The smile and flippy skirt approach to bike safety works best on younger riders--though I've no doubt it works very well then! For me, dignified silver hair pretty much serves the same purpose, though I think it helps that I also dress more for fashion than for sport.
I think a lot of the macho sport-biking traffic around my area comes from long commutes. No five-hour tours, of course, but many of the hardcore bike commuters here have commutes of an hour or more each way, involving hills, river-crossings, and state highways. I'm sure it's difficult to adjust to city-bike speeds when they get into the urban core. And pedestrians probably do look like mere obstacles. These are the cyclists who rail against separated cycle paths, too--they are pure "vehicular cyclists" willing and able to ride right in traffic. They want no money spent in support of any other kind of cycling but the kind they do.
I fear their acceptance of shared-use, pedestrian-friendly, slow-bike urban ways will be slow and painful.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2013-06-01 10:07 pm (UTC)The smile and flippy skirt approach to bike safety works best on younger riders--though I've no doubt it works very well then! For me, dignified silver hair pretty much serves the same purpose, though I think it helps that I also dress more for fashion than for sport.
I think a lot of the macho sport-biking traffic around my area comes from long commutes. No five-hour tours, of course, but many of the hardcore bike commuters here have commutes of an hour or more each way, involving hills, river-crossings, and state highways. I'm sure it's difficult to adjust to city-bike speeds when they get into the urban core. And pedestrians probably do look like mere obstacles. These are the cyclists who rail against separated cycle paths, too--they are pure "vehicular cyclists" willing and able to ride right in traffic. They want no money spent in support of any other kind of cycling but the kind they do.
I fear their acceptance of shared-use, pedestrian-friendly, slow-bike urban ways will be slow and painful.