Florida bicycle news and comment, with a special eye toward
making streets and paths more congenial to riders.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
When good cyclists get hit
Prompted by three traffic crashes involving expert bicyclists, Florida Today columnist Mark DeCotis muses about such bike-car conflicts. He doesn't offer any conclusions or solutions, but perhaps you'll be moved to do so. Here's his piece.
These three guys were not cyclists just trying to get from one place to another. They use our streets for training purposes which means that stop signs and traffic lights throws them off their pace. They usually travel faster than "normal", which throws the motorist's judgement off as to how much space there is to safely make a left turn -- something that becomes more difficult as drivers age anyway.
Other than abandoned subdivisions, I don't know of a very good place to train. I don't know of any velodromes in that area, but it might be a good idea to build one.
2 comments:
These three guys were not cyclists just trying to get from one place to another. They use our streets for training purposes which means that stop signs and traffic lights throws them off their pace. They usually travel faster than "normal", which throws the motorist's judgement off as to how much space there is to safely make a left turn -- something that becomes more difficult as drivers age anyway.
Other than abandoned subdivisions, I don't know of a very good place to train. I don't know of any velodromes in that area, but it might be a good idea to build one.
Thank you very much for that extraordinarily first class editorial! Very creative, one of the nicer sites I have seen today. Keep up the great work.
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