You're Welcome...?

Powering up…zap…crackle…

…all right, Igor…

Throw the Switch!

Sarcasm generator ON

Now, maybe it's the fact that I'm a bit under the weather today (which has nothing to do with the fact that it's very cold and rainy so I won't be riding) or maybe I have just reached my annoyance tolerance level, but...

I have heard from a lot of people who don’t think that bikes should have to share the road with cars. I am beginning to think that this is a good idea. Mind you, my solution and their solution may not be identical.

I remember having a conversation with a woman who said, “I think people should be allowed to ride their bicycles all they want, so long as they don’t do it on the road.”

“Where should they do it, then?” I naively asked.

“I don’t know.” The unspoken finish to that comment was, “And I don’t care.”

Lest you think that I’m being unfair by including an unspoken comment, take my word for it. It was hanging in the air will almost bell-like clarity. Here’s a blog I came across where things are spoken very clearly indeed.

It is often suggested that automobile drivers should learn to share the road with bicyclists. In my opinion, it is foolhardy and dangerous for bicyclists to be on the highways with motorists, period. Bicycles no more belong on roadways than autos belong on bike paths.

Well, you can’t ask for much more clarity than that, can you? So, pray tell, why not? I'm sure the writer will enlighten us.

Bicycles are slow, small and difficult to see; autos may weigh tons, and, with their automatic transmissions, are powerful and fast at a light touch of the foot. There is a question of timing and visibility here; and should a tragedy occur, proof of who is at fault would do nothing to mend bodies.

Now, the interesting thing about this comment is that it shows some understanding of the situation. The last line, especially, is the writer speaking the truth. Good for him. And yet…

Too many cyclists are clueless as to rules of the road — either for automobiles or for bicycles. This complicates matters for motorists, who are required to pass a written examination on rules of the road, and pass a road test to obtain a driver’s license. And young teenagers are required to attend a 30-hour driver-ed course, to boot. This is gross and unfair to motorists, whom we expect to share the road with bicyclists.

Well, hold up there, Tex. Does the guy think that cyclists don’t drive cars? As a matter of fact, nearly every single cyclist that I know has a driver’s license and has thus been through the driver’s ed course and has taken the written exam and road test to get that license. As a matter of fact, the vast majority of cyclist do know the rules of the road.

Mind you, they don’t always obey them, but that isn’t because they don’t know them, but that's a whole other post which I probably won't write.

This unfairness is magnified immensely when contrasting the mandatory costs of having the two types of vehicles use our highways. Registration and license fees, taxes and a sensible insurance package with liability and collision coverage may cost in the thousands of dollars for a responsible car owner but perhaps zero for unwitting cyclists. Should a bicyclist be the cause of an accident, there would be no mandatory liability insurance for any injured parties; in all probability too, in court, the cyclist would walk.

Okay, I was spluttering so hard I had to clean up my keyboard after I read this one. (Don't dwell on that picture for your own sake.) The cyclist would walk???!!!!!!! Everybody has their own opinion…but some of us know the facts.

Even drivers of automobiles say they are afraid to drive on the highways. Yet they have the car’s protection and the stability of four wheels. “Driving is no pleasure,” they say. They will even say, “It’s crazy out there — like a racetrack, a war zone.” No one owns the roads; bicyclists are permitted and certainly welcome on them. Still, it is folly and dangerous for them to be out there.

Bicyclists are certainly welcome on them. Well, isn’t that nice.

*Sigh*

Are we, in fact, welcome on those roads?

Well, regardless, I intend to keep riding on them. I hope you do, too.

My solution to all of this is to get more drivers on bikes. After all, the vast majority of us know what the road is like from behind a windshield, but there are a lot of drivers out there who have no idea what it's like over the handlebars. Now that's a situation that needs to be rectified!

See you on the road.

Tomorrow I shall be happy and light :-)

Two Wheel Trouble?

Two-wheel troublemaking: Have motorists let bicyclist 'rights' go too far?

Everytime this “writer” mentions cyclists rights, the word is always in quotes. I don't think he likes us very much.

For a decade, urban bicyclists have become more brash. In some cities, groups such as Critical Mass organized mass rush-hour bike rides that tied traffic in knots, delaying commuters rides' home by minutes or hours. They are hardly tactics that will win sympathy from drivers.

Well, that’s true. This may be how to influence people, but I don't suppose it's how to win friends.

In the aftermath and as their numbers have increased, cyclists have become emboldened to take over the road. That is, instead of riding to the right or on the shoulder, some are now riding in the center of the lane.

Taking the lane? Horrors!!

Two incidents underscore how they are putting themselves in danger. One incident involved a cyclist hit and killed by accident. The other case is a motorist who is alleged to have tried to make bicyclists crash into his car on purpose:

The writer is very concerned about the poor cyclists. That’s nice, isn’t it?

In the first case, a driver on the way to work struck a St. Mary's County, Md., bicyclist earlier this month and killed him, police told The Washington Post. The driver, a 20-year-old in her Honda Accord, told police she never saw the biker. But the accident might have been prevented if the 47-year-old bicyclist had been riding in the right, not in the dead center, of the lane, a major contributor to the accident.

Or course, the accident might also have been prevented in the 20-year-old driver had been paying attention to what was right in front of her.

In the second case, a Los Angeles doctor is on trial for allegedly slamming the brakes on his car to cause two bikers to run into him. They did, suffering bloody injuries. The doctor, Charles Christopher Thompson, was allegedly peeved over having to slow down for three bikers blocking his path, refusing to pull to the right and flipping him off as he passed. He is on trial for having pulled in front of them and, according to testimony, hitting the brakes so that bikes were sure to hit. One biker needed 90 stitches.

The doctor allegedly slammed on his brakes because he was allegedly peeved, but the cyclists didn’t allegedly refuse to pull to the right and didn’t allegedly flip him off? There’s certainly no bias in this writing, is there? What's the hippocratic oath say? First, do no harm.

By the way, that trial is now over. Thompson was convicted of six felonies: two counts each of assault with a deadly weapon and battery with serious bodily injury as well as reckless driving causing specified injury and mayhem. He was also convicted of misdemeanor reckless driving.

For a little perspective, Drive On sought out Jeff Peel, a program specialist heading the League of American Bicycle's campaign for Bicycle Friendly Communities. His contention is that the road is "not motorist space. It's people space." Bicyclists are road users, too, even if they travel at the fraction of the speed of a car. In fact, he says, that's good.

"The idea is you are slowing traffic, which may be frustrating to some motorists but making the road safer for everyone," Peel says. "Creating safer roadways and right-of-ways for all users sometimes requires taking space away from automobiles."

Taking space away from cars? Ouch.

Allegedly taking space away from cars.

When late to work, it pains a driver to slow down for a bunch of bicyclists hogging the roadway. In the past, you might have tried to steer around them. These days, they are right in front of the car.

Oh, my goodness, the poor driver. And those cyclists are hogging the roadway. Cars would never do that, now would they? Oh, dear, I guess the sarcasm meter is a little high today. Sorry about that.

It will be interesting to see how far this goes, whether bicyclists are allowed to stay in the middle of the highway. As the deaths mount, maybe it will become clear they need ride to the right.

Again, it’s all about the cyclists for this writer.

Okay, so perhaps I’ve been a bit sarcastic here, but is anyone else annoyed by the way this article was written? Or, for that matter, by my comments about this article? Let's be equal opportunity, after all.

You know, most drivers are not cyclists, but most cyclists are drivers. I’ve been in my car and late for work, but that isn’t the fault or the problem of the cyclist out on the road.

Cyclists aren’t always polite to the drivers of cars, which strikes me as unwise. If that driver gets ticked off and buzzes me or hits me, I’m going to feel it more than he will, so I’ll limit myself to a shake of the head at an annoying driver rather than a more emphatic gesture.

Still we can still ride, and that's all to the good.

See you on the road.

A Passing Thing

When I got home Monday, almost the first words I heard when I walked in the door were, "Mom doesn't want you to ride to work anymore."

Hm.

The my Lovely Lovely said, "You're not doing this anymore." Since I was in the process of taking off my helmet, gloves and RoadId (not to mention having heard the previous comment - it's amazing how I can pick up on subtle clues like that) I gather that she was talking about riding to work.

"Why not?" I naively asked.

"It's too hot."

That one stopped me. I was prepared for "it's not safe," but I wasn't ready for that one.

Fortunately, a clever reply leaped immediately into my mind.

"No it's not."

Okay, so apparently it wasn't that clever, but it was all I had.

"Yes it is. And it isn't safe." Well, I rode in the belly of the 2000 lb beast yesterday, but we talked some more and I was able to ride into work today without any hard feelings.

It felt pretty warm this morning, though the weather report said it was only 73. I have a feeling the humidity is was through the roof. I took it easy since I didn't want to offend anybody at work. Of course, a good sweaty odor keeps people away so you can get your work done...

And I decided to count how many cars passed me and how many of them passed me safely. To be fair (in other words, to make sure I wasn't being overly sensitive) I only counted it as unsafe if it made say, "Yikes!" or some other expletive. If all I said was "Well...." I counted it as safe.

The tally - 63 of 84 cars passed me safely. I wheeled my bike into my office this morning and found this on my door:


I'm going to leave it there. It made me laugh out loud. (In case you don't recognize the strip, it's Pearls Before Swine.) Well, now I'm at work, so I'd better do some.

See you on the road.

Monday, Monday

What is it about Mondays?

Last Monday, we were on a group ride when a car pulled up beside us and a lady within said, “Y’all are gonna get killed.”

Now, I don’t know if the was a threat, a prediction or a friendly warning, but as the car pulled away it was followed by waves and cries of “Thank you! Have a nice day!” (A 2000 lb beast is much bigger than a bicycle and, as a consequence, inertia is not on our side, so let’s be nice out there.”

Now it is true that the road is not a place where never is heard a discouraging word, and all of the “Have a nice day’s” were followed by a single discouraging word, but I think the car was too far away by that time for the word to have been heard.

Today, I commuted in to work. I had some errands to run on my lunch break, which I was in the process of doing – climbing a long hill with the temperature in the mideighties and the humidity unpleasantly high when I saw a pedestrian ahead of me. We were both obeying the law, so we were on the same side of the road headed in opposite directions. I glance behind me – clear, so I pulled out to go around him. I nodded at him, and he said, “You’re about to get hit bro’.”

Now, the look on his face and the tone of his voice indicated to me that he was merely giving me a friendly warning. There was no car behind me, so he clearly didn’t mean “right now,” though.
Is this sort of thing going to happen to me every Monday?

A little ahead, still recovering from the hill, I saw a sign that said, “Begin 35 1000 feet ahead.”
My comment?

“I hope that’s not a command.”

Well, it’s hard to be clever when you’re as hot as I was and have just climbed a hill.

Actually, despite nearly being plastered by a pickup truck and being told I was about to get hit, today has been a pretty good riding day. If I hadn’t commuted, I wouldn’t have gotten any saddle time at all, and here I got six miles to work, three miles to where my errands were, three miles back to work, and I’ll get six miles back home later on today.

Thinking about this, I was struck with how differently cyclists view the road from other people. A friend was aghast that I was riding my bike to work because it was “such a long way.” I explained that I viewed six miles as a short way, but I think we had to agree to disagree on that one.

There’s a spot on the road I was riding where the shoulder shrinks from two feet wide to less than two inches wide. I remember approaching that spot in the 2000 lb beast and spotting a cyclist ahead of me. There was enough room to pass, but I knew from personal experience how unpleasant it is when a car passes you at that point, so I waited and passed at a better spot. I knew the road and did it without thinking about it much.

It occurs to me that the road would be a nicer place if drivers were forced to ride the roads on a bike for awhile so that they would have the right perspective on things.

Anyway, later in the day I met the cyclist who turned out to be someone I knew and who had recognized my car. She thanked me for what I had done.

There’s a moral in there somewhere.

See you on the road.

Safety

I stumbled across a website called “How not to get hit by cars” which I thought I’d check out. After all, I’d like to know how not to get hit by cars, wouldn’t you? I thought the website had a lot of good information, but I have to admit that I got distracted from it by the Great Cycling Safety Controversy.

Apparently, not everyone can agree on how not to get hit by cars.

This is different from the controversy about whether you should wear a helmet or not when you ride. (You should, by the way. See how effectively I dealt with that controversy?)

The controversy seems to involve two schools of thought, one fostered by a man by the name of Bluejay and the other fostered by a man by the name of (appropriately enough) Foster who adds

M.S., P.E.
Cycling Transportation Engineer Consulting Engineer,
Expert Witness & Educator in Effective Cycling,
Bicycles, Highways & Bikeways, Traffic Laws

after his name, all of which sounds very impressive.

Mr. Bluejay (I’m sorry, that just sounds like someone out of a book by Beatrix Potter) doesn’t offer us any of his qualifications for dispensing safety information, he just dispenses the information and leaves it up to the reader to decide on its value.

So, what’s the difference?

Here is the crux of Mr. Foster’s philosophy:

Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles.

That is the guiding principle that cyclists should recognize and government and society should obey. But government does its best to prevent cyclists from recognizing this principle.

He goes on to add:

Bikeways neither make cycling much safer nor reduce the skill required. They probably do the reverse.

Government knows that bikeways don't make cycling safer, but it uses the public superstition that they do.

Well, I will admit to you that I know that a bicycle is classified as a vehicle with all of the rights and privileges and responsibilities appertaining thereunto. (If you aren’t a lawyer, how often do you get to use a phrase like appertaining thereunto?) I also have to admit that I like Bikeways (by which I am assuming the author means bike lanes). We don’t have many of them around these parts, but I like them.

Well, actually, we have one bike lane around here. It's about two miles long. Oh, and it isn't continuous. It reaches a corner and then disappears. Half a mile later, at another corner, it reappears. What you're supposed to do between those two corners, I don't know. Teleport, probably.

Mr. Bluejay’s method can be summed up like this:

Ride as if you were invisible.

It's often helpful to ride in such a way that motorists won't hit you even if they don't see you. You're not trying to BE invisible, you're trying to make it irrelevant whether cars see you or not.

In other words, wear bright colors and lights and anything else that will make you stand out, but assume that the driver of that car doesn’t see you and act accordingly.

I like this advice. I like this advice very much.

Mr. Bluejay also says that sometimes obeying the law may be hazardous to your health.

Here’s a question for you –

You are a law abiding cyclist on a two lane road. You want to turn left, but you have to wait for oncoming traffic to get out of the way. Do you:

1. stay in the middle of the lane with your arm stuck out indicating your upcoming turn while hoping that no car is going to come up from behind you and plaster you across the pavement
2. pull your bike off the road and wait for traffic to clear and then move across to where you want to be
   
3. decide that you didn’t really need to make that left hand turn right there and maybe you’ll just keep going straight for awhile

A vehicle would certainly chose 1., right? But is it safe? You tell me.

On a group ride a couple of days ago there were about twenty of us. We came up to a stop light which changed to red on us before the entire group got across. Some riders ran the light, others hit the brakes and waited.

Everyone has different ideas, and thinking about them all is making my head hurt. I think I'll go for a ride. If I can figure what to do, that is.

See you on the road.

Cars and Things

As far as I can tell, most drivers are not actively trying to kill bicyclists. They just don't care whether we live or die. If a driver wants to turn right 6 inches in front of me without signaling, that is, apparently, my problem,
-Del Dickson

In 15 years of riding and racing, there were so many times when trucks and cars passed by just a bit too close. Sometimes they’d be so close I could feel the vacuum-like force that is typical of a large vehicle passing at high speed. It’s amazing how easy it was to brush off all those close calls and keep riding, never really conscious of the minute difference that separated all those moments from the one that landed me in a hospital.
-Diana Panchyk

Virtually every cyclist, and certainly every roadie, has had more than one close call with a motorist who made too close a pass ─ sometimes unintentionally, but sometimes intentionally.
-Bob Mionske

You know, every time I read or hear about a cyclist getting hit by a car, it makes me feel a little twitchy on my next ride. When I hear a car approaching from behind, my back kind of prickles. After Dave had his encounter with a car, I thought a lot about it on my next ride, but I realized that Dave would hate to be the reason anybody stopped riding.

I read all of the statements above in the same day and then went out for a ride. It was a short one – twenty miles – but it was over a route that involved a fair amount of climbing, helped (if that is the word I want) by a screaming (and chilly) headwind. I was faced with the same conundrum that hits me every year when it starts to get cold. How do I dress?

In the beginning, I usually get it wrong. This time I was underdressed, and, despite all the work I was doing and the heat it generated, I was cold.

And twitchy. Let’s not forget the twitchy part.

But I have to admit that the vast majority of the cars who passed me did so not only safely, but courteously. Of course, all it takes is one person who’s inattentive or actively hostile to a guy on a bike to ruin your day or month or year or even decade.

So why ride?

That’s the very question my mother (who still worries about me) asks from time to time. She sees the health benefits (cardio, pulmonary, etc.) and she also sees the health risks (SPLAT!!!!!!!!!!!), and the latter agitates her more than the former comforts her.

I’ve certainly had enough people tell me that riding a bike on the road is dangerous.

I’ve also had someone say to me, “I don’t mind if people want to ride their bikes, just so long as they don’t do it on the road.”

“Where should they do it?” I naively asked.

“I don’t know.”

Not very helpful, really.

So I still ride on the road, but what do I do to protect myself out on the road?

Well, to be honest, there isn’t all that much you can do to protect yourself from a rampaging 2000 lb beast even if said beast is only going thirty-five miles an hour and is being driven by someone who is paying attention and values the lives of others.

I do have a Road ID that I wear containing some vital contact information. Granted, that won’t do much to protect me from getting hit in the first place, but it might help me out afterwards.

Other than that, be visible, be predictable, use common sense and then don’t fret about it too much because you’ll only torture yourself internally and end up as an unhappy person who used to ride and now sits in a corner staring at the microwave thinking it’s the TV set and wondering if all shows are this boring and wishing you were in the saddle instead, and nobody wants that, right?

You know what? I’m going for a ride.

See you on the road.