Roody

The original--and still the best--carfree people are causing some concerns with their new adoption of bicycles.

I guess this is for real.

Amish frustrating drivers in Kentucky as new ruling allows them to ride bikes | road.cc

B. Carfree

The Amish are over 10% of the population of Daviess County according to the article estimate of their numbers (10,000) and the US Census data of the population of the county (98,000). If all the Amish take to bikes, they have a critical mass. I wonder if they are allowed to use lights so they can ride at night.

Edit: I guess they could bring back the old bike lanterns. If they do, thank goodness they aren't in the west. We've got enough wildfires being caused by motorists; we don't need any bike-caused conflagrations.

Roody

I wonder if they're going to do any corking?

Clyde1820

Sounds like a solid bias against such folks and bicyclists, to me. Running "rampant"? So long as they're on the roadway and following the basic traffic safety rules, it's hard to see the problem. In "Amish country" or not.

Ironic, that those on the high horse are others. But I suppose it's not that surprising. Folks have been dumping on people who are different for as long as there have been differences.

Hopefully people will respect their presence in the roadway, instead of taking out their frustrations at slight delays.

B. Carfree

Maybe just a little to help grandpa get through a busy intersection in his horse-drawn wagon.

I wonder if they'll bring back the rear-steer tandem so a gentleman can allow his lady to ride in front without giving up his manly role of steering the vehicle.

Matariki

This is a hoot. Having grown up in the Amish country of western PA, one gets used to sharing the road with buggies and because the best cycling roads are the ones that the Amish typically use, the cyclist benefits by the extra precautions taken by motorists. That said, there are far too many car-buggy incidents even though drivers should be aware and buggies usually have reflectors and kerosene lights nowadays. I don't live in that area anymore but I haven't seen any Amish on bikes on recent visits. I assume that they would be okay with reflectors at night, but don't know the options for lighting. A kerosene lantern would be difficult to mount. Perhaps carbide.

Roody

Carbide Bicycle Lamp | eBay

TheManShow

I wonder if the people in SLC Utah has as much diffulity with the LDS Missionaries, who I am sure certain times of the year during when thy are being trained. Have problem with armadas of LDS missionaries on bicycles cloging the street of that great city.

bluegoatwoods

I spent some years about an hour, by car, South of the OP. There were Amish there. I don't recall them riding bikes. But, no matter. They did ride around on farm wagons. And every now and then some Clyde in his Camaro would smash into one of them.

Over the border, in Northern Indiana, there were more Amish and more of them were on bicycles. It always looked to me as though the bikes, carriages and cars got along pretty well.

In the Shenandoah Valley, western Virginia, there are some folks who look like "Amish-lite". I believe they are Mennonites. They ride a lot of bikes. And it looks to me as though they get along with the cars quite well. In fact, it looks like bicycle paradise to me. Though them hills can be pretty loooonnngg.

I suppose those drivers in Kentucky will need to adjust a bit to an influx of bikes that they, perhaps, weren't expecting. But they ought to be able to get used to it. I hope they just slow down a bit and keep their 'radar' operating. Maybe they'll come to like the idea of bicycling.

Hah! What am I saying?

Maybe a few of them will come to like the idea of bicycling.

Roody

I think some will come to like the idea. Country roads are not always well designed for mixed mode travel, so everybody will have to be extra alert and respectful.

RISKDR1

next thing you know they will be running stop signs. Sheesh!

Dave Cutter

I grew-up in Ohio Amish country. The law at one time required even the buggies to use appropriate (battery powered) lighting and reflectors but the laws have been repealed for the Amish... as it is against their long held religious beliefs. It makes hitting a buggy with a car, a very real possibility (my brother hit one). In Ohio... Amish even use cars, vans, and trucks as required. Bicycles have also been in use for years.

bluegoatwoods

By the way, I used some misguided slang terminology in my last post without realizing it until too late.

When I referred to some 'Clyde in his Camaro', I was thinking of someone who doesn't see much need for manners or even consideration for the well-being of others. I was not thinking of the term "Clyde" as it's used here.

And........I suppose I've also insulted nice folks who happen to have Clyde for a name. Plus Camaro lovers.

I'll go away now. Feeling sheepish.

Shimagnolo

I grew up in rural Elkhart County, Indiana, which had an Amish population, and the adjacent county to the East (Lagrange) had even more.

We had Amish neighbors, and there were Amish kids in school with me until their parents yanked them out as soon as they turned 16 (IN law required kids under 16 in school).

The Amish are decentralized (i.e. no Pope-like central authority), but have regional "bishops" that autonomously set the rules for their groups. The result is different rules in different groups. For example, going from the most strict to the most liberal, the rules on transportation could be one of the following:

a) No cars, and the horse-drawn buggies must be black, and box-shaped.
b) No cars, and the horse-drawn buggies may be more stylishly-shaped like carriages from the 19th century.
c) Cars allowed, but they must be black, and the chrome must be painted black. (We called these "Black Bumper Amish").
d) Cars allowed, but they must be any dark color. (e.g. black, dark gray, maroon, dark green, etc).
e) Cars allowed w/o restrictions on appearance.

In the region where I grew up, we (non-Amish) generally referred to "a" and "b" as "Amish", "c" and "d" as "Conservative", and "e" as "Mennonite". But that was not necessarily what they called themselves. When I asked Amish kids in school what they were, the answer was typically "Amish Mennonite", and these were from families that drove the black, box-like buggies. The Amish kids referred to non-Amish people as "English".

And back to traffic issues, some of the roads in Lagrange County had huge nearly-level unpaved berms so buggies could use the berm and not the paved portion of the road.

B. Carfree

That's odd. I was under the impression that compulsory attendance in public schools was from a bygone era. In fact, I remember reading about a famous US Supreme Court ruling that paved the way to people doing more homeschooling. It happened to involve the Amish and said that they need not attend school after the eighth grade (at which time most children are more like 14, not 16).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisconsin_v._Yoder

Well, as long as they're riding their bike to school, who cares how long they have to attend?

bluegoatwoods

For what it's worth, my understanding of the whole school issue went something like this. (My southern Michigan days were 30 to 45 years ago. And there might well have been some changes since.) In Michigan the Amish were, at one time, required to send their children to the regular public schools. As a result, many went to Indiana. By the time of my childhood in Michigan, though, things were looser and the Amish had their own schools. One room school houses, too. Like our old days. In Indiana, it seems, they never faced the prospect of being assimilated into regular public schools.

A side note; one poster above mentioned LaGrange and Elkhart counties in IN. They were near to me. LaGrange county was only about a half hour away by car. But the difference in the Amish was very noticeable. I never saw a carriage of any type in Michigan. Fancy or plain. They rode around on farm wagons. And I never saw Amish in clothes that looked like Jed Clampett's Sunday clothes. They wore work clothes. Well kept work clothes, yes. But nothing fancy.

The Amish, of course, live closer to the soil than we do. And the difference is soil quality over a short distance such as southern MI to northern IN was easy to see. The Indiana folks were practically neighbors, but much more prosperous.

I remember visiting an old friend there and looking at his garden. I was amazed at the sickly gray color of the soil. And at the rocks, from near microscopic through gravel sized, softball sized and right up through rocks that aren't going anywhere for a long, long time.

I had grown used to soil that was somewhat more pure than that. I found myself wondering how even weeds could grow in a place like this.

Michigan. Beautiful place. Bad soil.

prathmann

Yes, I used a carbide miner's lamp as a bike light for a few years. Inexpensive to operate and produced a very intense flame with a parabolic reflector behind it that gave a pretty good beam. Although the flame was open in front I never had it blow out by the headwind due to riding. Bumpy road conditions would result in a few extra drops of water landing on the carbide and increase the flame intensity. It worked fine for night riding at speeds of 20+ mph and should serve the Amish well if they are restricted from using the more common types of bike lights.

And the Deputy sounds quite prejudiced in his comments. No serious accidents at all yet he regards the increased bicycle use as a significant safety issue that would become a 'much bigger problem' if they have even one such accident. I suspect he's familiar with quite a few serious accidents resulting from motor vehicle use - maybe that's where he should be looking for 'safety issues.'

Shimagnolo

You just jogged a memory from my childhood: My parents had some friends who lived in MI, and we would sometimes drive up to visit. I think it was somewhere near Paw Paw. Their house was isolated on a dirt road in a wooded area, and what I always found fascinating as a kid was that the soil was all sand. There was none of the black dirt we had where I lived.

Roody

Good information, thank you.

It is a small world...my grandparents lived in Three Rivers and Constantine, Michigan, just a short distance north of Elkhart, Indiana. One grandmother owned property near Shipshewana, IN so we we visited that area often when I was a kid. My parents and relatives always commented on the need to drive extra carefully because of the buggies sharing the road. At that time, there were no Amish on bicycles in Indiana that I recall. I don't know if they have since changed like the churches in Kentucky. The Amish in Michigan (mostly in the northern central LP) were not riding bikes either. They did ride the Indian Trailways and Greyhound buses a lot. I had many conversations with them as I was also riding buses a lot at that time. Mostly they were visiting relatives in other states, or on their way to help out at disaster sites such as hurricane Katrina.

Roody

Actually the Amish will scrupulously obey minor laws like stop signs. They save their disobedience for major issues like warfare, education, and social injustice.

Artkansas 

I was watching a documentary on the Amish. I was a little surprised to see a couple of adult scooters of this style parked in front of their garage.

TheLibrarian

Do they have to build old style wright brothers bikes or can they buy modern bikes?

Roody

Why would they have a garage?

rumrunn6

good youtube video but I would ride to the right

Artkansas 

They didn't explain.

But I went back and looked, and it's more than a garage. It seems to have an office room and an upstairs. You can see the scooters as the camera gets closer to the building.

The guy sure looks like Jesse James. Maybe he builds bikes.

https://youtu.be/KOeSlUIS06U?t=1m53s