Bikers who insist on riding in the street when there is a bike lane available

The BBQ Pit
1

First, I’m in the Seattle area, and in my particular suburb, there are bike paths on every important street.

In the last few months I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: bike riders have taken to riding in the road when there is a bike lane there specifically for their use.

It happened today, in fact. The posted speed limit for that particular road was 40 mph. However, there was a group of six bicyclists in the road, and because they cannot pedal 40 mph, they slowed me and all the people behind me down to 15 mph.

This strikes me as pure selfishness on their part. There WAS a bike path on that road, and it was open and free of any obstructions. It is also wide enough to have two bikers riding side by side, perhaps even three at a time.

I can understand that they wanted to talk to one another, but still, it was incredibly rude of them to delay traffic like that. It’s a good thing I wasn’t going to any appointments, or I would have been even angrier.

This has occured twice before, on different roads. I don’t mind sharing the road with bikers when there is no bike path, since they have full legal rights to be on the road as well. But in this case, and in the two previous occurences, there WAS a bike path specifically for use by bikers.

Some people’s kids…

2

I quite agree. I used to live on the side of a lake and to get to either of my jobs I had to go around the lake. Friggin bike riders liked to ride on the side that I needed to go around. There is a really great riding trail around the lake proper that is much better maintained than the road and thus far better for the use of road bikes with tiny tires.

Those cock-biters would always ride in the street. Would they hurry? No! Granted, some of them would be able to do the 35mph speed limit or at least close over much of the stretch, but not even close to all of them.

Tell me bikeriders: What the fuck do you think that we are doing back there in our cars when you look in your rearview mirrors and see cars stacked twenty deep behind your slow moving asses? Move over!

3

fyi, most cyclists consider the term “bikers” to refer to those that ride motorcycles. I am, however, in complete agreement with your gripe.

4

I cannot necessarily defend the actions of anybody that I have not seen through a message board but consider the following possibilities:

  1. These bicycle lanes are often filled with traffic much slower than what a racer rides at

  2. These lanes are often poorly mainained, and discontinuous, with curbs/potholes/gutters every 50 feet for driveways or smaller roads that do not stop

  3. When you can do 25 on the road and there are driveways, coming into that road, a bicycle lane simply isn’t a feasable option

  4. When you’re about to head downhill at 55 mph a bicycle lane just isn’t smart

  5. Some of the lanes are too narraw to safely ride at a fast enough speed at

  6. Some lanes are bumpy and poorly maintained

If, however, a group of cyclists was continuing to inpede faster traffic for no good reason or just to socialize, by all means, flame away. Just trying to say that there are possibly some good reasons for avoiding a bike path.

5

The bike lanes here are part of the street, and are therefore just as well maintained as the roads, which is pretty well, here in Arlington. We also have numerous well-maintained bike trails that one can commute into DC on, yet I still see cyclists doing that same stupid crap. What’s wors, though, IMHO, is the freakin’ joggers that jog in the street, during rush hour on commuter arteries. They should be ticketed.

6

Ray Walker: You call them both “bike lanes” and “bike paths” in the OP. Which is it? There’s an enormous difference.

Bike paths and bike trails are both more dangerous then the road for a road cyclist (the kind wearing spandex on a bike with curly handlebars) in reasonable shape. Bike lanes can also be more dangerous, depending on how they’re laid out. For example, sometimes the bike lanes have stopsigns the road doesn’t have, sometimes the bike lanes have more debris then the road surface, etc.

Maybe they were just assholes in this case, but they could have been there for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious to someone in a car.

7

Shit, you are in a car (2000-4500 lbs), why do you put up with crap from somebody on a 30 lb bicycle - you move on them and they’ll get out of the way, and pronto.

8

county Are you honestly suggesting “bullying” and making “overt threats” as a way to solve such a problem? What if you caused an accident? What then? :eek: :rolleyes: :wally

9

Accident? Well, if you actually hit one of the bicyclists, I suppose you would be obligated to stop. But if the bicyclist just crashed his bike getting out of your way, well, you would just go around him (I wouldn’t drive over him).

10

IANAJogger, but the reasoning I’ve heard is that the sidewalks are concrete (which is very hard) and the streets are blacktop (which is softer). Joggers prefer running on the blacktop because it’s easier on their knees.
I agree, they should stay the heck outta the streets, but that’s why they’re there.

11

What are the laws in your area? There may be something that says that bikers have to use the bike path, rather than the street, if there is one.

I’m in agreement with An Arky - I used to live across the street from a multi-use path in Northern VA (the W&OD trail, if you care), and frequently saw bicyclists on the street even when there was nobody on the path to impede them.

Oh - and I’m glad that country lives several states away so I don’t have to share a road with him.

12

We get the same thing here. Perfectly good bike path, but some bikers ride on the highway. Yep, 2 lane state highway.

So instead they ride on the road and slow down cars. Quite a double standard if you ask me.

13

Shit, you’d be ok, I haven’t hit a bicyclist in a long time.

I ride a motorcycle and there is a rule we bikers pretty much abide by, stay the fuck out of the way of a car. In Tennessee the law says that on my bike I “own” the same space as a car. I don’t ever try to enforce that on the road - I get the fuck out of the way when a car tries to take the space, and they do it regularly. Sometimes it is unintentional, they just don’t see the bike, sometimes, they just don’t care.

IMO that group of bicyclists was taking advantage of their numbers and what they were doing was BS.

14

All it takes is a single kid on a BMX bike messing around on that path to cause a fatal collision with a road cyclist going 20+ miles an hour.

Bike paths (though not necessarily bike lanes) are dangerous for serious road cyclists. 20 mph is a sustainable speed on level ground (being able to do a 10 mile time trial in 30 minutes is a good benchline for being in shape). If there’s any kind of a downhill incline, the speeds can go much higher (the fastest I ever went on my bicycle was 54).

15

Ray I can only speak from my own experience but there are reasons why cyclist do not use cycle lanes, sometimes things are not as they appear from behind the steering wheel, you are supported by good suspension and robust tyres and a windscreen, this can insulate the driver from the street, which is one of the general ideas of a motor car.

In the UK cycle lanes are often poorly surfaced, used by others (inconsiderate arseholes) to spread glass, park, or for repair crews to dig maintenance holes.

Add to this that this is where drains tend to be and so is all the crap that rain washes down with it.

Then you get good old farmer Giles and his hedge flails which break off bits of hedge plant material,i nstead of cutting and you end up with thorns in the nearside.

Cycle lanes could be of most use at junctions, especially complex multi exit junctions but the way cycle lanes are actually implemented is almost unfailingly terrible and dangerous.
They end maybe 100 metres before the crucial point, allowing traffic to jostle for lane position, or they will force you alongside those who wish to use the nearside lane to turn off, or they will not allow you to position yourself safely to go straight on, thus going around the turn-offsters

The result is plenty of nearside lane sideswipes as motorists try to leave a main road, or cyclists simply being crowded off the road altogether.

It’s generally better for a cyclist not to ever be riding parallel to traffic in a continuous flow because of the risks of motor cars turning off and suicidal pedestrians, and motor car doors being inattentively opened.
It is better for the cyclist to move some way in from the roadside so that motor vehicles must drive around them, it provides room for the cyclist to use as an avoidance path.

No matter how close to the edge of the road a cyclist rides, and no matter what the width of any cycle lane, motorists will always cut far too close as they pass, and if they see a dead straight route past a cyclist which runs that cyclist very close then the motorist will use it rather than make the very slight effort to steer around to give a passing distance of a couple of feet.

Motorists seem to only be interested in destination, cyclists in the journey and this makes for completely differing priorities.

What I find peculiar is that a motorist will complain about a cyclist moving at perhaps 15mph as being an obsticle to their progress that should not be upon the road, but when that motorist encounters say a steam engine, or a farm vehicle, or any number of other slow moving obstructions, they will moan about the speed perhaps but never question why it should be on the road.

The motorists, when they get out of their steel boxes, becomes pedestrianised and then complains about cyclists being on the sidewalks, omitting to remember that they themselves are to blame for making roads such a dangerous place with their ill-tempered and impatient manner.

Generally, the motorist who complains about everyone else is a selfish inconsiderate twat, unable to schedule an extra 30 seconds into their journey time, they seek to place blame for this failing upon everyone else. The classic excuse of the speeding motorist to justufy their behaviour to traffic police is that they were late for some event or other.

It seems to me that the inconsiderate motorist has a congenital defect unable to schedule journeys allowing for possible delays. They are absolutely incapable of self assessment and instead they blame every other road user for their own shortcomings, they have the universal trait among such turds of believing that somehow their own journey is the most important event to take place in the world ever.
Add to this a certain paranoia that every other road user (the most defenceless are of course the most malcious) are in some kind of conspiracy to slow our hero down.

In my experience men are the worst drivers in these regards, women seem careless but not as big a danger, as insurance premiums will testify.

So My Darn Snake Legs, is your life so finely scheduled that taking a couple of minutes more to arrive at work is going to lead to total break-up of your family or loss of employment?

Is your medication maybe so important that you are not allowed to carry it around yourself, thus you have to constantly rush to the location where is is stored in ever the panic that your heart will give out before you get the chance for another life-saving dose ?

Are you perhaps the recipient of malicious threats of arson to your home that you constantly have to dash around trying to put out a non-existant fire ?

Frankly I am not impressed, myself, as a person who has had to rely on cycling, and public transport, I have had to learn the art of making sure I leave plenty of time to complete a journey.

Funnily enough I am almost never ever late, despite punctures, or bus breakdowns or railway points failures, somehow I am able to realise that there are unforseen things that can go wrong in my travelling and I generally have some contingency to compensate, wether that is to set off a little early, or have a range of transport options should one fail.

16

Sounds like some bicyclists are realizing that in the real world, it is size and weight that count, at least on the motorways. We motorcyclists have known this for quite a while.

I suppose I could initiate a rant on motorists who have tried to kill me but what’s the point. I just get the fuck out of their way.

If you get on the road with cars and you are on two wheels you are saying that you are willing to take the risk - if you don’t want to take the risk - get a car.

17

Hmmm. It seems like “serious road cyclists” wish to go 20mph completely unencumbered. You say you can’t do that on a bike path, well, you damn sure aren’t solving that problem by doing it on a busy street.

18

Define “busy street.” If it’s a highway that’s busy, then I’d ride the shoulder (single-file) if it was big and clean or I’d ride a within a foot of the right-hand side of the lane. I’d have no problem riding “unencumbered.” If it’s an urban or suburban road with traffic, stoplights, etc., I’d probably ride in either a bike lane or in traffic (keeping right and only taking the entire lane when I was crossing it to enter the left hand lane for a turn or going to the leftmost part of the rightmost lane to let drivers make a right at a red-lighted intersection). I’d never ride a bike path, unless I was noodling with friends or family at less then 10mph.

I think cyclists who ride more then single-file in traffic without a good reason are annoying and worthy of being pitted, but I have no problem with a cyclist (or cyclists, if single-file) riding in the traffic lane. It’s safer for the cyclist and, if a path is present, it’s safer for the users of the path.

I also think that motorists get unnecessarily annoyed when cyclists do things with good reason. For example, when I was in the stix and there was a short bridge that was too narrow for a car to safely pass me, I’d always move to the middle of the lane so traffic couldn’t move around me. It might have annoyed cars, but it kept them from dangerously passing me. You’d be amazed how many idiot drivers think it’s cool to give 3 inches of clearance as they wiz by at 55 mph. Sorry, but my safety trumps your right to arrive at your destination 3.7 seconds earlier then if I wasn’t on the road. My taxes pay for it too.

19

Steam engine?

If there was a special slow moving vehicle lane/path that they should be using but instead decide to slow everyone else down we would definitely complain.

Same with bicycles. Millions of dollars in tax money was spent to build a bike path. Use it. It’s the bicyclist that has the holier than thou attitude.

20

Sorry, I should have clarified what I meant by "bike “lane”. In this instance, and in nearly every other street in town, the bicycle lanes are of the same surface as the vehicle lanes: asphalt. They are seperated from the road by a solid white line, but they are actually part of the raod itself. These lanes are typically 4-6 feet wide. They are just as well maintained as the roads around here, so we’re not talking about a dirt path by any means.