Bike bus participants hope that its growing popularity will convince local leaders to do more on issues like speeding and congestion. “We want to show people that you can’t have safe streets for kids unless you literally have people guiding the way,” said Chris Roberti, a father who helps organize the ride to P.S. 110.The school lost Matthew Jensen, an English teacher, to a hit-and-run two years ago. The tragedy galvanized the community to push the city to redesign McGuinness Boulevard, the high-speed thoroughfare in Greenpoint where it happened. These days, a bike bus passes through it, with a police escort.
It needs to be safe. I'm wary of an approach that puts the kids out there first and uses them to increase pressure to make the streets safe.
For now, bike bus routes tend to exist in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods. When a reporter joined the Bergen route, no children participated for its first mile through Crown Heights, where cycling infrastructure is less accessible....
Is biking a white-people activity? Or is it that streets in white neighborhoods are more bike-friendly?
Here's a WaPo article by Nathan Cardon from a couple years ago: "American cycling has a racism problem/How racism has shaped the history — and present — of bicycle use."
USA Cycling recently revealed that its membership was 86 percent White, 83 percent male and 50 percent middle-aged. Beginning in June 2020, Bicycling magazine gave space to Black cyclists who testified to the racially exclusionary nature of cycling. The magazine also revealed a study of police data showing that Black cyclists are stopped up to three times as often as Whites, and it reported on a recent case from Texas, in which a White man beat a Black cyclist while hurling slurs at him....
From the beginning of the bicycle revolution in the 1890s, White Americans worked to stop Black men, women and children from riding bicycles. This was especially true in the South. Threatened by the radical mobility of the bicycle, White southerners attempted to prevent Black Americans from riding in public and sought to curtail the rise of a separate Black cycling culture — the legacy of which modern cycling is confronting to this day....
As a symbol of modernity and speed, the popularity of the bicycle declined swiftly at the start of the 20th century to be replaced by the new American obsession with the automobile...
In 1900, the head of the dying Tennessee Division of the League of American Wheelmen concluded that the “principal cause of the deterioration of cycling in the State is owing to the reduction of cost of bicycles, thereby enabling the colored brother and sister to possess wheels, and as a result one can see in [Nashville] about ten times as many colored people riding as you do White people, and it is a rare sight at present to see a White woman riding a wheel.”...
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26 comments:
“We want to show people that you can’t have safe streets for kids unless you literally have people guiding the way,
YES! the answer, to EVERY QUESTION is: literally have people guiding the way!
No one (NO ONE!) can be allowed, to do ANYTHING by themselves. A paid person "guiding the way" is essential
Remember how it was, it the good old days? We NEVER let children out of our sight.. EVER
Supervised Guidance is crucial
I somehow have over 350,000 bicycle miles on streets without a problem. Giving the impression of trying to stay out of the way while not giving up the right to proceed is the secret.
Forming a bicycle clot in the road is not the way to go.
1. Cross out "bicycle" and put in "guns."
2. Cross out "white people" and put in "racist segregationists" or "long dead old-South post-Civil War Democrats with Confederate flags."
3. Look up the racist roots of "Saturday-night Special" handgun laws that used price to limit gun access.
4. Look up the National Firearms Act of 1934 (in FDR's New Deal era) that put a then astronomically high $200 tax on some guns to keep them out of the hands of low income people and the 'criminal class.'
This deeply ironic self-own story merely recreates the working-class vs. wealthy-class hobby and lifestyle divide. It's not mainly race. Wealthy people buy expensive things and do more things because they have more money, be they bikes or cars or guns or stereo systems or boats or travel RVs. Wealthy people also can create and choose to live in safer, more controlled neighborhoods.
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Regarding kids on bikes in the street, consider that newspaper "paper boys" on bikes were phased out because of many, many accidents and injuries and deaths. A 75 pound child on a 25 pound bike will lose versus any 5,000 pound vehicle.
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/newspaper-carrier-shot.php
I'm old enough to remember when the responsibility of a parent was to protect your children from harm and instill rational fears in them so they could protect themselves...
Ann Althouse said, "Or is it that streets in white neighborhoods are more bike-friendly?"
Probably not for reasons you're thinking. It's not about the infrastructure and more about the behavior. No sense complaining about crumbling sidewalks when the bigger threat is a joyriding out of control stolen car with 4 high as a kite underage thugs doing 60 in some places. God help you if there are speed bumps, they just might go airborne before they hit you too.
There’s a group of black kids in Boston who bike in a pack on stolen bikes like those ‘we own the streets’ packs of black riders on stolen motorcycles and ATVs. The bike kids pedal opposite traffic, run lights and go the wrong way on Storrow Drive. I think the only difference between them and white kids pedaling to school in traffic is they don’t have a Critical Mass lawyer driving along behind them like these white kids will have…
Do the kids follow traffic signals and rules of the road?
Or is this just like all the other pelotons on the streets?
"The bike kids pedal opposite traffic, run lights and go the wrong way on Storrow Drive. I think the only difference"
Yes and they do wheelies and head right at oncoming cars then dart away at the last possible moment. It's the latest Cwazy Fun Game for teens.
Everything white people do that black people do not is due to white privilege and is by definition, racist. I am surprised you do not know that already. I think it is a law.
Jews on bikes. Given the history of Jewish v. black violence (crown heights comes to mind) does NYC really want that?
In my neck of the woods, we have "bums on bikes". So its not a class thing. They use the bike paths to get to and from the Homeless encampment and to go around collecting cans. I assume someone is helping them maintain the bikes, but maybe not.
White teacher killed on a bike in a white neighborhood, and the lesson is that biking is racist?
If 86% of bicyclists are white, does that mean that 14% are non-white?
Isn't the black population of the United States @13%?
Am I missing something?
John LGBTQ Henry
I'm sure this prospect will absolutely thrill commuters.
Good way to get a bunch of kids killed.
"Giving the impression of trying to stay out of the way while not giving up the right to proceed is the secret."
I did not learn to drive a car until I was 28. I went everywhere on a bike. My basic approach was to act as if the people in the cars were trying to hit you, but not trying real hard.
>The magazine also...reported on a recent case from Texas, in which a White man beat a Black cyclist while hurling slurs at him....<
Oh no! White people have culturally appropriated the "knockout game" from Black people! That is racist.
This caught my attention for a few reasons.
1) I live in Baton Rouge which is the most bicycle not-friendly place I have lived. You can ride around most neighborhoods but if you try to ride across town, ride to work, ride to school you take your life in your hands. Every year several people are struck by cars, some die, especially around the university campus.
2) For five years in Ithaca, New York I rode my bike every day to campus and back. Except when it was raining heavily or snowing. I was in great shape, very thin compared to today. Of course that was 30-35 years ago. Age and sleep medications make a difference.
3) If it can be done safely this is a great idea.
USA Cycling recently revealed that its membership was 86 percent White, 83 percent male and 50 percent middle-aged
And, based on my experience in Seattle, 98% @ssholes.
How long, do you think, before a nut sees one of these processions every day and decides to rent large U-Haul and commits a massacre?
Is biking a white-people activity?
It depends on the purpose of the biking (my entirely unscientific observations/guesses):
1.) Transportation: low income people, disproportionately non-white. I often see Hispanic-looking individuals cruising along to their, presumably, based on outfits, restaurant kitchen jobs. Higher income people will blame "lack of safe cycling infrastructure" for forcing them to drive their cars everyplace.
2.) Casual exercise: this starts to skew to higher incomes, more white/Asian, but no where near as much as the next two categories.
3.) Road biking with cycling-specific clothing (spandex): this aligns with (or exceeds) the numbers reported by USA Cycling - higher income, skewed white/Asian.
4.) Mountain biking (including eMTBs): since this generally involves driving to a trail-head with an expensive rack to hold an expensive (generally >$3K for a decent one) bike, this activity is limited to those with significant discretionary income.
"I assume someone is helping them maintain the bikes, but maybe not."
Why would you "maintain" the bike you stole, when it is so easy to steal another?
The Gods of the Copybook Headings include Newtonian Physics.
Rhhardin is only 1/30th of the way to the average fatality rate for bicycles. Less than 1 death per 10 million miles ridden.
BTW, there's a term for these guys: MAMIL. Middle-Aged Man In Lycra.
Please note that when I ride my (40-year old Schwinn) bike (purely as a workout) I wear gym shorts and a shirt or my swim trunks (and shirt) if I'm biathloning.
In Montana if a kid rides their horse the school the school system must provide food and beverage for the horse...
I'm white, male and middle aged, so I'm right in that demographic. I've also been pulled over by a cop. Yeah, I ran a stop sign, but there were no cars present other than the cop car parked on a side street. I don't run stop signs if there are cars waiting.
As for the other stuff, cycling is not cheap. Given that blacks have lower incomes on average, they are less likely to buy a bike, at least one they use for recreation. Also, they are probably less likely to have a decent place to store a bike, so why put money into something that stands a good chance of getting stolen. It's also true that the roads in the suburbs are wider and safer than those in the cities. I see plenty of Indians and Asians riding in my area, so it's not a color thing.
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