Have these always been these way everywhere and I just did not notice before? Or is it just a Venice Beach thing? The cycle icons in the lanes along the beach are wearing little helmets! Good for them:
(Click for larger view.)
Oh, this reminds me. Some time ago, I was sent a link to a “cycle facility of the month” page, maintained by the Warrington Cycle Campaign in the UK. Click on the various months for often amusing pictures positioning of cycle lanes and other facilities, by the local authorities. Here’s the link.
-cvj
If you are not comfortable on a bike with out a helmet dont go on please the life you save might just be your own
aaaahh gawd how i love synchronicity. Just as i was clicking to this thread, after the sci-fi one, my phone rang. It was a former student now in grad school in Arizona, who is at this very moment, in a sporting goods store looking at choices for bike helmets. They have a used supply of various helmets: baseball, skateboard, bicycle, hockey, et al. She asked what i thought, and i just read her Clifford’s note above. Must be something in the weather, or maybe the sci-fi is working its “magic” hehehehehhe.
Side note, the moment you really realize how important a helmet is, comes when one of your kids crashes hard on their bike. Somehow they seem mostly unhurt (road rashes and other bruises and aches aside), but when you look carefully at their helmet, you see that it has been cracked and fractured (hence no longer safe and reliable). Then you picture Amara’s metaphoric referent quite clearly: cracked lexan and ripped foam could just as easily have been skull and brain tissue, if the kid had ridden off without the helmet.
I’ve seen these helmeted icons before, in 2005 when I was on vacation in Pacific Grove. I noticed them when I walking along the bike and pedestrian trails to Monterey. I thought the icons were nice reminders to walkers and riders alike.
Here’s a page I found that has a photo of an icon. It’s been given a face — fun graffiti!
http://www.joeberkphotography.com/Coast26.JPG
Thanks for the link to the Warrington Cycle Campaign, which has brightened up my morning! The cycle facility of the month has finally convinced me of something I’ve suspected for a long time. Those with responsibility for transport provision *never* use the results! (In the UK at least).
Oh gosh. That’s such a sad thing to hear, and exactly what I was talking about in the comment above. Thanks for sharing that.
-cvj
Carl Brannen – I was going to UC Irvine in the early 1980s (I was an undergraduate in the physics department). The times that I biked there I was wearing my helmet….
I never ride my bike without a helmet, and I won’t go on a bike ride with a person not wearing a helmet either. I call bike helmets “brain buckets”, for reasons that you can guess.
I have held this philosophy since my active bike riding began 30 years ago, but it was reinforced by this girl, on the left in the white shirt in my 1979 goofy portrait photograph (she was the best friend of my younger sister). Ten years after this photograph, while the girl was a student at the University of Colorado, she had a ‘minor’ bike accident, no cars involved, where she fell and hit her head on the street curb. She suffered permanent brain damage and has not been the same since.
We’ve had the “yes helmet” “no helmet” discussion recently actually. See the comment thread of the post entitled “Bikes and the City”. Also a bit in the thread of “Just so you know I’m not the only nut….”.
No reason not to have it again of course. Quoting, with slight corrections, myself on the matter (follow the link to see the full comment in context):
Cheers,
-cvj
Back when I was a grad student at UC Irvine in the early 1980s, I commuted by bicycle and I didn’t own a helmet. I don’t recall anyone else wearing one.