You continue to assert that you must drive 50 mph because it is the legal limit and the “flow of traffic”. Several of us now have explained and documented to you that the law requires you to take road conditions into account and adjust your speed accordingly. You continue to doggedly assert that you don’t think you should do so. Sorry, that’s not being cautious. It’s just not. If you fear hitting a bicycle because you haven’t allowed yourself enough time to react when coming around a blind corner or over a blind hill crest, then YOU ARE NOT DRIVING CORRECTLY. If anyone doesn’t belong on the road under those circumstances, it’s YOU.
If you’re on a two lane road and another car is following closely, the correct response is not to drive fast out of fear of being hit. The correct response is to move to the right and let the other car pass. If you can’t move to the right at that particular moment, Mr. Cowboy will just have to wait until you can. Driving faster than conditions warrant out of fear of the cars behind you is stupid, stupid, stupid. It just makes no sense.
As scr4 said:
“If the road condition makes it unsafe to drive at the posted speed limit, then it’s no longer a legal speed. That includes sharp turns, rain, etc.”
The legal speed is whatever is safe for you to drive, accounting for hazards, including bicycles. If you are not doing this, you are creating a danger.
There’s no reason for bicyclists to be in any danger unless you are driving in an unsafe manner. You are failing to understand the law and the fact that bicycles share the road with cars.
Honestly, I still don’t understand what your problem is. You’ve acknowledge that bicycles have a legal right to be on the road. Your only complaint seems to be that drivers are forced to watch out for cyclists, and slow down or change lanes to accomodate them. But by that argument, stop signs and traffic lights don’t belong on the road either.
Honestly, if your driving skills are so poor that you can’t function in the presence of bicycles without having to drive 10 mph, you really don’t belong behind the wheel of a car.
There’s a place in Ventura County where bicycles actually have to ride on the freeway for awhile to get where they’re going. I have encountered bicycles while driving on that freeway. And we all managed to get through it without anyone peeing their pants. Unbelievable, huh?
I don’t ‘fear hitting a bicycle’. There are extremely few bicycles on that road, far less than there are deer and other animals, and the odds on any day of even seeing a bike are pretty low. I think that it’s likely, one of these days, someone riding a bike on that road will get killed, and I won’t blame the car or truck driver who hits them.
I never said they were following closely.
I drive at a perfectly reasonable speed based upon conditions, my skill at handling my car, and my experience with driving. I also understand, as you apparently do not, that going ridiculously slower than the other vehicles on the road is dangerous.
Do you not agree that traveling significantly slower (and by that I mean more than 30 mph slower) than the rest of the vehicles on the road is in any way dangerous?
Forget bikes for a minute and imagine that these are all just cars. Is it reasonable or safe for one car to travel at 20 mph for ten miles while all the others are going 60 mph? It’s reasonable to travel slower than the speed limit when weather conditions or poor visibility make it necessary. Times like those, most people will be traveling slower than the speed limit.
But if you’re doing 20 on a road where everyone else is doing 60, it’s most likely that you’re the hazard, not them.
That includes the fact that it is hazardous to drive significantly slower than the majority of traffic.
Traveling at a speed that is >30 mph slower than the flow of traffic is by definition ‘driving in an unsafe manner.’
They’ve also got safety devices bicycles can’t dream of having. The last serious car accident I was in (back seat of a car that was rear-ended) destroyed two cars and damaged a third. Out of the five people in those three cars, not a single one had an injury more serious than whiplash. Had I been on a bicycle rather than in the back seat of a car, I’d be dead.
The ‘shoulder’ of this road is 36" wide. One foot of pavement outside the white line, and two feet of loose berm material (which is actually just milled asphalt) before there’s either guide rail or a hillside with trees on it. Even if it were legal to park a car there, which it’s not (the state has handily supplied No Parking signs every couple hundred yards), there isn’t the room.
I think that he and lowbrass are also ignoring the fact that although I acknowledge that they have the right to be there, it’s still stupid. Being a moron isn’t illegal. Being an asshole isn’t illegal. Doing something that’s dangerous isn’t illegal.
I know they have a right to be there. I obviously make an effort not to hit the bike riders on that road, or I’d have run over more than one by now. I still think anyone riding a bike there is either a moron or an asshole or both.
It is possible to recognize that people have the right to do something as a matter of legal fact, and also have the opinion that doing so is stupid.
OK, you think I’m an asshole and a moron. You have a right to think so. I’m fine with that, as long as you drive at a safe speed and try not to run over my fellow morons and assholes.
It’s getting annoying to have to go back and constantly remind you of what you said when you play these ‘literal wording’ games.
Here’s what you wrote:
I’m not interested in your semantic games; what you said was that you are choosing your speed based on your fear of getting “hammered” from the “back end”.
Look sweetie - the rest of the car-driving world manages to co-exist with bicycles on all kinds of roads. Your contention that doing so requires some sort of extroardinary, unsafe measures, is ridiculous.
Why? They’re not all cars.
You’re not getting it. Vehicles that can’t go as fast can’t go as fast. It’s preposterous to say that they don’t belong on the road when they are legally allowed there and need to use that road. Sometimes tractors have to use the road. Sometimes slow trucks with large loads have to use the road. Sometimes street-sweepers have to use the road. Very often, these vehicles travel slower than other traffic. You have to be prepared to deal with situations like this - it’s simply part of driving a car.
If drivers are not taking this stuff into account, then THEY are being unreasonable. Most drivers are reasonable. If a drunk driver hits and kills a pedestrian legally crossing in a cross-walk, would that mean pedestrians don’t belong in crosswalks? No, it would mean that a drunk driver did something stupid.
If it’s necessary for you to be driving that speed, then people have to deal with that.
Getting back to the subject, I thought you said this was a 2-lane road. What exactly do you mean when you say “everyone” is going the same speed? It’s not necessary for you to keep up with the person in front of you. If you go at a reasonable speed for the conditions present, and the person in front of you is going faster, how does it hurt anything for him to get ahead of you? Why do you feel compelled to go the same speed as the car in front of you? To contend that you must travel at the “same speed” as other cars, when you are travelling single-file in one lane, makes no sense. What would be dangerous would be to slam on your brakes, and this is avoided by keeping a reasonable speed in the first place.
You keep bitching that you think it would be unsafe for you to drop below the “flow of traffic”, but that is nonsensical if we’re talking about only one lane.
Not for a bicycle. In most cases, your definition would render riding a bicycle at any time to be riding in an unsafe manner. That’s ridiculous.
I know. I didn’t say they were. The point, which you missed, is that it’s not difficult to share the road with bicycles, even when they are moving at a much slower speed than the cars.
Do cyclists use this shoulder at all? It would seem that would be the safest course for all involved. I don’t have a horse in this race, and I don’t have a picture of this road, but it seems to me that two cars and a cyclist should be able to fit on the stretch of road without any collisions. It’s not like lanes are exactly the width of a car or anything.
But perhaps I am not picturing said county road correctly.
I was referring to one argument in particular: “It’s my choice. I don’t question your right to do drive; why should you question mine to ride without a helmet?”
Also, most motorcyclists have a sense of separation when compared to others on the road. When a motorcyclist is involved in an accident, they tend to place the blame on an inattentive motorist. Sound familiar?
I’ve seen them on the shoulder, but it’s kind of narrow and it’s not paved so they’re usually over by the white line when they are on that road, which isn’t all that often. The hills are so steep and long that I don’t see the average bike rider out there, typically they stick to one of the more level roads in the area.
The stretch of road that I’m talking about twists and turns and climbs hills for approximately 12 miles between two different towns and has very few houses in between. It’s a two-lane road with a US route designation, so it’s fairly heavily traveled by cars and trucks, and although the speed limit over those 12 miles is 50 mph, there are days that I’m going sixty and getting passed on one of the long straight aways (designated as passing zones).
I’ve probably seen bicycles 20 or 30 times in the last 13 years of driving that road, which I do pretty frequently. Biking to work isn’t a big thing out here, and few people do it who don’t live and work inside the city of Pittsburgh. I live and work outside the city, although when I did live there and I worked at Pitt and was a student at Pitt, I used to ride my bike to class and work. Because I was never confident that I could make the ride from Oakland to Shadyside without being a living roadblock on Fifth Ave, I used to take the side streets. It took longer, but I felt it was safer.
I know that it’s legal to bicycle on this road, since it is not a limited access highway. I just can’t fathom why anyone would choose to.
That drivers, natch. I’ve had drivers blow a steam gasket before they were even delayed by cyclists.
The moment one of them gets delayed, or think they might get delayed, the ‘safety’ arguement is brought out as an excuse to gets the bikes off the road.
I had one of these ‘safety’ nuts leaning on his horn for over 15 seconds after he spotted me on the road over a block ahead of him. It was a two lane city street, I was in the left lane , he was turning right. We were the only things on that street. He leaned on his horn anyway. His reasoning for blasting his horn (which was right outside a hospital BTW) was ‘someone’s gonna run you down’*. Yeah, I’m sure he was truly concerned for my safety, and not blowing a fuse over seeing something that might, just might be in his way of urban speeding. Incidently, he lost more time yelling at me than he would have saved if I dove out of the way for his benefit.
Only drunks, truly incompetent drivers, or psychotics run down cyclists in the middle of the lane, BTW.
Which is why many cyclists take the full lane instead of trying to be meek and hoping that the driver knows where the right side of his car is by riding near the edge of the road.
If being ‘rude’ in the eyes of some psychotic Speed Racer wannabees means not getting clipped by the side of their car, I’ll be fucking rude.
And it sounds like catsix and I have in mind very similar sorts of roads: narrow, winding, quite possibly hilly rural roads with no sidewalks, minimal or nonexistent paved shoulders, where local motorists nonetheless frequently drive at a pretty fair clip.
That’s right - that’s exactly the contention I’m making: such roads exist, and in some areas they’re downright common.
I can envision places like this: you’re biking along the road, moving at a middlin’ pace, then the road curves sharply to the right and goes steeply uphill at the same time. All of a sudden you’re doing 5 mph, and having to work hard to maintain that. And you’re invisible to the next car that approaches the curve at 50, slowing to 35 for it, and not having the time to keep from smacking you in the rear tire because they weren’t expecting anything just beyond the curve that was, in effect, standing still on their side of the road.
You can argue whether it’s wrongheaded, but four decades of cycling on a wide variety of roads and trails hardly constitutes ‘ignorance’ of cycling realities.
Two entirely different issues. I don’t know what your point is, other than to be a smart-ass.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t blamed anyone for any accidents. I have merely countered the absurd notion that bicycles don’t belong on the road. I’m not even a frequent bike rider. The last time I rode my bike was probably 2 years ago. In point of fact, I have witnessed bike riders doing many stupid things, and have argued with bike riders who in my opinion suffer from a false sense of entitlement, in this thread and others. I have heard bike riders say that they deliberately block an entire lane to prevent cars from passing them, and that they feel entitled to do so. I have heard bike riders claim they shouldn’t be subject to traffic regulations such as stop signs and red lights. They couldn’t be more wrong. I am anything but a self-entitled bike rider. Same goes for motorcycles. I have seen motorcyle riders do completely idiotic, dangerous things: passing on the shoulder, splitting lanes at 80 mph and then forcing their way back into the lane when there is no space to do so and forcing cars to brake hard, riding in people’s blind spots for extended periods of time and then getting upset when people didn’t see them, etc.
But it makes no more sense to say they “don’t belong on the road” than it does to say that cars don’t belong on the road. I’ve seen car drivers do incredibly idiotic things, too.
You are obviously reading things that aren’t there, and trying to pigeonhole people into your own personal stereotypes. Catsix keeps saying that bicycles are causing danger because cars are going faster than they can react to them. I said that IF that is the case, then it is the fault of the car drivers. How you could twist that around to thinking I said that I always blame the motorist in an accident is beyond me.
Different issues, yes, but similar arguments. “You drive a car; that can easily get you killed too. But I don’t question your right to do it. Why should you question mine (to ride on a road that could be dangerous for me)?” “It’s my choice. I don’t question your right to do drive; why should you question mine to ride without a helmet?”
You are, however, arguing that catsix doesn’t pay enough attention to cyclists on a particular stretch of road.
And when you start trailing a line of cars that are unable to pass you for whatever reason, it’s time to move over–completely off the road, if necessary.