Entries by Eric

Who Wooda Thunkit?

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 […]

Illinois to start tracking bicycle ‘dooring’ collisions

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 […]

roads or people?

Dear Senator Simmons, I live in your district and I wanted to let you know what I thought about a particular budget issue. The newspapers are full of things that are proposed to be cut, but they never say much about what will stay pretty much intact. Today I discovered that while the House is […]

Why Anti-Car Measures Keep Failing

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 […]

The Value of Training

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 […]

The Media

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. […]

Get Out of My Way, You Jerk!

I think there are some points we can learn from this article. From the Wall Street Journal: You don’t need a car to get road rage. For many people, few things are more infuriating than slow walkers—those seemingly inconsiderate people who clog up sidewalks, grocery aisles and airport hallways while others fume behind them. Researchers […]

Bicycle tires – puncturing the myths

This is an interesting article from BikeRadar.com about an independent bicycle tire testing lab and what they do there. Much of this applies to weight weenies, but there is some decent stuff for us ordinary folks as well, such as: Puncture-resistant belts work but they’re not created equal: Nylon, aramid and other belts placed under […]