I’m going to start doing that.

As an aside, how big do you think a parking garage would have to be to accommodate all the people whose bikes are in the photo below, had they driven a car instead of ridden their bikes? (Photo from NY Times article linked above).

–EBR

It was the worst bike tour I had ever been on. Traffic was terrible, there was little in the way of a shoulder, and frankly the scenery wasn’t that great either, as the highway spent a lot of time far enough away from the ocean that you couldn’t see the coast at all. I remember a lot of depressing little towns that appeared to rely for their economic well-being entirely on kite sales and, to a lesser extent, driftwood baubles and wind chimes. Why anybody ever thought that would be a good bike ride was totally beyond me. The wind, the tiny shoulder, the log trucks, and the constant traffic made it dangerous and unpleasant.

It’s nice to see that in this normally shifty, uncertain world some things still say the same. I traveled the Oregon Coast Route again this week–this time by car–and saw lots of cyclists hugging that very same shoulder and looking miserable as a billion cars a day passed them at 60 miles per hour. I felt sorry for them, duped no doubt, the same as I was, by an aggressive tourism campaign. At least the beaches are nice and the camping is good.

I don’t know that I will ever bike tour again, at least not on roads that also permit cars. It just doesn’t seem like much fun. Although I didn’t enjoy my bike tour down the Oregon Coast, I took many others around the Pacific Northwest and California back in the 1980s that were great fun. But there was quite a bit less traffic back then, and what there was went more slowly.

–Erik Ryberg

EBR

You gotta give a guy like that some credit.

–EBR

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile. Is it right to put someone in prison for the rest of his life after pulling him over with 0.10 blood-alcohol content? Even if it’s the 16th time it has happened?

Readers of this blog know that I am critical of our DUI laws. I want more enforcement and I want penalties that result in the loss of driving privileges, but lower fines. I believe the financial costs to the defendant of a DUI are too high right now (they run in the thousands of dollars even for a first-time DUI) because they put people in truly desperate situations. But I think a loss of driving privileges for a significant amount of time is warranted, and I think after two or possibly three DUIs that loss should be forever.

But prison? Forever? Obviously you have to enforce a situation where a person just plain refuses to stop driving no matter what the court says, but this seems excessive to me, even draconian. What about three years or so after each offense? The person in the video above has a drinking problem, obviously. Wouldn’t it be cheaper and safer for everyone to find a way to get that person into a lifestyle where driving is not necessary and he can drink himself to death without risking the lives of others? Do we need to punish him for the rest of his life in a prison cell?

–Erik Ryberg

The Governor’s Highway Safety Association reports that, for the first time in four years, pedestrian deaths are up. This is particularly notable because traffic fatalities as a whole have fallen eight percent in the last four years. According to the report, 1,891 pedestrians were killed in the first six months of 2010 (the last six months have apparently not yet been tallied).

But don’t worry, we won’t let the story get side-tracked into irrelevant issues like increasing safety for the community that is at risk. Here’s how the Washington Examiner reports the story:

First lady Michelle Obama’s campaign to get people to exercise outdoors might be a factor in an increase in the number of pedestrian deaths during the first half of last year, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association.

GHSA executive director Barbara Harsha said her organization doesn’t know why there were more deaths in the first six months of 2010 than in 2009, but the increase is notable because overall traffic fatalities went down 8 percent during this period, and the increase ends four straight years of steady declines in pedestrian deaths.
But the “get moving” movement, led by Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign to eliminate childhood obesity, could be to blame, Harsha told The Washington Examiner.

“There’s an emphasis these days to getting fit, and I think people doing that are more exposed to risk [of getting hit by a vehicle],” said Harsha, who conceded to having no scientific evidence that the Let’s Move campaign has led to an increase in walkers and runners, or deaths.

“This is all speculative,” Harsha said. “Obviously, further study is needed.”

The first lady’s office did not respond immediately Wednesday to a request for comment.

Is this a great country or what?

–Erik Ryberg

I think it’s time as a country that we need to do a little soul searching. Because it’s the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the tv business, and what we see on tv and how our youngsters are being raised.

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And, unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

He is taking heat for that statement from Senator Kyl, who said that Dupnik’s comments had no place in a police briefing.

Let’s remember that Giffords’ opponent in last year’s election, Jesse Kelly, invited his supporters to “Get on Target for Victory in November — Help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office Shoot a fully automatic M16 with Jesse Kelly,” and Sarah Palin offered a map with a gunsight target over Giffords’ district with a tweet urging her supports “Don’t Retreat, instead RELOAD.” And don’t get me started on Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh, who often “joke” about solving political differences by murdering their opponents and their opponents’ supporters. Or Sharon Angle, who nearly became a Nevada senator, and who called for people to exercise their “Second Amendment remedies” if the elections didn’t go her way.

And any regular reader of this blog is familiar with the anonymous comments sent to newspaper Websites that call for killing bicyclists. That kind of rhetoric isn’t funny, isn’t constructive, doesn’t belong in the polis, and its cowardice and repugnance need to be condemned more often.

So I’m here to thank Sheriff Dupnik for doing so in such a public fashion, and you can count me among the thousands of others in this city who are offering their condolences to all the victims of yesterday’s shooting and their families and friends. That includes the family of Mr. Loughner, who are also suffering this day.

Sheriff Dupnik’s address is 1750 E Benson Highway, Tucson, Arizona 85714. I sent him a note already.

–Erik Ryberg

Here is an example of a bicyclist performing some basic safety checks of the sort that probably would have prevented the plaintiff in the lawsuit against Ajo Bikes (below) from breaking his arm.

Cool video, too.

–Erik Ryberg

The obvious idea — and the practical result — of the ordinance is to make it nearly impossible to open a marijuana dispensary in Oro Valley, and I am sure the town fathers are proudly patting themselves on the back over their clever application of zoning laws to keep Oro Valley free of dope. (The link above includes a map of what properties in Oro Valley would still be available to marijuana dispensaries, and they are precious few.)

But the thing I’ve noticed about marijuana is that it does not produce the same kinds of dumb-ass, testosterone-fueled violence and uproar that, say, alcohol does. In fact it seems like a pretty innocuous drug, actually. I can actually only think of one thing that makes marijuana dangerous, which is when you smoke it and then get behind the wheel of a car.

Which is, of course, the one thing the Town of Oro Valley is going to encourage by this ill-thought ordinance. They are going to protect themselves from all the things that marijuana doesn’t do — create a danger to churches, parks, libraries, and child-care centers that are within 1000 feet of a dispensary — and they are going to increase the danger that marijuana already poses, by making people drive to Tucson for their prescription.

And let’s not fool ourselves: a large portion of those people are going to light up and drive home.

Who are they most likely to hit on the way home? I’d say that would be us — bicyclists and pedestrians. If I happen to be a victim of a stoned Oro Valley driver heading home from the Tucson dispensary, I hope you, readers, will flood the Oro Valley lawmakers with copies of this blog post!

(Note: Tucson resident Charles Nystrom, a husband, father, grandfather, decorated Air Force pilot, school-teacher, and bicyclist, was struck and killed by a driver who was under the influence of marijuana. So don’t take any light-hearted language in this post to mean I am not serious.)

–Erik Ryberg

I’d like to see it explicitly state that drivers should not voluntarily stop in intersections to let cyclists pass. I am sure all my readers have had this happen to them often. I had it happen to me three times in the space of two blocks today. In each case the motorist was basically inviting me to ride into moving traffic, and in each case I declined. The first driver actually got quite frustrated with me for not riding out in front of her when she stopped for me, and she eventually pulled over next to me and angrily told me that I should get off my bike and hit the pedestrian button if I wasn’t going to go.

With the other two I did what I always do — I went behind them.

It’s a hard situation because the drivers really are just trying to be nice, but in doing so they are dangerously disrupting a system that is otherwise stable and safe. I am perfectly capable of waiting until it is safe to cross the five lanes of Stone without needing cars to stop for me, and when one does stop it only causes confusion to the many other drivers on the road.

I hate it when people do that. And I doubt this little addition in the driver’s manual would help much, especially since we only need to get tested once between age 16 and 65 in this state, but still.

(The other change I would like to see is a clarification in the manual that cyclists are not required to ride on the shoulder. It currently is confusing on that point.)

–Erik Ryberg