Tuesday, May 22, 2007
The approach from behind.
Here is some "rear cam" video (sounds pornographic almost, trust me not that exciting) of Pharmacy and Eglinton Ave. I wanted to get an idea of how close cars pass a cyclist, something generally I do not want to think about. The test kinda of failed. It is hard to get a perspective of close they really get. The first two cars (when the zoom was set wrong), less than 5 minutes into the ride, passed with less than ten centimetres of space. Few of the other cars got that close but it was hard to tell in the video. I rode about a metre away from the curb at all times. The road was really rough in spots, that is where the camera loses focus, requiring me to go further out. The rig that passes me at the end looks like it gave me lots of room, check out how the road changes as he is passing. Having a cyclist in view helps with perspective.
The video of the 3 lane road is Eglinton. It should be noted that the Diamond Lane was in effect (rush hour), very few of the cars adhered to the sign.
Will continue to experiment with different perspectives and traffic volumes.
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4 comments:
That was a cool video Darren , I like that:-) ,, same problem on Bay Street with the special lane with peeps parking in it ( cops do nothing ) Today I was going along Gerrard near Church and the amount of cars that use the bike lane as a passing lane to get by traffic was unbelievable and they were SPEEDING despite bikes being in parts of the lanes.
Hey there. Glad to see such enthusiasm for biking in our city. I've just bought a bicycle and am trying to get in the habit of using it as my dominant form of transportation. I'll see you folks at the Critical Mass this Friday evening if you're going. :)
Also, I've just started an environmentally focused blog (http://concernedindividual.blogspot.com) so I'll add your blog as one of my links, since biking is such an important environmental initiative. :)
Perhaps a way to show this a little better would be to mount the cam on a rear rack, and have a friend follow. (granted, with 2 cyclists the clearance might be more)
Or, mounted to the rear rack you could keep part of the rack in view.
Cool video though. Might have to try this round my town.
It is actually mounted on the rear rack. Need something to show depth.
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