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@ShawnoftheDread 31263 wrote:

So in winter it’s closed before anyone even leaves the office?

Yes. In practice, the police don’t generally hassle people who are pretty obviously commuting. (They seem to want the law so they can bust vagrants and vandals.) The possibility does exist, however.

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To the people along the W&OD who seemed strangely excited to see me riding along and kept cheering and waving signs: it was nice to see you, too, and I hope you had a nice day.

To the cops who kept stopping cars at crosswalks instead of trying to ticket me: keep up the good work.

To whoever spilled what smelled like a gallon of cheap gin at the fairfax county parkway overpass: I hope you managed to trade up.

Overall, a very nice quick trip out to Purcellville, with great weather.

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Agreed; this is for walker/jogger crime prevention, and is mostly irrelevant for bikes.

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@Dirt 31206 wrote:

It takes few minutes to change gears (loosen rear wheel, slide forward, move chain, tighten rear wheel, smile). I think it will be a good set-up. Hope to have that rolling in the next week or so.

So, basically, it’s the slowest derailleur ever?

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@Certifried 31182 wrote:

Now, if they would only amend their policy about no bikes during rush, I would be SO happy. I know that could be a nightmare if not done properly, but aren’t there other cities with large transit systems that allow bikes? At least adjust the hours a little bit, I’ve hopped on at 7pm on days when I just don’t have enough in the tank to get home, and it seems like 7pm is WAY later than it needs to be.

There are other transit systems that don’t allow bikes at any time. We’ve been all over this issue before, and I’m still fairly convinced that inviting bikes during rush hours would just end up in someone dead in some of the stations with overcrowded platforms. (The response that some stations/lines/directions aren’t crowded is relevant only if metro were capable of enforcing a rule requiring that much judgement, and people never tried to bend a safety rule for their personal convenience.)

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Why is filtering a good idea? Because once you’re across the street, there’s much less chance someone will run over you while focused on making the light.

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These days anyone who falls off a bike and doesn’t end up with a TBI credits the helmet, and anyone in the same state without a helmet is just “lucky”. The hysteria is way out ahead of the science. Why is it that people in other countries can manage to toodle around town bare headed? The anecdotes from this country suggest that the Dutch should pretty much all be dead by now. There are circumstances where wearing a helmet makes a lot of sense, and other cases where it’s unnecessary. I don’t understand why the discussion is no longer rational, and people instead compete to see who can be most doctrinaire about pushing helmets all the time (while implying that everybody else is just too stupid to understand the issue.) So am I acting like a rebellious teen (thanks for the analogy)? No; I’m simply going to make a conscious decision about whether a helmet makes sense for a given ride.

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@RayDC 31121 wrote:

Having just survived a direct hit by a car Thursday morning that failed to yield while making a left at an light controlled intersection, I can attest after seeing the windshield of the car, I would not be posting this now had I not had a helmet on.

Or, you may have. We’ll never know. But wouldn’t it be cool if better enforcement pushed a culture change that made this sort of thing less common?

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I tend to wear a helmet out of habit, but as people get more aggressive about the “need” for them, I find myself more sympathetic to the point of view that the pro-helmet hysteria is unhelpful. Cyclists are more likely to die from massive trauma in an accident with a car than from anything a helmet is going to prevent. The solution its to slow the cars down, make people drive less aggressively, and make the roads safer for everyone. Helmet hysteria does nothing to further that goal, and I increasingly think it’s just a distraction that prevents people from focusing on the real (hard) problems.

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You’re incredibly lucky there was any citation at all–there often isn’t, even if someone is killed.

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@JorgeGortex 31080 wrote:

Yeah, I see the irony. I think my point was rather that CaBi survive or fail is irrelevant to my interest in people keeping their brains in one piece and not gooped on our shiny pavement.

Thank god people don’t engage in too much hyperbole over this issue.

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Asserting that daytime strobes are a safety issue because someone could be blinded smacks of trying to rationalize bitching someone out over a personal preference. (Short version: I call bs.)

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@off2ride 30870 wrote:

Make it High and Tight just like Prom Night.

Oh my

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For many of us it’s a problem that has taken care of itself.

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@Dickie 30609 wrote:

Couldn’t agree more. Although it sucks to sit in traffic, I just don’t feel safe passing streams of cars on the right. I feel much safer (and visible) sitting and waiting with everyone else. I also think it encourages motorists to accept cyclists as vehicles.

You don’t actually get any bonus points for sitting unnecessarily. The cars are perfectly willing to pass in-lane (which they wouldn’t do for another car) so why shouldn’t we be equally willing to pass them in-lane? I know it’s a lot of burden for them to have to put one hand on the wheel and look up from texting to pass a bike, but they’ll get over it.

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