Call to Action

L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa launched his bicycle-safety campaign on Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2010, with this poster, which was installed along 150 of the city’s most-congested streets.

A friend of mine pointed me towards a very awesome bicycling magazine today. http://theridejournal.com/index.html

This thing has all the bells and whistles, and it makes me proud to be a designer and a cyclist.

So I’m riding my bike over to Colin’s place, because you know… we’re doing this workshop and all. I’m heading up Humboldt Boulevard, and there’s this section through the park where the boulevard part disappears. I’m riding on the far right side of the road. I get to Humboldt and North ave as I’m waiting for the light to change a car pulls up behind me. As soon as the light turns green the car blasts it’s horn at me. Shit! That throws me off. I don’t realize the boulevard has come back so I continue to ride straight. After riding up on my ass the car pulls to the side of me and yells out the window ”get out of the fucking street!”, to which I reply a hearty “FUCK YOU,”  Then the woman says “OH NAH UH! and cuts in front of me and hits the brakes. I cut left and go around her, then ANOTHER car pulls up with two guys in it who say something about my bike and the street. At this point I’m thinking I’m going to have to defend myself with the chain lock around my shoulders, but they pull away and the woman follows. I look at their license plates but I’m too shaken up to retain anything. Later, on the way back home, any car that came up behind me got special attention.

I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, maybe it’s something about educating drivers on how to deal with bikers on the road. Maybe it’s about keeping your cool when a driver is being aggressive towards you. Or maybe it’s part of the reason why more people don’t bike in the city.

To be fair I’m a driver. I drive my car all over the city, and I sometimes get pissed at bikers. But I get pissed when they put me in a situation where I feel like I almost really hurt someone. By cutting in front of me through an intersection, Or turning in front of me without signaling, forcing me to move into oncoming traffic as they unnecessarily dodge manhole covers*.

But never would I honk at a biker and cut in front of them on a two lane road when there is no one else around. What the hell? Hey man we’re all just trying to go somewhere.

*UGH

Here’s a very simple tip to pass on to drivers to prevent doorings. Found in a recent Chicago Tribute article.

“When you get out of your car on the driver’s side, open the door with your right hand. This will force you to twist your body and look back, allowing you to see if any cyclists or walkers are coming by.”

A web-based celebration of the Work Cyclist and their Work Cycles. We all should get involved!

The idea is to produce a photo-showcase of various work spaces and how The Work Cycle is being successfully integrated into the daily office grind. Interested in getting your work place showcased, drop an email to studio@pixillion.com. Tell then a little bit about you, your work place, your Work Cyclists and their Work Cycles.

Get enough submissions there could be a book in this somewhere!

I guess if the mayor falls short of his promise of 100 miles of dedicated bike lanes, we can always take matters into our own hands, like these New Yorkers did in 2009 ;)

The Chicago Tribune reported vehicle-pedestrian crash facts. One of the scary parts is that among the fatal pedestrian crashes there’s a 41% chance of it being a hit-and-run.

I googled “Chicago Bike Fashion” and found this Huffington Post article about a blog called Bike Fancy. There’s also mention of a recent article featured in Scientific America about the low rate of female bikers. Basically, urban biking rates would increase if women felt safe while riding bikes since they are targeted in crime and bike routes were near shopping destinations, since woman do most of the household shopping. So it’s great to see that Bike Fancy focuses on ladies that are biking in Chicago. It features great photos of ladies in cute outfits while biking, not specific biking gear. It’s also nice to hear their stories about their bikes, why they bike in the City, and what they would change about it.

Snapped @ Kedzie & North ave.

This story seems to illustrate how badly police DON’T want to issue citations for doorings. According to the reporting officer it was everyone else’s fault but the driver of the car who doored the cyclist.

http://chicagodispatcher.com/doored-cyclist-caught-on-cab-camera-p2049-1.htm

Doored Cyclist Caught on Cab Camera