I blogged about bike helmets ages ago and while researching I stumbled on a slide show of celebrities on bikes. About half of them were without helmets. There was an inverse relationship between niceness of hair and helmet usage.

Rosa has some good points. Traveling the roads by bike has made me a safer driver, and driving the roads by car has made me a safer cyclist.

It makes me so sad to hear people say they're going to keep driving their cars until there are fewer cars so it's safe to ride a bike…

It's worth it to at least try biking a few times – the world looks a lot different from out there. I bike, bus & drive, and I think every driver should have to bike sometimes just to keep in mind what the world looks like from outside the car windows. (And bikers should pay attention from inside cars, too – it's amazing how bad the visibility from inside a car is, it makes the need for lights & bright colors way more obvious.)

p.s. i've been hauling my son around in a trailer since he was 18 months old, and our worst near-death experiences have been while walking across streets with walk lights, because drivers don't look before they turn with a green light – i've never had a near-death experience while hauling the trailer. It's big & yellow and drivers notice it.

I haven’t been biking ever since I moved away from Canada. Basically we have been living in areas where we wouldn’t feel safe letting our teenage kids ride and me biking would make for a constant reminder of what they are missing. Also even a run of the mill bike spill and hospital visit would cost more than a year’s worth of bus rides.

My husband guest-wrote an article on my blog last year about how to buy a used bike. As a former bike mechanic, he’s got some good advice. His primary bike, the one he used for the Xtracycle attachment, was purchased used from a bike shop. He built his other bike as well as my Xtracycle long frame bike from scratch.

FB – what about the new bike path on de Maisonneuve? I take it regularly & love it.

I bike to work on non-rainy days for 6 months of the year. Yay bikes!

I just want to thank you for the links in this post. My family and I am moving to a very small rural area in Florida this summer after living all over the world in cities that have been amenable to biking/walking and others that haven’t. This move is our final and I am hoping that we will have some influence in making it more biking/running/etc friendly.

Here’s a great North America wide organization: The Alliance for Biking & Walking, formerly known as Thunderhead Alliance, is the North American coalition of grassroots bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations. We unite advocacy leaders to help them become more effective by sharing best practices and innovations. We strengthen organizations through resource sharing and training opportunities. We help advocates create organizations in underserved communities. Alliance organizations are working together to transform communities into great places to bike and walk.

~ We use a bike cart to haul everything from children to groceries, to hardware, through to moving. Bonus – you get to have a big flag!!!
~ We also have a transferable baby seat on the back of a bike.
~ I recommend folding bike racks to the rear for the most weight, and cargo rack in front with brackets to the wheel as a secondary basket. This makes steering easiest.

In a car accident in which there are serious injuries, babies properly strapped in car seats have a 51% chance of survival. This is the kind of statistic that makes you vomit, or wake up screaming at night if you’re a mother.

Most people I know don’t have cars. I do not know any children hurt in cycling accidents. I do know that:
1. My eldest daughter’s pre school friend was brained and severely disabled when run over by a car in her stroller on the sidewalk. Her friend was murdered this way at the same time. The driver suffered a ticket for speeding.
2. My eldest daughter’s best friend broke her thigh in 3 places as a 3-year-old when properly strapped in a car seat and 3 months in traction and a year learning to walk again. None of the adults in the car were injured in the low-speed collision.
3. My ex-neighbours ran over their pre schooler son at the bottom of the street and broke his arm.
4. Two toddlers were killed a year apart on their own front lawns/patios by speeding or out of control drivers racing down the hill near my house before they put in traffic lights.

Maybe we don’t see cars as dangerous or as weapons when we drive them, but they sure as hell look dangerous to me at times.

Love & RRRevolution, Tracey

An exciting thing happened today on my way to the grocery store: I almost collided with another bicyclist!!!

If I had, I might have ended up in traction at the hospital but I would have had a smile on my face because when bikes are hitting bikes it means we have a number of them on the street.

Why did we almost collide? Because his bike was so quiet I didn’t hear him approaching. But he wasn’t quiet when he thought we might bump into each other. Another reason to bike – you can hear the comments of others clearly, no need for obscene gestures!

On the subject of safety…I’ve put in over 15 years of daily biking in Chicago and suburbs and haven’t had an accident. You have to look at it as you would a car. People have accidents in cars all the time but they get right back on the road. Once you accept it as your mode of transportation, that’s what you do. What I don’t do is listen to an Ipod while riding. Being alert is job one.

LOL I got to bikes for about nothing. OK Near nothing. One is too tall for me, the other doesn’t have gears (is a single speedd) and too hard to ride as I puff my fat ass around. LOL I need one of them thar fancified bikes like you got. And yes I were a helmet. When I ride the scooter as well. I need something for them to scoop my brains into in case of an accident.

I never realized it until now, but we have very similar commuting habits! I even have a Giant bicycle bought around the same time that is so insanely comfortable compared to most other bikes I’ve been on. I live in LA near a subway station and I take the train to work in Pasadena every day. Even before I got rid of my car, I was riding the train daily and walking around a lot. Once I bought a bike, I worked toward doing all of my weekly errands by bike. When the opportunity arose to get rid of my car, I took it! As an additional bonus, my total monthly transportation costs are $0 unless I need something for my bike or if I need to travel someplace further away. My work subsidizes my train pass and all of my bike and related items were paid off in a short period of time when compared to a car and related payments.

Now I do most of my non-work commuting by foot, bike or in rare instances, bus/train/car rides from another person. Even though all method of transportation have their high and low point, I prefer biking and walking. I love how efficient, energizing, satisfying biking is while still allowing you to take advantage of calmer and less traveled paths that may normally only be accessible by foot.

Most people in Pasadena and LA don’t even know and haven’t seen all of the parrots and parakeets living throughout the city! The only reason I picked up on them was by hearing their squawks and squeaks while walking outside. I also never realized how close some museums and random attractions were to one another because it’s not so obvious when you are driving everyplace on the freeway.

One thing you didn’t mention is that many bike clubs are open to taking old bikes and fixing them up for area kids in need. It’s certainly something to consider, and definitely a good cause!

You might have mentioned that we have a bicycle we would love to give away. It’s a 15-inch frame green mountain bike. (26-inch wheels). Everything basically works, though it could use a trip to the shop since it’s been outside for a year and gotten a little wet. Free to the most worthy FPF reader who can come and take it off our hands!

Oh, and I should add we tried one of the child seats that mounts on the bike and no one liked it. Much easier to lose balance that way if he starts wriggling around. Also, the trailer makes DH’s bike very stable and has roll bars to help protect the little guys.

Really glad you posted this. We’re not in a bikeable area and are looking for resources to find a new place to move so your links are perfect!

Deborah – you might try one of the trailers for kids. My DH pulls our 16 month old and says he hardly notices the extra weight. DS loves to ride that way too, and it has a good cargo area for groceries, etc.

I wanted a bike for my birthday -didn’t get it this year. So, I’ll be getting one for myself :-) But I won’t be able to use it for many errands. Not because Marin isn’t bike-friendly or that I don’t live close enough to shops, but I take my 22 month old on errands. I suppose I could get one of those kid attachment seats for up front, but I haven’t been on a bike in years and I am nervous enough to ride alone with some bags in a basket, never mind risking the safety of my child. Unfortunately having a child in the suburbs requires car transportation and child safety seats. I will have to offset my footprint in other ways until he’s older.

I, unfortunately, will not be riding a bike at any point during National Bike Month. As I live in LA, in which there are over 3 trillion cars (yes, that is an accurate statistic… inside my head), I’m sorry, I’m just too freaked out.

I WISH WISH WISH I could ride a bike not just for environmental reasons but also because then a) I could spend less on my car and b) I could eat WAY more junk food!!! but I just don’t think it’s worth the risk. I tooled around online to find reassuring statistics and could not find any. Although technically, the statistics for fatalities per billion miles are higher for cars, the statistics for injuries are higher for bikes (which makes sense intuitively, as well). Also, I figured if I started biking short distances and continued driving long distances, I’d actually be compounding my risk: more car fatalities happen at higher speeds, i.e. on the freeway.

What really drove it home was the fact that this one bike activist–who was majorly into safety and proper bike driving–was KILLED in a bike accident!!!! I’m like, if THAT guy got killed biking, then I don’t stand a chance. While in a way, the environment is more important than my own selfish survival, I just gotta draw the line here. I’m a wuss.

So until LA makes PROPER bike lanes (i.e. not the three foot wide ones that run between parked cars and moving traffic–COME ON), as they supposedly are for the Expo line currently in the works, then I refuse to bike. If anyone has any problems with that, then please, argue me into it. I’m at CarrickB@aol.com.

Even though you’ve tried to pre-empt my getting freaked out by your not wearing your helmet, I’m still going to. Sorry, can’t help myself…(I’m a doctor) and it’s because not only are you putting yourself at risk by not wearing a helmet (which is bad enough, we like your brain!), but you are putting images of yourself out there in the media (via blog and a video?) without a helmet. Also, you’re riding down the street where others will see you being photographed and videotaped without a helmet. In short, this sets a blazingly bad example for other bike riders, many of whom are kids. Please please please please please wear your helmet. If not for yourself, or for me, or the kids, then do it for your cause! You need an intact brain to continue this important work. Ok, I will now dismount from my soapbox. Thank you.

I love to bike but hate MY bike. I want one that weighs ess than me and has basket ability like yours!!
Couldn’t you wash the slime out and then recycle it? Disposing of the stuff properly of course!

I am starting to love my bike as well. Biking to the grocery store and just around town is great, except if I want to go downtown, I take the subway… it’s just too dangerous with the way the Quebeckers drive here in Canada. :(

Other than that, extremely freeing, great exercise and fresh air.. and FREE :D