I recently moved to Fort Collins, CO. I love it here. I’ve lived in the south all my life and always hated it there (details and reasons available upon request). I’m much more at peace in the mountains.
Fort Collins is what some would call a “tree hugging, green aspiring, hippy, liberal paradise”. I’m cool with all that. Being libertarian my feelings are live and let live. Besides I can get a medical marry-wanna card here and not have to take so many doctor prescribed pills for my back pain. Plus, as I said, I love the mountains.
But there are a lot of people here that ride bicycles as their primary form of transportation. I plan on getting one myself and using it as often as possible. Not to save the planet or any of that bullshit that people are so convinced they’re doing. But just because it’s good exercise (I defintitely need that!) and will save me money on gas. Anyway… to my point (finally)…
I’ve noticed a lot of these dunderheads seem to believe that they always have the right of way and that traffic signs don’t apply to them.
So listen up you fart sniffing assholes!! (was that a contradiction in terms?)… STOP SIGNS, STOP LIGHTS AND EVERY OTHER GODDAMN TRAFFIC LAW STILL APPLIES TO YOU! When you come to a 4 way stop YOU TOO ARE REQUIRED BY LAW TO STOP! WTF? Do you not realize my car weighs considerably more then you’re fucking mountain bike and can turn you into road kill? It would give me no pleasure to have to wash your brains out of my grill. So please, obey the traffic laws.
Also, you’re not allowed to ride your bike on the sidewalk. So STOP IT!
This is (most likely) all I will say in this thread, because I can’t talk reasonably about this subject - every time I see a bike rider around here, they’re on the sidewalk. They’re either on the sidewalk or breaking a traffic law on the road.
Okay, before you go off on a rant, it’s really a good idea to know what you’re talking about: Colorado’s bicycle laws.
While you are correct in that Colorado requires people to obey all traffic signs and lights, that isn’t always the case (when I lived in Florida, a bicycle did not have to obey traffic signs or lights under certain conditions).
But, you’re wrong that riding on a sidewalk in Colorado is not permitted (see #10).
Colorado, eh? After you’ve carefully passed the same bicyclist for the fifth time because he blew the stop light on your right for the fifth time, and he gives you the finger for rolling down your passenger window and informing him that he also has to follow the road rules, well, suffice it to say . . . you’ll get a lot less worried about washing him out of your radiator.
Just be glad you’re not in Denver, where they like to go the wrong way on one-way streets, at night, without lights, while you’re driving a cross-street.
As far as I can tell, a bicyclist who is legally riding on the sidewalk in Colorado is required to give an audible waring to pedestrians, and is required to follow the pedestrian’s rules for crossing the crosswalk.
They’ve got to follow one set of rules or the other; they can’t mix and match.
I’m uncertain as to what effect the rules of the State of Florida have in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Or purt-near any locality at all in South Korea, but with the added challenges of watching out for the bicyclists wearing all black clothing, including a hat, riding a black bike, and, of course, no lights or reflectors on the thing. I guess the only reason I haven’t wet myself driving here is because I encounter those morons so often.
I wanna pit someone too!
Although I ride a bike often, when I’m in my cage (truck), and obeying the laws in one of our mountain parks, I really hate it when the bicyclists ride two or three abreast on the twisty, two-lane mountain roads. You’re supposed to stay right and get out of my way so I can pass you at the legal limit going uphill.
Why don’t they do that? Where did they get the right to slow me (and the cars behind me) by failing to keep right? What’s up with that?
(I checked with a Park Ranger. She concurred with my assessment but couldn’t offer any help.)
I wouldn’t mind if they moved over, but when they insist on keeping me from safely passing I feel a strong desire to pass unsafely…
And that contradicts what I wrote how? Or were you just posting that to show that I was correct about bicycles being permitted on sidewalks per Colorado law?
Maybe you should try reading for comprehension, then. It’s a skill that some take longer to develop than others.
Since you admit to having trouble understanding, I’ll help you out: Laws are different in different places. When you move to a new place, it’s a good idea to know what the laws are there, rather than just assuming they are the same as where you came from, because they most likely are not exactly the same.
No shit, Sherlock. You’re the one who brought up Florida as an exception. Pointlessly.
Since, for some unknown reason, you have decided to fixate on the phrase in the Colorado rules “where it is legal to ride on the sidewalk”, please cite that it is legal to do so in Fort Collins. It’s perfectly clear by the wording that in some places in Colorado it is not legal.
While it’s true that the state doesn’t ban bicycling on sidewalks, municipalities can and do. Denver bans riding on the sidewalk and Boulder bans riding on the sidewalk in non-residential areas. I don’t know about Fort Collins.
I live in Fort Worth, TX. we have 60 some odd miles of bike trails throughout the city. They’re great. you can get from the north side to west side by way of southwest side, and they stretch closer to dallas every year it seems. Maybe its just Texas, but cyclists tend to obey traffic laws here. Its that mentality we have, anything smaller than you is a target. Makes for careful cyclists on the roadways.
Amazing. Even when you have it explained to you, you still don’t understand.
I haven’t fixated on anything, and you’re misquoting the law. Essentially, you’re just making shit up. The laws of the state of Colorado do not make it illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk.
It’s not perfectly clear by the wording that in some places in Colorado it is not legal. It is clear that it may be illegal, as municipalities are free to set more restrictive laws than those enacted by the state (as laid out in section 1).
I’d say the onus is on the OP to prove that his statement about it being illegal is factually correct. I already called bullshit on it, and have showed that state law does not prohibit riding a bicycle on a sidewalk.
I heard on the radio this evening that some bicyclist decided it was a good idea to cut in front of a bus in San Francisco. It wasn’t. He was still under it when I reached home.
Didn’t work out so well for this guy. (which, I might add, is totally bogus. What a man and his consenting bicycle do in the privacy of their own room is nobody’s business)
I ride quite a bit (my goal was 2,000 miles this summer; didn’t quite make it), but I agree with the OP. I’ve seen riders blast right through stop signs and lights, or look at me like an alien when I don’t.
I do have some sympathy, though; the world doesn’t make a lot of accomodation for bikes. There’s one part of my daily ride where the bike path is a sidewalk. There are red lights where a bicycle doesn’t trigger the road sensor to know that you’re there. Sometimes you have to find your way to where you’re going the best that you can.