Id cyclist don’t make things a bit tough on the drivers, the drivers will never agree to pay for the needed bike lanes. There is no such thing as a road where bikes don’t belong unless it is specifically illegal for bikes to use that road.
I average about 5,000 miles a year on a bicycle. About 2,000 miles is on bike paths and the rest are on secondary roads. I avoid busy highways if possible.
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The vast majority of drivers are OK.
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There are a few jerks out there. Seems that most are younger guys, lower class men (as judged by their POS vehicles, and big pickup and SUV drivers. Women usually aren’t the problem (maybe they are admiring my body in skin tight lycra - if so they probably couldn’t pass the driver license vision test!)
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Cell phone usage is becoming a MAJOR concern. It’s amazing how many people I see swerving all over the place when they are texting, playing games, or talking.
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Some cyclists are our own worse enemy. Blowing by stop lights; riding 3 across and impeding traffic; not following traffic laws.
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Bike paths may be safer, but certainly aren’t exactly safe. Many are afterthoughts and have to take some weird twists and turns to fit into the existing traffic patterns. Intersections with roads are often poorly planned. Also they often don’t go where I’m heading. I can take a bike path about a third of the way to work and I’d probably luckier that way than most people.
Oh, design a road widening and then sit back and wait for the screaming. You want five feet of my front lawn!?! You want to remove my tree!?! Sacrilege and corruption and big brother domination!!!
Every street has its own history. Usually the traffic load has increased since it was built. The downtown streets, here, were laid out in the 1850’s. That’s laid out. They weren’t paved until later. It was the early 1900’s before cars were available. I don’t think most people realize how recently having a car was a sign that you were well off.
Designing for multi-use and the concept of ‘complete streets’ is the current philosophy, but that only applies easily to new developments. Any time you’re retrofitting into existing conditions, you probably don’t have enough space.
If you want lower gas use and better air quality, you want to encourage people to commute and run errands on bicycles. Or to walk. Recreational bicycle trails are for recreation/excercise. Bike lanes and bike routes (no stripe making a lane, but signs out) are there to encourage alternate transportation, not recreation.
Bike riders don’t kill people. They don’t pollute the atmosphere. They don’t require huge consumptions of public resources - roads, freeways, parking lots.
I’d say the autos are the roaches, not the bikers.
I ride everywhere I go in NYC. Here are the “bad” things that I regularly do:
-I never stop at red lights or stop signs unless I absolutely have to, opting instead to proceed slowly and with great caution. “Absolutely have to” means that there is traffic coming, or there is someone else, vehicular or pedestrian, who has the right of way. I will always give pedestrians the right of way. My reason/excuse is saving momentum, especially going up hill. I realize that this is dubious reasoning to some, but there it is.
-On very rare occasions I will ride on the sidewalk, or the wrong way down a one-way street. I do this maybe twice a month (total WAG), and again it is always with great caution, only for short distances, and remaining mindful of the fact that I am the one breaking the rules and have no right to expect anyone to give me right of way. However I confess that my reason for doing it is usually sheer laziness or poor time management.
I find that most drivers are courteous and aware (even on 2nd Avenue!), though I always ride with the mindset that no one can see me and I could get hit any minute.
But I cannot STAND:
- Other cyclists who ride the wrong way down one-way streets as though it is their right, often forcing me to move in to traffic to avoid them. A lot of them will compound this behavior with texting while they ride. Delivery guys are especially guilty of this. I really don’t mind if people need to do it every now and then, I just wish they would at least be apologetic and make an effort not to impede or endanger cyclists following the rules.
-Drivers who are ALWAYS unaware of the bike lane, especially those who cut across it to make turns, making no effort to watch for cyclists, and often without even signaling so that I can be ready.
-People who park in the bike lane, most likely because they don’t really understand that it’s a traffic lane. I think this is related to the belief many non-bikers have that bicycles are just for recreation, and this bike lanes need not be taken seriously.
-Pedestrians who think that the bike lane is just extra space for them to use when avoiding other pedestrians on the sidewalk, or hailing a cab, or waiting for a light. These are the people that usually give me the most attitude, like I’m the one being a jerk for expecting them not to hang out in a lane of oncoming traffic. The absolute worst are dog owners or parents with children, especially in strollers, who regularly put me in danger of mowing down their pet or offspring. These people don’t understand that they are essentially walking their children right down the middle of the street. The fact that I am not in the wrong would be little consolation to me if I were to injure one of them.
I’ve been trying recently to make peace with joggers who use my lane, because I get why they prefer it. All I ask is that they be mindful that they are guests in my lane and they should always be on the lookout for bikes. Which naturally they rarely are.
There is definitely an attitude among some drivers and pedestrians that bikers are parasites, and I think that this contributes to some people’s general lack of courtesy and conscientiousness toward us, but for the most part I think people are just unaware.
In most states, AFAIK, the law allows a cyclist to take up the entire lane if doing so is the only way for them to safely use the roadway. If it isn’t necessary then cyclists should be as far to the right as they safely can be.
Also, some states explicitly allow (or used to allow) cyclists to ignore traffic controls if doing so will not impact other’s use of the road. I know that Florida law, until the late 1990s, allowed this but eventually that language was removed from the statutes. I’m not sure which, if any, states retain that kind of language.
Perfect example. Conditions are so totally different everywhere that it’s impossible for many of us to even conceptualize what it’s like to bike (or share the road with bikers) in other regions.
Someone upthread described getting stuck on a mountain road behind twenty bikers. I’ve only ever seen anything like that in a TV commercial!
2 wheels good, 4 wheels better!
Anyway. Casual bike riders in the college town I live are generally horrid. They ride on sidewalks to go the wrong way on one-way roads. They don’t obey traffic signals. They frequently ride up along the side of stopped cars at red lights, between the lane and the row of parked cars (when there is no bike lane). Very dangerous, stupid shit. Bicyclists in professional gear are usually fine, but I hate cyclists in general. I accommodate them because I don’t want to have their death on my conscience. But I curse most of them as the bleeding idiots they bloody well are.
I can certainly say that cars are often impatient assholes when it comes to cyclists.
Very often on one street I am on with a lot of retail there are some drivers who troll along at 7-10 mph hoping the magic parking space will pop up just for them. I get stuck behind these folks but whatever, I am a cycling commuter. Naturally more cars end up behind me because of the slow car. This usually happens on a slight uphill climb (with a curve) with a moderately steep drop behind it on a two-lane two way road. There is a road to turn off before the hill is finished and sometimes the parking-seeking car turns onto that - sometimes not.
This is a partial list of things that have happened as a result of this situation:
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One driver, impatient after cresting the hill because I was not hugging car park-seeking car tried to pass me on the down hill and squeeze into the moderate space cushion I had and then hit the brakes when he realized he wasn’t home free for speed.
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After the parking seeker made the turn the car behind me decided that the curve at the top of the hill was the perfect place to pass me. This actually happened twice and the other driver was shocked to see that a bus was coming the other way.
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Another driver decided that when I was going downhill at full tilt was a perfect time to pass, seriously underestimated the speed I was going and had to crank it up to about 50mph on what is a residential street to pass me. He was also on the cell phone and I am amazed no parked cars were struck.
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A few drivers have felt that the curve at the top of the hill is the perfect place to pull a a squeeze play as the nature of the road means I end up slightly more to the right on the lane and they cut across it, pushing me into the parking lane. yay.
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More than a few just decide that me being there has no bearing on the situation and try to pass me within inches (PA has a 3 foot bike passing law).
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After being behind a few cars who were behind the aforementioned parking-seeker I had a driver explode at me laying on his horn and screaming at me to “Get that fucking bike out of the way!!”. This is with me within a few feet of the slow moving cars in front of me. He had to have those extra 8 feet. He kept screaming at me even when we all stopped at the light. After the light he tore past me (getting behind the slow guys) and slammed on his brakes just to teach me a lesson while giving me the finger. I decided I could stop and let a few cars past me to make a buffer between me and the psycho.
All of these things were impatience driven actions that could have caused me great injury. But of course that gets all made up for by a few people saying “oh, those bikers sure are bad, aren’t they!?” I mention these things happening that could kill me and it gets hand-waved away by the driver enablers.
Mind you, this is just one situation I encounter regularly on my commute. There are many, many others.
As a bike rider, I say most of the time cyclists are a PITA to drivers, and have no respect for traffic law, but I think that’s something that would vary a lot depending on region. And it’s something that’s changing, as more people turn to riding, drivers become more aware of us and our rights, and there’s more pressure from the “good behaving” riders to get the rest to ride safely and respectfully. I’ve even seen campaigns around the city to “educate” riders, and it’s great.
This comes from someone who got run over by a car while commuting a week ago.
I asked this question in a pit thread years ago:
"Yeah, I often have to wonder about this. It seems like the denizens of The Pit have an infinite supply of winding, twisty, single-lane-no-shoulder, 45 mph roads with cyclists constantly on them with the sole intent of slowing down drivers. "
To which Superfluous Parentheses made this hilarious reply.
It’s only happened to me once but I’ve gotten stuck behind smaller groups of cyclist going up or down mountain roads a few times. I did almost get stuck behind another group of 20+ cyclist but I managed to get around them before we started ascending. Colorado has pretty nice weather during the summer and there are plenty of cyclist who like to travel through the mountains. Sometimes they do it in very small groups and sometimes they get the entire club to go on a trip. I don’t typically try to pass them because it’s unsafe for the both of us. I can’t see far enough ahead to know if traffic is heading my way and if I get too close to one of them I might force them off a cliff.
I ride my bike everywhere (pragmatically, not recreationally), and I very, very seldom encounter drivers that are actually hostile-- I can only remember about two incidents in the past year. The bigger problem is oblivious drivers, who don’t see me at all, or who obviously see me but don’t know how to react (here’s a hint: It’s not to start into an intersection, but then slam to a stop, blocking the lane, as soon as you see me a block away). I see those about once per every couple hours worth of biking. Fortunately, I know I’m going to see those, and can anticipate them. I also often get passed fairly closely (closer than the 3 feet limit in the law), but I don’t actually mind that, so long as the drivers are being predictable about it: I don’t need three feet of margin.
And I really, really wish that the police would start ticketing riders who ride on the wrong side of the road, or blow through red lights. We’re vehicles, we want to be treated as having the rights of vehicles, and so we need to be held to the same standards as other vehicles. Yes, I know that it’s annoying to have to stop at a light and kill your momentum, especially going uphill (there’s one on one of my common routes that almost always gets me), but them’s the breaks. Cars don’t get to ignore the traffic laws that are inconvenient for them, and neither do we. And riding on the wrong side, there’s not even any bad excuse for.
I will confess that I ignore stop signs when I can see that nobody’s coming the other way. Which puts me in the same boat as car drivers. All I’m asking is that we be held to the same standard.
as both an avid bike rider and motorist I can answer both questions with yes.
this.
realistically we’re pitting a slow moving conveyance against a steel tank moving at much greater speeds and in far greater numbers. Cyclists in most locals have a legal right to impede traffic and there is something wrong with that concept. The solution is to make roads with wide shoulders that are dedicated bicycle lanes for anything above a certain speed.
Now when that happens they’ll be a discussion of people walking 5 abreast in these lanes with their baby strollers and poodles while listening to head sets so they can’t hear anything.
To date I have found very few ‘adequate’ bike lanes. I am amazed at what some municipalities consider ‘adequate’.
Which do you think is more likely: the pissed off drivers will hand over a bunch of money for the bikers, or they will demand the bikers be stopped.
There are loads of places where a bike doesn’t belong. Just because its legal doesn’t make it a good idea. Blocking a one lane 45mph road with a 2mph bike is bad.
I’m not quite a motorist yet, but I’m a pedestrian who is sick to death of colliding (and almost colliding) with cyclists riding illegally on the sidewalk. I won’t dwell on it here, because the subject has already been beaten to death on this message board.
Totally agree (and am a cycler myself). I have a friend here (Stockholm) that did get stopped for going through a red light. The fine was around 1000 SEK (154 USD, 115 Euro, 97 GBP right now according to xe.com). He certainly doesn’t go through red lights anymore.
These are questions that were not answered thus far.
My answers would be no, no and no.
- I consider registration little more than a hidden tax.
- For either registration or licensing the effective purpose as advocated by the ranting drivers is not to raise funds but to discourage cycling.
- Registration & licensing would doubtless cost more to implement than it would ever raise
- Both would discourage cycling on all levels - this at a time when gas is very high priced and people are not getting enough exercise.
- Registration won’t work the way the very tiny handful of people who aren’t advocating it as a backdoor method of discouraging cycling hop it would.
- Bicycles, despite some frothing rants to the contrary, are not really a danger to the public on the level where cars are.
- It turns law abiding or at least harmless cyclists into outlaws overnight, thus encouraging even more outlaw behavior.
- Registration has no way of being fair - if cyclists paid a comparable rate to cars by their weight the amount would be a joke. If it is more than that the rate is grossly unfair.
Invariably, the vast majority of those who advocate licensing and registration for cycles do not want a solution, they want something to get cyclists off the road and out of their privileged way. They scream and scream about cyclists misbehaving but at the end of the day what they really want is the cyclists to be gone, not following the law, GONE. Meanwhile misbehaving drivers whose antics can result in deaths don’t seem to cause these same people to advocate increasing the driving test standards.
I agree with this to a point, but I believe we really are different from cars, and at the very least the penalties ought to reflect that. I can only speak to biking here in New York City, but the one time I was ticketed for running a red light on my bicycle, I was shocked to discover that they charged me the same penalty as a car. Especially in light of the fact that it was 4am and there weren’t even any cars on the road, let alone pedestrians, the penalty really should have been more lenient.
We generally just don’t pose the same threat to pedestrians that cars do. I’m fine with being penalized, but It shouldn’t be the same as for a car. Some consistency would be nice, too. Running a light on a bike is treated like jay-walking here, which means that cops only ticket you when they’re bored or trying to make a quota.