More Bike Safety Mythology

A brief article on Yahoo Finance outlines the growth of the Citibike bike share program in New York City.

What's particularly striking is that the data shows a steady, consistent growth in the number of trips taken and number of miles ridden.  I haven't taken a math or a statistics class in a long time, so if there's a term (which, I believe, there is) for the sort of curve plotted in those charts, I've forgotten it.  But, even to a decidedly un-numeric person like me, the graph and figures are remarkable.

The writer of the article did a pretty good job until the last two paragraphs.  "Wondering how all of this extra biking has impacted New York's emergency rooms?" he asks.  He attempts to answer it by the city's Department of Transportation studies that show the average risk of serious injury to a cyclist plummeted 73 percent between 2000 and 2011. 

Now, perhaps I'm reading something into his article that isn't there, but I had the impression that he was implicitly relating the decrease to the Citibike program. If he is, then there's a problem:  the bike share didn't start until May of this year.

Then he goes on to promulgate a fallacy: that the decrease in the number of injuries and fatalities is, in part, a result of the construction of bike lanes.

As I've said in earlier posts,  bike lanes don't necessarily make cycling safer, especially if they are poorly-designed or constructed.  In fact, they can put cyclists in more peril when they have to turn or exit the lane--or if it ends--and they are thrust into a traffic lane with motorists and pedestrians who do not anticipate them.

I maintain (again, as in earlier posts) that nothing does more to make cycling safer on urban streets and byways than what I call the human infrastructure of cycling.  Even more important than the best-conceived and -constructed bike lanes is cyclists',motorists' and pedestrians' cognizance of each other.  That is achieved, I think, over a generation or two of cyclists and motorists sharing the streets on more-or-less equal terms and of not thinking of each other as, essentially, different races of people.  Such a state of affairs--which I have found in much of Europe--comes about from not only sheer numbers of everyday cyclists (commuters and people who use ride their bikes to shop, go to the movies and such) but also from large numbers of motorists who are (or recently were) regular cyclists themselves.

That is the reason why I always felt safer riding even in those European cities like Paris, where there are relatively few bike lanes, than in almost any American city in which I cycled.  And, by the way, the City of Light and other European capitals didn't have bike share programs until recently.

Autumn Morning Mist In New York

So far, this has been quite a mild Fall, at least here in New York.  While the weather has been great for riding, there's one thing I'm not crazy about:  The days are getting shorter.

Here is a view from the RFK-Triborough Bridge, looking toward Manhattan, just before seven this morning:

I enjoy the mist, especially the way it's pulled across the pillars and posts of steel and and slabs of concrete, as some are trying to get a few more moments of sleep.

But, of course, if you're trying to get a few more moments of sleep, you won't.  So it is morning for you, even if the light hasn't caught up, and won't for a few more months.l
 

Equal Opportunity?

If bicycles and bicyclists were to achieve public stature equal to that of cars and drivers, how would we know?

Well, I think I may have seen a sign that we're on our way:

While Vera was parked near Baker Field, at the very upper end of Manhattan, someone left a menu for a restaurant in my rack.

Menus and flyers are left on car winshields all the time.  I've even seen them rolled onto motorcycle handlebars.  But this is the first time I've seen one on any bike, let alone one of my own.

A Day Off-- And Another Beautiful Day to Ride

In at least one way, Columbus Day is a terrible holiday.  Depending on how you look at it, on this day the United States celebrates a guy who got lost or the beginning of Native American genocide.

Italy has given the world Petrarch, Dante, Bocaccio, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Puccini, Verdi and Gino  Bartali.  But we celebrate "Columbus Day" as a festival of Italian pride.  Mamma mia!

One nice thing about it, though, is that most people have the day off from work or school, so there isn't much traffic on the roads.  If the weather is nice, as it was today, people will be out and about--but not as many as, say, on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July or Labor Day.

There was no denying that it was a great day to ride. I took Tosca on a ramble through the Brooklyn waterfronts, the Hasidic neighborhoods and Coney Island. 

At Sheepshead Bay, I saw the Three Musketeers:

 

A Fall Classic (For Me, Anyway)

One of the great things about doing a ride you've done dozens, even hundreds of times, before is noticing how it looks and feels different from other times when you've done it.

So it was on my Point Lookout ride today.  We had classic Fall weather:  a mix of sun and clouds and a high temperature of about 20 C.   

But we pedaled into wind that varied from 10 to 15kph from Rockaway Beach to the Point.   That meant, of course, that the ride home was more like flight. 

Arielle, my Mercian Audax, made the ride even better, as she always does.  She also  seems to be taking on the light a little differently--or is it my imagination?

Perhaps it has to do with her consciousness of line.

No, it has to be the light itself--or at least the changing Fall colors.