Calm down, please. You’re overreacting to what is merely a misapplication (in your mind) of a single word. I did not call bicycling a “hobby” in an insidious attempt to dismiss the actions of all who would bike as insignificant children whose playthings are not worthy of my attention. Had you read the rest of what I wrote, in which I repeatedly stated my respect for cyclists (in addition to the fact that I used to be one, back before I had a car), you might not have picked up that implication. In fact, my respect for bicyclists is a large part of why I don’t want them to die, which is why I would recommend avoiding scenarios that are unsafe for both cyclist and driver. I called bicyling a “hobby” because, for a good number of people, it’s a hobby. Please see above explanation regarding football; I doubt if professional players get pissed off when they hear the source of their income referred to as a “game”.
As to the rest of your post: I maintain my position that bicycling in the situation I describe is inherently unsafe. If you have no other option, that leaves you with two alternatives: pull over and let faster-moving traffic pass (which, in most states, cars are supposed to do), or else take up the lane and reduce the speed of traffic flow by a significant amount. This does not apply if you can actually bike at the speed of traffic, but it’d be quite the strange road where you could do that. I’m thinking either an exceedingly dangerous mountain road where cars would be restricted to 15 MPH, or else a near-gridlocked road in NYC where the flow of traffic is next to nonexistant. If either of these is your situation, ignore the rest of this post, because nothing I’ve been saying in this thread was directed at you anyway. Otherwise, read on.
I recognize and concede to you your right to choose the second, traffic-slowing option. I submit, though, that it makes you a bit of a jerk. And given the conclusion to which you jumped about my “prejudice” against bicyclists, despite the evidence to the contrary, I’m not inclined to drop that assessment just yet.
You’re not doing any good by telling bike riders how unsafe it is. We know already, and if there were a safer alternate route available, we’d use it. All you’re doing is creating the impression that you are trying to scare us off the roads, so you can drive as fast as you want without worrying about us obstacles. If you’re truly concerned about the bicyclists’ safety, join a bicycle advocacy organization and help them convince the local governments to improve the situation.
By the way what exactly do you mean by “pull over”? You don’t expect bikes to come to a complete stop to let you pass, do you? It should be enough to slow down and move as close to the edge of the road as possible. But if that’s what you mean, I can’t reconcile that with your statement about dangerous riders who “ride right on the edge of a shoulderless, curvy road”.
With regard to nonpolar- A good book on how to use bikes is “Effective Cycling” by Forrester. He is a bit of a blow hard but the defensive techniques have worked for me in the crappy car town I live in.
Most cycling/car accidents are caused by left hand turning cars failing to yield right of way. This is a pretty good reason to be very skeptical of how a driver will treat you at an intersection. My commute has 5 stop lights, 3 of which are car activated and a fourth which is non functioning for cyclist and walkers. Drivers take these lights for granted. If I am at these intersections at a funny time of day I have to get off my bike and hit the button on the side walk. This is not a special situation. My commute has changed repeatedly over the last 10 years and many if not most intersections have car activated lights. These are some of the reasons it is why its always kind of funny hearing people who primarily travel by car complain about the traffic laws cyclist break. Anyway its not usually cyclists who really jam up traffic and causing traffic fatalities. It’s auto drivers who are largely responsible because they so often speed and run red lights.
I am a little surprised to hear you say this. From a training point of view bicycle commuting has worked wonders for me. I get 100 KM a week rain or shine plus whatever real training I do, in 2 work outs a day.
You quote was “…the safest option for all involved is for cyclists to confine their hobby…” Sorry, bub, but that is dismissive as all get up. The implication you gave is that those in the roads have earned no right to be there and are merely playing like children on a side street. The fact that you are too dense to see it makes the matter worse.
Why, exactly, am I a jerk for taking steps that will ensure that the driver behind me is not tempted to take actions that would be dangerous to my health (i.e. lane-splitting). Why am I a jerk for refusing to meekly pull to one side (how?!) and let the impatient go by?
The roads I am referring with do in fact have a posted speed limit of 25 mph. A speed I am capable of on my road bike. Faster roads generally tend to have shoulders or wider lanes. Why should I be forced to pull over and yield to someone who merely wishes to break the speed limit just because he might decide to break the law in attempting to pass me? (i.e passing under unsafe circumstances, crossing doublw-yellow lines, etc.)
As scr4 has already pointed out, your idea of meekly pulling over is actually more inherently dangerous than asserting my right to the road.
I must ride my road bike in some alternate universe from you guys.
First off on the curvy road thing. A lane here in California is 12 feet wide. My bike takes up at the most 2 feet of that, leaving 10 feet. A freeking hummer is only 8’ wide and that is about the widest thing on the road. So if you can’t drive a 6 or 7 foot wide car/truck/SUV or a 8’ foot wide Hummer through a 10’ wide hole, frankly you should go learn to drive. :wally need anymore straw fot hat man?
At least here in LA it seems like most of the drivers are not activly trying to kill me every time I ride. Have I had close calls? Sure a few, but I have never been dumped or hit by a car. I can’t off the top of my head recall the last close call I had on my road bike.
Do most bike riders stop at red lights, and stop signs? The ones I ride with and the people I see sure seem to. Frankly my bigest problem with red lights, is being stopped at one, and when it turns green for me, almost getting hit by the idiot in a car who thought a red light means just one more car. :eek: Or the ones that decide to make a right on red without stopping or looking. I got hit by one of those idiots once while I was in a crosswalk as a pedestrian.
I certainly did not notice that much uniformity of lane width in California. There were lanes that were 15’ and lanes that were much, much, much thinner.
Your formula assumes everything is perfect. No wind, no road hazards, no variations. Fact is, bikes and cars alike do not move in exact, perfect straight lines. A single pot-hole or poor surface can require a change of much more than a couple of feet. Even just general motion of the car and bike can result in changes that are too drastic. I see cars in thin lanes inadvertantly going over the yellow line every day. I amazed more scrapes don’t happen, but I think they correct when a car appraoches in the opposite direction. I do not trust this instinct to work with a cyclist.
2’ is too close to pass a cyclist. 4’ is better.
Quite frankly, I won’t allow this kind of lane splitting to occour if I can help it. If the lane is very large, I will ride to one side and cars will have plenty of room to pass. If the lane is smaller I will take the lane to prevent sharing incidents. Its for my own safety, even if I can keep a perfectly straight path, I do not trust the car to do so. Especially in light of the fact that a large percentage of drivers do not know where the passenger side of their car is. Don’t beleive me? Take a look at a street with a bike lane and count the number of cars over the white line.
Ahhh my friend, forgive me if I came across as a little bit too authoritative there regarding using bikes as a form of fun instead of as a means of primary transport. My comment was meant as a form of advice, not as an absolute. Certainly, I wish it weren’t the case that cycling was so dangerous. In a perfect world there’d be no cars at all and every one could safely ride to a train station and put their bikes on the train and then ride to the office and park their bikes safely in a garage and have a lovely shower provided by the employers, and then wear clothes which again, were neatly pressed and washed and ironed by the employers. Ahhh… in a perfect world! Sadly, such a perfect world doesn’t exist - and by virtue of the fact that there are great speed discrepancies between vehicles and cyclists, it remains an inherently dangerous thing to do unfortunately. Wish it wasn’t the case, but it is.
Still, if the Western World made an effort to introduce some of the concepts I mentioned above, I reckon we could make a huge dent in the obesity crisis, as well as unnecessary gasoline consumption.
BBF:Still, if the Western World made an effort to introduce some of the concepts I mentioned above
Why do you keep using the phrase “the Western World” to refer to bicycle-unfriendly car-dominated environments, when there are lots of other Western countries that manage to combine heavy automobile use with much safer and more convienient bicycling options? As nonpolar pointed out, cities like Berlin and Amsterdam are way ahead of ours when it comes to decent environments for bikes.
“High automobile ownership per capita”, which is indeed the general trend in the Western world, doesn’t have to mean suicidally unsafe conditions for bikes. So we don’t need to resign ourselves to passively lamenting about the impossibility of a “perfect world”, as though we had no options for improving the situation.
1.Sure there are variations, 12 is standard
2. The reason you see cars going over the line everyday is not because of road hazzards (when you were following the guy that went over the line, did you also go over the line at the same place?) but rather the driver is not paying attention. On a small twisty road, it is important to engage that 3rd brain cell.
3. 6’ car 10’ of lane, put your car on the yellow line, you have your 4’ Also the 2’ that I quoted is a max number, assuming that I am riding a full foot of the edge of the road. In the scenario given, I will most likely be one or two inches from the edge of the pavement. So you have almost 5’. And yes, I can pilot my bike very successfully that distance from the edge of the pavement.
4. Pardon me but WTF? It is pretty obvious that from what I posted that I was saying that the bike rides to the side of the road. From the California DMV
So your tactic of taking the entire lane is not allowed. I had a roadie do this to me about 2 years ago when I returning from a 30 mile mountain bike ride. This asshole pulled out on a long uphill stretch into the center of the lane and stayed there. Had he stayed to the right (which is not only the law, but a damn good idea) I would have been past him in maybe 10 seconds tops. Instead I had to stay behind him for almost another 10 minutes (along with about 6 other cars. By the time he got over where he belonged, I wanted to kick his ass. Now since I ride I usually cut people on bikes a bunch of slack. This guy used up my entire supply of slack. I can see where someone not as mellow as me might run an asshole like this off the road.
Borderline road raging noted. Unless you can establish that the road was safe to share in his judgement, and took the lane anyways, I have little sympathy for you.
I’m done debating with you what is or is not safe to do when it comes to biking. Obviously, we have different ideas, and given that you’ve been biking on roadways frequently for (presumably) some time now and (presumably) haven’t died, I’ll defer to your better judgement on that.
I’m still mystified, though, as to why you think I was being dismissive in my phrasing. Even if you believe my initial comment contained that implication (and I accept that it might inadvertently have), I’ve made perfectly clear by now that it was unintentional and nowhere close to my actual thoughts on the subject. I’ll apologize for the misunderstanding if it’ll do any good, but I somehow doubt it. You seem fairly intent on ignoring everything else I’ve said in regard to that and continuing to take offense at my original comment, which, as I said, was not intended as offensive in the first place. I can only guess that you encounter the anti-cyclist attitude you’re railing against on a fairly regular basis; you seem to have a “pet issue”-level touchiness about the subject. I can do no more than to assure you that I do not share this attitude. If you insist on continuing to believe that I do, based on nothing more than one ambiguously phrased sentence in an otherwise benign post, then I guess that’s your problem.
We have a separate bike path that parallels a 2 lane highway. Yet, still, some bikers use the highway.
Their reason? Walkers, and other recreational riders slow them down. I drive this stretch every morning, very early, and there are very few walkers or riders on the bike path. Still some riders insist on using the road.
So their solution is to slow down cars on the highway, making it dangerous for everyone. Total double standard, but since it is legal to ride on this road (a State Highway) they do
How much are the cars really slowed down? Not as much as the drivers actually think. The danger really isn’t as bad as you make it out to be. Especially given morning traffic.
If you’ve ever ridden on a ‘multi-use trail’ you would know that its downright dangerous and useless to all but the most casual of casual riders. They’re not meant for getting to one’s destination, and they are often poorly designed (the ones around here have some potentially deadly blind-spots.) and poorly maintained. The addition of walkers and rollerbladers does not make things any easier. That you decided that there are ‘very few’ of these walkers on the path is irrelevant.
The sooner you stop thinking of bikes as something to be segregated, the better we’ll all be. Bicycles are vehicles, get over it.
If pedestrians are allowed, it’s not a bike path. It’s a multi-use trail. As Mr. Miskatonic said, multi-use trails are useless for transportational bicycling. Bicycles mix with cars better than with pedestrians (and their dogs!).
However, this is a very well maintained muti-use path. And in the mornings, few people are on the road or the path.
Depending on the season, and the time, they both get very busy. IMHO, the road gets a LOT more busy (the last study put it over ‘capacity’, we are going to a four lane road soon) than the trail.
At one point, in our system, the road becomes very narrow as it goes over a dam. The bike path is right there. It runs parallel to the road on the other side of the guard rail. There is a sign saying that bicycles must use the trail. But some bikes still use the dam road.
It doesn’t have to be a lot. One person walking a dog can make it a nightmare, imagine if someone tossed a nice car-disabling land-mine on your road? Sure, you can avoid it, but it is extremely dangerous.
A single rollerblader wearing headphones can take up the entire trail when doing power kicks. With the volume turned up they often can’t even hear the “On your left!”. Imagine a drunk driver on your road weaving back and forth across the lanes.
Here is your real problem: There are too many goddamn cars on your highway. Blaming the cyclists for causing the problems is like saying the chef’s salad made you fat after eating a giant steak. If the problem is such that the road needs to be expanded, it isn’t the cyclists causing the problem.
You said earlier that the cyclists had the right to use the road. Which is it? Either way, that sign would not stand up in court, since the even the car-centric designed National vehicle code abandoned ‘bike trail’ requirements.
I can’t say for sure without seeing the trail, but I concede that some multi-use trails are safer alternatives than the adjacent highways. Nevertheless, multi-use trails aren’t safe above 10 mph in my opinion. That’s half my usual cruising speed.
I don’t even like bike paths that are physically separated from the road. They’re either very isolated with few entrances/exits, or have numerous road crossings that are more dangerous than highway intersections. I’d be happier with a wide outer lane (say 50% wider than other lanes) that can be safely shared with a car.
I see maybe 5 people on the path in the morning on a ten mile stretch. And the same amount of bikes on the road.
Yep, I said it’s legal. It’s not always prudent.
Well, bikes are illegal on interstates, aren’t they?. Interstates with nice wide shoulders.
This is a narrow dam road with no room. And a perfectly good paved trail right next to it. I don’t know if a resolution was passed to prevent bikes on the dam road or not. The sign is there, and you are right, it may not stand up in court.
Bolding mine.
Yeah, we have to many cars on that highway. I live in a tourist area and it gets worse every year. I never said anything about ‘goddamn cars’ (or bikes). In my opinion, it’s the bicyclists that have an attitude. You’re statement is very telling.
Hey, I’ve got nothing against bikes. The other part of my 25 mile commute is on the same road. But with no bike path. And no shoulder. It needs one desperately.
I’m talking about some very specific situations. The multi-use path is crowded sometimes. Other times it is empty. The dam road is just ridicules.
