Yes, at the first chance where it’s safe to do so. I don’t think any cyclist has said otherwise in this thread.
I would under the circumstances described. But I’ve never had it happen. Except for a few drivers line up behind me…in the bike & parking lane as they tried to sneak around the drivers waiting their turn at the light. That’s the only time I think I’ve ‘held up’ a train of cars.
And I sure as fuck wasn’t pulling over to let them by.
A. I don’t remember saying any of those things, and B. Riding a bike on the street is still a different issue than wearing or not wearing a helmet. I always wear a helmet when I ride a bike. You’d have to be an idiot not to.
Not really. I suspect that catsix is exaggerating the situation. I have never encountered a situation where I felt I was in danger of killing a cyclist with my car; it’s generally quite easy to pass them on the left with a little skill and foresight. I didn’t just pop in and say, “Hey catsix, I know nothing about you but I think you don’t pay enough attention to cyclists.” No, catsix is presenting this ridiculous exaggerated scenario where one supposedly has to drive 50 mph around blind curves and risk hitting cyclists. IN RESPONSE to that, I said that if you really did that under those cirumstances, you wouldn’t be driving correctly. I believe catsix’s position is mostly hyperbole.
But if you’d like to find the exact quote of me saying “catsix doesn’t pay enough attention to cyclists”, please do. I don’t believe I ever said that.
If that actually happened to a bicyclist, that would be a prudent thing to do. I think that’d be pretty rare, though. They’re usually going to just go around you.
While I agree that catsix’s position that the stretch of road is probably not the smartest road for bikers to traverse, I also agree with you in that as a motorist you should never be driving in such a way that encountering an unexpected obstacle in the middle of the roadway would cause an accident, and should an automobile hit a cyclist on such a road, I would assume the driver at fault.
Not in those exact words, no. That was scr4.
I’m aware of that. Point is, riding without a helmet and riding on the wrong street are both legal for one to do so, depending on one’s location, and both can be very hazardous to one’s health.
Usually, yes. Sometimes not possible; for example, if just going around isn’t possible due to traffic, road conditions, etc. Which is part of what catsix has been getting at.
Cyclists always have the choice of dismounting; they do not need to wait for a pull off, unlike drivers.
Missed this.
I believe you are concentrating too much on the speed. I have yet to see such a curve that doesn’t have a much lower posted speed.
I don’t believe I said it was an exact quote. You did say this, though:
Huh? Am I supposed to lift my bike and jump over a guardrail? Climb a wall? Walk down a hill?
And even if there’s just the curb to deal with, do you really expect a cyclist to come to a complete stop, dismount, and lift the bike onto the curb? It’ll take maybe 5 seconds to signal the cars behind and bring the bike to a complete stop without being rear-ended. Maybe another 10 seconds to dismount and move the bike. And that’s assuming the cyclist is strong enough (and the bike light enough) to do so, which isn’t always the case. Do you really think this is practical and desirable for any party involved? During those 15 seconds the bike+cars could have traveled 400 ft (assuming 18mph), during which there’s most likely a place where the bike can pull over without dismounting.
Again, your position here seems rather tenuous.
We have a cyclist, on a road he is allowed to be on by law, riding in a manner that obeys the law…and yet you think he is the self-absorbed moron, rather than say you for feeling you have more right to use this public road than he does?
Really, I get worried when I hear a fellow driver tell me that he thinks such a thing is dangerous. I wonder just how much attention they’re paying, or what control they have on their vehicle, that they find themselves so worried about what should be a very simple maneuver - spot cyclist, slow down, wait till it’s safe to overtake. On the roads I drive on, mostly narrow rural roads with a speed limit of 60, there’s lots of occasions where that’s necessary - would you be as vexed by a farmer driving a tractor? Should they not use the roads either?
No, I really just don’t go with your argument. I think that a bad driver is a lot more of a danger than a cyclist, and I’m beginning to wonder if that’s not the problem here.
I can think of a number of roads where there’s no real option for a cyclist to stop safely (roads with either a steep bank on the side, or a steep drop off). All in all, as a driver I’d rather they didn’t just stop whilst on the road, as I prefer it when my fellow road users don’t make sudden, unpredictable moves, whatever vehicle they’re in.
I almost posted a similar example. I’ve driven on winding, narrow hilly roads with ~50 mph speed limits where the occasional horse-drawn cart plodding up the mountainside would not be unheard of (OK, this was not in the US). To me, this is a lot more dangerous than a cyclist (the horse cart takes up pretty much the whole lane), yet it’s just one of those things that, as a driver, I have to take responsibility to look out for.
Like I said, it may not be the wisest thing for a cyclist to do, but it seems to me that he has as much a right to the road as I do and my responsibility is to be wary of him and courteous. I’ve never been much of a cyclist myself, but if that’s the poor guy’s only mode of transportation, I’m not going to begrudge his use of it.
Then you have a beef with catsix, not me. Catsix was the one who brought up the 50 mph thing. Honestly, are you even reading the thread?
Well I’m reacting to this bizarre contention that catsix is making that it’s somehow dangerous to have a bicycle on the road, when such a thing is quite commonplace and no cause for alarm whatsover. Gary Kumquat had the same kind of reaction as I did:
“Really, I get worried when I hear a fellow driver tell me that he thinks such a thing is dangerous. I wonder just how much attention they’re paying, or what control they have on their vehicle, that they find themselves so worried about what should be a very simple maneuver - spot cyclist, slow down, wait till it’s safe to overtake.”
See, we’re flabbergasted that anyone would make such a big deal about something that’s fairly innocuous and in fact quite a routine aspect of driving a car. The quite natural response here is to wonder, if a driver feels it’s so difficult to come to grips with the reality of a bike being on the road, how that driver is able to cope with the myriad of other routine obstacles that one comes across as a matter of routine when driving a car.
In many places, it’s quite common. But there are still roads where bicycling is legal, but a bicycle on those roads is an extremely rare event.
The relevant question is, how commonplace is it to the person driving the road in question? If it’s something he never experiences on that road, then he’s not going to be looking for it, and it won’t really matter how commonplace it might be in Davis, CA.
See the example in my previous post. There are roads out there where by the time you’ve spotted the cyclist, you don’t have much room to slow down. If it were always simple to spot things on the road well ahead of when you overtook them, I’d STFU. But that’s not the way it always is.
And again, part of the problem is that there are places where this is demonstrably false.
In AZ we have miles of sidewalk that nobody uses. I’d rather ride on that then get hit by some drunk illegal with no insurance.
Why do people think sidewalks are safe? I’ve already cited one study which found that riding on the sidewalk is 1.8 times more dangerous (i.e. more likely to be killed in an accident) than riding on the road.
If necessary and possible, yes. By the way, most adults are able to step over a guardrail.
Yeah, and you’re running with it–assuming that 50 mph is always 50 mph.
Exactly.
No, I’d expect a cyclist to ride up onto the curb, then stop. Had to do that myself once to get a one of those “bicycles do not belong on streets” types in a pickup to pass me on an otheriwise empty side street.
As I said way back on the first page, some of the designated bike trails around here are sidewalks. There must be other factors involved in that 1.8 figure than just riding on a sidewalk.