A lot of people wondered why the helmet discussion touched a nerve. And let me say before we start, I ride with a helmet, and I always have. When my son went to college we bought a bike out there, but he carried his helmet in his carry-on so he had it right away. All my children have helmets and use them so much, that when we were in China riding on the city walls in Xi’an, my daughter thought it felt weird to ride without a helmet.
All that said, helmets are one aspect of safety and one that doesn’t solve all the problems of riding a bike. I wanted to point out a few ways in which you can improve your own bike safety by learning from Lime Bikes.
Lighting — Every cycle commuter knows the importance of bike lights. Good bike lights not only allow you to see the road at night, but allow you to be seen by others. A key problem in this country is that most bikes aren’t sold with lights, forcing the user to add them on, and we all know that when something is an add-on it often doesn’t get purchased. Worse, good lights are expensive. The Lime Bikes not only have lights, but they’re on automatically and they are powered by a built-in generator, meaning they never run out of charge (you power them by moving). Even better, the lights are positioned below the front basket so you can see contours in the road at night, something that can get difficult when you put a light on your front handlebars, as most of us do. Related: the yellow fenders provide a wide area of reflective material so the bikes can be seen by car headlights.
Geometry — Mountain bikes and road bikes are designed for competition, so they want you to go fast. 
This means the whole bike geometry is designed to move your body weight forward and put your head out in front. This is great for when you’re attacking a course and trying to hit your top speed. But it also means your natural position puts your eyes toward the ground forcing you to look just a few feet in front of you. Again, this important when you’re moving at high speed. But when you’re in a city you want to sit up and look around you. You want to be hypersensitive to the cyclists, drivers and pedestrians coming from all angles. Chances are, the bike you got your child or even yourself doesn’t sit you up very high. By putting you up higher it also moves you head back over your body, so in an accident you are less likely to be flying over the handlebars and can handle the fall that much more easily.
Speed — No, these bikes don’t go fast. That’s not a bad thing, they’re not designed for you to work out. They’re designed to get you places. The lower speed makes it easier for you to react when something happens and reduces the chances of you flying over the handlebars if the bike comes to a sudden stop thanks to, say, a curb, pothole or a car that suddenly pulls out of a driveway.
Brakes and Tires — Disc brakes are relatively new in the biking world and a lot of people have them. Many of us don’t. Discs tend to stop faster, especially when wet. The tires are also wide to provide a smoother ride, and don’t require air, so they won’t blow out on you.
Bell — Did you look at the left handlebar? It has a bell. These are so important but again, few of us add them to bikes (though, they’re required in some cities). I used to call out to pedestrians on the bike path by shouting “On your left!” as I approached from behind. The problem was that people sometimes moved to the left while others froze. My intent was for them to move right. When I switched to a bell I found that people, upon hearing the *ding* simply moved out of the way (most often to the right). It’s polite and efficient. Use it often!
Carrying capacity — Just like lights, few bikes that people buy in the States come with baskets, racks, and bags. That means when it comes to riding to get something that needs carrying, like a package from the post office, a bottle of wine for dinner or some groceries, we take the car. It’s just easier to load things in and move on. But having a carrying capacity on the bike makes it an option. Why do I classify this as safety? Because the more cars we can move off the road the safer we ALL will be. Cars cause more damage to people around us than the bikes.
Availability — I used to show people a picture of my cousin’s garage in which you can see his two cars right there and available, but his bikes are suspended on a platform above his main vehicles. This means to use his bikes he must open the garage, back the car into the driveway, lower the bikes, release the bikes, move them to the driveway, pull the car back into the garage, then, finally, get on the bike and leave. Why would he do that when he can just go to step one and move on? A lot of us keep bikes in sheds, behind the lawnmower or the snowblower, or we put them in the garage in such a way that we need to maneuver around our cars. When we’re in a rush to run our errands we move to the easiest solution. The bikes being available makes them an easy solution. However, the reduction in bike numbers makes this a bit more cumbersome.
How can Lime Bike improve?
Rearview mirrors — These are so valuable, especially in traffic. There are some that attach to helmets, so if you are planning to have your helmet with you I suggest putting one on, though they’re easily damaged in that configuration. Having them on the bike handlebar would greatly improve safety.
Waze-like directions — The Lime Bike lets you mount your phone right in front, which is great. But what would be better is if you could give it your destination (like on an Uber or Lyft) and it could give you an estimated time, distance and a suggested route. These routes could be programmed to move people off of main roads and onto more bike-friendly routes.
Electricity — I don’t mind pedaling a lot, I do it all the time. But my wife isn’t likely to ride up the Walnut St. hill out of Newtonville. An electric assist bike makes her ride much more manageable and makes it more likely for her to choose to ride instead of drive.
How can we make the city safer? This is a much bigger discussion, but I want to touch on some top-level concepts.
Get off your cell phone — We all know it’s unsafe to text while driving. But when you’re sitting at a traffic light and looking at your phone, there’s that moment when you look up and realize the light turned green and you didn’t move. Then you jump quickly to move forward without really looking. If I’m a cyclists and I’m on the road in front of you, that puts me in a dangerous situation. Don’t look at the phone.
Protected bike lanes — This is key, we need protected bike lanes in parts of the city in order to make biking a viable option. Someone like me will take on Washington Street to get to Trader Joe’s, but for most people it’s just not an option. We need to use the data that Lime Bike provides and start looking at where we can build bike lanes to fill in gaps.
Better overall infrastructure — Bike lanes are just part of it. We need better bike parking in the village centers (which the city is currently working on) as well a clearly marked locations to leave the shared bikes. This may mean a single parking space devoted to shared bikes, or a series of boxes on the sidewalk that make clear where the bikes should go. In general, people want to do the right thing, but if they don’t know what the right thing is, they’ll do what’s easy. Let’s make it easy to place the bikes without blocking walking paths. We also need traffic lights that provide pedestrians and cyclists with a green in advance of the green for cars.
Use the bikes — There is safety in numbers. When there is just one bike on a road it’s easy to drive by quickly, but when there are many it creates a different visual for the driver and slows them down. The more we use the bikes, the safer everyone will be. Also, if the bikes are well-used we’ll get more of them in the city (see: Availability).
Stop Wearing Black Jackets — In this heat it’s tough to think about winter, but New Englanders seem to love their black outerwear. If you want to be safer, as a cyclist and as a pedestrian, buy a different jacket. I like red. In Newton, where our outdoor lighting is subpar, wearing black makes it tough to see you.
Excellent post. I learned a lot. Thanks Chuck.
This is a great article – thank you. I ride my bike to work from Newton to Boston every day, all year round (except when there is ice or snow – haven’t figured that out yet!) and I couldn’t agree more with everything you write. I especially agree with the “use the bikes point” – which is one reason why it is great Lime Bikes is here.
When e-bike share arrives ridership in Newton will take a gigantic leap. I can’t wait for it.
Thanks Chuck-
Very helpful. My bike is suspended from a hook in my shed behind the lawnmower. As a result, I have been on the lime bikes this summer more than my own bike. Considering a new place to store my bike…..
Are the e-bikes a certain thing in Newton? That would be fantastic!
If any experienced snow-commuters are reading this thread…any tips to share for how to ride safely on a snowy bike path/road?
This is a great post! I particularly like the ideas about creating bike paths on less traveled, mostly residential, streets, assisted by a Waze type app. I will NEVER ride a bike to the T stop or grocery stores by going down busy roads. Truth be told, I don’t think it’s safe for anyone to do that. Ideally, we could have designated, protected bike paths on main roads like they do in Scandinavia and Shanghai, but that is not likely to happen in a comprehensive way in our lifetimes. Piecemeal designated lanes don’t really help much unless you happen to want to go only to the places that are on that designated path. But I would bike much more if there were a system of designated side roads with bike paths. I think Cambridge has turned many of their side roads into one-way streets with bike paths taking up the extra space. This makes more sense than trying to combine bikes with cars in one lane on busy streets.
Shawn, Limebikes is supposed to be introducing ebikes as part of its fleet across the MAPC study area, so its a matter of time before they arrive in Newton. There won’t be enough to satisfy demand in the pilot phase.
Jump bikes is a wholly ebike share which has won rave reviews from experienced bike riders due to its robust design & solid performance. It is not yet in Newton but Limebikes better up its game and quickly if it hopes to compete.
The cat is out of the bag on personal e-mobility and sharing apps are just priming the pump for significant ownership of personal e-mobile vehicles, including e-trikes, e-kick-scooters & e-skateboards. The prices are becoming too low & convenience of use too high for commuters to stick with the inconveniences of the single occupant vehicle mode. And as more people defect to low speed personal e-mobility, those people who really need the convenience of cars – mobility challenged seniors, people needing cars to deliver people & goods – will have less congestion and parking woes to deal with.
The city needs to develop a proactive policy & plan for the coming wave of personal e-mobility. It’s going to be disruptive to the status quo but planning can go a long way toward mitigating conflicts with the existing car-centric system.
Great post Chuck. I look forward to the electric assist bikes.
@Shawn, probably not a satisfactory answer, but it’s possible to ride almost year-round (usually into December, then Jan-March in patches). There are two problems for winter road riding where I don’t see possible solutions. (1) Winter plows push snow & ice to the shoulders of the road, and when the shoulders are gone, bikes are forced further into the road. (2) Snow tends to pack down to ice at the shoulders, and then it just takes a thin coating of snow or water to conceal very slippery, dangerous conditions. Even if bike lanes were plowed, #2 is still an issue.
Some people like fat tire bikes in the winter (on and offroad) because they are slow and stable. The best answer I’ve found is to bike selectively, when the roads are guaranteed clear of ice (including melted/refrozen) and there isn’t a bunch of plowed snow hemming in the roadsides. Road sand and salt also do a number on components: I have an older bike with fenders and wider (treaded) road tires for that purpose, and even then it needs a thorough cleaning after a ride on wet winter roads.
@Dulles – thanks very much. You outlined the issues well. That’s what I haven’t been able to figure out how to handle safely – especially that slippery, packed ice/snow. Oh well … thanks for responding.
@Nathan – thanks for the update on the e-bikes!
@Shawn my son put studded tires on his bike and says they are a lot like tank treads. But his commute to school is only about 1.5 miles, so the fact that the tires are heavy and slow is less of an issue.
I haven’t tried them on my bike yet, and all the issues of road salt that @dulles mentions are key. It’s why I traditionally rode my old three-speed in the winter (RIP).
Chuck,
Do you know what criteria the city uses to create bike lanes?
For example, nevada street on route to the Carr school. Its:
A route used by elementary kids
Very long road
Very very very wide and encourages speeding cars
But yet no bike lane… is it not common sense? Its puzzling..
Judging by the process currently happening along Waltham Street, it would involve public comment as there is technically parking on Nevada, even if it’s often unused.
It’s a good question and I’ll look into it and see if I can get a good answer.
Chuck,
Thanks, it would be good to know the process so residents can collection signatures/ petitions and be confident of some kind of outcome.
Nevada is great example as its extra extra wide, long and leads to an elementary school
It seems MA drivers, and especially in Boston’s surrounding areas, never learned or don’t care about practicing defensive driving. I’m glad I learned to drive someplace else.
Just driving home this afternoon from Brighton I evaded being hit four times, was forced into another lane twice, was cut off three times and had cars jump in front of me several times to turn left after stopping at intersections.
I won’t let my grandson who learned to drive in a suburb drive here – nor does he want to. I’m not sure pedestrians or cyclists will ever be safe here as long as they are in competition for the same place. Protected bike lanes are the only option.
@Marti , You’re right that Boston drivers don’t learn defensive driving – they learn offensive driving. Or as we say, “right of way” is a complex function of mass and chutzpah.
Chuck: I can’t add much to the already expressed accolades about your post. A few observations from an earlier time.
Your call for secondary bike routes on side streets and less traveled roadways mirrors the routes we used to travel through Newton during the 1950s. Three problems now that weren’t a factor then. There was far less travel on these side streets and no real problem with parked cars. The big change is that the roads were in much better condition at that time than they are now. But I think it can still be done and I have some ideas about how to do it.
One thing I forgot until today. In the 1950s, every bicycle had to be registered with the City and they gave us a small metal license plate to put on the rear fender. In order to get the tag, you had to pass a pretty comprehensive test about rules and courtesy of bike riding.
We had no helmets or protective gear during the 50s and I had two spills during 1954 where my head banged down on the hard road surface and a third spill with head injuries from a fall on Mount Monadnock. I apparently came through all three without serious mental disruption although some might argue otherwise.
Cheers.
Chuck, a big problem I have noticed recently is that when Lime bikes line up the bikes, they do it incorrectly themselves. At the Newton Highlands T stop, a good place in general to have them, the bikes were lined up on the sidewalk facing the street, blocking the sidewalk and people wanting to enter the bus as this is a bus stop. Additionally, on Washington Street Lime lined up five bikes in the same way but also blocking a ramp to a crosswalk and a fire hydrant.
Whoever is in charge of this program from the city needs to let them know this way to line up bikes has to stop. In the last few days the bikes I have seen parked alone have all been parked correctly.
Marty, I tweeted your comment to Limebike (without your name attached) and this is their response:
“Thanks for this really clear feedback! We can do better. I’ll pass this slice to the local team leads. We are ALWAYS working to get better. Thanks!”
Woops, sorry, Marti.
That’s great Nathan. Thanks.
I’d like to add to Marti’s and then some.
Yesterday as we we walking on the footpath to a meeting at City Hall we came across a Lime bike left in a wooded area not at all visible enough to be easily seen and perhaps used by the next rider. Having been told again and again if you see a bike left on a sidewalk, you can call City Hall or move it to a safer place. It being 7pm, I decided to move it a few yards to the corner of Walnut and Comm Ave. The rear wheel apparently locked so I rolled it on the front wheel, right away we heard “Unlock me. Unlock me” and lights going off. It was frightening. I continued to roll it to a more visible place. Soon the voice said “Unlock me or I’m going to call the police. Unlock me or I’m going to call the police.”
Well let me tell you I doubt very much that Lime would pay my legal bills if the police came and gave me a hard time about what I’m doing with a locked Lime bike at night. Nor would I welcome this experience, especially in today’s frazzled climate. Nor am I going to take the time to phone the 800- number on the bike, which isn’t easy to see in the evening anyway.
I like the idea – but there are many many problems here with these bikes and I’m not keen that private citizens are asked to move bikes owned by private corporation that are left in dangerous or untenable places and then have to be frightened like this.
Tonight is NSHS Seniors’ Parents’ night, and from previous experience, traffic and parking will be utter chaos. But with a nice evening forecast, we’re going to bike and e-bike it over using Lime Bike. It’s a perfect use case and it turns commute drudgery into fun.