The Grim Reality of Urban Bicyclists
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about bike safety in the city lately. Recently, a bicyclist in my neighborhood, George Gonzalez, got crushed by a bus just two blocks from my house at a spot that I bike past dozens of times a month. And this morning, I’m reading about a popular blogger named Adam Finley of TV Squad who was killed last week by a bus in Minneapolis. What a bummer. Hearing about this just makes me so mad. Didn’t the bus see him? Wasn’t he riding safely? Even rock stars aren’t immune. Remember Mary Hanson of Stereolab?
If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that I like to post about bikes and biking. I love my bike, it’s a sturdy ride. An old steel-framed Schwinn with a single speed on a freewheel hub. It’s got a weird LiveWrong sticker on the downtube that a previous owner slapped on the frame. He told me it was to raise awareness about bicyclists being hit by cars, but when I google it, all I get were stupid tounge-in-cheek references to another campaign.
I was thinking about covering the sticker over, but instead I am going to declare a new meaning. I want it to be about fighting the senseless carnage of road rage, careless driving and unsafe habits when bikes and cars collide. Literally. Those of us who ride around big cities on a daily basis make our best efforts to be safe (usually). I sure do. Let’s all remember to keep an extra eye out for those two wheelers while driving cars, okay? And I guess I’ll be making sure not to casually cruise through red lights anymore.
Lastly, I hate news like this because it discourages some people from getting in the saddle. We need more bikers, not less. Here are some resources and tips to help your make urban bike riding safer:
BikeSafe.com
Bike Safety Tips on Treehugger.com
Paul Dorn’s Bike Commuting Tips
Urban Cycling Resource Guide
Technorati Tags: Philly, adventure, bikes, cars, love, biking, NorthernLiberties, city life, death
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