[DSalovesh]

A discount but still nice option that I like is the Pearl Izumi liner shorts. They sell them to go with all their baggy MTB over-shorts but they work fine without as well. They’re not especially good as your ONLY shorts tho – too meshy except when you’re around a lot of bikers that don’t care – so I wear “normal” shorts over them most of the time.

List price is just $30, often on sale for closer to $20 – the pad design is among the best, IMHO.

[DSalovesh]

Makes sense to me in a gender neutral way too. Even an attractive person of the appropriate gender ought to dress for the activities at hand. Tops may be optional in some sense, but then where would folks keep their snacks?

[DSalovesh]

NPR’s really racing to the bottom lately. “If Fox (or WUSA) gets ratings with sensationalism and fluff, NPR can too.”

I’d much rather hear an old-school NPR in depth analysis of the study, more along the lines of what WashCycle did, but what we really need is some actual science.

[DSalovesh]

In DC, a Bike to School day event is planned for Lincoln Park from 7:30 – 8:30. The parent organization behind it spans 11 schools, so it has potential to be a big gathering, and there are bike trains planned from there to the schools at 7:45, 8:00, and 8:15.

We’ve got confirmations from the director of NHTSA, the director of the National Safe Routes to School program, the president of Safe Kids Worldwide, and DDOT’s SRTS coordinator, as well as invitations out to DDOT director Bellamy and Mayor Gray. I’m working on getting some bikeshop swag, but all riders will get medallions or stickers.

We need two things:

* Lots of kids to bike to school that day, especially if they can pass through the Lincoln Park pit stop (help spread the word!), and

* Some bike train leaders who can help get the kids from Lincoln Park to schools safely.

Shortly after students arrive at schools, members of Congress and leaders of bicycle advocacy organizations will hold a press conference to announce new survey data about Americans’ attitudes towards federal funding for biking and walking. The press conference will take place at 9:30 AM at 2nd and C St NE. Participant numbers from Bike to School day will be included in the remarks, so make a plan to get those numbers to Mary Lauran Hall with America Bikes. (@MaryLauran on twitter, mlhall@americabikes.org) – and get to the press conference yourself if you can!

[DSalovesh]

As a driver I do the same.

I used to average about 15K miles a year, drove a lot of cross-country road trips in my youth, and did one three month stint where I covered 75K in a (quite over loaded) 28′ box truck. My last moving violation was in 1992 and I’ve never had a collision since I got my license in 1983. These days I’m pretty strict about keeping to the posted limits, stopping fully and behind the line at lights and signs, signaling every turn and lane change. My annual mileage is pretty low lately (thanks to biking everywhere) but I still do 4-5K a year – almost all in SUVs.

You know what?

I get tailgated, honked at, and passed closely for going too slow and stopping too long. They ignore my signals to zoom around me, and they break the laws and violate our road-use social compact all the time.

WHY DON’T THEY HEED MY FINE EXAMPLE? Don’t they know I’m trying to be an ambassador for good motoring habits, and to stave off more extreme enforcement crackdowns through speed and red light cameras? They’ll never build more roads if we use the ones we have in this way, and if injuries or deaths from people driving like that don’t drop somehow I’m worried that funding for new roads will be cut and/or the basic privilege to drive will be increasingly regulated or even curtailed.

I’ll tell you what:

The drivers who do this aren’t thinking about me or anyone else, other than themselves. It’s pure selfishness, and it would be silly to try to reduce other people’s selfishness by increasing my own self-righteousness. I just drive my own vehicle the way I know I should and let others go on their own ways as much as I can.

And it’s the same with cyclists. This idea that bad cyclists give us all a bad name is no more valid than saying it about bad drivers. Cyclists have an un-earned bad name that our own actions cannot repel. Discussions like this threaten to fragment our small community and distract us from the things that really matter, like engineering our urban spaces to provide safe and useful infrastructures for bicycles, or engineering our laws and judicial system to support the systems we already have.

Give me a city I can cross on a bike with my kids and a feeling of security and belonging that equals how I feel driving across it and I’ll stop making up my own code of conduct for how I survive biking in a city that lacks that.

[DSalovesh]

It’s usually a variation on “yo!”, everything from a polite little eyo to a bloodcurdling YYYYOOOOOOWWWW!!!

I’ll throw in a “passingggg!” if that’s what I’m doing and the target seems to be conscious, but mostly I assume they aren’t, don’t care, or I don’t have room to accommodate if they move INTO my path instead of out of it.

[DSalovesh]

It’s only wrong if a) it messes up the waterproofing and b) you care.

Congratulations! Wear it proudly.

[DSalovesh]

No point to it unless they’re going to continue it all the way around the tidal basin to connect with MVT. (That should be a priority considering how many people use MVT to enter DC across the George Mason bridge. The fact that it’s not contributes to my theory that bike lanes are designed to aid drivers and not bikers, but that’s a whole other story…)

Constitution has a horrible BLOS rating (bicycle level of service), which it probably deserves due to traffic volume alone. A road diet would help, but it would have to start at Rockville and Fairfax.

Rides to/from the east should probably use Pa Ave instead.

Rides to/from the west have no great alternative at this point, which is one reason adding a crosstown track is so crucial to building out a complete facility network. (And again, the fact that it seems so politically hard to pick an east/west street or two and make the track happen adds to my paranoid theory.)

There may also be a jurisdictional issue with the roads along the Ellipse. it gets crazy somewhere around there.

Otherwise, it’s not my favorite answer, but: take the lane. That was the situation before the cycletrack, and it’s still the situation wherever we don’t have one.

[DSalovesh]

Old Man Mountain (and others) make exactly the answer in a “p-clamp”. Properly sized and installed they’re strong enough for fully loaded touring.

http://www.touringcyclist.com/gear/model_16556.html

[DSalovesh]

I don’t disagree, and I did okay with basic helmets for a long time. I’d usually wear them, but I’d also find excuses not to – it’s TOO hot, it’s a short and / or casual ride, I had a meeting and didn’t want helmet head, you know.

One year I couldn’t find a basic one that felt right, so I upgraded. Not only was the fit better but the adjustability and comfort were too. I was done with basic helmets.

Next time there was a sale so a higher end helmet was the same price, and I preferred it over the others because it was lighter and more ventilated. And sure enough, though I wasn’t closely tracking it, I realized that I wasn’t finding those excuses as often. Putting on a helmet was less of a chore, so I did it more.

Next time I went all the way to the top, and what I got was no longer something where I felt it was remarkably light or extremely comfortable – it was like it weighed absolutely nothing on my head and I could hardly feel it. No excuse needed.

I don’t know what that’s worth, but I know what it costs. In the end I did the math and realized that across a few years the cost difference was negligible. If “spending” $0.16 a day got me a helmet I’d use, and “saving” $0.08 a day got me one I’d hate, there might come a day when using a helmet was better than hating it.

(The only claim a helmet can make for protection is that it passes the applicable certification tests. I know one super-light helmet maker has – well, they can’t publicly announce the testing and results, but they have provided them as training materials for retailers – tested the lightest ones and demonstrated just how much they exceed the standards. It’s pretty amazing, really, though the answer they give in the shops is always “these all meet all applicable standards”.)

[DSalovesh]

The other part is that over “a number” of years the condition of a used helmet is unpredictable and untestable.

That time it fell off the table once? Probably still fine. The one that’s fallen off a table on average once a week for five years, that got banged on a door frame once or twice a month, that got smushed by the bag in the closet, that has no sharp corners anywhere anymore and got a couple of gouges along the way? Still effective? Nobody really knows, and nobody could say which of those minor defects did or didn’t put it over the line.

If it was then involved in a crash and it failed to protect as intended, the folks who design them – and sell them too, of course – are saying they wouldn’t be surprised. I trust them in the first place or I wouldn’t wear their helmets at all, so I don’t really have much reason to disagree when they tell me there’s a limit.

And helmets are pretty inexpensive overall. Basic commuter helmets are $45-65, enthusiast helmets are $100-120, and it’s hard to spend over $200 on any helmet. With a five year expected lifetime, for daily riders, that’s at least 1,200 uses, so it’s under $0.20 per day even for the most costly ones. At that cost, considering the purpose, it’s hard to worry about squeezing extra life out of an old or uncertain one.

[DSalovesh]

What about this?

http://www.cyclelicio.us/2012/truck-vs-bike-accident-reconstruction/

[DSalovesh]

The blind spot map is good to keep in mind, and the advice doesn’t hurt.

Back when I drove trucks quite a bit for work I noticed a trend, and it’s one that has certainly continued in the last 20 years: the better a truck cabin gets, the less the driver is reminded that there’s 10-20 tons stretching 30-40 feet behind it. We see what that leads to these days every time a truck swerves to the right to pass another vehicle turning left or when they’re speeding 10-20 over the limit through residential zones.

Back to this tip then, it’s really hard to account for keeping away from blind spots and danger zones of large trucks when they’re being driven as if they’re compact cars. In another group we were given an example of this last week when a cyclist reported a collision with a truck trailer where bike lanes merged into normal lanes. (We didn’t get full details on the collision so I don’t know much more, but the cyclist was cited for riding abreast, presumably of the truck and trailer – similar to the story that was presented during the Judiciary hearing last fall.)

[DSalovesh]

Having solved all other problems…

@pmf 16066 wrote:

(does this count against your car points?)

Depends who you listen to. Police usually say yes because demerit points are associated with violations, and because bicycles are subject to the same laws then the same violation receives the same penalties.

Sensible people who are not police understand that having a driving license isn’t required for bicycle operation so no demerits should ever be assessed for bicycle violations.

Demerit points are mostly optional, by the way. Any guides stating point values for certain infractions (e.g., http://www.dmv.state.va.us/webdoc/pdf/dmv115.pdf ) are based on typical and recommended and statutory information, but judges see this differently as well and are allowed to assess whatever demerit points they believe are appropriate.

Any idea why the officer didn’t hand over a ticket on site? I’m a bit skeptical that he wasn’t carrying a ticket book, so checking the ID may simply have been one of those barely-legal contact verification checks and there may be no ticket forthcoming.

[DSalovesh]

WABA tweeted one I think everyone can see:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]808[/ATTACH]

https://p.twimg.com/AnJ_X3bCEAAyYJn.jpg:large

[Author]

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