Day five of April.

Today I went to the court house to answer the call of duty. Jury duty. The weather was nice and clear, with a slight breeze, the kind that feels good even as it makes you pedal a little harder to get where you’re going. It was the kind of weather that told nothing of the ominous events that would follow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Little information is available at this time. My condolences to the victims. Hopefully the driver turns themself in. Some comments from the news threads:

I was talking to a friend of mine on Wednesday afternoon about the lack of space for bikers. This is the third death that I know of on that stretch of Montague Road since 1988.

[…] 15 years ago I felt safe, but now that every one is going 50 in 35 while texting and sipping their coffee, its no longer a good place for bikes, no matter how much the laws say bike have just as much right to be on the roads along side of cars and trucks. […]

I have some sad stories to share, but I think they are relevant with the current bike-car-pedestrian unfriendliness currently abuzz in the Boston area.

The first is a TreeHugger article which spreads the story of an alleged hit-and-run driver who killed a cyclist, then tried to trade his car in as part of the Cash for Clunkers program as an attempt to get rid of the evidence. An astute dealer didn’t buy Timothy Kissida’s tale that he had hit a javalina (a medium sized, pig-looking animal) and decided to follow up with a call to the police. The make, model, color, and area of damage to the car was all consistent with the hit-and-run the night before.

Next are a few articles about a Marshfield man who was struck and killed yesterday. Another boston.com article also mentions a cyclist hit in Lowell. I have not been able to find any information on the current state of the Lowell-area, I hope he does not succumb and he makes a complete recovery.

My condolences to the families of 52-year-old Charles Waldrop and 69-year-old Charles L. Campbell; my thoughts go out to the 41-year-old man struck in Lowell.

Update, August 21st:
More sad news folks, the cyclist from Lowell succumbed to his injuries. More info here.

Right on the heels of yesterday’s news that Boston is looking to bring a bike sharing program to the city: Boston police could cut horse (and bike) unit(s), lay off recruits to help fill budget gap. Emphasis mine, things missing from the title.

Now, I realize this is the Commissioner’s idea where the bike share program is the city’s, but come on – this doesn’t look like a consistent message!

You’re going to need more bike units, not less, to help keep our community safe from the raging vehicularists. The best way to know the issues is to submerse yourself in them, keep the bike cops! How are you going to know what we cyclists deal with in our city travels if all of your officers are riding around in (costly) steel-reinforced cars or SUVs? And how is that saving money, again?

A BBC article titled “Thefts puncture Paris bike scheme” brings bad news to the very popular Paris bicycle rental program.

JCDecaux, the company that operates the rental program, is having trouble replacing the loss of over half of the fleet of bicycles which have disappeared and are thought to be stolen. Each bike costs 400 euros ($519) to replace, and since the inception nearly all of the original bicycles have been replaced.

Hung from lamp posts, dumped in the River Seine, torched and broken into pieces, maintaining the network is proving expensive. Some have turned up in eastern Europe and Africa, according to press reports.
…
Various videos have appeared on YouTube showing riders taking the bikes down the steps in Montmartre, into metro stations and being tested on BMX courses.

London, San Francisco, and Singapore are all in the process of copying the model of Vélib. If the current model is unsustainable then they will have to make some quick changes to prevent such losses. (Paris, in turn, copied the idea from Lyon which doesn’t have an much of a problem.)

Although the article hits a sore note, there was this quote which made me smile a bit:

Not all the bicycles receive rough treatment however. One velib repairman reported finding one of the bikes customised with fur covered tyres.

This is a very sad story [CityNews].
Via TreeHugger.

Road rage is an epidemic. It is pervasive and spreading.

Car culture (in it’s broadest sense, anyone who drives regularly) was innocent enough at first; it was meant to grow the economy. Society’s focus has changed and hardened, though, due to myriad reasons. This change permutes into all aspects of society. The end result is that car culture today doesn’t resemble that of yester-year’s. It’s more aggressive, hostile, and irresponsible.

(Let’s not kid ourselves, the same can be said of bicycle culture.)

Stories like this highlight the fact that people have gotten too used to getting their way and have forgotten the civil practice of brokering a compromise. People in their anger will use their cars in a fight. Cars are two-ton weapons. Human beings, being fragile in comparison, will lose in a fight with them every time.

This story’s a little old, I couldn’t find any updates to see what became of the cyclist, or the driver.

Found via a Reddit link. I have not heard of Ian Hibell before, I think now I’m going to have to buy his book. His story sounds amazing; unfortunately it came to and unhappy ending as he was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Greece.

Ian took cycling to incredible places. It seems such a waste to have a unique person like that taken away – after everywhere that he travelled and all the challenges he overcame it was another human’s crime that he could not in the end avoid.

I wonder what accomplishments that driver thinks he would have taken away for having a faster car than another guy. How is that even impressive? And because of him a true adventurer rides no more.

Makes me sad and feel sick. RIP Ian.

On second thought: Ride on, Ian.