My fave “bad driver” moment riding my motorbike was revving up to 10k next to an open top Aston Martin every time the guy tried to talk on the phone. After four or five tries he gave up and looked at me dolefully.
It’s a cultural thing. Drivers see other drivers doing stupid things, they do them too. Same with cyclists. Same with all groups. Something has to intercede to stop it.
Don’t screw around on the road. That’s what gets people hurt, or killed. That’s why the cyclist is mad. He’s vulnerable, but has every right to progress his journey in safety.
And on and on it goes. This Cyclist vs. Driver War is on par with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s endless, and I’m so flippin’ tired of it.
Bottom line: Haranguing, shaming, and bitching about careless drivers and cyclists gets you nowhere. It won’t eliminate dangerous habits, it won’t make the streets any safer, and it only accomplishes a volley of “Well, I saw a driver do this…” and “That’s nothing! I saw a cyclist do that…”
What will work: A new approach to street engineering and urban infrastructure. Simply put, a 25 lb piece of metal going 15 mph really shouldn’t be sharing the same lanes as a 4,000 lb piece of metal going 35mph. No matter whose right of way of it is, the cyclist will ALWAYS lose. These two modes of transport must be kept separate.
People blather on like accidents are caused by indifference to human life, arrogance, or suicidal tendencies. Perhaps that’s sometimes case (as in this cereal eating motorist), but accidents are mostly the result of carelessness and more importantly, simple human error even if you’re being careful. Not to mention piss poor street design that practically forces cars and bikes on top of each other.
Without the creation of dedicated bike lanes and/or separate cycle and car arterials for high-traffic routes, cars and bikes will continue to slam into each other, and cyclists and drivers will keep on pointing fingers at each other. I’m a cyclist, and I’ve seen my fair share of idiot cyclists and drivers. Hell, I’ve done a few stupid things myself on my bike, I’m not proud to admit. But I’ve been in the game long enough to know screaming at each other does nothing. What does reduce accidents is better street design. Because better street engineering actually takes human nature into account and compensates for it. Pontificating only makes each faction angrier at each other.
From the GIF (because I’m lazy) she’s stopped. What’s going to happen? The person behind her might get impatient, but I’m sympathetic to people doing crap while stopped whether it’s changing the song on their phone or sipping their latte. It’s not dangerous. It’s barely bad behavior. Then again, it’s as you said, maybe I’m less sympathetic since he’s being a jackass vigilante. Could you imagine if I drove around monitoring people’s speeds and then coming after them for being five mph over the limit?
She’s not stopped a lights a few seconds later. She has been, and fully intends to be, driving with a bowl of cereal on her lap. Just because she’s not actually dipping the spoon, doesn’t mean it isn’t a distraction. The cyclist is indeed being a jackass, but he also has a right to not be run down by some idiot who is distracted by a bowl of cereal sliding off her lap.
I’m not defending this particular cyclist’s actions (he strikes me as a dick), just cyclists’ rights in general not to be run down by cereal-distracted drivers.
Well, I guess she could just plan to sit there until she’s finished, or it may be that she just took the last spoonful. I’m making a reasonable supposition about the future.
If any of you want to balance a ceramic bowl of sloshy cereal in your left hand when driving, please don’t take it personally when I refuse to be your passenger.
What I mostly saw was a cyclist driving in a wildly reckless and illegal manner, weaving around cars and riding in the wrong lane. Perhaps he should correct his practices before he criticizes others.
I’d say a rude cyclist who records video and says words that upset the car driver is much better than getting blindsided by a distracted car driver.
In fact, I’d much rather be shouted at by a loutish bicyclist from the relative security and comfort of my mid-sized sedan, than ride a bike on the same roads where distracted drivers are eating cereal, instead of paying attention to the single most important and potentially life-threatening task they’re doing.
Do you mean the cyclist who cut across lanes of traffic and weaved between cars, repeatedy, and without signaling, and then pounded on a car window, accosting and distracting a driver who was stopped in a queue which was about to be moving slowly?
