Cyclists - Share the Road, Don't Hog It

[MalReynolds]

I’m only 20.

I should start by saying that I learned to ride a bike when I was 17. I know, it’s kind of late in the game to learn how to ride a bike when you can pretty much drive a car, but I was taking a kinesiology class at my High School (Gym, for you plebs) and one of the things we had to do was ride a bike.

I should also mention that my neighborhood is nothing but a mile long hill that I live at the bottom of, so learning to ride a bike was never a high priority for me. I could piddle around in the cul-de-sac where my house was located, or I could try and make it up the hill and to the dangerous wooded road, where it was another 2 miles up hill to anything that resembled a convenience store.

I had my neighbor, who was 10, teach me to ride a bike. It was embarrassing, but as I am a fairly large man, it was actually quite simple. I had a ton of leg power by the time I was 17, and I didn’t have problems with my balance, so it was fairly fun. I would ride up the hill about half way and coast back down on my bike. It beat the hell out of the Razor scooter I had – and good, too, because those things had weight limits I didn’t even know about.

How painful would that have been to be riding down the mile long hill only to have the single, small piece of metal beneath my feet snap and send me sliding down the hill?

Yeah. I thought so.

But I digress.

One of the things we learned during our cyclist activities, besides the hand signals and how the Tour de France works, was that cyclists are bound to follow the same rules of the road as an automobile driver. That is, they must stop at stoplights. They must stop at 4 way stops. They must signal lane changes.

There are even caveats, like you have to ride close to the shoulder if traffic is heavy – although this one is more common sense than anything else.

What bothers me is that despite the fact that these rules are hammered into our heads in high school, when it gets right down to it, cyclists never, ever follow the same rules as drivers.

Why?

Hell if I know. I think it’s great and noble that you’re either

a: trying to lose weight
b: trying to save nature
c: showing of your killer legs
d: trying to lose weight, save nature, and show off your killer legs (also known as: all of the above)

but it simply isn’t fair. You’re far more fragile on the road than most cyclists, so when you zip through a four way stop without stopping or gun it through a red light, you really should know that you’re breaking a law. Leaving a smaller carbon foot print is absolutely no reason for you to get clemency when breaking these laws.

It also seems that most cyclists I know have a superiority complex. Some will ride as close to the middle of the lane as they can so you can’t pass without breaking the law and driving for a long stretch in the double yellow.

You can honk all you want, but the most you’ll get is the finger – which, I found from my class, is not an acceptable way to signal a lane change.

The law clearly tries to get us to share the road – it would just be painfully unnecessary to try and make separate bike roads for all the cyclists out there – so why oh why do most cyclists feel that they are entitled to more than their fair share?

I would think as a consumer, who more readily supports the economy by purchasing fuel and actually driving a lethal weapon, I would get more of the road that we’re supposed to be sharing. After all, the bike takes up less than a foot of room, but no. Cyclists are entitled, somewhat unfairly, to half the road.

But that’s just the thing. Cyclists never share the road. They hog the road. And when you tell them otherwise, they’re less than kind to you.

So, fellow FFR users, tell me, why do you think cyclists are such enormous douche bags? Have you had a horrible experience while battling a cyclist over a lane change? Are you a cyclist that could perhaps share some insight into why your brethren can be such asses?

Mal

PS: Also, riding next to each other? Cute, but also illegal. God, pick up a DoT manual.

[stretchypanda]

People ride their bikes on the sidewalks at Baylor. Pushing through the crowds of people WALKING on the SIDEWALK because they can't be bothered to get on the goddamn road like they're supposed to.

I am often tempted to reach out and shove them into traffic. Idiots.

[Squeek]

On our campus, people drive golf carts on the sidewalks.

[Tokzic]

I used to bike around a lot, and I have discovered something.

No matter where you do it, people are pissed off at you.

I'm a really conservative cyclist, and I never make jackass maneuvers or break laws. I'll even go so far as to wait longer than I should for cars to clear an intersection before me. And yet I still get loads of attitude.

On residential streets, I tend to stick to roads, since you can just move around traffic and I'm not out to try to keep up with cars going 40 km/h on a mountain bike. Every ten or so cars, someone gives me the finger, or honks at me, despite the fact that I am getting out of their way. What?

Main roads are even worse. Whenever traffic's bad I get on the sidewalks and go slowly, and alert pedestrians with a bell long before I get to them so that I don't run right through them. Almost every time I do this, I get a dirty look. Sometimes people tell me off (one guy once said "get on the ****ing road you ****ing juvenile piece of ****") - I've even had a few people chase me or try to push me off my bike, or on the road, or whatever their goal is to prove some point.

It's kind of frustrating to have a bike to save time on short trips only to have everyone hate you for it.

[PsYcHoZeRoSk8eR]

People are idiots, it's almost that simple.