By Paul Richards
On Sunday, October 2 NTV’s Bankisha news program aired a segment about the dangers of fixed gear bicycles on city streets. The reason for the program was the fatal accident last month in Shibuya caused by a fixed gear bicycle that had been stripped of its hand brakes. The Yomiuri Online reports that there are two other related deaths in Kanagawa Prefecture as well. In Japan, it is required by law for bicycles to have both front and rear brakes. It is punishable by a 50,000 yen fine. Police have recently stepped up their vigilance in ticketing offenders. Last month, in Nagoya, a company employee was given a “Red Ticket” (aka kippu) and most notably, comedian Fukuda Mitsunori, 36, of the comedy team Tutorial, received a ticket for riding a piste bike without brakes on October 28.
These incidents are raising a furor among people and spurred the police to crackdown on illegal fixies. The offense is riding a bicycle with inadequate equipment.
For those who don’t know, most brake-less bicycles are inspired by bicycles used for track racing. These bicycles are often called piste bicycles. Piste is a French word meaning track or trail which the bike racing sport has borrowed from downhill skiing. Another name for piste bikes is fixed gear bikes or fixies. Piste bikes have a lean, minimalist look to them as there are no brakes and no gears. The lack of extra cabling and hardware gives them a sleek, stripped down esthetic that has become fashionable among certain groups of bike riders. You might reasonably ask, how are such bicycles stopped if they don’t have brakes. They are stopped by attempting to pedal backwards. This isn’t like the coaster brakes you probably had on your first bike when you were a kid. Without the freewheel hub in the back there is no coasting with fixed gear bicycles. The pedals don’t stop turning until the bike loses momentum or the rider forces it to slow down by pushing backward on the pedals until the bike comes to a complete stop or the wheel locks or the rider crashes into
Though I don’t own a fixed gear bicycle, I have ridden bicycles with inadequate braking ability due to worn pads. The first time I was cut off by a truck driver and had no recourse but to barrel head first into the passenger side door. I credit my helmet for keeping my gray matter inside my skull. Now if my brakes had been better maintained I might have avoided meeting the truck door up close and personal or at least minimized the impact. The second time was a case of me not learning my lesson. After my narrow escape from being road ragu you would think I would have rushed right out and gotten my brakes into tip-top shape. But I didn’t. I approached a corner as a car passed me. Realizing that the driver intended to turn right I attempted to slow down but my brakes just didn’t have enough purchase on the rim to slow me down in time to careen off of the side of the car. It wasn’t the driver’s fault. While she may have cut it a little too close after passing me she did make a legal turn. It was my own fault that I side swiped her door because I didn’t keep my brakes maintained. The Bankisha program pitted a professional keirin racer on a brake-less piste bike against an ordinary mamachari. At around 30 kph the mamachari was able to come to a compete stop within 6 meters but it the piste bike over 21 meters to stop completely. The video is pretty damning evidence. That additional 15 meters could easily take you through a cross walk filled with people into the middle of a busy intersection.
My take on the fixed gear issue is that bicycles equipment should be safe and ridden in the environment they were designed for. Track bikes should stay on the track or on such empty roads that they pose no significant danger to the rider or other road users. (I don’t know of any roads like that in the Tokyo Metropolitan area.) Bikes that take to the streets and sidewalks must have two sets of well maintained brakes. The streets in most Japanese streets are just too crowded with vulnerable road users to take chances.
Additional Resources:
Yomiuri Online (Japanese Text only)
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/news/20111007-OYT1T01129.htm
http://chubu.yomiuri.co.jp/news_top/111006_2.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/e-japan/kanagawa/news/20111007-OYT8T00110.htm
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/national/news/20111001-OYT1T00401.htm
By Paul Oertel
These bicycles are all for rent from the ward of Setagaya.
Recently I have been hearing a lot about something called bicycle culture. If you read the bicycle industry press and listen to the various bicycle podcasts you will hear all about it in far off places like London, Portland, New York and other cities in North America and Europe. It has gotten me thinking. What is bicycle culture and does Japan have it? I looked up this bit of cultural phenomenon in my favorite authoritative source, Wikipedia, (I have a degree in Useless Trivia and Interesting Miscellany from the University of Wikipedia). Wikipedia tells me that there are two related but different meanings. The first meaning applies to countries that support, ecourage and has high bicycle usage. Everywhere else it refers to subculture and related fashions and characteristics of people who ride bikes. For these people, according to Wikipedia, bicycling is an emotional and ethical choice. It has its own fashion trends, websites, art, music, entertainment and other cultural quirks (like this blog) to inspire and occupy the passionate, cycling faithful.
In the definition of the term it is easy to say that Japan definitely has bicycle culture because of the large segment of the population that uses bicycles as an everyday part of their life. Does Tokyo have a bicycle culture in the second definition of the term? Umm…perhaps a little personal history will shed some light on the answer.
I have always loved cycling. Before I was old enough to drive a car my friends and I rode our bikes everywhere we wanted to go. Like most teenagers, once I learned to drive I forgot about the joy of biking for the perceived convenience of a car and the rite of passage that a driver’s license represented. Riding a bicycle to pick up your date just wasn’t cool. In college I started riding again as a way to get around because most of the cars I owned spent more time broken down in the parking lot than cruising on the road.
When I moved to Japan in 1990 after graduating from college I found a whole nation of people for whom, at least part of their commute, walking or riding a bicycle is a way of life. I was intrigued by this a took to it like a fish to water. I would ride a mile and a bit to the train station in the morning then ride a mile and a bit more home almost everyday of the week. Like my neighbors, I went grocery shopping, rode to the barber, the department store, visited friends and took my children to daycare by bicycle. I rode through snow, rain, typhoons and heatwaves. When the weather was really bad I rode or walked to the nearest bus stop instead of riding all the way to the train station. It was as much an everyday part of life as brushing my teeth. The streets around the train stations were clogged with mamachari, Japan’s ubiquitous utility bike. Nobody wore a helmet, there wasn’t even a hint of lycra on the road and nobody even heard of a fixed gear bike and the folding bike wasn’t even invented yet. Mountain bikes and road bikes were a rarity.
A few years ago I returned to America and settled in northern New Jersey. When I first arrived I was happy to see so many people riding bicycles but I soon realized that for these people, with their expensive biking clothes and high-end bicycles, biking was just a hobby, mere recreation in the way that playing basketball with the guys after work or doing handcrafts in your spare time is for other people, and not a way of living. The bicycle world seemed to be split into two types of people. The very wealth with expensive kit who rode in brightly colored packs and the poor on their secondhand bikes. If you didn’t wear a helmet it was assumed that you were too poor to own a car and were probably dodging the INS.
When I transferred to the New Jersey office I was happy to find a place to live that was close enough to commute to by bicycle. When we arrived here our budget was very tight. I had to choose between buying a second car and buying a bicycle. For us, it just made more economic sense for me to bicycle.
My family and I returned to Japan in August of 2009 and I couldn’t wait to get back on the bike. In the two and a half years I was away the bicycle scene had changed in Japan. I saw more people riding road bikes and cross bikes. Roadies were zipping up and down the streets on their carbon fiber specials, wearing their lycra roadie fashions and irritating drivers. Folding bikes and mini-velos have exploded in popularity. Mountain bikes and BMX bikes are the bike of choice for young boys. Helmets are becoming more common, at least on the heads of roadies and middle-aged men conscious of their own mortality. Toddlers are sporting Thomas the Tank Engine and Hello Kitty brain buckets while sitting in the child seats on their mothers’ mamachari. Teens and mothers still don’t where helmets for fear of messing up their coif and being unfashionable. All in all it is nice to see increase in variety but it makes a little sad. It seems that the seeds of bicycle cliques have been planted.
It seems as though bicycle culture has come to Japan. The incursion of bicycle culture is like an invasive species of flora or fauna. It is threatening to squeeze out the native species of lifestyle cyclists who does not label themselves as a “commuter” or a “fixie” or what have you. The native species of cyclist is just that. A cyclist plain and simple. For them bicycles are just a way of walking faster. You take a bicycle to point B because it just makes sense. Because it is easier and you don’t give it a second thought. Bicycle culture has a tendency labelize, compartmentalize and emotionalize. Instead of being one large family of “cyclists” we become “commuters”, “fixies”, “roadies”, etc. For those who don’t ride a bike I think this kind of pigeon-holing puts barriers up that discourage entry for many people. I think it would better serve Japan as a whole to not jump on the trendy bicycle culture bandwagon that is roaring out of North America, Australia and parts of Europe. It isn’t too late to steer clear of this pothole but pop culture in Japanese cities is a fast moving. My wish is that Japan embrace all cyclists regardless of the width of their wheels or the weight of their frame.
So does Japan have bicycle culture? Yes… and no.
Tokyo Two Wheeling
Tokyo Two Wheeling is a source for cycling information, bicycle culture, news and commentary on cycling.