Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/09/30/controversial-road-diet-reduce.html
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What childhood would be complete without dodging your bike between fast-moving cars? It’s like a rite of passage. Put hair on my chest!
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Never understood the anti-cyclist hate from motorists. I’ve driven and cycled in both some very bike friendly and unfriendly cities and you know what I discovered in both? I hated cyclists most when I was cycling. Bad cyclists are way more of a pain to other cyclists. The worst I’ve had to endure as a motorist is having to slow down or stop short- same as I had to do when encountering bad motorists (much more often). But it’s fellow cyclists who’ll come barreling down a bike lane the wrong way that can ruin your whole day.
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As Homer Simpson said, “That’s ridiculous! Sure, it’ll save a few lives, but millions will be late!”
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It’s just another predictable combination of entitlement and victim-blaming.
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You’d be mad at cyclists too if you had to look at them through your windshield, flailing around on your hood like that. We get it already, it’s good cardio. Jerks.
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If I ever have kids, I’ll definitely be a helicopter parent, assuming we can afford the helicopter.
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If you don’t want to contribute to climate change, you’ll have to use one of these:
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I can say that I hate the cyclists I encounter, which are mostly suburbans enthusiasts that take themselves too seriously. When I was in the city and it was people getting to and from places it was fine because the roads supported it better and the cyclists were conscientious.
Every time I have lived in the suburbs you see cyclists on 45mph+ roads riding like a motor cycle down the roads during rush hour for exercise, cycling clubs that fill the entire lane in the same fashion, tired cyclists almost home that drift wildly into the lanes, a lack of hand signals, etc. This has been in the midwest and south, and these are higher speed roads without bike lanes and without swept shoulders.
But I’m also rational enough to not blame every single bicyclists when it’s a handful of irresponsible one that are the problem.
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I’ll have to admit that I had to read the first paragraph twice before I became convinced that the headline wasn’t talking about Cracker Barrel.
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…aaaaaand there is the victim-blaming and entitlement! That took less time than I thought it would 
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I only regularly ride a bike through rural areas. Country roads with big shoulders and light traffic, so even if an SUV passes me at 70mph (not an uncommon occurrence) there’s plenty of room for them to do so.
I could never stand city bicycling. People opening car doors right into the bike lane, clueless or aggressive drivers, equally clueless and aggressive cyclists… I’ll pass on that. I also grew up in the early 80s in Chicago, so I associate urban cycling with danger.
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This is pretty much my only issue with cyclists.
Ride single file and you’ll get a world of respect from me.
Form up in line abreast and well, I won’t hit you.
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FWIW, the only person I knew personally who died while biking was on a quiet country road with her friend. She died, her friend was in the hospital for months. They were on one side of the road, and a man in a car – the only car on the road – drifted over the double yellow line to their lane and ran them down. He was never able to explain why it happened.
It taught me to never assume a quiet empty road is safe. All it takes is one car.
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Well yeah, traffic slows down when you deliberately induce congestion. Aren’t we supposed to be mad at Chris Christie for doing the same thing?
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Oh yes, the entitlement of saying there needs to be better roadways for cyclists and that some of the ones I encounter in suburban areas are not cycling safely.
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Question for the Cyclist
My road has no shoulders, two lanes, and multiple blind curves. The speed limit’s 30mph although some people think it’s 65, apparently. Deer and other wildlife are frequently splattered across my property by passing cars.
So: the road’s been there since 1825, it was built to service ox-drawn wains delivering multi-ton loads to water powered mills. In 1825, we didn’t have the technology to make it better than it is. Today, we can’t make it better without doing serious damage to a drinking water stream that supplies several thousand of citizens with fresh water.
People on bikes ride down my road. I am astonished at their courage and/or foolishness. One side of the road has a steel rail above a drop into a stony streambed, the other side has a cliff. The total width of the road is about 18’ or a little less. The telephone poles an inch or so off the road are replaced on about a ten-year cycle - not as preventative maintenance, but because that’s about how long one stands up to being repeatedly hit by cars.
If a cyclist gets hit on one of the blind curves, by a car traveling at legal speed, was the cyclist guilty of endangering the motorist?
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I think the usual rule of thumb is that bikes are more or less the same as any other vehicle, just a speed limited one. I’m pretty sure it’d be on the driver of the car for not taking the blind corner at a safe speed (you’d have to be going pretty fast to rear end the cyclist right out of the blind turn while having not seen the cyclist take the turn.) Now a lawyer of course, though.
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I’ll wade in here, I suppose.
In most places (in the US), a cyclist is to be treated as a motor vehicle on the road. And drivers are required to travel at speeds that allow them to be safe (driving 30 mph may be the speed limit, but it’ll still get you busted doing it in a snow storm…), it falls to the driver to proceed with caution through a blind curve.
Assuming the cyclist was obeying relevant laws etc etc etc. IANAL. Etc.
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It’s not really possible to police a road like mine, but if you do 30mph in a snowstorm on it mother nature tends to dish out a pretty harsh punishment. That’s why the telephone poles keep getting hammered.
Double S-curve, straightaway, and another S-curve. I think you’re right as long as it is daytime. But at night, assuming the cyclist was not running lights or super-reflective clothing, you could easily pop up on somebody in the second S-curve with no possible prior warning.
But even if we acknowledge that the driver bears some fault for not taking the blind corner at less than the speed limit, the question remains: did the cyclist endanger the motorist, or is he a blameless, faultless victim?
