thepedalaffect

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This is awesome.  Makes me rethink what I want to do with the next spare $400 I come up with...

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So you’ll be seeing music and lights instead of this if you tune in...:

Which might not be a bad thing.  I think I’m getting motion sickness watching and re-watching this gif.

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Yes yes, no posts for a long time.  But this boggled my mind and deserved a post.  And though there are no pedals, it does involve locomotion... sort of.  I knew kangaroos (as portrayed by cartoons) have a reputation as “boxers”, but apparently they do kick-boxing too, and most surprising, look at their tails!  They can literally support their full body weight (briefly) on their tails.  That’s madness.

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Recent research suggesting that a significant (~10%) of passengers in self-driving cars might experience motion-sickness because of... well, what seem like obvious things that anyone who regularly experiences motion-sickness will probably attest to.  No sense of control or ability to anticipate movement for example, or that people who are trying to read text while a passenger might suffer more.

It would have been nice if the study with a title like that had found something more specific to self-driving cars rather than generally being a passenger in a moving vehicle.

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BICYCLE!!!

For your hump day listening pleasure....

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Astro Class!  SF to Copenhagen in 30 minutes!  Floating Luxury Lounges...

I feel like they had to start adding in other things because 2020 really not *so* far away that parts of this have to be an April Fool’s Day joke...

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Nice!  Selfie Shoes... because selfie-sticks are a pain to carry around and you can’t include BOTH hands in a selfie.  Soon to be for both feet, waterproof and to include a charging station....  :)

And in case you’re wondering... pedals are pushed with feet, feet have shoes, you get places with shoes, you take pictures of yourself while you go places... this is all perfectly related to the blog topic.  Uh huh.

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Beware of female and young drivers, the owners of old bangers and those in control of expensive vehicles. - New Zealand Herald

Ah, got to love the article’s title.  Attention-grabbing editorial at work for sure. Following up on last week’s collection of articles about motorists, their perceptions and safety.... here’s a study of Australian drivers that shows:

...that men were more likely to stop than women, although both were about twice as likely to allow someone of the opposite gender to move ahead of them. About half of all older drivers stopped, but about two-thirds of younger motorists kept driving. And the road's middle class was the most considerate.

Drivers of cheap cars were least likely to stop, with the drivers of the really expensive cars only barely more likely to allow others ahead of them.

The cars that stopped most were of "intermediate" value.

The study also reported that drivers were about twice as likely to stop if there was someone in the passenger seat of the car, and like was more likely to yield to like.

Broad conclusions to draw from this?  Courtesy is more likely to go by the wayside when drivers feel entitled, don’t have anything to lose, have nothing to gain, or feel no social pressure to be be polite.  Or in other words, this article is completely and utterly unsurprising.  Except for the first sentence about men being more likely to stop than women.  Heh.

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You can't get away from yourself by moving from one place to another

Ernest Hemmingway

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(via Cycling Humor | Funny Cycling Pictures, Videos, Shirts, Jokes)

Because who doesn’t love a good Chuck Norris meme on a Monday morning...

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Seems appropriate for a warm, dry, feels-like-summer-already Sunday day in California.

#tbt to a dusty, hot summer in Los Angeles with @fyxo by theradavist http://ift.tt/1xiutYy

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I wonder how many pedals were needed to get the big wheel to make one full rotation....

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Bunda Firewood Seller II by Andrew Moore On the road to Bunda College you pass many firewood sellers peadling to market.

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Audi R8 | Photographer

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Here’s another study - this one was a single researcher who got hit by cars twice while doing the study.  Apparently, the data showed that while wearing a helmet might better protect a cyclist, it also resulted in drivers giving cyclists less of a cushion (3.3 inches on average) when sharing the road with them.

Random cyclist from Flickr who is more likely to get hit by a car thanks to his helmet apparently...

Best of all?  The research put a wig on to give the illusion that he was female, and drivers gave on average 8.8 inches MORE space to the “female” cyclist (presumably not wearing a helmet) than the male cyclist wearing a helmet.  *sigh*

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road.cc - the website for pedal powered people. Road cycling news, Bike reviews, Commuting, Leisure riding, Sportives and more

photo by D. Robert Wolcheck on Flickr

Building on some of the previous “shared road” posts.... here is a 2014 study that claims to show that lower speeds and no central road markings tends to make motorists take more care when passing cyclists.  The presence of a bike lane didn’t seem to make a difference.  As some of the comments note,

Interestingly... the conclusion was that cyclists should have a segregated space for riding, not that lower speeds and no central road markings.

Got to love the logic - study shows one thing, conclude that the solution is anything the study didn’t show.  Sugar is bad for you, that proves you should eat bacon instead.  If only....

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Competition for Richard Simmons?