I live near Seattle, and go into the city fairly often. Almost every time I have a ‘close encounter’ with a bicyclist. I am careful, I watch for them, but they move fast, don’t always obey traffic laws, and add to that the confusion of one way streets and street lights on the side of the road instead of overhead…
It is the single thing about city driving I hate and dread most.
No. Bike riders are responsible for their own actions. It’s nice that you’re looking out for them.
If a bike rider blows through a red light and gets hit by my car, I agree, I don’t bear any moral responsibility for his death. That knowledge is going to be scant comfort when I have recurring nightmares of his skull splitting open like a casaba melon across my windshield, though.
Yes. Ditto motorcyclists who “split” traffic.
I hate it too. they make me nervous. All streets should have bicycle lanes.
I got rid of my car before moving to PDX – as a pedestrian, bicyclists are the source of uncountable units of terror. I’m glad for the rain here, because then I have an excuse to carry an umbrella with a strong central rod. Rap them on their knuckles, I will.
No. All bicyclists should ride on the sidewalks.
This doesn’t seem to be a Great Debate. I’ve reported it for moving, hopefully by bicycle courier.
I ride in the city, and I’m far more scared riding on a bike than I am in a car. Yes, some bikers don’t follow road rules, some do. Some drivers don’t follow the rule, some do.
Yeah, it probably doesn’t live up to the standards of ‘is rape justified’ or ‘will the world end on May 21st, 2011’. Maybe if I actually went out and drove over a bicyclist and took photos to link here the issue of bike safety on city streets would be more worth debating?
In St Petersburg, there are numerous bicycle clubs that openly challenge traffic; they refuse to ride on or in designated bicycle lanes; they ignore red lights and stop signs and they will take over an entire traffic lane rather than ride single file. Their only code of behavior seems to be that they wear matching uniforms and to ride as fast as possible. And St Pete does have multiple bike paths that are closed to auto traffic; I have seen cyclists take over traffic lanes adjacent to the bicycle lanes. Yes, I fear and loathe those peoples.
yes!
And it’s pretty well known that if you hit a cyclist in Colorado, you’ll be demonized forever and ever.
This is a search for opinions rather than a debate, so it is off to IMHO.
I still have a “flashbulb” image in my head of driving 35mph on a one way street in downtown Minneapolis in a 20,000 pound truck and having some dumbass on a bike run the red light going the wrong way on the one way we were crossing, looking in the wrong fucking direction. A fraction of a second later, and he would have been a water balloon on the front of our truck.
Especially given that within about a month of this, we crossed another intersection on our way into downtown to see a dead young woman under a sheet, a bloody smear on the pavement, a crumpled bike, and a distraught pickup driver talking to the police.
And then there was the time that the 10-12 year old kid rocketted out of an alley on his bike and nearly plowed into the side of my car.
And the three young boys zig-zagging wildly all over the road who completely ignored me slowing down and honking my horn repeatedly over 1/4 mile before I got to them, only to have one of the little future Darwin Award winners suddenly take a sharp turn into the front of my truck as I was trying to pass him. Fortunately for him, I was down below 10mph and he didn’t get hurt.
And then there was driving 30mph in a 50mph zone in the country (because there were knots of bike riders for some event all over the place) only to come over the crown of a steep hill to find a knot of the stupid motherfuckers on my side of the road. With at least a 20’ drop into a ditch off the right shoulder. I chose to slam on the brakes and keep going straight at them rather than shoot off the road to near certain major injury. Fortunately for all involved, I was able to stop short of them.
Then the stupid motherfuckers started screaming at me. I was so pumped full of adrenaline and angry about it that I started screaming about how fucking SUICIDAL they were to be in the wrong lane approaching the top of a hill they couldn’t see over, in a 50mph zone. The other riders near them (on the correct side of the road) then layed into them about the same thing, at which point they started to get the clue and moved to the right.
At this point, I don’t have a lot of sympathy of bicycle riders who get killed or severely injured because they’re ignoring traffic laws or common sense. If there was an organization willing to pay me to show up at their funerals to give their Darwin Awards to their next of kin, I’d be all over that job.
Drivers do not own the roads for their exclusive use. Bikes have as much right to be there as you do, and as controllers of the deadlier vehicle, drivers may need to make some concessions. Bicyclists obviously need to follow traffic laws, and I think you’d be surprised that they actually do get ticketed pretty often.
I agree that a better solution is to make bike lanes. Plenty of cities manage it. I don’t know why people would rather bitch about the existence of bicyclists rather than advocating solutions.
That’s pretty much how I feel about it - I don’t want to hurt anyone or anything with my car, not even a cyclist who comes shooting across the sidewalk in a place and at a speed where I didn’t really have a chance at stopping for him.
As a frequent pedestrian, I must respectfully disagree with this. I’ve been startled way too many times by a cyclist that zoomed up and around me with zero warning and bare minimum clearance.
This is not necessarily true. We regulate which vehicles are “street legal” and control how vehicles are allowed to operate on the road. There are no “rights” involved here, and bicycles are not entitled to the use of any and all roadways.
We license vehicle drivers and require courses before you can legally use your car on the road. No such restrictions are imposed upon bicycle operators.
And in most cases here, we are describing the extremely common behavior among bicycle riders of completely ignoring the rules of the road and operating their ‘vehicles’ in an unsafe manner. NO concessions need be made to improve their abiltity to use the road under those circumstances.
If anything, we should require bicycle road training and licensing before they can be used on city streets.
Bikes have rights, sure, but they have responsibilities to go along with them that they routinely ignore. Maybe part of the solution is like Chimera suggests, doing some serious licensing and training (and rule enforcement) for cyclists.
I don’t bitch about the existence of cyclists. I bitch about their too often irresponsible use of the road. The reason they feel they can act with impunity is because there is no effective sanction. If I speed in my car, pass in an unsafe manner, blow through a stop sign, I risk getting a ticket, which costs me $100+ right away and $1000 in higher insurance costs. What do you do to a cyclist who violates the rules? I have seen cyclists (and pedestrians) crossing against the light almost every day at a very busy intersection in front of my office, right in front of a police cruiser. Off a driver doesn’t yield to a pedestrian on a right turn, boom! Two points. Cyclists doing the same thing, nothing happens. Hell, cyclist flying through a red light stopping rush hour traffic, still nothing.
My five year old learned to ride without training wheels. She is on the road already.
I haven’t had problems with cyclists as a driver, and it is extremely rare that I have trouble with drivers when I’m a cyclist.
No, this is bad for both cyclists and pedestrians. Many cyclists are travelling at a good 25 mph, that is not a suitable speed for the sidewalk, and if you can’t cycle at a speed that either gets you where you want to be in good time or gives you a good workout depending on your goals, there’s no point. Cycling on the sidewalk is unsafe for the pedestrians, it is also unsafe for the cyclist. There are more “intersections” to negotiate as you not only have the road intersections but you also have all of the driveways, and while car drivers will hopefully be on the lookout for other vehicles on the road, they often aren’t on the lookout for vehicles on the sidewalk as they exit their driveway.
The solution to the cyclist/car problem, to the extent that one exists, is simply for both groups of people to respect the rules and drive/ride defensively and for the city planning department to plan their roads to take into account the typical users.
Where I ride and drive, in Adelaide, Australia, there are a large number of cyclists, and there are a large number of cycle lanes. Most of the time I see cyclists respecting red lights and generally riding responsibly. Of course, some don’t, but then all groups have their share of arseholes.
The things in city traffic that scare me the most as a driver are poor lane changing techniques (not checking blind spots) and drivers who aren’t paying attention and don’t realise that everyone in front of them has stopped.
Well, if he was going the wrong way on a one-way street, there probably wasn’t a red light for him to run.