I have yet to see a bike rider stop at any kind of light, stop sign, etc. I don’t know if it’s just the morons around the area where I live, but be it casual bikers or the ones dressed to the gills with the spandex suits and helmets, etc., not one of them that I can recall seeing ever paid one whit of attention to the rules of the road.
Not one has ever gotten off their bike to walk it across the street like the law says they are supposed to. No hand signals given to indicate where they’re going. They just shoot about like they own the world.
You’re taking it way too personally. If its safer to go slower, then for your own sake, go slower. You make it seem like I want bikes to get off the road cause I’m a road hog. I’m not, I avoid bikes and give them a wide berth. But the general consensus seems to be that drivers do not do that in most cases. So you can either push back by making driving more unpleasant for the drivers and pissing them off with regulations they don’t like, thereby making them angrier, or try to put your own safety above your need to headbutt the drivers’ ignorance and ride on the sidewalks. This is a battle that you cannot win, because your bike is going to make nothing more than a dent if one driver decided to be inattentive for one second
I make it seem one-way because if we’re sharing the road, only one person is going to be the one at risk: the biker. Its not out of some driver-side bias that you should be much more careful than the driver, its because we’re simply not as vulnerable as you are. For your own sake, you should be 10 times safer than a driver
Cars must yield to pedestrians in crosswalks and most places, but I would be foolish to step into the path of a speeding driver and dare him to hit me if I were walking. For my own safety, I would look before I take a step, even if the driver was violating a traffic law.
Its not about rights, its about safety. If I biked, I would rather go slower on a safer path than faster on a less safe one. You and other bikers choose to take a chance, which is fine and your legal right, but don’t let that right blind you to the dangers
It’s safer to ride on the road than the sidewalk, so for my own sake, I ride on the road.
Personally, if I had to ride at 10 mph, it’d take me twice as long to get to work. It wouldn’t be a practical means of transport for me.
I don’t see any such consensus here. I myself feel 98% of car drivers give cyclists adequate margin when passing, and another 1.9% inadvertently get too close (misjudging the distance, or not knowing how much room they should leave.) About 0.1% seem to get intentionally aggressive, because they believe (as you do/did) that cyclists shouldn’t be on the road.
As I and others have repeatedly tried to explain, riding on the sidewalk is not the safest choice.
Feel free to yell at them, or call the police. But realize it doesn’t give you a right to drive recklessly around them.
The law says bicycles can turn at intersections just as cars do (e.g. using the left turn lane if there is one). As for hand signals, yes, that is required, and should be done. (Unless your bike has turn signals, which is what I use.)
I stop at stop signs. I stop at red lights. I obey traffic signs. I am dressed to the gills not only with my bike shorts and helmet but also with the required safety lights, neon yellow/reflective “Don’t Hit Me” jacket and safety triangle on my backpack, etc. I pay pretty strict attention to the rules of the road and I appreciate that most drivers do, too.
I turn the way that the law tells me to. I use hand signals and I don’t go cutting in front of traffic, hitting cars or pedestrians, etc. I’m careful as hell because the price of a mistake will be paid by me, not by someone in a car (aside from scraped paint). I pull over to let traffic pass me when it’s appropriate & safe, as required by law.
When I see cyclists going the wrong way down a one-way street, blowing through stop signs and red lights, wearing headphones and no helmets, riding in low light with dark clothes and no lights, etc. it pisses me off. At the very least they’re endangering themselves but frankly they’re endangering me and the majority of other bike riders who are obeying the law and staying safe because every time someone sees some nimrod blow through a red light they say “See, none of those stupid bicyclists obeys the law so why should I?” And then that’s one more angry inattentive driver at the wheel of a few tons of steel who thinks that it is perfectly acceptable to break the law when they are around me, putting my life in serious jeopardy.
Well then the situation works for you, which works out fine for everyone. However if ever the circumstances change and it becomes unsafe, I would hope that you would consider the sidewalk instead trying to be more assertive on the road
Isn’t that kind of like the old joke that anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, but anyone driving faster is a maniac? I’m not asking you to predict your own actions as regards to bikers but other people’s. I have far less faith in them than I do myself. However, if it is safer on the road, then by all means, go on the road. Drivers in my town does not seem to have read that same study though. I think my town is filled with that 0.1%
So the drivers in your town are intentionally aggressive towards cyclists, and you think the solution to this is for cyclists to cede their legal right to the road to aggressive assholes?
FalconFinder, there are cyclists like the ones you describe. I get really annoyed with cyclists who ignore all road rules, blow through groups of pedestrians at intersections, and generally act like assholes. I believe that if they are caught doing these things, they should be ticketed. But, as others have noted, the fact that some cyclists act like this does not change the fact that bicycles have the right to be on the road, nor does it excuse drivers who act like aggressive assholes toward cyclists.
For a town of any size or with any pedestrian traffic I find this difficult to imagine. Biking on streets does carry with it some risk, but it can be managed much better then the risks on the sidewalks.
Just today I was nearly run over by a bike because someone the rider couldn’t see came out the door of a store and forced the biker into me. I narrowly avoided getting hit by basically jumping between two parked cars. Since I ride to work and also walk on the sidewalks, this is a pretty significant issue for me.
I think we may be understanding the case a bit here. I would agree with the 90% figure that some pulled from his/her nether regions earlier in the thread just based on anecdotal evidence. As one of the 10% who dutifully slows down, unclips, stops, signals all turns, etc., it drives me absolutely batshit.
The topper came a few weeks ago. I was riding down a road that has stop signs about every two blocks. It is a pain the ass to have to stop that often, but I use the opprtunity to do intervals. And I have to stop at every stop sign, because cars blow through intersections in this neighborhood with disturbing regularity. Coming toward me was a lovely girl on her Schwinn cruiser, running every stop sign she came to. Without a helmet. Listening to her iPod. I wanted to smack her so hard.
But I have to agree with those who say that the biggest PR problems bicyclists have is other bicyclists.
My joke was meant to illustrate, as you said, perception. Yours tell you that most people give an adequate margin while mine tells me different. Given such discrepancies, I would say that in general, it may be safer for you to be on the road but for me to be on the sidewalk. If I were you, however, I’d err on the side of caution
Well, yeah. What are you going to do, get hit to teach them a lesson? Laws arent working, so unless you’re packing heat and go around shooting out tires, wouldnt you rather be safe? I understand that people in general dont like to show weakness or give in, especially when they are right, but come on, you’re not going to intimidate a driver into sharing the road if he really doesnt want to. Be the bigger man and give him the road
Well I didn’t mean it literally. But my town has a lot of cars and not a lot of pedestrians or bikers. Big crowds and little roads doesnt contribute to a sharing atmosphere. Also, there’s a lot of asians here and we cant drive, apparently
I do wonder, those of you who say they constantly see cyclists blatantly disregarding road rules, what the particular provision for cyclists is like in your areas. Although this isn’t a particular excuse for disobeying the law (except in cases where obeying the law would put your life and limb at risk, which does occasionally happen), roads rules are set up with cars, not bikes in mind, and there are often cases where the rules make life particularly difficult for bikes if no thought is given to their needs.
In my area of town there are bike lanes all over the place, bike traffic lights, the occasional physical barrier between 2- and 4-wheeled traffic and bike-related questions on the license test, and the vast majority of cyclists I see obey stop signs, use helmets and lights and behave responsibly on the roads.
I can’t help thinking these two things are probably related.
I am small and timid so I can only fight people with words, otherwise I would end up in a bloody pulp (the bloke who came after me on his bike was HUGE).
Clearly it is not really my responsibility to advise people when they are breaking the law. But if my umbrella accidentally becomes entangled in the spokes of an arrogant swine who is patently unaware that he (or she) is doing so, then all the better.
Supporting it, before someone comes in here and says you can ride 101 from Ventura to Solvang (which in and of itself isn’t 100% true) but more importantly nowhere near 100% of that distance is freeway a very large portion of it is not freeway, but rather divided/undivided highway.
Here there are usually signs prohibiting non-motorized vehicles on freeways. For example Mennonites driving horse and buggies are permitted on “highways” as you looked them up (they can include a gamut of different types of road-ways), but they are not permitted on “freeways” since they are non-motorized vehicles. Same deal with bikes. I’m shocked too that there are people who would ride on a freeway. That would scare the hell out of me.
It varies depending where you are in town and what sort of road it is. Some roads have cycle lanes on the road, some have cycle lanes at the same height as the pavement with a kerb in between, some don’t have cycle lanes at all. Cyclists in London are also allowed to use the bus lane, which is not open to ordinary vehicles. In some places there are cycle lanes which go away from the car route entirely and take you to the same places but avoiding main roads, or even roads at all. There are over- and underpasses either dedicated to bikes or with bike lanes. It’s pretty well set up, for a place where no-one much rode a bike ten years ago apart from couriers. But still we have more cyclists who ignore the rules and put themselves and others in danger than ones who follow the Highway Code. There just seems to be some sort of holier than thou attitude among cyclists, that they are being so noble by riding a bike that all must give way before them. They are, in the main, ignorant, foolish, arrogant and rude. There are always exceptions, of course.
I live in Portland, OR, one of the most bike-friendly cities I’ve ever seen. Bike lanes galore, special safety areas in traffic lanes at intersections called bike boxes, rampant public awareness of bike safety, etc.
I live on a quiet street that happens to be a major thoroughfare for bikes trying to get from downtown to Mt. Tabor. The street has only occasional traffic lights; mostly it’s stop signs with a few roundabouts.
I have never seen a bicyclist stop at a stop sign on that street in any direction. Never. I’ve been heading home in the car and had to slam on my brakes as they cut across me; I’ve been a pedestrian walking home and been yelled at for walking in front of them when THEY didn’t stop for their stop sign. I’ve almost hit someone speeding through a roundabout drinking water and not even looking.
I don’t know what it is about that street, but they sure as shit don’t obey the traffic laws for stop signs, and we’re as bike friendly as you can be.
To echo Morbo, Boulder, CO, one of the most bike-friendly cities anywhere, also has the some of rudest, most entitled, non-law-following bicyclists, and I would say they are the majority by a large margin.