There should be more bike regulations on campus

Personally, I have never felt the need or want for a wheeled vehicle to get to class. However, if you work, live, or attend class on a college campus it is likely you see students and faculty in cars, bikes, skateboards, scooters, or even the occasional Heely wearer for those who never wiped out in front of their fifth grade crush wearing those death traps back in 2006. If you have even an ounce of coordination (and no mortifying past events to hold you back) those really are some good ways to shave five or ten minutes off of your commute to class.

With the option to ride to class, there is also the question of safety. What regulations are put in place to protect both the pedestrians and the riders? This is a question the University of Delaware was faced with in a “too little too late” type scenario last semester when a Delaware student was hit by a biker and left in critical condition. Recently Matthew Rosin, the victim, was taken off of life support and passed on.

The University has now lost a student and is facing a lawsuit, but still there are cyclists whizzing about on sidewalks, down the green, and outside of student centers. The school has chosen not to comment, but did confirm the pending lawsuit.

Since this awful tragedy, has there really been any change in how cyclists transport themselves from point A to point B? I set up a small scale observational experiment to take a deeper look.

I started my experiment by sitting outside of Trabant Student Center (lucky for me there was some sort festival that involved tons of Mexican food and a Mariachi band), and counting the amount of people who were riding bikes on the sidewalk vs riding bikes on the street. While there I noticed two police officers standing there and doing seemingly nothing. At one point an officer asked two boys to get off their bikes and walk them, but when asked specifically why they were there it was to keep an eye on the event, not to promote bike safety.

After about twenty minutes the smell of churros was just too much to resist, so I packed up and moved to the Green, possibly the most busy part of campus (don’t fret, I could still hear the Mariachi band). This is where I found the brunt of my data. At the end of my observation, I found that twelve bikers rode in the street, eight bikers walked their bike on the sidewalk, and twenty seven people rode their bikes on the sidewalk and through the Green.

To be fair to these bikers, there are not many great options on campus to bike comfortably. The bike lanes tend to be narrow and close to the street, and there really is no designated space for bikers on the green. Colleen Beairsto, a sophomore agrees, “there are way too many bikers on the sidewalk, but I also think that there need to be more, wider bike lanes so that the bikers can feel safe, too.”

Milannah Aguirre, a freshman feels “some of the bikers go way too fast on the sidewalk, and they don’t make their presence known.”

So, it seems many University of Delaware students would feel the need for safer and better conditions for both bikers and pedestrians.