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Entries tagged: Bicycle Safety

This month, Boston joins the ranks of cities like Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago and Washington DC as it rolls out a new citywide bike sharing program called Hubway Bikeshare. As more U.S. cities consider these popular programs and the number of bike users on the streets increases, one of the biggest concerns in city officials’ minds is safety. As voiced in a recent Boston Globe article, concern is particularly high in Boston, due to the city’s skinny lanes, cobblestone roads, and unpredictable drivers.

Lucky for Boston, MassBike is on top of this concern.

As part of the Hubway Bikeshare program, advocates at MassBike are ramping up bicycle safety efforts, teaming with the City of Boston to offer free bike safety classes for all Hubway users. The idea behind this new initiative is to quickly get Hubway riders up to speed on all aspects of bike commuting.

The one-hour workshops will go over the rules of the road, strategies for staying safe and tips for staying comfortable. According to Price Armstrong, MassBike’s education program manager, the class will be an adapted version of the group’s proven Commuter Workshop Series and will reflect the themes embodied in the Same Roads Same Rules campaign.

“We at MassBike are really excited to be working with the City of Boston to offer these free classes,” Armstrong says. “There will be 600 shared bikes and thousands of bicyclists out on the streets of Boston that might not have been there before. We’re trying to make sure these bicyclists get where they are heading safely, with confidence, and cooperatively with the other users of the road.”

Information about the free classes is currently available on the Hubway safety page. Stay tuned to MassBike’s newsfeed for up-to-date information about this initiative.

Earlier this year, the Alliance recognized the work of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition with one of our national Advocacy Awards. The LACBC took home the Best Practices plaque, in part, because of the advocates’ work to elevate the voices and call attention to the needs of low-income cyclists in underserved communities. This week, the organization took another innovative step by creating new maps that highlight bicycle crash hotspots.

Using data extrapolated from the TIMS database, LACBC intern Jimmy Nghe created a series of downloadable maps that show how crash fatalities are unevenly distributed in areas of higher density and lower income neighborhoods in the City of Los Angeles. The visuals drive home a critical point: Transportation planners and policy-makers have generally failed to address many of the problems of dangerous streets where the highest need lies.

“We see large discrepancies in where higher rates of crashes and bicyclist injuries/fatalities lie: in marginalized, low-income areas of Central and South LA,” Allison Mannos, LACBC’s Urban Strategy Director, explains. “We created these maps to start a nationwide conversation with other advocates, planners, and members of the public. These maps are the first time that, as a movement, we have put our heads together to pinpoint environmental injustices as they relate to bicycling on a neighborhood level.”

The advocates emphasize that these maps show only a rough relationship between population density, income, and rates of collisions involving people who bicycle or walk. More data needs to be collected to show causation. But the maps are a clear indication that the City of LA needs to heed the example of LACBC and invest more resources in underserved neighborhoods.

“This presents a major environmental and social injustice,” LACBC suggests. “Through the installation of more facilities in these neighborhoods, the City of Los Angeles will not only reduce deaths and injuries to low-income people who bicycle, but reduce the overall number of bicycle-related fatalities and injuries citywide.”

Click here to read more and see all three maps.

Blog and new resource contributed by Alliance intern Camie Rodan

Last year Maryland and Mississippi passed laws requiring that vehicles passing bicyclists allow at least three feet of clearance to ensure safety for both parties. At present, there are 16 states with such laws in effect and now another state is one step closer to being added to that list.

Just yesterday, the Virginia Senate Transportation Committee unanimously passed Senate Bill 928, which requires motor vehicles overtaking and passing bicyclists to allow at least three feet of clearance. Current Virginia law allows a two-foot cushion, which gives cyclists just a small margin in the event of an emergency. Two similar bills were shot down in the House earlier this year. As evidenced in a video shot by Bike Charlottesville, failure of these bills can be attributed to the legislators’ lack of knowledge of current law, concern that it will not allow cars to pass without moving into other lanes, and fear that it will impede traffic.

SB928 will now head to the full Senate where Virginia cycling advocates are optimistic about its success. In a recent blog post, Budl Vye of the Virginia Bicycling Federation notes that the measure has a promising champion: Delegate Glenn Oder has agreed to support the bill and will “help get it all the way through.” Stay tuned for updates on the bill on Virginia Bicycling Federation’s blog.

In the meantime, we picked up on some discussion circulating among Alliance leaders last week about which states have passed or are considering three-foot passing laws. So we put together a list that highlights:

• Which states have passed three-foot passing laws
• Which states are considering three-foot passing laws
• And advocacy contacts for the folks working to get those policies passed.
  

Check out the new resource in our Online Library.

The assault started long before Anoush Zebarjadian was knocked to the pavement by a hit-and-run driver.

On October 9, 2010, cyclists pedaling the popular Gran Fondo route in Sonoma County, California, were confronted by a maroon Ford Explorer, allegedly bent on making their Saturday ride as unpleasant as possible. The motorist in the mid-90s vehicle verbally assaulted and harassed riders for miles, before side-swiping Zebarjadian with the car’s mirror and sending the cyclist to a San Francisco hospital with critical head wounds.

The man or woman behind that wheel still hasn’t been brought to justice. But the advocates at Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition are working with local law enforcement to make sure the hit-and-run driver faces the consequences of recklessly and gravely injuring a cyclist. “The community must not tolerate those who harass and injure cyclists,” SCBC urges on its website. So the California advocates started a campaign to raise $10,000 as a reward for information leading to an arrest.

“We’ve been interested in doing something since the day of the hit-and-run,” Sandra Lupien of the Sonoma County Bicycle Coalition told Bike Radar last week. “We immediately notified our membership once we had a description of the vehicle and we [notified] our members that they should contact the California Highway Patrol with any information that they might have about the possible driver of the vehicle.”

But the CHP acknowledges that it needs citizen assistance to solve the case. “The California Highway Patrol has reached a point in this investigation in which all reasonable leads have been exhausted,” says CHP Sergeant Robert Mota. “The CHP needs the public’s help in this investigation. I believe that someone out there has information that could lead to the arrest of the responsible person. The reward money will hopefully entice that person to come forward.”

The advocates at SCBC certainly hope so. Thus far, the community has responded in dramatic fashion. Already, the SCBC has raised nearly $5,200.

Luckily, Zebarjadian is expected to make a full recovery. But, according to SCBC, “it will be a lengthy and challenging one.”

Click here to make a donation or read more about SCBC.

As early as 1904, a public library in South Carolina started loading books onto mule-drawn wagons to bring knowledge to the rural masses. Now Bookmobiles are a common feature of many libraries, taking the institutions’ wealth of resources to the streets.

The Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation is tweaking the roving library concept and tailoring it to serve students in the Show Me State.

Get ready for the BikeMobile.

Thanks to funding from a Safe Routes to School grant, the Missouri advocates are outfitting a box truck, school bus, or maybe even an old ambulance to carry bikes and safety instructors to elementary students.

“The BikeMobile’s maiden voyage will be this fall when we begin our Bicycle Lesson and Safety Training (BLAST) in the Kansas City area,” says Eric Bunch, the federation’s program coordinator. “BLAST is a three-hour, in-class, on-bike skills and safety training for 5th and 6th graders.  Thanks to a MoDOT [Missouri Department of Transportation] Safe Routes to School grant, MoBikeFed has a target of hitting 10 schools in the KC metro area with BLAST. We have funding for instructors, a coordinator, equipment, bikes and helmets. We just need the truck to complete the puzzle!”

Once they’ve secured their ride, they’ll take their ambitious plan on the road throughout the state.

“The ultimate goal is to take the BikeMobile around the state putting on bike rodeos and providing BLAST to thousands of students,” Bunch says. “Our next round of SRTS funding will hopefully fund a statewide train-the-trainer model by which we will teach PE teachers the ways of BLAST. Our Missouri SRTS State Network is working hard on this concept as we speak. Additionally, it is our hope that the BikeMobile will be as recognizable to Missourians as its inspiration, the Bookmobile.”

Read more about BLAST or donate a few bucks towards the BikeMobile on MoBikeFed’s website.

(Washington, DC) Just in time with daylight savings, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) has launched its Got Lights? program in partnership with the District Department of Transportation, the City of Alexandria, and Fairfax Advocates for Better Bicycling.

The Got Lights campaign is a joint safety and educational campaign aiming to raise awareness of the importance of cyclists being seen at dusk, dawn, and night. In an effort to ensure bicyclists are seen, WABA is handing out 800 free bike lights to bicyclists, as well as other bicycle safety literature, in three different DC locations. The campaign will extend only until November 8th, but the message of “Be safe and be seen” will continue to linger in WABA’s ongoing efforts and events. 
To get your free lights and to find out more about the “Got Lights?” campaign, visit WABA’s website at http://www.waba.org/events/gotlights.php.