It’s been awhile since I’ve had a chance to post any videos from my recent rides.
I ended up deleting most of them this past month as I worked to catch up from my recent involuntary computer downtime. And anything that didn’t seem all that dramatic didn’t make the cut.
But here are a few that did.
First up, as happens far too often, a driver speeds up to pass me on Abbot Kinney, then cuts in front of me to make a right turn. He might have gotten away with it if he hadn’t had to stop short to let a pedestrian cross the street he was turning onto.
If I didn’t have good brakes — thanks Chris! — and more importantly, been prepared to use them, this could have had a different outcome.
Note to drivers — never count on a best case scenario to complete a move you shouldn’t have started in the first place.
Then there’s this one taken the same day while riding past the VA hospital in Brentwood, in which I discover just how it feels to be invisible, by nearly rear-ending a driver who pulled out directly in front of me.
Same notes about good brakes and preparation, same thank you to Chris, formerly of the Westwood Helen’s and now a rockstar bike buyer in the Santa Monica store.
And by the way Chris, if you ever need someone to review anything…
Finally, my videos tend to focus on stupid driver tricks, simply because that’s what I usually encounter on the streets. And what shows up well on video.
Trust me, I wish the video of the idiot who nearly t-boned me Thursday by making a left into the bike lane I was riding in on San Vicente had come out better so I could show it to you. But even though he finally stopped about a foot from my left hip, I was looking straight ahead at the time trying to get the hell away from him.
And the camera doesn’t show what I’m not looking at.
But riding north on Ocean through downtown Santa Monica that same day, I was annoyed to find a parking enforcement officer cruising in the bike lane ahead of me, and started searching for a break in traffic to go around him.
Until he evidently noticed me in his rear view mirror, that is, and courteously — and safely — pulled out of my way to let me pass.
And no, he wasn’t pulling over to write a ticket; he gave me a wave as I passed, then pulled back in behind me once I was out of the way.
Note to the City of Santa Monica — if you can identify this guy from the video, give him a medal or a commendation or something.
He makes your city look damn good.
If only all your parking officers — let alone drivers — would follow his lead, the streets would be a much safer place for all of us.
A good rule of thumb for drivers to think about is: “If a cyclist is forced to adjust their speed or course so that you can make your turn in front of them, then it is an improper turn and you should have slowed down and waited behind instead.”
Another one that the SF Bicycle Coalition teaches taxi drivers is: “If you are making a right turn and there is enough space between your car and the curb for a cyclist to fit, then you are not far enough over.”
I’d like to see both of these make their way into the CA DMV driver’s handbook.
I like those a lot. Among the best explanations I’ve seen for how to drive around bikes.
National Safety Council might also be intrested.
The camera market is very new as reflected by your pointing out as if it was a given that you currently use a monocular version that lacks even 3d of what your looking at. I have encouraged teachers to pick up the home still I think half off for only them and the other three chosen job holders by HUD and in researching it noticed for the first time a blind spot shown as a colored triangle in google street view- not sure what caused it. IN recent years though there package has been mounted on backpacks but was huge despite that. As onstar is now free on our phones if we buy it’s brand, or horrifically the opposite of taken any stand, so to will the notion camera’s are pointed in a particular direction be considered quaint.
The goggles for example are if not just display devices dead on a arrival for not providing at least a rear view or do they? Frankly I’d assume they do and hope I’m not wrong. We also lack software for our desktop if not the cloud that will watch those views for us as obviously the reason your not having several cams now is because you can only afford to record what your already seeing for lacking such tools. The days where anyone can ever see anything happen that’s not also recorded perhaps should of ended a while ago- at least in public. I want the bumper sticker that says “you are being filmed!” and I’m sure such from the fanniecams have a huge market. Cars seeing us in nothing- we need cameras that warn of suspicous behavior, maybe even dial 911 for us when a car is following to close, matching our speed and not passing or will have no way of us or them avoid a collision. Make the call well before we collide- send texts, tell ’em whre the ambulance or perhaps just collection crew should come all while we are engaged in futile efforts to escape.
Having 4x video of five out of the next ten cars that kill us showing them doing it will be a major deterrent. Far more powerful then parents sharing what the kid who killed another was texting about at the time. I do disagree with the contentions here that people who drive cars especially in the city are victims when they kill with them or that motorcycle guy was. I’ve always taken the position that at the very least we can punish those who kill without fault very severely.
Recently I shared the story of the wife who was tortured extensively then hung in Iran. Only after finding my BP far too high and taking a very long walk, truth be told I left before night I think and got home before the sun was too bright, but otherwise that was a well deserved night out, only early in that walk, did it hit me, the signifigance of the fact about how her husband had been awaiting execution for a dozen years or so. For a few days the the two details had me apparently vacously ruminating. Now I could not be more impresed by how slow I am to figure it out. After a decade or much more she was adulterous. Her husband being detained for execution did not stop her from being married to him. So now I know why it was relevent he was also going to be killed, if after the lady, well after. Whatever he did didn’t entitle her to be a person, probably whether he was dead or alive might not of mattered. She touched a man without being married after being married! The grainy picture of her masked and hanging just didn’t bring out that detail. A video would of had me get it before she stopped swinging. Video is changing the world- it is letting us walk in other shoes, allowing the WSJ yesterday to point out that it’s resturaunts that should not be legal, as people have the ability to fix there own food now, or so those having a cow about those who even own there own bike get to use another. He argues in print- this is as far as I’ve read so far, that cars also take up space in the road. Only video though can point this out. More of us need to see the facts of what they do in our roads besides take up space. We need to see the emotion on the faces of those who are tossed far as they fly knowing that in maybe just milliseconds they will surely die.
As those who drive and have not seen this become rarer and rarer those who drive will as well. “I didnt’ know I was deciding to maybe kill someone as everyone is doing it” won’t cut it forever even in the lame box. I was saying that one fatality is enough- regardless of the details- if yoru driving down the highway, and some serial rapists jumps from the bridge above you, and dies before anyone could of even known he had jumped from your being there moving fast then that’s your first and last. No more license for you. If you think this is unreasonable it’s because you have not seen the video.
Death shoudl not be so easy nor frequent. The frequency alone, of not just those consenting surely, is a reason to stop it. Just stop killing people so casually. Stop teaching your children to kill not just each other. Don’t keep doing it because even if you only get to kill one, it’s not very likely, most likely, more likely then not, you won’t kill anyone not evne for 20 years of driving every day. This is not enough of an argument to allow us to collectively kill more people then any man has ever impregnated even in fiction. I don’t think there is a recorded family line with as many people as have been killed because we have built these roads and turned our backs to what happens on them in the last half century. Camera’s are needed. Chicago Sun in firing merely two dozen professionals maybe correct- we need a few dozen percent of us covering 360 degrees 24×7 and for there salaries can be so equiped as long as we can find food etc. on our own. These are our times.
When you buy a car your saying- since most likely I won’t have met the person who dies before i kill them that’s no reason for me to abstain. I’m against execution- but if we did shoot anyone and everyone in the cars at the scenes of these fatalities the world would be so much better overnight. That’s how much we suck- the notion we would merely be put down if found around would stop us cold. No need to bring flogging into it. Just for the risk of not living as long as we would of we would all live so much longer and better!
One wonders what the numbers are. Ten thousand? If the risk of us losing our life is one ten thousandth of the risk we take with the lives of others would that stop us? If a millionth? Of course it would.
Yet the reality is that when we buy a car, we are in fact signing up for a violent death of ourselves, to a statistical certitude that is far higher then what number we would say was sufficient in this example.
BUt the money paid to deny us this lesson ismore then ample. Madison maddens us in our every venues. NO one walks and talks in person. Stops because of what is heard. We say that’s Iran, as most of us every night spent hours cheering on the not even slut with the extra gas can being ‘played out’ in deference of the loudest shout. It’s just not worth chaning our ways at all to spare tens of thousands- hell it might as well be a million right? Overpopulated and all we are.
Survival of the fittest. Until we see them die. Blame them for being so holier then I- riding there dork kids wheels, just so they can claim there not killers- make us do the work, running them over, as nobody not even those driving we really see those moments of not surviving. The most important camera is the one on the handlebars showing our face as we are killed. Showing how most of us will say- even if I new this would happen, as of course I did, I still would not of traded places with whoever is killing me right now as state this. IN our pockets will be found the pledge, and in just months ewnough of us would of gotten these words video’d from our mouths onto the microsd card or even onto our facebooks before we hit the ground. We die because we are good. THose who kill us do it because they are evil, and have not been shown a better way or even what there choosing to be a part of yet.
Keep showing it.
Extinction soon of cars is the best bet.