Boing Boing » cycling

BagJack: Berlin's handmade courier-bags

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 18:00:15 +0000

Conversations with William Gibson are always a treat. Yesterday we sat down for a chat after our joint appearance at the Vancouver Writers' Festival, and talked about everything from how dead people use the Internet to the existential dilemmas of hipster time-travellers. Somewhere in there, Bill mentioned BagJack, a German messenger bag manufacturer that supplies some of the biggest (and most expensive) Japanese brands, and from whom you can buy at much lower prices (though the bags still run &eur;150-300).

The handmade bags really do seem lovely. I've ordered one to try out, and I'll let you know if it turns out to be the winner it looks like. In the meantime, have a look for yourself (Bill mentioned the extremely clever tablet holster that swivels around to prop your tablet open against your chest, which is awfully martian in the very best way).

BagJack (Thanks, Bill!)

Cyclists are safe and courteous, and your disdain for them is grounded in cognitive bias

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 26 Sep 2012 14:40:51 +0000

Jim Saska is a jerky cyclist, something he cheerfully cops to (he also admits that he's a dick when he's driving a car or walking, and explains the overall pattern with a reference to his New Jersey provenance). But he's also in possession of some compelling statistics that suggest that cyclists are, on average, less aggressive and safer than they were in previous years, that the vast majority of cyclists are very safe and cautious, and that drivers who view cycling as synonymous with unsafe behavior have fallen prey to a cognitive bias that isn't supported by empirical research.

The fact is, unlike me, most bicyclists are courteous, safe, law-abiding citizens who are quite willing and able to share the road. The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia studied rider habits on some of Philly’s busier streets, using some rough metrics to measure the assholishness of bikers: counting the number of times they rode on sidewalks or went the wrong way on one-way streets. The citywide averages in 2010 were 13 percent for sidewalks and 1 percent for one-way streets at 12 locations where cyclists were observed, decreasing from 24 percent and 3 percent in 2006. There is no reason to believe that Philly has particularly respectful bicyclists—we’re not a city known for respectfulness, and our disdain for traffic laws is nationally renowned. Perhaps the simplest answer is also the right one: Cyclists are getting less aggressive.
A recent study by researchers at Rutgers and Virginia Tech supports that hypothesis. Data from nine major North American cities showed that, despite the total number of bike trips tripling between 1977 and 2009, fatalities per 10 million bike trips fell by 65 percent. While a number of factors contribute to lower accident rates, including increased helmet usage and more bike lanes, less aggressive bicyclists probably helped, too...
...[Y]our estimate of the number of asshole cyclists and the degree of their assholery is skewed by what behavioral economists like Daniel Kahneman call the affect heuristic, which is a fancy way of saying that people make judgments by consulting their emotions instead of logic.
The affect heuristic explains how our minds take a difficult question (one that would require rigorous logic to answer) and substitutes it for an easier one. When our emotions get involved, we jump to pre-existing conclusions instead of exerting the mental effort to think of a bespoke answer. The affect heuristic helps explain why birthers still exist even though Obama released his birth certificate—it’s a powerful, negative emotional issue about which lots of people have already made up their minds. When it comes to cyclists, once some clown on two wheels almost kills himself with your car, you furiously decide that bicyclists are assholes, and that conclusion will be hard to shake regardless of countervailing facts, stats, or arguments.

Why You Hate Cyclists (via Skepchick)

(Image: Cyclists Sign, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from kecko's photostream)

Lunatic SUV driver harassing cyclists

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 02:46:47 +0000

YouTube user Dfriel1 and a pal went out for a Sunday bike ride on a road east of Longmont, CO, when a driver in a Ford Explorer (license plate Colorado 893 EKG) pulled up behind them and rode their tails for five minutes*, blaring his horn and holding up the traffic behind them. Despite their having pulled into single file, and despite the ample room for passing, the driver appeared to either want to express a general displeasure for cyclists, or believed that cyclists should actually pull off the road in the presence of cars. They Colorado State Police have received a report, and Dfriel1 says he's located other cyclists who've had run ins with this driver.

As a Founder of TrainingPeaks.com I encourage everyone to get out and ride bikes as part of a healthy lifestyle. Everyone no matter what their age or where they may live should have the right to feel safe when riding whether it be for health, fitness or simply commuting to work.

Insane Driver who obviously doesn't like people on bikes (Thanks, Fipi Lele!)

*Only two minutes are recorded here; in the narration, Dfriel reports that his camera ran out of memory at that point.

Turning your bike frame into a woven basket

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 24 Jun 2012 19:00:57 +0000

Yeongkeun Jeong and Aareum Jeong created the "Reel," a bike accessory that invites you to create a woven container on your frame, using a clever system of adhesive buttons to keep it secure:

The concept is fairly simple. Reel comes in two parts: a long piece of strong red rope, plus a sheet of clear plastic buttons. Peel a buttons off the sheet and attach them at regular intervals along your bike’s frame (they form teeth to keep the rope in place, preventing it from sliding to the bottom of the frame). Then uncoil the rope and start looping it around the diamond-shaped hole that’s formed by your top tube, down tube, and seat tube. When you’re done, you’ll have an ad-hoc “basket” to portage everything from patch kits to baguettes (just like on the Tour!).
Although, to be frank, Reel seems like it’s tempting fate. Twisting a thick rope around your frame, only millimeters away from complex mechanical system that keep your body in motion in traffic… Well, let’s just say, we’d test it out on the sidewalk first. Ride safe!

Bike Storage at High Speeds (via Crib Candy)

Steampunk bicycle from Roger Wood

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 25 May 2012 23:13:12 +0000

The latest from Roger Wood of Klockwerks: "I was asked to make a kinetic Steampunk sculpture for a show in New York; here it is."

National Bike Month: Draisines are the new fixies

Xeni Jardin — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:00:23 +0000

Cycling Hipsters, if you were truly worth your ironic sideburns and artisanal grease stains, you'd abandon that fixie and mount one of these bad boys. The Smithsonian honors National Bike Month with a dive into the image archives for this photo, the forerunner of the modern bicycle: a draisine from around 1818. More about this "dandy horse," below.

In 1817, Karl Drais, a young inventor in Baden, Germany, designed and built a two-wheeled, wooden vehicle that was straddled and propelled by walking swiftly. Drais called it the laufmaschine or “running machine.”
A forester for the Grand Duke of Baden, Drais used his laufmaschine to inspect the Duke’s forest. The laufmaschine soon became a novelty among Europeans, who named it the “draisine.”
By 1818, the draisine craze reached the United States. Charles Wilson Peale, a well-known portrait artist, helped to popularize the draisine by displaying one in his museum in Philadelphia. Many American examples were made, and rentals and riding rinks became available in Eastern cities.
By 1820, the high cost of the vehicle, combined with its lack of practical value, limited its appeal and made it little more than an expensive toy. The two-wheeled vehicle would not become sustained until pedals were added in the late 1800s.
Donated to the Smithsonian in 1964, this draisine is the oldest cycle in its collection of 61 cycles. They reflect social trends and technological developments that have shaped the growth and popularity of riding since 1818.

Lots more wonderful old things like this in the Smithsonian's exhibition, "America on the Move." (thanks, Jessica Porter Sadeq)

Bicycle repairer pets his doggie, in Beijing (photo)

Xeni Jardin — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 03:04:24 +0000

A bicycle repairer strokes his dog inside a storage box on his tricycle as he waits for his customer in Beijing November 24, 2011. (REUTERS/Soo Hoo Zheyang)

Men and Motorcycles, Nairobi, Kenya (photo)

Xeni Jardin — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 17:57:28 +0000

"Nairobi, Kenya," a photo from Boing Boing reader Biketripper shared in the BB Flickr Pool. On the bikeflaps of one rider, "A Strong Enemy Is Better Than a Weak Friend."