Savannah, Georgia has a large art college situated within the historic downtown area. Hordes of clueless college kids on bikes + narrow (often one-way) streets and squares (which are treated like roundabouts/traffic circles) + gobs and gobs of pedestrians (who are often tourists, and wander about aimlessly, enjoying the view instead of paying attention to where they’re going) = traffic hell. Someday, I’m just gonna be in the right mood and run down one of the little purple-haired, pierced punks on bikes instead of swerving, slamming on brakes, cursing, and/or offering the one-fingered salute.
I swear, some afternoons, Liberty Street westbound looks like the Tour de France peloton riding through a parking lot. It’s terrifying to think that some mother is gonna get a call that her special little college-aged snowflake is smeared on the road because he was too stupid to stop at a red light.
Just saw two dread locked guys riding their bicycles on the crowded sidewalk, at night, with no lights. Time for a few bicycles to be confiscated and the owners put in jail for the night.
I’m guessing you don’t spend a lot of time on the hundreds of kilometres of (very busy) Calgary bike paths, then, because that’s where I see the most cyclists in this city.
I cycle in London and yeah, I’ll go through a red light if I think it’s safe. What’s the point of me stopping at an empty pedestrian crossing and then having to accelerate again? Plus it gives you a little bit of tme where you aren’t being sqeezed between the pavement and the traffic. I think using a vehicle that isn’t a fatal risk to everybody else gives me a bit of leeway.
But this is London so traffic rarely moves faster then 20mph, there are lots of cyclists, pedestrians are will run across roads at the slightest opportunity and drivers are ready for anything. Seriously, driving round here is like a constant hazard awarness test.
Standard in Costa Rica, where often the shiniest part of a bycicle would be the rust. One of my coworkers refused to drive at night (usually after overtime, which would be unpaid and which he and I did not need but we had to stay due to a shortage of vehicles), on grounds of “we’re here on your orders and anyway you hate the way everybody else drives, so if we’re going to run over somebody wearing black clothing, I want it to be you who has to explain it to his mother.”
Aww jeez Bricker! I go to all the trouble of carefully crafting my argument, and then you take away my sandbagging ability by doing their work for them! What fun is it maneuvering people into having to admit they were wrong if someone else comes along and admits it for them?
“The City of Fort Collins and local stakeholders are working to make bicycling safer for bicyclists and pedestrians in the downtown area. Bicycling on the sidewalks in the downtown area is prohibited. Police officers will ticket bicyclists and skateboarders for riding in the dismount zone. Cost of the ticket is $50.00. View the dismount zone map to the right”
All of the bike laws for this city are listed here:
I should have been more clear about what area of town I meant. Pardon me for my faux pas.
But still, if you’re on a bike and looking to be a grease spot then just keep it up. Someone will be along shortly to run your ass over.
To those that actually do obey the law then kudos to you!
Overall I’ve found this place to have some of the nicest people I’ve ever lived amongst. After living some of the places I’ve lived in the south it is really quite a breath of fresh air. People here genuinely care about the environment and I find the quality of life here a pleasant surprise. I must admit though at first it was almost like stepping into a Twilight Zone episode.
There are cyclists like this that I have to deal with in the summer. And the walkers who go four abreast, well into the middle of the road. There are also assholes who go 45 where it’s really dangerous to do so. Fuck all them.
I don’t think the majority of irresponsible cyclists are the stereotypical militant, Critical Mass members who use their bike as primary transportation. Here in the suburbs, the worse cyclists are weekend warriors in expensive spandex (“can’t stop at the light - I’m *in the zone, *man!”), who Monday through Friday express their irresponsibility with their cars; often on responsible cyclists. And I assume that when they’re not on bikes or Harleys or in SUV’s, they’re assholes at work or at home, on message boards.
A thousand apologies. I was not aware of that rule. Have read these boards for many years and always thought almost anything short of threats of physical abuse were allowed.
Actually, it seems to me that this thread shows that bikes do, in fact, act a lot like cars—dangerously, selfishly, and irresponsibly. I see far more drivers than cyclists disobeying the road rules and/or driving like assholes on any given day.