Pool noodle as a safety device

[Ash]

https://qz.com/1620913/the-best-cycling-hack-is-a-pool-noodle/

I wasn't aware of this trick.  Apparently popular in Toronto.  Seems quite effective!

[Deacon Patrick]

Plus, at camp ... "Sword fight!" Grin.

With abandon,
Patrick

[REC (Roberta)]

Interesting.  Would be even better to place marks at "1-ft, 2ft, 3 ft--It's the LAW" So that the drivers can see it the .   Actually, in PA, where I live, it might be 4 feet.  Heck, even a yoga mat mounted like that might deter drivers from trying to pass within inches (or a foot).

I ride, walk, and drive, and try to be nice to other modal types around.  I don't like it if a car is behind me, even if he keeps his distance.  And, especially if he is considerate, at each intersection (every 1/10th mile, as I live in a city), I'll have room to ride to the side and wave him by.   

However, I read something in "Just Ride" that I do do sometimes and when I read it, I thought "I could never do that; its so not nice."  Grant suggests (and I'm paraphrasing from reading this 2 years ago) that if there is a danger behind you, rather than sticking to the right and hoping he'll leave you alone and not try to pass within inches, take the entire lane and ride "crazy."  He will back off.  Well, I sometimes do take the lane (legal where I am), but don't ride crazy.  But the point is for the car behind me to back off, because now he cannot even pass.  I actually signal "one moment" with my pointer finger, and let him pass when I'm at next intersection.  Then I wave a wave of thanks, a la Deacon Patrick and others. 

I still do most of my riding on the bike paths, just so I can keep away from the cars and not need to stop every 1/10th of a mile at each intersection.

Roberta

[Evan E.]

Good idea to use a pool noodle to establish a safety margin. But in San Francisco, where I commute, one of those noodles would take up nearly the whole bike lane, and then riders on e-bikes and scooters on e-scooters couldn't whoosh past me, in silence, without warning, just inches away, at 20 mph. Or maybe they'd just bump the noodle out of the way as they went by? 

[Deacon Patrick]

I'm dim, I realize, but I fail to grasp the "logic" of non-human powered bikes/scooters fitting in the same category as human powered ones just because they are electric instead of gas.

With abandon,
Patrick, who passed his first ebike group the other day, down hill into a headwind. I helpfully offered that they needed a better engine. Sardonic grin.

[Christopher Cote]

I'm with you D. Patrick. If it's a cycle with a motor, it's a motorcycle. Electric, gas, whatever. I'm not anti motorcycle, I own and enjoy one. Just keep the motors off the bicycle paths/trails.

Chris

[Evan E.]

Yep! I, too have no problem with e-bikes and e-scooters and motorcycles and motor scooters. Just as long as they are not in the bike lane — that is, an official lane, at the edge of the street or road, created for pedal-powered bicycles. (It would also be awesome if the various motorized vehicles were given an earth tax for whatever energy they entail or consume. But an accurate tax would be hard to levy because one e-bike might be powered by a windmill and another might be powered by a coal-burning plant, right?)

[Steve Palincsar]

So you'd object to a Class 1 e-bike being ridden in the bike lane (Class 1 motors only run when you turn the pedals, and in Europe anyway, assist stops at 15.5 mph)? 

I wouldn't quail at lumping Class 2 e-bikes (i.e., throttles but pedaling isn't required) in with motorcycles and motor scooters and mopeds, and you could even make an argument that a Class 3 e-assist (you have to pedal but assist runs up to 28 mph in the US) don't belong in bike lanes (even though most communities in the US allow Class 3 in bike lanes but not on bike trails).  Class 3 bikes are big, powerful and in general pretty heavy.  It's difficult if not impossible to ride one without engaging the motor.

But honestly, a Class 1 e-assist bike has a lot more in common with an unmotorized bicycle than it does with a motor scooter.   The latest generation of Class 1 road e-assist bikes with motors like the Fazua or the Ebikemotion X35 are pretty light, about in the high 20s, where a typical Bike Boom 10-speed would be.  They're intended to be ridden much of the time without motor assist, and as I said, assist cuts out at a fairly low speed.

Other than ideology, what is the nature of your objection?  Or is it just simplistic ideology, such as Christopher's "if it's a cycle with a motor, it's a motorcycle" totally devoild of any nuance?

-- 
Steve Palincsar
Alexandria, Virginia 
USA

[Patrick Moore]

Shortly after the City of Abuquerque shoved through the extension of Montgomery Boulevard westward over The River against the do or die opposition of riverside property owners in the then-bucolic Los Ranchos district, I recall Harley and rice rocket riders using the bike lane to pass the inevitable and unavoidable traffic backups from commuters crossing from the Eastside to the Westside. I don't know what changed; perhaps the coppers took a stand, but after 12 or 18 months that sort of thing ended.

[Garth]

Still ever Still ..... "The Ride" Rides The Ride .... One-Self.   The Ride is by nature The Good .... The True .... The Unalloyed .... Wholeyness . Unchallenged and un-challenge-able.....for The Ride is Everything and Everything is The Ride :-)

[Patrick Moore]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A0n7PzmKYA

Greetings, Garth!

On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 4:43 PM Garth <gart...@gmail.com> wrote:

Still ever Still ..... "The Ride" Rides The Ride .... One-Self.   The Ride is by nature The Good .... The True .... The Unalloyed .... Wholeyness . Unchallenged and un-challenge-able.....for The Ride is Everything and Everything is The Ride :-)

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Still 'round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
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And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.

                                --- J.R.R. Tolkien

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Patrick Moore

Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique

[Ian A]

As far as I know, Australia classes any bike that is not predominantly powered by the rider as a motorbike. E-assist is only an assist to the rider and therefore still a bicycle, but anything you can turn a throttle and go must be used on the road and be registered and insured. The rider must also be licenced.

That would solve the problem of 20mph speed demons in bike paths!

IanA Alberta Canada

[ascpgh]

What I object to is the differentiation between "assisted" and "powered" being too fine for local government to discern and wield if those e-bike classifications aren't already codified. The drift from "assist" to fully-propelled guided by the mantra of more-is-better is at play here and local authorities don't seem to be keeping up. 

My urban environment becomes Appalachian in the span of a single ride that includes parts of the GAP and the lawmaking encompassing those separate worlds is slow and often antagonistic.

The good news is that in those less urban realms, the e-things don't go far from the parking lots and access points. They are more of a hazard/nuisance closer in where some commuters try using them. 

At least the springtime hordes of Pep Boys electric motorcyle look-alike "toys" piloted by inexperienced, unhelmeted, unlicensed adolescents seem to choose the streets instead of the MUPs. By mid-summer their batteries don't keep enough charge to be interesting and disappear until the next spring swarm is purchased and released into the streets. 

Andy Cheatham

Pittsburgh

[Johnny Alien]

We don't really have bike lanes where I am at so taking the road is for every bike not just assisted ones.  And most of the hardcore riders are probably going at least 20 MPH without assistance.