An Ode To Her Helmet

 The next time I take a trip to some exotic locale, I will pack a helmet.  Whether I bring a bike of my own, or rent locally (as I did on my most recent trips to France, Italy, Greece, Cambodia and Laos), I will wear my “shell,” even if it gives me away as a tourist.

The young man I encountered a few days ago is fine.  His mother and sister say that they’ll make sure he’s covered when he rides again.  I offered mine—I explained that I have two others and could’ve taken the subway home to avoid riding bareheaded—but they said he already has one but just wouldn’t wear it.

I can say that wearing a helmet saved me on more than one occasion.  In one instance, the emergency room doctor told me as much. In another, two decades earlier, I was fine even though (or possibly because) my helmet (rather than my head) broke in two.

I think Lou Ness would concur with my assessment of the value of helmets.

On The Right Track In Ghent?

 When I was in high school, I took my first organized charity bike ride. It was in the Spring of 1976: the tide of the 1970s Bike Boom was ebbing and few (at least compared to today) adults rode bikes.  In fact, most had not pedaled since they were kids, if they ever had ridden.

That is what made some of my sponsors hesitant before signing up:  They simply could not imagine anyone riding the distance of that ride: 25 miles.  Little did they know that I had already done rides twice and three times as long and a “century” was not far in my future.

Of course I finished that ride easily and my sponsors paid up. But the reason I am recalling that ride now is because of a near-tragedy. 

The ride crossed railroad tracks. Many riders were inexperienced and almost none wore helmets. (I didn’t!) Someone apparently didn’t realize that cyclists should ride across at a 90 degree angle, preferably while lifting themselves off their seats—or, if the tracks protrude too far off the ground or are wet, simply walk across.

That cyclist’s tire skidded against a rail and when he fell, his head struck the rail. At least that was the story I heard. About a week later, I heard that he’d recovered and was out of the hospital. I wonder, though, whether he suffered any permanent damage that wasn’t detected in those days before CAT scans (as they were called) were widely used.

I got to thinking about that incident, nearly half a century (!) later when I read about how the city of Ghent, Belgium is trying to deal with a similar problem.  Ghent and other European cities have trams—similar to the streetcars that once laced many American cities and “light rail” lines that have recently been built in Jersey City and other places. Those conveyances run on a narrower set of rails that are more likely to be at or near pavement level.  Also, in some places, cyclists and trams share the same spaces.

So while it is easier to traverse them, it is also easier to miss them or simply not to take the necessary precautions. In Ghent, with a population of around 264,000, bike crashes on tram lines send about 500 cyclists to the hospital every year.

The elastic solution would be injected in the area marked by green paint.

The city is testing a possible solution: Lining the cavity in which the track lies with a new elastic compound.  While it won’t sit completely flush with the pavement, there would be enough so that a cyclist could more easily move cross or move out of a tram’s way—and is less likely to get a tire caught between the track and pavement.

Why Are More Cyclists Dying On NYC Streets?

The New York City Department of Transportation has reported that 2023 was the deadliest year for cyclists since 1999.  A total of 30 people lost their lives on two wheels. That represents a more than 50 percent increase from the fatality rate of the previous year, or the year before it.

Cyclist deaths in New York City

(Purple bar-traaditional bicycles.  Pink bar--eBikes)

E-bikes

Traditional bicycles

30 deaths

23

25

20

15

10

7

5

2009

2011

2013

2023

2015

2017

2019

2021

(Source:  New York City Department of Transportaion)

The number of cyclists who were killed while riding traditional non-motorized bikes (7) actually declined from any of the previous 15 years. So, the vast majority of the city's cycling fatalities were on eBikes.  Moreover, those 23 deaths in eBike crashes is more than double the number of any other year for which records have been kept.

That number is, in part, a reflection of the degree to which eBikes have, as some cyclists and pedestrians say, "taken over."  Indeed, no eBike casualties are recorded before 2014 because, before that time, there weren't significant numbers of motorized bikes on this city's streets. 

(That era--the early to mid 2010's--was also, interestingly, when the popularity of motorcycles was at its lowest ebb in at least half a century.)  

But one theme has remained constant in the past quarter-century.  About half of all bicycle and eBike deaths are a result of crashes with trucks.  A major reason for that, I believe, is that truck drivers simply don't see cyclists.  Also, delivery trucks often pull into bike lanes or the rightmost traffic lane, which is used by cyclists when a separate bike lane isn't present. Some drivers, I imagine, don't know how else to make deliveries.  Plus, there is simply more traffic of all kinds on this city's streets, in part because of ride-share services that began to proliferate at around the same time as eBikes.

“They’ve Gone Soft!” Who Would Know Better?

Photo by Zac Williams 

I forget what we were discussing. But I remember what a student said: “My father always talks about walking barefoot three miles in the snow every day to go to school.”

A pause.   “He was in Jamaica!”  She wasn’t talking about the neighborhood in Queens.

There’s always some member of the older generation (as if I can talk about them in the third person!) who insists that they had to be smarter, braver and tougher in the good ol’ days.  Such a person laments how the “younger generation” had “gone soft.”

That criticism has been leveled at the peloton in the just-ended 2023 Giro d’Italia.

What are the bases for such an assessment?

One is that of 176 riders who started, 125 finished.  That is indeed a higher rate of attrition than befalls most races, whether the local Category Four criterium or a Grand Tour like the Giro. But the riders who started three weeks ago included current and former champions, and the “quitters,” as they were called, included the rider who was wearing the race leader’s maglia rosa.

So what, exactly, caused 51 riders to—if you are to believe the critics—melt like a cake in the worst song in the history of pop music. (I can forgive Donna Summer for her disco stuff, but not for giving new life to that song!)

Well, for one thing, there was the weather which, even the haters would concede, was some of the worst in Giro history.  The rain, sleet and all of the other meteorological delights caused crashes that took out a number of riders, including 2020 winner Tao Geoghegan Hart. 

Then there was something that’s sneaking up on much of the rest of the world: a rebound COVID-19. When Belgian Remco Evenepoel, a favorite to win and Aleksandr Vladivostok, a strong contender for a podium spot, were forced to withdraw because of positive tests, they were accused of “faking” or being unable or unwilling to suffer.

As Ryan Mallon points out, cycling differs from other sports in that there is little incentive for a rider to “fake”or “dive.” Players can get themselves or their teams free kicks, foul shots or power plays by rolling on the pitch, court or rink to exaggerate the effect of an opponent’s hit.  On the other hand, if riders crash, fall or are otherwise interrupted, they are rewarded with a longer, tougher chase to keep up—if indeed they still can—with the rest of the pack.

If there is an irony in everything I’ve just mentioned, here it is:  Some of those who are saying that the riders who had to leave the Giro were “faking” or had “gone soft” are professionals who raced during the ‘90’s and early 2000s. You know: the era of PDM, Festina, Lance, Marco Pantani and a few others who, as Jacques Anquetil would say, didn’t win races on salad and mineral water.

Maybe they have a right to call today’s riders “soft”:  After all, those old heroes had to have really high pain thresholds to withstand all of those needles!

Did A Crash Save His Life?

Years ago, while pedaling along a long flat stretch in central New Jersey, I saw a woman and her bicycle lying on the side of the road.  She was conscious but in obvious pain.  I promised her I'd call for help at the next public phone. (This was in the days before cell phones.) She waved her hand. "No.  I don't need..."  

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. 

Of course, I was going to call for help, but not long after I started pedaling away, I heard a siren and glanced back to see flashing lights.  

I wondered whether she was OK--and why she didn't want help.  Was there someone she didn't want to worry?  Or, perhaps, she worried about a potential bill: Maybe she didn't have insurance.  It didn't occur to me that she didn't want to be found out by immigration officers or other authorities because such things weren't much in the public discourse and she was a white woman who seemed to speak English without a discernible accent.  

She may simply have been stubborn--as I can be in such situations. Or she may have had another fear that I hadn't thought about last night, when I came across the story I am about to relate.

The 27th of January in 2018 dawned as a cool and windy but clear morning--one that practically begs for a ride--in North Texas.  And so Tan Flippin did.

The 57-year-old Baptist pastor, who'd taken up cycling after a torn meniscus ended his running regimen, was pedaling on a street by a subdivision.  He'd ridden that particular street many times before "with no issues," he recalled. That street, however,  had recently undergone repairs.  "I guess they had a little bit of asphalt left over and put it on the shoulder," he explained.

His front tire ran into that asphalt.  His shoes came unclipped from his pedals as he flipped over the handlebars.  "I'd had a lot of wrecks and just got up and brushed myself off," he said. But this time "there was a terrible pain in my right hip and I couldn't stand."

His wife, Janet, drove him to the hospital.  Four fractures were found in his hip.  Due to the nature of his accident, doctors wanted to do a CAT scan.  He waved them off but those doctors--and Janet--prevailed.

The images revealed a mass pressing against the front of his skull, pressing against his brain.  The doctors thought it was brain bleed, considering the kind of accident Flippin experienced. (I had a mild brain bleed near the back of my head after my crash in New Rochelle two years ago.) Looking at those images again brought more somber news:  what doctors thought was brain bleed was, in fact, a baseball-sized tumor.  A few days later, they realized the tumor was malignant.

A grueling surgery and rounds of chemotherapy defined his two years--until cancerous tumors developed on his breast bone and ribs--and another on his skull.  That is how Flippin learned he has a rare blood disorder that predisposes him to tumors growing on his bones.  Radiation was no longer an option, so in October of 2021, he underwent bone marrow and stem cell transplants.

He's been cancer-free ever since.  Six months later, he was on his bike again.

Being the pastor he is, he believes that God used the accident to save his life.  Well, I won't comment on that, but it's not hard to wonder what would have happened to him had he not given in to his wife and the doctors and not gone to the hospital--or gotten the CAT scans.

And now I'm wondering what happened to that woman I saw, with her bike, on the side of a New Jersey road so many years ago.

What Will Be Influenced By This Report?

The 1980s gave us, in addition to The Smiths and some really good movies and TV shows, one of the most risible failures and one of the most-needed successes of American public policy.  

The failure is the so-called War on Drugs.  It did little, if anything, to reduce the demand for illicit substances.  If anything, it made criminals, in this country and others, rich and allowed gangs to become the de facto governments of neighborhoods and even, arguably, of whole countries in Latin America and other parts of the world.

Related to it is the success:  the campaign against drunk driving.  The relation of the War on Drugs and the crusade against inebriated driving is the subject of a longer piece of writing that would be far outside the scope of even this blog! Suffice it to say that both policies were two sides of the coin of a kind of puritanism that swept over this country and continues to blanket us today.

Now, I am not condoning drunk driving or, for that matter, the excessive use of any substance, legal or otherwise.  But, while the so-called War on Drugs did nothing to stop people from using or buying--or, for that matter, bring to account those who were responsible for its worst excesses--it can be said that while intoxicated driving hasn't been entirely eliminated, there is almost certainly less of it, and lives have been saved, as a result.

That said, I had a mixed reaction to a report documenting the rise of bike accidents in which the cyclist was under the influence of a drug.  

Because the statute of limitations has expired, I can now say that while some of youthful euphoria came from cycling itself, let's just say that feeling was, ahem, enhanced.  Now, being in middle age, I can tell young people "Do as I say, not as I did."  I really and truly do not recommend riding under the influence of mind-altering substances--even if they come in pint bottles or cans, and even if Dr. Albert Hofmann did it and lived to be 102.

While I laud the intention of the report--if indeed its intention is to call attention to intoxicated cycling and, by implication, warn against it-- I worry that folks who are already anti-cyclist will further demonize us.

You know how that works:  When any member of a minority group (and that's what we are in the US) commits a crime or does anything the rest of society doesn't approve--or is simply accused of such a thing--every member of that person's group is painted with the same broad brush.  

Also, as the report states, many of those cyclists were high or impaired by drugs, including opiods (and, in some states, cannabis) their doctors prescribed.  So were at least some drivers who struck and killed cyclists, including one I reported earlier this month.  But that incident, or others like it, don't cause drivers to be tarred in the way a single incident becomes emblematic of scofflaw cyclists.

So, in brief, while I laud any attempt to bring awareness to the problem of impaired cycling, I hope it isn't used to further marginalize us. 

Not The "Right" Setup

If you buy a new bicycle with hand-operated brakes in the United States, it will most likely be set up so that the left lever operates the front brake, and the rear is activated by the right lever.  That setup is that is mandated by the Consumer Products Safety Commission.  My own bikes are set up that way because, even though I am a "minority" in some senses, in another, very important area, I'm very much in the majority: I'm right-handed. (Please don't infer anything about my politics, or any other preference of mine, from that!)

So, I suppose, was whoever made that CPSC regulation.  It makes perfect sense if you're right-handed, because the rear brake is inherently less powerful, in part because of its longer cable, than the front.  Therefore, it takes more hand force to achieve a given level of braking force, or even to modulate, the brake.  

I might also assume that Carol Penkert is right-handed.  She is suing Costco Wholesaler and San Diego e-bike company Phantom because, she says, her machine was set up in violation of CPSC mandates.  But she isn't merely playing a "gotcha!" game.  Rather, she claims, the setup caused her to flip over the handlebars when she hit the brakes.  As a result, she lost her right eye and suffered a number of facial fractures.

She wasn't aware of the setup until the mechanic servicing the damaged bike spotted it.  The suit alleges that Phantom knowingly shipped, and Costco knowingly sold, her the bike, which she bought fully assembled,  without any warning that it had an irregular setup.  

Her Eyes Were Watching Amazon

 This story stokes my cynicism in so many ways.

A motorist struck a cyclist in Florida—the state that leads the US in the number of cyclists killed by motorists.

The driver was arrested.  I shouldn’t be so cynical, you say.  Well, I can’t help but to think the constables in Volusia County were diligent enough to apprehend the driver because someone captured the incident on video.

Oh, and the cyclist in question is Mike Chitwood—the Volusia County Sheriff.

Now, I am glad that, according to his tweets, he is recovering well from a fractured fibula and a gash caused by the car’s mirror. Having sustained similar injuries from being “doored,” I empathize with him.

But, in addition to the video and his position as Sheriff, there is another factor that led to a prompt arrest:  the driver, Paige Bergman, was shopping on Amazon on her phone—yes, while she was driving—when she struck Chitwood, who was on a 20-mile ride.

She was also charged with leaving the scene of an accident.  Unless they’re caught on video, hit-and-run drivers who hit cyclists are rarely arrested.

Apparently, Sheriff Chitwood isn’t the only person she hit: Online court records indicate that in December, she was arrested on domestic battery charges.

So, tell me:  Had she not been so flagrant, and had her victim not been a high-ranking county law enforcement officer, might she still be behind the wheel, looking at her screen instead of the road?

The Ride He Didn’t Take

The laments were punctuated by more “what if’s” than on any other day in the history of New York City, my hometown.

That day, some experienced transit delays, vehicular breakdowns or other emergencies.  Others called in sick.  Still others changed or cancelled other routines for all sorts of reasons.

That morning, they didn’t go to their offices, shops, kitchens or other workplaces.  Some missed a day’s pay; others worried—only a for a while, as fate would have it—about their reputations, or even their jobs.  But only for a while, a short while.

Erik Timbol may have had a smaller worry, but his “what if” resonates just as much as those of the people who didn’t go to work—or who, for what other reasons, weren’t in the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. on 11 September 2001.

Erin Michelle Ray

He often joined Erin Michelle Ray—one of Nevada’s top triathletes—for a ride.  He’d planned on doing that, along with four other friends, last Thursday.  But he had to work a shift at Las Vegas Cyclery.

Thomas Chamberlin Trauger

Ms. Ray went for that ride, along with fellow Las Vegas residents Gerard Suarez Nieva, Michael Todd Murray, Aksoy Ahmet and Thomas Chamberlin Trauger.  

Michael Todd Murray 

They will not ride with Mr. Timbol—or anyone else, or by themselves—again.  A truck struck and killed them. 

Gerard Suarez Nieva

Aksoy Ahmet

The crash was ruled an accident.  Erik Timbol, however, was saved by fate-or a schedule-making decision.  In any event, I am sure he is grieving the loss of his training partners and friends: Erin Michelle Ray, Gerard Suarez Nieva, Michael Todd Murray, Akhsoy Ahmet and Thomas Chamberlin Trauger.