I live in a very car friendly city. Cool. Lots of road 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 on bicycles.
That means stopping at red lights and stop signs. Not blasting through a red light while I am turning you stupid fuck. Not turning in front of me like you don’t see me. Not turning without using your turn signals you stupid fucks. 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 breaking your fucking mirror off when you illegally pass me on a solid yellow.
You do not get to selectively obey traffic laws.
I will probably get run over and killed by one of you dumbass morons one day and guess what, it will be your fault.
Can’t tell if you meant this to be pointless parody or not, but yeah, there are plenty of cars that fail to stop at red lights and stop signs. And turning without signaling is endemic.
Someone posted about how bicyclists were inconveniencing them while they are tooling along in their automobile. I commute by bike and from my experience there are far more cars breaking laws than bicyclists (sheer number of autos guarantees this) but the cars almost always have a more deadly result than a bicycle. I won’t look up a cite but if anyone can prove that bicyclists cause more: wrecks, injuries, deaths, etc, I’ll eat crow. Nearly every day I have to evade some idiot in a car while I am on my bike. Conversely, when I am on my motorized vehicle (motorcycle) I rarely have to evade a bicycle.
I think you’re certainly right about the absolute numbers, but I’d be willing to believe that the percentage of egregious scofflaws is significantly higher among cyclists than among drivers.
Although I think that this phenomenon may mask a different phenomenon: namely, that a lot of those clueless-dick cyclists started out as clueless-dick drivers and had their driver’s licenses revoked for illegal behavior.
In my experience, the guys who ride bikes because they’re prohibited from driving due to a DUI conviction are absolutely the worst and stupidest assholes on the road, perhaps with the exception of those drivers who are currently practicing illegal behavior such as DUI but haven’t yet been caught at it.
Depends on your definition of egregious when related to the road. I would speculate that a higher percentage of cars break traffic laws due simply to the speed limit. I speed from time to time in motorized and non-motorized vehicles. I break the law on my bicycle for valid reasons from time to time (ever try to trip a magnetized traffic sensor on a bicycle?). How much of bad behavior (motorized versus non-motorized) is due to revocation of license is beyond me. Idiots seem to travel by all means.
It just seems to me that, if you’re in a car, you have quite a bit of metal to absorb the impact in an accident. On a bike, you become a red smear on the pavement.
Outrageous idiocy is endemic to both classes of road denizens, but the negative consequences to boorish behavior fall disproportionately of the cyclist. That is one reason why motorists are so incensed by stupid bicyclists—they don’t want to be responsible for being the unwitting executioner of some doucherag on wheels with a death wish.
It might be one reason to some, but not to most. I ride legally, and I have found that a large number of drivers tend to actually be more annoyed with my existence when I do so. Don’t misunderstand me: I am much safer by riding legally but I tend to get more horns blasted at me and more deliberate (and illegal) actions taken by drivers - such as going straight on a turn-only lane to pass me, crossing double-yellow lines into traffic, passing much too close, etc.
The simple fact is this: while many drivers say they want cyclists to ride legally, what they really want is the cyclists to be gone.
I always hear people complaining about such things. But where I live it just does not seem to happen. Oh, an occasional blast through a yellow/orange light, and some folks don’t use their turn signals but most (95%) do.
Have you never heard of red-light camera enforcement? I don’t think they are installing these for the occasional blast through a yellow. Oh wait…maybe they are installing them to catch all the hooligan bike riders. Those assholes love to run red lights.
Going straight in a turn only lane to pass you? Are you not keeping right? And I believe it is legal for a car to cross the double yellow to pass a bike. At least in Colorado it is.
My Wife is an Iron Man. She does a LOT of bike riding. What bugs me is when a cyclist will ride on a two lane highway with no shoulders when there is a perfectly good paved swept recreational trail that is right next to it.
Yes, there are walkers and joggers on it. It does cause problems. But it beats the hell out of getting hit by a truck. My Wife understands this, and trains on the path.
Riding on the highway may be legal, but it is just nuts.
She did have an accident once on the path because of an inattentive bike rider. Got scraped up pretty good. I would much rather see that than having her come up against an inattentive driver.
Seems to come down to mere bullying, if there was a backhoe trundling along the road, the average car driver would never think about cutting it up, and yet its moving at around the same sort of speed as a bicycle and is a far greater obstruction.
The car driver might get frustrated, but they are most unlikely to be shouting abuse as they overtake the slow moving vehicle, so why is it so common that cyclists receive this treatment?
How often do you see cyclists speeding? I’ll bet you broke the speed limit on your way to work in your car today - seems motorists are happy to point out the misdeeds of others but not look too closely at themselves.
Even a 5mph breach of the speed limit can have devastating consequences in a crash, and car drivers can hardly say they are not aware since there are so many public information notices on tv.
That’s probably not illegal. At least in Wisconsin and at least for motorcycles there’s a specific set of circumstances that come together to allow motorcycles to run a red light, I use it all the time in intersections where I know I can’t make the light flip. I’d would guess it would apply to bikes…but since you think you’re breaking the law, you probably aren’t aware of the law and you probably are breaking it.
For example, part of it requires that there aren’t any cars coming up behind me that can trip the sensor for me. If I see a car behind me, I’ll pull up far enough so that the car can land on the induction coil and wait for the next cycle so I can get the light/arrow. Do you do that?
Actually, I see only a handful of states have adopted this law, so you might not even be allowed to use it anyways.
My problem isn’t with bikers that run red lights, it’s with the ones that ride though red lights like there isn’t even an intersection there…and then have the nerve to get mad at ME when I honk and slam on my brakes.
Also, I think there’s a world of difference between the casual/sport rider and the bike couriers that I deal with in the downtown areas.
The only time I have a problem with sport type riders is when they’re riding 4 wide and waaay out out of the bike lane and I’m stuck behind them until I can pass them. The city was nice enough to give them a big wide bike line, but they’re still so far into the driving lane that they have 15 cars piled up behind them because they want to be able to ride next to each other instead of two in front and two in back. But that’s not as big of a problem.
Where is this mythical city where car drivers abide by all laws and it’s only bicyclists breaking them?
I also don’t understand all the talk of bikes running red lights. Where I live, I only do it when I don’t trip the sensor and it’s on my very early morning commute to work. No cars coming. If I were to try this on my commute home when the roads are busy, I wouldn’t live much longer. Are you all really saying these bicyclists are darting out into busy intersections?
Joey P: Illegal in my state. Recent attempts to change this by the motorcycle community but it never gets past the state govt.
The opposite is true where I live. It’s a very recreational community. I would rather that bikes not ride on the highway when they don’t have to though.
Can’t find the link at the moment, but I believe that slow moving vehicles such as backhoes are required to pull over if five or more vehicles are backed up behind it. It’s not always practical, and I understand that. The drivers that get our ire are the ones that have a string of 10 or 20 cars behind them all the way up a hill and don’t pull over to let them by.
Bikes are easy to pass, and we can legally cross the double yellow to do so.
