Is Cycling Safe? The Product Development View

Since I ride a bike more than a 100 miles a week on average, I think about bike safety a bit. Mostly I ride on bike paths or bike trails (or whatever they are properly called) although of course they are used by pedestrians, runners, etc - but not motor vehicles! And it is the motor vehicles that represent the significant safety problem for cyclists.

In the Seattle area, supposedly a very bike friendly region, two middle-aged cyclists were recently killed within a period of less than two weeks, one by a truck that went onto the shoulder where the cyclist was riding and another when an SUV made a left turn once oncoming car traffic had cleared, but not the oncoming cyclist. (In the second case, the driver got out, ascertained there was an accident, then drove away - hit and run.) Even though I read about cyclists getting killed all the time, for some reason these two events bother me.

At a conference recently (that had nothing to do with cycling) I heard a presentation by someone from Kickstarter, an organization (well, it's a commmercial company, actually) that provides a vehicle for getting start-up funding for various kinds of endeavors through their web site. Many are small cultural projects but others are efforts to start sales of products of one sort or another.

As it happens, Mr. Bikesnob NYC had a recent blog entry about a Kickstarter project for a bike turn signal system that is built into a left cycling glove. Kickstarter seeks solicitation primarily through videos; the "you turn" fundraiser video is below.



Mr. Bikesnob has lots of fun spoofing this Kickstarter video in various ways, although he leaves aside the main question I had (at first) which is whether the fellow is serious - the circuitry in the glove detects whether the cyclist points his hand up (for a right turn) or out to the left (for a left turn) and activates one of two LED arrows built into the glove. Yes, but . . . we inherited the "left hand straight up = right turn" thing from people driving cars (from when turn signals for cars were not always present!) and most cyclists now use their right arms to signal right turns. Since the left brake lever is for the front brake (also known as the brake that works best) I never signal right turns with my left hand - common sense dictates using my right hand to signal, stuck out to the right, and keeping my left hand on that brake lever. So if you wanted LED turn signals combined with gloves, it would be simplest to put a single arrow on each glove - assuming you think it makes sense to have such digital signals at all.

But I digress.

The real question I have is whether attempts to buttress cyclists' safety through developing new products to buy and use is a good approach. That it is an American approach, that much is obvious, but is it going to make it safer for cyclists?

Frankly I'm doubtful. The two things I believe that are needed to improve the safety of people on bicycles (vis a vis cars, trucks, etc.) is more people on bicycles, which inevitably leads to a lower accident rate for the cyclists; and, in tandem with that, a change in our transportation culture such that the "complete streets" concept makes sense to more and more people.

Of course, common sense says that cyclists are safer when they are visible to motorists if they use roads. (And of course there are laws requiring reflectors, lights, etc. for certain conditions.) This product, however, seems to contribute more to making cyclists more car-like, which doesn't seem particularly helpful. An LED turn signal system for bicycles contributes mostly to making cycling seem more dangerous and more complicated than it should be. The more safety equipment we pile onto cyclists, the less appealing it becomes, thus defeating the "more cyclists = fewer accidents" strategy.

Kickstarter has another cycling funding project - a bicycle brake light system.



It is suggested that having a brake light like a car's (that comes on when the brakes are applied) "has the potential to save many lives." As with the glove-signal system, it seems more to add to the complexity of cycling and to the impression that it is dangerous. Having a light or lights and a reflector to make a cyclist visible when it is dark and to take other measures to increase one's visibility to motorists makes good common sense but "I failed to realize the bicycle was stopping and therefore ran into it" isn't the problem I read about with cyclists hit by cars from the rear, it's the "I wasn't expecting a cyclist at that location, I didn't see him/her, and . . . " situations that are the problem. As the number of cyclists increases, the motorists get used to them, and expect to interact with them in their daily drives (and stop running into them so much). Also, eventually (a la Amsterdam) more and more drivers will be sometimes-cyclists, which can only help.

Now I'll get off my soapbox, such as it is. I'll put forth my thinking on bicycle helmets another time . . .

PS I asked a fellow from the Netherlands recently if he commuted by bike to work on Capitol Hill - his answer? "No, so many here talk about friends they know who got killed riding their bikes. No one in the Netherlands is ever killed riding their bike! It seems too dangerous."

Ideas for Bicycle Saddles (1896)

Google presents zillions of digitized patent applications - in the 1890s there were so many patent applications related to cycling that there was magazine, Cycling Monthly, that was nothing but patent and trademark applications related to bicycles. Not surprisingly it is more entertaining to page through that (if one works in a large library where there are some issues) and then bring up the Google versions rather than try to find 1890s patent applications for bicycle stuff directly in Google.

One quickly realizes that then as now, there is a sense that there must be a better bicycle saddle. The following examples are all from 1896 ~


Patent number 554,337

The notion in the above "invention" is that really you just want to sit on a couple of springs.



Patent number 556,250

Above is something like the opposite view to the previous patent - no, what you really want to do is sit on a shaped piece of wood! Oh, with a slit in the middle.



Patent number 557,238

Above, the well-known view even today (perhaps even more so today) that a wider base of support is key.


Patent number 558,917

A rather complex contoured approach . . .



Patent number 562,919

The last example here (but hardly the last patent application for bicycle saddles from 1896) is an "add on" to an existing saddle the would provide inflatable cushions held in place by their invention.

Bicycle "Body Shield" (Patent, 1896)

Patent from Google that demonstrates that while the basic bicycle design hasn't changed much, ideas for how to improve cycling have had their ups and downs.


Has every crazy idea been patented?

The object of the invention is to provide a new and improved body-shield more especially designed for use by bicyclists,boatmen, or other persons exposed to the force of the wind, the shield being arranged to not only break the force of the wind against the body of a bicycle-rider, but also to protect the throat, breast, face, and ears of the rider and at the same time permit the rider to easily get on or off the bicycle.

Pleasing 1896 Overman Bicycle Poster

Victor Bicycles, Overman Wheel Co.

Poster advertisement for Overman Wheel Company's Victor bicycles, showing a woman watching another woman riding a bicycle. Includes art nouveau style flowers.

From the Library of Congress.

Plastic Bike Design

Recycled plastic bicycle design - this seems pretty clever but I have my doubts as to how pleasant it would be to ride.

None of the comments seem to have been made by anyone who knows much about bicycle design.

The first thing I see is that the steering tube is quite upright, which might be fine for a racing bike but for something like this, it would make it twitchy and requiring more attention to control. It doesn't help that the handlebars are so short.

Can this really not have any metal in it? It would be pretty amazing if you could have crank arms (that connect the drive system to the pedals) that are just made out of plastic that would support an adults weight and transfer power reliably.

It appears that the pedals are relatively spread apart - usually there isn't much variance in the distance left and right of center that the pedals are. A larger distance ("Q factor") is apparently less efficient.

Is the height of the seat adjustable? Doesn't seem like it. That's probably the biggest problem.

Park Service "Waters" Bikers, Joggers

The roadway is wet, the bikers and joggers are wet

The National Park Service runs a pipe along the roadway of Hains Point and uses pumps to pull river water into a large scale sprinkler system - in their effort to water both sides of the roadway, they blast the water across the roadway, too. From time to time one gets a blast in the face - it's a little strange. Since it's hot, it has its positive aspects, but on balance I would rather not have this experience too often.


Putting his head down to avoid getting a direct blast from a sprinkler

Generally I'm pretty comfortable for anything under 30-40 miles on my road bike, but apparently due to an unusual amount of squirming as I tried to avoid the sprinklers, after a lap or so I wasn't and this was only a 25 mile ride.

The Park Service puts up a sign that notes that the river water is not potable - so we won't try to drink from the sprinklers, I guess. But is it suitable for showering?

Of course, if they feel that the grass on Hains Point needs to be green, I guess it makes sense to use the river water.

Best Bike Parking - for Some

Four spots set aside for three police bikes

In my office building on Capitol Hill, we are protected by federal police. This parking lot has 24 slots for bicycle parking, half in the center and half at one end of the garage. Through some sort of unspoken tradition, the bicycle commuters know who parks where. This has been upset by the police taking four of the 12 spots near the center in order (at least for now) to park three bikes. (One of the bikes is made by "Smith & Wesson" - well known for making bikes! Stop or I'll shoot you with my bike!) This has completely upset the bicycle commuter ecology right in the middle of the prime riding season. (Well, ok with the heat wave, maybe not entirely prime in the usual sense.) So the police have three bikes on the four closest most convenient slots and the staff who are bike commuters have crammed ten, eleven, etc bikes into eight slots to see how much paint they can scrape off each others' bikes.

These police bikes are locked up with the most absurd chains and padlocks - you would think they were locking them up in some high crime area and not in a garage guarded like a fort.

PS - I thought perhaps this gift of parking places to the police might put us out of compliance with the DC "for every ten spots for cars, one for bikes" law but they count the slots on bike racks in front of the building. 95 percent of the car parking is in a garage and 75 percent of the bike parking is outdoors. Oh well.