Maybe where you live there are good bike lanes/paths; out here in SunSoCal your typical bike lane, in the rare case that one exists at all, disappears about half-way down the block and is used as a parking/turning lane by all and sundry. On any heavily trafficed street you are safer riding on the sidewalk, not only because you are (hopefully) out of harms way of inattentive drivers but also because you are less likely to raise the ire of some Excursion-driving moron who deliberately drives you into a curb, screams insults at you, or beans you with a beer bottle. (It really pissed me off to have to replace a helmet not because I fell down but because some jam-brained imbecile decided to use my head as a target for his pent-up aggression.)
'Course, if it’s a congested sidewalk or heavily trafficked area, you should get off and walk. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to ride my bike down Lake Ave. with drivers honking behind me and hurling insults and threats.
Exactly. I know in DC and in other big cities, bicycle messengers set the tone for anti-cyclist’s rants, but I sure as hell don’t call some drunk knob who got killed at 2 am riding the wrong way on a dark street a “cyclist”. IMHO, half of these goobers have lost their driver’s license for various alcohol events, yet even the papers described them as “a cyclist was killed today”… Yada, yada, yada… That’s my point.
Sure, in some places in Toronto there are good bike lanes, but mostly there are none. I always ride on the road; if I have to go on the sidewalk, I walk it.
Sidewalk cycling was a factor in over 30 per cent of the collisions examined in this study.
Can-Bike says “Drive on the right side of the roadway, never on the left and never on the sidewalk. … Sidewalk riding is also very hazardous, because each driveway or lane becomes, in effect, an intersection.”
This page has lots of reasons not to ride on the sidewalk. This page concurs that riding on the sidewalk is “extremely dangerous.”
It’s no skin off my nose if you choose to do it, but the fact remains that sidewalk riding is both illegal and dangerous.
It is skin off my nose. I walk on sidewalks. I can’t cound number of times I’ve been hit/nearly-hit/knocked over by asshole bikers. Not to mention the jerkoffs who think that bikers don’t have to obey traffic lights, and so breeze through crosswalks and into my shins.
cowgirl, ditto. Riding on the sidewalk or against traffic are the 2 most dangerous things a cyclist can do. As is weaving in and out from parked cars where you can surprise motorists.
Stranger, WTF? This is a thread about bigger, faster, safer people pushing around smaller, slower, more vulnerable people. Somehow I doubt that every sidewalk you ever ride on is completely empty, so what the fuck makes you so special that you get to be one of the latter and drivers don’t?
A biker was just killed around here by some kid driving while on PCP.
Apparently, the Australian women’s team was taken out by a girl who had just gotten her license.
One thing that gets me is getting yelled at by drivers when I roll through a stop sign. This is NOT uncommon. They yell, “can’t you read?” or “hey, there’s a stop sign there.”
Well, while I know I just did wrong, what’s got the guy all worked up? Would he have yelled at a car who just rolled through?
Basically, I see rolling through a stop sign in some barren residential neighborhood as about the same as a car speeding. Is “yeller” yelling out his window at everyone he sees speeding?
Nope, just a guy who is pissed off at bikers.
AND – this is the kicker – believe me if you wish, I’ve been yelled at for rolling through a stop sign by a guy ROLLING THROUGH A STOP SIGN. I can’t fathom the reason or the depth of the disgust these people seem to have for cyclists. I just don’t fucking get it.
That’s not to mention the guy yesterday who driving in the opposite lane, going the opposite direction just yelled, “assholes” at us.
For the most part, I don’t mind if cyclists take advantage of their agility, but as both a driver and a pedestrian, I’ve been cut off several times by a cy- er, person on a bike who had his head too far up his ass to see me sitting there with a turn sigmal, or taking a step off the curb.
I’d imagine if this happened to me a lot more, it would piss me off a lot more. Sorta like double-parking. Sometimes it’s no big deal to avoid a DPer, but so often it is a hassle, that I automatically try to Force-choke everyone who does it.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve been hit/nearly-hit/knocked over/driving into the curb/had bottles thrown at me/honked at/otherwise harassed by drivers.
The people I know who are dedicated roadbikers have endless stories of being attacked by drivers; one guy had a $2400 frame mangled, along with his ankle ligaments torn, by a truck that just kept on going. The driver got a citation for leaving the site of an accident; woo-hoo.
Make some dedicated bike lanes or enforce the law against drivers who harass bikers (something that police seem notoriously reluctant to do). Until then, on trafficked streets, I’ll ride–cautiously, mindfully–on the sidewalk.
I don’t understand your point. I don’t push anyone around. If a sidewalk is so crowded that I can’t safely ride around pedestrians, I get off and push. I try to take routes where I can safely ride on the street, rather than the sidewalk, but this isn’t always an option. Nothing “…the fuck makes [me] so special…”; if anything, I’m deferential to pedestrians. But I’m not going to risk being killed by some inattentive or rapacious driver.
FWIW, I notice that the bike patrol cops in Pasadena also ride on the sidewalks rather than risk busy streets. If it’s good enough for them…
I had a good childhood friend who was killed while riding his bike by a drunk driver. However, I’m also witness to many illegal and dangerous activities by cyclers. I almost never see bikes stop for stop signs or red lights, for instance, but perhaps I just take more notice of those who do not. Just this week, if I were not an alert and cautious driver, I would have plugged a kid who sailed across a busy intersection against the light, right in front of a right-turning truck that could have killed him and made it impossible to see him until the last second. In short, there’s bad drivers and there’s bad cyclers. The argument that drivers bear “more” responsibility suggests that cyclers have less responsibility, which is horse manuer. Cyclers, whatever their culture tells them, have every bit as much responsibility to obey the law and respect others on the road.
And might I add, use the bike lanes when they’re available, and if you’re not going the speed of traffic, move over. You are not a car!
That’s a rather nasty chip you’ve got on your shoulder with the reference there. I’m not advocating hit or otherwise harassing or endangering pedestrians. If you’ll read back through the posts, you note that I consistantly state that when a sidewalk is busy, I walk the bike.
I can’t speak for other bicyclists–some of which are as great a hazard to drivers the road as they would be to pedestrians (i.e. those who mindlessly zoom through stoplights, cut between lanes, don’t signal, et cetera)–but I recognize that, on a bicycle, I’m a third class citizen, and behave accordingly.
The only time I nearly hit a cyclist was when the cyclist was riding in the opposite direction to the trafic along the sidewalk. As such he was travelling much faster than any pedestrian would so my first look to the right did not see him then I was looking at the oncoming trafic to the left for a space. When a space appeared a quick glance to the right saw the cyclist racing in front of me so I avoided hitting him. Non the less it was a somewhat close call that I saw him in time.
A cyclist is a person on a bicycle, be them good or bad. It is a shame that police don’t seem to enforce the law about riding on the wrong side of the road here.
But the kid who’s about to dash in front of your bike to scare a bunch of pigeons or someone making a quick sidestep to toss something in a trash can, not knowing you’re there, or someone opening a car door or walking out the door of a store… it’s okay to risk them?
You’re right, that really is an unfair comparison, and I apologize for it. I misread something a few posts back and thought you were being a dick for the sake of being a dick, and you’re not.
Look, you may know you’re an excellent biker. You may know your ability to finesse through people. But as long as you’re riding a bike on the sidewalk, people have to get out of your way for their own safety (and even more so keep kids and pets close), even if you’re not actually a danger. And this is true even if you’re on a ten foot sidewalk with one other person the entire block. Especially how oblivious to any/everything so many pedestrians are.
Well, I can’t disagree; riding a bike on the sidewalk is illegal, and it does infringe upon pedestrians. On the other hand, when I brave riding on even a moderately trafficked street, I routinely am harassed, screamed at, honked at, swerved at, and even physically assaulted by drivers. There seems, as observed by travelloguer Paul Theroux, something about powered transport that makes (some) people arrogant and prone to untoward aggression; like Theroux, I’ve been literally attacked by powerboaters and ski-dooers while sea kayaking (and never by sailcraft, even accidentally), and I find the same behavior on land. I’d really like to ride my bike more–it makes more sense to hop on the bike and ride down to the store for a bottle of milk than to fire up the car for a 1 mile round trip–but (some) drivers being how they are, and the lack of provision for bicyclists in most cities makes riding on street exceedingly dangerous.
::shrug:: I don’t really have a good answer, and I’m not trying to promote riding on the sidewalk; merely pointing out at in some situations it is the only safe venue. I’d rather that cities establish bike lanes on heavily-used streets and enforce laws, but bikers represent a tiny minority of the population, and many (as have been pointed out) are in regular violation of traffic laws themselves.
Well, bike paths are all over my city, but cyclers refuse to use them. They will ride for miles on a narrow road, slowing traffic, while the bikepath is 10 feet away along the same road. Maybe they enjoy bitching about cars treat them too much to give up the road?
Police in Chicago are cracking down on all the bicycle violations discussed here.
As for me, the ways I avoid accidents are by:
Taking a safer route, even if it’s longer.*
Remaining keenly aware of my surroundings.
Exuding the impression that I and my dependents know my lawyer’s phone number and that we’re not afraid to use it.
Being big enough to get noticed and to remind a driver that if he hits me he may damage his car while if he hits a kid on a Big Wheel he’ll only have a bit of blood on his undercarriage.
However, I am blessed by there being two dedicated bike and pedestrian pathways near my home that will take me anywhere I need as long as it’s to the east or west. North and south are more limited and I really wish there had been a north-south railroad or trolley line near me that went bankrupt forty years ago so I could have a bike path with few or no steep grades.
Oh, and one of the primary routes I use to get to and from work has a wide bike-only lane, but I not infrequently see bikes on the OTHER side of the road. The decisions other people make baffle me. I can only think they get satisfaction from fucking with drivers.
Maybe they enjoy cycling. There are bike paths all over here, too. But almost every path I’ve been on is also used by pedestrians and horses and has a speed limit of 15 mph.
A cyclist can ride the speed limit on the road.
It’s not going to kill a driver to slow down and be mindful of cyclists on the road, but it *can *kill the cyclist if they don’t.
I’ve encountered cyclists riding on the wrong side of the road, while I’m riding along on the correct side, it makes things extremely dangerous for both of us. I remind them as I pass them “You’re riding on the WRONG side of the road.” I haven’t been knifed yet.
I’m a new cyclist myself and my husband is out there almost every day, I try to be mindful and obey the laws, it bothers me when I see people that don’t. I’ve had cyclists shout “Excuse me” while they were riding on the sidewalk and I’m walking. I don’t look back, and I don’t move. I haven’t been run over yet.
I’ve also seen riders doubled up instead of riding single file on a road. I’ve rolled my window down to remind them to SHARE THE ROAD. I haven’t even been flipped off yet.
