It's about the lycra

not the
commute

Magda Szubansk, a comedienne from Down Under, caught a whole lot of guff from bikers after her rant against lycra-louts last September. To be quite frank, I agree with her up to the point where she starts calling for cagers to run them off the road. Fortunately, she realized that she'd gone over the top and apologised. But aren't the streets, everywhere in the world, dangerous enough without ramping up the rhetoric?

Robot cars...

versus
freedom for technology

The Intelligent Life, the quarterly mag of The Economist, has a fascinating article on the automation of cars. In When Drivers Are Passengers Paul Markillie describes the trend toward cars that drive themselves. While he believes that this could make them safer, he has

... a niggling worry that it could make some drivers lazy and less attentive. If your car can park itself, why bother becoming familiar with its dimensions and learning how to manoeuvre it correctly? Why bother braking when the car will do it for you? ... Accidents will happen, and inevitably it will lead to more drivers blaming the car itself.

Isn't this another good argument for biking? Bikes put you smack dab in the middle of the world. Cagers, on the other hand, are dangerously isolated and, increasingly it seems, less free to interact with their surroundings. It's ironic that the great American icon of mobile freedom is slowly being replaced by our low tech alternative.

Bikers behaving badly?

Boston responds...

Cops on bikes

Chicago's Finest
training video

Traffic Enforcement for Bicyclist Safety
from the Chicago Bicycle Program
on Vimeo

Driven to distraction

hands free hazard
Part II

Slate has more on the Feds' refusal to pursue research on the cellphone use of cagers. It goes one step further by exploring possible ways federal agencies have suggested to prevent driving and dialing. They range from the obvious - Stop the vehicle in a safe location that is off the road, well away from traffic, before they receive or place their calls - to the doubtful - Allow a passenger to receive or place calls. How many cagers actually have passengers? And if they do, isn't someone else yacking away next to you just as distracting?

Two other suggestions seem to be equally obtuse.

Mass transit. The most efficient way to let people yap while traveling is to pack them in a vehicle with a single designated driver. That's called public transportation. Transit agencies should take steps to facilitate passenger phone use, such as improving underground transmission. If noise is a problem, agencies can restrict phone use to texting. The important thing is to get phone users out of their cars.

As a frequent mass transit user, I can easily imagine how wonderful it would be surrounded by even more loud cellphone user.

Software. ...some automakers now include a lockout feature to keep drivers from performing complicated tasks—like entering destinations into a car's navigation system—while the vehicle is moving. Maybe phones could be similarly disabled by integrating them with car software.

Don't even get me going on the American obsession with tech fixes; especially when a rather obvious solution already exists. In fact, it's one that goes all the way back to the invention of the telephone. Answering a phone is completely voluntary.When it rings, pings, or plays your favorite iTune you are under no obligation to respond. Isn't that why voice-mail was introduced in the first place???

Hands free hazard

feds keeps cager
safety data secret

Today's NYTimes reports that the Federal government's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration not only refused a request to research the link between cellphone use and road accidents but chose not to publicize previous research and warnings ... back in 2003! Fortunately, the Center for Auto Safety and Public Citizen filed a successful Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the agency's findings. And The NYTimes has published the documents here. Some of the more amazing, but not surprising, excerpts from the article include:

The highway safety researchers estimated that cellphone use by drivers caused around 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents over all in 2002.

...hands-free headsets did not eliminate the serious accident risk. The reason: a cellphone conversation itself, not just holding the phone, takes drivers’ focus off the road, studies showed.

The research mirrors other studies about the dangers of multitasking behind the wheel. Research shows that motorists talking on a phone are four times as likely to crash as other drivers, and are as likely to cause an accident as someone with a .08 blood alcohol content.

“We’re looking at a problem that could be as bad as drunk driving, and the government has covered it up,” said Clarence Ditlow, director of the Center for Auto Safety.

Ode to cigarettes redux

if only he
had a bike

Speed demons

or how to
kill a biker

Speed Kills is about as obvious as it gets for anyone who commutes daily in big metro areas like our City of Big Shoulders. Last year, The Spokesman posted about Delaware's then new Neighborhood Speeding Campaign. Its central message is brutally honest: if a cager hits you at 20 mph you have a 5% chance of dying. Up the speed to 30 mph and your chance of death goes up to 45%. Pulling no punches, this rather stark mathematics explains why the state sets the speed limit in residential areas at 25 mph. Of course, part of the problem is that the faster cagers go the more distance they need to stop. So I've put the two sets of sobering statistics together.

Cagers going...
20 mph, need 69 feet to stop

If not, bikers have a...
5% chance dying

30 mph, need 123 feet to stop

45% chance of dying

40 mph, need 189 feet to stop

85% chance of dying

Live a little...

bike a lot

Forever 2 wheels

F.T.W.
by the
Smut Peddlers

I realize this little punk ditty is actually about motorcycles. But it does capture the frustrations of the velotariat as well! Enjoy.

I’m not encased in metal
And I do not watch TV
I like my motorcycle
Because it helps me to feel free
The highways and byways are overrun
With Acura gangster clones
And soccer moms in S.U.V.’s
Who are talking on the phone
Fuck the world!
Forever two wheels!

To all the crazy drivers
whipping in and out of lanes
start using your turn signals
or suck my lock and chain
Your car’s all over the road
You’ve got alcohol on your breath
It gets me homicidal
Because for me it’s life and death
Fuck the world!
Forever two wheels!

You drive like a simp
And you think you’re a pimp
In your climate controlled cage
I’ve got hostile envy and it sets me in a rage
You’d better hope I don’t survive
If you get me in a crash
Cuz I’m looking to kill you
And they call me scooter trash
Fuck the world!
Forever two wheels!

Sinister motordom

in the
Windy City

The Hope Chest, posting Bad news from the past, came up with this little depressing nugget from the 22 April 1922 edition of The Chicago Tribune. Every 19th cager driving the streets had killed or injured a human being in 1921.

That's 9,406 total cagers of which 561 were killers!

The biggest reasons for this sorry state of affairs
was congestion and lax law enforcement.

Cagers tended to go between 25 and 30 MPH
do get out of the overly crowded Loop.

Would-be alternative transport experts,
not surprisingly, suggested
the expansion of the subway system!

Cager advocates, on the other hand, demanded
double-decking of the streets in the loop,
leading to today's subterranean wonderland
along the Chicago River!


Of course, they didn't anticipate the 1992 Loop Flood!

Roadside Assistance?

...ah-hem

Crazy Cagers

Massholes

and the summer's
first mass

There's been quite a discussion on the CCM listserv in anticipation of tomorrow's Critical Mass. It was sparked by the following email from Rob Sadowsky, the Executive Director of the Active Transportation Alliance - formerly the Chicago Bicycle Federation.

A top Chicago Police deputy approached me Sunday and wants me to relay a message to Critical Mass participants. He shared that the department is not interested in stopping Critical Mass, but it is concerned with two behaviors:

1. Drinking and drugs while riding.
2. Aggressive and violent activities, specifically concerned with this
around corking. Chicago Police will issue warnings and possibly
tickets starting this Friday.

I also want to add that I think that the individual I talked with really did get what Critical Mass is about in principle and that was a bit enlightening and hopeful. I told him I’d pass the message along.

As a frequent masser, I actually think it's a good sign that the CPD got in touch with Rob before tomorrow's mass. First, they obviously realize the summer's 1st mass is going to be huge - if last month's numbers are any indication. They'd rather work with massers rather than trying to stop us. Second, they are quite clear about the two issues they'll actively confront. I've learned the hard way that drinking to excess not only endangers me and my bike but threatens other bikers and cagers. As for corking, I've always felt it was a means of cooperating with cagers instead of challenging them.


View Larger Map
On last month's mass, I corked a woman who was trying to cross N. Humboldt Blvd. on Cortland near Palmer Square. She had stopped to let the mass pass but her car was blocking car traffic coming down behind her because massers were zipping around her front bumper. She was more frustrated - understandably - than angry.

I stopped and told her I would get the massers to give her more room in front so she could pull farther up. As folks were going by I simply yelled, She's ok. She gets the mass. Give her a little room! And massers did. Everyone was great; they whooped and cheered. She pulled up. She even got into the mood, rolling down her windows and cranking up her stereo. I then told her it would be 10 minutes tops before we passed, then she could go. I stayed with her the whole time and explained what we were about.

Certainly this type of feel-good story doesn't happen all the time. But I believe that the privilege of massing obligates all of us to at least try to be helpful to drivers AND to avoid, as best we can, being provoked by frustrated or angry drivers.

Off-duty police officer kills 13 year old

Today, the Chicago Tribune is reporting:

Terrence Booker had planned to pick up his 13-year-old son, Trenton, from school Friday afternoon for a holiday weekend of family barbecues just weeks shy of the boy's 8th-grade graduation.

But he instead received a heartbreaking phone call in the middle of the night that his son had been killed in a hit-and-run collision while riding his bike with friends about 1:30 a.m. Friday after sneaking out of the house.

Later Friday, Chicago police acknowledged that an off-duty officer had struck Trenton on South Ashland Avenue with his car and then drove off.

"That car tore him to pieces," Booker, 40, said outside the home of Trenton's mother, Barbara Norman. "He was dead when he hit the ground."

Police said an internal investigation would take place into the conduct of the off-duty officer, age 39 with 17 years on the force. He was stripped of police powers. A police spokeswoman confirmed that it was a hit-and-run collision.

No criminal charges had been filed against the officer by Friday evening, but the investigation continues.

It was the second fatal crash involving an off-duty Chicago police officer in recent weeks. Officer Joseph Frugoli, 41, was charged last month with reckless homicide and DUI after a fiery April 10 crash on the Dan Ryan Expressway that killed Andrew Cazares and Fausto Manzera, both in their 20s.

Witnesses said Trenton and at least one other boy were riding their bikes in the left southbound lane of Ashland Avenue near 81st Street when a black Dodge Charger approached from behind, swerving and speeding.

Though witnesses said the light at the intersection had turned red, the car did not slow as it approached the boys, striking Booker's bike and flipping him in the air, said Brian Jackson, a witness.

The car continued southbound on Ashland and later was found by police in the 1900 block of West 82nd Street, four blocks from the collision, said Sgt. Antoinette Ursitti, a police spokeswoman.

A steady stream of relatives and friends visited Trenton's home. He was in 8th grade at nearby Cuffe Math, Science and Technology Academy. Trenton's father said his son was loyal and friendly -- the only boy among five sisters -- still figuring out who he wanted to be.

"He wanted to be everything in the world," Booker said. "Nothing but dreams."

Booker said he was furious that it was a police officer behind the wheel of the car that hit his son.

"It's outrageous. It's a shame that a police officer [who] is supposed to uphold the law, that he would do something like that," Booker said later Friday. "You hold your badge and honor as an authority and you leave someone down in the road you know you just hit? It's terrible."

Two wheels good?

the owl of Minerva
flies at dusk

Tough economic times are inspiring a new generation of practical product designers claims NYTimes blogger, Allison Arieff. From more energy efficient lightbulbs to high-capacity batteries, she highlights the trend from creating a need for things to creating things folks actually need. Unfortunately, General Motors doesn't seem to get it. Last week it announced a new partnership with Segway to produce the P.U.M.A., a battery-powered, beefed-up version of the personal transporter that made Segway (in)famous.

Give me the two-wheeled, self-propelled original anytime. The PUMA is frankly ugly. It looks like a pedal cab without the peddler. In comparison to the lowly bike, this 300lb behemoths is inefficient, requiring recharges every 35 miles. Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility would be better served by a next generation bike like the Strida, a foldy designed by Mark Sanders. At only 20lbs, it easily surpasses the 35 mile range of the PUMA. Nor does it depend on electricity produced by polluting coal plants.

Besides, if GM really wants to create something that every red-blooded American male needs, why not take a cue from Ohio-based designer Kile Wygle? He's created a motorized bar stool! It's comfy with a padded seat welded to a frame with a lawnmower steering wheel. It uses a fuel-efficient, five-horsepower motorcycle engine. And it's small enough to store in your backyard tool shed.

Just don't drive it to your neighborhood bar for a long night of drinking like Wygle did back on 4 March. After 15 beers, he quite literally hit the road and was subsequently charged with DUI by the Newark, Ohio Police. Gerrit Konink, Wygle's neighbor, witnessed the doomed venture from his window while having dinner.

Driving Miss Daisy...

badly!

Just how fast is fast?

at least bikes
are in the top five

On 16 September 1929 Time Magazine opined on the fastest means for traversing a mile. If you remove the seaplane, fastest, and the motorboat, 4th fastest, as being impractical for your daily commute, a bike moves up to 3rd fastest.

Atcherly, 1929
Seaplane 0:10.83

Segrave, 1929
Automobile 0:15.56

Davis, 1922
Motorcycle 0:32.53

Miss America VII,
1928 Motorboat 0:38.07

Bedell, 1917
Bicycle 1:04.02

Roamer, 1918
Horse 1:34.08

Jaffe, 1928
Skating 2:30.06

Nurmi, 1923
Running 4:10.04

Goulding, 1910
Walking 6:25.08

Borg, 1925
Swimming 12:43.03

Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot!!!

yet again...

Back in February the new voice of the Republican Party bloviated over a proposed Madison, WI ordinance that would impose a $100 penalty for cagers opening their car doors unsafely or interfering with traffic and $50 for leaving them open longer than necessary.

Frankly, if the door opens into a bicycle rider I won't care. I think they ought to be off the streets and on the sidewalk. Don't misunderstand here, you bike riders, do not misunderstand this, but I mean if you're going to get in the street, get over there, get over as far right in the lane as you can. You ought to see Saturday morning where I live. It looks like a swarm of mosquitoes. It causes you to take an alternate route. And so now poor bike riders, some old codger opens the car door, bam! The bike rider does a head flip over the door. I haven't seen that. Now they want to fine you for not only opening the door, you don't close it soon enough, you get a $50 fine in Madison, Wisconsin. (laughing)

Perhaps, Rush should get off the drugs and get on a bike? Then he just might join Jim Morrison!

Pithy

ordered east

With all the bike fashions that've been coming out there recently, the one aspect that gets little or no attention? Helmets. It's an important question if you're a vehemently anti-lycra lout. You know what I mean if you've rejected neon colors for civilized tweeds. You spend your time trawling velopunk sites for just the right thing to wear on nostalgia rides. But headgear? It seems our sartorial predecessors needed no stinkin' helmets. So I imagined the next best thing - the venerable Wolseley Pith Helmet. What it lacks in actual cranial protection it makes up for in stylish panache. And, as I found out during last September's raining A.B.C.E., it's weather-proof as well!

Then, yesterday, I discovered that my historical speculations were spot-on. Here's a British divisional cyclist corps in Wolseleys from Cycling magazine, July 1915.

HUZZAH!!!!!

Keep calm & carry on - Part II

from National Lampoon's
European Vacation

You can't get a more stiff upper lip than Eric Idle, particularly when he's suffering at the hands of Chevy Chase. It is the quintessentially British trait. As the home of Uncool Britannia, the Sterling Times, notes,

Keeping a stiff upper lip is pretty hard to do and that's just the idea behind it. When someone gets upset, his lips usually tremble. Keeping a stiff upper lip is supposed to hide your emotions. This expression dates back to the 1800s, but is still used today. So why just the upper lip and not the lower? Well, most men of the era had mustaches and a top lip was more noticeable if it was quivering.