Bike commuting classes in San Francisco
The Christian Science Monitor is a very decent paper, in my humble opinion - better than any of the other national newspapers, in terms of fairness to what public opinion actually reflects. I’m glad to see that they are covering bicycling more, now.
This article talks about how growing numbers of folks are wanting to take bike commuting classes:
San Francisco - Like many Americans, Tara Collins hadn’t bicycled much since middle school. That changed this year when she started paying $50 to fill up her gas tank.
Since early July Ms. Collins has been biking to her job in San Francisco. Now she’s sitting in Bert Hill’s bicycle safety course – along with 31 others – after a close shave with a van.
Bert Hill is a certified bike instructor, and seems to be very active in the local biking community. Googling around for more info on Bert I found this bit on the Livable City Board of Directors page:
Bert Hill
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition representative
Bert is a bicycle advocate specializing in transportation and secure storage. He is currently developing a Bay Area intermodal bicycle sharing program, and teaches safety courses as a League of American Bicyclists certified instructor. Bert also serves as Chair of the San Francisco Bicycle Advisory Committee. Formerly, he worked in engineering and construction project management. He is a graduate of the University of Washington, where he studied Urban Development.
The article also gets a quote from a local professor:
Some cyclists avoid stopping fully because doing so means a loss of momentum that takes significant energy to regain, says Joel Fajans, a physics professor at the University of California Berkeley who has published research on bike propulsion.
“I’m in favor of this Idaho rolling stop rule because you don’t have to come to a complete stop to be completely safe,” he says. “On a bicycle … you are only really endangering yourself when you speed through an intersection, while that’s certainly not true when you are in a car.”
Published research on bike propulsion. Awesome. You can find more on Joel and his bicycle research here. Since we’re talking about Idaho rolling stops, you’ll want to read an article he co-wrote on the topic, “Why Bicyclists Hate Stop Signs” (pdf). BikePortland.org has a couple of older posts on the topic - one arguing for a change in stop sign laws, and one arguing against. More on the plan for San Francisco, including a video report, here.
I haven’t taken one of these courses yet, myself, but I probably will some day. Since I always end up talking about bikes, people often ask me for advice on how to do any number of things — it’d probably be a good idea for me to know the ‘official’ way to do things as well as what I would consider to be the best/safest way to do things — I suspect the two do not always coincide.
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