I am a dedicated pedestrian. Walking is my most used form of transportation, and by far my favorite. Walking, in the form of hiking, is also one of my favorite recreational activities.
So yesterday I was hiking down a small trail in a rivine. Suddenly the peace and beauty of nature was broken by a strange strange loud noise. I turn around to see a man on a bicycle barreling down the trail, gestureing wildly. I jump off the trail, into a patch of poisen oak, just in time to avoid being ran down as he made his crazed decent. I then had to wait for his three buddies behind him.
Look, biker from hell, nature is not there for the sake of your “extreme sport”. These trails are for us all to share (although I have seen your kind many a times on trails where bikes are prohibited). You leave ruts in the trails, and marks on trees and rocks. Most annoyingly, you have no respect for those that are smaller and less well protected than you (namely, me). Please keep your vehicle under your contol! I don’t want to a victem of your adrenaline rush! And you might even try looking around and you’ll see that nature is more than a flash of green as you fly by.
And to city steet bikers, don’t think you are off scot free. Do I have to tell you how many times I have been almost ran down by a biker that choose not to stop at the stop sign. I know you don’t like to stop, because that slows you down, but hey, it’s the law. And that law is there for a good reason. Pedestrians have no defense against out-of-control bikers. And yo! Don’t ride on the sidewalks. Those are ours! I know that bikes aren’t as bad as cars, but your self-rightousness does not give you a right to disregard safety. The pedestrian always has the right of way, and you have zero right to bike without full control of your bicycle.
There are times in this world when I am unwilling to move for some jerk so he can do something stupid and dangerous that inconveniences me.
In the situation you describe, I think i would likely just put a fist out, fully extended for him to run into, preparing to move to the side at the last possible moment.
You can bet he’d be putting on whatever brakes he had, or doing whatever he could to avoid me.
I’d likely get my butt kicked as a result, but I’d be happier about it.
i mountain bike regularly on trails with a lot of hikers. i cannot stand inconsiderate riders - they make us all look like jerks. bikers need to realize that they don’t have the right of way simply because they’re on bikes. it is not appropriate to yell ‘COMING THROUGH!’ and blast through a group of hikers at racing speed. it is not appropriate to speed around blind curves unless you’re in a race on a closed track. trail riders should treat every blind turn as if someone was coming the other way, and they need to slow the fuck down when approaching hikers. i apologize, even sven, for not being able to do more to rid my sport of its army of assholes.
um…i disagree about the sidewalks though. while i would hope that bikers would be considerate and always give walkers the right of way, i’m not putting my life in danger by riding on the street. when a trail spits me out on the road, i always quickly head for the nearest sidewalk. drivers are nuts when it comes to sharing the road with bikes, and i ain’t up for the challenge.
Hey Sven, I’m a mountain biker, and I hate jerky cyclists just as much as you do, because it’s these idiots that are gonna cost me access to my favourite trails. Like the majority of riders, I try to tread lightly, yield right of way to hikers and equestrians, and stick to trails that allow bikes, and don’t ever stray off the path into the trees (lots of idiot bikers do this, too). I ride for the same reason you hike: to get outside, enjoy some greenery, challenge myself physically. It’s this handful of morons who are giving the rest of us a bad name.
There are a set of guidelines concerning responsible trail use if you’re interested, put together by the International Mountain Biker’s Association, at http://www.imba.com/resources/science/trail_etiquette.html I encourage all you young folks who want to try your hand at the world of fat-tire riding to read up on it.
To sven, I apologize on behalf of all bikers. This kind of hiker/biker clash happens far too often. And to your four “friends” who you met that day, I say this. Park your ten-dollar Huffys back in the garage and get back on the couch, losers. You’re ruining it for the rest of us.
Pedestrians, in California at least, do not have the right of way when jaywalking. I learned that the hard way: jaywalking and getting cited for it.
&
Didn’t you read X Marks the Ped-walk?
p.s. You forgot to yell at one group of bikers, so I’ll do it for you
FOOLS! The bicycle is a VEHICLE! That means it and its rider both come within the scope of the CALIFORNIA VEHICLE CODE. YES, that means you ABSOLUTELY MUST RIDE ON THE RIGHT HAND SIDE OF THE DAMN ROAD, YOU MORONS! Tearing down the wrong side of the road against traffic only serves to piss off both the pedestrians and the auto drivers, not to mention its a good way to win a Darwin Award.
an avid cyclist myself, i’m right with the other cyclists here on this one. i hate jerks of all kinds, and it increases proportionately to the size of their vehicle, but jerk cyclists are especially bad because make my friends and me look bad.
and some cyclists are just as bad to other cyclists. i can recall being on some casual group rides when some spandex clad weekend warrior on his carbon fiber bike decides we’re in his way and that rather than wait a little while or go around, he’ll just go right between us! (yes, this has happened more than once.) :rolleyes:
Oh yeah, I forgot to add… GET OFF THE DAMN SIDEWALKS!!!
Nothing makes me angrier than commuting by bike to work, risking life and limb by riding with traffic (we actually have special bike lanes here, but cabbies like to use them as passing lanes, regardless if there’s anyone in them at the time) surviving the trip intact,and then, afer locking up my ride and feeling good that I didn’t come to grievous bodily harm yet again, damn near getting creamed on the SIDEWALK by another cyclist.
It’s a vehicle, just like cars, motorcycles, trucks, buses, mopeds… Around here we yelled long and loud to get bike lanes put in, and you people are using the sidewalk. GAWD!
Thanks for showing me that there are a lot of considerate bikers out there. I know it is hard to exist in a world designed for cars. I promise I won’t let these few examples of jerk-hood tarnish the good names of considerate bicyclists.
As a lifelong pedestrian, living in the ancient city of Oxford… cyclists? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGH!
Bill Bryson dsecribed Oxford’s cyclists as “whizzing everywhere like shrapnel”, and I’m inclined to concur. I moved here a few years ago (from Gateshead, in the ex-industrial North East, where people are too poor to afford bikes, or shoes, or sometimes even feet), and, after the third or fourth time I had to jump clear when some ****ing ****er of a cyclist made a sudden turn in front of me, I decided to make an unscientific survey. I would keep count of how many cyclists actually made turn signals - you know, just stuck out one hand to show which way they intended to go. “I won’t get obsessive about this,” I thought to myself. “I’ll stop when I reach some sensible number, ohh, fifty, say?”
And, sure enough, when I’d seen fifty Oxford cyclists make turn signals, I stopped counting. After three and a half years.
And I enjoy a walk in the countryside now and then, although not so much at the moment (foot and mouth disease). And I have much the same reaction as everyone else when some spandex-clad pillock in a silly hat shouts “COMING THROUGH!” and I have to dive into a ditch to avoid him. And you just know, in your bones, that when they have finished their ride and congratualted themselves on their ecologically-friendly aerobic exercise, that they’re going to strap their damn bikes onto the backs of their Volvos and drive home…
(And don’t get me started on cars in Oxford. Let’s just say that the city was not designed, in the 12th century, with four-car households in mind…)
I have to throw my angst in with donnie rotten on this one, too. As an avid cyclist, and someone who has done a fair amount of commuting by bike, I have to say that I am getting pretty damn fed up with cyclists who think they are above the law. I wish they would stop and think for a moment just how much their assholish behavior affects the rest of us.
The city I work in (Madison, WI) has miles of bike lanes and a fairly progressive attitude concerning cyclists. But I still see the random dipshit riding his bike against traffic or running a red light or stop sign. And few things piss me off more than being stopped at a light on my bike while some dumbass whips past me and crosses four lanes of traffic on a red.
Bike traffic is a touchy subject in a lot of places. There exists only a limited pool of public money to fund bike-friendly improvements in most cites, and these selfish assholes make it even harder to garner support for bike lanes by pissing off every driver and pedestrian out there.
So you would rather put pedestrians’ lives in danger? They are not wearing helmets and if you hit them while riding a vehicle on the sidewalk you are, sure as shit, responsible. As somebody who’s been hit by 2 cars riding on the road, if they can’t share the road: Fuck them. Don’t ride on roads with little to no shoulders if there is frequent and fast traffic in rural situations. In city situations, traffic should be fine if you obey the law.
Moving from sidewalk to street and vice versa may be the most dangerous thing you can do as a biker to you and others.
I don’t put pedestrians lives in danger. I give them the right of way and ride at a walker’s pace when passing from behind. Where I live, there aren’t a lot of walkers on the sidewalks anyway. I pass maybe one or two people when I’m on the sidewalk. now as far as ‘fuck them’ for cars that don’t share the road? Well, that’s probably why you’ve been hit twice. I’ve never been hit by a car and I’m not about to start by challenging them for road space.
Oh, the painful memory this unearthed!! 1978 - I was in college - waiting to cross the street on campus. The light changed, traffic stopped, and I stepped into the crosswalk. Suddenly, I was sprawled in the road and my books were everywhere - some yutz on a bike mowed me down. I was purple on my left side for days, and I had to drop out of tryouts for the rifle team because I couldn’t hold the rifle properly for the pain. The biker was miffed at me for the accident… what a toad!!!
Another cyclist pissed at the jerks who make us look bad.
When a bus pulls over next to one of those big covered booths marked “BUS STOP”, do you have any idea what’s about to happen? People are going to get on and off the bus, dipshit!
The following happened as I was taking the bus to work one morning: I was standing behind an elderly gentleman, getting off at the same stop he was. As the door of the bus opened, he stepped out to the sidewalk and WHAM!!! He disappeared. I jumped out (so did the bus driver and a few other passengers) and found him sprawled on the ground next to a cyclist who was tangled up in his bike. It seems this idiot decided to cut through the gap between the bus and the sidewalk without slowing down and ended up flattening someone.
Fortunately, the old guy was ok (at least, he got up and waved away everyone who was trying to help him), and after giving a few choice words to the moron (who was still on the ground bleeding. I don’t recall anyone offering to help him up), he just walked away.
–sublight.
And personally, I don’t see how the sidewalks are that much safer than the streets. Pedestrians are much more unpredictable than any car.
