I live in a very bicycle friendly city. Cool. Lots of bike lanes and shit. But you asshole jerk-offs are fucking up the whole program. You are supposed to obey the rules of the road like people in motor vehicles.
That means stopping at red lights and stop signs. Not blasting through a red light while I am turning you stupid fuck. And if I am at a light, don’t fucking ease up beside me and cruise on through like you don’t have to get in line.
I fantasize about opening my passenger door and knocking you on your sorry ass.
You do not get to selectively obey traffic laws.
I will probably run over and kill one of you dumbass morons one day and guess what, it won’t be my fault.
If the street is wide enough for both cars and bikes to be side by side there’s no reason for the cyclist to not approach the light and stop at the front. It would be more disruptive of traffic to actually get in line with the cars.
Cyclists should not actually be running red lights though. I may get shit for this, but I do think it’s ok to go through when you can see ten blocks down that no cars are coming and there are no pedestrians in your way. If pedestrians are able to cross the street in that circumstance, it’s not going to hurt anyone if a cyclist goes through as well.
I’m really afraid of bicycle riders. They do so many random dangerous things. They ride on the wrong side of the street, then dodge into traffic without warning. They ride on the sidewalks when there is a nice painted bike lane and don’t ring a bell when I’m walking on said sidewalks.
The worst part is when they run lights and scare the crap out of me because I really, REALLY don’t want to kill anyone.
Oh, and the ones who ride after dark while wearing black clothes (no lights or reflectors) are the worse.
I ride a motorcycle and I won’t ride after dark because I don’t think that people can see me. At least I wear a helmet and protective clothing, those idiots who ride their bikes like idiots don’t even wear gloves.
I am so fucking tired of almost getting slammed into by bike riders speeding like maniacs down city streets, they zip in and out of the shoulder and run red lights without even slowing down. See when I cross the street in the city I’m looking for cars, big loud hulks that are hard to miss, so I start crossing and ZOOOOM a fucking bike comes out of nowhere almost slamming into me. Worse they do it at night too with no reflectors or lights and the rider in dark clothing.
I don’t own a car (though I do sometimes drive one). I walk, take public transit and ride my bike. I endorse this Pitting.
Self-entitled arrogant asshole bicycle riders just make trouble for the rest of us. Oh, I’m so glad you were able to save five seconds by blowing through that red light at the low low cost of further tarnishing the reputation of cyclists in general.
Caveats:
If the cyclist is riding on the right shoulder in what is more or less a de facto “bike lane”, then yes, the cyclist should come up to the stoplight (as long as the rightmost car lane is not a “right turn only” lane where cars are entitled to expect that there will be nobody to the right of them interfering with their right turn).
If the cyclist is taking the entire rightmost lane in car traffic (which a cyclist is entitled to do when there’s not enough room on the right shoulder to ride safely), then they should not “double up” with cars in the lane when they come to a stoplight so they can creep to the front, but instead should stay in their lane behind the cars in front of them.
As you say, cyclists should not be running red lights. If you want to jaywalk like a pedestrian, then hop off your damn bike and actually be a pedestrian, wheeling the bike by your side, for the time it takes you to cross the street.
If you can’t be arsed to do that, then wait for the light to change like every other vehicle has to do, rather than just riding blithely through the intersection against the light while drivers fume in your wake.
For one thing, you should be trying to minimize the number of times a given car has to pass you. Since most cars on most non-jampacked city or suburban streets will go faster than you overall, ideally the average driver sharing the road with you should be able to go around you (carefully) one time and then never see you again as they continue down the road.
If you keep gliding up next to them at every stoplight and then running the light to get ahead of them again, though, they are stuck with having to watch out for your annoying ass for much longer than they should have to be.
Caveat to the caveat:
Yes, if there are absolutely no other cars or pedestrians in sight at an intersection, I will sometimes ride through a red light even though I know it’s still illegal and still potentially dangerous. But then, I will sometimes do that under the same circumstances in a car too.
And so are you (right, that is). Fuck those assholes too.
Mind you, I don’t hate my fellow cyclists in general and I think many drivers are gratuitously and occasionally murderously horrible to them. But that doesn’t give cyclists any right to go zipping around breaking traffic laws, which does jack shit to improve the traffic situation for anybody except maybe momentarily for their own precious ultra-important selves.
A-fucking-men. The other day I saw an asshole bike rider slam into a pedestrian on a sidewalk. When there was a perfectly good bike lane a foot away. That fucking asshole. That’s why they call it a sideWALK, motherfuckers! I fantasize about sticking my foot out and pushing as they go by. Yes, I do realize that’s illegal, that’s why it’s a fantasy.
I responded to a call for a bicyclist vs. car accident in which the bike rider was intoxicated, not wearing a helmet, and caused the accident by trying to zip through a red light not realizing that cars were turning into the area he wanted to zip through. He came over the handlebars and smashed his head against the asphalt. The trauma caused him to suffer a seizure that lasted several minutes (until after I got there).
He was in a big group of like-minded individuals riding recklessly, who (as a group) accosted the very people who were trying to help save their friend’s life. Police units had to physically block a crowd of 10ish bicyclist assholes from interfering with the hurt cyclist’s emergency medical treatment. One of them ended up being arrested.
Anyway, moral of the story is wear your goddamn helmet, obey traffic laws, and don’t be an asshole if you’re going to ride a bicycle on a busy city street.
Heh. A friend of mine was recently hit by a bicyclist, who was disobeying traffic laws. Didn’t do any damage to my friend’s beater of a pickup truck, but she was quite amused when the cyclist insisted on calling the police… (fortunately, the idiot wasn’t injured.) Little Miss 2-wheeler was loudly and profanely telling my friend about the ticket she was gonna get, which bail bondsman she should call, the lawsuit she’d face, etc. Officer Friendly seemed to have enjoyed writing that ticket… to the cyclist.
When I worked in downtown Savannah, I cursed cyclists on a regular basis. It’s bad enough to watch out for normal traffic plus tourists plus squares (roundabouts, as far as traffic flow,) plus one way streets, carriage tours, city buses, and trolleys, without the idiot art school students cutting lanes, riding on left and right shoulders, and hogging the sidewalks. (All of this simultaneously, especially at Liberty and Montgomery and Liberty and MLK. It’s a little nervewracking when 5 o’clock traffic is leaving town, you’re stopped for the light, and suddenly you’re swarmed by bikes on the right and left… which then zip through the green light, oblivious to cars trying to turn on the arrows. I’ve even seen kids do this wearing earbuds, riding “look Ma, no hands” style, and texting! Terrifying!)
Bicyclist make me angry because they scare me. Although I don’t drive anymore, whenever one of my famly takes me out and there are people riding bikes, some of them go right thru red lights or stop signs. But the other day took the cake. As we were attempting to exit a parking lot onto the street, a bicyclist whizzed by in front of us. Yes, it was our responsibility to yield, which we did. But he didn’t even look to make sure we were going to. Because he was texting.
Above post beat my reply. So texting while on a bike is something that’s “just done?” How dangerous can you get? Being on a bike in a traffic accident is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Don’t they know that?
Don’t you know that bicyclists are surrounded by invisible shields of self-righteousness that protect them from blame and from harm?
Seriously, on March 29 in San Francisco a bicyclist ran a red light and struck a 71-year-old pedestrian who was legally in a crosswalk. The victim died a few days later. Despite the fact that this case received a lot of publicity, I still see bicyclists blasting through stop signs and red lights, sometimes without even slowing down.
Fucking city cyclists. Around here you can tell how much of an asshole a cyclist is by what he’s wearing: No lights? Asshole. No helmet? Massive prick. Jeans with one leg rolled up? World class cunt.
I’m a cyclist in London, England btw. The roads here are busy all the time but I have relatively few problems with car traffic, you know why? Because I don’t cycle like a fucking moron!
Ha, all of this is just because the facilities are wildly inadequate and because motorists are not properly trained to deal with cyclists. In Holland cyclist often have their own cycle path separate to the road and they have their own sets of lights. That means there are three sets of road users, each with their own parts of the road, lights, signs, rules etc.: pedestrians (pavement); motorists (main road); cyclists (cycle path).
I learned to drive in the Netherlands, where the aim of driving is like a video game where you win if you successfully dodge all the cyclists. It’s easy if you’re used to it, no irritation really.
In the UK, I have to behave like I’m half way between a motorist and a pedestrian, sometimes going with rules for one, sometimes with rules for the other. It’s not because I want to annoy people, or because I’m reckless: it’s the safest way to do it. Like running a red light at a pedestrian crossing: often it’s safer to do, because if I’ve come up on the left of a car it won’t look out for me, so it’s better to overtake the car and then let the car overtake me so it sees me.
I dunno about the US, but in the UK and the Netherlands motorists DO always have to look over their [left/right] shoulder for cyclists, even if it’s a [left/right] only lane. Being in a certain lane doesn’t mean you get to drive with your eyes closed. If the cycle path is there, that’s where the cyclists go. Sometimes the cycle path will take you into another lane, but not always. Sometimes a cyclist can’t tell it’s left only because there are cars standing on the road markings. Looking over your shoulder for cyclists should just be a habit.
I’m really not saying that cyclists should just be reckless, but probably a lot of what annoys you, you would do too if you were cycling, and a lot of the other stuff is due to inadequate facilities for cyclists.
And now, just to make everyone happy again, a pictureof how the Dutch PM goes in to work.
I am a cyclist who stops at red lights and wears a helmet. So I can endorse most of this pitting (if you replace “cyclists” with “cyclists who do stupid shit”)
However, I do skip to the front at red lights all the time (and then stop, I stress), and there’s a very good reason.
On many roads, there are bike lanes. I ride on them as often as possible. And frequently what happens as the intersection approaches is that the bike lane actually goes away about 15 metres before the lights, and picks up again on the other side of the intersection. Meanwhile, an extra “general” lane is added and all the lanes narrow
So if there’s a bunch of traffic stopped at the traffic lights and I stop in my “place in the queue” then when the traffic starts up again I can either stay in the middle of my narrow lane, which I’m legally allowed to do, but which forces all the traffic behind me to stay at bike speeds for the next half a minute till I cross the lights thus pissing them the fuck off OR I can get over to the side of a very narrow lane and risk life and limb as people whiz past me in a space barely wide enough for just a car.
Skipping to the front allows me to get back into the bike lane and out of everyone’s way with the minimum of time and fuss, thus improving traffic flow for everybody.
So, you guys let me “queue jump” at lights, and I promise to keep wearing my helmet, using lights and reflectors, stopping at traffic lights and not running over pedestrians, and we can all be happy. Deal?
Don’t you have traffic cops to ticket bicyclists who violate 1 ?
Every spring, police in Munich sets up shop at the busy inner-city streets - one of them is Ludwig/ Leopoldstr. - and wave over every biker who’s doing anything wrong. Small offenses (like missing lights) get stern warnings, badly wrong behaviour gets tickets. Small tickets are at 10 or 20 Euros (no lights) but can go up to 200 Euros (running a red light after 1 second) and a point in Flensburg (the central registry for traffic offenses). This gets the word out so that during the summer the bikers try to behave to avoid tickets.
Of course, the good bikers are provided with seperate bike lanes, with free shops for small repairs, with free maps on good bike routes through the city, and a city office to make suggestions to.
Despite what I said above, I don’t always** go through a red light when there’s no one there, as I’m aware that a hazard could come out of nowhere.
If someone in a car is outraged by something as trivial as I’m riding on the side and go to the front or am in a bike lane proceeding to the front then let them be outraged. I guess they’re angry they’re stuck in a car? At least in New York (and many other major metropolitan areas) there are other modes of transportation if the driver’s that upset about driving.
I do think it’s a shame though that there are so many dangerous, inattentive cyclists who have given the rest of us a bad name. And those who ride dangerously are frightening to other people on bikes as well. I don’t want to get hit by a car because some jerk texting or whatever crashes his bike into mine.
Someone mentioned above that they’re irritated by pant legs being rolled up. That’s so their clothing doesn’t get stuck in the chain.
Yes to both. Although at least in New York they either don’t always seem to notice when a cyclist does something illegal or are selective in who they ticket which causes problems.
