Whoa! You nearly killed me... 08/13/2010
Or scared the crap out of me, or made bikers look really bad.
Following up on an earlier post "how do you communicate with people who are acting badly?", my girlfriend came up with the best candidate so far: Whoa!
Whoa! According to web definitions this is commonly used for a draft animal to stop; or to cease or slow a course of action. With some road users the draft animal that comes to mind is jack ass: A male ass or donkey; a foolish or stupid person.
So, let me know what you think about yelling whoa every time you see bad behavior. It's growing on me.
Following up on an earlier post "how do you communicate with people who are acting badly?", my girlfriend came up with the best candidate so far: Whoa!
Whoa! According to web definitions this is commonly used for a draft animal to stop; or to cease or slow a course of action. With some road users the draft animal that comes to mind is jack ass: A male ass or donkey; a foolish or stupid person.
So, let me know what you think about yelling whoa every time you see bad behavior. It's growing on me.
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Speeding, Safety & Peace of Mind 06/24/2010
I've been slowing down lately on my bike. Surprisingly, I don't think I'm actually losing much if any time getting where I need to go.
The strategy is really pretty simple: I generally have plenty of time to watch the signals ahead-- my goal is to maintain a constant speed so that I don't have to slow down, or speed up to make the light.
The strategy is really pretty simple: I generally have plenty of time to watch the signals ahead-- my goal is to maintain a constant speed so that I don't have to slow down, or speed up to make the light.
You might wonder, doesn't this mean speeding to catch the light? Yes, but only when I'm in a rush-- which isn't very often. Generally, I'm slowing down.
Essentially my top speed is closer to my average.
The real revolution would be if cars would only do this. An essentially instead of going 30 MPH and then waiting at the light for two minutes, they could go 20 MPH and end up waiting a fraction of the time or not at all.
This speed modulation results in a calmer, saner street environment.
Essentially my top speed is closer to my average.
The real revolution would be if cars would only do this. An essentially instead of going 30 MPH and then waiting at the light for two minutes, they could go 20 MPH and end up waiting a fraction of the time or not at all.
This speed modulation results in a calmer, saner street environment.
I was counting bikes for Somerville a few weeks ago when I witnessed some pedestrian/ bike road rage. A bicyclist stopped at an all-way-walk signal and then proceeded through the intersection behind a pedestrian walking a dog in the crosswalk. The pedestrian turned and screamed some thing to the effect of:
"you selfish, impatient piece of sh*t bicyclist, red-light-means stop..."
There was more than that. Real spitting anger.
Putting aside whether the cyclist did the wrong thing... or that the pedestrian over-reacted-- what are some good ways to tell someone hey, you're making me mad, you're doing something dangerous, or giving a whole class of users a bad rap?
You could be responding to a car cutting you off, a pedestrian walking into the bike lane, or a bicyclist riding at night with out lights.
Crazy venting doesn't do it for me. If any of you out in Cyber land have ideas, I'd love to see them in the comment field below
"you selfish, impatient piece of sh*t bicyclist, red-light-means stop..."
There was more than that. Real spitting anger.
Putting aside whether the cyclist did the wrong thing... or that the pedestrian over-reacted-- what are some good ways to tell someone hey, you're making me mad, you're doing something dangerous, or giving a whole class of users a bad rap?
You could be responding to a car cutting you off, a pedestrian walking into the bike lane, or a bicyclist riding at night with out lights.
Crazy venting doesn't do it for me. If any of you out in Cyber land have ideas, I'd love to see them in the comment field below
I am reading David Byrne's bicycle diaries. There's a great quote attributed to Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Bogota:
"One common measure of how clean a mountain stream is to look for trout. If you find a trout, the habitat is healthy. It's the same for children in a city. Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people..."
"One common measure of how clean a mountain stream is to look for trout. If you find a trout, the habitat is healthy. It's the same for children in a city. Children are a kind of indicator species. If we can build a successful city for children, we will have a successful city for all people..."
Bike Week Conversations 05/21/2010
One element of civil streets is conversations. This is Bay State Bike Week in Massachusetts where I live. As a commuter cyclist I've been going to some events to promote Civil Streets.
Yesterday I was talking to David Watson, the Executive Director of MassBike, about the Respect campaign and how it differs from a same-roads-same rules campaign for bicycles. Most would agree that obeying all the traffic laws will be a good personal policy for both personal safety and the general image of bicyclists and pedestrians. But most of us also break the law sometimes or possibly very often. At times could this law-breaking be harmless? If so, when?
If a tree falls in the woods and no-one hears it, does it make a sound?
If you break a traffic law as a pedestrian, bicyclist or car-driver and it doesn't bother anyone, does it matter?
I think the key element here is does the activity bother anyone? If it does, something that may seem harmless (I ran that red light after carefully looking both ways) actually really annoyed the three bicyclists and twenty car-drivers who watched the bicyclists run the red light while they waited.
Some of this is a broken-windows syndrome:
Everyone runs red lights.
Cars break the law too.
The system is broken therefore why should I follow the rules?
The broken-windows syndrom really exposes itself as more and more people bicycle or walk or drive because these problems become cultural and mode-rage intensifies. I see my own perspective shifting when I'm on a bike, walking or in a Zipcar, I adopt the viewpoint of the driver walker and bicyclist and get angry at those other road users.
Talking to other cyclists, I often hear, "I wish cars would do a better job of sharing the road". I do believe that overwhelming majority of cars do a great job of sharing the road. But if 5% of the cars don't share well, we have a real problem-- and those 5% paste the reputation of all the other car-drivers out there.
This same rule of guilt by association also applies to bicyclists and pedestrians. Furthermore as we lobby for more facilities this guilt-by-association does not help our case for better facilities. We hear "why encourage more of this behavior".
So where does Civil Streets fit in? At another event I ran in to Cathy Cagle, Mass DOT's Director of Sustainable Transportation. She saw the sticker and said "this is the behavior that matches a complete street". I read this comment to mean, if we have an environment that supports walking, bicycling, transit and city-scale driving, the way we interact needs to adjust.
Civil Streets then is about achieving great design that encourages better behavior and a change in law that facilitates good behavior. In the meantime, what can we do to foster better behavior? My hope is by showing the sticker each of us will up-our-game and be a little kinder to our fellow road users of every stripe.
The other very-important-purpose of the sticker is to flesh out what constitutes good behavior, design and laws. The conversations around this bring us together and hopefully result in a kinder more civil street.
Yesterday I was talking to David Watson, the Executive Director of MassBike, about the Respect campaign and how it differs from a same-roads-same rules campaign for bicycles. Most would agree that obeying all the traffic laws will be a good personal policy for both personal safety and the general image of bicyclists and pedestrians. But most of us also break the law sometimes or possibly very often. At times could this law-breaking be harmless? If so, when?
If a tree falls in the woods and no-one hears it, does it make a sound?
If you break a traffic law as a pedestrian, bicyclist or car-driver and it doesn't bother anyone, does it matter?
I think the key element here is does the activity bother anyone? If it does, something that may seem harmless (I ran that red light after carefully looking both ways) actually really annoyed the three bicyclists and twenty car-drivers who watched the bicyclists run the red light while they waited.
Some of this is a broken-windows syndrome:
Everyone runs red lights.
Cars break the law too.
The system is broken therefore why should I follow the rules?
The broken-windows syndrom really exposes itself as more and more people bicycle or walk or drive because these problems become cultural and mode-rage intensifies. I see my own perspective shifting when I'm on a bike, walking or in a Zipcar, I adopt the viewpoint of the driver walker and bicyclist and get angry at those other road users.
Talking to other cyclists, I often hear, "I wish cars would do a better job of sharing the road". I do believe that overwhelming majority of cars do a great job of sharing the road. But if 5% of the cars don't share well, we have a real problem-- and those 5% paste the reputation of all the other car-drivers out there.
This same rule of guilt by association also applies to bicyclists and pedestrians. Furthermore as we lobby for more facilities this guilt-by-association does not help our case for better facilities. We hear "why encourage more of this behavior".
So where does Civil Streets fit in? At another event I ran in to Cathy Cagle, Mass DOT's Director of Sustainable Transportation. She saw the sticker and said "this is the behavior that matches a complete street". I read this comment to mean, if we have an environment that supports walking, bicycling, transit and city-scale driving, the way we interact needs to adjust.
Civil Streets then is about achieving great design that encourages better behavior and a change in law that facilitates good behavior. In the meantime, what can we do to foster better behavior? My hope is by showing the sticker each of us will up-our-game and be a little kinder to our fellow road users of every stripe.
The other very-important-purpose of the sticker is to flesh out what constitutes good behavior, design and laws. The conversations around this bring us together and hopefully result in a kinder more civil street.
Civil Streets & Respect 05/13/2010
I was really heartened to get an email from an advocate in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn. They're looking to make the streets safer for pedestrians-- especially mothers with kids. They want to buy some stickers. There are two really cool things about it:
1. I wanted this site to be truly multi-modal and not linked to any particular geographic area. The Bay Ridge folks are concerned about speeding traffic and I'm concerned about the public image of bicyclists and this site works for both of us. At it's roots this is about treating each other better. With respect.
2. The second cool thing is that they asked if we had a poster that they could ask shops to post in windows. Great idea! The idea of the sticker was to post it on bikes, bags and strollers-- be small enough to be cool and large enough to see. The beauty of the poster is that anyone could print an 11 X 17 and hang it in a store window. Low cost/ effective. What's not to like.
In the next week or so, we'll upload a poster that you can use
1. I wanted this site to be truly multi-modal and not linked to any particular geographic area. The Bay Ridge folks are concerned about speeding traffic and I'm concerned about the public image of bicyclists and this site works for both of us. At it's roots this is about treating each other better. With respect.
2. The second cool thing is that they asked if we had a poster that they could ask shops to post in windows. Great idea! The idea of the sticker was to post it on bikes, bags and strollers-- be small enough to be cool and large enough to see. The beauty of the poster is that anyone could print an 11 X 17 and hang it in a store window. Low cost/ effective. What's not to like.
In the next week or so, we'll upload a poster that you can use
