Get yourself ready for the weekend with a good MTB video. [twitterer]

Take a tip

Bicycle-Safety Tips. Read ‘em and dweeb.

Foldin’ fender

The Quickfix and Foldnfix Foldable Bike Fenders are mudguards that slip over your back wheel, keeping you from getting that damp grey stripe up your arse. More protection than a seat posted mounted mudguard but not as much coverage as full-length guards, they’re a clever design. They look a bit rough-and-ready to me but then I reckon that’ll make them pretty rugged when it really counts. [twitterer]

Turning pedals, turning pages

Kent Peterson recommends:

• 50 Good Bicycle Books
• 50 More Good Bicycle Books

Seven things

Seven things you should give up to be a happy cyclist.

Baillieu ♥ bikes…umm, not

The Victorian Government remains fixated on the costly east-west link , with little relief for public transport commuters and funding for bike works turned down to zero. I don’t often use the term but to me this all seems nothing short of retarded.

[twitterer]

See also: the state of Melbourne’s public transport…yeah, it’s crap. Oh, and no one likes Myki. [twitterer]

Economies of bike

Why bicyclists are better customers than drivers for local business

the economic benefit of bicycling for communities doesn’t end with cyclists’ expensive cappuccinos and impulse buys. Properties near bike paths increase in value 11 percent…access and proximity to walking and biking facilities, especially greenways, makes homes easier to sell.

And on The Conversation Brad Pettitt argues that bike lanes’ economic benefits go beyond jobs:

the economic benefits of bike paths are not simply limited to jobs created during path construction. Long after the bike path concrete has dried the economic benefits can keep rolling, so long as the bike path is well planned and integrated into a broader cycle network.

[twitterer]

Shared paths: not safe?

A study reported in the Canberra Times which “examined the characteristics of bicycle crashes in different cycling environments” with the aim of finding “strategies to reduce bicycle crashes” has concluded in part that:

The number of crashes involving pedestrians and the relatively high speeds of some of the cyclists on shared paths and footpaths suggests that the regulation of cycling in shared areas should be reviewed, formally recognized as a part of the road reserve and appropriate speed limits applied. Such measures would be in the interests of cyclists and pedestrians, as cyclists who crashed on shared paths sustained higher average injury severity scores than those injured in any other road environment.

While I don’t see how shared path speed limits could be enforced, I actually find this report fairly convincing. I found alternative routes for my daily commuting years ago when the daily tangle with bike path racers started getting just a bit too scary.

See the press release from The George Institute for Global Health and the full report is available from NRMA – ACT Road Safety Trust.

[twitterer]

Downright scary

This video of a crazy mobile phone driver ramming a police officer is downright scary. But it’s important to remember that homicidal nutters like this are rare, fortunately. [twitterer]

Driving Mr Hitler

Observes Ian Walker: “So car sharing ads were perfected in the 40s?” Case in point: When You Ride Alone You Ride With Hitler!

Envy

National Geographic has some seriously cool travel biking photos. [twitterer]

And Live Free or Drive is a blog full of lush bike touring photos. [twitterer]

See also Bike tour + Twitter = Map.

How to steal a bike redux

Remember this? How to steal a bike.

Well after seven years, still nobody cares if Casey Neistat’s bike gets stolen.

Of course, there may be very good reasons for that…

[twitterer]

Sting like a butterfly

Having trouble with free-roaming pedestrians cutting you up on your daily commute? Slightly gullible? Well, help is at hand. Maybe. One frustrated London commuter got so tired with SMIDSY peds that he came up with a novel approach to the problem: the Bike Butterfly.

OK, this is getting just a bit ridiculous…

World’s brightest bike light at 100,000 lumens apparently (whatever that means) it sounds awfully bright. [twitterer]

For your own sake, don’t

Nine Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Ride to Work. [twitterer]

Spring classics

Paris–Roubaix: better in black and white. [twitterer]

Hit and run

The fact the people can do hit-and-run makes my stomach churn. So it was good to see this video showing a driver attempting to flee after hitting a bicyclist being blocked by a quick-thinking bus driver. Check it out: Salute to a Heroic Bus Operator. [twitterer]

Then there’s this one caught on camera, which looks deliberate or at least wildly negligent. Unsurprisingly, the car was later reported stolen.

As a follow-up, Cyclelicious summarised recently reported hit and runs. This one particularly caught my eye: “Hit & run with injury. Small child on bike hit by gray pickup truck. Driver of the vehicle gave juvenile $20 and left the scene.” Lovely.

“Need any help, buddy?”

We’ve all stopped to offer help to another cyclist but not all of us have had our good deeds recorded on Google Streetview. [twitterer]

Will make you cry

Take a private 10 minutes to watch this beautiful film Boy, featuring the wonderful Timothy Spall.

For the kids

On Momentum Mag, Tiny Helmets, Big Bike:

Since I’ve started biking for transportation, I feel like a better mother. I am more excited about each day, and less rushed because the journey becomes as fun as the destination. I am healthier and happier and able to watch the world go by at a child’s pace. We still have days where it is difficult to get out of the house and even days where we can’t avoid taking the car. However, knowing that with each pedal stroke I am creating a better future for my children gives me that extra push.

On the other hand, watch out for undesirable self-fulfilling prophecies. [twitterer]

Apropos, could urban planning reduce childhood obesity?

And Northern Ireland’s Health Minister says ‘Cycling can help us tackle obesity epidemic’ [twitterer]

But Grow-up, Australia! – we’re pathetic (link to article in the Hun). Seriously, there are more important things to get outraged about. [twitterer]

What was I thinking?

A selection of rants on one of my favourite ranting topics:

• No play please, we’re American
• Fat-arsed schoolkids
• Unwrap the cotton wool and get real
• What precisely is wrong with playing on the road?

Costly

Create your own cost of driving infographic thanks to Karl’s spreadsheet.

While we’re on the subject, what’s wrong with a car-centric system? [twitterer]

Why do you ride like that?

“Biking in the middle of the lane like that sure looks dangerous.”

No tribes please

Interesting discussion sparked by a cartoon in the New Yorker.

My key point: don’t try to tell me that any flavour of cyclist is more pure at heart—we all love our bikes, we all love cycling—we just do it differently.

Some good follow-up added to the original post later.

For what it’s worth, I thought the New Yorker cartoon was amusing.

History

The Queensland Police Serivce on bicycles, then and now. Cool. [twitterer]

See also these stunning vintage photos of early 1900s Australian bike culture [twitterer]

Holding up traffic

Melbourne’s peak hour myth: it’s more like three. [twitterer]

Suggestion: ride a bike. [twitterer]

Contest this

Elly Blue has opened The Bad Streets for Bicycling Photo Contest.

Design it, print it

Print your own bike parts. I really want a 3D-printer…

Get my drift?

Trike Drifting. Yeah, you’ve probably seen this sort of thing before…doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy watching it again!

And it’s a real shame that with the best of intentions, “panicky parents are breeding a generation of ‘cotton wool kids’ too afraid to climb trees or ride their bikes”. Don’t parents remember their own childhoods?

Worse, it seems that we’ve reached a point that the sight of children playing outside is considered suspect.

How did this happen?

Why can’t society accept that kids actually need some risky play in their lives?

‘Children are not being allowed many of the freedoms that were taken for granted when we were children,’ said Adrian Voce, director of Play England. ‘They are not enjoying the opportunities to play outside that most people would have thought of as normal when they were growing up.’…Voce pointed out how irrational some of these decisions were. Last year, almost three times as many children were admitted to hospital after falling out of bed as those who had fallen from a tree.

And here’s another thing that I hadn’t thought of: it turns out that too much indoor play could be bad for children’s eyesight. If mollycoddled kids rarely go outside into the natural light and rarely have to look further than the computer screen, is it really surprising that they are at risk of becoming near-sighted?

“We ‘ad it tough…”

When I was a kid, I’m sure my parents had exactly the same concerns as today’s helicopter parents, but their approach was quite different: they taught us things like how to swim, to watch out for snakes, and to respect other people’s property. The rest was up to us, more or less. Mum just had to know who we were mucking around with and that we’d be home for dinner. [And if you're reading this, thanks Mum.]

There’s an old story in my family about how our parents had to choose holiday destinations that were in close proximity to a hospital, because I would inevitably need to be hauled off to casualty to be stitched up or have a limb put in plaster. The reality was a little different. Oh sure, I was sometimes (often?) injured on our holidays, but I can remember some pretty long drives from remote locations to small country hospitals. Maybe I was accident-prone or maybe I was just a kid having some real-life adventures. Either way, that didn’t stop my folks taking the whole tribe well-and-truly off the beaten track. For the record, those childhood holidays were bloody fantastic and recalling those old adventures (and accidents) make great stories. [Again, thanks Mum.]

I guess I sound like one of The Four Yorkshiremen, but here’s my point: no one wants to see their kids get hurt, but it’s entirely possible that shielding them from real experiences is far, far more harmful. Sheesh, get those kids outside—let ‘em climb trees and ride bikes—sure they might get hurt, but they will definitely experience something far more important: a real childhood.