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Parisian cool comes to D.C. on two wheels

by Harry Jaffe, The Examiner

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Paris has a few things we Washingtonians might envy. The Eiffel Tower, the Left Bank, fine cuisine at every corner - and those thin, stylish, bored Parisians who smoke Gauloises and sip Bordeaux at cafes all day and night.

On a more bourgeois note, I have been in awe of the French capital city's that allows Parisians or visitors to swipe a card, grab a bike, and ride around town to the Louvre.

Envy no more. Washington, D.C., is about to become the first major U.S. city to embark on "Velib" bike rental system, an automated bicycle rental system, much like the Zipcar program for cars.

"We hope to have it fully up and running by spring," says Jim Sebastian, who manages the District's bike and pedestrian programs. D.C. will start with 100 bikes in four kiosks; Paris has 15,000 bikes. "We hope to expand to the Paris level."

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Study ties time shift, pedestrian deaths

After clocks are turned back this weekend, pedestrians walking during the evening rush hour are nearly three times more likely to be struck and killed by cars than before the time change, two scientists calculate. Ending daylight saving time translates into about 37 more U.S. pedestrian deaths around 6 p.m. in November compared to October, the researchers report.

Their study of risk to pedestrians is preliminary but confirms previous findings of higher deaths after clocks are set back in fall.

It's not the darkness itself, but the adjustment to earlier nighttime that's the killer, said professors Paul Fischbeck and David Gerard, both of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
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How I lost 100 pounds

Wade Wingler lost 100 pounds through diet and exercise. What impressed me was how quickly he went from 15 miles to 50 miles and then a 100 miles on his bike. One key element... cycling is fun! Few forms of exercise are as motivating (fun) and practical (you can actually go to useful places) as cycling.

"At this point, I ride almost every day and I average between 100 and 150 miles per week. I recently told my dad that I'd rather be riding my bike than sitting in a recliner watching TV. It's the first time in my life that I've found a sport that I really enjoy and I'm pretty good at too."

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Don

Have you ever felt like you could fly on your bike? Well apparently these guys do too:
You Tube video - Team raybannovic entrainement

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The Road That Has No End

We are Tim and Cindie Travis, an ordinary American couple who decide to live out our dreams. We saved our money, quit our jobs, sold our possessions, and set off to travel around the world by bicycle. We left our home in Arizona, USA on March 2002 and have been on the road ever since. We have no plans to stop. This web site contains our ongoing travel blog, short videos and photo journal. We update our web site regularly, on location.

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PEDALING EDUCATION

By JEFF MAPES
Two years ago, on a visit to Amsterdam, I watched a middle-aged motorist prepare to turn right off a busy highway onto a street bisected by a bicycle path. Both the driver and the woman next to him craned their necks looking over their right shoulders to make sure they would not hit a cyclist.

What struck me as I stood there, only a few feet away, was that there was not a hint of irritation or impatience in their faces as they waited 10 to 15 seconds until the road was clear and they could safely turn.

That simple awareness -- and patience -- on the part of drivers is one reason why it is statistically three times as safe to cycle in the Netherlands as in the United States, despite that virtually no cyclist in Holland wears a helmet.
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Instead, I want the city, and ideally the entire country, to be a lot safer for all of us. The truth is that everyone is far too much at risk in traffic, whether in a vehicle, on a bike or walking.

Last year in the United States, 42,642 people were killed in motor vehicle crashes, including 4,784 pedestrians and 773 cyclists. That's the equivalent of having two fully loaded jumbo jets fall from the sky and kill everyone aboard -- twice a week.

And here's the number that amazes me. Last year, 2.6 million people were injured on American roads. Your odds of being hurt in a crash are nearly one in a hundred, every single year. To me, these are not statistics.
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As a society, we pay a lot more attention and money combating homicide, which causes half as many deaths as motor vehicles.
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One professor, William Lucy at the University of Virginia, has made a cottage industry out of examining the combined death rates for homicide and vehicle crashes. He found that the overall death rate is higher on the suburban fringes of metropolitan areas in Virginia than in the high-crime cities of Richmond and Washington, D.C.
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And this brings me back to that middle-aged Dutch couple, patiently waiting to make their turn. Part of their safety culture is watching out for the weakest among them. "There's a strong political and social interest to save vulnerable road users, to protect children, to protect elderly people," explained Fred Wegman, who runs the country's traffic safety research institute.

And in watching out for others, they are protecting themselves. We can do that here, too.


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