Tag Archives: bicycle safety

Bicycle-Truck Crash on Hwy. 160

From the Springfield News Leader: A Springfield bicyclist was seriously injured Monday after being struck while trying to cross Highway 160. Nicholas White, 32, was taken to Cox South Hospital in Springfield after the accident Monday morning, the Missouri Highway Patrol reports. The report does not include whether White was wearing a helmet. Sharon Hancock, [...]

School Kids And Barrier Streets

One of the things I liked about graduate school was using critical theory to ask uncomfortable questions about social and cultural artifacts of various sorts. Another way to put it: It was fun learning to be an intellectual pain in the ass. Allow me to demonstrate… Consider this article (part of a series) in today’s [...]

Great Expectations

Every time I head into traffic on my bicycle have both high and low expectations. I have high expectations for how I’ll generally be treated by my fellow road users — especially those driving cars. People hereabouts are very polite. That politeness translates into a high degree of tolerance for road users who are not driving [...]

A Dangerous Syllogism

See if you can spot the problem (from montrealgazette.com): A 2003 study published in the Injury Prevention Journal by Peter Lyndon Jacobsen concluded: “A motorist is less likely to collide with a person walking or bicycling if more people walk or bicycle. Policies that increase the numbers of people walking and bicycling appear to be [...]

Crazy Season Has Arrived

The crazy season has begun. Always mark these four weeks on your calendar: The two weeks before classes begin at MSU and the two weeks after classes begin. You’ll also note that all other schools will begin classes at some point during these four weeks. Just crazy. The streets of Springfield are already filling with [...]

Chicken and Salmon

I played chicken with a road salmon today coming out of downtown in the rain. There are more bicyclists on the roads these days in Springfield. We need to do a new round of official traffic counts to confirm this. But with more than six years experience riding as basic transportation in this town, I [...]

Boy Hurt in Crash

The details from the News-Leader are sketchy: A 7-year-old boy on a bicycle collided with a van at the intersection of Kansas Expressway and Hovey St. The child suffered a broken leg. I found this interesting: Phillips said the boy, who was riding a bike, and the van met at the corner of Hovey Street [...]

Explain Bicycle Lanes To Me

I’ll soon have the first results of my recent bicycle survey ready. But here’s an interesting preliminary result (as yet an uncrunched stat): A bunch of respondents (almost 40%) indicated that the best thing Springfield could do to make bicycling better is add bicycle lanes. And as I gazed across the columns of answers one [...]

Willing To Say Anything?

Some politicians are willing to say anything to win. Check out this reporting about the proposed ban on bicycles on some state highways in St. Charles County: At a St. Charles County Council meeting last night, Councilman Joe Brazil came prepared with statistics in hand. In his push to ban bikes from certain rural two-lane [...]

No Updates, But A Google News List

No updates today on the proposed bicycle ban on some state highways in St. Charles County. Here’s a list of news articles about the ban from Google. Need to jump start the ol’ blood pressure this afternoon? Check out a few of the comments on this article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Technorati Tags: bicycle advocacy, bicycle [...]

Bicycle Ban Unenforceable?

From the Springfield News-Leader (via AP) this morning: ST. CHARLES, Mo. (AP) — A Missouri transportation official says a proposal to ban bicycles on some state highways in St. Charles County could not be enforced. No word yet if the St. Charles County Council will continue to considering the ban on bicycles on some state [...]

Update on St. Charles Co. Bike Ban

Here’s a report from FOX2 in St. Louis. Question: If these roads are so dangerous, why are the speed limits 55 mph? Perhaps what needs to happen is to slow drivers rather than to ban bicyclists. The council tabled the bill in order to consider expanding the ban. More coverage from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch AP [...]

Almost Decapitated Sort Of

I encountered a goofy and potentially dangerous situation on the MSU Bikeway yesterday evening — police crime scene tape across the path. It was twilight, and I was travelling about 12 mph (80+ rpm pedal cadence on third gear). The Bikeway was well lit, so I had no trouble seeing where I was going. Further, [...]

Lanes/Tracks Study: My Reaction

I’ve read the Bicycle Tracks and Lanes Study (actually an older study, so this isn’t news) and spent some time thinking about it today. I’m not at all sure I have much to add. This doesn’t mean that I agree with all the findings. It simply means that the findings appear to me to be [...]

Bicycle Lane Safety Study

Thanks to Dan Gutierrez for posting this to Facebook: Bicycle Tracks and Lanes: A Before-After Study. I’m a bit old-fashioned; anything that I want to study carefully I prefer to read in print. So I’m taking my printed copy of this study and heading straight to the Mudhouse for java and reading. I’ll post a [...]