Negotiating for Cyclist Safety - the NYTimes Editorial View

Today the NYTimes has an opinion piece titled, "Is It O.K. to Kill Cyclist?" It takes a meandering approach to the subject, so summarizing it accurately isn't something I am going to try to do, but a few aspects jump out at me.

It's a step in some direction (whether forward or back may vary depending on one's perspective) that someone has published something in a broad circulation publication that says we have a car culture that tolerates cyclists getting killed on a pretty regular basis with no legal consequences for motorists who are at fault, unless the motorist flees (hit-and-run) or was drunk. And he ties this to the obvious point that in car-cyclist crashes, "only cyclists have much to fear." The apparent answer to the question in the title of the piece is, "yes, generally it is OK to kill cyclists with your car." That's radical, even for the NYTimes.

In fact, it reminds me of one of the reoccurring rants from Bike Snob NYC, who in recent months has revisited the lack of culpability for motorists who kill cyclists often. But Mr. Snob brings approaches the subject with several differences that I think are significant.

For one thing, Mr. Snob usually brings in the pedestrians, and points out that the better way to think of this problem isn't "all powerful (and protected, in several senses) motorists vs vulnerable cyclists" - he adds in the vulnerable pedestrians. Because when you look at the highway statistics, what you see is that motorists kill a lot more pedestrians than cyclists. The way to look at this is to use the "Complete Streets" model - not reducing the conversation to "a vs b" when it really should be a discussion of what serves all the road users so that none are at high risk is better, and to his credit, that is the way Mr. Snob approaches it (even though he is not particularly pedestrian oriented otherwise).

I find it exceptionally annoying that the NYTimes' author drags into his discussion that he sees cyclists routinely "ignore traffic laws" - that much of the problem must come from that. This seems to come up all the time - those scofflaw cyclists, it's all their fault. Strictly speaking, the scofflaw aspect only means that the cyclist is at fault when the cyclist (let's say) doesn't stop for a light and gets into an accident. That one breaks certain laws from time to time and then is in an accident that is the motorist's fault does not absolve the motorist because the cyclist can be presumed to have been breaking laws frequently elsewhere.


Under the NYTimes writer's logic, this dopey cyclist who is "running" (slowly) a red light is inciting motorists

This fixation on getting cyclists to "obey the law" can be seen in news publications often - yesterday, for example, the "Kearney View" (of Nebraska) has an opinion piece Follow Safety Codes Bicycling on City Streets that is a very politely stated reminder from a motorist that cyclists have rules that they need to follow - but based on the two-times wrong statement that "unsafe cycling puts everyone on the road in danger." Uh no - it isn't all on the cyclists and it isn't the same risk for everyone.

The NYTimes writer closes with this: "So here’s my proposal: Every time you get on a bike, from this moment forward, obey the letter of the law in every traffic exchange everywhere to help drivers (and police officers) view cyclists as predictable users of the road who deserve respect. And every time you get behind the wheel, remember that even the slightest inattention can maim or kill a human being enjoying a legitimate form of transportation."

For me, this "we cyclists can (or gotta, more like it) earn the motorists' respect!" approach is just baloney. The only legislative change advocated for in the piece, stronger penalties for motorists who kill cyclists, is made dependent on that "obey laws/earn respect" mantra.

I am reminded of the Norwegian video that looks at motorist-cyclist interactions that I blogged about recently. The video carefully avoids strong suggestions of fault and rather draws out the often ambiguous nature of cyclist-motorist interactions. It is a "be careful out there" message without the "be legal" argument thrown in.

If we want to focus on passing laws to improve this situation, I think budget laws that direct more resources to Complete Streets style infrastructure is more important long term. And short term.

Hmm.

Soviet Kid with Bike Mystery Photo

Taken during the mid-1970s, somewhere near Leningrad

I have digitized slides and photographs from when I was in the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s, but in some cases I can't figure out exactly when and where they were taken. Like this photo of this Russian boy with his bicycle. I am puzzled by the monastery or whatever it is in the background - where is this?

The boy has what seems to me for the time and place to be a decent bicycle, for a child who is fairly serious about riding a bicycle. I like the tool bag attached under the top tube and the place for a pump behind the seat tube.

It is somewhat surprising that there is such a photo (to me) since I was not particularly interested in bicycles at the time. Also, one really didn't see that many people in the city riding bikes. But then this isn't in a city.

Kickstarter Your Way Out of Sweating

One of the "problems" that apparently needs solving is to create a bicycle that requires less effort to pedal. One doesn't want to "break a sweat" after all.

Electric bikes have been increasingly popular worldwide - even (or particularly) in places where bicycles are a more serious form of everyday transportation than in the U.S., such as the Netherlands.



"Smart Wheel is a pedal assist which means it helps you ride your bike effortlessly. The motor turns on when you start pedaling and begins accelerating to your desired speed. It stops when you stop. It saves you time by getting you to your destination faster and gets you there without losing your breath or breaking a sweat. There’s no need to worry about what to wear to that business meeting or 8 o’clock date."

The clever aspect of this Kickstarter, which is aimed at urban residents who already have a bicycle but aren't always interested in using it as much as they perhaps hoped and for any one of several possible reasons don't want to buy a purpose-built electric bike, is that it supports an easy and not too expensive conversion of an existing bike to an electric bike. In fact, one can easily switch back and forth by swapping in the standard rear wheel or the e-wheel! Oh and the whole shebang is controlled by your smartphone that you attach the handlebars. And a smartphone recharging system is helpfully part of the deal.

Of course the only fun in looking at Kickstarters like this is in critiquing them. Yeah.

* Purpose-built electric bikes are typically heavy. This wheel weighs only 9 pounds and has both the motor and the batteries in it - in fact, nothing more is required than the smartphone to control it. So leaving aside the phone, it only adds 7-8 pounds to the previous weight of whatever bike you use it with. But a reason that electric bikes are heavy is not just because their electric bike specific components (batteries, motors, controls) add more weight (than this one) but also because the whole bike is built up to support heavier loads since the force propelling it is now not just your legs. In particular, the brakes of your average bike intended to be ridden around at 9-10 mph are going to be working hard to stop a bike that now weighs 1/4 to 1/3 more that is routinely going 15-20 mph. So you would likely end up having more maintenance issues with a bike not designed with such use in mind and some safety issues with stopping, at least potentially.

* Carrying the bike up stairs - an obvious advantage for urban residents in apartments is a bike that isn't so heavy that you can't easily carry it up stairs. Arguably taking the typical bikes they are showing that weigh 25-30 pounds as manufactured and then adding 7-8 more pounds will result in a bike that can be carried easily by some people up stairs but by others not so much.

* Smart phone controlled - OK, I'm not strictly speaking a Luddite but the idea that I need to manage my bicycle through my smartphone takes away a considerable amount of the elegant simplicity of what a bike is. However since many if not most people now have some such device with them anyway, avoiding the extra weight of a specific control system for the e-wheel makes sense.

* The smart phone charging system - the cell phone charging system relies on a wired connection to a type of generator that is still used in Europe but is not very commonly seen now in the U.S., where a small wheel presses against the tire and drives the generator - a so-called dynamo generator. I had one of those on a bike when I was a teenager! On some level, given the rest of it, the thing is charmingly retro. I guess. But arguably it is a necessity only because your bicycle, with this wheel, requires your working smartphone and that in turns requires it is juiced up. So one is stuck by extension with providing an independent charging source for the smartphone.

* Anti-theft system - locking the wheel. Uh, they must be kidding. You would still need to lock this thing up, and in NYC that would require a locking system that weighs as much or more than the wheel. (In fact, a bike like this would be a high theft target, with its exotic wheel.) While in a certain way it may be helpful to have the GPS to find it when it is stolen, this is a poor substitute generally for not having it stolen in the first place.

* The gearing - in response to a question on this point, it says, "Smart Wheel is actually fully compatible with multi-geared bikes since the rear gear cassette gets removed together with your old rear wheel once you replace it with the Smart Wheel. This of course turns your bike into a single-speed bicycle but we don't see that being much of a problem since shifting is no longer necessary beause Smart Wheel is already doing most of the work for you." Leaving aside a bike with a front derailleur (that would remain and could presumably still be used) it appears that the e-wheel has 18 teeth, so in order to ride the bike with its pedal assist at 20 miles per hour you would have to maintain a pretty high cadence (how fast you turn the pedals) even if you aren't using much force to do so. This assumes that smart phone control aside that "pedal assist" means that in order for the motor to apply force, you have to be pedaling.

* Riding in the rain - the photo in the Kickstarter shows a woman riding a bike with no fenders, just of those plastic things that sticks out vaguely over the rear wheel. What one learns after riding a bike with properly fitted full fenders is that it is really the front fender that does the most useful work, keeping your feet dry by keeping water from flying from the front wheel into the frame of the bike and then down onto your circling feet in a more or less continuous stream as you ride. This isn't so much a drawback of it being an e-bike, but it would seem to me that in order to have a good example of an all weather bike they should have shown the rider in rain with full fenders.

But no worries - this thing is well over-funded by folks looking forward to early delivery of their own one of these things from the Kickstarter store as a Kickstarter "reward."

Interestingly while FlyKly.com is now all about their Smart Wheel for bikes, they have also worked on e-motor scooter development as evidenced by photos of the things in Flickr. Good e-scooters would seem in some ways more helpful for society since the gas powered scooters that are increasingly popular around here with folks who can't afford cars and don't want to use transit seems problematic in various ways, some of which would be addressed by a electric version.


FlyKly's e-scooter - now past?

I guess that's enough for this for today . . .

Cycling Propaganda the Norwegian Way

This video, which is from a Norwegian government agency and features the well known Norwegian cyclist Thor Hushovd, has been out for a while. In the U.S. such things when presented on television are known as "PSAs" - a "public service announcement," or advertisement that is provided for public benefit (generally at no cost).


In Norwegian only, no closed captioning in English - however little is said ~

"'Del veien' is Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NPRA) campaign to increase understanding between cyclists and drivers in the traffic." - according to the YouTube information for the video. Their agency web page doesn't provide more information (unless you speak Norwegian). The video shows different situations where the cyclist, Hushovd, almost has serious crashes with different motor vehicles, yet (miraculously) arrives home in one piece - the punch line is "for those who don't have nine lives" (in Norwegian) - it makes sense when you watch it.

I would imagine a fair amount of thought went into coming up with different seven different "interactions" between motor vehicles and the cyclist (in one case, while he is riding with a group). Although set in a village, each of close calls is an illustration of a typical high risk situation where cyclists and motorists can end up crashing in a more urban setting. There is a little of everything, which is remarkable in the 45 seconds allotted. Also, if one (whether cyclist or motorist) stops to think about each of these situations, it isn't so obvious who is at fault in most of them - so (apparently) the notion from the government agency is to "increase understanding between cyclists and drivers in the traffic" by showing the ambiguity in how they sometimes interact. I read this as quite different than the usual American approach, that to me can be summarized as, "if we (but particularly those cyclists) all obey the law, everything will be OK." Laws are fine up to point, but you can't legislate common sense, and you can't rely on traffic laws to provide guidance for every aspect of what works on the road for safety and what doesn't. Or so it seems to me.

As an example of this American thinking, the NYTimes had a recent "debate" with different viewpoints expressed - "should the laws and infrastructure be altered to recognize differences between bikes and cars, or should cyclists be treated the same as drivers?" was the question discussed. The differing responses to a considerable extent lined up on opposite sides by choosing to focus either on "laws" or on "infrastructure," ignoring the "and" in the question (that suggests both should be addressed). The perennial American stalwart of "vehicular cycling" John Forester presents his usual view, that "cyclists are fully capable of obeying the rules of the road; they fare best when they act, and are treated, as drivers of vehicles" while the expert from Copenhagen points out that there cyclists are "separate but more than equal" - but not in terms of the law, but in terms of infrastructure that means they get where they are going (up to certain urban-typical distances) faster on average than motorists.


A 3:50 minute mini-documentary on how the one-minute video was made

In the English speaking blogs mentioning the Norwegian video that I have seen there is just a pointer to the 60 second YouTube presentation but the Norwegian agency also have this short video on the making of the video, which is interesting even if one doesn't understand Norwegian - cramming as many different cycling-motor vehicle scenarios into one short video turns out to have been a pretty elaborate (and by the look, expensive) project. One assumes that Norway's oil wealth makes possible such productions from a government agency.

Bike Share in Boston

I'm visiting Boston for work for a couple of days and have been using their bike share system. Here is the station in front of Boston Public Library.

I found out I would be traveling to Boston rather late so I ended up with a hotel about three miles from Boston Public Library where the meetings were held. There was a bike share station on Commonwealth Avenue about a third of a mile from the hotel and from there it was a straight shot most of the way on Commonwealth Avenue by bike to Boston Public Library. Commonwealth Avenue has a green painted bike lane most of the way. It was very nice, even on a heavy Bikeshare bike (or perhaps particularly on such a bike).

It takes a little getting used to, riding along on that busy a street with the busses in particular right along side. It seemed much better however than simple sharrows or sharing a traffic lane with motor vehicles. (I am not a follower of John Forester, in other words.)

Flats Come in Threes??

I have written about this before - it seems often like flat tires "come in threes" - I don't have any for a long while, then boom - in short order, three.

Yesterday about a mile from home I realize the front tire was getting low on air but was not flat. After I stopped and checked it, I continued on, putting my weight as far back as I could, to put it on the rear tire (mostly). I was able to continue about 3/4 of the rest of the way without adding air (and I walked the last bit rather than getting a pump out).


First flat I've had in a while

I was a little worried that I had damaged the tire with this but it seems OK. Overall it probably isn't a smart strategy given that tires are kind of expensive. (Or good ones aren't cheap, anyway.) Now I'm wondering if I will encounter a rash of flat tires in the next few weeks. Hmm. I have seen a lot of glass on the bike trails lately, mostly from broken bottles. I have thought about bringing a little wisk broom, but then where is one supposed to sweep the stuff? If for example I swept glass off the 14th street bridge into the Potomac, is that even legal? Or am I supposed to carry the stuff with me, like a camper?


An 1896 patent for a possible anti-flat tire system - one example of many . . .

For almost as long as there have been bicycles with pneumatic tires there have been people trying to "solve" the problem of flat tires by "fixing" or improving the design of bicycle tires (and wheels). So far, though, the standard pneumatic bicycle tire with inner tube prevails ~

Another Kickstarter for Cyclists - the "Most Compact in the World"

From Fubi.com "The basic idea with FUBi was [i.e., is] this: a foldable bicycle that was very easy to store inside due to optimum compactness and at the same time would retain all the functionality and styling of standard full-sized bicycles!" and "FUBi is not intrinsically an ordinary foldable bicycle. It is a full-sized bicycle with a fold-able feature! There is a difference there."


This video, in my view, doesn't adequately address all the complexities of what they are proposing

The FUBi Kickstarter project page is the longest one I have ever seen (although I limit myself to looking at Kickstarter projects related to bicycling, so that may be a skewed sample). It is certainly the most ambitious project, in terms of the many novel aspects of the new bicycle they propose to build (and sell, eventually). Their Kickstarter seeks 90,000 British Pounds. (I don't understand why, at least where I live, it is given as in Pounds and not say Euros.) Most of the support so far is from a small number of people wanting to be at the head of the line to receive one when they are first available as a product. With 4,452 Pounds raised and 25 days to go, it doesn't look all that promising (based on what I understand about the usual trajectory for successfully funded Kickstarter projects) but maybe it will work out.


Folding bike patent, 1896 - the interest in folding bikes is of long standing

The FUBi people (or guy?) have a problem, I think - there is no "elevator ride" (that is, brief) way to explain all the aspects of the FUBi bicyclke - this is certainly not just a bike that folds up, but rather a collection of different innovative bicycle technologies, rolled up into a folding bicycle. Here are just some of the unusual (if not novel) aspects to the FUBi design:

* Truss frame design (which is the solution to providing stiffness for this folding bike, but can be a feature of any bike).
* The front and rear wheels have what are described as "an inverted hub as the center of hub is rotating, whereas on a regular hub the axis is fixed and non rotating" - the wheels are identical and only 50 mm wide (compared to 100 mm for a standard road bike front wheel).
* The drive cog set and rear derailleur are outside the chain and seat stays, which is associated with the used of identical narrow front and back wheels.
* The rear (and only) derailleur uses the spring opposite from a traditional modern derailleur - it pulls the chain up onto the larger rings rather than down to the smaller rings (while the rider applies pressure through levers to pull the derailleur in the opposite direction). This is described as a "totally new fast shift derailleur."
* Tension is applied to the chain by a separate system than the derailleur.
* Headset design has the front fork rotating outside of (in front of) the tube where the bearing are.
* The brakes and other aspects of the design are easily adjustable or simply allow use of several different diameter wheel sizes, thus the bike can be said to be usable in configurations ranging from mountain bike to road bike.
* FUBi claims that their bottom bracket, that uses ball bearings mounted directly into the frame and not a cassette is a plus or simplification but I'm not sure most people would see it that way and it isn't particularly unusual (at least not historically).
* And two different ways to fold it up - one fast, another so that it is reduced to the size of tennis equipment bag (and a small one at that - except for the wheels, of course).

I am not an expert of bicycle design and patents, but my impression is that the only piece of this (other than the overall folding design) that is truly new is the "fast shift" derailleur. (And maybe the wheel hub design?) But certainly the amalgamation of all these unusual design features in one folding bicycle is different.


One of 19 (at present) videos on YouTube from "FUBiworld" - how the frame assembles

Kickstarter now requires a "risks and challenges" section to each project proposal be completed - in other words, risks and challenges to the completion of the project if the funding is acquired. The FUBi people talk about some engineering issues, mostly to do with the use of titanium, possible problems with the supply chain for some parts, and building out their team - sure. But a more interesting risk or set of risks for someone putting money into this expecting to get a bike out of it (which is everyone who is putting more than trivial amounts of funding into it) is whether it is a good bike or not. By "good" I mean more than just "does it ride well and all the parts work," but also whether it is easily maintained over the long haul, because a good bike should last a long time. You know, as in at least ten years. To me, to take as obvious both that this bike would ride well and that it will be possible to maintain it in say 2025, seems doubtful - there is risk in particular with the design of the rear derailleur that if FUBi otherwise isn't a success that you end up with a bike that requires a part that isn't available.


A Panasonic Villager - a bike that demonstrates the problems with one-off bicycle innovations that don't catch on

This somewhat sad bike (note the missing left pedal) that I photographed (more for the odd frame design) was considered an innovative bike when made decades ago in that it had its freehub in the bottom bracket and not in the rear wheel - as a result, since no one else adopted this design, these bikes are not easily maintained (other than taking parts off of another example of the same bike). At the same time, the design of the bike is such that reworking the bike to use a standard design is also not possible - much like it would be impossible (I think) to redo your FUBi with a standard rear derailleur.

On the other hand, Kickstarter seems to be much about providing people who have some money they don't know what to do with the opportunity to have something really unusual, if only for a while (that it is unusual). So what the hell. Sure, FUBi.