Dedicated to life, liberty, walking, biking, and running. And the survival of our planet.
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
I should know. I didn’t have a car for five years.
For years my house looked like this:
Now it looks like this:
Continue reading “It’s Easy Not to Drive…”
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
For those who do not know, Leo Kottke is one of the best and quirkiest acoustic guitar players of the last fifty years, an American Treasure whose sense of irony and sarcasm might undermine anything I quote below.
That said, I was recently watching a DVD, Leo Kottke: Home & Away, Revisited, during which he talks about cars, reminding me that my heart sings when I consider a world with more music and less noise and air pollution.
Continue reading “Leo Kottke vs. Automobile”
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
Smart phone usage prompts this post. Nearly every driver knows the dangers, but not every driver feels the dangers. Hence the advantage of being a pedestrian. Frankly I’m surprised there are not more car-to-car, car-to-bike, and car-to-pedestrian collisions. The human body and mind are wonderfully made.
The underlying problem is of course distraction. Drivers were instructed to “keep your eyes on the road” long before the mobile phone. But somehow people like myself hone in on texting and map reading as the biggest threat.
Continue reading “Driving with a Distracted Mind”
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
Crossing the street should not be a death sentence. (Richard Retting, quoted in Denver Streetsblog)
Continue reading “Hit! or Hit and Run? (Denver-Boulder Reports)”
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
Today, we start with a quiz. What do these cars have in common?
If you said they are the best cars for pedestrians to get hit by, you are fully woke.[1]
Continue reading “Best Cars to Get Hit By as a Pedestrian”
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
Below are some recent events that chip away at the disproportionate role of the automobile in Western society (and, technologically, almost all society is Western).
As reported in “CU Denver Today” an extensive study recently concludes that adding protective bike lanes (i.e. lanes with a physical barrier, not just paint) to city streets not only makes the bicyclists safer but all the drivers safer.[1]
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
Below is an exemplary message written from a driver to a bicyclist after a near collision in Louisville, CO last week. As I post it (with the author’s blessing: “Louis, yes! Please feel free to use whatever you want. Maybe that will increase the chances that he’ll see this somehow!”)… as I post it, I know that the faults are bi-directional, and that drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians all make mistakes, the salient difference being the degree of vulnerability.
Continue reading “Driver Apologizes to Biker (Louisville, CO)”
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
When I discuss the American (and increasingly global) dependency on automobiles, some people with a politically conservative bend respond by saying that the problem is a result of personal irresponsibility, no more.[1]
I was raised to think this way, to think individualistically. So I get it.
However, over time, I realize that done exclusively, this thinking allows conniving and greedy organizations (or their leaders) to move invisibly through the world, exploiting freedom by limiting the range of choices that occur to individuals. As a result of such organizations, even if one’s moral fabric permitted him or her to resist pernicious trends, the very idea of resisting may never enter one’s mind. The gains of corporate and political greed are usually won upstream, with whispers in back rooms, such as, What they don’t know won’t hurt us, and, I don’t care who they vote for as long as I choose the candidates.
Continue reading “The Legal Bias Against Pedestrians and Bikes (Part 2 of 2)”
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
This is the first of two posts that highlight points made by Gregory H. Shill, University of Iowa College of Law, in his paper, “Should Law Subsidize Driving?”.[1]
Shill’s eminently readable, 76-page paper has already been summarized nicely in the article, “How Driving is Encouraged and Subsidized — By Law,” by Angie Schmitt (March 6, 2019).[2]
Continue reading “The Legal Bias Against Pedestrians and Bikes (Part 1 of 2)”
Mission: To promote driving less so all may live more.
[Marc, from southern Colorado, has turned his Mercedes into a car that burns the diesel fuel he also makes. Following is a post he wrote on the dilemmas with which he struggles. — Louis]
AeroKroil, my latest hope in the fight to get my 1995 Mercedes diesel back on the road.
Embarrassment, the key motivator to pull her in to my garage to figure out why she is smoking so bad when started cold. I pulled the fuel injectors to test them and two of the crush washers, which all need to be replaced, are frozen in there with carbon deposits; hence the AeroKroil. AeroKroil is supposed to be the “best” penetrating oil out there. The gun toters like it to clean their guns cuz it dissolves carbon.
Continue reading “Public Transportation Desert (guest post, Marc Syrene)”