Monday, February 4, 2019

Bike Story

There's an interesting statistic out there which relates to this essay.  In 2017....within Germany....181 Germans died in a accident where speed was the contributing factor.  Oddly enough, 68 of those folks were on bicycles when the accident occurred.  Roughly one out of every speed deaths....were bike-related.

So you sit and pause over the German statistic and ask questions. 

I was on a level walking trail about four years ago, and two bicyclists were bearing down on the trail.....probably going around 40 kph (25 mph).  Both wore helmets but if anything had occurred and thrown them to the ground.....serious injuries would have occurred.  Part of this is aggressive nature....adrenaline pumping.  But another part of this is the addition of battery bikes which lift the speed a little bit. 

I noticed over the weekend that one journalist had hyped the idea of bicycle speeds now being necessary because of increasing deaths.   In some ways, you have to ask about the breaking point....where a bike speed might be necessary.

Between Darmstadt and Frankfurt, there's supposed to be several million Euro spent over the next year or two.....building this bike 'highway', and there's probably going to be two or three thousand bicyclist peddling along at 40 kph on a daily basis. 

Somewhere in the next decade, some political agenda will start up over bike speeds and tickets will be issued to make a point.....you can just sense it. 

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