Multitasking Drivers

If you pay attention to current events, you may have noticed that on January 1, it became illegal in Washington state to compose text messages on your cellphone/blackberry thing while driving.

If you get caught, it’ll cost you $124. If it leads to an accident, the penalty goes up to a whopping $175.

Does this seem scary to any of my road-going bike-rider friends? It sure scares me!

Washington’s Doc Hastings may be afraid someone’s going to force him to ride a bike. Blumenauer must scare him silly.–Corrie

For Congressman,
Life in Bike Lane
Comes Naturally

WASHINGTON — A little after 6:00 one morning, Earl Blumenauer emerged from his Capitol Hill row house. The temperature hovered near 40 degrees and it was really raining. The Oregon congressman hopped on his rust-colored Trek Portland, an aluminum-frame bicycle with a carbon front fork designed to absorb road shock, and pedaled to his office.

Though he was alone on the road, and despite the downpour, he stopped at every red traffic signal. At one odd-shaped intersection, Mr. Blumenauer mused aloud about all the streets jutting off at odd angles. Perfect for a traffic circle, he suggested.

Later that morning, House Minority Leader John Boehner, the Ohio Republican, was incredulous that anyone had been out in such weather. “Are you out of your mind?” he asked.

For the whole story

The man accused this week of killing a 13-year-old bicyclist in a hit-and-run collision in Massachusetts was typing a text message on his cellphone when he lost control of his SUV.

Prosecutors say the 31-year-old man thought he had struck a mailbox in the 12:30 a.m. collision. The boy, Earman Machado, was riding at the edge of the road while his friend walked on the soft shoulder.

The frequency of such accidents have prompted legislatures in New Jersey and Washington to prohibit text-messaginig while driving as of next year. It’s amazing that people need laws to prohibit them from doing something so obviously distracting as text-messaging while behind the wheel. California also enacted cellphone laws effective in 2008.

Read the rest of the story. 

I discovered the Bike Nazi blog this morning. It has a focus on the bicycle as transportaton. This post seems to represent the tone and attitude tlhroughout. Most significantly this guy is in Boise. Steve should look him up–or, not. Sometimes too such strong opinions conflict. –Corrie

The Bike Nazi
Bicycling 101 for Non-Cyclists

There’s no denying it – a rift exists between motorists and cyclists. Motorists tend to see cyclists as obstacles and road hazards. Cyclists tend to view motor vehicles the same way.

Most cyclists – at least adult cyclists – know the motor vehicle traffic laws, because they have driver’s licenses and drive cars. And that means at some point in time, they had to take the test.

But many motorists (and cyclists, too) seem to be ignorant of traffic laws as they pertain to bicycles and their riders. After all, many have either not ridden a bike since childhood, or they ride bikes recreationally, but steer clear of the roads. (Bicyclists who ride on the roads have no excuse for not knowing bicycle traffic laws!)

This is the article in Bicycling Magazine I was referring to on Nov. 26 when I wrote about the cyclist on the wrong side of the road. It is directlly from Bicycling Magazine and well worth reading if you haven’t already. It makes a good comapanion piece to The Bike Nazi’s post on Cycling 101 for Non-cylcists. –Corrie

Broken - By Bicycling.com
Broken
Every time we take to the open road, we entrust our lives to a safety net of legal protection and basic human decency. That system has failed.

By David Darlington

BY ALMOST ANY MEASURE, Sonoma County should qualify as cycling heaven. Spanning more than a million acres from the Pacific coast to the Mayacamas Mountains, it has every kind of riding, from flat to steep to gently rolling, much of it on lightly traveled roads through quiet forests, farmland and vineyards-a pastoral landscape that, blessed by a balmy climate, amounts to a paradise for two-wheeled travel. That, no doubt, is why race organizers chose it for two stages of the 2007 Tour of California-the first one rolling up the coast and heading inland toward Santa Rosa on Occidental Road, the second passing through -Sonoma and Napa Valleys via Trinity Grade, an 8.2 percent slope of chaparral.

Should bicyclists be licensed to ride?
Should bicyclists be licensed to ride?
They share the road, so some say they should share costs

By ANGELA GALLOWAY
P-I REPORTER

Motorists help pay for roads with gas taxes, tolls and license tabs. Boaters subsidize maritime programs with vessel registration and boat launch fees.

Maybe bicyclists, too, should pitch in for the costs of their trails and lanes.

It’s a suggestion — sometimes born of sincerity, other times of snarkiness — that drivers, tax-weary citizens and others make whenever politicians and cycling advocates talk about investing public money into cycling facilities. Some raised the idea again in recent weeks after the Seattle City Council and Mayor Greg Nickels endorsed a $240 million, 10-year plan for new bike lanes and street upgrades.

So the Commuter Act did not pass. There’s still some good news for cyclists.

Missouri Bicycle News :: Some small advances for walking/bicycling in the federal Energy Bill :: Missouri Bicycle Federation
Some small advances for walking/bicycling in the federal Energy Bill
Monday, December 24, 2007
The recent federal Energy Bill (full text here) was to include a suite of conservation measures. The Bicycle Commuter Act, which would have allowed employers to give tax-free subsidies to bicycle commuters similar to those they can now give to carpoolers and transit riders, was part of this proposal.

Unfortunately the entire suite of conservation measures was stripped from the bill at the last minute, by a vote of 59-41 in the Senate (60 votes required to pass).

Some small but important measures did make it into the final version of the bill that was signed by the President Bush: