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I recently finished reading The Art of Urban Cycling, Lessons from the Street by Robert Hurst (interview from cyclelicious).

This is a terrific resource for any urban cyclist out there. Matter of fact, I think it is a great resource for any cyclist out there. Wait, even more. I think this is a great resource for anyone on the road in, on or near a vehicle.

If you don’t have this book, you really need to go buy it from your favorite bookstore, check it out from your library, or borrow it from a friend.

Hurst begins by briefly covering what he calls the Streetcar Massacre. This is the story of how GM bought all of the electric rail trolly systems in big cities across the nation, and replaced them with gas-powered GM busses. “A federal grand jury ultimately found the giant corporation guilty of criminal conspiracy for this effort [under the Sherman Antitrust Act], but the total fine –$5000– was less than the profit returned from the conversion of a single streetcar.”

To be fair, he goes on to say that America’s streetcar operations were already on its last legs.

What about our highway systems?

Ultimately, the shape of the American city is the product of a complex blend of ingredients. The most important single factor, by far, has been the citizenry’s inclination to motor around everywhere in private automobiles.

…

There is another built-in difficulty that continously frustrates those who hope a new highway, or a wider one, will disappear their congestion problems. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, a crowded city abhors an empty highway.

Even better, you can build a highway out where there is nothing, and the highway will create its own demand, sprouting developments along its length.

More discussion about the Interstate highway Act of 1956, The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1973 and the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991.

Hurst talks of the enclosure that an automobile gives its user, and how it can hold huge negative implications for the character of an American city. He quotes Jane Jacob’s 1961 work “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” stating one of her more valuable points is “the idea that vital, flourishing, and safe city neighborhoods owe their success to what she calls ‘an intensity of users.’. Such areas within cities have people from all walks of life coming and going, on foot, at nearly all hours, for a variety of reasons. This coming and going leads to face-to-face contact among strangers and heighbors”.

However with people almost exclusively climbing into cars (in their garage), to drive-thrus, and back to your garage in your “private metal pods with blackened windows” all you end up seeing is metal and glass. Where does the human interaction go? You’ll have to read Hurst’s argument that it leads to road rage.

That was all just chapter one.

For me, the biggest message throughout the book was the idea of taking responsiblity when you’re on the bike. It means that you need to be responsible for your actions, and also for anticipating the action of all other moving objects on the road. This means cars (both moving and parked), pedestrians, animals, other cyclists, and anything else. Naturally, no one is perfect and accidents will happen.

It’s actually quite refreshing once you’ve adopted this technique. No longer do you need to get pissed off at the driver who didn’t see you, nor the person opening their car door into the bike lane. After all why should it, when you’re anticipating that these things can happen and you’ve taken those possibilites into account as you’re riding along, you can deal with them much better.

The Surly guys talk about something called Flow.

You hear a lot about flow if you spend much time in the cycling world, particularly offroad cycling. Flow is about looking ahead, preparing for obstacles (physical or mental), using your momentum to best advantage (the more you brake the more effort you must spend getting up to speed again), staying calm and loose, and most of all learning how to ride better with less effort. Flow speaks to a higher awareness of your connection to the machine and the trail, and the more you know about flow, the better your riding will be, regardless of what or where you ride. Flow isn’t about the frame or components. Flow is knowing how to read what the ground and your bike are writing. A person with good flow riding a crappy bike can generally kick the ass of a person on a techy new bike who has not yet unlocked the secrets of Flow. Flow makes one Li Mu Bai, master of the Wudan, where before they were Chuck Norris, Texas Ranger. Or maybe flow makes one Betty Crocker where before they were merely Lil Debbie.
I have a theory that all of life’s answers can be found in rock lyrics, so I submit for your consideration this sage advice from 70s rock philosophers .38 Special:
Hold on loosely, but don’t let go. If you cling too tightly you’re gonna lose control.
Probably best if I leave it at that.

Flow, anticipation, taking responsibility. They’ll take you far and treat you well.

More about the book.

The City Surface

Now it’s time to get into some nitty gritty techniques for actually riding in an urban environment. Surface hazards such as potholes, cracks, waves, lane markers, train tracks, drainage grates, plazas and curbs. Each hazard is given a page or two of description and techniques for handling them.

Any cyclist who overlooks a surface hazard and suffers the consequences only has him or herself to blame. Accepting this respnsibility at the outset will go a long way toward prevention… The safest cyclists do their best to eliminate luck as a factor in their daily travels. They tame what seems uncontrollable to lesser riders.

Here’s the deal with plazas, for those who wish to ride them. Plazas are often surfaced with granite or brick paving stones, which are then coated with slick, urethante-like-substances. They’re slippery as heck.

In Traffic

We’re now introduced to the idea of Vehicular cycling. This is the idea that cyclists should act and be treated as an automobile on the road. There are arguments on both sides. Educate yourself and fall in where you see fit.

Here something to get you started.

However, the vehicular cyling principle has a big hole in it: the strict vehicular cyclist who has eliminated many of his or her own mistakes by riding lawfully will still remain quite vulnerable to the mistakes of others. Because mistakes are common in the urban mix and because cyclists are especially vulnerable to the seemingly inconsequential “brain farts” of motorists, riders who have spent decades and hundres of thousands of miles in city traffic naturally adopt a style that is quieter, more conservative , and somewhat less trustful of others than that of the vehicular cyclists. It’s amazing how a few trips to the MRI room will color one’s judgement of traffic laws and fellow road users. One ofthe big problems with the vehicular cycling principle, or any principle of urban cycling, for that matter, is that it fails to account adequately for the complexities, details, and chaos of the city streets.

Next is probably my favorite (and thus the most important to me) section in the entire book.

Blame versus Responsibility

The proliferation of blame is rather useless for urban cycling. Blame is what happens when it’s already too late. Obsession with blame is good for insurance purposes but not so good for safety purposes. The urban cyclist should cast the twin concepts of blame and legal liability onto the scrap heap and forget about them. Thinking in terms of blame while out on the road is a perfect example of self-fulfilling prophecy. Blame is dangerous.

The most effective way for a cyclist to stay out of trouble on city streets is to forget entirely about the possibility of blaming others, and to take on full responsiblity for his or her own safety.

This attitude will be fundamentally different from the prima donna mind-set displayed by many humans, drivers and cyclists mong them, who put their safety in the handsd of others, count on everything working out just right, and have a royal freak-out at the first sign of trouble. The successful urban cyclist counts on nothing but chaos and stupidity.

At this point I feel like I’m doing more quoting than actual review. I guess in this case I’m ok with it (I hope you are too Robert ), because the book is just literally full of good advice. Here’s some more.

Instead of just hopping on the bike and pedaling, we should take a moment before any ride to soberly consider the dangers we are about to face and how we will avoid them . We will need to carry this underlying seriousness into the ride and maintain it throughout, depsite all the distractions of everyday life that compete for bandwidth in our skills.

The old war-horses of urban cycling will always say their worst wrecks came at a time when their minds were wandering. They had momentarily forgotten the danger. They let themselves slip, just a little. Just enough.

Route Choice

In out traffic-jammed twenty-first-century urban sprawl, cyclists subject themselves to needless hassle and stress by trying to ride streets that are bad for cycling. Many newbies, embarking on their first urban commutes, simply attempt to follow the same exact routes they’ve been driving in their cars every day. This is ill-advised. The best routes for cars very rarely correspond to the best bike routes. Riders who attempt this are often so frazzled by the experience that they never look at their bikes again.

The idea here is to choose a route that minimized danger, hassle, and stress. Find streets with low traffic, wide curbs or bike paths, and lower speed limits.

Perhaps another personal note would be to consider the following: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

The Gap Effect

Consider the condition of some of the drivers locked in the typical urban traffic grid. They’re trying to make a left turn, b ut all they see is an unbroken line of fast-moving vehicles coming at them, with no end in sight. They’re late. They’re hppped up on four cups of coffee. They’re about to pee their pands.

Suddenly, a small gap opens up in oncoming traffic. They’re going to hit that gap if it’s the last think they do, which it may very well be. They stomp on the gas and crank the wheel. This is the Gap Effect in action.

Hurst goes on to explain how a cyclist being in the gap is a very bad thing, and is often a factor in many car vs. bike incidents. Gaps will always be around, and should be something you are mindful of at all times, again the best way to avoid issues is recognition and anticipation. Stay alert. Realize you’re in a gap, where you’re at in it, and be aware of potential drivers who will want to occupy the gap.

Seeing without Looking

The first audible indication of approaching vehicles is usually not engine noise, but the sound of tires on pavement. Most modern cars are extremely quiet. Some are near-silent at low rpm’s. They can sidle right up on you at low speeds, completely undetected. At normal city speeds, however, their tires give them away. Tire noise can be a hiss or a sort of ripping sound, depending on vehicle, tires, street surface, and speed. Faster tires make a more high pitched noise than slower ones.

…

Rearview mirrors do much of the same work as ears, and therefore are absoutely recommended for riders who crank music through headphones.

The Door Zone

Some of the worst streets for cycling are narrow, busy streets lined with parked cars where the cyclist is faced with the choice of getting out in front of much faster traffic, or riding in the Door Zone (DZ). The Door Zonee is the area within about 3 1/2 to 4 feet of the parkedcars, where doors pop open seemingly at random into or in front of cyclists, with disatrous results

…

Cyclists should realize the futility of trying to scan the passenger compartments of parked vehicles for potential door openers. We can never spot them all. Since there are no cinsistenly reliable ways to tell if a door will open until it opens, cyclists should adopt a strict zero-tolerance policy about wriding fast in the DZ

Bicycle Accidents and Injuries

About 90% of all car-bike accidents in urban areas involve turning or crossing. Parallel path collisions (in which a car sideswipes or hits a bike from behind) are relatively rare in city traffic but are much more common in rural areas, and on rural-style roads within cities

Road Rash

Road rash is a precious gift. Road rash is your friend. Bask in it, appreciate it, love it. Above all, learn from it.

Listen to what the road rash is telling you: “You’re not that great of a cyclist. Maybe you should try a Segqway. You’re dangerous to yourself and others. You need practice…”. Allow the humility of road rash to enter your consciousness, where it will displace malignant pride and help keep you out of the ER through your cycling career.

Typical treatment is simplee and do-it-yourslf. The worst part (and very important part ) is to remove the debris from the wound. Use anti-bacterial soap and water, then treat the wound with a topical antibiotic ointment, and cover with a nonstick andage.

How to Fall

Many painful and debilitating injuries, especially the collarbone fratures and severe road-rash incidents could be avoided if cyclists would apply more finesse to their crashes. There is a right way and a wrong way to fall off a bicycle.

…

The key to a good crash is to roll with it, and thus distribute the force of the impact. This is not always possible, even for a skilled crasher, because some crashes are just too violent and sudden. This is precisely the difference between a “good” crash and a “bad” crash.

The process of crashing begins with a frightening flash of realization: “I’m going down.” The talented crasher recognizes this point of no return, at the earliest possible moment and abandons fruitless attempts to avoid the inevitable, leaving more precious time to set up for the fall.

What are Helmets built for?

What these doctors know, the rest of us should try to understand: Bicycle helmets are built to soften relatively minor blows to the head, like those that can result from falls, but are unlikely to save the bacon of a cyclist in a high-speed collision with the road or a car.
…
The CPSC sticker maens that the helmet is certified to protect your head in an 11mph impact with a jagged surface like a rock or curb, or a 14mph impact with a flat surface.

Be sure to read up on Torsion Injuries as well.

This is about it. The book ends with a chapter on Air Pollution and the Urban Cyclist and Punctures and Flat Tires and Equipment.

You’d think I just gave away the whole book. Nothing is further from the truth. This is just but a small sampling of what you’ll find. Trust me, if you ride you need to read (even better buy it so you can read it multiple times) this book.

I guess I’d say that anything that makes you think about something in a different way is a good thing. This book takes multiple points of view towards urban cycling and presents them in a very compelling way.