I know, this is not an original idea for a rant. Just throwing my anecdote on the pile.
Yesterday I was taking a cross-town trip of a few miles, all via city streets, with many stop signs & street lights. And a bicyclist, in his bike lane, happened to be going the same way.
He (presumably) had on those idiotic bike shoes that nail your feet to the pedals, so you can’t remove them. So at every intersection, he would precariously wobble and weave, trying to balance himself motionless, because he couldn’t put his feet down. And so he would wobble into crosswalks, or edge into the intersection anticipating the light turning.
First: if it can be mandatory that bicyclists wear helmets, shouldn’t something so blatantly unsafe (to the rider and everyone around him) be illegal?
And second: you’re not in the Tour de France, idiot. You’re crossing a suburb. It is not imperative that you maximize the efficiency of every single movement. Put your goddam feet down.
(And I’m not even going to rag on his stupid fashion choices)
Those shoes unclip. He could have put his feet down, he just didn’t want to.
I’m not making a judgement on how safely or unsafely he may have been riding, but if all he was doing was annoying you then he was probably just not wanting to lose what little momentum his balancing act gave him. It takes considerably more energy to launch from a full stop than from even a slowly moving one. Plus given his likely saddle height it would likely become necessary for him to come completely out of the saddle and move down over the top tube to plant his foot. Full stops considerably reduce a rider’s cardio benefit as well. Put all that together and many cyclists will float (if not outright run) stop signs/stop lights if they feel it’s safe to do so.
Also, it’s a way for some riders to show off a little. I’ve seen quite a few guys riding in the SF area who can sit through a stoplight without unclipping.
I buy the energy bit (the same thing is true for my car) - but that seems to contradict the cardio benefit. Can you explain that? I guess maybe the cyclist is doing a little bit of extra work balancing, but I can’t see where that would be significant relative to having a foot on the ground.
My naive first look is that the energy required to get moving again would increase the cardio benefit, relative to creeping without pedaling for some short period of time.
I don’t buy the cardio bullshit benefit either. Most cyclist buy into the gear crap, when most of them are just exercising. If you are cycling for exercise, why do you care about wind resistance, or stopping for traffic and restarting. The more resistance should be adding to your work out. Unless it’s not about really working out, but having a certain look…
When I’m driving my car, I find that full stops provide unwanted and uncomfortable g-forces, both de-accelerating and accelerating, and sometimes cause my groceries to shift around. So I run stop signs/lights whenever I feel it safe to do so.
I could buy it if somebody said he was training for a race, where he was going to need to cover a specific distance as fast as possible, or a marathon where he needed to cover a huge distance, but those both call for open road and no stop lights…
It wasn’t so much that he crossed the line into the crosswalk; it was that he was not obviously in control while doing it. He looked like he could fall over in front of a car or on a pedestrian at any moment, all for the sake of his precious momentum.
TroutMan: I didn’t say I hate all bicyclists; just adding an anecdote in support of the general drivers vs bicyclists war – which I feel is caused by a sense of entitlement that bicyclists have, that road rules don’t apply to them. And no bicyclists here seem to be denying that.
A lot of bicyclists have their seat too high, because they raise it to a racing height. You should be able to comfortably put your foot down, and get going again quickly, but some people think they need to look like they’re in the Tour de France.
I lived in Bloomington, IN, home of the Little 500, and one of the best bicycle towns, for more than 20 years. I biked everywhere. I used to bike out to state parks on weekends, and could do 60 miles in a day. Just establishing cred.
It’s always men with that really high seat. Unless you are training for the Little Five, cut that out. You are going to get into a wreck if you have to stop for an emergency vehicle. And no, it’s not tall men. My husband is 6’2, and his seat is above his handlebars, but not crazy above them; he can still put his foot down at a stoplight.
Timmy: “Hey, Joey…let’s see who can balance longest on our bikes!”
Joey: 'Yeah, cool! And let’s do it at the intersection of Broad and Main! That’s a 4-lane with left turn signals! It’ll be even more fun!"
(Timmy wobbles into the intersection and gets creamed by a SUV making a right turn)
I wish cyclists didn’t roll through stop signs or get a head start on stop lights. And I’ll feel more sympathetic to drivers who complain about it the day that cars stop rolling through four-way stops or driving over the speed limit. Watch a four-way stop sometime in a low traffic neighborhood, and see how many cars come to a complete stop. See how many cars actually obey the 25 MPH limit on city streets, or drive the speed limit on the freeway. And guess how many injuries and deaths are caused by excessive speed in a car versus a cyclist who rolls through a stop sign, or god forbid, doesn’t put his foot down.
I didn’t see this rider, but most likely you are wrong about him being in control. That’s just what that type of balancing looks like. He may not have been very good at it, but most riders who do a track stand can stay like that for extended periods of time without endangering anyone.
Cardio benefit comes from maintaining a higher sustained heart rate, and the heart rate can be kept somewhat more elevated by floating stop signs than by coming to a complete stop (especially if lots of potential stops are involved). This is also why you see joggers running in place at stoplights; they want to keep their heart rates up. Exertion such as getting under way again doesn’t provide much of a cardio benefit. That’s why people don’t lift weights for cardio.
The seat should be high enough so that the leg is almost but not quite fully extended at the bottom of the downstroke. When the seat is lower than that it’s hard on the knees.