Archive for the 'Advocates' Category

You never know what a visit to Capitol Hill is going to bring. I was up on the Hill yesterday to deliver our testimony on the role bicycling can play in combating climate change – read all about it here – with Walter Finch, the League’s advocacy director.

I got up to the Hill first (cos I was riding….!) and found myself standing in the security line next to the guy from the Discovery Communications empire that does Lance Armstrong’s website. Evidently it was Livestrong Day on Capitol Hill and Lance was in town with other cancer survivors to raise awareness for their issues.

The hearing itself was a long-drawn out affair – not because of the witnesses or even the statements from Members of Congress, but because of frequent lengthy interruptions for a series of quorum votes on the House floor. My five minutes of fame took about four and half hours to complete – like the last few minutes of a basketball game, I guess – but I did get a couple of questions from Members who were in attendance.

The nicest surprise was that Congressman Dan Lipinski (D-IL) from Chicago introduced himself as a League member, and then asked a couple of good questions about the Federal government’s potential role as a model employer for bicyclists.

And then before we’d even gotten back to the office we were contacted by the Association for Commuter Transportation – the ridesharing, vanpooling, commuter services people – to follow up our testimony and see if there are ways we can work together.

Yesterday we heard the awful news that Stan Oldak of the New York Cycling Club was killed by a hit and run driver while completing a 400km brevet outside Houston, Texas this past weekend. The crash happened about 210 miles into the ride in the town of Columbus, Texas. Stan was completing the ride as part of the qualification series for Paris – Brest – Paris later this year.

You can see from the NYCC cover story that Stan Oldak was a great cyclist and a tireless volunteer. He was the NYCC club representative to the League for a couple of years and had been a League member for many years. Our thoughts go out to his family, friends, and colleagues in the cycling world.

Stan’s death comes at that time of year when we should be celebrating bicycling. It’s National Bike Month, for goodness sake. The weather is turning nice (at least in the DC area). And bicycling is such a healthy, worthy, and enjoyable activity that people shouldn’t pay for enjoying it with their lives.

We don’t know all the details of the crash – except that, yet again, the driver couldn’t be bothered to stop. I don’t know what the actual numbers are, but it seems to me that each year more and more fatal and severe bicyclist and pedestrian crashes involve hit and run drivers. Given the pretty pathetic punishments handed out to many of those that do stop and face the consequences, this is even more disappointing.

What do we do? We express our sincere condolences. We hope the driver has the courage to turn themselves into the authorities. Maybe we join a Ride of Silence (May 16) and honor Stan and the other 700 cyclists we can be pretty sure will be killed this year on our nation’s roads.
Somehow it doesn’t seem like that’s enough.

We’ll carry on with our education programming and our exhortations to build better roads to accommodate cyclists. And we know that somehow we need to do more to instill in people in this country that cyclists are people too, with real talents, value, skills, family, and friends. Our lives should not be cheapened or diminished because we happen to wear Lycra on occasion and ride a bike. We must drive home the idea that driving a car is a responsibility, not a right, and that the privilege given people to drive can and must be taken seriously or be taken away. For real.