Transportation officials have removed a growing list of safety materials that mention bike lanes from federal websites. Safety advocates warn that’s undermining proven measures for reducing crashes.
Here are the publications that matter. Everyone should be watching these for updates. When a change is proposed they hold public hearings that lists the contact information for the committee members and feedback phases open to the public.
Manual for Assessing Safety Hardware (MASH), 2016, AASHTO
These are the engineers who are responsible for running the experiments that determine safety standards.
Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD)
“The MUTCD is the law governing all traffic control devices. Non-compliance with the MUTCD ultimately can result in the loss of federal-aid funds as well as in a significant increase in tort liability.”
Notes:
- the MUTCD’s compliance deadlines are hard to nail down.
- each state’s regulatory traffic laws (search for “standard drawings”) often exceed the MUTCD’s requirements. Actually suing a state for non-compliance would be extremely difficult, but might be good publicity.
- the state’s DOT engineers can avoid having to cater to bikes or peds by simply changing the classification of a road, e.g. lowering the speed limit from 40 to 35 in dangerous areas.
My brother and I got into long distance road bike cycling. Lots of half-centuries and centuries and whatnot. We even did a couple of those weeklong supported rides where you just ride to your next campsite and Boy Scouts unload your gear from a big truck. I built an electric bike and rode to work on it. I loved bicycles.
My dad died in 2019. He was a huge Trump supporter. He wore the hat. He drove a big dually diesel truck and he thought that coal rolling cyclists and passing by way too close and way too aggressively was the funniest thing imaginable, even when my brother and I both were with him. And then later he’d email us something about a big ride like RAGBRAI and say that looks petty cool.
For a while I used to wonder what he’d think about all this shit that’s going on now and hope that he’d be like, nope, this is not it. But I know for sure that he would have loved this news about the government’s official position to objectify cyclists as nuisances and bike lanes as libtarded DEI waste. He would have sent me 10 email forwards about it. So I don’t wonder about that anymore.
For all the talk about how Trump is losing support among magas for whatever current madness has finally affected them enough to make them feel uncomfortable about something, news like this where people you already don’t like will be punished, made to suffer, or forced to carry a greater burden is the kind of primal bridge that will always keep that command channel open to him in their minds and hearts.
I’m sure that was hard to write, but I read it and I’m glad you shared it.
Yeah, hey, thanks for reading all that. I did not intend to actually write something meaningful here but it did kind of become that. I am usually a “scoff at topic” kind of commenter, and I don’t even usually press submit on the stuff that I do write. Reading this article just made it feel like there are all these deeply significant, stupid changes happening right now that I have no real control over and I can see how all these will all become overwhelming. The end state of flooding the zone with shit. I can just imagine my dad allowing the world to become worse just so he can know from afar that somebody else got whatever thought they deserved. And then multiplying that by some millions coefficient to approach reality.
Excuse me?
“Since nearly 80% of the population uses cars to get to work and their important medical appointments, we are taking a closer look at federal guidance to ensure American families have the infrastructure they need,” the spokesperson said. “This is a common sense approach despite the Left’s belief that everyone should ride a bike to their shoebox-sized apartment to eat crickets to achieve a phony climate agenda.”
How does this guy even tie his shoelaces? Wait, I bet he uses Velcro shoes because laces are a leftist conspiracy because reasons
He has zip up pockets on his Velcro shoes to store the tidbits received in payment
Let’s put aside whether or not cars or bikes are “better” and consider the fact that, due to conservative agenda that concentrates wealth in the hands of the few, many people can’t afford to drive a car. Should those people be left behind? I’m sure the answer is yes, because, again, the conservative agenda.
The answer is actually, at least for some, “simply live at work instead”. I think Walmart or Amazon were trialing pod-living-spaces for employees at warehouses.
Should those people be left behind?
Left behind?
Left
COMMUNISM CONFIRMED
Bicycles are a plot!
I actually saw someone claim bike lanes are DEI, apparently in earnest.
These people just parrot. No conscious thought.
They can only think in memes.
Or sound bites.
Oh and we all remember how bicycles helped liberate women, by giving them mobility they did not previously have.
