THE Bicycle and 'Cycling Thread pt 2 (merged)

[dorlomin]

Deaths from left hooks are at epidemic proportions in the London cycling community because of this.

Oh dont talk pish.

"Filtering" is where the cycle lanes are.





The problem is left turning heavy goods vehicles (specifically construction vehicles) from being stopped at junctions.

Women cyclists are far more likely to be killed by a lorry because, unlike men, they tend to obey red lights and wait at junctions in the driver’s blind spot, according to a study. The TfL study has not been published – a move that has angered many campaigners.

The report by Transport for London’s road safety unit was completed last July but has been kept secret. It suggests that some cyclists who break the law by jumping red lights may be safer and that cycle feeder lanes may make the problem worse.

The study claims that 86 per cent of the women cyclists killed in London between 1999 and 2004 collided with a lorry. By contrast, lorries were involved in 47 per cent of deaths of male cyclists. The findings help to explain why the growing popularity of cycling by city commuters is resulting in frequent deaths of young women in similar circumstances.

The death rate among women cyclists has increased since the report was completed, with two killed in collisions with lorries within 24 hours last month.

http://www.rudi.net/node/16395

The study, carried out for the Department for Transport, found that in 2% of cases where cyclists were seriously injured in collisions with other road users police said that the rider disobeying a stop sign or traffic light was a likely contributing factor. Wearing dark clothing at night was seen as a potential cause in about 2.5% of cases, and failure to use lights was mentioned 2% of the time.

With adult cyclists, police found the driver solely responsible in about 60%-75% of all cases, and riders solely at fault 17%-25% of the time.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/15/cycling-bike-accidents-study


And deaths per trip has been falling in nearly 1/3 over the past ten years.

Year Deaths Serious injuries Bike trips* Rate**

2002 20 394 300 0.36

2003 19 421 320 0.36

2004 8 332 330 0.28

2005 21 351 390 0.25

2006 19 373 420 0.24

2007 15 446 420 0.29

2008 15 430 440 0.27

2009 13 420 470 0.24

2010 10 457 490 0.26

2011 16 Not available yet Not available yet

[/quote][/quote]http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100135065/cyclist-deaths-and-casualties-in-london-%E2%80%93-the-facts/

Clycing has becoming vastly more popular. This has made the average cyclist safer as drivers are more aware of them.


Your alarmist clap trap belongs back in the 70s.

The majority think bike lanes are safe too, and they think sidewalk riding is safer than cycling in the road. The majority is wrong.

Oh how cyclists should cower and quiver and stay hidden from the big dangerous road.

[dorlomin]

and then that car makes a right turn before you clear to their field of vision. They can not see you, and they will unintentionally kill you.

I dislike the idea of being unintentionally killed.

Trucks have a blind spot that insecure cyclists tend to hover in because they dont filter past to get infront. Cars dont.

Cars are very rarely a problem as cyclists can see the car driver and the car driver normally can see them through one of their two mirrors.

If you cycle where cycling is rare then I can see why this would be a problem. But in cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, this is not really a big concern as drivers are used to looking for us.

[AgentR11]

f you cycle where cycling is rare then I can see why this would be a problem. But in cities like London, Paris, Amsterdam and Copenhagen, this is not really a big concern as drivers are used to looking for us.

Cycling here isn't common, but rare would be too strong a word, whenever I drive, its rare to go more than a mile or two without seeing a cyclist on the road. What would be a good description is clueless cycling. We have riders riding opposite traffic, riding in the shared left hand turn lane, filtering poorly; no lights at night, eratic shifts between offroad pedestrian and onroad vehicle behavior, and all this causes a lot of drivers to have no clue what to expect as far as behavior. My solution is to take no liberties, if I pass, I pass exactly like a motorcycle or other car passes; at stop lights and signs I take the full lane, do a full toe-down stop, and accelerate hard to match the profile 0-15 of a motor vehicle. My rear lighting is every bit as bright as any motorcycles. This has served me well over thousands of road miles in this region.

And btw, bike lanes are hideous. Take the friggin lane when you need it for safety, share it when you don't. Easy peazy.

I'm not really sure how I'd adapt to this designated bike lane, super dense and slow mode in the cities you mention; but I'm not really as much of a stick in the mud as I sometimes come off as; I will 'cheat' my rules if the traffic is disastrous. I have admittedly gotten off the road and done 5mph in grass and sand to get around construction or accidents. So, I have no claim to road-rules purity! I am however, glad we don't do bike lanes here.

[AgentR11]

Best, fresh seafood market from here is 16 miles away.

It may be now, but in a world without cars, there will be more outlets for fresh seafood close to the coastlines, if only because shipping seafood in bulk won't be possible anymore. ... I think you're getting caught up in the idea that big box stores and massive warehouses will somehow continue

If you saw this market, I suspect you'd think it is exactly what should happen post peak, one truck run daily from the boat, bringing fresh seafood in to a small distribution node that feeds a few restaurants and a fresh fish market.

Thing is, I think the peak effects will cause this to be the norm, with fewer quality distribution nodes; so people end up having to choose between frozen fish sticks at the nearby grocer, or traveling to the fresh market node to get same-day tuna, snapper, crabs, etc. As the quality node feeds restaurants as well as its own fresh market, there's no reason to expect it to stop operation in response to rising fuel costs. (20 gallons of diesel to deliver up to 5 tons of fresh fish, etc; it'd take an unbelievably high fuel price to make that not work, so high that people would plant and grow biodeisel to the exclusion of all else).

I would never trust a big box store for quality seafood. They're ok for fish sticks though.

OTOH, further diffusion of the nodes fails since the retail volume ends up being too low to keep fresh fish, fresh.

It will adapt naturally, as it has for thousands of years. So will the towns, villages and the countryside.

I'm not very optimistic about this, but it is the only game in town. On can hope I suppose...

[Tanada]

I'm starting to wonder whether cycling energy efficiency is really the excellent deal it seems to be on paper. I've been running a bit of an experiment with myself as guinea pig, counting cal in/out very closely over the last couple months, trying to maintain a steady weight, and doing a lot of my transportation by bicycle.

I'm running into instances like, bike 30 miles for A,B,&C at a good pace, placing my total burn including baseline at about 4500 - 5000 Cal. Now, it is true enough that using my gasoline powered truck or van for those 30 miles would burn more than the added 2k Cal; *but* the real question is... how often can your digestive system tolerate eating 5000 Cal in a day? I flat can't do it. Today, eg, I've eaten the fastest, densest foods I can stand, its 5pm, and I'm still 2900 Cal short for the day, and I'm stuffed. This is a hard limit, that was real energy burned, and it exceeds my apparent maximum recapture rate. Now... what if instead of 30 miles, its 60? I can bike 100 in a day without it being a great challenge, but can my digestive system deliver the fuel at the rate its being burned though?

Obviously, the cycling is a good way to loose weight and get in shape; but once you are there, can a large American male bike 20-40 miles a day with significant cargo (groceries, tools, parts, whatever), eat enough to sustain using their body as transportation motor, and still be mentally "on" enough to deliver 8-10 productive professional hours.

I'm starting to have my doubts....

If you actually need that large of a caloric intake I suggest you study the diet followed by Arctic and Antarctic researchers. On average they burn around 5000 cal a day to work in -30 weather and maintain body weight.

[Beery1]

Oh dont talk pish.

LOL. Well, you can cycle where you want, I guess. All I know is that filtering (and riding in those dangerously narrow but very pretty blue ribbons that TfL cynically calls 'Cycle Superhighways') increases the danger to cyclists. But heck, it's a free country - you do it if you've got the nerve.

The problem is left turning heavy goods vehicles

That is a factor. It is not the problem. The problem is filtering and gutter-cycling. Eliminate those and you prevent many unnecessary deaths. The fact that you want to filter does not make it safe. All your citing of statistics doesn't mask the fact that you simply like filtering and can't take criticism of it. That is clear from the apparent anger with which you greet my posts. People who are not angry address the argument - they don't start their response by saying that their opponent is 'talking pish'.

Women cyclists are far more likely to be killed by a lorry because, unlike men, they tend to obey red lights and wait at junctions in the driver’s blind spot

Your premise regarding obeying red lights is nonsense. If confident cyclists who are controlling the lane stop at a red light, they are very unlikely to be left-hooked. Waiting in the blind spot is the key. The question then becomes: Why do they do that? Clearly it's because they filter up on the left side of lorries, or because they are gutter-riding and lorries pull up next to them. If they took the lane, as a confident cyclist does, they would never be in that position. Instead, they would be controlling the lane; they would come to a stop at the red in full view of all the traffic around them; and they would go through at the green similarly visible. It's when cyclists surrender control of the lane and do stuff that makes them less visible that they get injured and killed.

The report by Transport for London’s road safety unit was completed last July but has been kept secret.

'Secret'? Not all that secret, it seems, since you and I are both aware of what it says.

It suggests that some cyclists who break the law by jumping red lights may be safer and that cycle feeder lanes may make the problem worse.

Of course this is true. Jumping red lights removes the threat of left hooks and substitutes for it the lesser danger of a red-light-running motorist. As for feeder lanes (bike lanes or paths - 'suicide lanes' as they're aptly called in the UK), they have safety issues at intersections that have been known for decades (not that it stops traffic engineers or even many cyclists from working to install them). But taking the lane (riding in primary position, as it's called in the UK) makes cyclists even safer - and no lawbreaking is necessary.

Clycing [sic] has becoming vastly more popular.

'Vastly'? Until I see a similar number of cyclists on the road as motorists, I think the word 'vastly' in regard to an increase in ridership is a bit of a stretch. Here in the US, ridership has gone from 1% to about 1.5%. Some might call that a 'vast' increase, and since 'vast' is one of those vague terms that can mean virtually anything, those people could say that with a straight face - and they might even mean it. I'm not sure what the increase in ridership is in the UK. Somehow I don't think it meets my criteria for a 'vast' increase though.

This has made the average cyclist safer as drivers are more aware of them.

Based on what evidence? The figures you cite and your arguments regarding reductions in accidents and the increases in ridership merely suggest correlation. Correlation is not causation.

Your alarmist clap trap belongs back in the 70s.

LOL. Not sure why we need all the apparently angry and dismissive ad hominem stuff, but okay.

Oh how cyclists should cower and quiver and stay hidden from the big dangerous road.

Wow! You've really got that one wrong. I am an integrated cyclist. My whole point is that the road is NOT dangerous - unless people use it in ways that increase their exposure to danger (such as by filtering, gutter-riding, wrong-way cycling, sidewalk-cycling, bike facility use, etc.). I urge cyclists to use the road. My beef is with half-baked bicycle infrastructure and the sort of fear-based cycling that YOU appear to advocate, which turns a safe and healthy pursuit into something that seems more like a game of Russian Roulette.

But again, if you've got the nerve, you cycle how you want. I'm not going to stop you.

[AgentR11]

If you actually need that large of a caloric intake I suggest you study the diet followed by Arctic and Antarctic researchers. On average they burn around 5000 cal a day to work in -30 weather and maintain body weight.

Maybe I'm getting unlucky on the search results, but so far all I seem to be finding are articles and papers that note how much things have improved and that most are spending the majority of their workdays in climate controlled, temperate conditions... :-<.... I have seen a few documentaries over time that make mention of cold acclimatization, but they've always seemed obsessed with showing the snickers bars as opposed to more baseline foods like the obvious cooking oils... (not to knock the snickers bar, its a wondrous invention, when its not frozen.)

Still, those 5k output days are all over 30 miles of biking, which is atypical; yesterday was more typical with about 10 miles of biking and 90 minutes of lap swimming, which is closer to 4k Cal. I brought it up because in other posts I've made the claim that people *could* choose to commute quite far by bike, if they were unwilling to move for financial or other reasons, but the sustained Cal expenditure has started to make me doubt that long bike commutes are within the "challenging but realistic" box. Maybe it just means the large milk shake replaces the martini for lunch! lol.

Maybe beery is right and everyone will just abandon their single family homes and move into small apartments closer to work...

[Tanada]

If you actually need that large of a caloric intake I suggest you study the diet followed by Arctic and Antarctic researchers. On average they burn around 5000 cal a day to work in -30 weather and maintain body weight.

Maybe I'm getting unlucky on the search results, but so far all I seem to be finding are articles and papers that note how much things have improved and that most are spending the majority of their workdays in climate controlled, temperate conditions... :-<.... I have seen a few documentaries over time that make mention of cold acclimatization, but they've always seemed obsessed with showing the snickers bars as opposed to more baseline foods like the obvious cooking oils... (not to knock the snickers bar, its a wondrous invention, when its not frozen.)

Still, those 5k output days are all over 30 miles of biking, which is atypical; yesterday was more typical with about 10 miles of biking and 90 minutes of lap swimming, which is closer to 4k Cal. I brought it up because in other posts I've made the claim that people *could* choose to commute quite far by bike, if they were unwilling to move for financial or other reasons, but the sustained Cal expenditure has started to make me doubt that long bike commutes are within the "challenging but realistic" box. Maybe it just means the large milk shake replaces the martini for lunch! lol.

I didn't have any luck looking it up online either, I just gave it a shot with a wide variety of search terms. From reading many books over my life about polar exploration and survival I know that Pemmican and lots of fatty meat are the main ingredients, the pemmican preferably with blueberries to add vitamin C and other nutrients. Actually if you eat a typical super sized McDonald's double quarter pounder meal for lunch with full calorie large soda you get 720+470+225=1415. Add on dessert and you can get it up over 2000. People at least in America consume a lot more calories than they think they do, that one meal is the same as a whole day for half the humans on the planet. A large glass of fruit juice with breakfast and a few beers after work and boom you are bumping 5000 if you eat breakfast and dinner before and after work.

[dorlomin]

LOL.

Oh look, the Americans are going to lecture the world on cycling......

Well, you can cycle where you want, I guess.

I do. As do over my fellow Londoners with over 300 thousand cyclist trips in this city every day.

The problem is filtering and gutter-cycling. Eliminate those and you prevent many unnecessary deaths.

Sorry I provided research from the city in question. I did not ask for your opinion.

Your premise regarding obeying red lights is nonsense.

Not mine. Reasearch by TfL.

Transport for London.

The body in charge of Londons transport.

Sorry it does not agree with what you learnt when you took your American cycling proficiency badge or whatever.

Of course this is true. Jumping red lights removes the threat of left hooks and substitutes for it the lesser danger of a red-light-running motorist.

So you do not read the research I posted.

The study, carried out for the Department for Transport, found that in 2% of cases where cyclists were seriously injured in collisions with other road users police said that the rider disobeying a stop sign or traffic light was a likely contributing factor.

So its 2% of serious accidents.

Clycing [sic] has becoming vastly more popular.

'Vastly'? Until I see a similar number of cyclists on the road as motorists, I think the word 'vastly' in regard to an increase in ridership is a bit of a stretch. Here in the US,

[/quote]
I am not in the US.
But let me post the numbers I posted earlier as you seem unable to read anything that does not agree with you.

cycle trips 2002 300
2010 490

(that is thousand per day)
Over several key bridges such as Blackfriars the number of cycles is greater than the number of private cars (not taxis, busses or lorrys).

So cycling is on the up, massively and it is a rival to cars in key parts of Central London.

But dont mind me, all I have is local data.

Your alarmist clap trap belongs back in the 70s.

LOL. Not sure why we need all the apparently angry and dismissive ad hominem stuff, but okay.

Blah blah blah.

Out of date thinking from an out of date cycling culture.

This is our goal, to keep pushing up cycle numbers till we have Danish densities.And along key routes we are achiving this.

No helmets, gutter cycling, often no fluro at night. And among the safest per mile in the world.

You get the densities high enough and you make yourselves safe.

[dorlomin]

Here is some footage of south london rush hour.

You just cannot miss them.

[AgentR11]

Couple thoughts on that London vid.

First off, that's really not all THAT bad, the places they are speed restricted, everyone is speed restricted. I would still be pretty hesitant about filtering if I was riding alone, but in that density of bicycles, probably better off going with the crowd. Kinda a legal critical mass effect...

Secondly, what the heck does a zig-zag lane marker mean!

Oh, and btw. Yall still drive on the wrong side.

[Beery1]

Oh, and btw. Yall still drive on the wrong side.

For a cyclist, driving on the left is natural - at least if you're right-handed. I've lived in the US twenty years and I still haven't managed to train myself to mount my bike from the left hand side (which would be safer, as I could do it from the sidewalk). Driving on the left used to make sense in England, because you'd mount the bike from the left - on the sidewalk and out of the traffic lane. Here I'm in the middle of the road when I get on my bike.

It makes sense to enter a car from opposite the curbside, because you have to be on that side for the visibility it affords, so from a motorist's standpoint, it doesn't matter which side of the road you drive on, as long as the driver's seat is closest to the middle of the road. But for cyclists and horse riders, driving on the right is stupid.

[dorlomin]

For a cyclist, driving on the left is natural

You drive your bike.....

[Beery1]

For a cyclist, driving on the left is natural

You drive your bike.....

I'm an integrated cyclist, so yes, I drive my bike. Technically, every cyclist drives a bike: you drive a bike; you steer a car; you ride a roller coaster.

[AgentR11]

Speaking of driving, as in providing the motive power for a vehicle, I recently indulged my digital self and got one of those gps/hr monitor/cadence/speed/power logging computers, and am starting to understand that no sane person bikes like I bike. (all the racers, ride roadies, and loaded / commuters are on MBs at 6mph) Which is fine, but its also let me experiment with more energy efficient output levels... which surprisingly don't happen to be all THAT much slower. (me being insane is probably not all that surprising either..)

So amending my previous critique on energy... if the cycling commuter/traveler rides at a level that keeps their heart rate at a modest walking pace (50%-60%), they can travel a decent amount each day (~10, maybe even 20 miles) without overly shifting their total kcal requirements for the day; like the difference of an ice cream cone, glass of juice, or a biscuit (American, not Brit cookie!). If they travel by pushing their HR to 80%+, racing cars, and end their ride by drinking a half gallon of water and changing clothes... probably not as efficient. (get there faster though, as long as you don't count the required nap... lol) I do think Berry misses the utility by overly restricting mileage, 10 miles is really nothing, even at a very efficient pace, and conveniently enough, 10 miles is enough to make suburbia (in most places) limp along.

nb... "drive" is probably the better word, but I think "ride" is now good and stuck in the English vocabulary with regard to bicycles. Fighting language evolution is next to hopeless.

[seahorse3]

Rode 79 miles on Saturday, group ride, small, about 6 people, average was 19mph.

[Beery1]

I do think Berry misses the utility by overly restricting mileage, 10 miles is really nothing, even at a very efficient pace, and conveniently enough, 10 miles is enough to make suburbia (in most places) limp along.

I'm not 'restricting' anything. Hey, if you want to drive 20 or more miles a day, more power to you. But I'm just suggesting a reasonable distance for the average person to ride. Most people, whether we are living in a car-free future or not, are not going to be spending every day going more than ten miles. If they are, they will soon find ways of reducing the distance they must ride. Just look at modern drivers - they 'could' easily drive 30 or 50 miles every day, yet their average trip is 3 miles, their average commute is something like 10 miles. We are not a species that likes taking multi-hour journeys, no matter what vehicle we can use to do it.

nb... "drive" is probably the better word, but I think "ride" is now good and stuck in the English vocabulary with regard to bicycles. Fighting language evolution is next to hopeless.

Again, I'm not fighting anything. Lots of integrated cyclists use 'drive' because that's what we do - we drive our bikes. It's a different method than 'riding'. Anyone can 'ride' a bike. Driving one takes skill.