Are Starlings Afraid Of Her?

[T]he cyclists go in flocks like starlings, gathering together, skimming in & out.

Yes, I wrote that...in another life.  If only....

Actually, it was written about a quarter century before I was born, by someone whose talent I wish I could have, if only for a day.  And she was writing about cyclists in a city she was visiting.

I have visited that city, too.  I am sure, though, that there wasn't a cloud hanging over it--unless you count the Cold War, which shrouded every place--as there was during her sojourn there.

Most people in that city were living relatively peaceful lives.  But in a neighboring country, a xenophobic demagogue had seized the reins of power by, essentially, convincing people that foreigners and members of minority groups were responsible for everything that had gone wrong in their nation.  And his sense of hair styling was, shall we say, out of the ordinary.

No, I'm not talking about The Orange One. I am referring, of course, to the author of Mein Kampf.

Now, he wasn't nearly as good a writer as the person who penned the quote at the beginning of this post. (A professor of mine once told me that most translations make MK sound better-written than it actually is.)  But he would, within a few years, invade the country where the cyclists skimmed in and out on its capital's streets.

Telegram deliverers in Amsterdam, 1930

That capital is, of course, Amsterdam.  And the observant visitor was none other than Virginia Woolf, who recorded that verbal image of its cyclists in her diary.

Today is her 136th birthday.  She never looked better--her writing, I mean.

What Would They Say To Each Other?

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

By now, you've probably seen that saying on more than a few bumper stickers.  You might have even heard it.  

Just for fun, I've asked people who said it first.  The answers have included almost every kind of woman imaginable, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Marilyn Monroe and Gloria Steinem to Kim Kardashian.

Kim Kardashian?  I'm not even sure "seldom" is in her vocabulary!

I confess:  Until I knew better, I would have believed that Eleanor Roosevelt uttered it.  For that matter, I could have believed it came from Sinead O'Connor or even Madonna.  But, alas, the pithy quote spilled from the pen of an academic with whom even I wasn't familiar. (Shh..don't tell anybody!)

She is none other than Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian.  That saying, however, was not part of the work that would earn her acclaim:  it was tucked in an article she wrote as a graduate student.  Ironically, some three decades later, she would use that aphorism as the title of a book, precisely because it was everywhere.

Now, I must say, with all due respect to Professor Ulrich, I generally try to behave myself, and even try to resemble a lady, at least in some ways.  I also must say that I am constitutionally incapable of being so well-behaved at every moment.  Yes, there are times when I "lose it" and use words graduate students rarely use in papers they're trying to publish in the hopes of becoming professors.

I won't repeat those words here.  Fortunately--for me, anyway--most of the drivers (and errant pedestrians) who were at the receiving end of my "good old Anglo Saxon words" never saw me again. 

Let's face it:  When a driver who's texting almost kills you, it's hard not to yell and curse.   Those "four letter words" are most accessible when we're under stress and in danger, especially when it's caused by someone else's negligence or stupidity.  

But what if bikes and cars could talk?  What would they say to each other in such situations?

That question isn't as fanciful as you might think.  Trek is partnering with Ford and Tome Software to come up with a bicycle-to-vehicle (B2V) communications system that alerts drivers to bicycles that might be ahead of them in dangerous areas of the road.  

One thing I find interesting is that the partners are trying make their system "brand agnostic", so it's not tied to one platform or product. (And we can't have Net Neutrality?) For the next year, he will be working at the Mcity autonomous vehicle test site at the University of Michigan to develop software that can go into bike and car accessories and apps.

 "This is something that will absolutely save lives if we do this, " says Tome founder and CEO Jake Sigal.  

I don't doubt him.  I just wonder what he will have bikes and cars saying to each other in a B2V communications system.  Will they be well-behaved?

Which Way Was He Supposed To Go?

Few things vex me more than a designated bike lane that's poorly designed, constructed or maintained--or that ends abruptly or simply doesn't go anywhere.

Such lanes are not merely annoying or inconvenient:  Riding them is, as often as not, more dangerous than sharing the roadway with motorized traffic.

That is especially true if the direction of the bike lane is not clearly indicated--or, as in one case in northern California, a new lane is under construction or has been constructed to replace an existing one, but there is no indication of which one the cyclist should use.

For Matthew James Newman, such confusion proved fatal.  According to his widow a lawyer representing the family, Newman was riding along Highway 29 when he came to a railroad crossing.  

The safest--really, the only safe-- way to cross railroad tracks is at a 90 degree angle. According to reports, there was no way to do that where Newman met his fate:  the road crossed at a "severe" angle.  When he approached, his wheel got caught in a flangeway and he was thrown off his bike, which injured his head.  He died the next day from his injuries.

Now, some might argue that he was at fault for not wearing a helmet. But the suit his family has filed alleges that Caltrans was at fault for not clearly marking the hazard. 

Actually, that intersection had been marked with a sign warning riders to get off their bikes and walk across.  At least it was until some time before Newman made his fateful crossing.  When that sign was taken down is not the main issue, however.  Rather, it is another sign that was or wasn't nearby:  one indicating whether a new route was open to cyclists.

According to the family's attorney, Bill Johnson of Bennett & Johnson LLP in Oakland, the new path still appeared to be under construction--at least to Newman. "It was ambiguous and confusing which route he was supposed to take," according to Johnson. "If you didn't make the right decision, you were in peril."

Had there been a clear indication that Newman should have taken the new path, he would have, according to his family and Johnson.  He had traveled the route he took once, years before, so he probably thought he was making the "safer" choice.  Apparently, though, during that time he'd forgotten about the way it crossed the tracks.  

In addition to Caltrans, the suit includes the Ghilotti Brothers Construction company of San Rafael.  Johnson believes they were doing work on the bike path at the time of the incident, and therefore shared the responsibility for warning of dangerous conditions.