rolling rolling all right welcome to the first ever Seattle bike blog news roundup chat yeah hey I'm Tom Fucoloro and sitting with me in this video is Kelli Refer who was most recently a staffer for Seattle City Council member and transportation committee chair Mike O'Brien and also happens to be my spouse and we are in our house right now and the baby's asleep so we're gonna talk about bike news and this is Tom Fucoloro he's the seattle bike blog editor and writer and we are super excited to be here and have our child be asleep should we cheers to that cheers okay so let's get right into our first video so this story has pretty much broken the internet in urbanist transportation circles performance artist named Simon Weckert in Berlin put 99 smartphones in a little red wagon and loaded Google driving directions on all of them and then just walked down the street of Berlin the busy central city streets creating what he called virtual traffic jams so if anyone knows how when you see a traffic map on Google Maps that is generated by user data so people who have Google Maps up and they're following the directions as they drive they're sending data to Google about how fast they're going if they see a bunch of people all slowing down they say oh there's must be some kind of you know traffic either an incident or just traffic's bad and if it's bad enough Google will stall are actually rerouting people to different routes because they want to get them around this traffic jam i love that he's on a bridge right now sitting on a bridge I think this is actually a block away from Google's Berlin headquarters too which makes it even better and the speaker said I mean this is like central Berlin so you know you didn't gather any data it doesn't seem like about whether like to demonstrate that it was effective but if you look at the video like there's long stretches of time where there's just no cars he actually spoke to Vice well I guess I think they messaged or something it says and explained a little bit more about what he was thinking and it's had a really interesting take on it there's a lot to really unpack here do you want me to read the quote sure the map is not the territory but another version of reality record son quoting [gibberish] oh gosh [gibberish] data is not always translated to what they might be presented the images lists graphs and maps that represent this data are all interpretations and there's no such thing as neutral data data is always collected for a specific purpose by a combination of people technology money Commerce and government right oh that's so good I feel like there's so much to unpack in this particular story from like being amazing performance art which just kudos right there that's great fantastic use of a wagon also notable our family is very pro wagon Pro way in here wabun you think it's the toddler wabin wabin yeah but yeah this is great I think there's a lot to talk about in data and maps and also the real life implications of this kind of an interaction the fact that people driving are choosing to drive on different streets which is something that many of us have probably experienced I know I've been on what is usually a calm neighborhood street and all of a sudden experienced car after car after car after car now I'm curious as to like what's happening and then I'm realizing there's a traffic jam on a neighborhood street and all those people have been diverted to what is my like calm neighborhood route and you're just experiencing the results of a traffic jam on another Street yeah yeah it's this idea that there's you know the Maps application is a virtual space it's a virtual representation of a real place and but what that virtual representation tells people influences what actually happens in that real place I think if you're on the ground standing there you know pulling a wagon whether that's through downtown Berlin with 99 smartphones or if you pull a wagon with a toddler in it on the sidewalk in your neighborhood you know either way these maps are influencing what's actually happening and I think the people you have a sense that's very benign the like oh the maps is just routing you the fastest way isn't it great like it what's wrong with that technology yeah yeah and why is this happening and this is a nothing new but maps like Google didn't invent this concept basically ever since we've been making they've had a purpose and they had impacts on what happens in the real world I like this quote he talks about maps have the potential as an instrument of power they substitute political and military power in a way that represents the state borders between territories and they can repeat legitimate and construct the differences of classes and social self understandings you know and so in you know in this case it's just it's just traffic right like I mean this traffic's everywhere right but it's part it's sort of telling everyone who's using these application that any street it routes you on is yours to drive on to get to your destination as quickly as possible regardless of the context of that street right in that real-world implication is that my calm neighborhood street that I bike with my child on is all of a sudden inundated with a ton of people driving who are just trying to get to the highway on-ramp and it really isn't the most efficient way to go it's not the like arterial it's not the direct way right it's like there were enough people with Google open in their cars waiting at the stoplight that the algorithm said oh you should turn down this street and we'll save maybe five seconds but you'll probably actually it will take longer when I think about like how that really reinforces the case for some infrastructure needs like diverters I think in Seattle a lot of our neighborhood greenways don't have diverters um and this is kind of that tool that would help subvert this technology and say hey this is an opportunity to make sure that the street is staying slow is staying for people who are a local traffic or people riding their bike we're walking through and making sure that it's a still a calm place to be on and I think this kind of technology and this kind of performance art helps really illuminate like this is why we can't just allow like you know especially a Greenway right because all of a sudden all the stop signs are turned to the other way you just get this free pass to go along this neighborhood street that's supposed to be slow so I feel like that's really an important peace I still love thinking about ways that we could potentially use this information to subvert lots of kind of map data like what would it be like if everybody on a bus was like alright let's put our Google driving directions on like could you clear out some bus routes and 70 is finally gonna go quickly so I'm curious about like for the 8 can we get everyone to route off of Denny Way to let the 8 through oh yeah there's a lot of opportunities there to be creative funny like could you even organize a bus of people to like all just like just open your Google Maps and just like say that you're you know get driving directions to like up the street yeah I think this should spawn a whole other layer of people utilizing you driving directions and subversive ways i think that's all I really want to happen and diverters okay so two things all right next story ooh funding so this was this is actually back in December but the ideas brought that feet-first raised in this I guess it's an op-ed in the urbanist was they were trying to set the conversation what should we go into this state funding session thinking about when we're thinking about doing funding since the state is gonna be looking at ways to maybe cut transit funding if they want to try to appease I-976 voters who will not be happy if this court strike down the whole thing so they want to kind of like this pressure to do some anti-tax work in the legislature and I actually think we have an amazing I mean I-976 is devastating I don't want to like underestimate that in any way but I think we have an amazing opportunity here to look at transportation fun thing and really think about it strategically and I think one of the situations that Washington has really gotten itself in is we don't have a lot of good mechanisms for stable transportation funding and we're looking at a lot of levees especially in Seattle and levees are really sold to voters with capital projects right that's new stuff everybody loves new stuff no one likes to do maintenance work or operations work and that's actually super vital to the ongoing benefit of all the things that we've previously invested in and so projects like highway expansion are really expensive really budget heavy and are they actually moving that many people are they actually doing the kind of work that we want to see happening in the state for transportation are they getting more people to where they want to go are they helping meet our climate goals are they helping create places I'm gonna just say no a bold statement for this I don't like luck but no highway expansion isn't helping us meet any of the goals that we really have well I think the problem is that we just have there's one too few lanes on their way wow this one do you feel if we just do one more lane um no but seriously I think like we are at an amazing opportunity here to really rethink how we do transportation funding and there's a lot that needs to happen in the legislature I think it's time to maybe switch over to the transportation choices do you want to go over any of these points oh yeah I think really thinking about the number of people moving through projects right now kind of going back to our first piece data like right now a lot of data is based on vehicle output rather than people output and we don't have as many mechanisms to capture the number of people walking or biking or the number of people taking transit through any given road and it's trying to think about how you know what are efficient projects that are actually moving more people and so that's one really good metric to think about whether a project shouldn't be funded or not um also I really love the peace of prioritizing safety over speed we're not about moving people quickly we're about making sure that people arrive safely or that's what I hope if we're really trying to get towards vision zero or target zero and then looking at maintenance sort of what I was talking about earlier it's really sexy to find a new stuff but like are we going to take care of anything that we've already built okay well then there's the whole problem we keep when we build new freeways historically we had built them not where rich people's homes where poor people's home sorry mmm-hmm yeah I'm sure is a coincidence that every city did that that folds into equity a very important piece of us really can transportation funding I think paratransit is one of those places where it becomes really obvious there are people who rely explicitly on transit to get around and I think it's really frustrating being the transportation world and seeing that there's a lot of people who are like oh not everyone can get around by bike it's like sure but not everyone can get around my car there's a lot of people who are relying very exclusively on living in a walkable neighborhood or having access to paratransit or other mobility options and we should be prioritizing those people's needs first in their funding yeah and then arguments always made me really frustrated because I think there's no like I'm a bike lane just goes in on a street it doesn't limit someone's ability to drive take the bus or walk like it's not a bike lane going in doesn't mean you have to bike now and you don't have another choice yeah but there are lots and lots and lots and lots of places where the whole road is for cars and if you don't drive then you're not allowed to get around and you know this idea that well bike lanes are exclusive is not everyone can biking like well sure like not everyone can bike that's true but we're not building infrastructure where that's your only option where there are places even in Seattle where if you're not driving you're at a huge disadvantage you know but further access to food access to jobs access to recreation if you don't have a car in in certain parts of the city then you just don't get as much of any of that access education as well so you know it just frustrates me when I hear people say well not everyone can buy it oh yeah but we're not we're not forcing everyone to bike like you you know we're getting slivers of road space so that the people who are biking are safer and so that other people who don't bike yet can say wow I would actually bike there that doesn't look terrifying the way that you know but who would never mix with in with the all car road that we're all so familiar with grant rant over so oh there's a lot going on in Olympia right now it's really exciting there's some pretty big stuff going on let's talk about block the box really quick I know we're about to yeah scroll on and it's amazing I think we really want to see this one pass Rooted In Rights has done some amazing videos that if you haven't taken the time you should definitely check out really looking at what it means when crosswalks are blocked by people driving and cars and the safety challenges that that poses for all kinds of people and especially folks with wheelchairs and walkers and limited mobility that has a lot of potential to just literally save lives very very very important work transportation for all super exciting as well just really looking at the opportunity to ensure that the projects that are going to be funded are the ones that are moving moving people so I think that's pretty pretty vital here as well and then like really looking at how are we gonna fight on the transportation let's kind of gets into a bigger bigger theme in the post I-976 world with the Road usage charge is one particular option just seeing how we can charge people for their actual use of the road I think it's it's pretty ironic that people biking are often accused of not paying their fair share when in full full truth it's really people who are driving or not really paying for their toll on the roads their toll on the environment the toll on our communities or in the toll on literally the infrastructure that we're paying right there's a lot that isn't being if gas taxes and vehicle license fees covered the entire cost of driving infrastructure and then also the harm the driving caused is a gallon of gas would be completely unaffordable so we subsidize it because that's politically expedient but at extreme detriment in so many directions and and but it leaves people this idea that oh well you know there's tax on my gas that must cover everything right which that's not that's not reality it turns out you're paying for a car infrastructure whether you drive or not because so much of it has to come through other means sales taxes and property taxes well I guess that's really tricky right now I'm right because a lot of boon to some parts of our environmental consciousness is that a lot of cars are becoming electrified or better gas mileage well that's great that still doesn't provide us with a stable revenue source for transportation and I think that's kind of this fundamental problem that Washington is facing and I mean I think one of the big things is really looking at we need a more stable revenue source for transportation as a whole where we're not trying to identify behavior that we're trying to eliminate and taxing that we actually just means something that's gonna be ongoing and not diminishing and that that's really kind of a kicker for transportation funding as a whole and also I think there's this desire in the state legislature to see transportation benefit districts get a little bit more in the way and the types of funding that they can incorporate to fund important and vital programs like paratransit for some counties in Washington it's their entire transit is funded through vehicle license fees so we're seeing places where like there hold transit substitution is is through that source of income and you know I think right now we're having this conversation of what is a sustainable source of transportation funding and we need the state legislature to take bold action and actually prioritize transit and prioritize mmm multimodal investments that move people yeah wait and and you I think you you got into what might be one of the arguments against I-976 which is that it's doing it was doing multiple things at once which is you're not allowed to do that when you write a ballot initiative so for example you know someone might have voted against or voted for I-976 because they were mad about sound the way Sound Transit was valuing cars when they calculated their vehicle excise tax as part of the the sound transit 3 package you know people didn't think was fair their cars were being overvalued you know way significantly beyond what they could possibly sell it for and they felt like that wasn't fair yeah I don't completely disagree with them you know you know you thought you were gonna pay one rate and they go well I pay way more if you think my car is worth yeah you know way more than it is but so if they vote for it for that you know they might not be thinking like like their goal in that vote is not to well I want to completely decimate you know a transit system in a County you know 100 miles away or even in in King County or in Seattle I think like in the ferry system I mean like I already loves the ferries nobody really I mean come on who wants to cut ferry service yeah and like if you knew that your vote was gonna have all of these impacts would you have still voted that way waiting it's hard because yeah it's one of those things where the reason you're not allowed to do that is because you could feasibly create initiative that like you know 40% of people like this part of it and 40% of people like this part of it and so long as there's not too much overlap you might get 51% but really what you've done is you've combined to losing arguments and you've made them into one winning one and even though it turns out that the majority of the state hates both those ideas but so that's why you're not allowed to combine things like it makes sense that's a against the rules like sneak weird stuff and I think it's weird that you're allowed to put initiatives on the ballot that would be illegal I think there should be like a check process before we're like maybe we should have this court battle before it goes on the ballot it's weird to like have everyone get all worked up and go vote on it and then we do the lawsuits but maybe there's maybe there's no other way to do it maybe that I mean it depends there's lots of like there's lots of different ways there's so many different models of government you know like this is not the way it's done everywhere but that's a whole nother that's like we don't need to and that is exactly why though you should do this action alert because so if you go to transportation choices coalition and check out their dispatches from Olympia so they keep posting these as news evolves during the session and they'll let you know if they need you to contact any senators about it an issue like people need to be able be hearing about your support for example this one is oh my god I can't even read this here we go um a host of bills have introduced that would strip sound transit of revenue and put essential transit projects at risk cuts are delay so you can hit this little button in at all let's see what it does oh look handy form kind of tells you what you're supporting you just fill it out and it automatically sends it to the correct people pretty neat and you'll probably end up on an action alert list for transportation choices coalition which you should join and they're doing really great work I think right now I mean especially this year it feels like a really important year to be following what's happening in the state legislature and figure out how we're gonna move forward there's some really big fundamental questions about what we're gonna fund how we're gonna fund it and what we're looking for and I think this is this is the year to take action this is the year to call your representatives and let them know what you're feeling what you're thinking about this know that this is an important issue to you and why yeah and also this is a short session so if your remember last year kind of went on and on and on so if you're thinking that you can wait you can't wait do it now yes take action right now the session's going to end way faster it's not a budget session so don't delay taking action this is not one of those sessions it's gonna go on and on all right let's talk about Belgium let's get out of this country so zooming out yeah the street films if none of you are if you are not familiar with street films yet well then I got something to tell you okay street films is amazing you can get completely lost in there they've been going on for so long they just make these concise informative optimistic videos about the ways that our public spaces could be different in our streets could be different and you know they go when they highlight places that are doing interesting things and talk to people and ask them questions about how they did it basically I mean it's just the way that they spread information is just I think few things few sources of media have probably had the impact that Street films has had just because a lot of these things you just need someone to film it and explain it to you because you can't visit all over the world to actually see these places yourself and they just think it's so digestible so let's do a really eco-friendly way of traveling to Ghent Belgium yeah this is the same kind of system Groningen has right like a ring road this is a much larger so yeah yeah like a real city dorm and this part is really interesting too yes yes it's pretty good oh my god so I think the something that let's put our names back up here at work I really love that concept that you know it's hard to imagine how we could do that here cuz it it would just be so foreign to so many people who drive I don't think I think we should try it at some point but yeah the idea that we could have streets where you're not allowed to pass like you just can't pass like if there's someone biking in front of you you do you just go behind we just don't pass I'm gonna go step further I think there need to be streets where you're not allowed to drive um but I think that's actually closer than we think right like um so I love the whole concept that it took a lot of planning and a lot of intention to get mode shift and I think we've seen cities do this again and again Vancouver is our nearest neighbor they've had amazing mode shift and it's because they did the hard work of making safe bike routes prioritizing transit and making it easy and accessible to walk and it's not a secret formula in Seattle you'll often hear this line not all modes can fit on all streets it usually comes in the context of saying like we can't have bikes and buses and cars and pedestrians on the same street and then works like a base and it's like okay cool well so I agree with you not all modes can go in all streets and let's do some car free streets for real here there are so many places in the city where it makes a ton of sense I think downtown is where people start to envision it we don't have to start downtown like Seattle loved neighborhoods we have amazing neighborhoods Ballard Ave is like the best business they do all year is during their seafood fest that's when the street is shut down they have their neighborhood farmers market on Sundays that's a vibrant amazing like destination spot we're gonna have a light rail in university district we can have some car free streets there I would love to see some places in Columbia City and we can have like those neighborhoods could use some activation on these streets where especially like in Columbia City Rainier is a practical highway going through the neighborhood so what if we find some streets where there can just be open people walking biking and enjoying enjoying the neighborhood yeah I don't know if anyone watching this ever got to go to the the old summer streets that used to happen on Rainier Avenue it was accompanied by there's another festival to happened they just kind of combined them Oh was it the Heritage Festival was that what it was called I can't remember the exact title it was awesome it was just so wonderful so you just had this stretch of Rainier Ave through Columbia City and it was car free and there was a parade you know Bike Works would do like a bike parade and it was just so much fun people would just kind of party all day like in the street and it just kind of showed you like yeah like this doesn't have to be just full of cars stuck in traffic I think you can be different I think like our neighborhoods like people talk about what makes Seattle unique and it is our neighborhoods and I think that's a great place to start and removing cars from some of these vital business districts and really allowing restaurants and cafes to open up and really expand upon that streetery concept and just say hey let's have more tables let's create more space for people to enjoy their coffee or have a nice pastry or what you know like we've really got some some space to work with and not keep people on the margins yeah and I think that was one thing that you know the city tried this and on the pike pine did I think was Pike Street they made it car free for you know random days oh yeah I kind of forgot about Capitol Hill I'm sorry I'm old but yeah, Capitol Hill has tons of places you remember that place yeah, we used to live close to there but yeah there are so many options and I feel like you know they people took advantage of the car free Pike Street but I think what it was missing was like I want it to be filled with like like I want there to be like cafe seating with you know people going out and serving people drinks and meals in the middle of the street like I want like it to be a place you go because you know you'll have a nice way to just like enjoy yourself and enjoy your community and a place you can stay a place you could stay a place where there will be space for you like you know Capitol Hill like you know again we're old like sometimes I'm like Capitol Hill everything's so packed really like I'm so old i really want a table i need a table like I can't I can't I can't like do this you know in a crowd I can but I would like not to sometimes yeah but like so when you can be outside and can be at a cafe in the middle of street there's so much space to be used for just like people being able to just exist out there and instead you know we just have you know basically just an endless stream of you know ride hailing cars just driving up and down and picking people up yeah there's just a lot of room to play here right like you know there's a lot of space to say where can we be creative and where can we do something fun that makes it unique in Seattle focused right like we don't need to be Ghent we don't need to be Groningen we don't need to be any other city we can be ourselves but how can we use the space we have and just show off what we've got the other thing in love about this video I'm like a huge protected bike lane fan but I actually love this concept of just having a cycling street because I think it it's kind of where greenways are wanting to go but aren't at this point I think a lot of our sort of looping way back to our first video is that a lot of people get diverted onto greenways who are driving and they're not actually Pleasant and slow streets and I think there's a lot of space to just say hey a really good option for some of these streets it's actually just making it a total bike route you know we're an interesting place to experiment this might be Bell Street yeah Bell town you know this idea that yeah I think like the problem with greenways the way that we have them now is that well there's couple problems you know what one of them is like we have this double-edged sword if we have the really skinny streets and then we do parking both sides which is really really really effective at slowing traffic like like there are other cities that drool over it is handy yeah like our Seattle's collision and injury rate on non arterial streets is so low yeah compared to like basically any other US city like we are and it's because of the it's just so skinny like we're not afraid to create a street that's two-way but there's not actually room for two cars to pass you have to do that negotiation thing like that whole annoying negotiation thing is safe yeah that's what's making the collision rate go down the problem is that if you're trying to bike down that street that's also not always comfortable then you get someone behind you who's impatient maybe Waze has told them that this is a faster route to the freeway and then instead they get stuck behind you you know biking with your kid you know up a hill on the side street we're just trying to go to the playground man and like there's not enough room for them to pass you safely but they might they might think that there's room and they think you're being rude but for not getting over and it creates this like stressful conflict it doesn't need to be there and it would be amazing if we could somehow create the social norm and understanding that on these streets you just don't pass like you can't you just cannot pass sorry or you cannot go um I love the idea of like an American cultural consciousness-raising where all of a sudden we really respect everyone's needs to move at their own speeds and desires yeah yeah love the idea and in reality we need some diverters we had to force them to love yeah um yeah I you know something like this idea of like protected bike lanes being bike infrastructure is always a little bit false right like I don't actually need a protected bike lane you who are driving in your SUV you are the one who needs a protected bike lane so then we're not negotiating the same space and I think it's it's that that sort of realization of like the protected bike lane is a wonderful tool for a city that has a lot of people driving and has a lot of roads that are getting people to meet in business districts and our sharing space and making it safer to share space but in in in a different world we can just have some streets that are really focused on transit and some streets that are really focused on people walking and biking and some streets that are focused on cars but I think we have yet to make that leap in Seattle to say this is a street that's for a car and this is one that is it right yeah yeah absolutely and you know I like the idea that so legally speaking an eight-year-old should be able to bike down the middle of the lane all the way down Rainier Avenue or Aurora illegally an eight-year-old has every right yeah bike just ride their bike down you know just take the whole lane all the way down Lake City Way and that person and the SUV behind them is gonna call CPS which is illegal use your operate your phone while driving but everyone so yeah in a perfect world like everyone driving will like respect that kids right and will slow down and pass according to our new passing law which means they have to change lanes completely to pass or just wait or just wait if they can't I'm like that's what the law says now in a perfect world everyone would just do that and would be perfectly safe for that eight year olds just bike down Lake City Way but that's not the world that we have and if not the person biking who needs infrastructure it's the person driving the needs infrastructure to enforce them to protect that person biking and their right to be there and I feel like we constantly think about that backwards oh yeah it's like oh if you are an entitled bicyclists you want this lanes like now I'm not doing it for me I'm doing it for you so you don't kill me I don't know I do want to not that I also speaking of which to go into our next our God let's ah okay this one is happy okay this one's all the way from April but it is last year April last year it's not honestly news to a lot of people but it's presented in a very good way it's about this yeah you want to go yeah pause it all right time out okay hey we're back and we're about to talk about something kind of heavy or at least it feels heavy to me it is extremely heavy because there's a lot of these SUVs in the world and they're not going away anytime soon yeah and yet this is what they're like let's just let's play the video like a preschool class you guys oh my god 15 feet okay blah okay so let's talk about this before then sorry I'll refrain my language that I want to spew out here this freaks me out a lot I think as a person who has a small human being and walks with them in her neighborhood I think a lot about who can see her and like she just doesn't even come above the hood for what do you think like 50 to 80 percent that's like a really large bottom percentage because I don't know but like a huge amount of cars yeah cannot even see her kid yes yeah it looks like they were talking about directly before this like you know our seats would be you know the idea that like our street no one would ever get in a crash or ever get hurt if everyone debate every single law perfectly when they're driving right and that's in it that's unrealistic the whole concept of vision zero says that is unrealistic and you can't just keep putting this on individual behavior but then you get something like this it's like literally if you can't see someone then like you literally it is impossible to see them your car is in the way your car is designed in such a way that removes your ability to make the correct decision so that that's like you know these people who buy these cars think that I'm up high can see really well I know something that everyone there's a couple people in the video who say that but up high is not where you know I think that's the thing is like I've been thinking and reflecting a lot about perceived safety and I think about like you know as a woman who bikes alone at night um you know I used to more frequently before we had a child but like still fairly often and people ask you all the time like how do you feel safe doing that and safety is something that can feel so personal and and then there are these moments when it kind of takes you out and realize like Oh safety also has this other connotation of like the safety ratings of these vehicles has nothing to do with the people outside of the vehicle it's only about the people inside yeah so this whenever you see those like five-star crash test rating in Europe car's safety rating includes the concept of what about someone that you hit so like pedestrian safety which is why if you see like European cars are often much more snub-nosed and the windshields closer to the front and stuff like that because visibility is how you get the good rating over there in America it does not they like that it doesn't factor in it that five-star rating does not in any way at all include you walking across the crosswalk like you are not a factor in that star rating at all anyway there's just so much heartbreak associated with this trend and SUVs and bigger vehicles and thinking about the number I mean to me it just like it really hurts to think about the number of families who have lost children because they've been run over by a car in their driveway you know by a relative or parent and then in this story ya know there's a heart let's watch it let's watch it it's it's it's really heartbreaking but I think it's important to see it is oh my god Erica Boyer says her son Noah was playing outside house when he wandered into the driveway to get a basketball at that same moment his grandfather was leaving his truck forward I didn't see him I was greeted by the two sheriff's and I said just tell me that my baby's ok and he said we can't do that so I mean this isn't abstract I mean it it's one of those things that news stations the phenomenon I've observed you know so I've been writing this blog for the past ten years I've been very tuned in to what other media writing about anything transportation related and there's this thing what will happen we're like the scanner will say there's been a you know life-threatening injury whatever of a child and so the news stations will send out the copter and they'll go and they'll go to some usually as a cul-de-sac or something you know some someone's driveway and there'll be this really short bit where the news copters are help hovering and they are just there to get the footage of there's been some sort of terrible thing and then once like news breaks that it was a kid and it was probably a relative that hit them everyone just goes away the copters fly back and no one wants to talk about it because it's so horrific and there's no it's hard to think that like reporting it is gonna end in justice because like the person who did it is in hell now you know they're in pure hell and you know sure they're responsible but that doesn't like we don't need to hold anyone responsible for this because it's the most horrific thing that could happen and so we just ignore it and I think that that's dangerous to ignore it because it creates like what happens in this video where there's all these people who own cars that have this vulnerability and they have no ideas dangerous because we don't talk about it or they like these thinks they're doing the right thing which is I think that like twisted part of this is that people in big cars feel like they're being safe that they're doing the safe thing by having this car that feels good to them and I think to have this realization that like you could have what was 13 kids in front of you before you saw a child like that's horrific and it really shifts your perspective and like what messages were being sold about safety and like whose safety is at stake and it's heartbreaking and they it's it's scary and it's also really really and I really appreciated that the pedestrian safety crisis is her name I can't remember the woman who was talking about it Oh Angie Smith yeah she's writing a book about it or I think her first draft is already I wanna see it soon but like thinking about where and your body things are hitting like I've started to think about that all the time in front of cars that I cross is like oh this is hitting my hip or this is hitting my like a vital organs and then with your child that's just like well the whole my whole child and that's a horrible thought to have and but also not having it doesn't help the cause either it's it's all terrible and it's hard cause I think there are so many people who don't want to think about their choice of like buying an SUV as part of the safety problem yeah I mean the pedestrian safety crisis in America is correlated with SUV sales it's it's pretty simple SUV miles traveled correlates with whether or not people walking are killed then the car manufacturers are aware that SUVs are more deadly to people walking and they don't care and they're not doing anything about it they're the the free press in Detroit did a groundbreaking piece on this two years ago I want to say and they discovered not only that SUVs are correlated with with pedestrian deaths but also that the car companies know about it and to me this is this should be front-page scandal like if we didn't have a complete bumbling racist wad of garbage in the White House this might have been a bigger story a major business in America has is complicit in deaths and they continue to sell these cars because they make a larger margin on them I mean so you might have heard like there was that this this this is the thing that blows me anyway so a lot of the costs of making a car are sort of fixed no matter how big the car is so honestly it is it's a lot of houses you know there's just like you know every car has to have the safety features every car has to have axles and tires and wheels and engines and like like there's so many things that are gonna be in the car no matter what and but as you grow the car you can sell your costs of manufacturing don't go up nearly as much as the margin you can put on top so you can sell an SUV for so much more than a sedan even though your cost to produce it wasn't that much more and that is why car companies are pushing SUVs so much so you saw like the you know Ford is trying to kill off the Ford Focus and may have killed off the Ford Focus it's either it's either killed off or they're trying to kill off something like that in a big and it's not because the Ford Focus wasn't selling and it's not because people don't want that size of car it's because their margin is smaller and they want to have as many of the cars they sell be at the highest margin level possible and that's SUVs so the thing driving this is not pure customer demand you know like like car companies were maybe not the first but they were pioneers in the concept that you know what we will just tell you what you want through marketing yeah like we can control the market's demand by just telling you what you demand and it will work and they've been extremely effective at it so you look at car commercials if you watch television they're all SUVs and if they have a sedan in them it's like oh also we have one but it's like they're not the star almost ever only luxury sedans are ever the star and they're always in an empty city that's true they already had somebody with a wagon go through I think it's important to understand that when you see an SUV commercial that is them building demand and then they justify the killing of more reasonable sized cars in favor of these SUVs because they've created the demand and now this is what people are going at so it's it's an insidious and evil conspiracy cars have always been that way they're the ones who made jaywalking illegal it was a coined the phrase jaywalking yeah they're the ones who have perpetuated this notion that streets are for cars and people buy it all the time if you're watching this and if you made it this far you probably don't believe that cheers to you like five people watching but it's we have this enormous problem because even if we were in some kind of perfect world to ban SUVs somehow there's so many SUVs in the world they're not going anywhere well I mean what I hate is this notion that this technology is gonna fix it right like we put a camera in front of the car like that will mitigate future car collisions but it doesn't help all of the people who are on the road right now and maybe them knowing that they have an enormous blind spot in the front is some small sliver of a silver lining but I think what we're really lacking is like a major awareness of how dangerous these vehicles are and it sucks cuz like a lot of people I think legitimately bought into the idea that they were getting a safer car and I you know like I don't I I kind of feel bad for them right like I think they're you know especially because I think a lot of bigger cars are marketed towards people who have kids and aren't carrying kids and all their stuff and like I don't I don't believe that always like I hate the stereotype I like SUV driving moms like they don't want to know that they can't see 13 children in front of them like they want to think that they're being safe and and I think they this is just really devastating and we don't actually have a fix for other cars that are on the road there's not a camera that can retroactively levy add into your front of your car right I mean that's that's literally what the Ride the Ducks solution was after they killed Oh God we still have them on the roads right now what the hell sorry i'm not supposed to swear hell is a pretty minor swear but no what the [bleep] why are Ride the Ducks are still on Seattle streets Jesus [bleep] Christ this is honestly this is one of the biggest failures of street safety policy our city has ever experienced that we so there was one year where Ride the Ducks through one incident was responsible for one quarter of all Seattle road deaths for the entire year and we couldn't even say you're done you don't get to drive in our streets anymore we couldn't do that and every single time I see a Ride the Duck I get so mad I can't believe they're still out there and then they always say some bull [bleep] like spandex riders on the Burke-Gilman and I'm wearing [bleep] jeans dude I've got a child in front like what what do you want from me just spandex Highway let me look over and like all the there's like a bunch of tourists like taking a picture of you like I'm going to work what stop all right all right I hate Ride the Ducks I hate Ride the Ducks I want their business to fail completely yeah it's not a fun tourist activity there's so many better things even those know what I'm gonna plug Argosy cruises that was more fun Argosy Cruise is great they go through the locks this is way cooler all right [bleep] the Ducks alright this is this is wait wait we should skip ahead to this one this is related yay so yay climate protesters all of you hold on we didn't show them sorry I didn't hey there we go protesters all around the world we love all people doing all climate protests in any shape and form but especially the folks who came out to protest the car industry doesn't happen enough like we do more of this yeah we you know it's it's interesting like that I don't know if it's because of ties to unions or something what the excuse is but there's you know people are fully ready to protest like a coal company or like a oil pipeline but we're not ready to protest cars which is where that oil ends up and that should change and that's why I like this story a lot there's another photo that's not in here in this in this version that I saw elsewhere someone had poured like a bunch of blood on the hood of one of the fancy new cars and people are like well that's an electric car why are you doing this like electric cars kill people too like electric cars can be better however they're still taking up a lot of space they're still monopolizing that like politics of space in urban environment they're also still dangerous I think they like the fact is if we can travel 60 miles per hour more very easily and in a given place that's too fast it's dangerous I mean the car infrastructure and car dominance is what is the limiting factor and so much of walking biking and transit use in our country and the electric cars don't change that at all no I mean I'm not so I'm not against electric cars because like well there's lots of benefits to them you know there's oh and not everywhere is a place but that has the kind of density that you need to really be able to comfortably walk or bike or the transit infrastructure sure but like electric cars aren't the end-all be-all of solutions and I really wish people would stop pretending they are yeah and to get back to our or other version about our other point about our companies sure like car companies are making like they have like one watch a car because they don't want to be the company that doesn't have what I guess but those aren't the car the cars that they are creating the demand for they're doing running giant endless advertising campaigns for their electric cars a lot of places that have electric cars like they're still running on crappy energy system it's like a no wait that's this story gonna blow it up oh wow too much transportation it is still a problem for missions I think it's um you know it's really easy in Washington and King County and Seattle to sit her and focus on transportation as one of our greenhouse gas emissions cuz we know it's this target we know it's where our pollution is coming from but then you do this and this is the United States right like transportations still our problem well a lot of ways it's easier to transition a coal power plant to natural gas so not a solution but be clear it's like it's like well this seems like okay well you're better than coal that was low but the result is that except you see that the power emissions here that goes down here that's because so much of what happened during Obama's time was coal plants turning to natural gas and that's fracked gas that the extraction of it is but probably not as bad as taking the top off of a mountain in the pollutes during the extractions and pollutes during the transportation and includes during the usage yeah it is it's like one of those things was like okay well maybe it's better than the most horrible thing that we could be doing yeah but that doesn't well I guess it's like the most horrible thing that can be doing this side of like whale oil I know that's I'm saying like it's like literally like whale oil coal I guess natural gas is like significantly below that but we've got a lot of work to do right and like I think it's frustrating here because transportation isn't an isolated thing right like there's so much that's related to transportation it's about housing affordability it's about jobs it's about land use it's about the kind of places that people live and we're in a place where we have a lot of opportunity to change that and shift that and like honestly not everywhere in the country is in the same boat right like we've tried to map out if we're visiting our parents like what would be walking distance from her parents house and then like what oh we could walk to in our current house in Seattle and it's like kind of ridiculous it's like large swaths of the city I love you mom i mean my parents live kind of out there in the burbs too you can walk to things anything do things you know so I think like transportation isn't in a vacuum no well and also you know the equity issues related to transportation and power here and industry actually are all intertwined they're all intertwined it is is intersectional as hell like you know I think back to you know there's parts of the st. Louis metro area so I grew up in St Louis, Missouri and actually i'm wearing a St Louis shirt right now there are neighborhoods I remember growing up where when it rained the rain was so acidic from the exhaust from power plants nearby that the rain would eat the paint off of your car so if you didn't park in a garage like you could tell like people would just drive around these cars but the paint was all faded and like like they'll be like pockmarks almost in it and yeah I mean essentially acid burns is what it was and it's because the rain was so acidic from the power plants there were you know that's going in the air that's going in their kids lungs you know their kids have high rates of asthma now because of this like and those places also happen to be the places where you had to drive because they're undesirable to live in a place where the rain eats the paint off your car like that's not a great place and so it's not a dense populated area where there's good transit service and you know all the factors that play into you know why people rely on cars why people have access to food why people have access to recreation and good health and clean air they're all tied together with environmentalist issues here and you can see it around this graph that like they're all connected climate justice is so much about really looking the folks who are impacted and I think this is where there's so much work to do to really lift up the folks who've been impacted by environmental racism and say you know the solutions and you know what will support community and I think it's everyone in everyone's best interest to really support the people doing climate justice work and I think there's so much to do in that intersection of livability and yeah industry where is industry and how is this how is this really impacting people's lives and public health there's so many things coming together mmm-hmm just so happens to be their food desert it's like all these things are coming together and we've got so much work to do and this isn't just in like Seattle's got a lot of work to do we're not exempt from this we've got a lot of the same environmental racism problems like I think we like to think that we don't have these issues we do you know st. Louis I think you know our clean energy comes from hydroelectric great we're very damaging to the river ecosystem yeah yeah I mean it's but obviously I guess it's better than coal there's just a lot of opportunities for everyone to do better work and just you do better we really have to do better so so for Seattle I don't have the graph in front of me but transportation is significantly higher than everything else on this for the Seattle version because we have so much hydroelectric for our power really drives down the the heating homes and things like that that still a lot of work it's like housing housing and buildings are still a large part of our greenhouse gas emissions but transportation is a pretty big one too so I think this was the biggest here it is but yeah but we still them to be we still need to be tackling our power sources yes still need to be tackling new housing buildings yeah do you want to talk about natural gas pans it's a great idea there is everything it's it's becoming more we're talking point I'm hearing it more more people are imagining like what would a city look like if we banned natural gas and this seems really extreme but it isn't like in the reality is like and so if we want to meet our goals of reducing our emissions by 2030 that means that we need to take a lot of steps the first step is not creating new problems not creating new infrastructure that supports fossil fuel first step right like this is when we talk about natural gas ban it really is an early step in the process of weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels right like how do we not make the problem worse so electrification in Seattle is supportive mostly by hydroelectric which has its issues but is a renewable energy source and so it is possible to do a lot more electric buildings and I think we are looking at figuring out what that means right like what does that mean for seattle City Light what does that mean for I'm scared to say this but Puget Sound Energy but like whatever what does it look like for these big energy providers for the city and I think we're looking at electrification and a lot of different scales it's like our house that we're in right now is fully electric we have things like a heat pump we have an induction oven those things are are really scalable for our size of house which is very small is it scalable for bigger medium-sized apartment buildings large towers that's some commercial kitchens commercial kitchens I mean there's a lot to figure out the market is I believe not always the solution but I think we can see if we create these bans for natural gas beyond options for incentivizing companies to develop cool induction ovens that are affordable for commercial kitchens systems of heating that work well for multifamily buildings we need to see that jump in innovation and so that has to happen right like we're seeing in California a rippling wave of natural gas bans it is where things are headed and and this is new construction new construction or not we're not like going into people's homes mean like don't forget I think it is really important for people to start thinking about like what are other ways that they can start to do things on their own but no it's not retroactive it's just new construction I mean coming from that range dude induction is the shit it is we've got an induction oven and like it's amazing you're just against aluminum pots it's not it's like sorry your shitty pots have to go you have to buy nice pots um but no really I mean like we're looking at something here that is an absolute requirement in the future and or now I mean honestly yeah it's not it's not just to rely on a source of energy that in order to get it we need to poison the water for indigenous communities and rural communities so that was the thing that really struck me Colorado has a lot of fracked gas and that's where I'm from and we drove by on the way to her friend's house for new years this was several years ago a bunch of frat gasps thanks and the thing about frack gas and then I think this is fairly insidious is that it actually doesn't look like much it's a field and there'll be like a little box or some sort of like vaguely industrial looking structure but it's pretty small and that is what some fracked gas land can look like and that is something that doesn't look like a lot right and then you have a lot of realizations of like oh it's it's like this acre and this acre and it's this whole space that looks like almost open space and it is actually like land that is having some pretty substantial shifts and changes and exploitation to it well and like you know the fracking process isn't like magically stop it like the fence line right yeah okay there's houses really close to a lot of these borders right and the water that you're using to do that then water is the same water and it's coming from the aquifer which is being drained so like the Front Range which is like Denver and surrounding cities and suburbs is totally reliant on this thing they call the aquifer aquifer and it's a giant underground reservoir nobody has any idea how much water's in it but they know it's going down and if so there's like this weird existential thing hanging over all these communities where it's like someday it might that might be all of it like it's not and then what do we do and so the idea of wasting water on this process is exceptionally offensive yeah in the front range it's like there's this whole system of getting natural gas to houses and that also is exploitative right so it's like the extraction the transportation and the usage and I think we're just really looking at a time when we need to be not making our problems worse I also feel that way about electric cars sometimes - right because like we're extracting all these resources to make electric cars they're using resources on the batteries they're using resources on the production they're not as neutral as we want to think they are like even if their overall emissions are lower than a diesel car gas car like they're still not neutral yeah oh man we're diving to like climate despair oh no do you have anything else to life us out Janice yeah Jesus hi we met Janice Janice is amazing I've met Janice a couple times Janice's is awesome to talk to such a really inspiring human being who is doing incredible work in San Francisco that policy director for the what is it what do they call it the Bay Area Bike Coalition and is also ran and won a seat on the BART board and has just been like you remember there is the person who was arrested for eating a sandwich on like the platform of the BART it triggered this whole series of protests of like that was racist policing and it like someone can eat a sandwich on the freaking subway platform it's fine and so Janice is on the BART board actually attended the protests against that which was awesome So Janice does all kinds of really amazing work and I really like this story because it's very that she's being very honest and open about kind of the the stress and the weight in the way that doing this kind of work has impacted her life and the toll it takes on you personally to be so engaged in such important issues that are so huge all the time that it's it's easy to forget about yourself a little bit well I know that I think the fact that there's a lot of women who take transit and are not necessarily having their voices heard I really love this the beginning part of the article like Janice Li is 32 years old she's a woman she's Chinese she's an immigrant she's queer right these are her identities and all of these identities intersect on public transit this is a public social space and women are taking transit but they're not always the ones whose voices are heard to be a woman of color to be queer to be an immigrant to be representative on this board is a really important work and it is hard it's hard no matter who you are cuz it's a job that you don't get paid for but is taking up a lot of your time San Francisco Bicycle Coalition the advocacy director um so she's doing this whole amazing other scope of work for a nonprofit probably not getting paid enough um and and then doing the BART part was paid almost nothing yeah and it's just doing a ton of work in in transportation and that is hard and I really appreciate the story for being honest and real and I also think that she's passionate and she brings this like really heartfelt and personal approach to transportation that's really needed I think one thing that is like my ultimate pet peeve about as but people can get this with you but no offense transit people but they're the worst they are like the most nit picky about like timetables and technical performance but then when you talk about like what is the lived experience someone's trying to take transit they don't always factor that in and like so much of why transit succeeds or fails it's about lived experience of like who's feels comfortable and safe on transit who feels supported that the transit is going where they need it to go when they need to go there you know we're not all nine-to-five workers going downtown and like so many transit agencies absolutely fail at acknowledging that there are other types of people taking other types of trips on transit and to just be a person and trying to bring that perspective into major transit agency is a lot of emotional labor we want to give to serious kudos for doing all of that work you know so like we're making this video on you know so like right right now in this contemporary moment the Democratic Party has like somehow completely failed to like make an app where they can count votes and has kind of like thrown their whole primary system like off-kilter and then our government just acquitted Donald Trump from you know he did nothing wrong it's totally cool and you know it's there's so much important work to be done and it is important and you should still do it of course but also we love you take care of yourself that's self-care is a radical act community care that's my new kind of care yeah explain it so self-care is a lot about like you know thinking about what your your self means are and community cares about acknowledging that we aren't pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and that we really need each other and that I think there's a big push to just like think about how we support each other I really appreciated a friend had a post saying like hey these are some tasks that I really suck at but here's some stuff I'm really good at and I can help you with the things I'm good at and you can maybe help me with the things I suck at and it was like going to the post office and like but I'm really good at like making sure all your you know finances are in a spreadsheet or whatever you know like we all have different skills and like I think part of it is technology and I like we're not fully self-sufficient beings I love self-care I love a good bubble bath but like we also need to take care of each other and like part of our goal is to be interconnected and self-care includes the relationship care right you know all the parts that make you happy also like it's not just bubble baths i mean bubble baths i guess are nice but yeah I mean yeah it's hard like you continuing to go another day fight another day is more important sometimes than the fight today maybe that's the point that I'm trying to make about that but and that's not me speaking to Janice Janice knows exactly what she's doing I'm speaking to you i'm thinking of the emotional person person who might be frustrated and depressed and I think sometimes like with I felt this way since 2016 like is transportation worthwhile to spend my time on like we're looking at a at a moment when human rights violations are rampant and my heart is aching over all kinds of things that are happening and it doesn't take away the fact that like transportation is still a really big climate problem it doesn't take away the fact that transportation is still like a source of killing lots of people like there's you know I think there's these moments when I come back to the why of what I'm interested in doing yeah yeah I know there was like there are days where you know you know my job is to put out a seattle bike blog post and i'll read a story about you know oh you know these are the conditions for unaccompanied minors who are detained at the border you know sleeping with emergency blankets in like basically dying of the yeah like dying of preventable illnesses because they don't have enough access healthcare horrific things then like my job today is to like write about how the mayor's proposed revamping of the bicycle five-year plan is like not as ambitious as it used to be and like I 100 percent believe that's an important story like the bike plan being scaled back this is totally an important story but how am I supposed to care about that when there's kids in cages and somehow you have to like it is still important like kids in cages doesn't mean that the bicycle five-year plan of Seattle is not important on a scale we can say kids in cages is really more important right but my job is to write about the bicycle plan in Seattle yeah but sometimes I'm like should that be my job like do i need to quit like you know it's like it's hard it's hard and you have to have faith that your community is there and they're people working all kinds of issues you have to be there for them when they need someone to be there you'd be a good Ally you know you don't say well I'm gonna ignore that issue because I'm gonna focus on this thing but sometimes it is a little bit of an escape to be like you know what I'm gonna talk about bike lane today because I can't handle the idea that our government just acquitted Donald Trump yeah you know like yeah so I'm gonna talk about bike lane because bike lanes are cool and it's good good they're good things yeah I mean it's it's tough too because I think it also creates the space where especially like the federal government where it is it makes it harder to trust local government that they're willing to do the right thing I mean II think that's something that like is really challenging to deal with on a local level of like we actually need our local government to function and work for us and to do the right thing and to be accountable to people's needs and it can reveal really hard when you have a leader who says corrupt and pretty vile and detestable as our current leader is yeah and white supremacist overtly yeah it's bad so thanks for sticking with us we have derailed it's okay you're just like at our house on a night it's real all the stuff in this story is real I mean yeah what is but you know would save all of the problems everything we've talked about can be so they could be solved by one what if I told you what if I told you that everything we just talked about could go away including the acquittal of Donald Trump yes yes I'm willing to make that statement and all it would take is the purchase of a single product I mean you're you're interested interested well have you ever heard of car helmets oh my god I love a car helmet you know car helmets are so fashionable you can get them in all kinds of different colors you can get them to match your car it's like if you want it to be the same color as your car I think you can I think there's only ever been one produced ever it was by some dude in Australia I think he sold like 200 of them and now they're like really expensive on eBay because they're like collector items i was just trying to knock the world of bike helmets because people want bike helmets to be really fashionable but damn I've gotta love me and good car helmet there we go right there a motoring helmet I'm into it you know how many times so like I don't drive really at all you have not driven in how many years since 2011 May it's because i'm stubborn AF for real i'm just like no Mitt Romney had yet to declare his candidacy for president the last time you drove a car but so like I'm really stubborn but man I don't I also don't even ride in cars a lot my dad always gives me shit about that I feel like well you must just get rides a lot and it's like actually no it turns out in this city with functional transit network and I can ride my bike and I can walk anyway the point is we love you too we do I do love my dad he does build highways uh-huh anyway I've digressed a good car helmet would make me feel safer I do not personally feel very safe in a car going 60 miles per hour I think I've read too many vision zero documents I know you've got like safety collisions to think of myself as safe in a car I always think about dying whenever I'm going on a highway 60 miles per hour it's very similar to people who have flight anxiety I feel that way about a highway mm-hmm yeah and that is not out of place I know and that's why I'm a big fan of a motoring helmet so this came up because the governor of New York Andrew Cuomo was suggesting that we should have bicycle helmet laws or someone had asked him about it or something here let's see it was I forget the exact context in which it came up but some reporter followed up with a question like would you mandate car helmets for people driving and he's like I think he didn't really know what to say so he was like I don't know I'll like look into it and so that generated this headline so Forbes is usually I don't know if you guys are aware of this but Forbes is not a legitimate website like they published like whatever basically but Carlton Reid I happen to know is trustworthy so that's the only reason I'm showing a Forbes link here is because I happen to know the author are you saying I shouldn't trust the top 10 resume tips from Forbes so they yeah they have no quality control like there's no copy editors like no fact checking so you're saying their lifestyle section it's probably altered there are things straight-up published in Forbes that are published by people who are paid by whatever company it is that they're promoting in the article they're writing you should do a Seattle Bike Blog Forbes article you know what I would make a lot more money if I just wrote things that people pay me to write yeah I'm the worst at business all right it's now on this bike news roundup video series is sponsored by General Motors turns out he loves SUVs did you know the suburban is the is officially now the longest-running make of car in history of the world why do you know car facts because I'm paid by General Motors to know these facts okay let's just talk about the joy of car helmets so here's a thing like so every this is very real for us in Seattle and King County because we have this all ages helmet law which is extremely rare and it's sort of like the ultimate trolling and we can't talk about it because it never goes well yeah it's not you can't talk about it it's like once you have it on the books it's like impossible like no politician wants to be the anti safety politician like you're gonna kill people so like there's so little political upside to being the person who tries to overturn this law that it seems like it's just entrenched even though anyone who looks into it very far quickly realizes that we have no evidence that car helmet or bike helmet laws bike helmet laws have ever increased safety outcomes for a population you know it's like one of those things where it's like there's anecdotes of like people that it's helped that wearing a helmet has helped children often helpful right cuz kids crash their bikes even that's fuzzy but yes more legit whatever i'm gonna make my kid wear a helmet sure but we're talking about the law here this is why you can't talk about helmets this is why you can't talk about helmets we're just illustrating the point every argument in favor of bicycle helmets applies to being in a car every single one of them the number one cause of death for people inside cars head injury like obviously if you wore a helmet maybe you'd have less head injury if it's a it's just one life isn't it worth it and people but people laugh off the idea of wearing a motoring helmet so they got a car because they got a car but yeah yeah but your your car goes 80 I was gonna say sixty but it's really eighty eighty ninety how fast are you moving like maybe downhill at 20 miles an hour and you know it's you know so I'm not saying don't wear a helmet when you bike because your choice but if you're gonna make it legally required for someone that bike there's no reason why it shouldn't be legally required for someone in the car and it just would be enormously unpopular because the people who really like bicycle helmet laws are often people who don't ride a bike and so it's I think it's the it's the perfect thought experiment for people who are completely convinced about bike helmet laws I think like well then come up with a single reason why we should have car helmet laws and in a weird way so this whole story was written from the perspective of like well sure it's a good idea we should do it which is all sort of tongue-in-cheek because like everyone knows this is never gonna happen but I mean why not I was thinking about when we went to children's is this a terrible story to tell sure yeah okay sorry set set up the alright so our kid was born really early we had a lot of extra doctor appointments after our kid got out of the NICU we felt really cooped up is that fair to say yeah we had a cargo bike it's guys special box in the front we had a special attachment drilled into our cargo bike to have our car seat installed into our bike children who do not have enough neck strength to wear a helmet cannot bike our child does not have enough neck strength to be in a helmet but she was in a car seat and we had her in car seat in a bike very securely attached we went to children's and we had a whole talk with our doctor about in and out doctor was like well was she wearing a helmet really well actually like kinda you should know that she wasn't because if she was wearing helmet it would like close up her airway cuz her head would be like this cuz she was in a car seat yeah mm-hmm anyway the point is I don't know it's just an there's a our culture is so you know so entrenched the idea that if you have a child especially an infant like you have to transport them by car and people have convinced themselves that there's these ways to make car transportation for your infant really safe which it isn't I mean car seats are safer than going car going 80 on a freeway not safe for your baby certainly not safer than biking your child the cargo bike down the Burke-Gilman trail yeah which is what we were doing so but there's this people aren't used to that idea and it makes people very nervous so at time our child was like she had a feeding tube in her nose like it went down her nose into her stomach which I had to learn how to install which is horrible the most horrible thing I've ever done in my entire life and maybe the most horrible thing I ever do in my entire life was stick the feeding tube down our child's nose into her stomach I like wake up with nightmares sometimes thinking about the feeling of it like there's one day where she pulled it out and we just decided you know what we're done let's see what happens if you eat on your own it worked out well for us she also had oxygen so we had to like have these oxygen canisters in a backpack like attached to her like nose like taped under her cheek you know a feeding tube coming out and we're like biking her yeah we're like this is we just yeah it's like this is how our life used to be and we needed a taste of like our life the way that we knew it and we also wanted to believe that like our child's can be a part of our life the way we wanted to be right like our life isn't around a car we don't own a car we have a child we want that to be okay so we made it okay and we were safe about it right like we weren't idiots like many places we took our child in the stroller in the bus or we wore her baby carrier and walked but childrens is very easy to get to by bike as noted by their incredible mode shift which has a phenomenal rate of women commuting to Seattle Children's by bike and it's part because they're off the Burke-Gilman trail so you know we weren't totally irresponsible parents by just like shoving her kid on bike we had her in a nice car seat we had her situated and bolted on dutch-style attachment for big cargo bike and it was a thing that felt really powerful but she wasn't wearing a helmet right now she wears a helmet yeah you know people who work in the medical industry with children like I understand why they're so concerned and focused on bike helmets because you see one child come in with a serious head injury from biking that's gonna leave a lasting impact on you like this what a horrific thing to deal with in your work life and to see and to witness and to witness what that does to the family and I mean it's a it's a horrible thing to imagine but I think what this experience pointed out to us is like but you have this enormous blind spot around cars where it's like you know our child's in a car seat in a bike though we're only really ever going I think even in like if they were in the same exact car seat in a car going 80 miles per hour it would be fine but if it's in a bike worried that they don't have a helmet on you know I mean the thing is like especially when you're a parent and especially when we were first biking with her so much of it was like route selection and speed I don't think in the first few months of biking her I even went over 15 miles an hour you know like it was just like we're just gonna slowly take it beat by beat and even now like now that she's two and has a helmet and can sit and can like totally talk about her experience in the bike we still don't go that fast and that's what we know about safety right is that safety is around speed the speed of your collision it matters so much more than so many other factors right mm-hmm yeah and when you're going slower you can respond at a more human pace when you're going 60 to 80 miles per hour you can't respond in human pace no it's not safe to drive 80 miles per hour it's not safe to drive 70 miles per hour and our culture is dependent on all of us believing that it is safe to do that and it just isn't it's dangerous and that's why people die and if you die in a collision on the freeway we all just are like sucks to be you but you know yes you lost the lottery like there's some sort of like twisted you know dice rolling going on and some of us just have to die like sorry just like in order to like maintain our lifestyle we require an annual human sacrifice of 40,000 people have you read Ursula Quinn's the short story the ones who walk away from Omulus it's really good one can you tell us about it um it's a short story about this really wonderful it's been ages since I read it but like that's really perfect seeming town but to live in that perfect town to a certain point and get to learn that there is like a sacrifice of this like I believe it's like a child or young person in a basement that is just basically tortured and so like all of this pleasantry is based on like the tortured and death of other people and you can choose to stay here and choose to go and like so much of car culture is based on that right well sure that's not pleasant but yes car culture is not pleasant but it's like if you want to believe in easy convenience and cheapness of it all mm-hmm you can ignore the cost of human life yeah except you walk into any room in America when you say raise your hand if you or someone you love has been seriously injured or killed in a traffic collision everyone will raise a hand it doesn't matter Democrat Republican rich poor it doesn't it doesn't matter hands will go out and we just accept this and we shouldn't we ended on a downer note we're supposed to end on a happy not but we ended on the downer note do we have anything okay we're gonna try to spontaneously add something happy no not a judge okay how about a cascade advocacy leadership institute you can do that that's fun oh okay was that in here yeah it's right there I'm just thinking okay we can do this one if you want if you want to make things better sign up oh wait hold on wait I gotta bring it up hey there we go so full disclosure many years ago i was in charge of this program and the thing is it's a really good program bike advocacy is really what was your role when you were in charge oh we had two titles I think I need like statewide engagement director was last one I had and it was really about just planning some awesome trainings to help people learn how to be better advocates I think there's a lot of really great ways to learn about political power learn about campaign processes and figure out how to organize people have taken this and lots of really different ways people have ended up on boards like the Seattle bike advisory board or the transit advisory board or pedestrian advisory board people have also come onto this work through coming up with their own kind of events the Moxie Summer Jam has some alum of this program all kinds of things there's lots of people who do good stuff who have gone through it and be creative go for it and Tamar is awesome if you haven't met Tamar yet this is it this is your chance and I've spoken at these before and they're always really fun it seems like people who are there get a lot out of it and it's really cool to see what I love about this program is that it is about training people and the tools of advocacy how can you make change in your neighborhood workplace you know whatever level it is that you want to work in you know how can you be empowered to be the one who organizes because you know I think a lot of people will care about an issue but they assume that like someone else is better suited to do this than I am and this program says take this program and you'll be that person it's brilliant and they don't they don't require that you go on to do stuff for cascade or put the Cascade name on everything that you do like it's not about what's amazing about it is that's not about cascade getting credit for this it's about the they're just trusting that if you take this program whatever you do will probably be in their interests also well it's a really good opportunity for people to figure out how to do something that they're called to do and I think people can take it and lots of different ways I've seen people be really focused on the social elements I've seen people who really focus on policy and campaigns and getting involved there and I'm just gonna throw it out there we're gonna see some campaigns come up in the next few years so this is the time to like hop on board you can make you can make a difference and yeah yeah it's it's it's a really neat thing honestly I'm surprised it's not more often copy any lots of people have copied it you know lots of different programs have manifested in different ways it's hard to say where they all stemmed from but I think there's lots of different borrowing and sharing in training organizations and lots of lots of awesome collective knowledge in the alumni group and smart people passionate people good networks great cohorts so there's your positive named you can make change alright we're gonna wrap this up I should bring what should be the names back I can do this hey hey and you should do a subscribe pitch I hope you enjoyed this uh if you did so you should definitely hit subscribe on YouTube I need more I need like 700 more subscribers before they will start giving me money so I'm you know I don't think I'm never gonna make a lot of money in this but uh it would be cool to make like a little bit we'll see so yeah you could subscribe to the Seattle Bike Blog but also you should subscribe and then there's a little bell you hit that then it'll like tell you every time we post something which is especially important because we're thinking about maybe future bike news roundup videos like this might be streamed live oh horrifying yeah so you could actually like if you get notified when it happens then you feel like tune in and you can like ask us questions we can answer them on ale err on air on ale I'm all out which I think would be really fun I've never done anything like that this is me just if you have any thoughts about the format please leave feedback for me in the YouTube comments or in the bike blog comments either one thanks for watching you can support this work by becoming a Seattle bike blog supporter just go to seattle bike blog dot com and you'll see supporter link on the navigation bar it'll tell you all the details you know starting at five dollars a month just kind of pitch in and know that you're helping this work continue I'm 100% independent I answer to nobody which allows me to be as honest as possible about you know and write the things I think are important and I think that's been very valuable to the city and so I hope if you think so too that you'll you know pitch it a little bit to help it keep going because it turns out that there's not a lot of money in honesty and independence so you know everyone who's who is supporting is really making this happen and so if you're already a supporter thank you and I hope to see you again soon thank you for having me yeah yeah now drive home safe oh wait we got to do the outro video bye