New Philly Weekly (and additional observations)
Drop by the Philly Weekly for my new piece on the proposed bike laws. Read it, and then come back here for a few additional comments. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
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OK, that’s enough time. The Weekly had to edit my original piece down for space, and there are a couple of points that unfortunately didn’t make the final cut.
One misconception the Daily News has actively promoted is that “brakeless bikes” can’t stop (and how loaded is THAT term, when the proper nomenclature is “fixed gear bikes”). It’s simply not a true statement. Like any other skill, braking a fixed gear bike requires practice, the same way conventional bikers like me learn very quickly not to hit the front brakes as hard as the rear:
Decreasing the speed of your pedaling is the easiest ways to slow down a fixie. Since the rotation of the rear wheel and the movement of the pedals are directly connected, slowing down your strokes will put a damper on forward motion. In non-emergency situations this should bring you to a smooth, natural stop — time/distance permitting of course.
[The skid stop] process is started by leaning forward on the bike and relieving the weight on the rear wheel. If you have the balance to lift the rear wheel ever-so-slightly off the ground, even better.
Once the traction of the rear wheel has been taken out of the equation, use your feet to lock the pedals in a horizontal position. Push down on the pedal coming up, and pull up on the pedal going down (this is why being attached to the pedals is important) This should slow the suspended rear wheel to a stop. Shifting weight back onto the rear wheel should cause the rear tire to skid, causing the bike to slow to a stop.
But hey, why let facts ruin a perfectly good scapegoating?
I’d also like to address some comments by Breen Goodwin, education director of the Bicycle Coalition of the Delaware Valley, who’s cited in Ronnie Polaneczky’s article as identifying “stopping at red lights – and not moving again until the light has actually turned green” as a priority. It’s not the stopping I object to, but the not moving again. You can’t deny the truth in "SayHello2MyLittleFriend"'s comments in response to Bykofsky's column:
I don't know about you guys but I would not want to be behind a bicyclist who is following the rules of the road to the letter. You want to be stuck behind someone who can only go up to 15-20 miles per hour? I think not. You want bicyclists to stop at all red lights? What are you going to do when you have 5 or 10 of them at the light and there is no room for you to go around them when the light turns green?
"SayHello2MyLittleFriend" is absolutely right. I say that as a bicyclist AND a driver. What the city SHOULD do is recognize and implement the "Idaho stop" for bicycle riders:
A person operating a bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a steady red traffic control light shall stop before entering the intersection and shall yield to all other traffic. Once the person has yielded, he may proceed through the steady red light with caution. Provided however, that a person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if required, may cautiously make a right-hand turn. A left-hand turn onto a one-way highway may be made on a red light after stopping and yielding to other traffic.
Finally, over at the Weekly, a commentor wondered if I was "putting out a sinister "omg secret alliance with the city!" conspiracy theory motive" to generate page views. Man, I WISH I was clever like that, but no.
I don't see a conspiracy, but when three out of four opinion pieces parrot the official line, that two tragic acts by assholes constitute a need for a brand new bureacracy and a police crackdown, while exponentially more abuses by motorists go unremarked, I gotta ask where's the journalistic skepticism? And I especially have to ask that when both newspapers, with the exception of Stu Bykofsky (go figure) took the side of management in the recent SEPTA strike and in such an unproductive way. By and large, the Inky and the DN refused to address with the union's arguments and instead chose to publish self-serving whines about who makes more money and whether they deserve it or not. So while I don't see a conspiracy, I do see quite a bit of that tendency that Steven Colbert identified a few years back, writ small: "The president makes decisions. He's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home."
So no, I don't see a conspiracy. I see a failure of imagination coupled with perhaps outdated sensibilities, and amplified by deference to the powerful.
But then again, no one reads the DN or the Inky to read challenges to the conventional wisdom, do they?
