Greetings from New York.
I thought you would like to know that you are not alone out there in a fight to save cyclists' lives. Not that knowing this necessarily helps but perhaps a sharing of practices would be worthwhile. Bedford, by the way is just north of Manhattan in Westchester County and part of the regular weekend Gimbals ride which is arguably the largest weekly ride in the Northeast with hundreds of riders every Saturday and Sunday except when it is snowing.
The two attachments include an article of the accident reporting and then one Bedford resident's recommendation is to ban bicycles from roads as the obvious solution.
Similar to PCH or San Vicente, we have riders out here that ride in groups that don't give a rats ass about the cars or traffic lights or laws. This clearly pisses the drivers off. I ride also, and yes, I've blown through a red light when it was safe to do so, but the behavior of riders is half of the issue. The sentiment out here definitely seems to be F.U. to the cars; you have the road all of the time; when I'm out here I get it.
In my mind it comes down to ignorance. Yesterday, while I was at a high school track helping a group of my runners with their form, I had them calibrate their Nike Speed and Distance Monitors. The track was open and people were jogging around it and on the field a soccer game was going on. As I had my runner run in the #1 lane to get as close to 400 meters as they could, the soccer moms would step into the lane and stand there instead of on the field. As I ran ahead of my runners to clear the track, I politely asked them to step out of the #1 lane and their response was indignant. "There's plenty of room on the outside." They just don't understand and have probably never been taught. In my mind this is no different than what happens on the roads with cyclists and drivers.
My vote is to include a section in every driver education and drivers test across the country that includes and acknowledgement that cyclists and other non motorized vehicles (We have horse and buggies out here in Amish areas) have as much right to the roads as do the cars. I don't know if they show it anymore but we were required to watch "Red Asphalt" before we got our learners permit. With all of the blood in that movie, not once do I seem to remember them addressing the fact that other vehicles use the road other than cars and the single pedestrian pushing the grocery cart across the intersection.
My thoughts
-Adam
Here you go.
George A. Grenier III
N4 Fitness, Inc.
31 South Road
Katonah, NY 10536
914-671-3729 (voice)
914-767-0996 (fax)
-----Original Message-----
From: Adam [mailto:running_coach@...]
Sent: Tuesday, September 13, 2005 3:53 PM
To: 'George Grenier'
Subject: RE: [WCCTriathlon] Record Review articles
George, can you please send the tiff files to me as an attachment?
Thanks
-Adam
running_coach@...
From: WCCTriathlon@yahoogroups.com [mailto:WCCTriathlon@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of George Grenier
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 6:29 PM
To: WCCTriathlon@yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [WCCTriathlon] Record Review articles
Yes, I did write. And yes, it was beautiful this morning! Just be careful now that it is darker in the morning. We ride out of Katonah a few days a week and the start time has gone from 5:30 to 5:45 to now 6:00 and we still had someone crash at 6:10 Sunday morning due to an unseen 2” diameter rock in the road.
Anyone recommend a good road headlight for not super big bucks?
Be well,
-----Original Message-----
From: WCCTriathlon@yahoogroups.com [mailto:WCCTriathlon@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Eve Hartman
Sent: Monday, September 12, 2005 6:05 PM
To: WCCTriathlon@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [WCCTriathlon] Record Review articles
George -
Thanks for sending these articles. It's a good heads up for all of us
to be as cautious and as courteous as possible when we're riding.
I hope you're writing a rebuttal letter to the editor - I'm not from
Bedford or I would. The road rage against bike riders is really scary
sometimes. That said, I was out on my bike this morning and it was
beautiful.
Eve
--- George Grenier <grenier@...> wrote:
> Sorry I could not get Acrobat to work with me so I posted some Tiff
> files. Hope you can all read them.
> George
>
>
>
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