Those hyper-aggressive drivers who are speeding and weaving in and out of traffic, I’m not worried about that guy. That person’s an asshole, but I know they’re paying attention.
Who worries me are the people driving 5 mph under the speed limit, cell phone in one hand, other hand in a McDonald’s bag in their lap, steering with their knee, sipping on a soda, reading a newspaper sprawled over the dash, all while putting on makeup and fixing their hair. I don’t mean that to be sexist, but I’ve witnessed all of this behavior at some point, from all genders, maybe not all in the same driver, but I’ll often see at least two of those things at once. The worst part is they are actually surprised when they inevitably crash into something (or someone).
I recently saw a driver in rush-hour traffic, going 50 in bumper-to-bumper conditions:
[ul]
[li]Reading a document[/li][li]Putting said document into FedEx envelope[/li][li]Eating some breakfast thing from a fast food place[/li][li]Drinking coffee[/li][li]Shaving (electric shaver)[/li][/ul]
As a biker, I’ll admit that a few/some/too many of us ignore traffic laws when it suits us.
And that’s all it takes for a driver to get tweaky when they see a bike: "Uh, oh, what’s this 2-wheeled thing gonna do? Stray into the traffic lane? Run all the lights? Run some, then stop for one? Suddenly decide to turn left and scoot across four lanes?
Well, okay, that’s when drivers even SEE bikes. I’ve been squeezed out of the bike lane (as a car moves right over next to the parked cars before turning right), just missed in an intersection, and even hit. So now I just pretend it’s a game where I’ve got my Invisibility Cloak on. To mix movies, I play “Sixth Sense” and I’m Bruce Willis on a bike.
Drivers are so trained to watch out for other cars that their radar isn’t calibrated for bikes. After yet another horrified driver apologized with “I didn’t even SEE you there!”, I wanted to yell “Hey, what if I’d been a baby stroller?!?”
SMIDSY, not sure if it works on a bike, but on a motorcycle, when you’re coming towards a driveway with someone inching out of it, weave back and forth a bit in your lane, it makes you look bigger. I try to do that and I notice a lot of other bikers doing it as well.
And, when I’m on a motorcycle, I just work under the assumption that all the other cars are trying to hit me.
I’m going to sort of defend Quartz here. While you are not likely to get injured if you are in a car and hit someone on a bike, it is still true that bicycle riders who do not follow traffic laws are a menace to everyone else on the road. I live in a college town and can’t tell you how many times I have almost hit some idiot on a bike, in the dark, with no lights, no helmet, wearing dark clothes, who decides that he doesn’t need to stop at the 4-way stop that everyone else is obeying.
Not as sweet as the jerk who got stopped for hassling us at a light. We had a new clutch in the car, so it was tighter than we were used to, and my husband killed the car at the light. It meant he had to restart it, and that was enough for the jerk behind to honk the very second the light turned green. That startled my husband, and his foot slipped off the clutch, and the car died again. So the jerk behind us pulled out around us on the inside, gunned the motor, and roared out into the intersection. He managed not to notice the cop kitty-corner to us. Cop turned on his siren, and pulled out right after the guy. We passed him, pulled over, about a minute later. It was very, very sweet.
I ride a bike occasionally; I used to ride a lot, always with a helmet, and always with ALL required reflectors and lights. I stayed off of unlit roads at night, and at night, always wore light clothing. My aunt tried to get me to wear a reflector vest at night. She was probably right, but I didn’t wear it. I see a lot of cyclists wearing them now at night, though.
Personally, I almost hit a guy at night who was dressed totally in black, including a black helmet, and did not have pedal reflectors, because he had those clip shoes. He had tire reflectors, I think, but they don’t show up from behind. I don’t remember whether he had a seat reflector. He definitely didn’t have lights, and he was on a dark backroad-- no lights, and lots of tree cover. Bad choice.
Of course, I also almost hit a guy in a parking lot who was dressed in jeans and a black hoodies, black shoes (I’m guessing), on a drizzly December night, who walked right behind my car and slammed his fist on my trunk, even though I was pulling out really slow. I probably would have seen him in my lights if he’d been walking down the middle of the lot.
Dressing in something reflective is such a simple thing, but people never think about it.
But I’m like an art student, man, so I spent twenty minutes picking out the exact shade of black to wear to this… thing. Kinda matches my flat black bike. I waited an extra week to get Trek to ship a flat black one. Hey, I wear a helmet, but it’s my skating helmet… oh, so, yeah, that’s flat black too. Guess flat black is the new black.
Yesterday, my wife and I were waiting at a red light, and a guy pulled up next to us in the right-turn lane and came to a stop.
At first I thought he was waiting for cross traffic to clear before making his right turn, but then there was no traffic any which way for awhile and he still didn’t turn.
Then he drove straight ahead through the intersection while the light was still red, maybe 10 seconds before it turned green.
In Houston, a while back, we had several intersections along the west Sam Houston Tollway identified as being in the top 10 in the city for collision caused by running red lights. The city installed red light cameras all over the place and the number of collisions drastically dropped.
But then someone filed a lawsuit and the next thing you know, Houston had to turn off the red light cameras (and still pay a buttload of money to the camera company). Now the collisions are back up where they used to be.
I live about 4 blocks from one of those intersections. When I’m at the intersection and my light turns green, I have to wait for at least four cars to blatantly run the red light in front of me. I wish that HPD would do a lot more selective enforcement out here.
For the most part I have no problem with Bicycle traffic, other than the occasional issue with needing to give the customary ~3ft berth when passing. On small two-way roads with no bike lanes it can be tempting to pass closer.
However, there was one particular situation that still baffles me by how dumb it was. I was driving late at night, 1 or 2 AM, and was passing through a park downtown. I’m going 15mph and approaching a mid-street crosswalk. Just before I get into the crosswalk, I get passed on the right by a cyclist (dressed in dark colors), who then immediately flips a 90 degree left-hand turn into the crosswalk in-front of me. I slam on the breaks (at 15mph I know), and I swear it felt like he came a molecule away from hitting my trunk.
To this day I wonder if I was some kind of insurance thing, or a really bad suicide attempt.
I think you’ll find handlebars are about the right height to transform the rear lights of a car into a thousand shards of jagged glass lodged in your fingers.
The OP posted this “The second time was last night on my motorcycle,:” The OP was the one on the motorcycle and the way cars are made today it doesn’t take must to damage them !
Yeah according to AAA drivers are a lot more aggressive today . I went to the grocery today and no one was stopping for the stop signs , if I wasn’t paying attention I would had been hit by some jackass that run a stop sign . :mad:
The police have taken to parking near an intersection not far from my house, because people speed down the streets and/or don’t bother stopping at the four way stop.
A few years back I drove past an accident where someone plowed into the back of a car at very high speed (the car was wrecked), one fucking block past a stop sign. So obviously that person didn’t stop for the sign and was going considerably more than the 35 mph speed limit when they hit the back end of the guy waiting to turn left onto his (dead end) residential street. And of course, as I drive past, the moron is over talking to the cops, waving his hands around in the air and acting completely surprised. No, you stupid fucker, they were not buying your bullshit.
And of course, I’ve been hit from behind several times, including the very last car accident I had, about 10 years ago. I was the third car in line at a red light. The old lady in the big caddy slowly turned right on the red, the car in front of my crawled forward to stop and the idiot behind me literally floored it. :smack:
And of course, the beauty of that was that the guy who hit me was an illegal immigrant driving a rented car with a fraudulent DL and insurance papers and he immediately abandoned the car (somewhere else) and skipped the state. :mad:
I see people blow through red lights just about every day. I’m a magistrate, and have begun imposing maximum fines ($150 here) when people plead to or are convicted of the offense before me. It’s an epidemic.
If I’m the first in line at a red light , when it changes to green I wait a couple seconds , because of the red light runners.appens often here out win the wild Wild West.
I saw no sign that either moron was using a cell phone.
Driver one claimed something was in her eye, while two said he was changing the radio station.
Both were slowing down, just not enough.
But I’ll disagree with you about cell phones. I now play a game on the highway called drunk, texting, or smoking pot.
If they’ve weaving at high speed, they’re likely texting.
If they just can’t stay in their lane, or they’re staying waaaayyyyy behind the car in front of them, they’re likely stoned.
I’ve seen data that suggests the opposite: an increase in rear-endings due to people slamming the brakes to avoid getting caught by the camera. All I know is NH and ME must have reasons for making them illegal by state law.
Or old and blind. Once drove down Hennepin Avenue through Uptown in Minneapolis in the middle of the day behind some old woman who drove down the exact center of both lanes. When I honked and tried to wave her one way or the other, she just got more confused.
Of course, when I worked Armored, I had a woman jump into her car and floor it in reverse, turning as she went and almost hitting me - as I walked in the parking lot, scream obscenities at me, claiming she was going to call the cops on me, then floored it straight into a concrete flower pot. She called my company to complain about me and told a bunch of lies. I referred them to the store manager, who had watched the entire thing on their CCTV and offered to call the police on her for her actions.
“Did you swear at her?”
“I tend to do that when people nearly kill me”
“Ok, don’t do that”
“Sorry, if it happens again, I’m sure I will.”
She called my company to complain about me and told a bunch of lies. I referred them to the store manager, who had watched the entire thing on their CCTV and offered to call the police on her for her actions.