California Bicycling Street Smarts
Posted By Sam Ollinger on August 27, 2009
California finally has a booklet for bicyclists on safe bicycling techniques on public roads and streets. Produced by the San Diego Bicycle Coalition, the book is modeled after the Florida Bicycling Street Smarts booklet.
The original guide written by John S. Allen was used as the model, but the California booklet contains the laws that are specific to California riders.
The guide is available to all San Diegans at the Bicycle Coalition offices at 740 13th Street, Suite 220 or at any of their events, such as the upcoming Bike the Bay ride.
I haven’t seen the book, but I’m curious: don’t you suspect that all this sort of thing — bicycle safety guides, the “bike courteously” campaign you mentioned in your previous post — are all efforts to reinforce the paradigm of automotive primacy on the roadways? I do. I wonder if they have instructions like this in Amsterdam.
Comparing Amsterdam’s bicycle infrastructure to San Diego’s is like comparing apples to airplanes. Amsterdam embraced the bicycle early, and essentially built their roads to accommodate cyclists. San Diego built roads for the car culture so many Americans are familiar with, and is just now giving cyclists a cursory glace as far as attention is concerned.
Amsterdam doesn’t need a bicycle safety guide, San Diego does. Without this kind of effort, we end up with newbie bike salmon who run red lights and stop signs.
Jay: Much of the existing bicycle advocacy efforts in San Diego appears to be based on, as you say, reinforcing the existing automotive paradigm. Transportational cycling isn’t anywhere on the radar, and recreational cycling is advocated on the basis of obtaining whatever crumbs are available to the small minority that attempt to search for it.
Furthermore, it appears that bad cyclists often wind up dictating the terms upon which all cyclists are viewed.
What made Amsterdam a success story appears to be their top down methodology in dictating who gets what priority on the roadways. Citizen activism does work, but to make it really effective, deep pockets or governmental help is a necessity.
I hope that despite the acknowledgment to the automobile as still reigning king on our roadways, the small nod toward bicyclists will be first step of many in making San Diego a cycling paradise.
Jay and C-Murder both have good points, and I think there’s a middle ground. I’d like to think we’re somewhere on a spectrum of bike-friendly cities, moving (albeit slowly) towards something better. There are a lot of attitudes that need to change first, we can’t just leap ahead all at once. Also, I’d like point out that the bicyclist featured on the cover of the guide is very clearly a transportational rider with bags, lights, fenders, a semi-upright bike. Now, I don’t know about tucking a t-shirt into shorts, he’s certainly not going to make it on any of the cycle chic sites, but at least he’s not wearing spandex.
Yea – I like the model. He has Planet Bike fenders, too. Must be for all the sea-salt here in California (I have 4 be-fendered bikes).