Kirby's article is online!

At the end of February, I got pulled over by a police officer in Oldham County, for, as best I can tell, driving my bicycle defensively.

As you may recall, I had just returned from the I am Traffic Colloquium, and while there had met Kirby Beck, who spoke to us about the role of law enforcement education in the organization we hoped to create. I had Kirby's email address due to our discussions on other things, so I asked him for suggestions as I crafted the letter I would eventually send to Oldham County. He gave me some good pointers to ponder, and included a .pdf file of this article, mentioning that it would be published "soon," but that no date had been set.

It's finally been published! It appeared in the July edition of Law and Order Magazine, and is now online so that the general public can read it.

Many of us have some idea of how we think police officers think. Some of that is stereotypes drawn from bias-confirming behavior, some from popular portrayals. Let's face it: some cops act the asshat, seemingly for the pure pleasure of acting the asshat. They may be reasonable people when not in uniform, for all we know.

The article is good reading. It might give you some ideas worth keeping in mind should you ever have to discuss your lane position with a police officer or that officer's supervisor (or further up the chain of command), or, should things really go wrong, a judge.

I don't know that I've had a lot of folks watch this video before. This is raw video from my GoPro (save that I've added some comments in text). When he opened with his "I understand that you have the right to ride on the road, but..." bit, he showed his anti-bicycle bias. A parallel sentence structure would be to say that I have the right to ride on the bus, but only in the back seat.

His claim that he "is the one that decides what goes on out here" is a fallacy argument from authority (aka bullying)--he does NOT decide what is practicable for me. Of course, a roadside argument would have led to more trouble than I wanted that day. I wasn't ready to go to court to argue my case further.

This incident led me to do a LOT more reading of KRS and KAR. If I had this happen again, I would be tempted to ask what statute the officer thinks I'm violating, so that I can better prepare after-incident comments for the officer's supervisors.

The problem stems from...

I've had my Surly Big Dummy for almost fourteen months, now. It has about two thousand miles on it, according to the cyclometer, although apparently I've not been logging all those miles, as my records on mycyclingloc.com show a bit under nineteen hundred.

In any case, it's been a great bike--versatile if not fast, capable of hauling big loads if not quick. I've been happy with the component specifications (stock bike, except for the handlebar and saddle). I've also had fun with the "what ELSE can I do with this bike" exercise from time to time.

Except that I get finger numbness on longer rides, especially if the load makes the bike anything other than rock-solid stable and I have to keep my hands on the bars all the time.

Looking back, this hand position issue has been on my mind since shortly after I put the bike in service. I like the hand position of the Surly Open Bar, and I have liked the Ergon grips since I got them a year before getting the Dummy.

As big as I am on bike fit and comfort, it's weird that I haven't taken time to work on my own comfort on this bike for over a year. My mind must have been elsewhere. Or something.

A recent trip home from downtown, pulling a friend's bike so that I could work on it, was apparently the trigger I needed to start really giving the handlebar position some thought. I realized a couple of things: a) I had done myself a disservice when I only brought home 40mm of stack washers, b) I was holding off fixing my handlebar position for the wrong reason--not wanting to buy a new fork and more stack washers, when I could more easily (and affordably) install a stem that is shorter and has a steeper angle than the stock stem.

When I ordered the parts to fix that friend's bike, I ordered a shorter stem with more rise. I put it on the bike today, and went for a short spin (about two miles). I need to spend more time with it to know for certain whether it helps enough, but I found a couple things to be true right away.

This bike has always felt "wide" to me. The handlebar has always felt wide, the q-factor has felt wide (even though it's similar to my Globe in that respect), the saddle even felt a little wide (even though it's the same top as the saddle on my Raleigh, which is quite comfortable). I have typically shrugged it off as a function of that it's a big-assed bike. It SHOULD feel big. It's the bicycle version of a pickup truck, for cryin' out loud.

However, the handlebar feels more like it should, now. It feels like I've narrowed it a smidge, although I haven't done anything to it.

My torso feels more comfortable, now, although I really don't think two miles is far enough to get a good sense of how much better it will be.

Now, why didn't I do this a year ago?

Sidetracked, er...

Sidecar!

As I mentioned a couple months ago, I received an Xtracycle Sidecar to fit my Big Dummy as a birthday gift. 

Since my typical loads either fit in the Big Dummy's bags easily, or are big enough to require that I use the Bikes at Work trailer, I haven't really done any testing on the sidecar.

Until today.

We were low on cat food and cat litter, and completely out of bird food, so a trip to Feeder's Supply was on the schedule for today. As the intended purchases are all fairly dense bags, the sidecar got attached for this trip.

My route to and from the nearest Feeder's Supply involves the Shelbyville Road/Watterson Distressway interchange. Having ridden through this interchange for over a dozen years, I am quite accustomed to its quirks. More on why the intersection matters in a bit, however.

I rode to the store with the sidecar stowed, made my purchases, loaded the bike, adjusted the load a bit, and played in the parking lot for a while. I wanted to see how the bike felt with this load before moving in traffic. Several months ago, I hauled a similar load without the sidecar, so I compared my mental notes on that experience to the current one (the prior load was far more top-heavy, so the bike was a bit squirrelly, but still manageable). While I didn't think it would offer any race-bike cornering, I found it acceptable (backstop option was to reload as I had done before, as that was a known quantity).

Onward to home I rode. Yes, the handling was a bit different than what I have been accustomed to, but it was quite manageable. I had a brief moment of concern when I first got on the bike, but realized that I was trying to move the rear bike tire and the sidecar tire in relation to one-another. They are two points on a triangle, the sidecar pivot being the third, rather than points on a parallelogram. 

The only problem I had on the way home was that as I was setting up to enter the aforementioned interchange, I got caught by a couple seconds at the light in front of Mall St Matthews. I was there long enough that I had a BIG platoon of motorists behind me--enough that I couldn't get to the left lane before the next light at the Watterson exit ramp. I negotiated with a couple of cooperative motorists who let me get across their paths so that I could make my left turn at New LaGrange Road. Once I turned onto Washburn, I found a place to pull over and address the cause of the noise I was hearing--the paper sunflower seed bag had moved over until it was getting rubbed by the sidecar tire, but not enough to damage things or lose seeds. I adjusted the placement of the bag and went on my way.

So, one might ask, how about that sidecar?

It does well for dense, low-center-of-gravity loads like the hundred or so pounds I was hauling on it. It takes some time to acclimate to the subtle differences in handling. It requires a bit of understanding of its characteristics, as they are different than just hauling the weight around in the bags or on the rear rack. I go back and forth on whether I like it or really like it, but I certainly don't dislike it. 

writing dry spell is over for the moment

For a couple of days, now, I've been wondering what to discuss in my next blog post. I wanted something worthy of getting back on the keyboard for a missive more involved than a pithy comment on Facebook.

Thanks to Mighk Wilson, I now have such a topic--his new essay posted on the I am Traffic site.

It's not a short essay. There are several complex thoughts presented--enough so that I cannot give an adequate synopsis on a first reading.

There are some gem-level tidbits in Mighk's writing, but quoting them here limits their effectiveness. To really make sense, they need to be read in the context of the entire essay. A couple of his statements have become axiomatic to me, although not as well put into words:

Adding more rules will not solve the problem, because adding more rules adds points of failure. Instead of more rules, cyclists need more options to avoid the errors of others. Our most important options are sufficient operating space and adequate line of sight.

 The essential fairness of the rules of the road is based on the idea that all people are equal, no matter their mode.

Or a point that I keep reminding folks of when talking about the Lusk, et al study and the Teschke study that figure so prominently in the arguments put forth by fans of painted-on bike lanes:

But I was being charitable to those bikeway studies a few paragraphs back. Their claims of crash rate reductions are highly suspect due to poor methodologies. None of the studies address cyclist or motorist behaviors. They simply look at all the crashes before and after the installation, or compare crashes on streets with and without bikeways. In order for such comparisons to be valid you have to screen out crashes that wouldn’t have been affected by the bikeway presence, such as someone running a red light or a stop sign, or a cyclist entering the roadway from a driveway, or one out at night without lights.

In other news, Grinstead Drive is getting a road diet! There had been talk of this for a while, and I had a very small degree of input at some point (mostly agreeing with a couple of points made by 8Dave during the design phase). I haven't seen the final design plan, but I'm cautiously optimistic, at least for the westbound side of Grinstead alongside Cave Hill Cemetery. A bike lane there actually does make sense, as there are very few (one--the side entrance to Cave Hill) chances for right hook conflicts and that section of Grinstead goes up a hill such that a cyclist climbing lane would be appreciated by many.

In the same C-J article, we learn of a public information meeting on the topic of expanding the successful Brownsboro Road diet section from Ewing Avenue to Hillcrest Avenue. The C-J cites the Mayor's office claim that the crash frequency has dropped by 40% while transit times have remained roughly the same (no doubt aided by the reduced need to slow to avoid others' crashes).

Again, I'm cautiously optimistic on the Grinstead Drive road diet. I'm eager to see the results of the Brownsboro Road diet.

And I need to spend some more time thinking about Mighk's essay. I'd enjoy reading your comments on it as well!

Stirrin' up S&!#

As noted in a recent post, Louisville Metro has installed a couple of bike boxes--on Spring at Mellwood and on Adams at Story (Adams becomes Spring when it crosses Story, or Spring becomes Adams as one crosses Story, depending on one's travel direction). I've not been overly delicate in expressing my opinion of this move, citing, among other things, that bike boxes:

1. create right-hook crash hazards as cyclists follow a bike lane that is situated to the right of a lane from which motorists may make a right turn
2. teach unwary cyclists that "queue-jumping" is acceptable practice, in violation of the basic traffic principle of "First-come, first-served."
3. teach unwary cyclists that being off to the right of traffic is somehow a safe place to be (despite all evidence to the contrary showing that cyclists are far safer in the center-left of the travel lane).

To offer a quick review of what a bike box supposedly does for cyclists, the original intent was to enable cyclists who wished to make left turns to get ahead of the queue and get across the main travel lane (presumably from a right-edge bike lane). In practice, cyclists were not using the boxes as intended, so the goal post got moved and the current claim is that bike boxes allow cyclists to get to the head of the line and leave the intersection first AND somehow avoid right-hook conflicts. The mechanism for prevention of right-hook conflicts is the farcical notion that motorists making right turns will grow eyes in the backs of their heads the better to notice a cyclist approaching in what would otherwise be the motorist's blind spot. There is a recent video from Portland Oregon from a bicycle user who, despite the motorist making a right turn, rode right in to a right-hook conflict and had the audacity to blame the motorist when the cyclist could easily have avoided the conflict by slowing a bit.

Several friends have noted that significant numbers of the folks who advocate for such majick painte solutions as door-zone bike lanes, gutter-zone bike lanes, and bike boxes are in fact advocating for abdication of the personal responsibility of cyclists to manage their own safety. They are holding everyone BUT cyclists responsible, and making complicated demands on all involved.

Anyway, as noted in the title to this blog entry, my sharp tone and numerous comments didn't go unnoticed. A subset of my three or four readers likely read LEO, the Louisville Eccentric Observer, a weekly printed paper that at least used to have a decidedly progressive take on things AND offered some great commentary (LEO used to carry a column from the late Molly Ivins, a wonderful voice for many years). Apparently advertising revenues no longer support such things as a weekly dose of This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow or other similar comics, nor national columns on par with the aforementioned one from Molly Ivins (who, as noted, is no longer among the living and thus no longer publishing her column).

A writer from the LEO contacted me a bit more than a week ago, asking for an interview. She and I met over some form of refreshment at a Heine Brothers' location, chatted for a while, and bade each other a good afternoon. I didn't expect I would be the only one interviewed, and was not surprised to see comments from a friend in the resulting article.

As I read the article, I noted that Mayor Fischer apparently used the Geller Taxonomy for classifying cyclists. In short, this classification system tells us that a tiny percentage of cyclists are "strong and fearless," a small (~7%) percentage are "Enthused and Confident," a much larger percentage (~60%) are "Interested but Concerned," and the remaining 33% or so say, "No way, no how."

I rankle at the notion that my thought processes involved in self-preservation by riding with my safety in mind are somehow "fearless," or that I am some sort of superman on a bike. I ride the way I ride BECAUSE I am risk-averse.

And, anyway, the classification is hokum. Pure hogwash. It's far more productive to consider riding behaviors, since personal safety is, first and foremost, a product of one's own behavior. A friend put forth that the behavior classes could be called "pedestrian behavior," "edge-riding behavior," and "bicycle-driving behavior," where the first refers to using a sidewalk or path at mostly walking speeds, the second to riding against the curb or fog line in attempts to "stay out of the way of (presumed) more important traffic," and the last means "integrating into the traffic system by controlling one's travel lane and releasing faster traffic to pass as safety allows."

I hasten to mention that I have over-simplified the descriptions a bit.

One reason the behavioral model is helpful is that a given cyclist may exhibit each of the three types of behavior at various points in a single trip, depending on circumstances. An example: If I am in St. Matthews, my most common route home includes using a sidewalk that links the back side of a Kroger parking lot to a neighborhood, then using the neighborhood streets to avoid some of the Westport Road bike lane. Once on Westport Road, I am all but compelled to use the gutter bike lane (or face harassment from motorists and/or law-enforcement officers who have read some of 601KAR 14:020 (9) (2)). When I leave Westport Road by turning onto Washburn Avenue, I again resume my preferred bicycle-driving behavior pattern.

In other words, I don't fit into any one category of Geller's model.

And, because I was really following meaningless numbers for a while, this is my 567th blog post.