I mean, you have probability on your side, but sadly assholes are everywhere.
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It’s Oregon, a pretty blue state, so Bayes theorem comes into play.
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As twisted as this guy is, he’s not alone in OR as an illicit road spiker. It has been a fav pasttime of d-bags hating on road and Mt bikers around PDX, Bend and other locales. I know plenty-o-folk who had their bikes and bodies damaged from crashes caused by roads sprinkled with roofing nails.
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Gainesville, Florida also had an asshole in the 90s who was stringing fishing line across bike paths on public land…at neck height, no less.
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For fuckssake!
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It’s been so long…I think they caught the guy. IIRC, it was a homeowner whose property was next to the land, and nobody was doing damage to his place. He just hated bicyclists.
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I wish that was surprising. A few years ago we had a pretty frequent issue with drivers throwing bottles at cyclists.
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I was once driving through a neighborhood where someone had strung the tape of a cassette tape across the street between two light poles at windshield height. The tape wasn’t visible until it was in your face and then the air draft of the car pushed the tape up and over the car, ready to freak the next person out.
When it flashed in front of me I swerved and nearly side swiped a parked car. I was in my teens so truthfully I was probably going faster than I should have been. After my heart rate slowed down I went back and broke the tape to be safe.
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This was happening right by my house and was super scary; one of the stretches he “nailed” was on a downhill road leading to a railway underpass with a 90-degree curve. Granted the speed limit is 30 going down that hill, but how often do you see people going 30 downhill?
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It only takes one, unfortunately there were - and I believe still are - many who still practice the “art” of terrorism against bicyclists, perceived CA imports and others.
Back in the day, my wife & I would ride out in the gorge often up to Vista House. It was this last leg, the road to Vista that was nearly always “spiked”. The route 26 to Mt Hood was often a problem too, for bikes and cars.
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Reminds me of my bike trek from Austin to San Diego.
Some counties in Texas “properly” cut roadside grass & weeds so the mower blew the debris away from the road, but there was this one county stretch of I-10 where all the debris, including Goat-Head thorns, got left on the roadway. So many flats, despite Tuffy Liners and Slime.
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Although I have interacted with some really douchebag bikers who think riding on pavements at speed when crowded ringing their bell or shouting is fine. (That is illegal btw here, but police don’t enforce it unless they kill someone like that dickhead with the sports ‘velodrome’ bike without brakes).
In those cases, I wish I had a mini Stinger, let alone caltrops or nails…don’t do the latter since small kids could get hurt, or pets or fellow pedestrians.
Wish there was an easy way to blow out the tires of those breaking the law, though.
(Cue someone saying that’s one bad apple…well in London, UK there’s a fucking forest of them every time I go out who think riding on non-empty pavements is fine, especially Deliveroo riders! Yes a company privatising the pedestrian-only spaces, and yes I’ve complained and they do absolutely nothing, like the police)
For years I volunteered for a multi-day bike tour through the mountains as part of the support staff and having some d-bag sprinkle a box of tacks along the side of the road happened often enough that we would carry big rolling magnets in our staff vehicles just for this reason.
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So people breaking the speed limit might have been in an accident?
My tiny violin is playing for them, bless (and yes, speed limits still exist for downhill drivers as well…there are these things called ‘brakes’? You might have heard of them!)
It was his form of anger management.
I think that’s called “anger mismanagement”.
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My father in law lives in Oregon City too, and was hit twice by this dude. I wonder how many thousands of dollars in damage he caused driving recklessly (tossing his nails from the car he was driving) as revenge against reckless drivers…
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AM I to understand that your point is that bicyclists using public roads who follow established traffic rules should endure the terror of nail-spiked surfaces and the ire of motor-vehicle-born passers-by?
Is a pavement a public road?
Am I to understand your point is that cyclists should be allowed terrorise pedestrians? Even hurt or kill them?
Cos that’s what they do when they intersect with pedestrians at high speed on crossings and pavements. I have sympathy with cyclists vs ‘ire of motor-vehicle-born passers-by’ but oddly they seem to take their anger out on us pedestrians by then moving illegally onto the pavements (you call them sidewalks) and terrorising us instead. Or indeed ramming through red lights, car drivers moan about that but at least one guy seemingly doing one of those smartphone speed trials killed a woman pedestrian in SF at one by doing so.
I was explaining that SOME anger towards cyclists is justified, as they do break the law and do things that are dangerous. Sure what this guy did was wrong, but I have limited sympathy for those who were speeding anyway or breaking the law. Karma is a bitch. Laws are there for stuff like this, unexpected things that happen, to protect people. Can’t break the law then complain (like the person above saying one of the spots was on a hill so of course people broke the speed limit and could have crashed - eh?).
Might does not equal right, and 4 or 2 wheels are not good, neither should not trump legs. In that case I wish I could blow out their tires as the male dicks on mountain bikes power through another crowded pavement which isn’t shared use, and they know it. Having argued with them, they turn out to be quite often car drivers too and have that entitled ‘I’ll go where I f**king want’ mentality.
Here in central Texas, I’ve pulled these out of my feet, my dog’s paws, tires and more.
I hear you.
Those goatheads are evil.
Goathead is an annual weed in the caltrop family.
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