Bicycle Safety Quotes

All that interconnectedness that facilitated much of the explosion of megawealth over the last decade also facilitated the interpenetration of everything, so no one or no building is truly isolated and 'safe' anymore. Safety is in getting along. (p.261)

It's easy to get carried away in the search for “experience.” I think that people boast of “experience” as if all experience is good. The whole world will tell you that all mistakes are good and all experiences are worthwhile. Nevertheless, I believe in an equilibrium. I always say “throw yourself out there” but at the same time, I want to tell you, that there are so many experiences in life that you’re better off not experiencing. Experience is not always a positive thing, it can affect a person in such a way that it is like finding a tulip trampled under foot, run over by bicycles and spit on. And then the tulip is set on a windowsill for sale with a sign that says “I have had so much experience, that’s why I’m more expensive.” But the truth is, there’s nothing wrong with being that tulip in the field, untouched and caressed by moonlight. Yes, we have the choice to make mistakes, but we also have the choice to choose what things we allow in to make marks upon our lives. It is okay to be untouched by darkness.

Teen drivers are more dangerous even than drivers in their eighties. And safety education, including showing teens gory movies of car crashes, has little effect.

After all, the media have been and are the major dispenser of the ideals and norms surrounding motherhood: Millions of us have gone to the media for nuts-and-bolts child-rearing advice. Many of us, in fact, preferred media advice to the advice our mothers gave us. We didn't want to be like our mothers and many of us didn't want to raise our kids the way they raised us (although it turns out they did a pretty good job in the end). Thus beginning in the mid-1970s, working mothers became the most important thing you can become in the United States: a market. And they became a market just as niche marketing was exploding--the rise of cable channels, magazines like Working Mother, Family Life, Child, and Twins, all supported by advertisements geared specifically to the new, modern mother. Increased emphasis on child safety, from car seats to bicycle helmets, increased concerns about Johnny not being able to read, the recognition that mothers bought cars, watched the news, and maybe didn't want to tune into one TV show after the next about male detectives with a cockatoo or some other dumbass mascot saving hapless women--all contributed to new shows, ad campaigns, magazines, and TV news stories geared to mothers, especially affluent, upscale ones. Because of this sheer increase in output and target marketing, mothers were bombarded as never before by media constructions of the good mother. The good mother bought all this stuff to stimulate, protect, educate, and indulge her kids. She had to assemble it, install it, use it with her child, and protect her child from some of its features.

Nonetheless, the bigger problem has little to do with any particular product or industry, but with the way we look at risk. America takes the Hollywood approach, going to extremes to avoid the rare but dramatic risk--the chance that minutes residues of pesticide applied to our food will kill us, or that we will die in a plane crash... ... On the other hand, we constantly expose ourselves to the likely risks of daily life, riding bicycles (and even motorcycles) without helmets, for example. We think nothing of exceeding the speed limit, and rarely worry about the safety features of the cars we drive. The dramatic rarities, like plane crashes, don't kill us. The banalities of everyday life do.

To use a very ordinary example, growing means taking off the training wheels from the bicycle. We lean into the potential of developing more independence and competence but must run the risk of falling over. Our safety is threatened. This challenging dynamic is at the heart of almost all of life. Often we prefer to play it safe by hiding out in what we know, rather than letting go and learning something new. It feels more secure to avoid change than to risk trying and failing. It feels smarter to keep our thoughts and feelings to ourselves than to share them in an intimate way. While

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs described the ballet that takes place on crowded pavements as people make eye contact and find their way around one another. I felt a similar, if supercharged dynamic coming to life in Paris’s traffic lanes. With cars and bikes and buses mixed together, none of us could be sure what we would find on the road ahead of us. We all had to be awake to the rhythm of asymmetrical flow. In the contained fury of the narrow streets we were forced to choreograph our movements, but with so many other bicycles flooding the streets, cycling in Paris was actually becoming safer. As more people took to bicycles in Vélib”s first year, the number of bike accidents rose, but the number of accidents per capita fell. This phenomenon seems to occur wherever cities see a spike in cycling: the more people bike, the safer the streets get for cyclists, partly because drivers adopt more cautious habits when they expect cyclists on the road. There is safety in numbers.fn7, 15, 16

And now for the Safety Pledge. This is serious, “Dr. Brunson warned. “You’re really making a promise. Put up your right hand and repeat after me: “I will cross only at crossings ‘I will obey all traffic rules ‘I won’t play in the street ‘I won’t play with matches ‘I won’t play around parked cars ‘I will never ride double on a bicycle ‘I will always be careful.

needs. Riding too far to the right is dangerous because you’re in the danger zone of poor sightlines and opening car doors; it invites motorists to pass too closely, and it takes away your escape route to the right. The correct lane positions described in this booklet are the safest and most efficient. Do not be intimidated. Take responsibility for your own safety, even if other traffic must occasionally slow and follow you. An understanding of road positioning makes the difference between stress-ful, dangerous surprises and smooth, uneventful travels.

FEAR DOESN’T CHANGE THE STATISTICS Fear about guns seems to be greatest among those who know the least about them. It takes some familiarity to know that young children can’t simply fire a typical semi-automatic pistol. Few are likely to know that the slide needs to be pulled back to put a bullet in the chamber. Those who do are unlikely to have the strength to do so. And, of course, they may not be aware that the safety has to be switched off. Maybe more media attention should be given to the dangers posed by everyday items. In 2014, motor vehicles killed 303 pedestrians under age ten.8 Bicycle and space heater accidents take many times more children’s lives than guns do. Suffocation claimed over 1,100 lives. The most recent yearly data available indicate that five-gallon plastic water buckets claimed the lives of more than thirty children under age five. Again, the problem with gun-phobia is that without guns, victims are much more vulnerable to criminal attack. Guns are used defensively some 2 million times each year.9 Even though the police are extremely important in reducing crime, they simply can’t be there all the time. In fact, they virtually always arrive after the crime has been committed. Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when one is confronted by a criminal.

Today the issues most vulnerable to becoming displacements are, first of all, anything related to safety: product safety, traffic safety, bicycle safety, motorboat safety, jet-ski safety, workplace safety, nutritional safety, nuclear power station safety, toxic waste safety, and so on and so on. This focus on safety has become so omnipresent in our chronically anxious civilization that there is real danger we will come to believe that safety is the most important value in life. It is certainly important as a modifier of other initiatives, but if a society is to evolve, or if leaders are to arise, then safety can never be allowed to become more important than adventure. We are on our way to becoming a nation of “skimmers,” living off the risks of previous generations and constantly taking from the top without adding significantly to its essence. Everything we enjoy as part of our advanced civilization, including the discovery, exploration, and development of our country, came about because previous generations made adventure more important than safety.

A prediction about safety is not, of course, merely statistical or demographic. If it were, a woman crossing a park alone one late afternoon could calculate risk like this: there are 200 people in the park; 100 are children, so they cause no concern. Of the remaining 100, all but 20 are part of couples; 5 of those 20 are women, meaning concern would appropriately attach to about 15 people she might encounter (men alone). But rather than acting just on these demographics, the woman’s intuition will focus on the behavior of the 15 (and on the context of that behavior). Any man alone may get her attention for an instant, but among those, only the ones doing certain things will be moved closer to the center of the predictive circle. Men who look at her, show special interest in her, follow her, appear furtive, or approach her will be far closer to the center than those who walk by without apparent interest, or those playing with a dog, or those on a bicycle, or those asleep on the grass. Speaking of crossing a park alone, I often see women violating some of nature’s basic safety rules. The woman who jogs along enjoying music through Walkman headphones has disabled the survival sense most likely to warn her about dangerous approaches: her hearing. To make matters worse, those wires leading up to her ears display her vulnerability for everyone to see. Another example is that while women wouldn’t walk around blind-folded, of course, many do not use the full resources of their vision; they are reluctant to look squarely at strangers who concern them. Believing she is being followed, a woman might take just a tentative look, hoping to see if someone is visible in her peripheral vision. It is better to turn completely, take in everything, and look squarely at someone who concerns you. This not only gives you information, but it communicates to him that you are not a tentative, frightened victim-in-waiting. You are an animal of nature, fully endowed with hearing, sight, intellect, and dangerous defenses. You are not easy prey, so don’t act like you are.

Perhaps it would be even harder for them to understand that I still love my country and miss it very much. I miss its snowy mountains in winter, the smell of kerosene and burning coal. I miss my childhood there, the safety of my father’s embrace, and sleeping on the heated floor. I should be comfortable with my new life, but I’m still the girl from Hyesan who longs to eat noodles with her family at their favourite restaurant. I miss my bicycle and the view across the river into China.