Back to bicycles behaving badly...

Monday, June 27, 2011 20:48:19

Things are happening in the world of bicycles. The law of unintended consequences plays a part. So does the same ‘poverty as culture’ that gave the world coq au vin, haggus and the Volkswagen. And then there’s both sides of generic male arrogance, the ‘gotta tinker’ inventiveness in the shop, somewhat offset by the ‘No Rules’ approach to traffic.

Unintended Consequences

George Bush Sr, back in ’91, was forced to sign the Americans With Disabilities Act. WTF has that got to do with bikes acting badly? Observe any intersection. The infirm and the wheelchair-bound once had to negotiate the step down and back up at either end of the crosswalk, making crossing the street an impossibility for many, leaving them confined to the block they lived on. The more desperate dared going into the street at driveways, and tooling along the gutter until they could cross. The ADA changed all that, mandating curb cuts at the corners. The rest is history. Now, in addition to the infirm and the wheelchaired, every pedestrian takes their life in their hands on the new bicycle freeways. No longer restrained by that same up-and-down curb challenge, bikes of all types, with their riders of various skill levels, fly along sidewalks, launch into crosswalks and traffic, and scatter crowds on the other side. Notice the use of the verb ‘walk’ in the nouns ‘sidewalk’ and ‘crosswalk’? Just wanted to point out that explicit preference for the pedestrian over the wheeled. Duly noted, duly ignored.

Since these skill-deficient cyclists ride in any direction, besides being a hazard for the folks on foot, they present a new blind spot to the driver. If they are traveling the same direction as traffic, their very existence is often hidden by the cars parked at the curb. And no driver thinks there’s another lane of traffic to consider on the sidewalk, certainly not one moving at car speeds. So when a bike suddenly vaults off the curb into a crosswalk from the right as a driver takes that right turn, I have no sympathy for the rider’s sudden transition from living being to hood ornament.

Riders coming the other direction on the sidewalk are at least more visible at the intersection, since they are coming straight at the driver as the car turns right. Who has the right of way? Well, the bike is riding against traffic, and so, by definition, is in the wrong. But the argument in court, as the parents try to get the driver to pay for the damage done to their young one, suddenly in different need of those curb cuts, is the question of who had the last chance to avoid the accident.

Poverty As Culture.

The question of who had the last chance to stop is made simpler if the bicyclist was riding a fixee, since the ‘real’ fixie, fashion ride of the fixie pixie, is not only gearless but brakeless. These are made cheap, by stripping all the hardware and cables off an old 5- or 10-speed, then slapping on a coat of paint and a chain. No coaster brake, no caliper brake, no brake at all except the incredible ability to make the feet on the pedals suddenly stop going forward. These bikes are meant only for banked closed-oval racing, where all bikes are similarly non-equipped, so the bike in front of you can’t stop any faster, or with any less warning than you can. And where there are no pedestrians, no cross traffic, and no cars. Technically, this is a legal configuration on the street, since the law requires that the bike can be stopped, but does not specify how.

Some small number of fixees, for girls I suppose, have a single caliper brake on the front wheel. Appropriate, since 70% of stopping power of the usual two-wheeled brake configuration is at the front wheel. But these are anomalies, a training-wheel-type configuration the rider aspires to outgrow on his way to permanent injury. A cop can make any rider demonstrate a bike’s braking, but no city wants its civil servants requiring citizens to injure themselves, since most of these cyclists haven’t got the skill level, or the attention span, to perform a controlled skid as a braking maneuver, certainly not in a panic before the SUV’s grill bounces the rider off the bike and onto the asphalt head first.

Speaking of head-first. Helmets, anyone? Apparently not. EMTALA anyone? Look it up. If you don’t wear a helmet, you’ll need it.

To be continued…

750 (minus the ‘Tbc’) ~ Monday, June 27, 2011 21:48:17