News-Press Sunday 3/8/15: biking safety feature:
By Janine Zeitlin,
jzeitlin@news-press.com
Six years ago, I parked my road bike
in the garage. Ever since, it's been barricaded behind rusty pruning shears and
a misfit boat motor. I could blame the near extinction of my free time. I have
two little girls, but I find time for yoga and "Downton Abbey." I
can't blame the lack of bike lanes. I live off Three Oaks Parkway, a breath
from miles of paths. The real reason is: I'm scared of cars.
I still putter around the
neighborhood on a beach cruiser, but I used to take to the roads with my
husband. He's a serious recreational cyclist —– to the point I long ago stopped
giggling when I see him in Spandex. I felt free on a bike. I loved escaping my
car. I got stronger each ride. On one of our rides, in Bonita Springs, we were
riding on the road because there was no bike lane. A pickup driver leaned out
his window.
This is my recollection of our
exchange.
"Get off the road!" he
shouted. "You should be on the sidewalk!"
I flushed with anger because he was
trying to bully me from a place I was legally entitled to be. Sidewalks are
unsafe spots for speedier bicyclists for many reasons, including the potential
for mowing down a parent with a stroller.
My husband suggested I ignore him; I
did not.
"We're allowed to be
here!" I barked.
"You deserve to get hit! You're
going to die!"
I will die, some way, some day, but
I didn't want it to be under the wheels of his truck. I trembled as the light
turned green. My husband told me to let it go. He's been riding twice a week
for almost a decade and finds most motorists respectful, but he has been bumped
by a car and has had his share of bottles, curses, honks, gripes and exhaust
smoke directed his way.
My reasons for not riding on the
road kept piling up. A ghost bike went up near my home. A pair of riders were
struck in bike lanes across from my neighborhood grocery store. A dear friend
was injured in a Naples bike crash. The News-Press police scanner chirped too
often with reports of bike crashes. Even Dan Moser, among the best-known safety
advocates in Southwest Florida, has had doubts. Moser recently told me about a
friend in the bike business who gave up riding.
"For him to give it up has put
me into a situation where I'm thinking, 'What the hell am I doing out there
riding?' The only thing that keeps me from just throwing in the towel and
jumping in my car for everything I do is that possibility that there are places
around the country that get it."
In those towns, cyclists and drivers
respect each other.
I want to live in a place where 12
people aren't killed in bike crashes in little more than a year; where a
government employee doesn't think it's OK, at work, to threaten on Facebook to
plow a cyclist off the road; where a driver doesn't fire shots at a bicyclist
who asks the man to slow down; where a motorcyclist doesn't purposely ram into
a cyclist; where a driver who just plowed into a group of cyclists doesn't say,
"I should have hit them harder" and where a driver doesn't spit in
the face of the maimed bicyclist she just hit before speeding off. These
reports span less than a year in Southwest Florida.
This is not to say all bicyclists
are angels.
This is to say they are more
vulnerable.
This is not an argument for
bicyclists to stay off the road. I know many bicyclists who are confident
there. I hope to be one of them again someday.
Be sure to watch the online video of WINK News' interview of Janine.
Reporter Janine Zeitlin talks about
Southwest Florida's bicycle deaths and the results of analyzing 5 years worth
of bike crash data. Video courtesy of WINK News
Janine Zeitlin is a staff writer
with The News-Press.
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