Madison Minor Lewis is dead, but that's not the biggest tragedy. The biggest tragedy is that the death of this promising 19-year-old woman probably could have been prevented. Lewis was one of seven Southern Union Community College students riding in a 1995 Chevy Trailblazer in the wee hours of the morning Dec. 8 on a state road in Chambers County, Alabama. The vehicle driven by Sandy Jose Tiburcio, 19, left the road, overturned and struck a tree. A freshman third baseman on the Lady Bison softball team, Madison Lewis was killed in what police are calling an accident. But was it really an …

If your holiday gift list includes a cyclist, runner or walker, read on. Decatur's active population supports two local bicycling stores and at least three running stores, so you can shop locally without straying far from the 30030 zip code. In fact, Decatur-ites could walk or bike to these stores with ease.  Your faithful columnist called or shopped local stores for gift suggestions for the many local residents who get around by walking, jogging or pedaling. At Bicycle South, open since 1972, the cyclists on your list can log in and create a wish list of items they're longing to open at …

  If you’ll be driving hundreds of miles next week to enjoy Thanksgiving with family, then you'll want to know about a caffeine nap. Because falling asleep at the wheel can be just as deadly as driving drunk. One in six deadly crashes, and one in every eight crashes that caused a serious injury were linked to a drowsy driver, according to a 2010 study by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. But that caffeine nap can help keep you awake and alert, according to researchers at the Sleep Research Laboratory at Loughborough University in England, who have devoted decades to studying how to keep …

If any teenager ever deserved a driver's license, it's my 16-year-old son. He's obsessive about obeying rules. He nags me when I drive over the speed limit, points out if I don't come to a complete stop at a stop sign, and refused to even consider driving a block without an adult present. If his driving instructor told him to look over his shoulder when changing lanes, that's what he did. But last Thursday, when he went to take his driver's test, was a tense day for us. Since my son is my second child to get a driver's license, I knew a few tricks. Such as, make an appointment for the driver'…

If Decatur’s retail environment is thriving, thank the city’s pedestrian-friendly streets. So sayeth Sally Flocks, Atlanta’s uber-pedestrian and the founder of PEDS, a nonprofit, member-based group that works to make metro Atlanta’s streets safe for all pedestrians.  “Pedestrians are more important to the economy than motorists,” said Flocks in an interview this week with Patch. Decatur’s streets are much more walkable than most other towns, enabling the city to “accommodate high density housing,” says Flocks. “You wouldn’t have the kind of retail that Decatur is getting known for without …

Does a bicycle have the right to take up an entire lane of traffic? Does a bicyclist need a driver's license? Can a police officer charge a bicyclist with a DUI? As of this week, Decatur Police officers know the answers to those questions and more. On Thursday, 16 Decatur officers sat through an educational presentation designed by Georgia Bikes!, a state-wide cycling advocacy group based in Athens. The other half of the police department had gone through the training in early October. Lt. Mike Matics led Thursday's class in which officers learned that a bike is legally considered a vehicle …

You'd think that a gal who grew up in New Orleans would be parade jaded. Nope, I love parades. And one of our community's loveliest little parades will run through town Friday afternoon. The Decatur High School Homecoming Parade kicks off at 5:30 p.m., complete with a marching band, convertibles and home-made floats. The Decatur Bulldogs will be playing the Twiggs County High Cobras in the 7:30 p.m. homecoming game, so you can expect to see floats representing huge caped Bulldogs constructed of chicken wire and papier mache wrestling, overpowering and generally trouncing chicken-wire cobras. …

As soon as my children were able to walk, I begin to worry about them falling down. Like many parents, I wanted to teach my children to walk safely, including teaching them to look both ways before crossing a street and other lessons. One study showed that a 5-year-old taught how to identify safe places to cross a street will be able to cross that street as well as an untrained 11-year-old, according to a federal child pedestrian safety program to be offered in Decatur next week. Parents, P.E. teachers and others interested in promoting walking are invited to attend the free, two-hour …

When my daughter, a Decatur High School graduate, attended orientation at the University of Georgia this summer, the college emphasized -- repeatedly -- the dangers of drinking. Apparently the football players weren't paying attention. According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution story, one of the Bulldogs' key defensive players is going to miss at least the next two football games because he was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. Driving while intoxicated is bad enough, but the story by Tim Tucker and Chip Towers reports that Cornelius Washington was clocked at driving 92 …

Memo to all bicyclists everywhere: Let's be careful out there! The perils of two-wheeled transportation have been all too evident this week. Decatur's biking attorney Ken Rosskopf broke nine ribs after riding over a nasty Avondale Estates pothole, just weeks after noting how dangerous white road turtles are to a bike tire.  Decatur Metro reported that a teenager on a bike was hit by a car near Decatur High School last Friday and treated for minor injuries.  I pedaled out to Avondale Estates to try to locate the pothole and was hyper-aware of road hazards. I even pedaled over the offending …

We may look middle-aged, but my husband and I helped our city win an athletic trophy Thursday night. Dressed in neon-green t-shirts, we were part of Team Decatur and we walked, ran (but mostly walked) and helped our city win a ginormous trophy as the fittest city at the 5K Kaiser Permanente Corporate Run/Walk and Company Picnic Thursday night. Decatur has won the trophy two years in a row now.  Take that, Roswell! Team Decatur nearly doubled in size to 256 members from about 140 last year, when the group was formed by Decatur's Active Living department and the Decatur Business Association. …

Decatur bicyclists may begin wearing shirts with the slogan, "Save the Whales, Annihilate the Turtles." But it's not living turtles they despise. The objects of their scorn are the hard white bumps glued into the road all over Decatur to delineate parking or no-drive areas. They get their name because they're about the size and shape of a turtle. Cute name aside, Decatur's biking lawyer Ken Rosskopf says the road turtles are a waste of money and hazardous to bicyclists.  Rosskopf plans to air his turtle trepidations at a Community Workshop on Clairemont-Commerce-Church Street Pedestrian …

Avondale Estates residents may be able to drive around most of their city in electric golf carts if an ordinance under consideration is approved. The city is working on their own version of a model ordinance that was passed by the state, said city planner Keri Stevens. In May, Gov. Nathan Deal signed a new law allowing golf carts that travel up to 20 miles per hour on public roads, so long as a local jurisdiction allows it. Georgia is home to some of the world's largest manufacturers of golf carts, including Club Car and E-Z-GO, both headquartered in Augusta, Ga. Think of it! Instead of …

Decatur Mayor Bill Floyd was one of the officials who approved a list of $6.14 billion in proposed transportation projects in the region. The list goes up for a vote in 2012 in 10 metro Atlanta counties. Included among the projects is a $700 million Clifton Corridor MARTA route to Emory University;$25 million in corridor improvements to North Druid Hills Road from Buford Highway to Lawrenceville Highway; and  $12 million in pedestrian, landscape and bus improvements on Buford Highway in DeKalb. Wheels and Heels interviewed Floyd, a member of the Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable, …

When you train for marathons in Atlanta, you know a thing or two  about running in the heat. Lee Fidler, a two-time Olympic Trials qualifier, has run 43 marathons, won the Atlanta Marathon and Half Marathon, finished 11th at the 1975 Boston Marathon and finished second and third at the Peachtree. When a local sports drink manufacturer was looking to test a sports drink, Fidler was one of the guys they hired as guinea pigs. His resting heart rate is in the low 40’s or 30’s. Oh, and the Competitor Network ranked him third among the Top-5 Bearded Runners of All Time. Fidler is now a personal …

I have a thought about how to reduce federal expenditures, improve family relations, save energy and improve the air, all by revising the school bus schedule. In the morning, Decatur's school buses are scheduled to ensure that students arrive at their schools a half hour before school starts, in time to eat breakfast. Students who eat breakfast at home and choose to ride the bus just sit around talking to their friends, I guess. I'm not against making sure kids have breakfast, but why have we created a system that seems to punish families who do the right thing, namely feed their children …

Decatur’s Safe Routes to School program has a message for parents: Want to prevent your child from getting fat and get them to talk to you every day? Walk or bike to school with them daily. “I love the morning ritual,” said Lesley Stuart, who will be walking to Fifth Avenue Academy Tuesday morning for her son Lachlan’s first day of fifth grade. Stuart has walked her son to school for most of the days he’s attended school. Besides the obvious health benefits to having kids burn cornflakes instead of fossil fuel getting to school, walking to school offers priceless parenting benefits, said …

Learning to ride a bike is a life-altering experience. For my son, that experience came last weekend, under atypical circumstances. See, I'm a bike nut. I'm so crazy about bicycling, I've done the Bicycle Ride Across Georgia more than a dozen times and once quit my job to ride an old Fuji around Europe. My son is a tall, athletic 15-year-old. How come I never taught him how to ride before? Oh, I tried. When he was young, my son was wary of this two-wheeled contraption. Early attempts at riding resulted in the inevitable falls. Falling did not sound like fun to him, so he opted not to keep …

Last March, thousands of cyclists rode to the gold dome to lobby for laws for safer cycling. Ironically, cyclists continue to blow off one of the easiest ways to get safer cycling.  When was the last time you saw a bicyclist stopping at a stop sign or a traffic light? The situation has made Avondale Estates Police Chief Gary Broden so frustrated that he's issued a broad letter to area cyclists warning them that they risk tickets if they continue to roll through stop signs in this hamlet. Oh, some area cycling leaders are on Broden's side. The Avondale Estates Police Department contacted local…

An extra penny sales tax will spell the difference between more and quicker ways to get around metro Atlanta and continuing gridlock and congestion, according to DeKalb CEO Burrell Ellis and Decatur Mayor Bill Floyd. And they're depending on DeKalb residents to go to the polls next July to approve a new sales tax for transportation improvements. The two are DeKalb's representates on a 10-county Atlanta Regional Transportation Roundtable, and on Wednesday, they held town hall meeting that reached more than 26,000 county residents.  Instead of asking residents to come to a meeting, the …