I love rants about cyclits. In many other rants, someone can pop in and say “well really that was a unique case, do you have a cite that even a significant minority of that group act that badly?” But not in cyclist rants, as the % of fucktards and jerkwads in* that group (as well as motorists, I admit) is so high that one of those fuckwads will come in to self rightously defend his assholish behaviour, and thus prove the OP’s point.
[QUOTE=catsix]
Because you’re the one gleefully proclaiming that you and your bicycle don’t follow traffic laws despite wanting all of the rights of any other vehicle.
[/QUOTE]
If you can’t follow along, at least stop saying things that you think I’m saying.
I never said shit about having it both ways until FiveYear brought it up, and then I offered a deal. I’ll stop running lights. You extend to me the same courtesy that you extend to other drivers.
I also never said that I don’t have to stop at lights because bicycles aren’t cars.
I also never gleefully proclaimed that I want all the rights of other motorists while not following traffic laws.
It must be fun to make up a straw man, and then just attach the name of a poster in the thread to it.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
I love rants about cyclits. In many other rants, someone can pop in and say “well really that was a unique case, do you have a cite that even a significant minority of that group act that badly?” But not in cyclist rants, as the % of fucktards and jerkwads in* that group (as well as motorists, I admit) is so high that one of those fuckwads will come in to self rightously defend his assholish behaviour, and thus prove the OP’s point.
Until I hear any sort of argument that running a red light on a bicycle is more fuckwaddish or assholish or dangerous than speeding in a car, or rolling through a stop sign in a car, you all are just circle jerking yourselves and being completely hypocritical.
Bring it. . .every one you. . .from the OP through catsix, and DrDeth. . .never speed? Never tool through a residential neghborhood. . .never forget to use your signal. . .never high beam someone. . .never roll a stop sign in the middle of nowhere. . .never keep it at 20 when you hit a speed bump that says 15mph?
You don’t get it, do you?
You’re offering a deal as if you’re going to make some sort of concession by doing exactly what you are legally obligated to do already but are not doing, and you treat this as if you are graciously bending over backwards to accommodate someone else?
You’re being a dick. You should already be stopping at all red lights and stop signs when on your bicycle because the law (the same one that gives you the right to be on the road, which you so freely wave at car drivers) requires you to.
The rest of your post is all smoke and mirrors to deflect attention from the fact that your deal is that you’ll actually start following laws you’ve always been required to follow.
There’s no straw man here. Just you being a dickheaded shining example of the exact kind of bicycle riding jackass that’s been described in this thread and elsewhere dozens of times. You are literally a living, breathing example of the hypocritical, smug, self-entitled, self-righteous shit stain that you seem to consider such an unfair characterization of bicycle riders. Excuse me, “cyclists”. Wouldn’t want to fail to apply the elitist title that helps you believe you’re better than drivers.
[QUOTE=Trunk]
Bring it. . .every one you. . .from the OP through catsix, and DrDeth. . .never speed? Never tool through a residential neghborhood. . .never forget to use your signal. . .never high beam someone. . .never roll a stop sign in the middle of nowhere. . .never keep it at 20 when you hit a speed bump that says 15mph?
[/QUOTE]
I think I finally see your logic. You are equating running a red light with forgetting to use a turn signal, or hitting a speed bump too fast; they’re all illegal, therfore they are are the same, right?
Wrong. Running a red light is far away more dangerous than forgetting a turn signal. Do you always use hand signals when turning? That would be equivalent to a motorist’s turn signal violation.
The point we are making is that we believe bicyclists run red lights far and away more often than motorists do. I haven’t seen any statistics, so we may be wrong. But that is the equivalancy you should be arguing, not that “we all break the law sometimes” dodge.
[QUOTE=cowgirl]
Sorry. I call BS. It is this type of overblown rhetoric that makes discussion on this issue so over the top. Talk about a confirmation bias.
Of course it’s impossible to prove such things, but if you are approaching this in good faith, I will ask you to please, on your way home tonight, have a look to your right (assuming you are in a car in N America; amend as appropriate) each and every time you are stopped at a light or a stop sign. I am almost positive that if you do this, and do it honestly, you will see at least one cyclist stopped beside you - and that’s only one trip home!
[/QUOTE]
I’d be money that wouldn’t happen. The last time I saw a cyclist on the road here was about four months ago, I see it about two or three times a year. People don’t cycle here, period.
I’m not sure what it is about people who live in areas where there are significant cyclist populations that makes them assume it’s like that everywhere. In the vast majority of the United States, the only time you see someone on a bicycle is when you see a little kid on his Huffy. A great portion of the United States just isn’t set up in a manner where you could remotely use a bicycle as a serious form of transportation. Aside from the fact I’d be breaking State law and be arrested, I’d probably be literally killed if I tried to ride my bike to work as there is no way* to get to my place of employment without going onto an interstate which has a top speed of 65 mph (realistic top speed of 75 mph) and a minimum speed of 55 mph on most days.
I love riding my bike and I do it most every weekend, and I’m a pretty strong guy, but I can’t pedal at 55mph.
*There used to be a way you could get from A to B through side roads, but when they built a new interstate they uprooted a key connecting road making it impossible to get there without hitting the interstate now, except for maybe some crazy circuitous route that would take you two counties north, then back east, then south, then west but I’m not really sure if that’s feasible considering it’d be around 200 miles round trip.
[QUOTE=Equipoise]
I was going to respond to some of what Trunk has been saying, but he’s doing a good enough job of showing what a fucking dumbass idiot cyclist he is, so there’s no need. If someday he gets splattered under a train or car or truck, we’ll know why.
By the way, I have nothing against bicyclists, and I’m not a motorist. I haven’t owned a car in almost 17 years. As a full-time pedestrian, I’ve almost been creamed by bikes AND cars. I salute the cyclists in this thread who are aware of their fellow humans out there and their own mortality, but isn’t kind of sad that you have to come into a thread like this and state that you obey traffic laws. That would be like, in a thread about dickheaded motorists if car drivers popped in and said, “Wow, I always try to drive the speed limit and stop at red lights.” The exceptions are the problem in any assholery situation, and I, for one, do not paint ALL cyclists with the same asshole brush (unlike Trunk, who seems to think that those who prefer not to ride bikes are jealous fat slobs). Nowhere in my post did I apply any broad brush to cyclists as a group. I only directed my scorn at one cyclist, who not only got his idiot self killed, he psychologically scarred the conductor and probably many other people, not to mention his poor grieving family.
[/QUOTE]
I agree wholeheartedly. I have no problems with cyclists whatsoever. I think in most cities, where posted speeds may be 25 mph and because of traffic the speed is usually even lower at times, it doesn’t hurt anyone for a cyclist to be on the road, who might at most be traveling a few miles per hour slower than the common speed.
I don’t try to push cyclists off the road when I’m in a city, nor do I try to pass dangerously close to them. They don’t move slow enough to justify that, they don’t move any slower than any slow motorist, really.
I do think it’s dumb when cyclists are pedaling along on a road with a posted speed limit of 55 mph, and I believe that any road with a posted speed limit of over 45 mph cyclists should not be allowed to legally ride on out of traffic flow concerns and safety concerns.
But inside city limits, no, I have no real problem with someone rolling around on a bike because they’re moving at a reasonable speed in relation to traffic flow.
[QUOTE=cowgirl]
Sorry. I call BS. It is this type of overblown rhetoric that makes discussion on this issue so over the top. Talk about a confirmation bias.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe it’s geographic, but you can call BS to your heart’s content, and I would welcome others from the Bay Area to confirm this. But, bicyclists here are their own strange political action group. At a major intersection, a bicyclist *might * stop at a red light only because cars are currently in that intersection, but I have NEVER seen one not run through that light the second traffic stops coming through. I can’t even conceive a bike around here stopping at a stop sign.
But like I said, having a bike that is even equipped with brakes is considered a sign of weakness around here.
[QUOTE=Trunk]
I never said shit about having it both ways until FiveYear brought it up, and then I offered a deal. I’ll stop running lights. You extend to me the same courtesy that you extend to other drivers.
[/QUOTE]
I agree to your deal! That’s all I want.
You are a vehicle. You deserve all of the courtesies of vehicles. Until you stop obeying the laws for vehicles, at which point you are a pedestrian, and therefore shouldn’t be on the road.
Cite for that last claim, by the way.
From the article:
"For urbanites in the Bay Area, the trendiest bikes right now are also the simplest. With one fixed gear and no cables or brakes, they’re called fixies.
Once popular only among bike messengers and hard-core cyclists, fixed-gear bikes have a place among the hipster icons of trucker hats and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. Their urban cool is attracting the attention of mainstream marketers: Multinational sportswear company Puma has created online guides to fixies, and Ford features them in Lincoln Navigator ads."
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
I’d be money that wouldn’t happen. The last time I saw a cyclist on the road here was about four months ago, I see it about two or three times a year. People don’t cycle here, period.
I’m not sure what it is about people who live in areas where there are significant cyclist populations that makes them assume it’s like that everywhere.
[/quote]
This is not the same situation that I was talking about. I was responding to someone who said cyclists NEVER stop. The relevant part is the stopping habits of cyclists, not the presence or absence of cyclists.
I am asserting that where there are cyclists, there are cyclists who stop for red lights or stop signs. I strongly believe this to be true (because I can’t imagine that the contrary - that there are areas where no cyclist ever stops - is true.) I am making no comments as to the proportion.
This requires an assumption that there are cyclists in the first place. If this isn’t true, then I have no dispute with you.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
OK, start paying several thousand dollars a year in gas taxes and vehicle registration fees and we’ll build more bike paths.
[/QUOTE]
This is possibly the most common logical fallacy I see in threads regarding the bicycle/vehicle usage disconnect. Apart from young bike riders, it’s safe to assume that almost all adult cyclists own vehicles and pay registration fees and pay gas taxes when they use their cars. It’s just that they also ride bikes - mostly for exercise, but in some countries, also as a primary form of transport. But I wouldn’t describe the latter as being very common in the United States.
[QUOTE=DrDeth]
OK, start paying several thousand dollars a year in gas taxes and vehicle registration fees and we’ll build more bike paths.
[/QUOTE]
It took till page two? What are you all? Slacking? Some simplistic dumbass usually spews this one out by about post #4.
The elephant in the room is death and injury.
[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
"For urbanites in the Bay Area, the trendiest bikes right now are also the simplest. With one fixed gear and no cables or brakes, they’re called fixies.
[/QUOTE]
For the sake of clarity, you can actually brake on a fixed-gear bike, they just don’t have hand brakes. There’s no freewheel, so when you push against the pedals, the bike slows down. They don’t stop nearly as quickly as a pair of caliper brakes, though (you have far less stopping power when the pedals are moving horizontally, making emergency stopping a crapshoot), and I wonder about the sanity of people who ride them in the cities without at least putting on a front brake.
[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
Maybe it’s geographic …But like I said, having a bike that is even equipped with brakes is considered a sign of weakness around here.
[/QUOTE]
We’ve got those here, but we’ve got lots of other people on other kinds of bikes, too. Do non-crazy people not bike in the Bay Area? or do they just use those bikes? I just know an awful lot of civil servants and yuppies and sundry regular folks who bike, I can’t imagine a city without such folks.
For what it’s worth, I bike every day, I always stop at lights and stop signs (with the aforementioned exceptions) and because I am familiar with my route and can time things well, I almost never use my brakes. I’m sure glad I’ve got them, tho.
[QUOTE=Trunk]
People reealllly have to stretch to come up with a reason that cyclists running red lights affects them in a significant way, and everyone knows that the people who do the complaining are really just pissed because they think a cyclist is getting one over on them. Not because “I’m worried I’m going to hit one of you so wait for the green light, m’kay?”
[/QUOTE]
Hey, fuck you, pal, for questioning my motives. I posted a calm – exhausted, really – thread, in the Pit no less, saying that I didn’t want to hit anybody. That’s it. No follow-up posts or anything. But then you’ve got the balls to dig into the most forbidden depths of your ass and pull out a corn-laden nugget, saying that my REAL motivation is that I’m pissed because you are “getting one over” on me? What in the fuck are you talking about anyway?
As big of a prick as you are, I don’t want to hit you. It’s that simple. It’d fuck up my car, it’d fuck up my schedule, it’d fuck up my psyche, and it’d fuck up some nimrod who felt like running a red light. It’d fuck up everything, and I don’t want it. That’s the sum total of my feelings on the matter.
I don’t give two shits how sick and tired you are of all the anti-cyclist threads. Start your own fucking thread complaining. Don’t come in here and bitch about how put upon you are. Don’t you dare deflect blame from yourself, saying that you’re not to blame for being a flaming douchebag and running red lights. Don’t even dream of concocting some bullshit story about how I’m just jealous of your mad biking skillz. Just stop shitting on my thread and fuck off.
[QUOTE=Sublight]
For the sake of clarity, you can actually brake on a fixed-gear bike, they just don’t have hand brakes. There’s no freewheel, so when you push against the pedals, the bike slows down. They don’t stop nearly as quickly as a pair of caliper brakes, though (you have far less stopping power when the pedals are moving horizontally, making emergency stopping a crapshoot), and I wonder about the sanity of people who ride them in the cities without at least putting on a front brake.
[/QUOTE]
Thank you for this explanation. I rode a rental “beach bike” a few weeks back, and had the intuitive sense that my braking power was a little lacking–compared to the mountain bike I’m used to, but I wasn’t sure if I was imagining things.
[QUOTE=Trunk]
I can state without exaggeration that EVERY SINGLE TIME I ride my bike, I witness (pittable) behavior from drivers that is more dangerous to life and limb than ANYTHING ANY CYCLIST HAS EVER DONE TO A DRIVER.
…
People reealllly have to stretch to come up with a reason that cyclists running red lights affects them in a significant way, and everyone knows that the people who do the complaining are really just pissed because they think a cyclist is getting one over on them. Not because “I’m worried I’m going to hit one of you so wait for the green light, m’kay?”
[/QUOTE]
Picture it. 1990. Vails Gate, NY. In a 1969 Ford Torino with my then boyfriend, Tommy. We are on our way upstate for the weekend as we are passing through the five corners. We had the light and were going about 40-45ish. Self absorbed asshole driving a non-vehicle vehicle who wanted the all the privileges of the road without the responsibilities blows the light going across our path. Tommy slams the brakes. We narrowly miss the cycle. The guy behind us, however, did not miss rear ending us.
The cyclist, by the way, never even looked back. Even though he caused the accident he never even stopped (guess that would have broken his momentum).
Luckily we weren’t hurt. A 1969 Torino is bigger and heavier than your average aircraft carrier - the car was just banged up a little. The guy who hit us was ok, too - although his car had more damage.
Had we hit the cyclist he would have been nothing but a smear on the road. m’kay?
Personally, I have never blown stop signs and the like on my cycle, because I am kind of a chicken and have this strong self preservation thing going on.
[QUOTE=matt_mcl]
That’s fine, I won’t (and don’t) blow red lights. Now that we’ve come to a consensus about that, will you please do something about that whole opening-doors-directly-into-bike-lanes-without-looking,-clotheslining-passing-cyclists thing?
[/QUOTE]
And parking in bike lanes. And drifting into my lane when there’s no bike lane.
[QUOTE=Fiveyearlurker]
Ah, you haven’t scratched the surface of the ever so high minded idiocy of the San Francisco bike rider. Apparently, it is quite a badge of honor to ride your bicycle without brakes (scroll to number 3, but this is a common practice now, not reserved for bike messengers). You know, what with the hills and all, this would be a good place to prove how different you are by not being able to stop your vehicle.
[/QUOTE]
Which is why we all go to Esquire for our information about bicycles. :rolleyes:
Fixed-gear bikes are not impossible to stop. Fixed-gear riders use leg strength to stop. You can see these cyclists stopped at intersections. They’re the ones with both feet still on the pedals, standing perfectly still until the light changes.
Edited to clarify who was stopped at intersections