A Successful Kickstarter Bike Lighting Project

The "mini-monkey" wheel lighting system

This is one of a number of products out there trying to push the combination of making cycling in the dark safer (by providing a more visible bicycle) with a version of "fun" achieved with a bike that displays lighting patterns on the spokes.

The video shows riders chugging along with their wheels lit up nicely by these devices, making amusing patterns of light. As is usual with such videos, the riders don't have either headlights or tail-lights, so while they have lights they aren't following the law (in most jurisdictions) or common sense, for that matter.

The video spends a fair amount of time on technical aspects and not just showing how much fun this is, which is good. The design does seem better than some others - the "mini" aspect is that the unit that attachs to the spokes is small, so it doesn't throw off the wheel balance (much). The battery pack attaches to the hub, again to prevent the wheel from being unbalanced. Of course it does mean you have a wire running down a spoke to connect the hub unit to the lighting panel thing.

I am not much in favor of solutions (if one considers this a solution to the bicycle lighting problem) that don't scale well. If there were lots of cyclists all using this sort of lighting, it would be annoying and distracting.

Fortunately (again, in my view) at 50 bucks a unit (and what cyclist wouldn't insist on one for both wheels?) I don't think we'll be seeing too many of these around. I was also amused that they supply a steel security strap - nothing like having something new on your bike to attract "mini-theft."

What might be kind of cool would be something far more subtle (not making patterns) that would put a couple of LEDs on the wheels of bikes that have power generator hubs. I guess.

Anyway . . . they got over-funded, so good for them.

Parking in the Bike Lane -Moscow

Moscow site with nothing but photos of cars parked in what is the first dedicated bike lane in Moscow, near Moscow State University. The person posting the photos, on a more or less daily basis, is a chemistry student who one assumes is doing this as some sort of protest.

I think acclimating Russian drivers to cycling will be tough.

Police Unity Tour on GW Trail

Sunday, mid-day - despite the excellent weather, not really that many riders out - any many were part of a local event supporting a national "Police Unity Tour" (by bike). The riders had event numbers on their clothes.


Came up upon this fellow heading north on the GW trail near National Airport


Riding with gun

I guess maybe this is a work-related activity? I don't see the need for this guy to be riding with his sidearm. I wasn't able to work out what jurisdiction he was from.

Four Mile Run Trail Flooding

Minor flooding of trail along Four Mile Run under Route 1

This is part of my morning commute - the heavy rain combined with the tides can lead to some flooding at this location, the low point of the trail along Four Mile Run. You can see that earlier the high point was perhaps 2-3 inches above where it is now. There was one time last winter after one of the heavy snows when there was a heavy rain storm that also melted snow and the flooding was probably a foot higher than this - I pulled myself along the fence to keep from peddling underwater. This was a dumb thing to do since bottom brackets are generally not watertight and enough grease was washed out that the bottom bracket started to emit rather amazing creaking noises. Always learning something . . .

Cyclists in Stockholm, 1948

Photo from the Stockholm Transport Museum Commons in Flickr

Alas, for now it is the only one with bicycles.

Overdue Bicycle Parked at Library Branch

Bicycle parked at Aurora Hills Branch Library, Arlington VA

You can't leave your bike locked up at one location for more than five days, or it gets removed. To where is a bit vague.


Tag on bicycle parked at Aurora Hills Branch Library, Arlington VA

I guess we won't have any books published like Bicycles Locked to Poles with its photos of bicycles in New York City (in various states of disassembly, mostly attached to poles with chains as heavy or heavier than the bikes themselves).

500 Hurt in New York City by Bikes - Good? Bad?

The Wall Street Journal (that is mostly behind a paywall, so no point in linking to it) has an amazingly bad article titled "A Different Spin on the Dangers of Urban Cycling" - the first sentence states, "Two recent studies appear to expose cyclists as a potent urban menace." I guess for this fellow it appears that way.

The first study he quotes compares soot accumulation in the lungs of five (5!) cyclists who commute by bike in London with Londoners who don't. The cyclists had higher levels of black carbon in their lungs. When I think of something as an "potent urban menace" I am thinking it means to other people and not to themselves. But it says cycling is bad, so he tosses that into his article.

The second study has been reduced by the Internet (and the Wall Street Journal) to "500 pedestrians hurt by bikes in NYC a year." The study, done at Hunter College, was more nuanced that that and tried to determine if more or fewer pedestrians were injured by cyclists over a four year period - their conclusion was that despite more cycling and cycling infrastructure, the number has dropped (slightly). So this is a good metric - that is, even if we want to think that cyclists are a potent urban menace, it seems to be declining, or anyway not growing at the rate that cycling is growing. No one suggests that the 500 figure is good but there are questions such as, "compared to what?" and "is it going up or down?" that these articles typically ignore.

Different publications draw different conclusions - the New York Daily News takes the view it suggests a "need for tougher enforcement" which I guess is step beyond the Wall Street Journal position. But a physical fitness advocacy group takes the position that this is good news since the number isn't growing - "The city says that while bike use is up, the total number of accidents is stable. According to a Hunter College study, some 500 pedestrians are hurt each year by cyclists. At Bike New York, there is nothing but optimism." Kind of oddly put, but anyway.

This takes the "is the glass half full or half empty to new heights (or lows, depending on your point of view). And it does nothing for confidence in the Wall Street Journal.

Another point of view is provided by the trailer for the new bike messenger movie set in NYC - it makes it look like it is the messengers and the taxi drivers who are having dramatic traffic interactions.