Read a post over coffee this morning about how bike commuting is up and so are bike accidents and fatalities. A big part of it is just that folks aren't used to cooperating with bikes on the road, and lots of bikers are taking to the streets who haven't been riding until gas prices got so high.

Here's a post and article about it at the Bike Commute Tips blog:

http://bikecommutetips.blogspot.com/2008/07/bicycling-increases-so-does-injury-rate.html

Our experience riding on this trip has been almost universally good. From no-shoulder highways to crowded streets in downtown Chicago and out to the the rural roads, we've really not even had a close call yet. We've probably had 2 hecklers on the whole trip, and one time in Iowa where there wasn't a shoulder and a semi just about ran over a couple of cars who had slowed down to pass us, but I've generally felt pretty safe. Even the semi thing was annoying at the time, but in retrospect I totally understand what happened.

We were on a 2-lane highway with no shoulder, so we were partially blocking the lane. We were going down a long descent and a couple of cars backed up behind us waiting for a break in traffic. A couple of Semis came over the hill behind us and couldn't slow down enough on the decline. We were probably going 20-22mph on that stretch, and a speeding semi going 70+ has a lot of slowing down to do with a load on. So the semis laid into their horns as they were trying desperately to gear down and not hit the cars in front of them. I don't think we were even really in much danger, but it was pretty scary to be going down this decline with no space to get off, knowing that there were some cars lining up behind us, and then hearing those air horns going off and just feeling the collective panic in the air.

Luckily, there was a small break in the traffic going the other way and the cars got around. The semis got around too, but they had to stay in our lane since there was more traffic. I'm sure some cars on the other side got pushed pretty far into their lane, but the semis stayed just clear of us. It was pretty hair-raising.

But I think the baby trailer is becoming ubiquitous enough that drivers avoid us like crazy, thinking that we might have a kid on board. That's a good thing, and we've gotten plenty of space on the trip in general.

But another thing that we've got going for us, especially now, is that we've been on the bikes an awful lot. I started commuting almost daily last summer (with weather exceptions), and what biking skills weren't already at a high level before have definitely gotten honed to a fine point this summer. We've become good bikers on the trip, and it's nice to feel like we'll go back to Bloomington ready to face the crazy traffic there (and it is worse in non-downtown Bloomington than 90% of the places we've been on this trip).