Easy Peasy

Say your'e commuting on a bike/pedestrian path and you find that some idiot has smashed a glass bottle on the path. What would you do? Note: you use this route daily.

Ride around it?
Sweep it to the side?
Clean it up and bag it?

Anyone travel with a hand broom?

CB HI

Yes (actually, the small broom that baseball umpires use). Cleaned six beer bottles and one vodka bottle off path/shoulder on Thursday.

Easy Peasy

Good idea!
Spent some time picking up glass shards on my way home today. Fortunately had a plastic bag. An umpire broom would've helped a lot.

vtjim

I try to get as much of it off the pavement as possible but I don't carry a broom. I came across a guy with a broom cleaning some glass once, and thanked him.

Dang, the other day a cop (car) pulled out behind me on a street and I noticed a big broken bottle in the middle of the road. Sigh. I just went around it and made a big show of pointing down at it as I passed. The cop ran right over the thing. "Not his job", I suppose, but he couldn't even, y'know, steer around it? Driving is hard.

dedhed

If I have time I kick the big stuff off the trail.

electrik

Fenders and kevlar tires. Way too much broken glass to sweep personally.

jsdavis

I once somehow managed to run over a bottle and break the thing and still get to work unscathed. I'm thinking I ran over the neck, but I'm not entirely sure. Checked the tires and no glass embedded either. Three months later I'm still riding on the same tire and tubes.

david58

Kevlar tires. I would need to rent the city's street sweeper to clean up the glass. It should be in good shape - they never use it....@#^%!!

reducedfatoreo

Definitely need to get me one of those umpire brooms. There's one section of the Hudson River MUP that the cleaners never get to...

scroca

This. I try to clear a line so I can navigate through it in the future, like on a center stripe if there is one.

scroca

Not trying to hijack this thread, but it brings to mind a question I have often wondered: Who breaks this glass? Is it the winos themselves when they're done with the bottle, or is it that they leave the bottle laying around and later kids come along and break it?

Easy Peasy

I'm guessing kids.

As an aside, the problem with sweeping the debris to the grass side of our bike path is that folks walk their dogs on the grass.
I recently met a woman whose dog cut it's foot on glass, so this time I bagged it.

wolfchild

Almost everyday I see glass on the roads , I wonder who does that ? The glass is crushed into tiny little chunks and I always see it along the curb. I am not talking about big pieces of glass but very small ones, it's almost as if somebody will purpously crush it into tiny pieces and then throw them on the roads. I've seen the same thing along some mup's. A bottle thrown from a vehicle will not break into hundereds tiny pieces like that, and then position itself along the curb ?? I am sure somebody is doing it purpoesly.

sggoodri

I think they get pulverized by motor vehicle tires running over them repeatedly. With time, the wind blast moves and deposits the debris into the gutter, or wherever motor vehicle traffic doesn't travel.

dynodonn 

I'll usually record the spot with my video cam, come back within a day or two, sweep it up and haul it away. On my last cleaning venture, it took me a couple of after work trips to clean up a plate glass window that some one dropped onto the roadway and then swept all 50+lbs of it into the gutter bike lane.

SouthFLpix

There is too much glass for me to be able to do anything about it. At night I see groups of young teenagers walking or sitting and drinking. When they finish their beers, they smash the bottltes rather than look for a trash bin.

Last week I had my first ever flat with Marathon tires, after about a year of use. It was a 'spear-like' peice of glass that worked it's way between the tire threads and slowly pushed itself through to make a 'pin-like' prick of the inner tube. No tire is completely immune to flats, unfortunately.

Easy Peasy

My mom gave me her extra hand broom today! A plastic one about 5 x 5 inches, and it spoons with a matching dustpan. Quite perfect.

CB HI

On Oahu there use to be three groups of people breaking the beer bottles. Currently there are two.

1. Homeless people. There are a couple of areas with large homeless camps. Those areas always have large amounts of broken glass on the paths and roadways.

2. Underage high school kids who do not want to show back up at home with beer bottles in parents car.

3. Underage military that did not want to return through the security check going back onto base with open bottles in the car. Every Monday, there use to be several broken bottles on the roads leading back to the bases until the military cracked down hard on any drinking by underage people and/or all drivers. So that glass has gone away.

Once saw a paper grocery bag in the gutter full of broken beer bottles. Figured that was a drunk homeless guy that had collected them for the money deposit but was too drunk to not drop the bag and break his future beer money.
It was right at the largest homeless camp.

hammandegger

I sometimes carry a small brush with me. When I'm on my way to work, it is dark, so I can't really see as well as I could in the daytime. On my way home from work in the morning when it is light out, and when I am not pressed for time I sometimes stop on the bike trail and remove glass.
I sometimes wonder about who it is breaking the glass. Part of the trail I ride goes through 'da hood.' So I am thinking it might be disaffected poor people who might be jealous of all the 'happy' folks riding by on bikes. So whenever I ride through this area I am extra nice and polite to people and I always give a friendly wave to everybody. I don't want to be the reason they want to break bottles on the trail.

Danny1962

I don't usually ride with a brush and dustpan but if I know there's a location with a lot of fresh glass I'll pack one and sweep it up. The council certainly aren't going to bother, and I figure if I don't bother, who else will? I'll be the one who has to repair the flat tyre if I (or my wife) ride through it.

nashcommguy

If there's an area anywhere in the entire length of my commute that poses a consistant danger I'll go back after I get home and sweep or shovel it. On one 2 mile section there are 'sleep divots' cut into the asphalt just outside the fog line. Plenty of room to ride to the right of them. However, there was a place where a big pile of gravel/dirt would cause me to have to go out into the road to get around it. So, I went back w/a shovel and cleared a path large enough for me to by-pass this pile safely. My thought is that one is responsible for one's own safety if making the decision to cycle-commute. Societal attitudes are so stacked against the bicycle that when it comes to safety one must look out for exactly that number...one.