Ride Boldly!

Been pretty busy lately, but as the (first) thaw gets underway, there are goings on here in the tundra and elsewhere.

The Winona Bridge, about which I have written a billion times following its brief closure in Summer 2008, is now scheduled for ‘rehabilitation’ in 2014. Everyone gets to take their chances on this fracture-critical structure [...]

I think we all know the stats:

Drivers are 8 times as likely to get in an accident while texting than those, you know, paying attention
Driver distraction was reported to have been involved in 16 percent of all fatal crashes in 2008
An estimated 22 percent of injury crashes were reported to have involved distracted driving

(Source: USDOT [...]

In a recent study, Minneapolis-St. Paul made it onto a list of the top five metros for road rage.
Factors cited that create anger include running red lights, texting and e-mailing while driving, putting on makeup, eating, or talking on a cell phone.
One thing worth noting is that per the study methodology, the telephone surveys were [...]

I’ve concluded that when hard-up for a story or just in a lazy mood, many media outlets resort to poking sticks at the anthill that is bicyclists using roads. Bike to Work Week is apparently a red cape to that lazy bull.
We have another fine example of this genre over at the Strib again. The [...]

There’s nothing quite like going for a ride on a lovely spring evening and having a guy in a child molester panel van yell at you for using the road appropriately.
He was apparently unaware that the Cervelos some of our group were riding definitely had higher value than his panel van, and that we bicycle [...]

A study from Colorado State University suggests that drivers who personalize their cars – think bumper stickers, air fresheners, personalized plates, hula girls on the dashboard – are more prone to road rage. While bicyclists should always watch the traffic around them, this may provide another clue to prompt defensive vehicular cycling behaviors.
The personalization is [...]