Monday Morning Commute - Group

Good morning

• DCist put together a handy listing of free, weekly group bike rides in the DC area. 
• Cyclist in San Francisco to be charged with felony manslaughter after a fatal crash with a pedestrian. "Some 4,834 cyclists and 59,925 pedestrians were killed by motor vehicles in the United States between 1999 and 2009 (the most recent year for which figures are available), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Cyclists killed just 63 pedestrians, or about six a year, during the same time period." And one letter writer to the Post thinks that last week's fatal trail crash should serve as a warning to pedestrians. [I'm actually unclear on the letter-writer's point. Are they actually trying to warn pedestrians, or just complaining about cyclists?]
• I think Congress should fund biking and walking programs, but I've come to believe that we should probably retire the word "war" except for those cases where we're actually blowing things up and killing people. This is especially true at a time when we're actually at war. A better headline might be "Republicans want to defund biking and walking."
• The reason Hincapie didn't make the Olympic team? He asked not to, as did three other cyclists associated with Lance Armstrong.

Comments

[charlie]

Looking at fatality rates is a bit misleading.

I think we can agree a bike-pedestrian fatality is pretty rare, and many times involves a highly senstitive person (i.e. old) that might survive if there we younger.

What isn't rare, however, is bike-pedestrian accidents.

[Will]

I meant to comment on this the other day, but the Olympic team selection thing was bugging me. There's this "associated with Armstrong" thing, as if there's something secret going on. The guy that ended up on the team, Chris Horner has also been an Armstrong team rider for over a decade. Seems obvious to me the other riders made way for Horner because Horner didn't get placed on the Radio Shack TDF team, and he's never ridden in the Olympics.

All the riders who declined were also Horner teammates, all will be riding the TDF, and all have previously raced in the Olympics. The only one that doesn't make 100% sense to me is Zabriskie, who would've been competitive at TT, the rest of them will be burned from TDF. It's true that Phinney will have just raced TDF as well, but he's a kid and can recover fast, the rest are elder-statesmen of cycling.

I don't think there's anything questionable going on, just the usual "chapeau" and giving a fellow member of the peloton an opportunity to race at his peak. You see this all the time in the grand tours with senior riders getting stage wins when they aren't in contention for GC.