Motorists Are Homicidal Maniacs

Cars are comfortable. Cars are practical. But this comes at a cost. Worldwide it was estimated in 2004 that 1.2 million people were killed (2.2% of all deaths) and 50 million more were injured by motorists. That’s a lot of carnage. Why does this happen?

A lot of accidents are caused by frustrated people in a hurry who forget that they are operating heavy machinery. People who would use the utmost caution operating a table saw will think nothing of flinging their massive tools of transportation at babies in strollers crossing the street. And they generally add insult to injury by honking at the parents.

The other day I was studying how people interact at the grocery store. The store was pretty crowded and some people were growing frustrated with their ability to get their shopping done on schedule. Occasionally I would see one of them tailgate a slower-moving patron and then zoom ahead in a huff. At first I thought it was funny seeing their little dramas, but then I realized that this is the same behavior I’ve seen on the streets, and it’s behavior that has seriously threatened my life. It’s one thing to bump into someone with your 30 pound grocery cart. You can apologize and move on. But it’s a different matter to roll over them with your 3000 pound grocery cart. And yet people approach these two situations with the same inconsiderate behavior. Scary.

You motorists might argue “Well I’ve never killed or maimed anyone personally. Don’t get all in a snit about it!” Even if you haven’t killed anyone with your car lately, you are perpetuating a system that is continuously threatening to kill. And this threat of death keeps people off the streets and diminishes our communities. Before cars you could walk around pretty much anywhere and stand around pretty much wherever you pleased. Now we have what I like to call Zones of Terror. You may have seen these zones—they are paved areas that surround our houses. Whoever lingers too long in one of these zones is facing severe consequences from their fellow citizens. Pets and children must be fenced in to prevent them from wandering into one of these zones. Is that how we want to live?

When you enter your metal box, you lose some of your humanity. You can no longer fully interact with me. I can barely hear you. I can barely see you. To me you look like a big hulking menacing robot. I invite you to exit the box to join me and the other humans.

Why Bicyclists Should Run Red Lights

I remember once at a party a group of people was making disparaging remarks about bike couriers, how they run red lights with abandon endangering themselves and others. I consider bike couriers to be graceful and heroic, a spark of joy and a symbol of freedom in a mass of dumb lumbering vehicles. So I couldn’t help myself from blurting out a response to their baseless accusation. I explained how cars in a big city form into packs at red lights, and bicyclists need to keep ahead of those packs. One way they do this is to run red lights. After running a red a cyclist is not in the way of the motorists, the motorists are not in the way of the cyclist, and everyone is happy. Everyone except for the bystanders who think the cyclists are doing something unsafe, when in fact they have found the best way to be safe. Needless to say the group at the party did not agree with my explanation, even though they themselves did not have any actual experience biking in a big city.

I am not the only one to come to this conclusion about running reds, though among bicyclists I think the idea that “bicyclists should run reds” is something we whisper amongst ourselves lest the children should hear and misinterpret what we’re saying. But ten seconds of web searching brings up this on the second page:

While we’re not advocating running red lights, notice it is in fact safer to run the red light if there’s no cross traffic, than it is to wait legally at the red light directly to the right of a car, only to have it make a right turn right into you when the light turns green. The moral here is not that you should break the law, but that you can easily get hurt even if you follow the law.

http://bicyclesafe.com/

Running a red light can be dangerous—and I am concerned that if I advocate it to inexperienced cyclists they won’t use good judgment about crossing intersections. But on the other hand, I think if motorists know that bicyclists are running reds a last resort to make the streets safer for themselves, the good people inside the cars will begin to appreciate the dangerous situation they are creating for the rest of us. A bicyclist running a red light is a very visible symbol of a transportation system gone wrong. A normally law-abiding citizen reduced to breaking the law says more about the law than the person.

If anyone thinks that running a red on a bicycle is dangerous, how about running a red on foot? I mean, at least a bicycle has some speed to get through an intersection. What chance does a pedestrian have for getting across? Any yet most people don’t think twice about looking both ways and then walking across an intersection if there are no cars coming. Many of those same people would be outraged if they were waiting at a red light in their car and a bicyclist pulled up beside them and then shot across the intersection.

Pedestrians should run reds. My son has been trained by my wife to wait at red lights even when on foot. He makes me wait too. This makes me nervous. This morning while we waited at a red, three other pedestrians crossed in front of us. Then when the light changed and we stepped into a crosswalk, the cars that had been waiting to turn zoomed through the crosswalk we were in. I don’t see how anyone can argue that waiting for the red is safer. Don’t take my word for it! Go out there! See for yourself!

Why do people think running a red is always unsafe? Motorists apply their own understanding of their vehicles’ performance to that of the bicyclist. They may be thinking, that bicyclist might hit someone! That bicyclist might get hit! The fact is, bicyclists can swerve and stop much faster than cars. And they are narrow. What’s more, if there is a pedestrian in front of them they can say “excuse me” and do the little dance we all do when we have to go around each other. Try that in a car.

And even if a bicyclist does hit a pedestrian, if the bicyclist is going a sensible speed it’s not a big deal. All that’s needed are apologies, not a trip to the hospital. (I do think it’s poor etiquette for a bicyclist to ride in the vicinity of pedestrians if the bicyclist is going faster than 10mph or so.) I am ashamed to admit that I did once hit a pedestrian when I was a bike courier. A man and a woman were crossing against the red in front of me. Not that I minded. Heck I do it myself all the time. I simply marked their position and trajectory and made adjustments to my own trajectory as I had done a dozen times per minute all day long. However the confluence of three factors resulted in my running into the man. One is that because they were crossing against the red my speed was greater than it would normally be around pedestrians. The second is that when the man saw me coming he jumped back into my trajectory. I still would normally have been able to stop. But the third factor was that there was a thin layer of sand on the road so that I had absolutely no traction. I slammed into him. He looked surprised. We both had maybe a few bruises but no broken bones. We apologized to each other and left. No hospital. No insurance. No problem.

In the previous paragraph I detailed how the confluence of three factors led to an accident. We can generalize this concept to help us answer the question “When should a bicyclist not run a red light?”. My friend Jeff has a theory that the bicyclist brain can only assimilate and adjust for at most two safety factors; if there is a third factor present an accident is waiting to happen. Safety factors include such things as:

• it’s dark out
• it’s raining
• it’s dark out and you don’t have a light (counts for two)
• there is ice on the road (this one also counts for two)
• you are going above 25mph
• your bike has mechanical problems
• you are lost and not paying attention
• traffic is fast
• the streets are congested
• there is an aggressive driver in your vicinity
• there is no shoulder
• a car is pulling out of a driveway in front of you
• you are running a red light
• you forgot your luck rabbit’s foot

A smart bicyclist notes which factors are in play when they begin a trip, and then as they ride they scan their immediate area for other factors. So for example if it is dark out and you forgot your light, DO NOT run a red light. Or if your bike has mechanical problems and traffic is fast, ride your bike slowly on the sidewalk. Or if it’s dark out and you forgot your light and there is ice on the road (that’s *four* safety factors), call your wife to come pick you up in the car (I did that once actually). So you can see there are many instances where the safety factors add up to the conclusion that a bicyclist should definitely not run a red light. What do you think I am, crazy?

I’m not advocating that bicyclists be allowed to zip through red lights with abandon. That’s not safe. But certainly it *is* safer to allow bicyclists to cross an intersection ahead of car traffic. Why aren’t there laws that allow this? Why isn’t there transportation infrastructure that allows bikes to go first? We already have special traffic light modes that allow turning traffic to go first. How about an iPhone app that allows bicyclists to activate a special traffic light that allows only them to cross ?

Bikes are different than cars. They need different laws to be safe. Just because you, in your car, aren’t allowed to cross doesn’t mean a bicyclist shouldn’t be allowed to cross. The main reason people don’t bike is because of safety concerns. And the main reason they have safety concerns is because there aren’t enough people biking to justify making the streets safe for bicyclists. Help! We’re stuck in a vicious circle! In the meantime those of us who do bike will continue to run red lights in order to remain safe.

Don’t Expect Apologies from Motorists

I think Gandhi would want me to make these posts less mean. But I think he would appreciate that they are provocative. And I have to say writing these posts is very therapeutic. I think I must have bottled up all the abuse I’ve gotten from motorists over the years, and now I’m letting it go, letting it go onto these pages. I’m sure there are readers out there who will think that I must be an angry quick-tempered person. Actually my friends think of me as unusually mild-mannered. In fact one friend once challenged my other friends thusly: “Let’s see if we can make Larry angry!” They failed. But for some reason I do get upset when a motorist puts me in mortal danger and I get even more upset with they scold me for it.

You may think my claim in a previous post that “bicyclists existing” makes motorists mad is an exaggeration. The fact is, bicyclists are inherently unwelcome in our culture. The following story illustrates what I am talking about. I remember once my wife and I were waiting at a red light on our bicycles. A car pulled up behind us and started honking and honking. When I realized they were honking at us I managed to squeak out something like “we have a right to be here!” That made the motorist mad. He stormed out of his car and shook his fist at us and challenged me to a fight. The light changed and my wife and I beat a hasty retreat. A more recent example: my friend and I were biking next to each other on a remote country road with no traffic in sight. Suddenly a motorcyclist came up behind us honking wildly and shaking his fist before zooming off. I can understand a motorist feeling upset because they have to slow down to go around (though it’s not illegal for two cyclists to ride abreast, just impolite if someone wants to pass). But a motorcycle! What’s with that?

Motorists often harbor the assumption that bicyclists (and pedestrians) will always stop for them since their car is bigger than your bicycle, so it is in your best interest to stop for them, right? I mean, you don’t want to get hurt do you? I know this fact from my days as a bike courier. I’ve developed a little dance I do for asserting my right-of-way just enough to encourage a car to stop, but not enough that my life is in danger. I do this by maintaining my speed while keeping a swerve space ready. Often if I suspect a car will cross my path from the right I move left. Drivers behind me may think I’m being erratic and unsafe when in reality I am ensuring my safety.

Once when my wife and I were biking toward an intersection where we had the right-of-way I saw a car on the right pull up to a stop sign. I instinctively moved to the left and prepared to swerve if they failed to yield. My wife however continued on. The car leaped forward straight toward her, and stopped within inches of striking her. In that split second I honestly thought I had just lost all hope for future happiness. I was dizzy with relief. I stopped and tried to express this thought to the driver without using any swear words. The driver didn’t say anything and drove off.

I lot of people will think I’m exaggerating in these posts. I’m not exaggerating as much as you think. The only way you will know how much I am exaggerating is to get on your bike. Try biking 10 miles a day for several years on the streets of a big city (except Portland Oregon ). You will see what I am talking about. You will experience not only daily routine abuse, but you may even enjoy some spectacular life-threatening experiences. Don’t expect apologies.

More “Should Bicyclists Follow the Same Laws as Motorists?”

This post continues answering the question from a previous post, Should Bicyclists Follow the Same Rules as Cars?

One argument I’ve heard to promote the idea that “bicyclists should follow the same rules as motorists” is that bicyclists need to earn the respect of motorists before bicyclists will be treated as equal partners on the street. Give me a break. First of all there is a demeaning attitude here that bicyclists are like children and motorists are like adults. Secondly, there is a hidden assumption here: motorists in general follow the rules and bicyclists have to be brought up to their level of morality. This is laughable. In our culture motorists break the rules so routinely they are no longer aware they are doing anything wrong. Ask your friends what their average speed is on the highway. Most will brag about how fast they go above the speed limit, and how fast they can get from point A to point B. They will likely continue like this until you let on that you are testing their morality. Then they will start giving you reasons why it’s okay to break the speed limit. I’d say the percentage of motorists who routinely break the speed limit is close to 100%. I know this because as an experiment I drove from Ithaca to Washington D.C. at exactly the speed limit (generally 55 or 65 mph). I did not pass anyone for the whole 350-mile trip. These are the kind of people bicyclists are supposed to emulate?

In our culture motorists routinely and blithely break another law: they don’t yield the right-of-way to pedestrians in crosswalks. (I should note that California is refreshingly different in this regard.) Motorists in my area feel their role is to “allow” pedestrians to cross if the motorist is feeling generous that day. Motorists have pedestrians trained to wait at the curb until the motorist says the pedestrian can cross. I like to disrupt this paradigm. I like to assert my right-of-way. When I step off the curb into a crosswalk motorists sometimes have to come to an abrupt stop. Sometimes they honk. Sometimes they give me a condescending wave of their hand saying they are allowing me to cross. Listen up: I don’t need your little wave. I’m going to cross whether you “allow” me to or not. I have the right-of-way.

Something about bicycling is inherently friendly. When I see another bicyclist on the road I give a friendly wave and they wave back. If we are going the same way, sometimes we chat (if we can hear ourself over the car traffic). But for some reason when people get behind the wheel of a car they become crazy mean like animals (although to be fair I should note that very few animals kill for sport). Why is that? My office overlooks a busy street in downtown Ithaca. Every few minutes someone honks and someone yells an expletive in response. The first someone then steps on the gas to make a loud automotive growling sound intended to express their displeasure and to surge past the second someone. And what sorts of offenses cause these sorts of displays? A car took more than three seconds to start after the light turned green. A pedestrian stepped into the crosswalk. A bicyclist wanted to turn. A bicyclist wanted to go straight. A bicyclist wanted to stand in one place. A bicyclist existed. Bicyclists frustrate motorists no matter what we do. So why should we follow the rules? We are cursed if we do and cursed if we don’t.

Aspiring bicyclists should know that there are deranged motorists out there who get a kick out of knowing they hold your life in their hands, and knowing there is nothing you can do about it. Some motorists will swerve at you just for fun. Once when I was on a bike tour in Alaska riding on a long stretch of lonely highway we saw an oncoming car in the distance. Curiously, the car changed lanes so that it was coming straight toward us. As the car got closer and closer our alarm grew. Some of us dove into the ditch. At the last second the car swerved away from us. Bicyclists are vulnerable to psychopaths, and following the rules won’t make you any safer. However breaking the rules might save you: I once had to ride onto the sidewalk to escape from a motorist who was trying to run me down. He followed me onto the sidewalk but I managed to stop behind a phone booth. Thankfully he wasn’t willing to smash into the phone booth to get at me. What had I done to him? He was angry because I had occupied the left lane in preparation for turning left.

I’m not saying all motorists are immoral or psychopathic. Some of them are also simply not paying attention. A couple of years ago in Ithaca a right-turning motorist ran over a pedestrian. The motorist was a small man in a big SUV. I suspect he had trouble seeing over the dash. After rolling over the pedestrian he continued on, blissfully unaware he had killed someone, until police caught up with him shopping in a grocery store miles away. How do you protect yourself from someone well-intentioned who doesn’t see you, no matter how many blinking lights and fluorescent jackets and little flapping flags you are wearing? You avoid putting yourself where the accident is about to happen. You make sure you are not next to or in front of a right-turning vehicle when that light turns green.

Motorists can afford to follow the rules. The rules keep them from running into each other and bending their fenders. For bicyclists the stakes are much higher. Bicyclists can’t afford to follow the motorist’s rules. Instead they must follow the real rules of bicycling safety: be alert, assert your right-of-way, get in front where people can see you, take short cuts to avoid dangerous intersections, keep a swerve space, keep moving, and don’t stick around in danger zones.

Cargo Bikes Featured on NPR!

Cargo Bikes: Riding with the Kids and the Kitchen Sink

I left this comment:

Larry Clarkberg (lclarkberg) wrote:

I like biking, so this summer I decided to do all my errands less than 10 miles by bike. I purchased a Surly “Big Dummy” cargo bike (which is also known as a “long tail” or Xtracycle style bike) for $1500. I regularly carry my 9-year-old daughter and four bags of groceries on my bike. Kids dig it. Because Ithaca (where I live) is extremely hilly, I mounted a Clever Cycles Stokemonkey electric motor on my bike. Now I can run my errands in any season up any hill with any load less than 400 pounds no sweat. Sweet.

Should Bicyclists Follow the Same Laws as Motorists?

As a bicyclist who has an aggressive biking style I sometimes hear people tell me (or shout at me) “bikes should follow the same laws as cars”. From my perspective this is a ridiculous statement. And yet even bicyclists say this. I don’t understand how anyone who regularly rides on city streets can believe this. I’m not advocating recklessness. Of course a bicyclist should look both ways before crossing. Of course a bicyclist should never endanger a pedestrian. Of course a bicyclist shouldn’t put responsible motorists in awkward positions.

Certainly there are reckless bicyclists who wear hoodies and endanger themselves and others. I am just as outraged as any motorist (though I am secretly glad that they are reckless with a bike rather than reckless with a car). But more often I see safety-minded bicyclists breaking the law in order to improve safety. I routinely come across situations where following the same laws as cars is absurdly inconvenient, unsafe, or even impossible. Here are some examples:

• Near my house there is a stop light that can only be triggered magnetically by a car. Whose bright idea was that? Pedestrians and bicyclists have to choose between waiting for a car or breaking the law (by humbly looking both ways and crossing if it’s safe).
• In Ithaca West State Street has many stop lights as a traffic calming measure so that cars don’t zoom down the street (as they are allowed to do on flanking Seneca and Green streets). Side traffic is minimal at all times of the day. Pedestrians routinely cross against red lights. I suspect the city wants to encourage pedestrians here, and having pedestrians illegally crossing the street is another method of traffic calming. Why should bicyclists be subject to the same traffic calming designed for cars? Compared to cars, bikes are inherently calm!
• One of the leading causes of death of bicyclists is motorists turning right and cutting off (and crushing to death) the bicyclist. When I come up to a stop light I like to pull ahead of the column of cars so that I am in front of them and visible to them. Sometimes (if there is no cross traffic) this entails pulling ahead just as or before the light changes. Also, turning right on red (even if it’s posted as illegal) is the safest way to get out of the danger zone. I haven’t been crushed yet!
• In Ithaca there is a confluence of three busy highways so dangerous it is given the sinister name of “The Octopus”. Even though biking on the sidewalk can get you a $150 fine in Ithaca, bicyclists prefer that possibility to navigating The Octopus. I once saw a bicyclist here venture off the sidewalk. He was struck by a motorist as he crossed in a crosswalk. The motorist scolded the bicyclist and the bicyclist (whose bike was ruined) apologized to the motorist.
• Another common situation I encounter is coming up to an intersection where there is an oncoming stream of cars turning left in front of me. If I try to assert my right-of-way the oncoming motorists sometimes honk and shake their fist at me. That’s if I’m lucky and they actually see me. When they don’t see me I have to use my momentum to swerve out of the way. I’ve had some close calls this way. This situation is caused by motorists blindly following the car in front of them while turning left (and often exacerbated by them talking on a cell phone). My solution at these problem intersections is simply to run the red light if I have the opportunity. That way I’m not in their way, they’re not in my way, and we can all go on our way, no harm done.
• Country roads have their own issues. I recently had to turn left on a busy highway. My turn was at the top of a hill, so instead of turning while biking uphill I turned before reaching the hill and illegally rode a short bit on the wrong side of the highway. I did this so that I could get across the highway while I was still going fast enough to merge with traffic and cross. I did not want to get stuck straddling my bike in the middle of a busy highway.

These last two examples exemplify a general rule of bicycle safety that they don’t teach you in school: there is safety in speed. It may seem counter-intuitive, but as a bicyclist you should avoid coming to a standstill. It is a sad fact that motorists routinely don’t yield the right of way to bicyclists. As long as you are moving you can swerve out of danger. If you are at a standstill in front of a car you are deadmeat.  Unlike a motorist, you can’t simply step on the gas if you need to. You have to use your wits, your agility and your momentum. And you may have to break some laws to maintain your momentum

This kind of focused and fast riding requires skill. As a bike courier in Washington D.C. and later as a bike commuter in Chicago, I learned this skill to survive, not to irritate motorists or satisfy some sort of death wish. In the book Pedaling Revolution I was pleased to read about other bicyclists who have also concluded that speed equals safety. It takes a certain leap of faith to go faster to be safer. It’s a leap that aspiring cyclists will have to make on their own since the prevailing bike safety philosophy is to wear lots of protective equipment and wait for cars to run into you.

Another lesson here: never trust a motorist to yield the right of way. Always have a backup plan, whether legal or not. Be prepared to ride on the sidewalk to go around a car that looks like it might cut you off. Be prepared to pull into another lane if it looks like someone might pull in front of you. Do whatever is necessary to keep a swerve space ready. Look around you, thing about where everything is headed, and “try not be where an accident is about to happen”. Motorists don’t have to be this careful in city driving since the stakes are perhaps at most a fender-bender. For you the stakes are your life. If you’re off the bike path, take out your earbuds, pay attention, and and bike paranoid dude.

Pop quiz: you are biking. You come to an intersection where you want to turn right but the intersection is marked “no right turn on red”. A car pulls up next to you and it appears they also want to turn right. Do you a) remain beside the car and wait for the light to turn red, trusting that they will yield the right of way to you? Do you b) pull in front of the car where it’s safe and wait? Or do you c) illegally turn right on red? If you read paragraph five above you will know the correct answer to this. If you answered a), it was nice knowing you and my condolences to your family. If you answered b), be prepared to take some abuse from the motorist behind you. But if you answered c), enjoy the freedom that only comes from riding sensible human-scale transportation.

Sometimes bicyclists break laws because our streets in general are designed as if bicyclists don’t exist. Here’s an example:

• Across the street from my house my neighbor Nancy used to yell at bicyclists riding on the sidewalk in front of her house. I told her that there was a lot of bike traffic on our street because our street leads to a pedestrian bridge. This bridge can save a bicyclist a mile of uphill biking. (Ironically one of the best assets for bicyclists in Ithaca is poorly accessible to bicyclists!) I told Nancy that because of the fast car traffic on our narrow street bicyclists preferred to bike on the sidewalk. Nancy discontinued haranguing the bikers and instead got the city to install a stop sign and speed limit that slowed traffic on our street. Now more bicyclists bike on the street instead of the sidewalk. (However another problem is that it’s a one-way street and they have to bike the wrong way to get to the bridge. Also bicyclists must ride on the sidewalk to get onto the bridge—technically a $150 fine.)

This last example can I think be generalized: if many fine upstanding bicyclist citizens are consistently breaking the law, there is something wrong with the law or the road design, not the people. Don’t take it out on the bicyclists!

Let’s face it, traffic laws exist because cars are lethal things in need of regulation; bicycles are not. When people say “bikes should follow the same laws as cars” I hear “once again we are too lazy to consider how bikes are different than cars and design our roads accordingly”. I hear “once again we are going to leave bicyclists to fend for themselves and then make them wear lots of safety equipment because we can’t be bothered to make room for them on our roads”. And “once again we are going to spend gadzillions of money on automobile infrastructure but for bicyclists we’ll paint a little line on the road and tell them good luck.” Bicyclists don’t have the same rights as motorists. Why should we have the same responsibilities? Don’t get me started.

The bottom line is that bicyclists should follow law—laws that meet the needs of bicyclists. This kind of law is still rare, but I’ve seen some examples lately: the sign at the top of South Hill that says “bikes can use full lane”; the sharrows on North Cayuga Street; the “bike boxes” in Portland Oregon that encourage bicyclists to wait in front of a line of cars at red lights. However, it may be a while before we have more of these laws made for bicyclists rather than hand-me-down laws made for motorists. The best we bicyclists can do in the meantime is to be respectful of pedestrians and do what’s safest, be it legal or not.

The Highway of the Future Is a Pleasant Path through the Woods

Let’s assume that over the next hundred years everybody does the sensible thing and lets their cars (including electric cars) fall into ruin. Bye bye Passat and Accord. Bye bye Hummer and Prius. In their place people will only use pedal power and electric bikes. Furthermore assume that these vehicles weigh between 15 and 100 pounds, they  are no more than four feet wide, their top speed is 20mph, and their range is about 50 miles. This is a pretty short range, so in order to go cross-country people will ride trains. In this future, train stations will be 1 to 25 miles apart all over the country. How will these changes affect our landscape? What will this future look like?

Roads, overpasses, bridges, etc. will only have to bear loads two orders of magnitude less than they did during the loathsome auto era. That is, they need only support 30 pound vehicles rather than 3000 pound vehicles. All this infrastructure will be correspondingly less thick, less expensive and even unnecessary. Goodbye clover leaf and other concrete monstrosities. Hello covered bridges.

In this future, snow will be white. No more snow gray from auto exhaust. And no more snow plowing. We may want a big machine to compact the snow, but our vehicles will be light enough that they can ride on top of the snow instead of having to rely on snow plows to laboriously push the snow aside.

Under this scenario, pavement for suburban and country roads pretty much becomes unnecessary. Heck, you may even be able to grow grass on your “road” if there isn’t too much bike traffic. Roads closer to the cities may require crushed stone. Only the very center of cities will require pavement. Our highways will be scenic paths through the fields and woods.

Roads can be much narrower. One-way streets will be unnecessary. Multi-lane highways will be unnecessary. We will have to come up with some use for the exorbitant number of lanes previously deemed necessary. Hotels? Roadside taverns?

A vehicle going less than 20mph and weighing less than 100 pounds can stop very quickly, can swerve around obstacles, and won’t necessarily harm something or someone it does run into. Flattened possums, raccoons, and squirrels on the roadside will become unknown. And in this future you will be able to let your kids and pets wander freely throughout the neighborhood (like people used to do a century ago). And kids will be empowered in other ways: since these vehicles of the future are not so dangerous as cars, kids will be able to drive them at an early age. Teenagers won’t have to wait until they are 16 to get their wheels. Kids can drive themselves to the soccer game—soccer moms are no longer necessary.

Parking lots will be minimal. The malls of our present era will look ridiculous. Think of all the former parking lots that will be opened up for parks and playgrounds. Get out your jackhammer, we can start now.

City centers of the future will be walkable. Traffic jams will be a thing of the past. People of the future looking at photographs of our traffic jams will either laugh or scowl. Why don’t pedestrians and bikes form traffic jams? A mass of slow moving thin vehicles can perform a very human dance to get through a bottleneck. Think about all the people moving past each other in Grand Central Station, sub-consciously negotiating with each other to get where they are going without stopping. Now think about the same amount of people sitting in their cars staying in their lane on a highway stretched out for miles and miles waiting to go forward. The future will be more like Grand Central Station: happy chaos rather than ordered misery. People will discover what bike couriers in big cities have known for a long time: it is faster to get across town going 10 mph continuously on a bike than going stop and go at 30 mph in a car.

In the future, traffic signage can be minimal. First of all, it can be much smaller. Have you ever looked at a billboard close up? They are enormous! But that’s what it takes to get someone’s attention who is whizzing by at 65 mph. What size does the same sign need to be to be seen by a bicyclist going by at 20mph? Smaller. Secondly, the navigation technology of the future will make it very difficult to get lost. If you can see on an electronic map where you are and where you want to be, why do you even need signs, except maybe street signs? Thirdly, slow-moving thin bikes make many signs unnecessary. We won’t need one-way signs since bicycles are thin enough to go both ways on almost all streets. If we’re all going less than 20mph we can yield instead of stop, so we won’t need stop signs or stop lights on almost all streets. And we won’t need speed limits since they are built into our electric bikes’ electronics. Think about what that will look like—a city without signs.

You might say “What about delivery trucks? What about garbage trucks? What about fire engines, police cars, and ambulances? What about tractors, fork lifts, backhoes and dump trucks? Surely you are not so naive as to think we can do without these things?” We’ve grown so used to internal combustion engines that doing without them has become inconceivable. Consider the alternatives. Do we need delivery trucks? One possibility is that we’ll just need less things in our future slower-paced lifestyle. We certainly won’t need mail. And we can certainly bike to the post office (which will be near the train station) to get medium-sized and even large packages. You would be surprised what it is possible to carry on a bike. I have seen photos of people carrying refrigerators on their cargo bikes. Do we need garbage trucks? If you know there is no garbage truck coming, you quickly learn to compost, repair, reduce, reuse and recycle. And you may suddenly feel like petitioning manufacturers to quit with the over-packaging. In the past what often happened is that if you didn’t want to repair something yourself the local tinker would take it off your hands. If there is any trash left you can take it to the transfer station near the train station. Do we need fire engines, police cars, and ambulances? Here is the only instance where I say yes we do. They can even be gasoline powered. All the bicyclists will get out of their way when necessary. Do we need heavy machinery? In the future agriculture and architecture will be much smarter and much smaller in scale. Today we harvest crops with big machines, transport them to a factory, package them and then transport them to a grocery. In the future people will simply bike out to the fields and pick the crops. Duh. Today we bring bulldozers, cranes, trucks, etc. to prepare a home for occupation. In the future we will simply carry enough steel tubing on our bikes out to the site to erect a modest geodesic home. A few more trips and we can trick it out with insulation, furniture, and solar power. How much space do we really need for living? How much stuff do we really need? If you don’t have a car to carry all that crap do you still want it? The future will be a time of reckoning. Like “I reckon I don’t need all these back issues of National Geographic. I reckon I don’t need my CD collection.”

It goes without saying that energy use for transportation in the future will be extremely low, maybe even entirely human power and renewable resources. Batteries for electric bikes will be charged using one blanket-sized solar panel per person. A day’s worth of sun would be enough to power several 10-mile trips. And a person can use the same batteries to power all the lighting, personal heating units, and electronics they need. People will be completely off the grid and out from under the thumb of OPEC. We’re already losing the telephone poles. There go those unsightly utility poles too, except maybe for the trains.  The trains of the future will require centralized power. However, the power can likely be generated from solar, wind, and hydroelectric sources.

Sound impossible? Believe it or not, the technology for this futuristic scenario already exists. It simply requires the will of the people to make it a reality. I gave up driving this summer. Instead I bought a “cargo” bike that I use for errands less than 10 miles away. My bike can carry 400 pounds up steep hills, which equates to two adults or my 9-year-old daughter and four bags of groceries. My bike has a top speed of 20mph (as required by law to be considered a bike) and a range of 20 to 40 miles depending on load and hills. My bike battery can be charged entirely from a solar panel in about a day. My bike was rather expensive (several thousand dollars) but if it were mass-produced it could easily cost less than a thousand dollars. But it won’t be mass-produced unless there is a demand for it—I encourage everyone to go out and buy an electric cargo bike.

When we became an auto-centric culture a hundred years ago we gave up more than we realized. We gave up the outdoors. We gave up clean air. We gave up quiet streets. We gave up safety. We gave up simplicity. What did we get in return? We got convenience. We got speed. We got unprecedented comfort. Do we really need these things? I for one want to get back what was lost.