Heard across a street. Highly intelligent. A bike alarm like no other! $210 CAD. Direct from manufacturer: $120 CAD.
Updated: Sunday 24 July 2022
Landlords and Bicycles
Here in Vancouver, BC, Canada, some landlords do not allow bicycles to be taken into your apartment. Bikes have to be kept outside, or locked in underground bike rooms, bike cages, storage lockers, or underground/outdoor parking. The lease (or your condominium contract) says so. While the latter is not always enforced, it too often is.
It is so even in neighbourhoods such as the West End which are designed to be very cycle-friendly and pedestrian-friendly. Why this is, no-one can tell! Speculation spans damage and bulk. What the damage could be, I don’t know. As for bulk, well wait for the next elevator! And why prohibit folded, folding bikes!
Unsurprisingly, the West End is a hotbed of bicycle theft. Stealing from underground facilities is widespread. And the landlords accept no responsibility. Essentially, they are telling you to leave a pile of cash on the sidewalk!
Media
Well this should require no explanation. While nowadays, after decades of warnings about Global Warming, green-washing as well as genuine support for cycling have become common in the media, seventy years of cyclephobic attitudes, if not hysteria, fostered by newspapers (and especially tabloids), have conditioned drivers of living-rooms-on-wheels to feel themselves law-abiding, and cyclists as law-breakers.
This should come as no surprise, as the most significant source of income for all media, on-line and off-line, remains the automobile and the housing that goes with it. While public broadcasters might be receiving more funding from the public purse, reduction would require an act of Parliament, or some such, whereas annoying an auto-maker might cause cancellation of advertising on the morning after!
Via self-censorship, rationalizing your source of income, “Manufacturing Consent”, and hiring people who are like you, complex institutions slowly shape themselves–in this case, hiring drivers who fit in the middle class. And the exigencies of ‘engagement’ and ‘entertainment’ often call for a conflict-based narrative of us-as-good and them-as-bad, agitating the hoi polloi to shake their fists at those damned cyclists breaking laws.
The Laws
A favourite quote of mine from Beverley McLachlin, the retired Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada is that laws evolve through time. We can certainly see that in the changed attitudes of society as well as much of the legal system, in particular with respect to LGBT people, visible minorities, and even First Nations people, among others. Even traffic laws change: Witness texting and usage of cellular phones.
But with respect to cycling, we’re still stuck with laws which seem to have ingrained in them a 1950s mentality. Back then, the North American attitude was that bicycles are either children’s toys, or are for elite sports (on dedicated tracks) such as the Tour de France! Simply, bikes were not transportation, and any accommodation of them was an after-thought.
This has barely changed! Yes, decades of effort by activists and riders have slowly led to cities and municipalities developing infrastructure. But, the laws have not fundamentally changed.
The fact is–and the many dinosaurs opposing cycling will delight in this–bicycles are not the “vehicles” that traffic laws describe them as! Yes, back in the 1950s, it might have been a worthy fight to get the laws to accept cyclists as legitimate users of roads. But, now, a century after the suffragettes, this is as sufficient as voting rights would now be enough for women’s equality.
A bicycle is as much a ‘vehicle’ as an F35 and a hang glider are both aircrafts. In every measure it is closer to a pedestrian than to an automobile. In weight, size, speed, passenger capacity, lethality, distance covered, it is one or two orders of magnitude less than a car’s. And it’s about time the laws change to reflect that–for their role in a healthy society and a healthy planet.
Helmets
There is no justification for enforcing helmet use for adults or teenagers. This nonsense is based on cyclephobic attitudes that discourage more uptake of cycling, instead of resting upon defensible data. In terms of the numbers of riders, and the distances travelled, planetwide, for the past century, cycling may be the safest means of transportation other than walking. In fact, if we take cars out of the picture, it may be nearly as safe as walking. Per kilometer of travel, it most likely is.
If anything, considering the horrific injuries in car crashes, their speeds, lower maneuverability, and tighter lanes, helmets ought to be required for cars.
Anneke Beerten was hit by a driver that ran a red light in August of 2020 as she was driving home…she revealed that she has been struggling with recovering from a traumatic brain injury ever since. The 2015 Queen of Crankworx and three-time 4X World Champion has announced her retirement from professional sport today as a result of this injury.
Pro cyclist retires from racing when her car is hit by another car, as she drove home.
The accident cracked his skull in 30 places, compressed his neck, and shattered bones in his face and ribs. … spent three days in a coma, waking up with no memory of the accident. Doctors told Stevenson he might never fully recover from the traumatic brain injury. Skiing again at the same level was uncertain at best, they said.
Ski Competitor’s Head Injuries in a Car Crash
