Ten days ago, Steven Regenold covered a Critical Mass ride, and asked whether it hurt or harmed the cause for bike commuters. Here's where he came down:
As a workaday rider, I want drivers to respect me on my bike. Blocking traffic, making people mad and disobeying traffic laws not only felt wrong, but meaningless, contrived, aimless -- a lot like Critical Mass.
Like a lot of other commuters, I'm also conflicted about those rides. Driver anger toward cyclists is not good, but it's still less of threat than driver inattention.
Earlier this week, I noted the two local cyclists hit — one killed — while heading to work in the dark.
Three more recent fatalities occurred in the daylight, and apparently did not involve angry or impaired drivers.
On the edge of River Falls, a 22-year-old rider was struck by a car trying to cross a no-man's land (left, click to enlarge) where a county road meets a four-lane highway with a 65 mph speed limit heading out of town.
Monday morning, a rider was killed in Blaine as he tried to cross Cloverleaf Parkway. It's not clear from the story whether he was riding on the stub of Central Av. isolated by highways or on Hwy. 65 which is also called Central (right). Either way, he was passing through a suburban area inhospitable to bike traffic.
The victim apparently lived close by, and probably had little choice for his route home. This kind of forced encounter is all too common in the suburbs, with their lack of any predictable or continuous street grid on which to find alternate routes. It's particularly vexing for the cross-urban cyclist, who may be treated to bike paths or winding suburban streets, only to be dumped into these wastelands where traffic is most dense and hurried.
An 18-year-old cyclist died Tuesday after colliding with a commercial truck on 5th Street in downtown Minneapolis. That street is particularly dangerous because the light rail runs down it, and drivers may be occupied by sidewalk traffic, the trains and figuring out where they can make turns across the tracks.
"This is a casualty of bikes and cars sharing the road," [Minneapolis police spokesman Sgt. Jesse] Garcia said. "People don't realize there are more bikes on the road and bicyclists need to obey all traffic laws."
It's also a casualty of more people riding in an environment designed for cars that will eventually consume us all.
