The car is in decline. The Economist says so, and so does the New York Times.
Cars are boring; bikes are cooler. Here are the top 10 reasons why.
10. Cars are for stuff
People from the pre-computer era have books, DVDs, TVs, stereos, big photo albums, board games, and playing cards. They need cars to transport their stuff.
Cool people have digital stuff. They can fit their entire music collection in a bicycle pannier.
9. Cars are for suburbs, and suburbs are boring.
Why buy a car in order to commute to a suburb that's miles away from clubs, museums, galleries, theatres, indie movie houses, parks and all the other things that make life worth living?
People don't need big houses in the suburbs any more any more (see point 10 above).
8. Bikes are a guy thing.
Seventy-one percent of Canadians who bike to work or school are men. (The same pattern – the masculinity of cycling – is found in the 2009-10 Canadian Community Health Survey data, and in international studies).
As feminist scholars such as Nancy Fraser have argued, androcentric social norms "privilege traits associated with masculinity". There is "pervasive devaluation and disparagement of things coded as 'feminine.'" Translation: guy stuff is cool.
7. Hawkwind wrote a song about a bicycle.
6. Bikes are dangerous.
Only about 1.4 percent of Canadians cycle to work or school, but cyclists account for 2.7 percent of traffic fatalities in this country.
There's a real chance of getting killed on a bicycle. That makes it kind of thrilling.
5. Cycling requires skill.
Technology is slowly taking the skill out of driving a car – automatic transmissions, automatic parallel parking, automatic braking, automatic everything. Cars that drive themselves may soon become a reality.
No one is looking to develop a driverless bike any time soon.
4. Cars are stupidly expensive.
Hundreds of dollars for insurance. Hundreds or thousands on maintenance, or hundreds or thousands on depreciation. Gas. Parking.
Twenty-somethings are struggling with student loans. They're trying to establish themselves in a tough job market. A car is an expendable expense. Yet when cars become the province of the middle-aged, they lose their cool.
3. Bikes are fixable
A moderately skilled person can fix her own bike. The parts are standard and interchangeable. There are no computer diagnostics; just nuts and bolts, dirt and grease.
2. A bike of one's own
Many people share their cars – with the other drivers in their family, with passengers, with whoever needs to be transported from A to B. But one's bike is one's own.
1. Bicycles could save the planet
Cycling is more energy-efficient than any other form of transportation, even walking.
Then there's the wind in your face – or your hair, if you ride without a helmet (see point 6 above) – and the joy of riding with no hands on the handlebars.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
Re point #6: Seems like females like danger too. For pedestrians 6.8% of usage leads to 13.3% of fatalities and only 43.8% are male.
My hatred for bicyclists burns hotter than a thousand suns. They are not licensed, they are not insured, there is no age or sobriety requirement, they do not obey traffic laws and it is an insane idea to allow them to share roads with automobiles.
Bicyclists are quiet and have a small profile, so they are difficult to detect by others on the road. Of course they don’t signal. Moreover, even though they are 25-40mph slower than the traffic they weave in and out of, they require large stopping distances because bicycles do not break efficiently (only two very thin surfaces to grip the road). Plus the testosterone factor. A bicycle is the result of intelligent design that consciously disregarded any behavior in response to anyone else on the road. There is no rear view mirror because the bicyclist doesn’t care who is behind them. They do not signal because they don’t even try to coordinate their actions. It is all about darting into and out of traffic, running red lights, jumping onto the sidewalks when the streets are crowded, and then sliding back on the streets when the sidewalks are crowded. The bicycle was designed purely for the individual engaging in a solitary activity.
Leave bicycling and skateboarding to designated recreational areas within parks. Actual transportation should be on paths dedicated for a specific mode of transport. Sidewalks for pedestrians, roads for buses and cards, rail for trains.
For the first time, I find myself in disagreement with rsj.
I bike all over New York City – including, lately, to an office in Manhattan — and on a day to day level there are few things that bring me more pleasure. I think way more people should to do it — not only is it great for reasons 1-5 here, but bicycles only get safer, for their riders and for others, when there are more of them on the road.
Note that NYC — thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, or more precisely to Janette Sadik-Khan — now has dedicated bike paths, in many cases physically separated from auto traffic, throughout most of the denser parts of the city. Cars, somewhat surprisingly, seem to respect them. And on the other side, NYC police aggressively ticket bikers who ride on the sidewalk or otherwise violate traffic rules, which seems to improve bike behavior.
Maybe I’ll get a rearview mirror tho, now that you mention it.
rsj – No licensing or insurance – that’s another reason bikes are better 😉
I agree with you about the invisibility of cyclists. The interesting thing is that men actually seem to be less likely to die in bicycle accidents than women, because women tend to make themselves invisible by hugging the curb, etc., while men will be just more out there. See e.g. this article.
Bicycles are incredibly wonderful for actual transportation – but I agree with you about the advantages of dedicated paths.
JW – yup, a rear view mirror is a good idea.
rsj is right in a completely ignorant kind of way. Bikes are safe, it’s the bad infrastructure that’s dangerous. Unless you’re paying attention to what they’re doing in the Netherlands you have no idea about bikes. There 55% of bike trips are by women.
Here are some great sites to about quality cycling infrastructure:
http://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/
http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/
#11 and bikes can be really beautiful, I think:
http://t.co/ZeYnjGZ7h6
rsj reminds me of that guy who, even though he has an entire spare lane and traffic is light, passes me with two inches to spare (when I’m dressed in bright yellow, riding in a straight line, obeying every law in the book, operating in a completely predictable manner ) because he doesn’t think I belong on the road and he has a need to “teach me a lesson”. You need to be a very assertive person to put up with a-holes like that… perhaps that’s more of a guy thing?
And what’s that complete nonsense about “long stopping distances” from our “two little contact patches”? Has rsj ever actually ridden a bicycle? Taken a physics course? Coefficient of friction? A = F/m, where m is a mere 200lb of bicycle and rider?
I agree that the behavior of some cyclists leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly, although the devil-may-care behaviour rsj describes is pretty rare in my daily experience. I strongly suspect that many cyclists are not aware of how the rules of the road apply to them and I’d be comfortable with mandating some training (like the excellent CANBIKE 2 course, of which I am a graduate).
Bicycles are considered vehicular traffic everywhere on earth. We’re not going away. Deal with it.
BTW, I ride in downtown Toronto every day. I can only shake my head at the mind-numbing gridlock that I cheerfully sail past every day. I’m surprised more people don’t cycle… as far as I can see it completely dominates every other means of getting around a crowded city. Cheaper, faster, healthier, and more fun!
I don’t understand the need for rear view mirrors (I’ve ridden without one in heavy traffic daily for years). I can usually tell by hearing whether someone is right behind me. A fit adult cyclist can easily ride at the same speed as automobile traffic in congested areas. LEARN TO SHOULDER CHECK before changing lane positioning (yes, changing your lane position is a conscious decision). You should be able to do that while maintaining a straight line.. it’s not difficult but it is important (again, take the CANBIKE course, I cannot recommend it highly enough).
I’m not entirely sold on the idea of physically seperated bicycle lanes… the concern being that it puts the cyclist “out of sight”, except at intersections, where no physical seperation is possible and cyclist seems to “come out of nowhere”. I prefer to be on the road, with plenty of other cyclists…. I operate in a visible and predictable manner… you can’t miss me.
I don’t think it’s unique, but here in Edmonton, a bike is totally impractical. Most people live in an exurban asteroid belt laid out in twisted cul-de-sacs, work far from their home, shop miles away in strip malls and big box stores. Not to mention that winter lasts from October to April. Making bikes practical is a long term project (supposing we aren’t ready to scrap the existing stock of infrastructure and buildings). I don’t see cars declining in a big way around here any time soon.
Same thing for me as for Patrick: even in June, with wind from the sea plus my own speed, the wind-chill factor here is almost below freezing. Dressing back to work makes it even more impractical. There is one guy who bike almost every day at my college. The evening janitor…
I know Edmonton is colder than Calgary Patrick, but I can say that cycling in Calgary is fantastic. I am a regular cyclist commuter here except when there is ice or snow on the road, which usually lets me cycle at least one day in every month of the year (and of course most days for much of the year). Here – and I think Edmonton is the same – there are fantastic bike paths that allow people living in even far suburbs to bike into the city without being on roads at all. Plus new bike lanes and paths are being added all the time. And better still, the main bike paths are ploughed even though the roads almost never are. It’s true that it can be cold, but the clothes they have for cycling nowadays are terrific, and allow cycling (for me) up to about -15 or so.
I agree with the gender breakdown, at least here. My observation of commuter cyclists is that they are overwhelmingly male. I think for many women the challenges of clothes/make-up etc. are prohibitive.
Alice,
Let’s not forget about the risk-seeking demographic — you are talking about young males, overwhelmingly, engaged in risk-seeking behavior.
As it stands, I’ve never seen a cyclist who obeys traffic laws. The traffic laws are something that can be turned on and off. When the road is not crowded, they are part of traffic, but when the road is crowded with vehicles, they can suddenly stop being part of traffic and pass cars by travelling between lanes or on the sidewalk (lane splitting as well as riding on the sidewalk is illegal in my jurisdiction as well as most jurisdictions in the U.S.). The complete disregard for laws or safety, as well as reluctance to wear bicycle helmets or signal properly is what you would expect from the demographics. As people get older, they adopt safer forms of transportation.
Here is a nice video on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KD8rfejWbH4
It shows a guy who mounted a bike cam on his commute to work. You can see him going the wrong way, jumping on the sidewalk, lane splitting, almost hitting a couple of pedestrians — all set to metal music. The comments are instructive, too:
“it will totally get that adrenaline flowing!”
“God, living in suburbia sucks compared to city riding! I’m about a half an hour away from San Fransisco, you just cannot beat the feeling of speeding past cars on a freaking bicycle in the city!!!! haha! Awesome video!”
rsj: “you just cannot beat the feeling of speeding past cars on a freaking bicycle in the city”
Thank you for making my point for me. More evidence that bikes are cooler than cars.
Patrick: “Most people live in an exurban asteroid belt”
And almost 80 percent of people commute by car. But long-term trends are not in their favour. See, for example, this write-up of the most recent US census results: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/04/09/census-breaks-the-news-we-already-knew-the-exurbs-are-history/. Personally, if I was investing in real-estate, I wouldn’t buy in the exurbs, unless I was buying farm land.
Alice – thanks for writing. You are absolutely right about the hair/make-up/clothes issue.
My MX6 refutes you thus:
QED
(We are looking forward to driving Quebec Route 138 along the North Shore of the St Lawrence to Tadoussac this weekend, to see whales. OK, the save the whales stuff is really just an excuse for a drive.)
rsj sez: “As it stands, I’ve never seen a cyclist who obeys traffic laws.”
Who has ever seen a motorist who obeys traffic laws? One who never speeds, never rolls through stop signs, never tries to turn right into pedestrians who have the right of way. And of course, never passes a cyclist without signalling and shoulder-checking! After all, our fanatically law-abiding motorist is aware that if it is illegal to “make a lane” on the right it is equally illegal to do so on the left. Well I have never seen or heard tell of such a fabulous creature and I do not believe any motorist goes through a single day at this standard.
Where this thinking has gone off the rails is in the assumption that cyclists (and motorists) exist. There are no such things as “cyclists”, or “pedestrians” or “motorists”. There are only people who are cycling, or walking, or driving and most people do two or three of these activities at different times. It is salutary to reflect that several cyclists I know drive dump trucks for a living and that a car bears much the same physical relationship to a dump truck that bicycle does to a car.
A reckless cyclist is also a reckless driver and a careful driver is a careful cyclist. It is true that any given individual is likely to break more rules as a pedestrian than as a cyclist and as a cyclist than as a driver. But this is as it should be, and as people in fact expect things to be when they consider activities that they can imagine themselves engaging in: the more damage you can cause to others, the more careful you should be. It is easy for a person who never cycles to say that cyclists should obey all traffic laws, even as he flouts them, but the same person will hold the dump truck driver to a higher standard than himself.
Nick – I knew this post was going to get you worked up!
Sadly, all this proves is that cars were cool. That’s an old machine you’ve got there. The Porsche 911 doesn’t even come with a manual transmission: http://www.tulsaworld.com/article.aspx/New_tech_takes_fun_out_of_driving_sports_cars/20130513_11_A11_AttheM350138.
Frances, I am aware that the macho, risk-taking theme accounts for only two of your ten explanations, but I think it is being overplayed in the comments. The crazy courier-wannabe types who are weaving through traffic are highly salient to our perceptions but they account for only a small minority of bicycles on the road. Most cyclists are just poking along sedately trying to get where they are going. When it comes to flagrant law-breaking, I think that the occasional, decidedly non-macho cyclist (think women in skirts and no helmets) are the most egregious. They aren’t risk-seeking, they are just clueless.
And it’s good for your health, if you stay on it.
Commuting in Barcelona innovative: kick scooters, electric and even motorized. And skateboards too. Even adultes use ’em
In Saigon achalleng or just scary.. One Ferrari and 1000’s of scooters..
Slightly more seriously: yep. The car blogs and mags have been noticing this too. Here’s TheTruthAboutCars posts on Generation Why. Here’s a good example. Another, blaming it on declining youth income.
But if it were purely relative prices and incomes, young people would lust after the unaffordable. I do see some 20-somethings spending more to buy a used bike than I would spend to buy a used car. It’s gotta be a status thing. For my generation (born 1950’s in the UK) getting the first car was both difficult and a rite of passage. Because learning to drive and passing your driving test was harder then and there (no autos, and if you passed your test in an auto you were only licensed to drive autos). “Pushbikes” were for kids, and you felt like a prat riding a bike if the other boys (yep, definitely a gender thing) had cars. You would rather walk or ride the bus than ride a bike.
But my hunch is that it’s not so much “bikes are cooler than cars”, but “smartphones (or whatever) are cooler than cars”. (My daughter took the photo above, using my digital camera, which she donated to me a few years back because it was her third-best camera that she didn’t need any more.)
Fun post. Some thoughts. Bikes imply skinny fit people, cars imply out of shape overweight folk. It’s cooler to be skinny. Bike couriers are way edgier than pizza delivery guys, truckers, taxi drivers, and furniture movers. Check out this video. When was the last time we had a cool Taxi driver? De Niro in 1976? Cars used to exemplify freedom. With stultifying traffic and impossible-to-find parking, cars’ve lost their monopoly on freedom, at least in the urban core.
“They are not licensed, they are not insured, there is no age or sobriety requirement, they do not obey traffic laws and it is an insane idea to allow them to share roads with automobiles.”
All of these are fair comments, and they’re compelling reasons for hating the many bicylists that display those traits – the casual disregard on the part of cyclists for the rules of the road that DO apply to them is shocking, moreso given their very real vulnerability in the event of an accident.
Mind you, the same observation could be made about many car driver. Nothing drives me crazy like the chronic inability of car drivers to use their signal lights or the last minute suicide “I’m still in the left hand lane of the 4-lane highway, notwithstanding that I want to get off at THIS exit, NOW, so get out of my way” lane change, for which reasons I hate most car drivers with an equal intensity (many is the morning I’ve dreamed about equipping my car with a “Deathrace” style machine gun on the roof and dispensing with some much needed traffic “education” – sadly, I suspect that would adversely affect my insurance rates). Basically, 50% of Torontonians, whether cyclists or car drivers, shouldn’t be let within 10 feet of a public roadway (and I’d bet that 100% of Torontonians would agree with that proposition), which is ultimately the real solution.
In any event, in terms of dealing with cyclists, part of the solution is to license them, require them to get insurance (people do get hit by bicycles, and not every car driver is at fault in an accident with a cyclist), and be consistent about enforcing the rules of the road (with both cyclists and car drivers). In short, treat cyclist like the “real” drivers that they’re supposed to be. (Caveat, I’m only talking about adults, obviously, we need to have different rules for children – akin to the current rules that allow them to ride on sidewalks).
Try transporting a family of four by bicycle.
Just try it. Seriously.
I have actually seen this done, in developing countries, and it isn’t pretty.
I wonder: to restate and expand on Frances’ #5, is it that cars are a victim of their own success? Even the most boring new cars nowadays are just incredibly capable machines compared to the past. Any family sedan can safely go double the speed limit (200km/hr) on any 400-level highway (straight road good conditions etc.). Hypercars can safely go 200 mph, but so what? You never get a chance to use all that ability. A soccer mum in a V6 camcorder with auto tranny and traction control can out-accelerate a 70’s muscle car just by putting her right foot on the floor and holding it there. So cars are failing as a way to signal ability (both your own ability and your car’s ability).
Reason #12 or whatever we’re up to by the time this comment goes live…
You can get really fun bikes from certain websites factory-direct from China/South Korea/etc., with quality components, awesome colors, and so on, at pennies on the dollar compared to the average Trek or whatever. You can’t do that with cars.
Nick – “So cars are failing as a way to signal ability”
I do think the feminization is part of the story here – sort of like Claudia Goldin’s “pollution” theory of discrimination, when the entry of women into a profession signalled that the skill requirements of the profession had changed. I couldn’t find stats on the total # of car journeys made by men v. women (the #s above are just commuter journeys), or the amount of time men and women spent driving, but that book Traffic argues that driving is much more feminized than it once was.
tyronen: “try transporting a family of four by bicycle”
All this does is establish that cars are for soccer moms, which hardly undermines the “bikes are cooler than cars” hypothesis.
But cool parents have bicycle trailers. Tandems. Trail-a-bikes. In the past 10 or 15 years the technology for moving families around by bicycles has progressed by leaps and bounds.
JP Koning: “Cars used to exemplify freedom.”
Making the connection between your point and tyronen’s – the more cars are used for stocking up on paper towel and toilet rolls, or transporting kids and groceries, the less cars exemplify freedom.
In Edmonton I’d say biking to work is for the rich who can afford to live in posh areas and who work in the downtown or at the university. It’s a status thing. Rich folks park the Audi and bike to work in the summer.
Sure, for someone who lives in one of the posh areas of Edmonton and works nearby, a bike might work pretty well some of the year. But if you’re not able to pay $600+K for a house in Strathcona or Glenora and instead live out in the asteroid belt around the new ring road and work in an industrial park in Nisku, then a bike is totally unworkable anytime of the year.
Bike paths in Edmonton are not reliably ploughed. Neither are sidewalks, which are the responsibility of home owners, who mostly wave a shovel at them and say “good enough”. Even using our SUV style baby stroller with pneumatic tires was almost impossible this winter. My wife (who is slight) was unable to push it through the ice and snow. The idea of her riding a bike in winter is ludicrous. She’d be killed for sure. Of course, bikes should be on the road, not the sidewalk.
I challenge anyone to, in winter, start in one of the far flung suburbs and get to work in an industrial park or office complex while obeying all traffic laws and not getting killed or freezing half to death. Oh, and do it in the dark at 7:30am and 4:00pm (yes, it is pretty much dark at those times in the winter in Edmonton).
And I say all this as someone who competed in triathlons for many years. I love bikes. But in Edmonton, for most people, they simply don’t work due to how we occupy the landscape.
Patrick “In Edmonton I’d say biking to work is for the rich who can afford to live in posh areas and who work in the downtown or at the university. It’s a status thing.”
Another reason why bikes are way cooler than cars. Only rich people – and people with enough control over their working conditions to arrive 1/2 hour late if there’s a thunder shower, and a gym or a totally private office to get changed in afterwards – can cycle to work.
A more general critique:
The question is not so much why bikes are cooler than cars. The question we should ask is why the coolness of bikes has been increasing over time relative to cars. If you restate the question that way, the answers must also involve change. Which of those 10 things has changed over time in the right way to explain why cars have become less cool over time relative to bikes?
But cool parents have bicycle trailers. Tandems. Trail-a-bikes.
Hahaha, nahh, come on. There’s nothing cool about any of that.
Nick – most of them. Cars have become safer and require less skill to drive than they once did (driving up steep hills on cold mornings in an Austin Marina with a manual transmission and a dodgy choke – now that required skill). Rising female labour force participation and helicopter parenting (driving kids everywhere) has feminized driving. I think the internet and digital everything means that one doesn’t have to be with a person to feel close to them (sexting is the new parking?) and definitely decreases the appeal of big houses/cars.
“I can usually tell by hearing whether someone is right behind me.”
A Prius is quiet as death when it’s right behind you. I heart the ‘sssss’ of it’s tires on the damp pavement long before I heard the car itself.
Another reason why the roar of a 6L V12 is just better 🙂
Well, this MX6 picture reminded me so much of a Manta, I was actually looking, if there are special MX6 jokes, but maybe you take the Manta jokes instead:
http://www.loria.fr/~vigneron/Bookmarks/Home_made/manta.html
You should put some rallye stripes on your silver arrow
Bicycle riders are cool people, who live in cool places in AAA countries, where you do not need a car : – )
http://top10hell.com/top-10-countries-with-most-bicycles-per-capita/
Nick: sorry to miss you (I am in Tadoussac till Thursday,union business). The weather is sunny but very cold, even for the season. Which make it rather easy to book accomodation and restaurants. In a few weeks, it will be the Festival de la chanson
http://www.chansontadoussac.com/
and 20 000 people will throng this superb village of less than a thousand.
When leaving Qubec City, try to do the Tour de l’Île. ( Île d’Orléans).Don’t forget at Baie-St-Paul to take the 362 along the river instead of the 138. If you have time, go to the Isle-aux-Coudres
http://www.tourismeisleauxcoudres.com/
(ancestors settled the place, for a Québécois the place is mystical…)
If you have time, go back through the 172 to Saguenay then either the 381 (magnificent mountains, I went through a snowstorm there yesterday)to the 138, or the 175 straight to Québec (if you’re lucky you might see caribous) or the 155 to Trois-Rivières.
genauer – And yet Germans bring us the M3, M5, RS6, R8, Veyron, AMG Mercs, the loud bits of Lambo’s and Pagani, just to name a few. I’d say that it’s the Germans who are keeping motoring cool and masculine (with a little help from Ferrari). The last stand against the minivan and complete feminization of driving.
Frances: Maybe. Though I don’t think a posh house and a downtown desk job would induce the guys driving the huge turbo diesel lifted pick-ups to put on spandex and start pedalling.
Patrick “the guys driving the huge turbo diesel lifted pick-ups”
That it takes a huge turbo diesel lifted pick-up match the testosterone-fuelled masculinity of a bicycle is just more evidence that bikes are cooler than cars.
Not obvious that spandex is cool, though. The spandex wearers are known in some quarters as MAMILs (middle-aged men in lycra).
This today at the Atlantic:
“Cyclists Aren’t ‘Special,’ and They Shouldn’t Play by Their Own Rules”
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/05/bikers-dont-deserve-any-special-treatment/5565/
I’m not quite as fervent as rsj about it, but Amen I say.
rsj: “As it stands, I’ve never seen a cyclist who obeys traffic laws.”
This is, of course, fatuous nonsense.
Frances: yes, I think you are probably right on the feminisation bit. IIRC, auto trannies were originally advertised for women!
I think what we might be observing is a slow switch from a signalling equilibrium to a pooling equilibrium. You have to go to a hypermasculine or hypercar to be able to signal anything.
genauer: back in 72, I think, my friend had an Opel Manta GT. It was a beautiful little car, and very fast around curves (and also in driving very illegally in and out the lamposts). Yes, they do look very similar.
Jacques Rene: you read my mind! Those were exactly the roads I was looking at! Thanks for the advice.
Patrick,
I am no ideologue, I am an economic person.
I am NOT selling cars.
German companies sell, what people want to buy, not Mao bibles : – )
If you want to buy things like fine German quality tanks, some restrictions do apply, obviously: – )
If I have to be at 9 am in Munich, I ll take the (rental) car above 200 km/h, where possible.
But I have chosen to live, where owning a car does not make economic sense.
Actually the first years I waited for a reason to buy what car. But in winter the colleagues took the tram, because they didn’t want to scratch the front window, and I drove with a rental car into the new eastern neighbor countries, while the car owners took the train, being too afraid, that their car is stolen : – )
@ Jacques,
After our talk yesterday, I took my bike trip today to my good Czech neighbors, and took a few pictures:
http://de.slideshare.net/genauer/iron-curtain2013
I work for a large commercial property landlord/asset manager with buildings across Canada. This year we surveyed the people who work in our office buildings, primarily it was to understand if we could be serving them better. But we also asked about commutes.
Edmonton had the highest percentage of bike commuters out of 7 cities (8 if you count the 905 as separate from the 416 in Toronto, which we did).
This isn’t scientific, mind you. In some cities we have a higher percentage of auto-centred business parks, and in places like DT Toronto and Vancouver, a lot of people walk to work (who might bike if the distances were a little larger). But, given the discussion and Patrick’s contributions from Edmonton, I thought I’d share.
A couple of other comments.
1. The requirement for insurance. While it is not impossible, it is extremely difficult and rare to damage property or injure people on a 20lb bicycle (every time it happens, it makes the news). I’m not sure what the actuarially fair liability insurance premium would be for a bicycle, but (given what it is for cars) I find it hard to imagine it would be more than $10. Many motorists have a twisted sense of anger and fairness (totally uninformed by even a rudimentary grasp of public finance) when it comes to bicycles “paying their way”… I don’t think $10 is the kind of punitive insurance premium they had in mind, but it’s the right one. Is that worth enforcing?
2. Helmets are a good safety feature, but they are not the only word in cycling safety… they aren’t even the most important word, and I don’t like how they direct the conversation away from cyclist training and competence (easily obtained skills). If you get hit by a car with sufficient force, a helmet won’t matter much. I wear a helmet myself, but I’m not a helmet scold anymore. Helmets might discourage many riders, and density of cyclists (to calm the drivers down, make them more patient, and reinforce the idea that cyclists belong on the road) is one of the important factors for the real safety goal, which is not to get hit by a car in the first place.
3. Those dinky little rear view mirrors you attach to your helmet might end up embedded in your face if you crash. Not a good safety feature. No competent rider needs a rear view mirror. A competent rider knows how to shoulder check. If you think you need a rear view mirror, what you really need is to register for the CANBIKE course.
4. Bicycles are not a suitable transportation option for everyone at all times. I’ve structured my life so that I don’t need to own a car (rentals for road trips are vastly cheaper), and I feel very grateful that I’ve been able to do so.
5. For every video rsj produces showcasing an irresponsible cyclist, I can probably find a thousand showcasing careless driving. If rsj wants to take that line of argument, he’s welcome to it.
When my son arrived at kindergarten on his Trail-a-bike the other kids were envious. It was definitely the coolest way to get to school.
I LOVE my rear view mirror.
Rachel, I was looking for an on-line version of that fantastic article you wrote about your family and cycling but couldn’t find it – actually I think I have a hard copy somewhere, I should scan it.
Frances: “… just more evidence that bikes are cooler than cars”
Maybe. Personally, I don’t care for those kinds of trucks. But the men who drive them kinda do most of the work that keeps the lights on and the cars on the road so I respect their choices.
Wendy – interesting. What time of year do they commute on bike and from/to what neighbourhood? Proximity to the UofA would be interesting to know.
genauer: thanks! Wish the U.S.border ( called in QC “les lignes” ( “the lines” as it is mostly lines in the middle of the map of the forest)) would revert to what it was a few years ago, what you now enjoy.
Little bit old, but the data quoted here jibes with my experience of Edmonton:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2008/04/02/edm-commuters.html