Bike Items That Have Little to Nothing to do with DC - The People Don't Always Ride in a Hole in the Ground

I'm riding in the Five Boro Bike Tour today, so let's start with some things from New York City:

A new bike count out of New York City estimates that an average of 236,000 cyclists a day rode in NYC. That's up 28% from the year before. 

While the count also includes commercial riders such as bike messengers and food-delivery cyclists, Transportation Alternatives calculates that such riders travel only about 5 percent of the total miles, with non-commercial riders making up 95 percent of bike traffic on city streets.

And Bike League points to a study by John Pucher and others about Cycling in New York.

Streetsblog NY interviews Pucher about the TA count and he thinks it's very suspect, but then so is the census count.

Pucher said the shortcomings of census data are as exasperating as [TA's] screenline count's deficiencies. His team looked at the three-year average from census surveys in 2006, 2007, and 2008. That yielded an estimate of 25,000 New Yorkers who primarily commute by bike. "There's just no question that the data understates total cycling," Pucher said. In addition to undercounting non-commute bike trips, he said, the census undercounts cycling by the city's enormous immigrant population.

Ride the City now has an iPhone app for NYC. 

California cyclists are supporting a law allowing "green light cameras" for drivers who make illegal right turns. And they're debating whether or not cyclists should be included in texting bans (I think they should. Pulling over is way easier on a bicycle). 

"If you're going to ban it while biking, you might as well ban it while walking," says cyclist Jesse Daniel.

Simitian says the question of banning texting while walking actually did come up when drafting the new legislation, but it didn't make it into this bill.

Seinfeld star Jason Alexander in crash with 14 year-old cyclist. Everyone is fine. Alexander stayed on the scene and was not charged.

A list of the Top 50 cycling blogs.

A driver in Tennessee hit a cyclist from behind. The driver claimed he was driving safely and that the cyclist swerved in front of him. But a witness came forward later who said he saw the driver driving too fast and out of control, and that when he saw the cyclist, the cyclist was on the right hand side. But the cyclist doesn't remember what happened and it was dark, there was fog and the cyclist was wearing dark clothes. But the driver was on Oxycontin. But the cyclist may have been drinking. It's a mess, but this is encouraging:

The record also reveals a dispute regarding whether Defendant was keeping a proper lookout. The record shows that Defendant testified he did not see Plaintiff until Plaintiff was only approximately ten feet in front of Defendant's truck despite the fact that the road approaching the accident scene was straight for approximately three hundred yards, Defendant had his truck headlights on, and there were street lights on the roadway. Further, there is a dispute regarding whether Plaintiff's bicycle had reflectors or not. Viewing the evidence and all reasonable inferences from it in the light most favorable to the Plaintiff, as we must, particularly the Defendant's own testimony, there is a genuine issue as to why Defendant did not see Plaintiff at all until Defendant's truck was only approximately ten feet away from Plaintiff.

"I didn't see him," isn't enough.

Comments

[Angry Parakeet]

There was an article in the NYT yesterday regarding bicyclists stopping for red lights, submitted by a bicyclist. He offered that cars will do less hating if we stop, but is that a good enough reason to always stop and wait for lights? I think there will always be many haters out there mainly because sometimes bikes slow a driver down which is a capital offense.

[jj]

OBVIOUSLY, that list should have included WashCycle among the top blogs.

And really, Copenhagen Cycle Chic? It's not even a cycling blog but a fashion/voyeurism/self-promotion blog more than anything else.

[SJE]

What is the fetish with reflectors on bikes? Surely the question is visibility, but not the way you get there.
People can wear reflective clothing, backpacks, helmets. Lights are better than reflectors, since reflectors only work from specific angles. What am I missing?

[Jonathan Krall]

Thanks for your post. IMO, nullifying the "I didn't him" defense is at the top of the legal agenda for cycling advocates.

@SJE: The fetish isn't about reflectors on bikes, it's about the law.

State laws typically require reflectors on bikes, but not reflective clothing or helmets. News reports, OTOH, often report on the clothing/helmet issue, mixing up a legal issue with a matter personal choice. Worse yet, police reports often focus on the non-legal helmet/clothing issue. It's nice to see a report that sticks to the law.

[SJE]

It is the law in VA, but I still think it is silly to focus on a legal requirement over one of safety under the circumstances. Thus, if the cyclist did not have a reflector on his bike, but was lit up like a Christmas tree, then focusing on the legal aspect tells us little about the accident except that the victim was not compliant with the law.
Having a working bell is also the law in some places, but not relevant to being hit from behind.

[Washcycle]

SJE, the reason reflectors matter in this case is that it was before sunrise (dark even) and the cyclist didn't have a tail light or other reflective tools.
In DC a cyclist can have a rear light visible from 500 feet in lieu of a reflector, in MD they can have a taillight in addition to the reflector and in Virginia cyclists are required to have the red light in addition to the reflector if they're going to ride on a road with a speed limit higher than 35 mph.

[SJE]

I agree that visibility is key and that reflectors are the law. My comment re Jonathon Krall's post is that he praises the reporter's focus on the legal requirements, which seems less relevant per se than visibility.

[Michael H.]

+1 that the list should have included WashCycle. What gives?

Other than that omission, there are some interesting blogs as well as some useless ones on the list. I've only looked at a few of them but the Cycling Tips blog seems worth reading.

Though it's not on the list, Big Ring Riding was posted by someone on one of the blogs. That's not really a blog since it seems to be a single static webpage. But it's bike-related and kind of humorous, in a weird way. The guy has a fetish for riding in the big ring (on the bike), with some bike racing action pictures and some strange captions. (NB: The captions get cruder as you get toward the bottom of the page. Not nasty but a bit foul-mouthed.)

[MB]

I endorse CyclingTips. Like so many other lists, this one was subject to some odd criteria/anomalies. Mostly it's good for finding new and interesting stuff, as opposed to validating the efforts of a given blog.