[SolarBikeCar]

@Steve O 178357 wrote:

Even if the perpetrator is telling the truth (haha) that he was waving, he left the scene of the incident. That is a crime and he should be cited for it.

Can you explain your reasoning? If I pass someone who is biking aggressively in my lane and there is a small amount of contact I would focus on maintaining direction and control. Looking back isn’t on my todo list for at least a few seconds if at all especially if the traffic is heavy. So why would you expect the east bounder to even know there was an accident, let alone that it was serious? Turning around and heading back toward the westbound cyclist could be perceived as escalating an otherwise mild altercation especially if the east bound cyclist sees any mishap as the fault of the west bounder’s bad riding.

[SolarBikeCar]

i saw a women face down on the road with lots of people around and a traffic jam. I suspected a collision although no emergency vehicles. I asked if a first aid kit would be helpful and someone on the periphery of the crowd said no, I left feeling sad that I couldn’t do something to help.

I few days later I had a flat tire and was on the side of the road repairing the tube when a woman walked up and asked if I needed help. she had passed me in her car and pulled off and walked back because she thought I needed help. Although I could manage just fine I asked her to help watch for traffic so I could focus on the repair and not bad drivers and she could feel useful. A previous time it was a guy who stopped as I was fixing a flat and he dug out a powered air pump.

In these cases maybe it was a bit of busybodyism using the offer to help routine to get a closer look. I prefer to think people are basically good and genuinely care about strangers. Allowing them to help makes the world a happier place by rewarding the Good Samaritan’s attitude even if in most cases help isn’t needed.

[SolarBikeCar]

@hozn 168797 wrote:

Yes, the data is location-dependent. A solution here would be to make a grid and “snap” nearby locations to the same lat/lon coordinates so that we could take advantage of caching (which we do already do) and everyone in a (e.g.) 10-mile radius gets the same weather data applied to their rides. This is probably as simple as decreasing the precision/scale of the coordinates, but I’d like someone with more geospatial knowledge to weigh in on that.

That’s what I’d do as well. Round every geo-point to 1 decimal place. Most of the metro area riders would be in the 36 geo blocks between (38.6,-78.4) and 39.2,-76.. Each of the blocks would be roughly 5 square miles. People outside the area would cluster around a few more geo-block areas. If you took last years data you might find you have only 100 or so unique values once you rounded every geocode down to 1 decimal of precision. I’d then give everyone in that geo-block the weather as returned by the API for the center of the block (i.e Lat+.05,Lon+.05). This method would adjust to the minimum number of geo-blocks needed each day and could vary as players travel to far-off places and returned.

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[SolarBikeCar]

@hozn 168725 wrote:

.
(2) One limit we’re pushing up against that is motivating the 250 limit is that we can only make 500 weather-related API calls per day. .

Caching the weather data and reusing it for multiple people would allow more participants without exceeding the API limit. I offered to help with programming and support last year but wasn’t needed. Unfortunately I don’t have time this year.

[SolarBikeCar]

@dkel 167516 wrote:

Va. Code § 46.2-904 “

Clearly there is no legal requirement that bike must be walked across a crosswalk in order to be treated as a pedestrian. There is no ambiguity in the law.

I don’t disagree. However in Loudoun a cyclist got hit in the crosswalk riding to school and the driver was not charged. A child was hit by a car in a crosswalk and again no charges. Being in the crosswalk (especially without a walk light) does not give a pedestrian or cyclist much legal protection. Police say if the car isn’t speeding then the pedestrian/cyclist is at fault for entering the crosswalk if the highway was not clear of approaching traffic, especially if there is no walk light.

[SolarBikeCar]

Virginia law is a little ambiguous on whether a bicyclists is a pedestrian or a vehicle when in a crosswalk area.

Bicycles are vehicles when on roads. Bicycles are pedestrians when on sidewalks.

There is a difference between who has the right of way when roads go over a sidewalk and when sidewalks go over a road.

If a car drives out of a driveway and across the sidewalk into a road, the driver must yield to vehicles and pedestrians. A car exiting a driveway into the street is expected to wait until all the traffic is clear before proceeding. If a driver stops to let a driver out it is considered a traffic infraction of “stopping on a highway”.

So when a bicycist enters a street via a sidewalk and gets hit by a car, if the bicyclist is a vehicle it has violated rules because a vehicle should not be impeded the passage of vehicles on a highway by entering from a side driveway. If you view a bicycle as a pedestrian the cars must stop once the pedestrian has started across the crosswalk.

When ambiguities occur, I think the rule should be resolved in the favor of the most vulnerable. So bicyclists in a crosswalk should be treated as pedestrians. However, the only way to be legally secure as a pedestrian instead of a vehicle, a rider must get off the bike and walk across the road to the other side.

It is not clear enough to prosecute drivers for hitting cyclists who drive out in front of a moving car until the ambiguity is resolved by judge or legislation.

[SolarBikeCar]

I suggested that ffx police pull the security camera footage but I do not think they did. The investigating officer didn’t return my follow up call.

[SolarBikeCar]

@ejwillis62 166974 wrote:

I am not sure all of those strava max speeds are correct..

My experience is that my phone augments the satellite gps signals with location info from wifi hot spots and the slight variations results in occasional spikes in speed evened out by slower speeds before and after compared to my wheel based speedometer. I also notice it tends to think I’m moving even when my wheels are stopped as the gps osscillates at a stop. End result is that I trust distance but not velocity from Strava and average speed is typically slower than my cycle analyst readout if I have stops along the way.

[SolarBikeCar]

@mstone 166036 wrote:

That’s a ridiculous answer, speeds in the range appropriate for a trail aren’t enforceable. 20 is too high much of the time, and really means 30 (which is way too high). The real answer is for people to be considerate of others, but that’s not going to work either. (As has been amply demonstrated by those who already think the rules don’t apply to them.)

“Considerate of others” is so corrupted by bias that it can’t be a rational rule. Do we have to be considerate of people who hate purple and not buy a purple vehicle? The only rules that matter are the ones that improve safety outcomes enough to offset the social cost of enforcing the rule. If 20 is too fast for the trails why do non-ebike riders consistently pass me on the downhills at speeds much closer to 30? Attempting to apply a speed limit to e-bikes that you don’t want applied to everyone exposes the bias–just be honest that you hate e-bike riders more than roadies.

[SolarBikeCar]

@hozn 166026 wrote:

Banning class-3 from MUPs as a general rule (assuming I read that right) seems perfectly fine to me. Does the trail needs class-3 e-bikes?

A directly observable fact (e.g. Speed) is better than a conjecture (potential to speed) or checking stickers on bicycles. We don’t prohibit vehicles on the parkway based on whether they have speedometers with numbers higher than 120 mph. We set a speed limit and apply it to all vehicles. Instead of banning class-3 e-bikes, ban speeds of more than 20 and apply to all users without regard to vehicle. Otherwise you are going to repeat this discussion for unicycle hover boards and jet powered skates, etc.

[SolarBikeCar]

Difference between weight of a small car versus large truck 40,000/2000 = 20x
Difference between weight of a heavy ebike (with rider) versus a child on bike (400/50) = 8x
Difference in speed between slowest traffic and the fastest traffic on a highway (80mph/40mph) = 2x
Difference between bike versus ebike speed on downhill (30 mph/30 mph) = 1x
Difference between bike versus ebike on level (28mph/22mph) = 1.3x
Difference between bike versus ebike on modest hills (15mph/10mph) = 1.5x
Difference between bike versus pedestrian speeds (18mph/3mph) = 6x

If disparity is the logic used to judge ebikes, MUPS should ban all cyclists because they go so much faster than pedestrians.

If disparity in weight is a crucial safety factor than how do cars and trucks coexists reasonably well?

It seems there is an unspoken objection to ebikes that is masked with an illogical arguments about disparity. If ebikes riders never passed “real” cyclists, then all would be well.

[SolarBikeCar]

One point rarely discussed is the stopping distance. E-bikes are heavier but generally have front and rear disk brakes. On the downhill they go about the same speed as a traditional commuter bike. In a panic stop I would expect disk brakes to greatly outperform a single coaster brake or a pair of v-brakes. Should we ban bikes without disk brakes on trails because riders can go faster than 30 downhill but can’t stop adequately? Ebikes are used to improve uphill speed where stopping quickly isn’t hard even without disk brakes.

[SolarBikeCar]

@hozn 163853 wrote:

This argument makes no sense to me. If I had an e-bike and could average 28mph, I could work out in Leesburg without making my commute much longer. Is that really my right?

Average speed and level cruising speed are not the same.
A 28mph level cruising speed is an average speed of about 19mph.
The rest of your point isn’t valid because your data is bogus.

[SolarBikeCar]

@Vicegrip 163802 wrote:

Real easy to get all lost in numbers that mean little with regards to the issues.

Spoken by someone who can’t do math or physics but still thinks they know more than an engineer on how to build safe bikes.

[SolarBikeCar]

A bicycle speed has three components: motor input (pedals and/or electric motor), friction losses (air resistance + tire resistance) and change in potential energy of going up or down hills.

Riding on the level eliminates potential energy change so all the motor input goes into countering friction.

Power required (watts) to move a bicycle at speed on the level:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]15319[/ATTACH]
(Fun fact, the elf’s body and shape gives it a friction profile more like the race bike than a MTB.)

Riding up and down hills changes the potential energy of the bicycle. Potential energy is the total vehicle weight and the change in elevation. The table below gives the power required to go up or down a hill for a MTB at the given speed. Empty cells indicate braking needed.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]15318[/ATTACH]

One take-away is that if the potential for speed is the key safety issue with e-bikes, then we must also ban heavy people from riding on trails with hills. Even on modest hills, heavy people’s potential energy shedding provides more power than an e-bike’s motor.

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