+1
I also find that type of biking behavior to be… puzzling.
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Ok, I’m going to bare my soul a bit here, I was driving in my Wife’s '85 Corolla down the suburban roads in my neighborhood. Every couple of blocks there is a stop sign. As I followed a guy on a bicycle, a guy too big for the spandex clothing he was sporting was riding his bicycle out about 3-feet into the traffic lane, well outside the 5-foot bicycle lane along the road way we were driving. Besides hogging the roadway rather than using the empty bike lane, he ran every stop sign. I was getting a bit irritated at this and was wishing for his tires to blow, we came to a red light. There was a group of kids crossing (with the light…) and he yells, “clear the way” as he rides his bicycle right thorough the group of kids.
Now my hackles were getting up and I was reaching for my phone to call 911 and report him, his actions were recorded on my traffic camera and I had gotten alongside him once and snapped a photo. But then, we came to another stop light with a right turn lane. He slowed down, pulled up next to a car going straight and he starts doing that “wiggle-waggle” that bikers do when they do not want to stop. I pulled up next to him in the right turn lane.
As the last car went through on the cross traffic’s Green light, he decides he wiggle-waggled enough and started to pedal through our still Red Light.
It was then I hit my horn and I hit it hard and long (the '85 Corolla’s horn is “old world – LOUD” not like those new wimpy horns on today’s cars…) and that must have scared the bageezes out of him and he snaps his head around and as he does he also snapped his handlebars around, and he tumbled over, right there in the empty road. As he’s sitting there I yell, “Are you all fight, that looked like it hurt.” He yelled back, “Why did you blow your horn?” I yelled back, “Because I was too far back to blow my horn when you almost ran those kids over two-block back.” He then yells back, “You Son of a (not a very nice term…)” and I give him one more yell, “Hey, that’s what the kids yelled at you!”
I then make my Right Turn on Red after a lawful stop… and drive off into the sunset knowing that that guy was probably too sore to ride so caviler for the rest of his trip…
Yeah, some of you probably think I’m the butt end of a mule’s cousin, but it felt good to put the road bully on my butt.
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Sadly that is not an isolated behavior for cyclists. You are riding for exercise. Stopping so you can proceed…well, the “proceed” is more exercise, isn’t it?
I’ve heard that excuse “riding for exercise” and the “need to maintain the elevated heart rate” and I say BULL. There is no excuse for bicycles to run Red Lights so the rider can maintain his/her heart rate…
I ride a bicycle too, for fun, and to get some exercise, but I do not put my safety or the safety of others at risk for so selfish a reason.
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Please don’t misunderstand my comment…
Stopping and restarting IS MORE exercise! So stop, start and get more exercise!
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I was going north through the top of the T. There was no stop sign for north-south traffic. There was a stop sign for the road dead-ending into the intersection. He stopped for it. If he saw the stop sign he should have seen me at the same time.
I notice you think the motorist isn’t responsible to see what’s in front of him, but the bicyclist is for seeing what’s behind him.
What am I supposed to do? Keep my eyes peeled for every driver overtaking me? He turned into a driveway. Am I supposed to stop before every driveway, look behind me for cars that could turn right into me, the way buses stop at every railroad crossing? He didn’t signal. This is crazy to blame me - that’d make bicycling impossible.
The point is that cars took over the streets, marginalized everyone else, to the point that they can commit mayhem and murder with impunity. That didn’t have to happen. We chose it. You say it’s forward, but that’s an opinion, not a fact. Cars took something away from everyone else. They act as though pedestrians and bicyclists are intruders.
You’re exceptional. It’s in the news often.
Bicycles too, at least in the law.
I bicycle everywhere: stores, the gym, concerts, work. I put 177 miles on my pickup last year, a few thousand on my bicycle.
I follow the law and yell at bicyclists who don’t (not that it does any good.) I follow the news on bicyclists’ deaths, and think some are their fault, but I’ve been driven into many times when I had the right-of-way, always yielded it when someone else had taken it from me.
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Getting older and wiser, with all these motorized bikes, I was less than great at stopping before the crosswalk, but now do, and double check for one of those trinkets flying through at 20 or 30 mph. I also now check more diligently for someone coming through on the right hand side when making a right hand turn. Near me these motorized bikes seem to care not where or when they go.
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I agree
The motorist clearly IS responsible. The cyclist, however, is the big loser when the car makes a mistake so it is incumbent upon the cyclist to ride defensively.
Yes, you should. THAT is the reason I have a rear view mirror on my bike so I DO know what is behind me at all times as I also do in my car. Again, in a car-bike confrontation, the bike always loses. You can rightly claim you had right-of-way all the way to your grave.
Mayhem, maybe… murder? That is a huge stretch. My great-great grandfather was killed in 1903 in a traffic accident with a horse. Traffic accidents still happened even with limited car traffic. Again society had to change. Horse urine and manure was a HUGE sanitation issue in cities. The cars and trucks solved that problem.
Much like the transition to indoor plumbing. My great grandfather’s 1/6 acre city lot had an outhouse until indoor plumbing came through. It was a huge improvement in sanitation but there was resistance to having poop IN the house. We adapted. The world improved.
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I have been PASSED by electric bikes and one electric scooter while driving the 30 mph speed limit through my neighborhood. I don’t think they are supposed to go that fast but they did.
My mother–who was born in 1912–grew up in a house in NYC’s Greenwich Village that had no indoor toilets, and–believe it or not–it was not unique for less-affluent NYC residents to have to use outhouses up through the late 1930s.
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That is your choice, and nothing wrong with it. Most people can’t do this (due to distance of the commute, etc.) or choose not to. Nothing wrong with that either. Most people choose to drive a car because it’s more practical. The commute is faster, you don’t arrive to work all sweaty, etc. Roads were designed as they were needed. They probably started as trails when most people walked, then wagon trails, then evolved into what they are now - which, yes, probably is set up favorably for the majority user…which is cars.
But, in urban areas, do they not have bike lanes and crosswalks with pedestrian traffic lights with the “walk / don’t walk” signs and all that? I’m trying to understand the issue, exactly, other than jackasses who don’t follow the rules, drive aggressively, speed, drive drunk, text, etc which will always be an issue, and just plain old accidents like a kid chasing a ball into the street. It’s always going to be more dangerous for a pedestrian or bike. Just like it’s more dangerous for a motorcycle. All the other guys have the big steel cage around them. I just think the S curves and the trees between lanes are going to create additional issues. Plus, with the money spent to redesign all of this, could they not build an entirely separate lane for bikes and pedestrians (if there isn’t one already)?
I don’t like riding a bike near traffic, myself. There’s just too much risk and too much trust that I have to place in my fellow man. I stopped riding motorcycles on the street for the same reason.
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I am sorry, I did not intend to disparage your remarks. It’s just the expression, “riding for exercise” really pushed a button from my past. I served in the US Air Force for over 30-years and I’ve been retired almost 20-years now.
Back in the early '90s, the Air Force’s yearly aerobic test to promote and prove fitness encompassed one of two options. You had the choice to either “run” a 1-1/2 miles in an allotted amount of time, based on your age or fast-walk 3-miles, again in an allotted amount of time based on your age.
The fallacy here was that there was no established exercise program in the Air Force to establish and maintain fitness. Many out of fit members “ran” their mile and a half by “slogging” (slow jogging) intermixed with short sprints and walking (sometimes limping…).
Or they "walked the three-miles by also slogging to make up for the slow walking.
But one of the problems of this “non-system” was a slew of heart attacks, especially in members over 35-years old. To counter this, the Air Force started us on an aerobics test (still only once a year…) of riding an exercise bicycle, wearing a heart monitor, in the presence of medical personnel to respond to any medical emergency brought on by just “riding the exercise bike…”
Also, the Air Force loosened up the rules to take time during the duty day for exercise. Did this ever open a can of worms. Folks started coming in late or leaving early, saying they were exercising at home. Folks started taking extended lunches (2-3 hours–an hour for lunch and an hour for a “walk in the park”; or an hour for lunch, an hour for basketball/racquet ball/jogging, then another hour for hot tub, steam bath and a shower…).
It was not until the late '90s that the Air Force created an actual real aerobics and fitness test, more similar to Army’s, which included real exercise, on a scheduled basis, that was monitored… But by then, I was in my late 40s and still exempt due to my “advanced age…”
So, once again I am sorry that my remarks seemed dismissive or ridiculing of your posting.
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I grew up in a city (until I was 12). By 11 I was taking the bus to the YMCA every Saturday morning. Street lights and traffic was a way of life in a city. You learn. But kids getting hit by cars did happen. Especially back in the 60’s when DUI laws were so lax.
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I was riding a city bus at 10-11 as well. My dentist and orthodontist we both in the city. Dad drove me into the city on his way to work and I rode the bus to school or home. You teach kids how to be safe.
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Luckily, kids always do exactly what their parents instruct them to do, and never take chances.
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Unfortunately there are parents that have no idea of what is correct . We had one parent that would not accept that it was walk facing traffic and ride a bicycle with traffic . Really startling have a kid on a bicycle coming at you on a narrow street .
Well, yeah, you can only do the best you can do… lock in best practices so it is ingrained, and hope for the best. Nothing is 100%.
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Including redesigned streets and intersections. As for kids in traffic…I get that some of you guys were turned loose as a kid in the city to deliver papers, etc. I think those days are over, unfortunately. Maybe every generation of parents think that way. I used to ride dirt bikes all over the county roads from age 10 on up. The roads were gravel (mostly) and there was little traffic. I’d ride one logging trail, then take the road to the next trail. I don’t think I’d let my kids do what I did back then now. Lots more traffic, the roads are mostly paved (which increased the speed of traffic). Probably technically illegal anyway, but no one minded back then. Sort of like how we used to stand on the driveshaft tunnel when riding in the car or ride in the back of the truck. The world is very different now. Better in a few ways, worse in others.
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I didn’t see the place where he recommends a way to keep pedestrians from having their noses stuck on the phones and walking into traffic against red lights, in front of trains, into fountains and other oblivious activities. In my view this becoming more and more of a problem.
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