Tony, you are a great advocate for cyclists. I applaud you for it, but I must chime in. You are a man and you don't face the same challenges a woman or young girl does riding alone or even walking alone. I jog, and I have to say when the time change comes it is pretty dark out there. I was thinking to myself how creepy it was and how I was violating all my training to not be in the wrong place at the wrong time alone when I pass this poor girl all of 90 pounds wet making her way to what I assume is FHS for a zero period class. She looked scared out of her wits. Maybe her parents had no choice. Riding in the dark is a dangerous proposition, flashy lights or not. There are many homeless in our neighborhood and not all of them are nice people. No way I'm letting my child make his or her own way to school if I'm leaving anyway on my way to work and can drop her off, especially in inclement weather.
My child walked to Sutter Middle, but even in crosswalks and with staff waiving a sign people would drive on through, most talking on their cellphones, without stopping for the students crossing. What we need are better crossings in that area and it doesn't take millions of dollars to do that. Most of the children I see riding bikes are on Riley and on the sidewalk, the way I would want my child to ride regardless of what is considered the "correct" way. I have absolutely no problem stepping off the sidewalk so a child or even adult can ride by because I can see the oncoming traffic and they can't.
Thanks, ducky, and yes, I am guilty of being a man.
Just one question for you: what's by far the most dangerous thing our children (over age 4) do on a regular basis? Yep, ride in the car with their parents. According to statistics from the CDC (as presented by SafeKids.org), the number one cause of unintentional injury death (that excludes illness) to children between 4 and 19 years of age (and number 2 for kids 4 and under after drowning and suffocation) is riding in a motor vehicle. Getting hit by one as a pedestrian is a distant sixth place -- and that includes the rising number of small children being killed in their driveways by their parents large SUVs, thankfully a cause that should start declining with the proliferation of backing cameras -- followed only by burns and bicycling of the eight causes they report. A child in the US is approximately 20 times more likely to be killed as a passenger in a car than while riding their bike. And suburban areas such as Folsom are the most dangerous because of the high speed roads (people rarely die in collisions at 35 mph, but they do at 50 or 60 mph).
There are a thousand "reasons" -- too hot, too cold, too hilly, too far, too humid, too rainy, too dark, too female, too dangerous, too scary, too slow, too heavy, too uncool, too many kids, too few kids, too two-wheeled, too tired -- why people "can't" walk or bike for transportation, yet, from rainy Portland, to hilly San Francisco, to freezing Montreal, to drizzly Copenhagen, to left-wing Davis, to right wing...hmmm, still working on an example for that one...to traffic-snarled New York, people do it in far larger percentages than they do right here in bike-friendly Folsom. (OK, so, it's hard to come up with a good example of a very conservative city where bicycling is a big part of the culture (although that could be because most big cities tend to lean left)). Why? Why in a city that touts its 40 miles of bike paths, where the developers advertise housing developments with pictures of families on bikes, where with a little creativity, you can get almost anywhere in town with a 5-year-old (OK, maybe 7) on a bike....why have so few people discovered the health benefits, the frugality, the sense of adventure, the pure joy of starting and ending their work day with a pleasant bike ride, or of riding or walking to school with their children, teaching them to be safe and confident in their world along the way, or riding to soccer practice or a baseball game, or to Dos Coyotes or Dominics for lunch or dinner? Hey, I just don't want y'all to miss out on all the fun!
So, I'll close this advocacy rant with a punny little joke told to my wife and I by a young boy in Guyman,OK where we stopped (specifically because we had been told by an eastbound cyclist we had met days earlier that we had to meet this boy and hear his bike jokes) for a respite from the incessant 30 mph cross winds at the general store that he and his slightly older sister were minding. Says the 7-year-old boy, "Why are bicycles slower than cars?" "I don't know, why are bicycles slower than cars?", says the 30-something bike tourist who's just happy that he can actually keep his bike moving in the wind this day. "Because they are two tired!", dead-pans the young boy.
Now, back to your regularly-scheduled politics...
) dependent on the cities upkeep and such- I would prolly now view his ideas related to road work differently.
