Don’t feel too bad: even the Straight Dope Science Advisory Board had to eat crow on this topic.
Are you still here? I thought you were done with this thread…
Anyway, to be perfectly clear, within the context of the post you were responding to, you are an idiot. Legality and you being an asshole are two seperate subjects. You can be perfectly within the bounds of the law, and still be an asshole. In fact, you could be undertaking actions required of you by law, and still be an asshole. The law has nothing to do with how good, or kind, or considerate you are as a person. If you regularly ride your bike so as to obstruct traffic, you’re an asshole. You can cite all the laws you want, but that’s not going to change a damned thing, because it’s not a question of law, it’s a question of manners. And you haven’t got any.
Utterly immaterial, and a dishonest attempt to sidetrack the argument to boot. Well done. The infrastructure except where there are bike lanes, which I fully support) is tooled for automobiles. It’s graded for automobiles. Hell, sometimes, they knock down mountains to put a smooth path for automobiles. It doesn’t take a genius to see that a virtually unprotected human body flitting around all that fast-moving tonnage is unsafe. It should not be legal for you to do it.
You’re saying the government should forbid me to risk my own life?
I’m saying the government should forbid you to create a situation that would force someone else to deal with you risking your life.
You seem confused. There are simultaneous debates going on here about safety and about convenience. You made a comment about convenience, I rebutted it. Go back, re-read and try again. Or maybe you’re working on a Wookie defence.
Yawn. Unimpressive. The arguments about safety and convenience are corollary to the same argument…that bicyclists present an undue hazard and inconvenience on high-traffic, high-speed roadways.
Ok,just so I am clear. If you are on a bike, and you come to stop sign with 15 cars waiting, you get in line as the 16th vehicle to go into that intersection, correct?
You’ve lost the thread, Ogre, and until you actually go back and deal with my substantive comment, you’ve lost that aspect of the argument. Posturing aside.
Yes, of course. Why would I want to anything else?
That’s assuming there is no paved shoulder or bike lane to ride on, and therefore I’m being forced to take the lane. If I am riding on a bike lane or shoulder, it’s pointless to stay behind the cars.
I’ve read the thread. You have no substantive comment. You complain that the cause of traffic problems is cars. No shit, pal. Unfortunately, that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about whether you should have the basic right to slow down traffic on a thoroughfare which has a much faster average traffic flow than the pace of your Ti roadster.
You should not. You’re slowing down/inconveniencing delivery trucks, cops, and everyone else who has the reasonable expectation of being able to actually go 50 mph on a road with a 50 mph posted speed limit.
As for the safety, let me use my example from Lookout Mountain from upthread. This guy is tearing ass down the mountain (for a bicycle,) having taken the lane in front of me. In reality, he’s going slower than the posted speed limit. Irritating. However, because I’m really NOT an asshole, and I have nothing personal against him, I give him plenty of room. Let’s say that on one of these sharp turns, he leans just a little too far in and loses his traction. He lays the bike down at 35 mph, and slides right into the path of an oncoming pickup truck. The truck either slams on the brakes and crushes him anyway, or yanks away to avoid hitting him, perhaps taking him into the side of the mountain, off the edge for an 1100 foot drop, or into the front of my car.
Now, I assure you that such a scenario is far from unlikely. This guy was begging for it, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen such a thing. Chattanooga alone has had several bicycling deaths due to bikes sharing high-traffic roads with cars.
Well, cars obviously have the right to slow down on those roads before making a turn. Even stopping on those roads to wait for a chance to make a left turn.
So the answer is yes. A vehicle has every right to slow down (or keep moving at slow speeds) on those roads, even if it means inconveniencing the following vehicles.
Your scenario is pure speculation. You (or anybody else) have yet to give us an example where a bicycle, taking a lane legally, caused harm to car drivers, car passengers and/or pedestrians.
I can’t be arsed. It isn’t important enough to me, but do you seriously think my speculated scenario is in any way unrealistic or unreasonable?
Your debating style would be so much more successful if you and you alone had the ability to dictate the terms and scope of the debate. Unfortunately for you, you don’t.
Go back to your post #120 and my post #130 and deal.
I’m familiar with your debating style. When you hit a rebuttal you can’t argue with you bluster, you insult, you try to change the terms of the debate, you delay till the rebuttal you can’t answer is too far back in the thread to be immediately at hand so you can bullshit about what it was, and you hope that in the midst of all that, the fact that you didn’t have any answer will be lost. I will not repeat myself so you can start your tactics all over again. Go back, re-read, deal substantively or shaddap and stop wasting my time.
I think it’s highly unlikely that a car driver would get hurt as a result. I’ve never heard of it happening.
It’s possible the bicyclist would hurt himself, of course - I had a fellow rider die on an organized tour once, running off the road in a steep descent. But that’s the risk we accept when we decie to ride on those roads.
And I’m sure car drivers hurt themselves on those roads all the time too. Should we ban cars from twisty mountain roads too?
What a steaming load. You’re “example” says nothing about whether cyclists on roads pose a danger to others, it just says any road user who loses it, endangers others. And further, that a cyclist is the least likely to endanger others, since they are less likely to run over or crash into others with deadly force. Every aspect of your example would happen but worse if it was a motorist that lost it.
Actually, you’re right. A horrible day yesterday combined with a generally cranky attitude and impending sickness combined to create a Perfect Storm of hard-headed stubbornness. After a beer or two and a good night’s sleep, I’ve decided I was more strident than I should have been. Sorry about that.
I really don’t have anything against bicyclists in general. I just get as irritated as the OP at bicyclists who think their enjoyment of their hobby takes precedence over whatever I’m doing, when I’m using the infrastructure which should allow me to go from place to place with whatever speed is posted on the speed limit signs. This is in no way unreasonable to me.
I do, however, have to admit that offending bikers are few and far between, and the level of insult I’ve experienced is not commensurate with the amount of bile I was putting into my posts.
Thanks for the rethinking, and I’ll try to come in on the other side with the quest for common ground. Okay, I think we’re all perfectly agreed here that cyclists should follow all traffic laws, and that cyclists who violate them are being reckless assholes.*
And I think it’s also been generally conceded that if cyclists really are seriously inconveniencing motor traffic—as in the example of a lane of law-abiding respectful drivers getting stuck for a mile creeping along behind a bicycle without being able to safely pass—then something needs to be done about it. The cyclist should pull over to let the cars go by, and cyclists should try to avoid causing such situations in the first place.
However, I haven’t seen anybody here complaining about any such situation that they’ve actually encountered. What most motorists seem to actually encounter is merely a case where cars are delayed for a few seconds or half a minute before they can safely pass a bike that’s “taking the lane”.
And I just don’t see why motorists should consider themselves entitled not to have to put up with an occasional few seconds’ delay of that sort. The idea that the road system “should allow [you] to go from place to place with whatever speed is posted on the speed limit signs”, without ever having to slow down even briefly for a slower vehicle, sounds insanely unrealistic to me. Talk about a delusional sense of entitlement!
Even the idea that you’re grudgingly willing to slow down for some slower vehicles based on your personal assessment of whether their presence is “necessary”, but resent doing the same for bicycles because you think they “don’t have to be there”, comes across as pathologically self-centered. Lots of people use the roads who perhaps “don’t have to be there”. Doesn’t matter. The roads are for everybody, as long as they’re obeying the traffic laws.
- Just a point on the much-contested “legality vs. assholishness” issue: The principle that “you can be obeying the law and still be an asshole” doesn’t really apply to traffic regulations, because they’re designed to regulate all vehicular behavior on the roads.
The reason it’s not illegal to call another poster ugly, even though it’s assholish, is that the law deliberately refrains from regulating most forms of personal speech out of respect for individual rights. Traffic laws, on the other hand, exist specifically to set guidelines for all kinds of activity on the public roads. If a particular use of the roads is legal, that’s an explicit indication that society as a whole, taking into consideration the professional opinion of traffic-safety experts, considers that use of the roads appropriate.
So it really doesn’t make sense to say “Using the roads in such-and-such a way is legal, and ought to remain legal, but it’s nonetheless assholish and people shouldn’t do it.” There is no individual-rights argument for protecting assholish traffic behavior from legal regulation. When it comes to traffic laws, all behavior is regulated. Anything that shouldn’t be done shouldn’t be legal. (Don’t believe me? Okay then, can you come up with a single example of vehicle use on public roads that everyone agrees is wrong but that traffic laws refrain from regulating?)
So if you really believe that a certain use of the roads is “assholish” or inconsiderate or unwise, then you should try to get traffic laws changed to reflect that, rather than invoking subjective unwritten rules of “politeness” or “courtesy” to discourage such use. It is pointless, misleading, and even dangerous to have a set of traffic laws that doesn’t accurately reflect what society considers to be proper use of the roads in all circumstances. “You have the legal right to do that but you shouldn’t do it” simply isn’t a useful approach in the context of traffic laws.
Passing someone and then turning in front of them?
No, I think that’s regulated by the passing laws. You aren’t allowed to return to the original lane “until safely clear of such overtaken vehicle”, and if you’re making a right turn too close in front of the car you passed then you’re not “safely clear” of it.
On the other hand, if you pass somebody and get well clear in front of them, and then immediately afterwards make a right turn (without endangering the car behind you), I don’t see anything particularly assholish about that. Rather pointless, perhaps, but not specifically asshole behavior.