http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress Encouragement, Education & Advocacy for Bicycling in the Real World Thu, 24 May 2012 02:02:01 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 Encouragement, Education & Advocacy for Bicycling in the Real World Commute Orlando no Encouragement, Education & Advocacy for Bicycling in the Real World http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/powerpress/rss_default.jpg http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/category/motorist-education/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2012/02/28/fdot-implementing-sharrows-in-north-florida/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2012/02/28/fdot-implementing-sharrows-in-north-florida/#comments Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:40:07 +0000 Keri http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=14827 The poster on the right (click it to enlarge) is part of an education campaign accompanying the placement of Shared Lane Markings (SLM), aka sharrows, on the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine. Here’s a little background on the Bridge of Lions. It’s a narrow, 2-lane drawbridge where A1A crosses the Matanzas River. It has narrow, walled sidewalks on both sides. It’s not wide enough for bicyclists and pedestrians to share. How the SLMs came to be on the Bridge of Lions is a story of smart advocacy and conscientious public officials. Once, there were signs approaching the bridge that said “Walk Bicycles Across Bridge.” It would be appropriate for sidewalk bicyclists to walk their bikes, but the placement of the signs suggested that bicyclists were not allowed to use the road. George Martin (Geo) of Flbikelaw.org succeeded in having those signs removed last year. They were replaced by Share the Road (STR) signs. In June, Geo sent a letter to FDOT District 2, thanking them for removal of the sidewalk sign and requesting the placement of Bikes May Use Full Lane (BMUFL) signs on the bridge. He cited state statutes and lane width requirements for sharing vs controlling, and outlined the [...]]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2012/02/28/fdot-implementing-sharrows-in-north-florida/feed/ 4 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2012/01/14/too-complicated/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2012/01/14/too-complicated/#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:21:02 +0000 Eric http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=14517 I think I am on pretty safe ground when I say that eleven pages shouldn’t be necessary to explain a single, tiny aspect of traffic design to drivers. Yet, that is exactly how many pages the City of Minneapolis used when they published “Bike Lane Basics” complete with diagrams just in case the text doesn’t do it for you. Here are all the different types of bike lanes a driver is likely to encounter in Minneapolis. Nine different types of lanes. Nine different rules. Tons of ways to get a ticket. It gets better. At intersections, they have something called “shared space” where the cars are supposed to yield to a cylist on his right when making a turn. Yet, the cyclist is instructed to, “use caution and assume turning or merging motorists do not see you.” Gee, I wonder why they wouldn’t see you. After all, you are in the bike lane which is supposed to make you safe from those evil cars that are trying to kill you. I can assure you that motorists have absolutely no trouble seeing me when I am in the middle of the lane and crossing the intersection with the cars rather than [...]]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2012/01/14/too-complicated/feed/ 19 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/05/24/who-wooda-thunkit/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/05/24/who-wooda-thunkit/#comments Tue, 24 May 2011 15:53:07 +0000 Eric http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=12908 So I open my Google News this morning and this headline catches my eye. Matt Reed: It’s time to let cyclists join traffic on Pineda Causeway I don’t think I have ever read anything like this in a newspaper before. Lacking a reasonable alternate route over the Indian River Lagoon, they risk tickets by disregarding a few small white signs that warn of a ban that makes no sense. Total bicycle fatalities on the four-mile span during 10 years, according to the state Department of Transportation: One (1). In 2002, a pair of 14-year-old boys were riding to the beach before dawn when they were run over by a drunken driver in a pickup truck. and  . . . To the press, people act like it doesn’t happen. But I watch it daily. The safety records say as much about today’s levelheaded drivers as it does the safe bicyclists. “We really don’t have any record of bike accidents on the Pineda,” said Leigh Holt, Space Coast Transportation Planning Organization program manager. So, by all means, let’s get on with a pilot project we already know will work. Did I get that right? Did he actually say that riding on a [...]]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/05/24/who-wooda-thunkit/feed/ 5 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/04/25/illinois-to-start-tracking-bicycle-dooring-collisions/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/04/25/illinois-to-start-tracking-bicycle-dooring-collisions/#comments Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:34:08 +0000 Eric http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=12501 From the Chicago Trib: Quinn sought the change after reading a March 21 Chicago Tribune story. The article reported on a long-standing IDOT policy to exclude dooring crashes from annual state traffic accident statistics because the motor vehicles involved in such collisions are not moving. I don’t know if Florida even has a policy one way or the other. IDOT officials expressed concerns that such a requirement would burden police with additional paperwork and that there were few complaints from the public about doorings. Uhhhmm. So which is it? “We hope to use the data to obtain funding for education safety so drivers as well as bicyclists know what the risks are and what the factors are to create safer roadways,” said Dan Persky, director of education at the alliance. Talk to me! I know how to avoid getting doored.  ]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/04/25/illinois-to-start-tracking-bicycle-dooring-collisions/feed/ 11 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/03/02/why-anti-car-measures-keep-failing/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/03/02/why-anti-car-measures-keep-failing/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 17:04:35 +0000 Eric http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=11732 Bureaucrats can’t change the way we drive … but they keep trying By: Fred Barnes Weekly Standard For most Americans—make that most of mankind—the car is an instrument of mobility, flexibility, and speed. Yet officials in Washington, transportation experts, state and local functionaries, planners, and transit officials are puzzled why their efforts to lure people from their cars continue to fail. The Obama administration is only the latest to be bewildered. It has proposed every alternative it can think of to the car – high-speed rail, light rail, mass transit in general, bikeways, bus lanes, walking paths, the return of streetcars. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has embraced the “livability” movement, which is anti-car. Those are just the positive attractions. There are punitive policies, too, both active and passive. Urban growth boundaries have put a virtual wall around cities like Portland, Oregon, to prevent sprawl and the cars that come with it. Limits in many locations on parking lots and on-street parking discourage the use of cars. Refusal to ease traffic congestion by building more roads and inertia in the face of rising gasoline prices make driving a car less appealing, even if those policies are not pursued with that purpose [...]]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/03/02/why-anti-car-measures-keep-failing/feed/ 17 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/03/01/the-value-of-training/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/03/01/the-value-of-training/#comments Wed, 02 Mar 2011 01:37:30 +0000 Eric http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=11723 Today’s newspaper brings us a story about a helicopter that landed safely after suffering from complete engine failure. Neither the pilot, nor the passengers were injured. More remarkably, the helicopter was at 200 feet of altitude when the engine quit. The pilot, without thinking much about it, executed something called “auto-rotation” which means that the main propeller is purposefully disconnected from the gearing which cause the main rotor to spin freely  and the helicopter floats down, much like a maple tree seed. At 200 feet, this pilot didn’t have much time to think. Hesitation would have meant death and not just for him,  and not just for his passengers, but also for anyone on the ground. It’s not as though helicopters can glide for a while and decisions can be thought through. It has to be instinctive and to make something instinctive, takes forethought and planning. Twenty years ago, rather than having a happy ending with a busted tail rotor, this story would have ended very differently. The change in the last 20 years is because of improved training. Now, pilots don’t just receive chalk talks and flight time, but by using computer aided flight simulators, dangers can be simulated [...]]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/03/01/the-value-of-training/feed/ 14 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/02/26/the-media/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/02/26/the-media/#comments Sat, 26 Feb 2011 16:41:08 +0000 Eric http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=11678 I keep reading and seeing things about the Florida laws that I am pretty sure  are wrong. Made worse is that the media quotes people — “authorities” — who are also wrong. So the the wrong statements get amplified. Here are two things I saw just in the last week that made my jaw drop. From The Suncoast News titled NPR police targeting jaywalkers to reduce carnage During two enforcement sweeps in January along U.S. 19, officers wrote 34 citations to pedestrian violators, five warnings, six moving violations and one nonmoving violation, according to a report from Sgt. Erik Jay, the department’s traffic supervisor. . . . Most citations were handed out to pedestrians who failed to cross at marked crosswalks. If a pedestrian safety brochure doesn’t convince violators to change their habits, $62.50 traffic tickets might persuade them. . . . The worst spot for pedestrians seems to be U.S. 19 at Green Key Road, Pascalli said while watching the intersection from an unmarked Dodge Charger. Walkers tend to dart among the U.S. 19 traffic, about a block north of Main Street, to get to restaurants and a small motel. . . . “People don’t understand that’s a violation,” [...]]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/02/26/the-media/feed/ 10 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/01/14/theyll-do-it-every-time/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/01/14/theyll-do-it-every-time/#comments Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:46:20 +0000 Eric http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=11320 I’m not anti-bike, but followed by some cockamamie statistic and then some dreadful interpretation of the motor vehicle laws. It’s a pattern we have all seen far too many times. And here it is again, all in one paragraph, from a fellow applauding the new NYPD crackdown on cyclists. But in a way, his complaint about cyclists not riding on streets that have bike lanes makes perfect sense . . .  it is another logical conclusion to painting lines and requiring cyclists to stay on one side of the painted line. *thanks, with a tip of the hat, to Jimmy Hatlo When people ask me why I’m for the NYPD’s new bicycle safety enforcement initiative that’s poised to start, I have a very straightforward answer for them: It’s going to save lives, period. As president of the 84th Precinct Community Council, I talk to cops all the time. Just the other day I was asked to come over to the station house on Gold Street to address the 20 new cops we’ve received. I told these young officers flat out that they shouldn’t be shy about giving out tickets, because sanctioning people with tickets will ultimately save someone’s life. I’m [...]]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2011/01/14/theyll-do-it-every-time/feed/ 7 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2010/11/29/helping-motorists-with-lane-positioning/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2010/11/29/helping-motorists-with-lane-positioning/#comments Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:08:26 +0000 Mighk http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=10803 “‘I’ll see it when I believe it’ is more accurate than ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’” – Social psychologist Karl Weick Regular readers of this blog know we recommend an assertive lane position when the lane is too narrow to share.  Our rationale was initially that when a cyclist is in the right wheel track, some motorists will still attempt to squeeze past within the lane instead of making a full lane change.  That’s still true.  But we’ve also observed that a more assertive lane position — either in the center of the lane or just left of center — gets motorists to change lanes earlier on roads with more than one lane in each direction. Our hypothesis was that from a significant distance, a cyclist in the right wheel track (where the League of American Bicyclists has long recommended cyclists travel if the lane is too narrow to share) looks like he or she is on the edge line, so the motorist stays in that lane until he or she gets close enough to realize there’s not really adequate width for safe passing.  By then the opportunity for changing lanes may have closed.  The motorist then either [...]]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2010/11/29/helping-motorists-with-lane-positioning/feed/ 92 http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2010/10/21/crosswalk-workshop-ii-october-31st/ http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2010/10/21/crosswalk-workshop-ii-october-31st/#comments Fri, 22 Oct 2010 01:49:07 +0000 Bill http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/?p=10457 Hot on the heels of our first Crosswalk Workshop is the upcoming Crosswalk Workshop II on Sunday, October 31st.  We plan to work the crosswalk on Edgewater Drive at Shady Lane Drive at the 7-11 convenience store. Please plan to join us between 3:00 and 5:00 PM to meet with local pedestrians, explain to them the proper use of the crosswalk, hand out brochures, and to exercise the crosswalk to instruct motorists on the need to yield. If you want a T-shirt, you can order them from Big Frog in Winter Park, 321-972-8879.  Just ask for the I Stop 4 Pedestrians shirt (in the Bike/Walk Central Florida file). Since it will be Halloween, costumes are optional.  What would really be great is to have someone dressed up as the Chicken That Crossed The Road!  Let me know if you’re interested in this very prestigious position. Contact me at wbcarpenter5@att.net, 407-504-2455, or leave a reply to this post with any questions or for more information. Check out video from a previous visit to this crosswalk: There’s work to be done!  See you there!]]> http://commuteorlando.com/wordpress/2010/10/21/crosswalk-workshop-ii-october-31st/feed/ 5