Last week a moped car ( a lightweight, fourwheel vehicle that looks like a car but goes only 45 km/h) crashed with an ambulance on an emergency. Two were killed.
Car drivers seem to be annoyed with such imposters and complain about their lack of training, running red lights etc. Pretty much the same complaints they have with mopeds and cyclists ( and pedestrians, too).
The police put a comment on their web page about microcars and their accidents. The insurance claims for accidents for microcars are 1 per ten vehicles, cars are 1 per 42 cars and mopeds 1 per 50. So the moped cars are four or five times more often in accidents that cars. Injury rates for microcars are about the same, both are two or three times worse than people in cars. The cars have a better steel cage. :-/
Microcar accidents are often at intersections or rearendings. Both are symptoms of lack of experience on the part of the driver (mostly teenagers). Also because most moped cars are in cities which have intersections and other cars to rear end with.
And more often than not the driver is at fault. Before only a theory test was needed to get a drivers license for a microcar. The regulations have been tightened and now there's also a driving exam which should help a little.
Thursday, June 28, 2012
Thursday, June 21, 2012
Summer Schedule
You'll find there will be less updates during the summer. I''ve decided to limit my time on the computer in the summer and I'm out there enjoying the sun and warm weather while they last. Including riding a bike at midnight.
The Midsummer Day is a few days and as some people already say the summer is almost over after that and the winter is coming back. Not everyone wants to hear that before they even have had their summer holidays in June. :-) Although it's true!
Right now there's lots of flowers and trees in blossom like the rowan in the photo. Smells nice too!
Enjoy your summer, folks!
The Midsummer Day is a few days and as some people already say the summer is almost over after that and the winter is coming back. Not everyone wants to hear that before they even have had their summer holidays in June. :-) Although it's true!
Enjoy your summer, folks!
Saturday, June 02, 2012
Riding in the noise
Another boring video clip to keep you entertained. This one is from a ride from a few weeks back, when the grass was still brown. The chunks of ice in the underpasses had melted though, so it must have been May.
It may look like it but this is not out of the city, but it certainly is out of the downtown grid streets. Maybe it'd be the suburbs then. Noisy motorway is not a nice thing to live next to, so very often there's a noise wall or some woods to give some protection. Maybe I should've included a clip from the non-short-cut route to see if the noise levels are noticeably lower.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Construction blocks the path
In the last few weeks several blogs have posted videos of construction blocking the bikeways. As expected, in the Netherlands there usually is a good alternate route with clear signage.
A few days ago the path near a supermarket was closed by construction huts. So the next time I took the camera with me to get a video. Starts with a good, wide bikeway...
When there was only the huts, I got around them by going left through the empty parking lot that is hardly ever used. On a later ride, they had put a fence around the work area. Nobody wants people milling about their work space, and especially not when you're working on ladders. So now I had to ride through the car park on the right. Oh, the horror. :-)
How about the signage? Well, there was the rather useless round red-and-yellow sign saying you can't go through here. Some kind of arrow pointing which way to go would have been nice so I wouldn't have tried going left first. And there was no sign for drivers to look out for people going around the fence, but maybe they expected the drivers to use their brains and do it anyway. There are no temporary paths marked by bollards or fences or any limitations on the parking so the drivers are not inconvenienced by the construction.
Sure, this is only one of the three routes for bikes and pedestrians (not counting going through the parking lot). So maybe there could have been a detour sign earlier, like 50 meters before the beginning of the video where I could have turned right and taken the other route.
And another clip to provide some comic relief for an otherwise gloomy post. Evening sunshine (the video was shot after 7pm yesterday) , green grass, new leaves growing on the trees and...
A few days ago the path near a supermarket was closed by construction huts. So the next time I took the camera with me to get a video. Starts with a good, wide bikeway...
When there was only the huts, I got around them by going left through the empty parking lot that is hardly ever used. On a later ride, they had put a fence around the work area. Nobody wants people milling about their work space, and especially not when you're working on ladders. So now I had to ride through the car park on the right. Oh, the horror. :-)
How about the signage? Well, there was the rather useless round red-and-yellow sign saying you can't go through here. Some kind of arrow pointing which way to go would have been nice so I wouldn't have tried going left first. And there was no sign for drivers to look out for people going around the fence, but maybe they expected the drivers to use their brains and do it anyway. There are no temporary paths marked by bollards or fences or any limitations on the parking so the drivers are not inconvenienced by the construction.
Sure, this is only one of the three routes for bikes and pedestrians (not counting going through the parking lot). So maybe there could have been a detour sign earlier, like 50 meters before the beginning of the video where I could have turned right and taken the other route.
And another clip to provide some comic relief for an otherwise gloomy post. Evening sunshine (the video was shot after 7pm yesterday) , green grass, new leaves growing on the trees and...
Thursday, May 10, 2012
Mopeds out of bikeways: less accidents
The Finnish traffic law says mopeds are allowed on bikeways (MUP's) if there is a sign saying so. Often the sign is there.
For a few years there was loud complaints and public discussion in the local newspaper about youngsters riding noisy mopeds too fast on the bikeways and too close to other users of the paths giving them a scare. Part of the problem was that moped users rarely seemed to slow down, they liked to ride full throttle everywhere, including underpasses and tight corners with limited visibility. (Car drivers go faster it the road is wide. Maybe the same is true for mopedists: our bikeways are too wide?)
The other part was that the speed differential with other users of the MUPs was too big. A moped has a max. 50 cm3 (or 4 kW if electric) engine and has a maximum speed of 45 km/h. It is rather easy to do some changes to make the moped go faster (60? 80?). And who would be likely to tune up their moped to go faster? Maybe the reckless youngsters. Mopeds going over 45 km/h among pedestrians... not good!
In August 2010, most of those signs were removed in Oulu and mopeds had to ride on the streets (default speed limit in urban areas is 50km/h, could also be 40km/h or 30km/h) and on roads with speed limits of 60km/h or less. If the speed limit was higher and there was no other route, they were allowed on bikeways next to the road. It's the speed differential thing again, only mopeds are the slow vehicle this time.
There was another cry in August 2010: the mopedists would be slaughtered by the cars. Some parents were afraid their kids would get hurt if they had to use the streets. Others said the reckless mopedists don't know traffic rules and shouldn't be allowed on the roads.
A research comparing injuries before and after the change shows safety improved 70%, says the local newspaper. I haven't seen the article in print, but the short web clip says in the year before the change (Aug 2009-Jul 2010) there was 53 injuries involving mopeds. A year later the figure was only 16!
Unfortunately the short version of the article on the web page doesn't give exact figures for pedestrian, cyclists and mopedist injuries in moped related crashes. So I can't tell you how many less grannies were mowed down by the mopedists. Neither can I tell you if there has been a decline in trips taken or kilometers travelled by moped. Fuel prices have gone up, but the mopeds are not exactly gas guzzlers.
One might make an educated guess that there might be less mopeds in the winter than the previous year. The moped riders had to move from well gritted and snowplowed bikeways to icy, rutted streets and roads, which are not gritted or plowed well enough for two-wheeled vehicles. On the other hand, riding a moped in the winter is very cold. You're just sitting there and you're not getting heat by using your muscles like when biking. And what I recall, there weren't that many moped users in the winter anyway.
Anybody who has been reading Hembrow's blog knows he has written how in the NL the different modes (or speeds) of traffic are often kept separate to reduce conflict and damages done by a collision. Their bike paths for bikes only are world famous.
Unfortunately, in Finland many politicians and traffic planners think streets are for cars and they use 'light traffic roads' (also known as MUP, multi-use paths )for everything else. Looking from the windshield perspective it seems dangerous to have unarmored mopeds on the streets, they might get hurt! Not to mention they are slowing down the traffic! This is why allowing mopeds on MUPs has been widespread even if it puts fast moving mopeds among dogwalkers and kids and grannies.
On the other hand mixing pedestrians and cyclists does work, sort of, if the MUP is wide enough and there isn't too many of them. If the traffic is heavy, the modes should be split, to reduce conflict and smooth the bicycle traffic flow, just like they do in the Netherlands! :-)
Now that Oulu has shown the example and has statistics to show it works and is safe, some other cities are doing the same. It certainly has calmed down our bikeways when the noisy contraptions are gone!
For a few years there was loud complaints and public discussion in the local newspaper about youngsters riding noisy mopeds too fast on the bikeways and too close to other users of the paths giving them a scare. Part of the problem was that moped users rarely seemed to slow down, they liked to ride full throttle everywhere, including underpasses and tight corners with limited visibility. (Car drivers go faster it the road is wide. Maybe the same is true for mopedists: our bikeways are too wide?)
The other part was that the speed differential with other users of the MUPs was too big. A moped has a max. 50 cm3 (or 4 kW if electric) engine and has a maximum speed of 45 km/h. It is rather easy to do some changes to make the moped go faster (60? 80?). And who would be likely to tune up their moped to go faster? Maybe the reckless youngsters. Mopeds going over 45 km/h among pedestrians... not good!
In August 2010, most of those signs were removed in Oulu and mopeds had to ride on the streets (default speed limit in urban areas is 50km/h, could also be 40km/h or 30km/h) and on roads with speed limits of 60km/h or less. If the speed limit was higher and there was no other route, they were allowed on bikeways next to the road. It's the speed differential thing again, only mopeds are the slow vehicle this time.
There was another cry in August 2010: the mopedists would be slaughtered by the cars. Some parents were afraid their kids would get hurt if they had to use the streets. Others said the reckless mopedists don't know traffic rules and shouldn't be allowed on the roads.
A research comparing injuries before and after the change shows safety improved 70%, says the local newspaper. I haven't seen the article in print, but the short web clip says in the year before the change (Aug 2009-Jul 2010) there was 53 injuries involving mopeds. A year later the figure was only 16!
Unfortunately the short version of the article on the web page doesn't give exact figures for pedestrian, cyclists and mopedist injuries in moped related crashes. So I can't tell you how many less grannies were mowed down by the mopedists. Neither can I tell you if there has been a decline in trips taken or kilometers travelled by moped. Fuel prices have gone up, but the mopeds are not exactly gas guzzlers.
One might make an educated guess that there might be less mopeds in the winter than the previous year. The moped riders had to move from well gritted and snowplowed bikeways to icy, rutted streets and roads, which are not gritted or plowed well enough for two-wheeled vehicles. On the other hand, riding a moped in the winter is very cold. You're just sitting there and you're not getting heat by using your muscles like when biking. And what I recall, there weren't that many moped users in the winter anyway.
Anybody who has been reading Hembrow's blog knows he has written how in the NL the different modes (or speeds) of traffic are often kept separate to reduce conflict and damages done by a collision. Their bike paths for bikes only are world famous.
Unfortunately, in Finland many politicians and traffic planners think streets are for cars and they use 'light traffic roads' (also known as MUP, multi-use paths )for everything else. Looking from the windshield perspective it seems dangerous to have unarmored mopeds on the streets, they might get hurt! Not to mention they are slowing down the traffic! This is why allowing mopeds on MUPs has been widespread even if it puts fast moving mopeds among dogwalkers and kids and grannies.
On the other hand mixing pedestrians and cyclists does work, sort of, if the MUP is wide enough and there isn't too many of them. If the traffic is heavy, the modes should be split, to reduce conflict and smooth the bicycle traffic flow, just like they do in the Netherlands! :-)
Now that Oulu has shown the example and has statistics to show it works and is safe, some other cities are doing the same. It certainly has calmed down our bikeways when the noisy contraptions are gone!
Tuesday, May 01, 2012
May Day Ride
It's 1st of May again. Besides students getting drunk, parades, annual May Day motorcycle ride and the concert there was the market. I was getting bored and it was a sunny day outside so went so see what they had for sale. I uploaded some videos: on the way , parked at market and leaving , Crowd at Concert and Red Nose.
Crossing the river I saw the ice is breaking apart. I hope any of the students who decided to go swimming (read: was thrown in by his friends) didn't catch a cold.
A nice day for a riverside picnic. It was +2C and windy, but at least the sun was shining warmly. It wasn't cloudy, it just looks like that on the photo.
Bikes parked all around the market square, and also on the pedestrian streets I visited later. There was no sign of the construction of the car park yet. IIRC they'll start to dig the tunnel here at the market square somewhere.
Unfortunately the selection at the market was the usual: cheap jewelry and other trinkets, candy, some food, even t-shirts. The only thing that caught my eye this time was these baskets made of thin strips of wood (don't know the word in english) and some tin pots. The baskets looked very nice.
And then I went to listen the concert at the pedestrian street but I didn't take any photos. Even the video clip caught just the end of one song.
Crossing the river I saw the ice is breaking apart. I hope any of the students who decided to go swimming (read: was thrown in by his friends) didn't catch a cold.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Meteorological spring
According to the meteorological institute the local "meteorological spring" started on 11th April, when the average daily temperatures climbed above zero degrees Celsius. The summer will start on late May.
Even though the snow has been melting fast and I've even seen some motorcyclists on the streets, if a cold spell comes it can get below freezing even during the day and the snow stays on the ground for a moment. Like it did last week.
The sea outside Oulu seems to be still frozen. I tried to go to the old docks to get a closer look, but there was too much snow to ride through. Here used to be a sawmill and tar barrel storage area, but it burned down and now the lot is empty. Good area for walking the dogs. I'd have thought this wide open area would be clear of snow pretty fast, but the snow was still knee deep.
No sign of anything green on the bushes around the lot either.
Until yesterday I thought all streets and bikeways would be ice free already, but I was wrong. 10 cm of ice! I rode between the ruts, it was easier than trying to balance in them. I have been thinking about switching to a summer tyre. Maybe it's time as it seems the ice is gone.
Oh, I bought a studded tyre on the 'end of winter season' sale a month ago. Even though it was almost too late as the bikeways were clearing fast I did get to ride on ice with them. Having one on the front wheel helps a lot and I don't think one on the rear wheel is necessary with my riding style. The rear wheel tends to follow the front wheel. In fact it was a bit funny to have the front wheel go straight over icy ruts and bumps and the rear wheel would slip left and right. :-)
One more iceberg photo. This one was so high you can barely see the cyclist behind it! Inspired by all the documentaries and movies about Titanic shown these last weeks.
I noticed one funny thing about the documentaries. There was two of them one after the other on a certain tv channel. Each claimed to tell the truth about the sinking, but they disagreed. One claimed the steel and rivets used were of good quality. The other found substandard iron rivets had been used near the bow because the machine used to punch the steel rivets was too clumsy and couldn't work there. The steel rivets couldn't be installed manually, so they had to used iron rivets. Did the first show even know iron rivets had been used? Well, it's fun to watch them and nitpick!
A shiny bikeway. This time it's not ice, just wet asphalt. Notice it has been cleaned, and all mud and gritting sand has been swept to the sides. They made the snow dirty. :-/ The wall you see is a noise barrier between the bikeway and the street.
This one shows the brown grass and a too narrow (maybe 2 meters) paving on the footpath to a bus stop. The snow plow machine has been so wide only one wheel was on the asphalt, the other was on the shoulder. Heavy machines will disfigure the shoulder (how do you say it in english?) and crack the edge of asphalt requiring repairs in a few years.
Another example of things found under the snow. The snow plow has been plowing more on the grass than on the bikeway. There isn't any snow plow sticks to mark the edges, so when everything is under the snow and ice even 3 meter wide bikeways can get lost.
Even though the snow has been melting fast and I've even seen some motorcyclists on the streets, if a cold spell comes it can get below freezing even during the day and the snow stays on the ground for a moment. Like it did last week.
Oh, I bought a studded tyre on the 'end of winter season' sale a month ago. Even though it was almost too late as the bikeways were clearing fast I did get to ride on ice with them. Having one on the front wheel helps a lot and I don't think one on the rear wheel is necessary with my riding style. The rear wheel tends to follow the front wheel. In fact it was a bit funny to have the front wheel go straight over icy ruts and bumps and the rear wheel would slip left and right. :-)
I noticed one funny thing about the documentaries. There was two of them one after the other on a certain tv channel. Each claimed to tell the truth about the sinking, but they disagreed. One claimed the steel and rivets used were of good quality. The other found substandard iron rivets had been used near the bow because the machine used to punch the steel rivets was too clumsy and couldn't work there. The steel rivets couldn't be installed manually, so they had to used iron rivets. Did the first show even know iron rivets had been used? Well, it's fun to watch them and nitpick!
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