Dead bicyclists aren't much fun

I haven't blogged in a while. It's not that I don't have things to say, it's just that everything I get riled up enough to post about is along the lines of how I can't wait for USA to stop promoting "The Starter Wife" so heavily because to me it looks like the most uninteresting show imaginable and I just want the season to start, already, because not a single clip they've shown in an ad has been the least bit funny, intriguing, or engaging, and if they can't do better than that in the ads, the show is going to tank fast, and then I won't have to hear about it ever again. Because the entire premise — a woman living in la-la land who has no idea that her marriage sucks gets knocked on her ass by divorce and suddenly O NOES WHO AM I AND WHAT AM I GOING TO DO WITH MY LIFE — is an affront to me. OK? People, get a grip on yourselves. Your life has value. You don't need another person, especially a jerkface who divorces you, to live a full life. And you don't need to listen to your jerkface friends like Judy Davis when they tell you crap about having "no prospects" (which seems to be the only scene they want to show in the ads that involves more than one line of dialogue, and that doesn't just show Debra Messing contorting her face in some really unattractive way), either.

And who wants to read my rant about that?

But then I go and visit No Impact Man this morning, a blog I visit often, and the title of today's blog post alone makes me go, "Whoa. Now that's interesting."

And a little shocking. The post is called Sad pictures of dead bicyclists that I plan to show the Senator. The author, Colin, you see, was nearly hit by the car of Senator Jeff Klein (Dem, NY) when he was riding his bike a while back. So Colin hopes to draw attention to the problem of bikes and cars and how they might learn to live together better. (Because at least bicyclists and drivers know there's a problem. No la-la land on the streets of NYC.)

And Colin has stated all the reasons why bicycling is so good for humanity, and has prepared this shocking statement, and he's right about all of it. It would really help if traffic policy allowed us all to get along.

My only question is: how? Where are the ideas? Are they being saved for a blog entry for another day? Because I've experienced the problems, too. The last time I rode my bike home from downtown Chicago (a 27-mile journey) I had to swerve up onto a sidewalk, on the opposite side of the street, and ended up traveling the opposite direction, if you can imagine it, to avoid being hit by a car. The driver wasn't even particularly at fault. He was just doing what he was doing (which was, apparently, making an alley-assisted 3-point turn) and wasn't looking for me, and I didn't understand what he was doing, so I hastily decided to just bike around him, but little did either of us know, we were both about to go the same way. And I'm not really sure what we can do about that.

And I'm not really sure that adding more bike lanes, or adding bicycle-only streets will help. Because have you ever been stopped at a light with 20 other bicyclists, preparing to cross North Broadway? It's a pain in the ass. And the idea that bicyclists should be stopping at every stop sign in the city? We would never get where we were going, and we'd badly inhibit motorists, too. Can you imagine all these cyclists slowing to a stop at the end of every block, and then starting up again? It takes for-frigging-ever. I do not want more bicyclists taking the route I take to work. There, I said it. It's selfish, but true. Bicycle congestion is a worse problem than automobile congestion ... it's just that bicycle congestion rarely exists, so we're mostly unaware of it.

I can't imagine how the Chinese do it. Of course, they have lots of problems, but mostly when automobiles are involved. From Overview of Bicycle Transportation in China:

Bicycling is the transportation mode of choice for up to 70% of the urban passenger trips in China. However, because of its slowness, serious traffic problems occur when bicycle traffic mixes with motorized vehicle traffic. The mixing of faster and slower traffic modes causes a lower capacity and results in higher accident rates. In the average Chinese city, about 30% of the traffic fatalities are bicyclists. Traffic separation, better intersection control, and improved bicycle management are recommended to improve bicycle transportation in China.

That was written in 1993. I have no idea if it's improved since then, but I hope so. And I'd like to see some video of both bicycle and bicycle/automobile traffic in Chinese cities, just to see how it works. Because I don't have any ideas, either, and I hope Colin and Senator Klein can come up with something together.

I have cyclist readers. What are your ideas?