When riding in the road riders should follow the same laws that apply for cars. Police should fine them if they break the law or take away their driving permit/bring charges, just as with cars. Some riders are very unresponsible and outright dangerous. Especially riding up to the light in a light controllet intersection, bypassing the line of cars, is dangerous. You never know if the driver besides you noticed.

Multi-use paths are dangerous. Usually there are way too many intersections where cars have to cross and the drivers never notice a bicycle coming along. Lots of accidents happen that way.
The layout of multi-use paths are usually laid out for walkers, so bikes have to accelerate/brake all the time or get off to cross roads while walking the bike. Not very efficient for those choosing to travel cleanly.
In addition the maintenance is much worse on those compared to pure bike lanes. Riding multi-use paths without suspension is hard on me at least and often there is glass or gravel in the lane as well. Sad but true.

Timbo,

sounds like you have been walking in London

Doug,

If you get a recumbent bike I advice you look seriously at these features :

-1- Rear suspension (either on wheel or seat)
-2- Dual drive propulsion (not only a back and front derailleur)
-3- Sit elevation at least 450 mm of the road unless you really want a low trike
-4- mud guards.
-5- get a rearview mirror


The reasons for this are simple

-1- At 20 mph every bump in the road is transmitted to your back and upper body. Without suspension this is not very enjoyable. Note that on a normal bike you automatically lift yourself out of the seat to soften the impact on your body. You can't do that on a recumbent.

-2- If you use the recumbent in any usages that involved regularly stopping for say a traffic light then the dual drive system is absolute king. (look up SRAM dual drive).

http://www.dahon.com/components/xl/dualdrive.htm
http://www.gstrikes.com/dualdrive.html

One of the problems with a recumbent is making a quick stop (emergency) and then being stuck in a very high gear and unable to shift down to get started again. Note that derailleurs require you to have some speed to be able shift down. On a normal bike it is much easier to drive really slowly and maintain balance. On a recumbent (excluding trikes) this is much more difficult and I feel getting away slowly and as the very last is neither enjoyable or safe. The light may be red again, greening the cars that may hit you and you'll have to overtake all others that waited at the light with you. The dual drive lets you shift down even in a full stop and accellerate away very quickly. OI enjoy doing this and actually drag race the cars for who is first at 25 km/h (16 mph).

-3- At about 500 mm seat height you can look the drivers of Japanse and European cars straight in the eyes. The very low recumbents like trikes sit so low that you'll be hidden behind car's doorpanels or are very hard to see overall (in their mirrors etc). Additionally, you yourself see more at that elevation, especially when riding along many hedges or concrete crash walls.

-4- You just drive through a rain puddle at 20 mph or more and see where the debri and water that flies around ends up. I feel this is a disadvantage of the trike design. You are right in the spray field of both front wheels.

-5- Should be obvious. You just have to keep track of the cars overtaking you and check that they move around you. Raising an arm and waving tends to wake up drivers who are at sleep. On a recumbent it is much harder to turn your head and look behind you; the rear view mirror solves this problem very well and allows you to be much more in control


Other then that; Speed is everything. The harder you can peddle the less problems you'll have with cars. People think that cars are fast but in my experience they only do 20 to 25 mph average speeds in urban area's. If you can approach that by peddling then the speed difference has gotten so small that there is plent of time for them to spot you and they actually have to stpe on the gas to overtake you.


I hope this helps

Wouter

Karl,

Of course a peddle bike is not a tool truck nor should society want this. There should be room for both. Those people who can cycle to work should and those who can't must be free to use the car. There are plenty of business case commuters in comparison to guys who need to bring a large tool set to private residences.

With respect to 5 miles commuting. That is a pretty ideal distance for a peddle bike assuming the roads to it are up to specs for bike riding. It is actually the distance at which Dutch research has found that people are willing to commute on normal upright city bikes. In fact, the average time lost with respect to taking the car was found to be less then 10 minutes per trip which is nothing when compared over a whole workday. Especially, during rush hour the difference can be small and often be less by bike then car. But I grant you that The Netherlands have excellent infrastructure for bikes often allowing you to take short cuts.

Mind you peddling 5 miles in 25 minutes is pretty slow for a person who rides alot (only 19km/h). Even when I go to the grovery store I do at least 23 km/h (or 20% faster). At first you don't or sweet doing so but after a few times your body adjusts to this effort and you'll go faster and start to sweet less or significantly later. You'll do this trip under 20 minutes; unless their is steep climbing involved.

But of course their are always situations where biking is not practical as probably your case is. The idea is however that it is practical for a large portion of the others. Those who can should. Other then that, laying down bike paths using concrete slabs or even asfalt is much easier to do then making a road for cars that need to withstand 18 ton trucks. It may not even be a very large expense with local communities to lay down a few dedicated bike paths parallel to the road.

But this is of course a chicken-and-egg problem.

Wouter

Awww, Timbo, don't be so skert. They put my arm back together after a car used me as a speed bump so long ago, and medical technology has improved a bunch since then. They could probably fix you up if you became someone's hood ornament.

ANd the new single payer health plan with foot the bill for you, right?

Where is that popcorn?

I think bike lanes are great and more effort should be put into this type of system as well as driver education. They are expanding bike lanes in my home county as part of any road expansion project. This keeps bikes off the sidewalk (now to deal with rollerbladers who keep knocking pedestrians over...) and speed limits under 45 make it more survivable for cyclists.

I have a nice strobe on the back of my road bike (embarrassingly old Cannondale) and coupled with a bright shirt, I think most drivers have to see me. I ride during non-peak traffic hours, and pretty much assume that any intersection I have to make solid eye contact with the drivers (in front and behind) so they drive over me making a turn.

I'm also lucky enough to have groceries, fuel, and a selection of local restaurants within a 1 mile radius of my house (with good sidewalks and bike lanes). Sure, it costs a lot of tax millage, but it should work in the long run to allow those who can use bikes for some things to do it more effectively.

I'm lucky enough to live half the year on an island where most people travel by foot, bicycle, golf carts or mopeds, and top speeds on the roads are 25 or 35 mph.

Mary:

I built one of those in 65. Took a bike frame and flipped it over. Reversed the petals and welded some pipe to fork and seat tube. Had to get a skirt gun full of ammonia and water to keep the dogs from biting at my feet. Bitch to get on and off.

Doug

Wouter:

Know anything about this?

http://www.bicycleman.com/recumbents/trikes/HP-Velotechnik/hp-velotechnik-scorpion.htm

Doug

Check this for urban riding. Drag Race NYC may be the best.

If the guys around here rode like that, there'd be no problem. That was excellent.

Here's a couple of my rides.

Do people really think getting rid of SUV's is some big step in energy conservation?

That would be like putting a teaspoon of water into an empty bath tub then jumping up and down while clapping excitedly about your efforts to fill up the tub.

A boeing 747 airplane uses a gallon of fuel per second. A 10 hour flight can use 36,000 gallons(150,000 liters).

How many flights are there per day in the world? Now pipe down about my SUV and its fuel efficiency.

Not in particulary, no.

There are so many recumbent models that it is very hard to know the complete scene.

Wouter

No, but rethinking is essential to solving the problem.

Here's the -thing- on the whole conservation issue, in my little, narrow mind.

Some day, maybe 100 years from now, maybe more, maybe less, nobody knows for sure, but some day, oil will run out, right? I mean it is a -finite- resource, right? Nobody is making more crude, right? So, even if we all conserve and ride bikes and buy Smart Cars, even then, some day, oil will still run out.

Then what?

Shouldn't we all be thinking about that day and trying to "invent" a new fuel now? A fule we can put into our cars, or trains, or airplanes, etc? Or...should we keep doing the same old thing, and just cross our fingers and hope there's enough oil to last until -we- take the big dirt nap, and put it off for the next generation to come up with new answers?

Personally, I like electricity as "fuel". All we really need is new technology to produce it and a new battery to store it.

You make a fundamental error.

It is not always the few big spenders that make up the largest single segment of use.

Sure an airplane uses alot of fuel per second, but how many SUV's are driving on the road at that very same moment do you think ?

If you have 100 flights in the air and a million SUV's on the road; which of the two do you think is burning off more fuel per second ?

Wouter

Personally, I feel fossile fuel are much to valuable to simply burn it off.

Note how many things are made of oil. Plastics, asfalt, carbon fibre etc.

It is far smarter to use something else for fuel and save the oil for the really high grade and valuable stuff.

Wouter

I feel most of this cycle has been solved already. The only real challenge left is the mobile storage of electricity (= batteries). That is really not up to specs yet.

Other then that, we have all the technology we need.

Personally, I'm convinced we all have to accept to "do it" with less. We simply can't expect to drive an electric F150 with a 500 mile range over the next 50 years. Electic peddle bikes are in the cards however.

It is a totally different picture when we all need a 2.5 kg Li-ion battery pack for our daily transport or a 250 kg li-ion battery pack. (Basically, the difference between a 0.5 hp and 44 hp average over a 50 km/31 miles range).

And of course you simply can not propel a 2 ton SUV on a "0.5 hp over 50 km" daily ration.

You can however have a recumbent bike do 30 mph over that range with "0.5 hp over 50km/31 miles" including some 15 kg of cargo in your side bags or child seat.

Wouter

Wouter, you'd have a coronary if you knew how much my pickup weighs.

Why do SUV take all of the heat in this? Its a free market, people will drive what they want. Does a Windstar or Odyssey minivan make more sense than an Tahoe or a Explorer? Honestly I don't see that many of the bigger SUV's, people don't buy that many Excursions, or Suburbans. Never really have either compared to the smaller models.

I'm actually all for the electric pickup. DC motors a f-ing awesome. Instaneous torque at any rpm. But Americans are terrified of nuclear power, and that is the only means of producing enough electricity to make it a viable solution.



Tim, don't tell the folks in North Dakota sitting on the Willsiton Basin that. You might get laughed at.

Karl, you really think I care what the people sitting on the Willsiton Basin laugh at? Is it a bottomless pit, full of oil? Or is it coal, being turned into oil? Either way, it's going to run out some day.

And here's something I've wondered about since I was a kid. They were building a Nuke Plant about 10 miles from my high school back in the mid 70s', the Seabrook Station, Seabrook, NH. The big fear was escaping radiation in the event of a disaster of some type, like Three Mile Island.

So why don't they build nuke plants under ground, like a nuke missle silo?

OK, being board to tears and living in the lightning capital of the world, why are we not looking at building big lightning rods that can harness the lightning strikes and store the energy in big battery banks underground? Free energy with every thunderstorm!

http://gas2.org/2009/07/13/students-build-hydrogen-vehicle-that-gets-1336-mpg/

1336 MPG !!!!! Now we have something LOL LOL

Doug