Not really. It’s not that hard to spot crap statistics. So, for instance, statistics tell us that biking really is safer in Northern Europe, and it really is true. This study ( http://www.metroplanorlando.com/site/upload/documents/Bicyclist_Crash_Study_OrlandoArea.pdf , found with others here: http://www.metroplanorlando.com/site/downloads/default.asp ) was useful in determining that ride-single-file laws do not in fact enhance safety (at least, not very much — this was relevant here in Massachusetts, where it was against the law to ride two abreast until very recently ). And cycling drunk, that turns out to be a bad idea.

“Also, as I mentioned, I would guess that most bicycle accidents and injuries go unreported.”

Seeing as how my last bloody accident (first crash in at least ten years, just a slide in gravel but someone carelessly left a rock right where my gloved hand landed ) went unreported, I have to agree with this.

The debate is quite fatalistic. Mostly only death or grave injuries are mentioned and compared. Understandable, since statistics exist only for those. But what about lighter injuries? Are those not worth even thinking about? I think they are. I choose to wear cycling gloves and never to ride with exposed arms and legs not because it will save my life but because when I eat some pavement the next time (and despite being a slow and safe and paranoid rider, I *will* fall again), it will save my skin and I will have fewer bruises. I had painful scrapes on my hands and elsewhere a few too many times and realized that avoiding light injuries is a perfectly good reason to wear protective gear.

I also don’t really buy statistics on either side. You can use statistics to prove just about anything. Also, as I mentioned, I would guess that most bicycle accidents and injuries go unreported. It does seem though that there are a lot of anecdotes out there that helmets saved (or would have saved) a rider from injury (in the biker’s opinion), and far fewer anecdotes where the helmet didn’t make a difference (in the biker’s opinion).

The argument to not wear helmets just to make a point, ie. to make biking seem more normal and safe is a silly one in my opinion. In my workplace quite a few people ride every once in a while, and walking into the office with a helmet is about the same as having car keys in your hand. It’s perfectly normal.

The argument that helmets provide false comfort cuts both ways. Every time you put on a helmet, it may give you a false sense of safety. Or it may provide a timely reminder that you are indeed fragile, and are about to enter a potentially dangerous situation.

I fully concur with the three points in the first essay Andy Thornley linked in comment #2. That said, I consider my helmet and my gloves to be standard gear and never ride without them. The helmet not only provides more protection than no helmet, it also shields the sun, warms my head, and holds my rearview mirror.

Similarly, one might be happy with the SFBC’s advocacy, but others might prefer that we follow failure with critical analysis so that we might learn to prevent such errors in the future, instead of dismissing such analysis as “insider baseball.”

Yes, it is a painful exercise, but delaying it, dismissing it or ruling it out of order in a thread will not solve the problem, and only kicks the can down the road, ensuring more pain until the wound is cleansed and healed.

One might make the connection to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” that having taken an ill-advised policy turn, the path to redemption is truth and reconciliation rather than denial or vindictiveness.

-marc

Thanks,
Matthew Roth

It is interesting to note that the BAC chair at that time (2002) accepted a paid position working on CEQA issues right after she worked to take these issues out of the Public Bike Plan — an action against the democratic will of the committee that had decided CEQA issues should be addressed in the plan. She also accepted this paid CEQA study position right after she worked to dissolve the entire BAC.

This was also right after the committee had passed a request under a 7-4 vote requesting that a dangerous condition inspection system be developed in the Bike Plan. It was also immediately before the committee was scheduled to hear a vote to remove the Chairperson.

This Chairperson was not dysfunctional or “holier than thou”, but she was repeatedly working against the established will of the committee. She did repeatedly and aggressively push the SFBC’s all bike network agenda.

It is also interesting to note that the SFBC Executive Director was on the advisory committee of the same all private org/agency CEQA studies(The TA LOS studies). This is the same Executive Director that is in the Bike Plan law-suit urging the plannning Department to not do any CEQA review of the Bike Plan. These TA studies continue to this day and have not resolved the issue.

(The LOS legislation, a huge step towards a solution where the Supervisors said automobile traffic engineering is innappropriate in SF was an almost entirely citizen led effort.)

Anyway, this is how the SFBC privatized the Bike Plan. In spite of this action, numerous public commnents recieved in the bike plan called for CEQA issues to be resolved, etc. These people like the members of the BAC were ignored and “shut out”. Their thoughts about how to make the streets safer were “outside of the scope of work”.

When the Bike plan was started there was no public advisory committee overseeing it. When the BAC was reconstituted the body really had, and has, no influence because it is supposed to develop the Bike Plan and the Bike Plan was taken away, privatized and turned into a massive disaster.

The reason it is important to understand what happened is so it does not happen again.

The response of the apparent SFBC representative is very illustrative of their tactics at large. If people disagree with the SFBC they attack. If a citizen’s committee disagrees with them they dissolve it.

Since 2002, the SFBC has made no effort to realistically work with other advocates. They have ignored requests to enter into mediation to do anything different or in the least recognize the mistakes they made, like causing the law-suit.

Even worse than their inability to work with other advocates is you never really know what they are going to do. The apparent SFBC representative told citizens that the SFBC would be supportive in interveing in the law-suit. When those citizens after months of work brought a reputable attorney and a strategy to move they were attacked.

It’s also pretty sad the way they attacked the plaintiff and the judge in the case. Even sadder is the way they attack their own allies, even their own staff. Every article they spun about the law-suit was an attack piece that just completley ignored the issues in the case. And attacking the judge, I mean this is just juvenile.

This is why the Bike Plan law-suit happened. It really doesn’t even having anything to do with CEQA. It’s really about one corporation working to privatize public speech and exclude the thoughts and feelings of other citizens.

Let’s say you went to the Bike Plan meetings and spent your time to give public comment? Unless you said “bike network good want bike network” your public comment was ignored. Your thoughts and feelings about your streets were “outside the scope of work”.

So go to the rallys, speak in indignance about the car culture, but remember its not some boogeyman who is your enemy, its not Rob Anderson its not Big Bad ole CEQA, its not even traffic engineers. It’s the Bike corporation. The cause of this disaster, the reason it went on for so long, the reson we wait for a 1997 Bike plan to maybe be completed….is the SFBC.

As far as I can tell, anyone can show up to a meeting (which are announced) with full meeting agendas / minutes. So can’t you show up to that and get your word in? Or are you saying the SFBC’s “privatized” staff will somehow shut you out? I find this very hard to believe.

When the bike plan was started there was no public oversight. Numerous other areas of study were removed to create the all bike network bike plan. These were referred to as “outside the scope of work”. Among these was resolving CEQA conflicts with new bike infrastructure. The SFBC even went so far as to convince the Planning Dept. not to do environmental review of the Bike Plan. This is what caused the law-suit. It is in the court papers if you care to review them.

After causing the lawsuit and privatizing the plan the SFBC completely failed to help the City get out of the mess. The judge just ordered “adequate environmental review” not so hard. But in numerous private meetings the SFBC failed to help the City to see things in a different way. They failed to speak and continued in privatizing speech. If you happened to be a citizen who specialized in such work doing anything was virtually impossible, because all decisions were being made behind closed doors and the SFBC which is seen as representing the City’s bicyclists was saying we want bike lanes not helping the City to give them what they want.

In addition, they failed to seek legal counsel or to do anything really, restricting their response to railing on the judge and the plaintiffs in the suit that they actually caused. This was an opportunity missed because of instead of speaking they were just crying.

And now, hopefully their bike network will be realized, but the sad thing is that privatizing speech and failing to speak has sanctioned a discriminatory view of things
and set the City back decades. Maybe the 1997/2009 Bike network will be realized but if so it is realized at the cost of endorsing the way things had been done. All of this was caused by taking away the place to speak (the bike plan) and failing to speak (except for whining and attacking Rob Anderson)

Internally the Bike Corporation is completely undemocratic. Their Board does not make decisions or debate issues, but basically rubber stamps anything the staff tells them. The same way that they abused the plaintiffs and the judge they abuse their own allies. The most notable examples of this are SFBC staff who have actually been fired for advocating for more democratic operations.

This parallels traffic engineering because it is the same thing all staff action with no legislative process. And this is how they have worked against their own goals without even realizing it — following the same all public relations/advocacy speech model while letting the details become disasters and actually working against other citizens who were trying to do something about them.

Going to their meetings is just going to get some stickers and line up to give public comment. Giving public comment is just saying what people have said for years the streets are for people and the people want safe streets.

To make the streets safer you have to speak most notably speak to undo fifty years of making the streets really dangerous. The place to do that is in the City Bike Plan. That place was taken away from the people and now we have the SFBC’s Bike Plan disaster.

The Bike Network was planned in 1997. For twelve years what kept the City from realizing the Bike network was not traffic engineers or the lawsuit, etc. it was the SFBC in their completely unethical restriction of the speech of others and their failure to actually speak themselves.

Everything else the org does, everything within its model of advocacy is great, the best in the country. But failing to see outside of backroom meetings, letter writing public comment and all of that has caused huge problems and will continue to do so.

There is nothing that can be done to change this and they are completely oblivious, even to black and white evidence like the email from the SFBC Executive Director urging the Planning Department to not do environmental review of the Bike Plan. And if you are a member i would strongly urge against trying to make any change because as i said they have fired their own staff for doing such things. Just pass out flyers and go to the meetings to give public comment, enjoy the new bike network and wonder why more things don’t change.

Just keep quiet…don’t speak

…and where a helmet if you want to

it is the fear of actually speaking about these issues that kept them in power…

when the bike coalition did that they were acting exactly like traffic engineers in that they were ignoring reality, behaving undemocratically…acting against what the people wanted and overlooking what was really happening.

the best example of this is in 2001 a woman was killed in very dangerous double turn lanes…the sfbc had a press conference and then forgot about her…

then they directly opposed the city bike committee’s request to have such situations be addressed in the bike plan. why because they don’t speak and work against the speech of others…the sad thing is that working through extremely dangerous designs is key to undoing them, just like working through CEQA problems is key to not having the bike plan turn into a multi-million dollar disaster.

this is how the sfbc has kept the streets dangerous by failing to speak, working against others who were trying to speak..etc.

sorry about the diatribe but it can get a little frustrating. streetsblog is possibly the only hope in that they are allowing speech but in a way its too late. the damage is done. some seven years and numerous opportunities have passed to solve some of the bigger problems or move forward all the while the bike corporation has been doing the same thing over and over again and they are not going to change.

so enjoy the 56 projects and the at times crazy situations you may ride through but at least know why…

and remember that people have died on these streets for nothing to not even be mentioned in the city bike plan…

…and wear your helmet if you want to.

The vast majority of my fellow rush-hour bike commuters into and out of the FiDi wear helmets. I’m fine with dismissing the safety concerns and mere ‘ancedotes’ of SF cyclists as long as there are compelling, fact-based arguments that neturalize the physical safety issue behind helmet wearing. Just implying they aren’t necessary is insufficient. Just treating the issue as one of “sending signals” is insufficient.

Helmets aren’t merely a signal to those who wear them–they are a necessary evil. They’re unfashionable, they mess up our hair, they get too hot, they are a pain to store. I think we all share the dream of a San Francisco in which the majority of riders feel safe without helmets. But right now, on the ground, the preponderance of helmets downtown amounts to a collective judgment by thousands of individual cyclists on the safety of this city’s actual cycling conditions.

Are we wrong about all that? Show us, with facts. Don’t just mock us and state your belief that more exposed heads on Market Street will somehow magically improve hazardous street conditions, dangerous road design, treacherous competition for space. Show us we don’t gain any safety by wearing helmets, and I’m sure we’ll dump them. Again, people don’t wear them because they’re fun or cool.

The SFBC Bike Plan disaster has kept this situation in place and even sanctioned it. Because you not only failed to substantively speak about the streets you actively worked against other citizens who were trying to do such work. Then when the law-suit came down you failed to speak in order to do anything about it and again worked against other people who were trying to speak. The streets are speech. Literally the streets are a form of speech. By removing the vocabulary of other ways of speaking and arguing against yourselves you have taken away everything you supposedly want.

Everything you took out of the Bike Plan is the key to everything you want. Its like you took the rational out in this blind pursuit of bike lanes. You empowered the system of thought arrayed against you. The traffic engineers aren’t stopping progress in this City, big bad ole CEQA is not stopping progress. The Bike Coalition is what has kept bicyclists down and created a situation where people wait in rapt anticipation for the possible realization of a 12 year old bike network. The Bike Coalition, its failure to speak and its unfortunate tendency of working against others who were trying to speak.

You mimic the problem and thus perpetuate the problem. Traffic engineers are not democratic, they are faux experts developed to take time and space away from the people, just like the Bike Coalition is not democratic and is instead a mindless public relations machine that monoplizes the political capital of the bicycle.

Suppressing reality is what traffic engineers do and it is what they are designed to do to justify the killer designs with mathematical jibber jabber. When the SFBC suppressed reality by taking actual happenings and actual speech out of the
Bike Plan they did the same thing. And in doing so you made your enemies that much more powerful. Your fear of CEQA of saying what is really happening in places like double turn lanes, strengthened those problems. No helmet is going to help in some of the most dangerous situations in the City, places that aren’t on your bike network. And analyzing those places, speaking about them is the key to undoing them.

56 projects, originally planned in 1997, this is the work of likely the greatest bike coaliton in the country, not because of big ole bad ceqa or rob, or not because you are bad people, but because you are failing to speak, preventing others from speaking and arguing against yourselves often without even realizing it.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/06/kansas-ad-bike-accident.php

Ride your bike as if you weren’t wearing a helmet and you’ll live a lot longer, even if you are wearing a helmet. And we’ll bring out more and more “normal” people, and the streets will be filled with people riding bikes as if it was a totally routine, civilized thing to do, and of course it will be.

Not true. In fact the EIR on the Bicycle Plan confirms what we said four years ago: a number of the projects in the Plan will have “significant unavoidable impacts” on traffic, Muni, and loading.

To do that you need to understand why the streets are dangerous and systematically work to undo the danger. Doing that involves speaking about the streets in a far more substantive way than having rallys, doing press releases and studying studies. Until advocates do this in an organized way there will be incremental progress retarded by bureacratic disasters and misunderstandings because you are not undoing the structure that is keeping you down.

This is seen in the Bike Plan law-suit and the worst thing about that is nothing was really resolved, it was just unecessarily studied. And now that an entire new full bike plan cycle has passed (every five years) the question remains will the next bike plan be considered within the same skewed and discriminatory lens. And what about all those other streets?

The reason all this has happened is of bike advocates failing to speak, failing to address the issues failing to use the available vocabularies to make change. And it will continue…

A good example even with the injunction is Fell/Masonic. For years neighbors complained about this intersection. It wasn’t until the City was presented with arguments for exempting from CEQA review/the injunction by various public committees that anything happened. The committees were successful in encouraging the City Attorney to move for change there because they had the vocabulary to speak. The City attorney moved in a different way seeking to modify the injunction, but they moved because of speech, substantive speech that goes beyond just complaining and pining away for the promised land where things will all get better.

Even with the Bike Plan lord willing, hopefuly, finally coming together. This is still a huge issue probably the biggest challenge facing bike advocates now. Because the coming bike plan is just what was planned in 1997. What made it into such a disaster is the failure to really speak about the streets. And such disasters will continue until advocates move beyond planning and press releases and use the available vocabularies to make real change. Right now the situation is such that in some places people are systematically killed and injured because the mode they use is discriminated against, forgotten, ignored. changing that takes more than 56 bike lanes and more than another press release.

Having lived in both Tokyo and San Francisco for many years, there’s definitely a difference. Bicycles in Japan are a normal part of everyone’s daily life. Most riding occurs on local streets that are very narrow, have very lengthy straightaways, and have pedestrians, cyclists, scooters, and cars all sharing the same undivided space. Also, the open rain gutters (that are very deep) are a big incentive for drivers to keep it slow. Cops are everywhere, too, in their koban (neighborhood stations).

When I lived in San Francisco, I used to usually bike without a helmet, but then again, I mostly just commuted occasionally from North Beach to just south of Market close to Powell Station. I think I would wear it for rides out to the Marin Headlands or things like that – any time there’d be bigger, faster roads to travel, or when I’d be actually mountain biking.

I got hit by a car once, at Columbus and Kearney, by someone driving pretty fast who went straight from the left turn lane furthest to the right. As I leaned left onto Columbus, the car slammed me instead straight north on Kearney.

What saved me was the martial arts training I had in rolling. Helmet or no, if I hadn’t rolled and gotten up immediately, I probably would have been squashed. The cyclist deaths last year, in the town I live now, were all of people who were wearing helmets.

So I don’t know. It seems to me that the most important thing is to just be present and do all the proper preventative things we all know how to do in city traffic. Maybe if we had a more chill road infrastructure and the bike were a part of most adult’s daily life as a tool, then we probably wouldn’t think about wearing them. I certainly never saw anyone in Japan who wore one, except for me – but I was riding an American mountain bike and not a Peewee Herman special like most people ride over there.