Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

adventures / cycling / Friday / Rowan — Comments Off
14
Mar 25

Presenting some cycling research

I gave a presentation of our research today at the Summit on Communication & Sport today. The session was titled Perception and Representation. One of our colleagues presented on topics titled “When Soccer Meets Streetwear: A Critical
Analysis of Soccer Shirts’ New Cool.” Another, a good friend presented on an interesting topic, “Interaction and Gamification – The Media Audience’s Perception of Reality and Virtuality in New Sports Formats. A Mixed-methods Study using the Example of the Baller League in Germany.” Another research team discussed “From Geek Kingdom to Non-Gendered Utopia? The Gendered
Representation of Esport on French Sports Media L’Equipe.fr.”

In between, I talked about the research The Yankee and I conducted last fall. We titled it “Doing this may Kill Me: A Mixed Method Approach to Perceptions of Cyclist Safety.”

Here are some of the slides.

On a beautiful evening in August 2024, two brothers were heading home on bikes when they were killed by an aggressive driver who, police say, had a BAL over the legal limit.

It happened by that power pole on the right.

They were local boys. Two guys done good. Both were hockey players, they became folk heroes at Boston College. Matthew, the younger one, had a short professional run on the ice before returning home to coach his high school team. His older brother Johnny was an NHL star. The family said they were always together. Shoulder-to-shoulder. They were together on that particular day to celebrate their sister’s wedding the next day.

Johnny had two children. He and his wife were expecting their third. Matthew and his wife were expecting their first child.

The driver of the vehicle hit them so hard that his Jeep Cherokee died a tenth of a mile away, as he tried to flee.

We conducted a survey of local cyclists. Using snowball sampling, we aimed at people in the tri-county area, but our instrument quickly reached into the tri-state area. We wrapped it with 1,296 respondents.

Here are a few numbers from the survey …

Of those 1,296 respondents, all cyclists, 66 percent reported near misses with other vehicles on their bike rides. Eighteen percent said they’ve had bike crashes involving vehicles. Nine percent have had more than one accident involving vehicles.

That’s something like 116 people!

Sixty-one percent reported that drivers pass too closely more than half the time. This is, admittedly, a tricky question. As a cyclist, I recall the dangerous passes far more clearly than the safer interactions. (Boy do I!) But … this gets to perception, and the intrinsic motivation involved in Self Determination Theory.

Our survey asked about aggressive drivers, and 13 percent said they have to deal with them on more than half their rides.

Also in this survey, 67 percent of cyclists say they fear they’ll be in an accident when they ride their bikes. And two-thirds of them also told us the infrastructure at their disposal for road riding is inadequate. (The implications here are fascinating.)

Of the 1,296 people who took our survey, 83 percent reported that they feel unsafe riding by some combination of drivers and poor infrastructure. We didn’t break that down further, but it’s there for future study.

When we asked cyclists about their perceptions of law enforcement, the numbers were not good; 64 percent perceived the utility of law enforcement toward helping to ensure their safety was “terrible.”

We’ll unpack this in a moment.

This is not a percentage, but a real figure. A third of our respondents, 453 cyclists who took our survey said the risk was so great they have stopped, or would not, ride on the road.

Here’s some other data. The various state departments of transportation use the term “vulnerable road users.” That’s how they define cyclists, pedestrians, or anyone else not in a car, truck, or SUV.

This, so you know, is the state law on passing vulnerable road users. National advocates who monitor these things say this is one of the best in the country. One of the best laws in the land means you have to give me four whole feet when you pass me. But you have to know that law, honor it, and understand distance and vehicles at different speeds (and a lot of you don’t). So, just think on this for a second. Four feet.

Four themes emerged in our qualitative work. In the first theme, people discuss how road systems are set up, first or exclusively, for motorists. That’s problematic. The US Census says 870,000 people commute by bike. People for Bikes, in their most recent research, says 112 million Americans rode a bike last year. The discourse is due a change.

We saw a great deal of frustration within the law and law enforcement theme. Cyclists complain of law enforcement officers who don’t know the laws or aren’t interested in policing them. They’ve been told that without video evidence there’s not much that can be done. Sometimes that’s difficult even with video.

Infrastructure is a recurring theme in our survey, advocacy, and in national conversations. Cyclists and other vulnerable road users frequently complain about it.

Boil it down to money, political will, and time. Most places are several lacking quality infrastructure for all road users. (Again, not just motorists.) There’s also an urgency problem.

Our final theme, I just called it personal. Hands go to chests when I talk about the bike shop owner who fixed a customer’s flat, and, minutes later, the cyclist was killed by a motorist.

“What if I’d told him I couldn’t do it then? What if I repaired it slower? Or faster?”

He lives with that.

It’s not his only story of that sort.

Let’s talk about impact. The Yankee and I were invited to share the initial version of this research with the local community soon after the Gaudreaus were killed. The crash, and this data, helped inspire the creation of a local safety committee. They are now doing advocacy. That group’s work has them in front of youth organizations. Bike safety and road awareness are key for everyone. They are also taking part in a county safety committee as well.

We’ve also shared the data with the state DOT and talked messaging with a variety of organizations. This research also caught the ear of a state lawmaker, who ran with it. And with good reason!

One criticism we saw a lot is that not everyone knows about the state’s relatively new Safe Passing law. The Center for Sports Communication and Social Impact. We take the title to heart. This is research with real impact. In part because of our research, the Safe Passing law will now be taught in Driver’s Ed and appear on the driver’s license exam.

Please be careful on the roads. We’re all just trying to get somewhere and safety is the goal.

adventures / cycling / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
13
Mar 25

A day in sunny Chicago

Yes, we are in Chicago. Spring has arrived here with us. (It will snow here this weekend.) But today is beautiful, and if there’s one thing I learned in the Midwest, it is that you live for the day, because tomorrow could be an entirely different kind of problem.

But this trip is great, because we are with friends and colleagues, most of whom we haven’t seen in a year. Sadly, some aren’t here for international travel reasons, but maybe in a few years more reunions will be had.

We had lunch with friends from South Florida and UNC-Chapel Hill today. Lovely, lovely people. The sort you should see more than once a year. Two, maybe three times would be much better — and still keep me at low risk of being found out. We walked down to an Irish pub, where everyone working there was Irish, or at least had worked out a good accent. I had the shepherd’s pie, because I’m a sucker for the stuff. In the back of the joint, near the restroom, was this sign.

I glanced at that, thought, They oughta know and took a good picture.

Down the street was a bike shop. My lovely bride had a meeting and I had nothing to do, so I walked down there. Look! Bikes!

The application of that bike lane warning was hasty, and there’s probably an end-of-the-work-week story that isn’t that good, but I had a two block walk, which gave me plenty of time to invent a better story.

I went to the bike shop to look for helmets. I’m due a new helmet this year. Past due, in fact. And they have one I like. And since it’s not at my local store, and I had a few minutes I figured, why not? Except while this store had it on their website, they didn’t have it in the shop. Now, it’s a small enough place that everyone sees you come and go, and so I felt a bit silly about being in there and walking out without buying anything. I need new fingerless gloves, so I bought some. They made a sale, I didn’t leave empty handed, everyone was happy.

And I saw Didi the Devil! He’s a German superfan. A car mechanic by trade, holder of 17 world records for bike inventions and he’s been on the side of the road for all the big races in Europe for 30-some years now. The story goes that in German broadcasts, the old 1 km to go flag, a red triangle hanging above the race, was called “The devil’s flag,” and that inspired the costume. The riders say it’s good luck to see him in the race.

I’ll never see him in a race, of course, but I do see him when I watch the races. And since I’m talking about bikes tomorrow, maybe he’ll bring me some good luck.

The photo was taped to the customer-facing side of the receipt dispenser, so if I had not gotten new gloves I wouldn’t have seen him today. The guy that made the sale flipped that photo up and showed me another one taped beneath it. Double good luck to all their customers who know what they’re looking at.

After the day’s pre-conference work, we went out for dinner with a friend from St. Bonaventure. We headed to another pizza place, but it was a two hour wait for some mysterious reason. Looked dead, sounded quiet. No one wanted a wait like that, so we went to Billy Goat’s Tavern.

It was legendary before it became a bit on SNL.

The place is steeped in Chicago history. This is beneath the old newspapers, and so all of the reporters and the people that wanted to be seen came here. The walls are covered in the city’s history. The picture frames jammed next to one another like a wood and glass wallpaper.

We first visited in 2008, when we were there for another conference. We stopped by at lunch time, when the line wraps around the restaurant and the old man was doing his cheezborger shtick for his guests. That guy is, or was, the life of the party, and he knew it and reveled in it. He could also take one look at you and guess what you were eating. It doesn’t hurt that it was a relatively small menu, but he could just tell. It was great. Also, the borgers are pretty good burgers.

At the time of night we visited, it was quieter, the night crew didn’t need to do the gimmick. And there was plenty of room to sit and have a quiet meal. Also, the borgers are still pretty good burgers.

Now I’m going to go finish my presentation. I have to deliver a concise 12 minutes on this research tomorrow. It’d be better if they would allow me 14.

adventures / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
12
Mar 25

The traveling academics

We are traveling. This required us to pack up suitcases, which we did last night. An old pro at this by now, it took me about 15 minutes, and only that long because I needed to be sure to leave room for an extra sports coat. We then drove to an airport. We went through the procedure required of you at the airport. I walked through a quick security line. Though the sign said you were five to seven minutes away from the front, it was more like two, and this is a pleasant bit of social engineering.

Through security, no problem. The hardest part was recombobulating.

Then to the plane, and on the plane and off. Here’s proof.

So where did we go. It was a domestic flight. It took a few hours. And when we got here we had chamber of commerce weather. That’s not much of a hint. This is a better hint.

Does everyone know now? Well, we walked around a bit today and I found one more fiendishly difficult hint I can share with you.

Needs more Ditka.

We are here for a conference. My lovely bride is presenting some of her Olympic research. I am presenting our recent cycling research. There will be rooms of sports scholars everywhere. The person that runs the conference is a person you might now.

When she’s not upside down in a swing, she’s the executive director of the only stand-alone association geared to communication researchers interested in exploring sport from diverse critical, methodological, theoretical, and multi-disciplinary perspectives.

And this is important, that swing had an age limit.

There were three of those swings, and they were all in use when I shot that. Not a single person was under the age limit. I bet that happens a lot.

Anyway, the conference starts tomorrow. She’ll have to climb out of that swing to present her research that morning. I’ll give another talk on Friday afternoon, and then I’ll run a session on Saturday. Great fun! Many pizzas!

(We had deep dish tonight. I’m not sure how many more I’ll want.)

cycling / photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
11
Mar 25

First outdoor ride of the year

Yesterday, at the end of class, I gave my students my other bully pulpit lecture. I tell them at the beginning of the term that being at the front of the room allows me to give one or two brief speeches that have little or nothing to do with the class. And yesterday was the day, because today was the day.

That speech is the one about how to pass other road users safely when you’re driving. There are relatively new state laws. People don’t know them very well. I am updating people one room at a time. I have a whole patter about this, because I’ve been doing it for years. I used to do it much more intently.

The whole thing was about being careful to allow cyclists room to safely operate when you pass them. And I won’t tell you what I wear or what color my helmet or my bike is because I want you to be safe and attentive and considerate when you pass all of them them. Because one of them might be me. “And remember,” I used to say in the driest tone of humor I can muster, which is pretty considerable, “I have your grade, right here, in my hand.”

That’s what I used to do, and one semester a student said to me at the end of the term that I’d psyched her out and tensed her up whenever she saw a cyclist. That’s not the point. Nor is it the point to threatened anyone’s grade, of course. It’s a laugh line. After that, it seemed important to point out, “This is a laugh line. But, also, be careful.”

All of this was made much more relevant after my lovely bride’s pickup truck-caused accident in 2022. And it’s relevant since we’ve been doing research in this area the last few months. And it’s relevant because, today, the weather was beautiful and I took my bike off the trainer and put it on the road. (Twenty-two days earlier than last year!) Oh, happy day.

Also it was a momentous day, of sorts. I’ve been sneaking up on this little achievement for a while, and I certainly didn’t want to capture it indoors. So I have slacked off on the trainer, with that in mind. I didn’t really want to do it on a road I know very well, but that’s the risk you run when you are on your normal training roads. Not that it matters, nothing about this matters, but, somewhere, right in here, I reached a mileage equivalent to the earth’s equatorial circumference.

That’s 24,901 miles to you and me. I celebrated by dropping a gel, turning around, and picking it up.

The bullfrogs were cheering me, and summer, on.

In addition to being the first outdoor ride of the year, and the equatorial ride, it was also new bike computer day. New is a relative term. I bought this, used, at the end of last September and mounted it in the cockpit today. The computer I just retired, a Garmin 705 Edge, I bought used in 2020. It was a 2008 release. My new computer is the Garmin 520, which made its way into the wild in 2013, so I’m happily still behind the curve, but it is a half-decade leap forward for me.

And that’s an important five years because the new computer communications with this new light, the Garmin Varia. I got one for The Yankee for her birthday last year, she loves it, and so she got one for me for Christmas. This is no mere light. There’s a radar system here, and it detects approaching vehicles, and then signals the computer, which beeps, turns red on the edges, and displays dots meant to represent the traffic behind you.

It’s a cool little feature. Sometimes, in the right circumstances, you don’t always hear the oncoming vehicles, so it is a nice help. Though you mustn’t think of it as 100 percent accurate. It’s not too bad on false positives, but there seems to be one time of day, if you’re riding in front of a low-in-the-sun sky, that it isn’t perfect. It didn’t pick up the first two cars that passed me on this initial ride today, but I think it caught the rest of them. One extra layer of safety.

What’s nice is that sometimes the headset will beep, because the Varia picks up a vehicle before I hear it. I have developed a three-look technique that seems to help. I glance over my shoulder when the oncoming motorist is well back, when they’ve closed about half the distance and then just before they get to me. And this seems to help them realize that I’ve seen them too. Since I’ve started doing this late last summer, most of my passes have been much better.

But perhaps the best part of the Varia is this. It has different light settings, and I’ve watched this with great amusement while riding behind The Yankee. She leaves her light on a solid setting, but when a car or truck gets to a certain distance away from them, the light starts blinking. Every time, every time, you see the car decelerate and move over.

So if you wandered to this page thinking about bike radar, we’re still in the early days, but big fans of them so far.

Also, because why not, it was new jersey day.

I got a good sale at NeoPro. Full zip, three pockets, they do the job you ask a bike jersey to do, except make me faster and skinnier. They’re bike jerseys.

Now I need to find good sales on bib shorts.

And to go pack. So, if you’ll excuse me.

Monday / photo / Rowan / video — Comments Off
10
Mar 25

Giving you no mis, and certainly no dis

In class today we discussed disinformation and misinformation. There is a difference. Did you know the difference? I recently had a nice conversation with a colleague at Cambridge about this, and I showed one of his videos in class.

It gets down to motive, we decided, but motive isn’t always clearly perceived. And the conveyance of bad information is bad, either way. Happily, my students have a pretty decent handle on the social engineering often at play with disinformation. But there’s always something new to learn. The next time the class meets we’ll discuss some techniques on savvy consumption.

And then we get into the fun stuff!

About time the class sighed.

Just kidding, it’s all fun. It’s an international media class. Coming up after spring break we’ll talk about the Armed Forces Network and sports on the international stage, and advertising and social media. It has all been a great deal of fun.

Almost as fun as after office hours, when I went to a nearby JoAnn’s. They’re all closing, of course, and that’s unfortunate for the people that work for the company and it’s stores, but there’s something about store closings that is interesting to me.

And what was interesting today was how unusually crowded this JoAnn’s was, and how the shelves were already getting bare. But I walked around, saw all of the things that weren’t fabric, and then I bought some fabric. It seemed worth it for an early evening’s worth of entertainment. I’ll make some new pocket squares from them this summer.

It was probably the largest JoAnn’s I’ve ever seen, which is to say, bigger than two or three others I’ve ever noticed. Smaller than a late 20th century major retailer, much bigger than necessary for fabric. I wonder if the kitchen section was somehow part of their problem. Maybe it was the wood craft section. Or the enormous floral quadrant. It seems they’ve strayed, in their pursuit to pursue Hobby Lobby.

I also saw some of the reasons why JoAnn’s has struggled these last many years, the all too familiar considerations that have hit brick and mortar stores of all stripes. The apps on my phone were happy to tell me how much cheaper every comparable brand and product were elsewhere.

It’s a sad feeling, in a bad-laminate-floor-under-worse-neon-lighting way. But, still there were employees straightening things up, moving things around, offering good cheer, great theatrical performers that people are when working in retail. Retail was never easy, but the challenges they face today … it all felt typified by the last dying gasp of advertising that was plastered around the store. “New shipments arriving from our warehouses daily!”

The rapidly thinning shelves would suggest otherwise. Crafty customers of crafts had been busy picking the place clean; there aren’t many reasons to go back.

I know the reasons you come back here. The proof is in the analytics, and the analytics say the most popular feature on the site is our regular check-in with the kitties, which starts right now.

Poseidon has to follow you everywhere, especially when that place is behind a closed door. So when his honed feline senses tell him you’re heading to a door, he’s there. And in this case, he had to get into the bathroom so he could jump on this rickety MDF cabinet top and be taller than everyone.

He is very pleased with himself in that photo. Sometimes you try to keep a cat out of things, but other times, you’re just too tired, distracted, slow, or you remember that look they get when they’ve conquered the unconquerable.

For Phoebe, it is different. Her race is to find the coziest spot possible.

I respect her dedicate to her craft.

So, you can see, the cats are doing just fine. And so begins another week, one like any other, but different in every way.

What does that even mean? I’ve no idea, but we’ll find out together, in this space, this week.