If Only One Of You Makes It

Question of the Day:

A tandem enters an intersection.  The green signal is about to change.  The "captain" (the rider in front) makes it past the signal before it turns red.  But the "stoker" (rider in the rear) doesn't.

If some cop with too much time on his or her hands sees this, does he or she ticket:

a.) only the stoker,
b.) both the stoker and captain, or
c.) neither?

I have ridden tandems only a few times in my life, so I must admit that the question never entered my mind--until I saw this:

Image credit:  Copyright:© Drew Dernavich via Cartoon Collections - www.cartooncollections.com/cartoon?searchID=CC144669

Wearing A Sign To Send A Signal

Most of the time, cycling is good for your health.

There are moments, though, when it can raise your blood pressure, especially if you ride in traffic.

In such a moment, you might be riding as far to the right as you can in the traffic lane because there's no shoulder or bike lane.  It's night, and someone drives close enough to tear off the back of your glove.  Oh, and that car has it's high-beams on.  And the driver honks repeatedly.

If the driver acknowledges you, it's usually with a gesture they don't teach in etiquette classes or words they don't teach in basic English or Spanish or whatever-language classes. 

If Dani Motze hasn't experienced that exact scenario, I am sure she's experienced something just as scary and irksome.  The 28-year-old Reading, Pennsylvania resident says she's been harassed, followed and run off the road in 11 years of pedaling her city's streets.  Oh, and she's been hit by a car.  Another time, she was "grazed"--ironically, when she was on her way to a meeting about cycling.

So, a year ago she took to wearing a sign:

"May Use Full Lane--Change Lanes To Pass"

Her objective, she explains, is not to crusade for the right to ride in traffic. That's already canonized the laws of Pennsylvania, as in most other states.  Moreover, the Keystone State has a "four-foot rule", designating the berth drivers must give cyclists when passing them.  What she wants, she says is to "educate" motorists as well as cyclists.

Motze, who is a social worker and online magazine editor as well as a cycling advocate, says that what she wants is to take the lane in cities and towns, not on highways with 60 MPH speed limits.  That, really, is about as good as we can hope for in the absence of physically separated bike lanes with provisions for turning and crossing intersections.

She sometimes drives a car she shares with her husband.  But most of her commutes and errands are done on her bike, and she sometimes rides for pleasure.

How have drivers responded?  Some well, some not so much, she says.  But, for them most part, in the year Motze has been wearing the sign, "people have been passing me with no issue," she says.   

Why We Need The Idaho Stop--And The Paris Accord

When I saw this image in my Google browser, I thought it had something to do with Donald Trump's intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord Obama, along with the leaders of 194 nations, signed two years ago.

The smoke is thick enough.  As I write, DT hasn't officially pulled away from the agreement, and some of his advisers--including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson--are going to make appeals in the hope of changing his mind.  I can almost picture him, or someone else, using that image as part of his "pitch".

Alas, it is the opening frame of a video shown on an Arizona television news program, and posted to the AZ Central website.  The story is terrible:  A commercial truck collided with a bicycle.  Now, that description is strange:  I normally think of a collision as occurring between two people or things that are more or less equal in their ability to withstand the crash.  That hardly brings to mind, at least for me, a truck hitting a bicycle.

According to the news report, two cyclists were involved, "but only one was struck by the vehicle, according to Gilbert police."

With reports like that, El Presidente has absolutely no reason to trouble himself with "fake news".  Too many stories one reads or hears in the "news" media are so incomplete, so lacking in facts or context, or simply so ineptly or deviously expressed, that the "fake news" seems reliable, or at least predictable, for no other reason that you can dismiss it outright.  Stories like the one I've just mentioned have to be filled in, teased out or in some other way worked through in order to make sense of them, let alone make an evaluation.

Oh--the woman hit by the truck was pronounced dead at the hospital and the other cyclist, also a woman, "required no medical attention."

OK, I  don't want to seem like I'm nitpicking, but I want to know how two cyclists were involved if one bicycle was struck.  

I will give the reporter(s) credit for this, though:  The report mentions that both cyclists  and the truck were traveling east on Ray Road in Gilbert, Arizona,  when the truck driver made a right turn onto Val Vista Drive.

I wouldn't be surprised if the cyclists stopped for a red light and proceeded when the signal turned green.  As I have mentioned in earlier posts, that is the easiest way to get struck by a motor vehicle, especially a truck or bus.  The "Idaho stop" is much safer:  When a cyclist proceeds against a red light through an intersection where there is no cross-traffic, he or she is much safer than he or she would be by following the signals, as the law requires in most places. 

 Going through an intersection when no cross-traffic is present allows the cyclist to get out ahead of traffic moving in the same direction--which makes it more likely that bus or truck driver behind you will see you.  

However the truck came to collide with the cyclist, the image at the beginning of this post is not good news--whether or not The Orange One quits the Paris climate accord.