The bicycle.

[Canadian_watcher]

Canadian comedian Mary Walsh sure isn't after a street accident she posted about Wednesday on her Facebook page left her battered, bruised and a little worse for wear.

The post explains that she was injured when a cyclist who smelled of alcohol hit her on a downtown Toronto street as she got off a street car.

"Was hit at Peter st getting off the queen car Hit by a cyclist Knocked to the ground Three broken ribs Young fella Bit of a skeet Smelled of booze Oh gentle wasp waisted Jesus, Broken ribs hurt so much (sic)," the post read.

June 2012. Mary Walsh is hilarious (not that being hit by a bike is funny)

[MacCruiskeen]

Finally (and this is key. no one is addressing it but like it or not it's reality, so someone should man up here)... Ya'll haven't tried to get kids off to school before work on a bike yet, have ya?

I've done it ever so fairly often ever since my child learned to ride. I live three blocks from my child's school and about two miles from my job, a bit closer the way people are going to eventually have to learn to live if we want a nice world, or, strike that, a world at all.

Yup. I took my child to kindergarten on the bike nearly every day for about four years, slowly and carefully, before racing off to work at great speed. It was all equally enjoyable. I had some great conversations with my kid on that bike, regularly punctuated by the dialogue: "Go faster, daddy!" "No." (But sometimes I did.)

Of course, it helps when the city you live in has a fairly well-developed system of bike paths. These weren't built in a day, naturally, and people have to show that they want them.

[Luther Blissett]

Mac, do you live in Germany?

[Canadian_watcher]

Finally (and this is key. no one is addressing it but like it or not it's reality, so someone should man up here)... Ya'll haven't tried to get kids off to school before work on a bike yet, have ya?

I've done it ever so fairly often ever since my child learned to ride. I live three blocks from my child's school and about two miles from my job, a bit closer the way people are going to eventually have to learn to live if we want a nice world, or, strike that, a world at all.

Yup. I took my child to kindergarten on the bike nearly every day for about four years, slowly and carefully, before racing off to work at great speed. It was all equally enjoyable. I had some great conversations with my kid on that bike, regularly punctuated by the dialogue: "Go faster, daddy!" "No." (But sometimes I did.)

Of course, it helps when the city you live in has a fairly well-developed system of bike paths. These weren't built in a day, naturally, and people have to show that they want them.

Your kid was in kindergarten for four years?
apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I see.

[Elvis]

---

No car---the new status symbol. I'm richer since my last car died, a day I'll never forget. Cars are for poor people, to get to their jobs. Me, I pedal 5 miles round trip to my job---uphill both ways. With the nice weather on, I got my bicycle going again a few weeks ago and ditched the city bus, again saving me $25/mo. minimum, plus I can leave whenever I want (my bus was hourly) and get there faster than the bus.

Each passing week I feel the leg muscles coming back, I can make it up that one steep part with less huffing and puffing. It feels really good, I must say. And people pay money for gyms? I never understood that.

How can anyone disagree that bicycles on city streets are major hazards?

Well, I'd say it's obviously the cars that are hazards. jeesh. Downtown I have to ride a few blocks in the street (sidewalk verboten), I go fast enough to hit the lights, but it's never fast enough for a lot of drivers. I get sick of cars menacing me. When I can, I take to the sidewalk but that still requires constant attention. I will agree that many bicyclists are careless, lazy and inconsiderate, and I try not to be like that.

Occasionally I rely on others' cars, but I chip in liberally for "gas" since I'm mindful of what money-sucking beasts automobiles are. As the tow truck pulled my last car away a few years ago, it took a huge weight off my shoulders with it.

Rambling again, but yes, the bicycle is one of the great inventions. I'll never forget the day I learned to ride one, my first bicycle. And I can still hear my grandfather's advice: "Watch out for stones---you're liable to up-set."

[MacCruiskeen]

@C_w: Yes, there are some real sociopaths among the so-called "cycling community". There are a few (a very few) cyclists who think the mere fact of being on two wheels a) makes them a better human being, and b) permits them to weave along the road (or even the pavement) at 40 mph, sometimes shouting "Fascist!" at anyone who objects.

It's not really the point, though. Is it? Also, they are easier to deal with. I saw one such sociopath being punched off his bike by a pedestrian at the traffic lights after he had nearly hit a mother & child and then "defiantly" shown them the finger. Try doing that to a motorist.

@Luther: Yes.

(PS I'm going to stop doing this "@" thang. Try anything once.)

[Canadian_watcher]

@C_w: Yes, there are some real sociopaths among the so-called "cycling community". There are a few (a very few) cyclists who think the mere fact of being on two wheels a) makes them a better human being, and b) permits them to weave along the road (or even the pavement) at 40 mph, sometimes shouting "Fascist!" at anyone who objects.

It's not really the point, though. Is it?

It's part of the point. Like this:

No car---the new status symbol. I'm richer since my last car died, a day I'll never forget. Cars are for poor people, to get to their jobs. Me, I pedal 5 miles round trip to my job---uphill both ways

Also a part of the point. (btw Elvis, I am assuming you were being somewhat ironic?)

For the record, I have walked to work, and walked my daughter to school. I'm too frightened to ride a bike amongst the cars in this city. (or any city without proper bike paths). Bike Stands are all over the place in Paris and I really wanted to have the guts to do it. I couldn't though - traffic was nuts. And, of course, I was concerned about my cheeks. No one wants sore cheeks in the City of Light.

[barracuda]

In 2010, 618 of the over 4000 pedestrian fatalities in the United States involved cyclists.

Obviously with 618 deaths per year, there are risks associated with riding a bicycle. Bicycle fatalities represent just fewer than two percent of all traffic fatalities, and yet bicycle trips account for one percent of all trips in the United States. However, bicycling remains a healthful, inherently safe activity for tens of millions of people every year.

As mentioned, bicyclists seem to be over-represented in the crash data as they account for almost two percent of fatalities but one percent of trips. However, there is no reliable source of exposure data to really answer this question: we don't know how many miles bicyclists travel each year, and we don't know how long it takes them to cover these miles (and thus how long they are exposed to motor vehicle traffic). Risk based on exposure varies by time of day (with night-time being more risky), experience of rider, location of riding, alcohol use, and many other factors. Until we have better exposure measures, we just don't know how bicyclist risk compares to other modes, but the health benefits of riding may offset some of this risk.

In other words, nearly eight times more persons die on foot in roadway accidents than on a bicycle. Of course, far more persons walk than cycle in terms of daily modes of transit near roadways. And in that same year, 32,885 persons died in cars. Life is a perilous thing.

But when I started this thread, Canadian Watcher, I never considered that there might be someone who'd argue against the bicycle. And having heard your arguments - that bikes are a roadway hazard, that you're too frightened to ride a bike, that your ass bones hurt when mounted, that it's just too cold, that your babysitter lives too far away - I can't say I'm entirely impressed. With far more than a billion bicycle riders in the world, vast numbers of whom depend upon the bike as their only, and coveted, source of rolling transport, the "hobo" characterization is a bit much coming from someone who doesn't want sore butt-cheeks in Paris.



But I suggest you get that little number you've been eyeing, add a good saddle, and hop back on it. You know what they say: it's like riding a bike.

[barracuda]

I can't see any reason to confine this thread to two-wheeled pedal-powered vehicles, so here's my favorite trike in the world:

Tricycle Donated by Nobuo Tetsutani, Photograph provided by Hiroshima peace museum. Shinichi Tetsutani (then 3 years and 11 months) loved to ride this tricycle. That morning, he was riding in front of his house when, in a sudden flash, he and his tricycle were badly burned. He died that night. His father felt he was too young to be buried in a lonely grave away from home, and thinking he could still play with the tricycle, he buried Shinichi with the tricycle in the backyard. In the summer of 1985, forty years later, his father dug up Shinichi's remains and transferred them to the family grave. This tricycle, Shinichi's best friend, was donated to the Peace Memorial Museum.

[barracuda]

Tour De France riders in the 1920s shared cigarettes to aid the respiration prior to the big climbs. Notice the bikes are one-speeds, and the spare tubes wrapped around their shoulders. Several varieties of bad-assery on display here.

[Project Willow]

Obligatory re-post:

[compared2what?]

How can anyone disagree that bicycles on city streets are major hazards?

I can do it because nothing in my experience, observation or general knowledge of the subject suggests that they're even minor hazards. People on bicycles have accidents and doubtless sometimes cause them. There might even be select cities in which an increase in the number of bicycles on the street corresponds to a net increase in accidents. For all I know. But they're either just not, in themselves, so hazardous that they're a menace in themselves or the evidence of it has been very thoroughly concealed from the citizens of every city I'm familiar with. Because I've totally never heard, seen or read a hint of it.

I gave evidence of the hazardousness above. I did a google search of just the last 24 hours and if I hadn't gotten bored to death of copy and pasting urls my five item list could have been at least a 25 item list. Dead cyclists - a great many of them just in the last 20 hours or so. That isn't hazardous?

I'm not sure exactly what that "That" refers to. I mean, obviously, your doing a Google search and getting bored probably isn't hazardous, and whatever combination of events, factors and circumstances caused the deaths of those cyclists certainly is.

So maybe. And maybe not. It doesn't actually matter until you clear the unspoken question in front of it that might be roughly stated as:

That isn't evidence that bicycles on city streets are a major hazard?

Because it isn't. If it were, most obituary pages would be evidence that having a loving family is a major hazard.

this cannot be true. You mean to tell me that you've never heard anyone tell a tale of nearly being clipped by a bike messenger or other cyclist? Never? And, obviously, you haven't glanced at the other thread: observations from a normally oblivious guy And I guess my own anecdotal expressions in this thread don't count..?

I think I just answered that last one.

I'd say it was true that I'd never seen anecdotal evidence of it and that it hadn't been much of a problem for me. In fact, I did say it.

If I'd meant that I was shocked, shocked to learn that bicycle accidents occur, having never ever in my whole life been exposed to a single tiny hint of such a thing even being possible, I would have said that.

Why aren't scooters and skateboarders allowed to ride in with vehicular traffic?

It would be hazardous.

But why? Why so hazardous?

For a number of reasons, several of which I would have thought were self-evident. But if you really can't figure it out, PM me.

I'm keeping it real. These are real life concerns. Everyone wants to respond by making it seem silly to want to get my child to the babysitter and then myself to work safely, on time and with my clothes and lunch dry. Like it's all 'so easy if you want to ride badly enough' but man, it just ain't so.

If I saw that response, I'd smack the smug, foolish grin right off its face, I guarantee you, C_w. I'm in sympathy with you in spirit. And when it comes to your personal experience, you're the only judge whose call really counts.

But speaking for myself, fwiw, I really just don't see that happening.

[Elvis]

No car---the new status symbol. I'm richer since my last car died, a day I'll never forget. Cars are for poor people, to get to their jobs. Me, I pedal 5 miles round trip to my job---uphill both ways

Also a part of the point. (btw Elvis, I am assuming you were being somewhat ironic?)

Not really; along the way there's a deep dip, so I face an uphill climb each way. If I had a car, I'd probably drive it to work, but I've turned down at least three "free" cars because I don't want the cost of maintaining, licensing, insuring and fueling it. The extra work going up that hill is good for me. If it rains cats & dogs, I take the bus.

[MacCruiskeen]

Your kid was in kindergarten for four years?
apple doesn't fall far from the tree, I see.

I don't know why you insist on being so bitchy about this. I don't even know exactly what you mean. So: What do you mean, exactly?

For the record, I never went to kindergarten. There was no kindergarten where I grew up, nor any kind of institutionalised childcare. I started school at the age of five. Before that, I was looked after mainly by my mother, my grandmother, my older brother and the entire extended family, as well as the neighbours and the neighbours' kids.

For the record, children in Germany start school at the age of seven.

Also for the record, I exaggerated very slightly, though not intentionally. My kid was in kindergarten for about two-and-a-half years. After that, she started off in pre-school (Vorschule), about two hundred yards up the road, where she went for a year. I took her on the bike to both places, as did her mother. As did most parents (nearly all, in fact).

Also for the record: the weather was not always good, and the traffic was sometimes bad. We must have been superhuman to have managed it.

HTH.

[compared2what?]

No car---the new status symbol. I'm richer since my last car died, a day I'll never forget. Cars are for poor people, to get to their jobs. Me, I pedal 5 miles round trip to my job---uphill both ways

Also a part of the point. (btw Elvis, I am assuming you were being somewhat ironic?)

Not really; along the way there's a deep dip, so I face an uphill climb each way. If I had a car, I'd probably drive it to work, but I've turned down at least three "free" cars because I don't want the cost of maintaining, licensing, insuring and fueling it. The extra work going up that hill is good for me. If it rains cats & dogs, I take the bus.

Is there not a Pynchon book with a mention of hills that go up both ways somewhere in it? Maybe describing Ithaca and/or Cornell?

Or am I just....I don't know. It's unusual for me to remember something like that vaguely. With me, it's all er nuthin, like Ado Annie.

Getting senile, I guess.