I’m reading a lot of stuff lately about bicycles including advocacy movements like Critical Mass. It’s interesting and very surprising to see the big outcry from drivers against cyclist. And they say the lamest things.
The most common would be that they don’t stop at Stop signs and at various times they have seen cyclists ignoring posted street signs. This is hilarious. Hasn’t everyone who has driven for one year seen dozens of other drivers ignored posted signs. One time I saw a Mustang run a red light, thus all Mustangs should be banned from using the public roadways. Replace Mustang with bicycle and you have the motto for the Combustion Engine Defense League.
Let me explain some differences between my bike and my car. The latter has something referred to as blind spots from the doors and roof frame. The limits of vision on my bike are my head. My car has 70 years of technology for blocking noise and temperature fluctuations. My bike has none. And two organs on my head placed as far apart as possible let me triangulate the source of sounds. When I pull up to a Stop sign in my car I HAVE to look. On my bike, I can hear a car a couple of blocks away.
Then there is the safety issue. Cars have airbags, seat belts, crumple zones, antilock brakes, etc. My bike has zip. A car is classified as a deadly weapon and can become a large, heavy, self-propelled low-speed projectile representing a serious threat to other vehicles, pedestrians, and the occasional building. My bike weighs 30 lb + 210 lb and maxes out at 40 mph. The only deadly threat I present is to myself. Cars can kill me. I can’t kill someone in a car. Can’t even scratch ‘em if I tried.
Well, you might be worried about a lawsuit for running over a cyclist. Don’t be. It’s my cynical and as yet disproven belief that drivers are not responsible for hitting cyclist in the Texas panhandle. If you run me over, I’m dead and you have some paperwork to sign.
I freely admit to skipping through certain lights and Stop signs. If no one is there or even close, why stop. My bike does not accelerate like my car. 0-60 in 20 seconds. Not unless it’s 60 feet/sec and I’m an Olympic sprinter. It takes forever to stop, put a foot down, bring a foot up, and cross a 24-60 ft intersection. Let’s say I average 7mph and seek to cross a 5-6 lane intersection. That will take 6 seconds. A car will take 2-3 seconds. Am I going to take this trouble when I can see and hear that oncoming traffic is 1 block away? In a car yes, on a bike no.
And how ’bout the times when the lights at large intersections don’t give me time to cross? Some light switch allow traffic to flow while I’m half way across the pedestrian walkway. The most frightening time riding in the city is at large Stop lights.
Let’s talk about inaccessibility. Cars and truck can legally go where I can not. Amarillo is divided by the BNSF railroad. There are three crossing, all for heavy vehicles only and all dangerous to bicycles. Lack of bike trails force cyclists into harrowing rides in the gutters. Street layouts force one to ride circuitous routes or risk sprinting along with 40-60 mph traffic in 12-16 in of space.
Cars regularly park in the bike lanes. Some even take up the full width of the lane. No one tickets in these residential areas. If we double parked some Semis in a residential neighborhood with just enough room for one car to scrape by at a time, would anyone complain? You can be riding along safely in a lane and then have to stop for traffic, because someone is parked in the bike lane. And what good is a bike lane for a block, skip two blocks, another bike lane for a block, etc.? It would be quite challenging to accommodate these lanes today, but nothing is requiring new housing developments to have 45 ft wide roads for bike lanes. Today’s problem is tomorrow’s problem.
The only thing that matters is whatever conduct can safely traverse me from point A to point B. My bike is a church mouse in the middle of a longhorn stampede.
Ya know that’s how it is here in Portland. But I still think bicyclists should follow the rules of the road at all times. There has been some incidents where the cyclist has been cited and at fault for hitting vehicles. And one where they ran over a person and that person died. Also during one Critical Mass, they surrounded a mother with her children in a car on the I-5 ( which they were not suppose to be on) and pretty much scared the shit out of her and did quite a bit of damage her car.