Today I went to the USF Speaking and Writing center during their office hours.  I wasn’t there for long maybe about 15 minutes but in that short amount of time I learned a lot about how to conclude my speech because that is what I have been having trouble with.  The girl I worked with, I didn’t catch her name, but she was very nice and helpful in telling me what strategies I should use to end my speech.  I liked how the Speaking Center is run by students and not some professor or speaking coach who judges my style of writing.  I think I would defiantly go back to the Speaking Center to not only work on projects for this class but for my other classes.

In my final rehearsal video I felt like I knew my speech better but also since I had my speech right next to me and I could look at it whenever I wanted I feel like i heavily relied on that.  I stumble over my words because I can see that what I say does not exactly match the words that I use in my paper and for some reason even though I know on the day of the presentation I will not be about to say exactly what I wrote in my speech I want to get semi close to the same words. Going forward I will try to work on being okay with not using the exact same words from my speech but getting the general idea across.

In this video I felt better about knowing the content of my speech because I did not look at my paper that often.  I still feel like I need to know my facts better because I feel like I spend time searching my paper for the correct fact.  Other than that I feel like this rehearsal went pretty well.

For this practice I feel like I did not know my speech at all.  Barely just wrote it a few hours ago and in this video I am just reading off my paper.  I feel like in my next rehearsal video I should try and not look at my paper unless I need help with facts or statistics or in general if I forget a certain line.

Hi my name is Ashley Rice and I want to talk today about the safety of electric bikes.  Some say electric bikes are the way of the future but should they be?  With technology advancing more everyday it seems logical for modes of transportation to also continue to advance to create more mobility and convenience to the rider.  With the increased use of electric bikes politicians need to create more adequate laws to target the growing demographic.

In the US the use of electric bikes since 2005 have risen about 35%.  With this increase, law makers understand that new laws need to be put in place to target the e-bike community.  In 2015 Governor Jerry Brown signed A.B. 1096 which clarifies the regulation of e-bikes in California.  This bill states that there are three different types of e-bikes classified by the speed a certain e-bike can reach.  Only the lowest level of electric bikes which can reach the speed of about 20 mph is allowed on bike paths.  Most importantly, e-bikes will no longer be regulated like mopeds even though the same rules of the road will apply to both e-bikes and human-powered bicycles. E-bikes will not be subject to the registration, licensing, or insurance requirements that apply to motor vehicles which could seem like it would create problems.  How would a driver of an electric bike be held responsible by the law if they were to get into a serious accident and harm themselves or even other person?

E-bikes are not only popular in the US but the trend originated in China and Europe.  In Switzerland the amount of e-bike riders increased as did the amount of e-bike related accidents.  From 2012 to 2013 the amount of e-bike related accidents rose 25%.  In 57% of those cases the accident was caused by the biker losing control of his bike.  This poses the question are e-bikes really safe?  If an e-bike can reach 20 MPH the same speed at which many cars are driving, then should it be considered a bike?  If this is the case 14 year olds should not be allowed to operate e-bikes just like they are not permitted to operate cars.  Even with a helmet the rise of e-bikes has also brought the rise of accidents and deaths.  Some accountability has to be present and I believe the only way to do this is to require e-bike riders to obtain a valid driver’s license so at least people on the road have some piece of mind.

With the initiation of AB 1096 at the beginning of this year it may seem that California is jumping on the trend of the e-bike but I think it is a little too soon.  The amount of accidents due to the increase of electric bikes sharing the road has increased by 25% and will continue to rise.  Creating accountability and peace of mind is very important to keeping our roads safe.  I believe that e-bikes are not best for safety of the roads right now because there are not enough regulations put in place to keep e-bike riders and others who share the road safe.  With more laws and restrictions placed on e-bikes I believe that they could become valuable modes of transportation that would create more mobility for bike riders.  I encourage you to think about should be done to make our streets and e-bike riders safer?

In Janette Sadik-Khan’s Ted Talk “New York’s Streets? Not so Mean Any More,” Janette talks about missioner and how she reshaped the streets of the five boroughs through the transformation of pedestrian space, bike lanes, and bus lanes.  She first describes how she helped to create more space for pedestrians to walk or sit starting with Times Square which is one of the most iconic and most visited places in the United States with an average of 350,000.  She is very hands on and believes in the idea rapid testing with temporary materials and if the desired amount of data or results is not an improvement then the temporary space can be put back the way it was.  In her first six years as transportation commissioner (from 2007- 2013) she created 50 pedestrian zones throughout the city.  She also helped to implement over 350 miles of bikes lanes, most protected by parked cars.  In addition she helped to establish Citi Bike a bike-sharing program which made New York one of the bike capitals of the world.  In addition to working with bikes and pedestrians she also wanted to improve the way the buses moved around NYC.  She helped to create bus only lanes which maximized the movement of buses throughout the city.

To present her evidence Janette used a lot of pictures, one on almost every slide she showed and used the least amount of words she could.  No where in her presentation did she use complete sentences because it is said that if there is more than 6 words on a slide the audience gets distracted and does not maintain the information.  Janette used before and after pictures to show her progress and express to the audience that what she was making real change throughout NYC.

Throughout her Ted Talk Janette keeps saying that anywhere and in any city streets can be improved just by reimagining the space.  To finish her talk Janette states, “you just need to reimagine your streets they are hidden in plain sight.”  She is showing the audience that the change of city streets to improve mobility and create a safe atmosphere is not expensive and does not require a lot of planning.  She gives an example where she turned a street into a pedestrian zone in one weekend with some paint, planters, and the addition chairs.  Reimagining the streets is not the hard part and she thinks any urban city in America can follow the example of NYC and become a safer more bike and pedestrian friendly environment.

I have been to the library only a few times and have never used the online data base.  When I searched “electric bikes” a lot of different and interesting articles came up.  Most of the articles that came up had to to with the use of electric bikes in other countries including China and Australia.  This made me think that I might want to change my focus area on electric bikes from stylish motorcycle looking bikes to the use of electric bikes by older people or how electric bikes impact the enviorment.  Overall I think that the use of the library data base will not only be helpful for research in this class but also in my other classes.

When I was younger my Uncle owned an electric bike that he manufactured himself.  I was always fascinated with how he was able to add a motor to his bike which pedaled for him.  I remember his bike was very bully and looked awkward so I think it is very interesting that today there are companies we are manufacturing electric or e-bikes that look like motorcycles.  I want to learn more about how these companies came up with the idea of making a bike that models a motorcycle and also how they make this bike and also how they produce this bike so it is a able to run on a battery which only takes four hours to charge.

To find out more about this topic I will research the bikes further and visit the website on which they are sold.  On the website I will look through the customer reviews and also see what the company has to say in the “About Us” section.  I will also look on the internet to see if there are anymore news reports about these bikes and if there have been any accidents concerning these bikes.  I would also like to look into the legal side of the issue and investigate why you do not need a license to opperate these bikes even though they do reach the speed of 20 MPH.

On Saturday I decided to take a walk to Haight off of Masonic.  I walked down Haight Street toward Ashbury and observed a few things.  The street is pretty narrow and the all the parking spots on the street are taken up.  There were not that many bikes and I think that is due to the street being so narrow it would be hard and probably dangerous to maneuver the street on a bike.  When I was there I did see many people getting into ride sharing vehicles such as Lyfts or Ubers.  As Zimmer states in his article the amount of ride sharing has increased in the past few years and will continue to increase due to the costly upkeep required to own a car.  On my trip I saw this was evident as I’ve said I saw many people getting into ride sharing vehicles.  As I mentioned Haight Street was full of cars and as Zimmer states cars aren’t the problem it’s how we use them.  Cars are parked about 95% of the time and this seems like a bad use of space that could be used for more bike lanes or bigger sidewalks for pedestrians.  On Haight this would probably help with the congested street and help to improve the flow of traffic on the very narrow street.

Since I was little I thought I knew what I wanted to do with my life.  I wanted to be a first grade teacher for as long as I could remember and then when I started high school I realized that was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.  I so badly wanted to know what career was right for me but I could never figure it out.  My mom suggested that I should think about becoming a book publisher because I like to read and that seemed like a good enough reason to me.  For all of high school when anyone would ask me what I wanted to do I would say book publisher but every time those words came out of my mouth they felt wrong.  I knew I did not need to know what I wanted to do because I had time, but really I knew that wasn’t true.  College is when you’re supposed to figure out what you want to do right?  But this isn’t actually true.  When people start college they usually have an idea at least which field they want to go into and I knew I had to figure out what I wanted to do and quickly.  During my senior year I decided to attend Harvard Model Congress in Boston with about 15 other people from my school.  For five days in February we traveled to Boston and got to participate in a mock Congress where we were assigned Congressmen or House Representative.  We were also assigned a committee and had meetings all day for four days.  I loved being able to experience the law making process and have my ideas heard.  This is when I decided that I wanted to be a lawyer and go into some field of law pertaining to politics.  I am so thankful for deciding to attend HMC but I am also thankful that my parents allowed me to go and have always supported me in whatever I do.