1. I never ride without my helmet. And if not for this policy, I'd certainly have a semi-serious injury. I didn't crack the helmet, but it's severely scratched. I'd at least be missing some scalp.

2. Tough one. I do take lights & Cali roll stop signs. Dead wrong and I'll own that. I do it as safely as possible, for whatever that's worth.

I also ride on the sidewalk and between lanes when traffic doesn't allow me to fit where a bike lane would be. I'd change this if there were bike lanes any where near my commuting route. I'd have to ride a mile out of the way for .5 mi of bike lane. My direct commute is 2.7 mi.

Selfishly, most of what I do is to save time. My commute is only 2.7 mi, and it takes roughly 15 minutes, bike or car. At the same time, frustrated drivers would run me over if I rode the middle of lanes like a car. The scolding & spiteful close passing I experience on the few occasions I do ride the middle of the lane is enough for me to avoid that tactic at all cost.

3. I always commute in regular clothes. And most of the cyclist I see do the same. I currently live in DC and I'm from NYC. I only wear sporting gear on exercise rides in the park, but that's still just basketball/sweat shorts, t-shirt & track sneakers. It's only on these rides that I see a significant number of bikers wearing biking gear.

4. I only greet fellow riders during my commute, but I'm always courteous to walkers & runners.

5. I've been meaning to, but I have yet to join my local bike association. This reminded me.

----

I rented in NY, then rented in MD (DC Suburbs) prior to buying in DC. Being from Brooklyn, I missed city life and its conveniences. My mortgage, taxes & insurance is roughly $125 more than my prior rent. The time & money saved by living in the city more than makes up for it. Commuting, I pay nothing now versus $8/day on public transportation (DC Metro is more expensive than NYC Transit).

I never rode a bike from MD into work, but that would be a hell of a ride and I doubt I could do it on my single-speed. And the direct route would be mostly on a 6-lane busy street in MD and a 4-lane busy street in DC, no bike lanes. I'm not sure how far out of the way I'd have to go to enjoy some bike lanes, but DC is not very bike friend from my experience.

During one neighborhood meeting, a bike lane for one of the main streets through the neighborhood was discussed. I was the only one in favor. Most were concerned with the loss of parking on one side of the street. When I asked which they'd prefer, me slowing them down on the road or less parking, the response was "ride on the sidewalk", which is legal here.

I was just in NYC this weekend. Yeah, biking is big there. If I could afford the same house in a similar neighborhood in Brooklyn, I'd go back in a hear beat. But the changes in Brooklyn (can't believe we have an arena) have raised property values way beyond my reach.

I didn't mean to imply that helmets have a magical safety bubble around them. I also don't stigmatize riders not wearing helmets on the road, even though I disagree with their decision.

If I'm riding on a MUP at 10-15mph and slip out on a puddle, I'm much more likely to not hit my head. Might break a wrist or get some scrapes, but nothing serious.

If I'm riding on the road at 20-30mph and a car pulls out in front of me, I'm going head first over the car and onto the street. Much higher chance of a head impact.


Anyway, there's already a helmet thread for this stuff.

If falling on your head is so dangerous, why don't we wear helmets all the time... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/16/he...tats.html?_r=0
Most accidents at home happen in the bathroom... so perhaps we need bath helmets, and walking helmets and certainly motoring helmets... yet, there is a fascination with foam hats for cyclists.

Yeah, I'll admit I wear one... when commuting on high speed arterial roads with cell phone distracted motorists... maybe that helmet will be my last line of defense. But when I cruise down to a local grocery store... I go in regular clothes and with bare head. I enjoy the wind in my thinning hair and the road speeds are a comfortable residential 25MPH. If I need a helmet to bike in that environment, I probably need one to walk too.

+1 me too! Enjoy it while you got it!

Reminds me of that star trek movie where Data was offered humanity by the Borg, and how he was fascinated by the feeling of a breeze through arm hair.

Once you're over 65 and especially 85, a helmet in the bathroom might be a good idea since it's mostly those folks getting hurt there. If not a helmet, at least the judicious placement of hand rails. Still head injuries from bathroom falls are less common than head injuries from cycling.

Cycling accounts for more head injuries than any other recreational activity as well. Twice as many as football. It's your choice.

Did you convince "those people" to go back to having a car ??...And how about people who decide to go car-free and remain that way and never purchase another vehicle ??...


Car-free lifestyle is based on location of where the person lives and not upon nice weather.
As long as all the neccessities of life are within biking/walking/public transit distance, then it's easy to live car-free, it doesn't matter how bad the weather gets.


I hate the word "impossible" and I have decided long time ago to eliminate that word from my vocabulary...Seriously what the heck does the weather have to do with car-free lifestyle ??



I am in above average physical shape. And all I can tell you is that super fitness is irrelevent to a car-free lifestyle. There are a lot of "normal" people who are not super fit and they live car-free...So just because LCF lifestyle is not for you doesn't mean it's impossible for others to live that way.

I don't completely disagree with anything on this list. I think helmets are a good idea and I don't like to ride more than a few miles without Lycra, but we've argued those points more than enough. The thing I'd like to say about this list is that I don't believe these are the things that keep people from riding bikes.

People don't think that cycling is dangerous because they're told that helmets are necessary. They think cycling is dangerous because it looks and feels dangerous. If you get on a bike and ride down the street for any length of time you're going to get buzzed by a car and if you aren't used to it, it's going to freak you out. Whether it really is dangerous or not, it feels dangerous and it takes some time and determination to get used to it. Besides, mandatory seat belt laws and the proliferation of air bags aren't keeping people out of cars. Driving feels safe, whether it is or not, so people don't even give it a thought. There's a lot of debate about whether or not bicycle infrastructure actually improves safety, but without a doubt it makes bicycling feel safer.

I don't see anything in the other four points that even looks like an obstacle to cycling. Other people ride like idiots so I should ride? I don't see it. And that's the best of the other four.

+1

When you're used to traveling inside something, not being inside feels unsafe.

I sort of get his point about riding like idiots, though I think it's more complicated than that. If you as a driver come to despise cyclists for whatever reason, you're less likely to become one.

There's been some interesting studies about cheating on tests. I may have the exact details wrong but here's what I remember: Students were given a test consisting of 20 questions. They also got $20. They had to give back a dollar for each question they got wrong. They had 20 minutes to complete the entire test. The questions were such that it was obvious when you got the answer right and it was entirely on the honor system. The students were to put their answer sheet in a shredder when they were done. As far as they knew, there was no evidence. They didn't know that the shredder only shredded the edges of the paper and the answers were in fact left intact.

One student was a plant. In one session he got up immediately, announced that he was done and walked away with his money. The other students knew that he couldn't have possibly finished the entire test. Cheating was rampant because they knew there were no consequences.

In another session, the same student pulled the same stunt, except this time he was wearing a t-shirt from a hated rival school. In this case, there was relatively little cheating because no one wanted to be like "that guy from...".

My family while growing up was no example of physical fitness. We lived car-free the entire 18 years I was living at home, and my mother is still car free to this day.

The author is a BF member, Ajenkins I believe, it would be interesting to have him chime in....

How can that be considering that everyone uses a bathroom at some point during the day, but not everyone rides a bike. Of course not everyone falls in the bathroom, but then not every cyclist falls either... but the sheer difference in the number of cyclists vrs bathroom users has got to make bathroom falls more common.

I think the biggest obstacle to cycling is laziness... I almost succumbed to that this morning (the irony will be thick on this). I was getting ready to go to the gym, to do some arm strengthening exercises (I like to ocean swim... and certain muscles tend to suffer while just cycling) and I briefly toyed with the idea of driving, to save a few seconds involved with getting the bike out of the garage... I had to laugh however as it struck me as counterproductive to drive to a gym... so I got in both some weight lifting and aerobics, by jumping on the saddle... and yes, I did have to pump up the tires a bit... I've been out of town for a few weeks. Still, to me that was no excuse to drive. However, that may not be the logic for most Americans, who would just jump into the car to go a few blocks to a store or even the gym.

I think the "safety excuse" just adds another excuse to the laziness issue... yet further rationalization to just drive.

The problem is that in many American cities, designed for the automobile, the "necessities of life" are a not within easy biking/walking distance and public transit can be a pain to use... this society is just too darn auto centric... shops tend to be clustered in malls which may be some distance away, unlike in say European countries where one may find all the needed vendors within blocks of where you live. More dense American cities such as San Francisco or NYC may offer everything in a reasonable distance, but the same may not hold true in say Minnesota or Montana or Arizona. In places like San Fran and Portland and NYC it can actually be frustrating to drive, and thus foster a car free existence.

Even here in San Diego, there are some neighborhoods that really foster a car free existence and others that are practically hostile to peds and cyclists. I recall working in one area that had minimal sidewalks, and just to go across the street to a shopping center from my office required that I walked either in traffic in a busy driveway or through gardens and across lawns. (I thought it just down right lazy to drive the 1/2 a block from my building to the mall area where the food court was.)

WITH ya on this one -- I'm already to the point of BELLOWING:

**SHUT

THE

F

UP**

ABOUT

HELMETS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't CARE what your OPINION is about being "a fool" for not wearing one -- OPINIONS are like SPHINCTERS...EVERYBODY has one, most all STINK. If you feel stupid not wearing one, WEAR one. Call *ME* stupid or foolish, and we have a PROBLEM.

How about "bad weather excuse" ??...I think bad weather can really play tricks on the persons mind and cause them to give in to "laziness" or give in to fear of getting sick..and they end up driving instead of biking.

Bathroom falls can be more common but that doesn't mean that as many result in serious head injury. But I checked the stats again anyway and I think I found the difference. The bicycling stats included kids under 14 while the bathroom stats didn't. Kids under 14 accounted for almost half of the cycling head injuries. So taking that into consideration bathroom falls do result in more head injuries for adults but if you excluded adults over 65, I'm not sure that would be true.

Still, 90% of the cyclists killed in 2009 were not wearing a helmet, - most of them were middle aged men.

Agreed, but the root cause is laziness, everything else becomes further rationalization for the root cause... "Oh it's not safe...;" "Oh it's raining...;" "Oh I don't look good in bike clothes...;" "Oh the helmet messes up my hair...;" on and on ad nauseam.

Around november last year(2012), a 56 year old bike courier was killed in Toronto. He was riding through an intersection and was hit by a taxi which was "racing" to get through just as the light turned orange. It was "bad timing" I guess... The cyclist was wearing a helmet which was shattered to pieces and he died from head trauma.

I like the goals of this article and do think the writer is sincere, but reality does get in the way.

Relatively speaking cycling is not a safe mode of travel in the US as only pedestrians and motorcyclists have higher death rates. Victoria Transportation Institute has stats on fatality rates by miles traveled broken down by mode:

commuter rail: 0.1
transit bus: 0.6
passenger car: 7.9
cyclists: 82.2
pedestrian: 198
motorcycle: 303

http://www.vtpi.org/safetrav.pdf

And yes when you do look at it by number of trips taken the gaps will narrow but they will not close as far as any data that I have seen.

Does this stop me from riding? No, but it does make me rethink certain trips, riding at certain hours, specific routes, etc.

Well...err...I looked it up, and according to my gps I went 11.41 miles at 12.6mph average speed. I mean to be fair - I gain some on the bike because I avoid rush hour traffic which slows me down some (it's slower, but not stop and go in the car). And my bike route only has like 2 stoplights on it.

Lol, wasn't trying to start a flame war on that one. Maybe I was to over the top, because I've known 3 people to try it and that's it. Just saying you forget what a pain the weather is when you're used to driving a car where rain just means people drive slightly slower - maybe...

I had no input into the people I knew going back to having a car. One of them lived in Florida, the other two in Minnesota.

I imagine this argument has been had over and over again, so I'll leave it at that.

You're clearly an idealogue. If you want to tell yourself that you can bike through 9 inches of snow, you keep telling yourself that.

Only superficially related to what I wrote.

I'm really curious where these statistics you're quoting are from...I'm definitely surprised to hear that it's "middle aged men" who make up the largest group...

I live currently in Sioux Falls SD from Southern California and biked through a crazy winter and into June the weather is blowing my mind and I have commuted every day here for almost 1 year on a bicycle.

There is much talk about making South Dakota "bicylcle friendly" but the reality is that is not going to happen, The Great Plains finished almost dead last in the recent bike friendly places to live.
I think there may be a "hunting season" on us....ouch


I still cycle every day because I want to, helmet, hi viz clothes, lights and all.
(In Cali I was an Aerospace Engineer and Professional Jazz Bassist).

I really liked the basic tone of the article that USA needs to grow up and I would really like to hear what the Author has to say about this,

Mr. Jenkins?

OK, I guess you had a slower car route, which gives bike an edge, and since my route was longish and almost all freeway, that skews against bike. But I get it. Now I have a 5.6mi commute. Car or bike would be exactly the same route (suburban arterial streets), car would be 10-15 min (I actually haven't driven it enough to really know!), and today I set a new personal best of 25:24. (That's mostly uphill, but not super-steep. I should look up how many feet I gain on my way to work).

My guess, thats just a statistical reflection of middle-aged men being the largest demographic that cycles. How many middle-aged men have you seen out on their bikes since the last time you saw a 10-year old girl on her bike? (Unless you have a 10-year-old daughter, you know what I mean...)