I've got a new Outside column, and it's about how right on red for drivers is bullshit:
Of course we don't allow right on red here in New York City, though there are certain intersections where it is permitted, and if you don't notice the tiny sign telling you it's okay to go the drivers behind you will completely lose their shit because you're robbing them the chance to savor this rare opportunity.
Also, I've been acquainting myself with the mechanical nuances of my new-to-me bike:
Firstly, I preemptively lubricated the freehub in order to obviate the dreaded "Mavic Death Squeal," and to familiarize myself with the process. (As it happens, I was riding with a friend recently when his Mavic hub started howling, so the blood-curdling sound was still fresh in my mind.) In all the process took maybe 5 minutes, required only two hex keys, and in terms of mechanical difficulty was only slightly more challenging than removing the rear wheel from the bicycle in order to do it. So if doing that a couple times a season keeps things working smoothly then I'd consider that acceptable.
Secondly, a on a ride a few days ago I noticed a subtle squeaking sound while pedaling that I eventually narrowed down to the crank. (Remember, this bike is new to me, so it's bound to need some attention here and there.) "Uh-oh," I thought. As a Shimano Hollowtech II enthusiast (let's be honest, a traditional threaded bottom bracket shell with a Hollowtech II crank is the most reliable, easily serviced drivetrain in the history of humankind), I was dreading the moment I'd have to figure out the Campagnolo Ultra Torque crank, what with its wave washers and Hirth joint and all the rest of it--though I also knew that sooner or later I'd have to come to terms with it, and clearly that moment had come sooner rather than later.
Anyway, removing and reinstalling the Campy crank also turned out to be pretty easy--not Hollowtech II easy, but certainly easy enough. It also didn't require any weird tools (I had a hex key of sufficient length, as well as a torque wrench), though had I done a full bearing service it would have been another story, because apparently those require a special puller, because of course they do. In any case, I greased the cups and put everything back together, and since then everything's been quiet.
Hopefully it remains that way, because I've got an Ultegra crank ready to be deployed on short notice, and I will mix Campy and Shimano if I have to. (In fact, if you look closely at the bike, I already am.)
You have been warned.
Also, I've been acquainting myself with the mechanical nuances of my new-to-me bike:
Firstly, I preemptively lubricated the freehub in order to obviate the dreaded "Mavic Death Squeal," and to familiarize myself with the process. (As it happens, I was riding with a friend recently when his Mavic hub started howling, so the blood-curdling sound was still fresh in my mind.) In all the process took maybe 5 minutes, required only two hex keys, and in terms of mechanical difficulty was only slightly more challenging than removing the rear wheel from the bicycle in order to do it. So if doing that a couple times a season keeps things working smoothly then I'd consider that acceptable.
Secondly, a on a ride a few days ago I noticed a subtle squeaking sound while pedaling that I eventually narrowed down to the crank. (Remember, this bike is new to me, so it's bound to need some attention here and there.) "Uh-oh," I thought. As a Shimano Hollowtech II enthusiast (let's be honest, a traditional threaded bottom bracket shell with a Hollowtech II crank is the most reliable, easily serviced drivetrain in the history of humankind), I was dreading the moment I'd have to figure out the Campagnolo Ultra Torque crank, what with its wave washers and Hirth joint and all the rest of it--though I also knew that sooner or later I'd have to come to terms with it, and clearly that moment had come sooner rather than later.
Anyway, removing and reinstalling the Campy crank also turned out to be pretty easy--not Hollowtech II easy, but certainly easy enough. It also didn't require any weird tools (I had a hex key of sufficient length, as well as a torque wrench), though had I done a full bearing service it would have been another story, because apparently those require a special puller, because of course they do. In any case, I greased the cups and put everything back together, and since then everything's been quiet.
Hopefully it remains that way, because I've got an Ultegra crank ready to be deployed on short notice, and I will mix Campy and Shimano if I have to. (In fact, if you look closely at the bike, I already am.)
You have been warned.
46 comments:
Podium?
Whoa, you use different brands based on what works well?
Weirdo.
Could those be non-campy pedals.
FYI, your campy levers are rebuildable. I have the oldest version that was originally 8 speed and upgraded the internals to 9 speed. Parts for the latest Ultrashift are not sold individually, but a lever body (minus clamp band and brake lever) with all the internals is.
I always worry I am alone in my preference for a threaded bottom bracket and an easy-to-service crank, when everyone else is going on about "better power transfer" and the like. Thanks for making me feel less lonely (albeit, somewhat weirded out by the company.)
Hey, that's the local story that burned so many biscuits here.
1) It really is annoying to ticket the victim, and I'm glad you see you not mincing words about it.
2) In the county next to Fairfax (Arlington) there is a dreaded intersection along the Custis trail where cars too often hit pedestrians or cyclists in the crosswalk. They've put a nonstandard no-turn-on-red sign that lights up for only the pedestrian signal in the few seconds before the countdown, but few look for something like that and it's often ignored. Anyway, people have been hit here and sent to the hospital, only to have the police go to the hospital to give them their citation for being run over. Once it was for not being in the crosswalk when the victim says she was in the crosswalk but was knocked out of it by the car.
3) Right turn on red needs to go away anywhere pedestrians and cyclists are common. So that's any city and most suburbs. I suppose on some country roads it would be okay. Walking in downtown DC, where you can turn on red in most places, is an exercise in futile-seeming self preservation.
Matthew Weigel,
You're definitely not alone, I think a fair number of bike companies are going back to the threaded BB now.
--Tan Tenovo
Anonymous 11:23am,
Shimano pedals *and* the stem is technically Shimano too.
--Tan Tenovo
You ride summer tires in winter, mix Shimano and Campy, and ride mountain bikes on the road. You are one bad hombre. This obviously explains the infamy you carry.
Avid driver and passionate cyclist here with a...
Aw, fuck it, you're right about the right on red. While legal 66.6% of the time in the mid sized metro I inhabit, most drivers are simply not capable of exercising the due caution required for laissez faire motoring.
Snobby, re the Mavic death squeal: There’s a guy on the net who sells the nylon bushing, slightly undersized to cure the problem. Lubing only fixed mine for a few days. The bushing worked.
Bradenton Police Chief Michael Radzilowski explained that he wanted to avoid the right turn on red controversy created by other cities. His department allows rolling right turns on red at speeds up to 15 mph.
Read more here: https://www.bradenton.com/opinion/editorials/article34713042.html#storylink=cpy
I live in Florida—- this is how we do it.
Tan, after careful viewing of the other dashcam video, I think that the cyclist may have started to cross on the green Walk light, it is tight either way. But then cop driver...
It looks like the bike rider was either 1) riding on the sidewalk, so he shouldn't have crossed...….or 2) Was on the road, riding the wrong way, against traffic...….which is illegal. If it was #2, the cop was wrong, but the bike rider should have received a ticket.
Grump,
According to the Washington Post article he was on a multi-use path, and the intersection he was crossing is known for being poorly engineered.
--Tan Tenovo
I was surprised to learn that it’s legal in Chicago (maybe the whole state, I don’t know) to make a left on red, if you’re turning from a one-way street onto another one-way street. It would make sense in an alternate universe where nobody ever hits anyone, but in this universe it’s nuts.
Ohhh the earbuds thing. Went back & read that piece too. (See, those links DO generate traffic.)
Any law to that effect is shitty because: car stereos, and also: Is it illegal for deaf people to cycle?
This is just a hypothesis but: the number of threats to bicyclists that you can identify solely by hearing, that you have a chance in hell of avoiding, is zero. The only ones I can think of are all extraordinary events e.g. a tornado behind you; a gunman.
Can anybody think of anything that satisfies all five of these:
1) happens in the ordinary course of things
2) is a threat to bicyclists
3) can't be seen by bicyclists (includes things behind them)
4) can be heard by bicyclists
5) having been heard, can be identified by bicyclists
6) having been identified, can be avoided by bicyclists
Example, a car coming up behind you satisfies 1) through 4) but fails 5) because you can't tell BY HEARING whether a car is headed right for you (a threat) vs. just passing (not a threat) and anyway even if you grant 5) (for example in response to the sound, you turn and look) it still fails 6) because if they're indeed headed right for you, you're pretty much fucked regardless.
Oops all six. Blow me.
Ahhh OK, Yeah I do that maintenance. I prolly don't use the right lubricant though.
Fk them, it was the driver who was “failing to pay full time and attention" rule number fking one is don't run anyone over. I hate cars
BikeSnob professes ignorance on an important point relating to the crash: "Now [a cyclist] comes to an intersection controlled by two signals: one’s for pedestrians, the other’s for drivers. Which does he follow? After all, he’s neither."
This is indeed a key question. If we want to be safe as cyclists, we need to choose a role. The safest role for a cyclist is to decide "I'm a vehicle." If this guy had been cycling as a vehicle, he never would have been moving against traffic down the street, and would not have been hit.
On those occasions when cyclists do use pedestrian accommodations like sidewalks and crosswalks, we must manage the transition to riding as a vehicle again with great care. If we fly into a crosswalk at the speed of a vehicle, people expecting a pedestrian will be ill-prepared to stop for us. When we use pedestrian accommodations, we need to move like pedestrians and use the pedestrian signals.
So what appears as a great mystery to BikeSnob—do I use the pedestrian signal or the vehicle signal?—is solved at once when one decides to either cycle as a vehicle, or walk as a pedestrian, while abstaining from doing confusing things like flying from a sidewalk into a crosswalk against traffic at the speed of a vehicle.
Scott B.,
Or--and hear me out here--you're a total pedant and normal people who don't spend most of their waking hours obsessing over this stuff and just want to ride a bike somewhere are understandably confused by shitty infrastructure that basically serves as a booby trap for anyone who's not in a car.
Maybe try some empathy.
--Tan Tenovo
Motordom is terminal and there's no stopping it in the USA into the foreseeable future. Americans are beholden to driving due to a wicked combination of land use, government policy and programs, transporation planning, social norms, behaviors, and corporate sway that suborns a vast majority of Americans to daily driving. There's scads of people that will hold onto their steering wheels as fervently as if driving got a nod in the 2nd amendment. I wish i could see a way out of this traffic nightmare, but don't see cause for hope of significant change happening anywhere anytime soon. There's no way to break the spell. Americans are dependent on, addled by, and addicted to, their shiny automobiles.
Man, it's bad enough I have to sit at a red light at an empty intersection, now you want to take away the right turn as well? No right on red makes sense in NYC where there are always cars and always people and you would have to look in 2 or 3 places at the same time to make a safe turn. If I can see no people for a block and no cars why sit there? I have eyes and a brain. I'm not going to sit at an empty intersection on my bike, either. In 30+ years of cycling in what passes for "urban" around here I have had zero close calls with drivers turning right on red. Oncoming left turns? Plenty. Right hooks? Yup. Turns (in either direction) from side streets with stop signs? Sure. A driver turning right on red is one of the few situations where it is totally clear what they are going to do and where they are at least paying attention to something. For most of the non-densely-populated hinterland, in the grand realm of stupid shit drivers can do, right on red is way way down on the list.
Crosspalms - left on red from one-way to one-way is also legal in all of NY outside the city. The mechanics are fundamentally the same as right-on-red, allowing one and not the other is illogical.
Also, four posts and two Outside articles in four days? Impressive output, especially considering the time commitment required to curate the brood of 17.
A couple of weeks ago, I had the (literally) horrifying experience of watching as an older gentleman using a mobility scooter was knocked from his motorized chair while in the crosswalk by a commercial van making a right turn on red. Fortunately, the man was not injured, but it was a terrible thing to watch unfold, being too far away to do anything to stop it happening.
Without ending in anarchy, I am one for the least necessary rules and regulations and agree with scott b. to some extent. we want to ask drivers to drive smart and with attention, but it's most important that cyclists pay even more attention. case in point happened to me a few years back as i was flying down a slight hill with the thrill of passing many cars as they lined up at the intersection about a mile down the road. "as a vehicle" i was basically passing on the right which is illegal, and i then caught off guard a motorbike making a right to a non-major road to avoid the line up to the light. luckily the motorbike just caught my rear wheel and i broke some spokes and the motorbike turned around 5 minutes later to apologize...etc.
@Beck the biker, It's the "fully democratic" tyranny of the majority problem at work. Most adults never ride bicycles at all, let alone for a "meaningful" purpose beyond recreation, so cyclists automatically become interlopers in "their" domain. Our founding fathers wisely set us up as a representative democracy, a.k.a. "republic", to help us avoid making all laws as if the perceived interests of the majority were all that mattered. When people rant about how some controversial issue "needs to be put to the voters", they demonstrate their ignorance of how our system is designed to work. Police officers, taken as a group, are no more sophisticated in their thinking than the general population, to put it kindly, so it's no surprise for officers to behave like other drivers, especially when it comes to cyclists.
The driver thinks the roads are designed for them because they are. They think that this is only right, as they are the ones who pay for the roads, which is wrong. This is why we need continual advocacy and vigilance, though not the misguided advocacy that seeks to solve the problem by getting cyclists off the road and onto recreation and pedestrian paths, as the majority would have us do.
Anonymous 12:21am,
Apart from the fact that you were on a bicycle your story has absolutely nothing to do with the incident I address in my column.
--Tan Tenovo
I run a stretch of road with 4 exits from a hospital complex, only one has a light (which is a red herring in this discussion) . At all the exits, about 70% of the vehicles roll out across the crosswalks with the drivers looking left and not looking right once. If I were naive and ran as though I had "right of way" I would have been hospitalized about 20 times over the past 5 years. Even getting eye contact with the drivers would have saved me in only about 75% of these cases.
I don't have an issue with right on red. As a frequent sidewalk rider that stuff almost happens to me daily with cars turning out of parking lots as they merge into traffic. The issue is they are looking over their left shoulder, not where they are going.
I always use the analogy "What if the bicycle rider was a 7 year old girl?" In that case I doubt charges would have been filed and maybe the cop would be thining OMG rather than CYA.
It's not really a "special puller". Any decent bearing puller will do it, but you do have to protect the teeth of the Hirth joint. Having said that, the "CULT" bearings on my Campagnolo BB are still going strong after 6 years of pretty decent use. Flush them and grease them, and they spin better than new.
Maybe in rural areas there should be a "right turn on yellow" because at least with yellow lights drivers of automobiles look for others?
Nah..nevermind …
That piece of highway in the Virginia/DC area should be Exhibit 1 in what makes this country lethal for anyone not in a car - sprawl and multiple lanes of car traffic flowing in all directions all supported by the SUV industrial complex. As an earlier closer-to-the-podium poster wrote, we've engineered the landscape for the care and well-being and overall benefit of the car and occupants therein. That is a bummer.
I pull my 10 year old ultratorque cranks once a year, cram as much grease as will fit in the cups, and reassemble. Nothing to it, and they are blissfully quiet in my steel frame.
Reminds me of the Blues Brothers, where the two cops pull out without looking and slam into the camper of the Good Ol' Boys, then the one cop pulls his gun and says, "boys, you in big trouble."
Maybe it's the mentality of not thinking you can do wrong, or maybe it's just CYA. But I hope the cyclist bothers to fight the citation and wins. The Fairfax County Alliance for Better Bicycling has written the police chief on the issue.
https://coveringthecorridor.com/2019/05/fabb-letter-fcpd-chief-roessler/
Anonymous 1:09pm,
Thank you, this is encouraging.
--Tan Tenovo
Some drivers are angered when a vehicle stops at a red light to allow pesky pedestrians to cross. Automobile exhaust smells bad!
A couple of days ago I was honked at by a driver behind me who wanted to turn right on red when I was waiting to go straight. I was in the right most lane as at that intersection it is ahead or right, and a second lane for ahead or left. If I wait in the ahead or left lane, my bike doesn’t trip the loop, so I wait to the right so a car can come up and trigger the light. A vehicle was already on my left so we were about to get the signal anyway.
"we want to ask drivers to drive smart and with attention, but it's most important that cyclists pay even more attention."
Many would say some are stupid, but others could possibly heed them difficult as that may be for those people making things easier for few.
Well, yes, actually, and I used my ears to avoid cars lots of times on my ride today: listening for approaching cars when I am at a stop sign waiting to turn into a winding road with no stop sign. This is a more rural than urban situation- winding road with relatively infrequent vehicles. But, our car-favoring system being what it is, I want all the help I can get out there, and my ears are definitely helpful.
Sadly most drivers in this country are "trained" to look for vehicles (which are a threat to them). They can look right at a bicycle or motorcycle and still not "SEE" them. Right on red for cars is a very scary situation for bikes and pedestrians for sure. And in a similar vein, the good ol' "Right hook" (where a driver passes a cyclist and immediately makes a right turn, and the bike actually runs into the turning vehicle and somehow that is the cyclist's fault too). I don't even live in a large city, and I've been right hooked a number of times (haven't actually plowed into the vehicles thankfully, but stopped close enough to slap the window hard enough to get the drivers attention...boy do they get upset at that!) Sure seems like collectively WE are circling the drain and picking up speed as we near the flush-point in this ol' world. Not sure how we stop the madness...and we can't ALL move to Costa Rica (I hear they have pretty great mt biking there).
Snob, would you please address the permit hikes at floyd bennett field? The race is held at a national park, and Aviator sports has hiked the fees from $150/year to $30,000 /year killing the race. We need all the help we can get on this, after Red Hook was cancelled the NYC racing community just can't take any more losses. We would be ingratiated if you were to address this in your Outside column.
https://patch.com/new-york/new-york-city/huge-fee-hike-threatens-nyc-bike-racing-tradition-cyclists-say?fbclid=IwAR1iNmw0fPoSa8SPAbvAhivMkYo5CKl9FU2zjHwi5dUlXgKRhS20Tflx0to
https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/05/11/bike-racers-may-lose-prime-spot-due-to-corporate-greed/
https://www.change.org/p/aviator-sports-save-cycling-at-floyd-bennett-field-5545640e-a471-43b0-ae2e-c1e841b34308?source_location=petitions_browse
I'm a little confused by the focus on the right on red. Not that it isn't dangerous, but right on green and left on green are both dangerous as well. Left on green, drivers are so busy looking for oncoming cars, they often don't see cyclists, pedestrians, or even motorcyclists. Right on green cars often barely slow down, resulting in the well known right hook. And in NY, the parkways (thanks Moses) give those on green turners a good 50ft to accelerate out of the turn for maximum ped lethality. Right, left, red, green, all turn out rather mean.
We probably all agree the real problem is roads so big with speed limits so high they need traffic lights or stop signs. I love poking about street view of Stolkholm to learn lessons from the biggest city in the country with the lowest traffic fatality rate. The narrow streets, uncontrolled intersections, and 30kmph speed limits are what's actually safe. But I guess if that's never gonna happen in this car loving country, annoying drivers by banning right on red will have to do.
BPsucks: Right turn on red is easier to address. Right and left on green are problems but are harder to address. I only know of a few intersections where the lights stay red in all directions while pedestrians have the signal, and even this treatment doesn't help vehicular cyclists much.
Anon May 9 @ 1:45 already noted this, but you can buy replacement bushings for your Mavic freehub body on Ebay. Given the relentless pace of change in the bike market, I am pleasently surprised that they are still selling. In any case, I have ordered bushings from a seller who styles himself The Hub Doctor and I have successfully replaced several freehub bushings. Lube only stops the death squeal temporarily - the replacement bushing is the only solution.
https://tinyurl.com/y4r9u9fb
https://tinyurl.com/y2cy5tae
This was pushed to the internet on my birthday, which is why I was blissfully offline, sleeping in a tent in the mountains with a gurgling river flowing nearby. So good to be back at the office, spending my days in front of a computer...
Right on Red kills more people annually than sharks, tornados or deer (ok, the deer come close). It's about time we eliminated it (the right-on-red, not the sharks or deer).
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