Rusty, I'm a bike geek, so let me chime in. My pet peeve is drivers who have a problem with the idea that they need to accommodate other people, whether that's another car, someone on a bike or someone crossing the street.Quote from: Rusty Shackleford on October 23, 2009, 10:34:02 PM* Making a right-hand turn from your lane instead of pulling off onto the shoulder to make the turn.This is really annoying when people don't know how to deal with bike lanes. The dashed line means you are supposed to pull into the bike lane before making a right turn. This lets the bikes pass you on the left. Unless you're reckless about it, nobody is going to ride into you. I am not going to ride to the right of a car with its right turn signal on. Too many bad stories.Quote from: Rusty Shackleford on October 23, 2009, 10:34:02 PM* Bicycle riders who think their bikes are cars. Roads are for cars. Stay on the sidewalk.I know it sucks to be trapped in a car while watching other people who are free and having fun. Roads were paved originally for bicycles, actually. (Before bike tires, they were gravel and wood and dirt which was OK for stage coaches and the like.) Riding on the sidewalk is illegal in most places. Drivers and their vehicles need to be licensed and registered. Quote from: Rusty Shackleford on October 23, 2009, 10:34:02 PM* Bicycle riders who go out of their way to be obnoxious. Some roads will have bike lanes, but where do most riders insist on riding? Directly on top of the line separating the car lane from the bike lane. I really think it kills these people that a special bike lane prevents them from directly interfering with traffic so they ride as close as they can to the cars to be as annoying as they can be. Some bicyclists are obnoxious, I agree. On the other hand, debris often ends up the bike lane, and it's not the kind of thing you can see from a car. In some places, the bike lane is so narrow that there is nowhere to go if a parked car opens its door. In California and everywhere else I'm aware of, cyclists are not forced to ride in an unsafe lane. Drivers and cyclists are looking for completely different hazards, but why assume a bike rider is trying to annoy you? Believe me, the last thing I want to do is to set off somebody's road rage, but I'd rather have someone honk at me instead of risk that they didn't see me at all.I suppose the other problem is with the helmets, you can't tell which of us are your SLY friends but there are a lot of us out there, so a little patience and space helps!
* Making a right-hand turn from your lane instead of pulling off onto the shoulder to make the turn.
* Bicycle riders who think their bikes are cars. Roads are for cars. Stay on the sidewalk.
* Bicycle riders who go out of their way to be obnoxious. Some roads will have bike lanes, but where do most riders insist on riding? Directly on top of the line separating the car lane from the bike lane. I really think it kills these people that a special bike lane prevents them from directly interfering with traffic so they ride as close as they can to the cars to be as annoying as they can be.
As for the roads being originally built for bikes, well, I'm sure they were originally built for horse or foot travel. But here in the 21st century roads are primarily designed and utilized by automobiles and bike riders should respect their place.
As for having to stay towards the center of the road because there could be debris on the road... I can't gather much sympathy because it means you must be riding too fast for the conditions. For example, I may want to ride 100MPH in my car to the next town but the road conditions would never safely tolerate that. Therefore, while you may be able to maintain 45MPH on a bike, if you cannot do it safely and keep track of debris on the road then you should not be doing it!
Quote from: (|8-) on October 24, 2009, 07:11:51 PMRusty, I'm a bike geek, so let me chime in. My pet peeve is drivers who have a problem with the idea that they need to accommodate other people, whether that's another car, someone on a bike or someone crossing the street.Quote from: Rusty Shackleford on October 23, 2009, 10:34:02 PM* Making a right-hand turn from your lane instead of pulling off onto the shoulder to make the turn.This is really annoying when people don't know how to deal with bike lanes. The dashed line means you are supposed to pull into the bike lane before making a right turn. This lets the bikes pass you on the left. Unless you're reckless about it, nobody is going to ride into you. I am not going to ride to the right of a car with its right turn signal on. Too many bad stories.Quote from: Rusty Shackleford on October 23, 2009, 10:34:02 PM* Bicycle riders who think their bikes are cars. Roads are for cars. Stay on the sidewalk.I know it sucks to be trapped in a car while watching other people who are free and having fun. Roads were paved originally for bicycles, actually. (Before bike tires, they were gravel and wood and dirt which was OK for stage coaches and the like.) Riding on the sidewalk is illegal in most places. Drivers and their vehicles need to be licensed and registered. Quote from: Rusty Shackleford on October 23, 2009, 10:34:02 PM* Bicycle riders who go out of their way to be obnoxious. Some roads will have bike lanes, but where do most riders insist on riding? Directly on top of the line separating the car lane from the bike lane. I really think it kills these people that a special bike lane prevents them from directly interfering with traffic so they ride as close as they can to the cars to be as annoying as they can be. Some bicyclists are obnoxious, I agree. On the other hand, debris often ends up the bike lane, and it's not the kind of thing you can see from a car. In some places, the bike lane is so narrow that there is nowhere to go if a parked car opens its door. In California and everywhere else I'm aware of, cyclists are not forced to ride in an unsafe lane. Drivers and cyclists are looking for completely different hazards, but why assume a bike rider is trying to annoy you? Believe me, the last thing I want to do is to set off somebody's road rage, but I'd rather have someone honk at me instead of risk that they didn't see me at all.I suppose the other problem is with the helmets, you can't tell which of us are your SLY friends but there are a lot of us out there, so a little patience and space helps! No, no, no... The right-hand turn complaints had nothing to do with bike lanes. I was just talking about in general. We see this here a lot in Florida where people will just stop on the road and then make their right-hand turn into a shopping center. It makes me wish I had some old clunker that I could drive into the rear of theirs.But I don't have a problem with the idea of biker riders using the highways, but in practice what I see is a consistent behavior of smug superiority coming from them. They seem to revel in the idea that THEY have the right-of-way and enjoy knowing others must look out for them. That's why they don't like the sidewalks. In the sidewalks it would change the rules and force THEM to look out for the right-of-way of pedestrians.As for the roads being originally built for bikes, well, I'm sure they were originally built for horse or foot travel. But here in the 21st century roads are primarily designed and utilized by automobiles and bike riders should respect their place.Before my bike died a slow and pathetic death I used to ride my bike all the time. I loved it, and it was bizarre riding into town that first time because the view from the bike was somehow as foreign as driving down some unseen town. But I knew my place: I stayed on the sidewalk and always made sure I interfered with cars as little as possible because the roads are for them. I am only a visitor. I do the same thing when I jog: I keep out of the way of cars. In both cases this is not entirely for safety reasons because it's out of respect for the true road pecking order. Once again, when I jog, the roads are for cars. I am only a visitor. When I approach an intersection with a vehicle I make a big curve around the back of their vehicle so that they are not held up by someone screwing around on foot. As for having to stay towards the center of the road because there could be debris on the road... I can't gather much sympathy because it means you must be riding too fast for the conditions. For example, I may want to ride 100MPH in my car to the next town but the road conditions would never safely tolerate that. Therefore, while you may be able to maintain 45MPH on a bike, if you cannot do it safely and keep track of debris on the road then you should not be doing it!
I can't stand tailgaters....especially when I'm on my motorcycle. There's no good reason to tailgate anybody.Last week, while on my bike I had a guy in a car tailgating me....so I sped up to get away from him. A couple miles down the road I'm sitting at a red light and I see jiom in my mirror flying up behind me and not slowing down. I was about ready to bail out to the right when he slammed on the brakes....stopped about 3 feet behind me and the MOVED UP so that his front bumper was even with the front of my rear tire about 1 foot from me. That's when I noticed he was gnawing on a huge sandwhich. I flipped up the face on my modular helmet and told him if he didn't back off i was going to cram the sandwich up his ass so it would be easier to digest.Funny....... he didn't get within a 1/4 mile of me for the next 18 miles...........
It seems as though I touched a nerve with my response. I didn't know that tailgating was one of the intrinsic guarantees of the Constitution. That being said, Rob, I will attempt to address your concerns in the order that they are posted.First, with regards to the cars being capable of exceeding the speed limit my thinking, and I'm probably wrong here, is that in these times of economic strife it would just make more sense to have a car that would max out at 70 or 75 mph and get 40 or 50 mpg. Of course cars like the Toyota Prius or the Honda Insight can both exceed the speed limit so I fear that this one will remain a paradox.Second, regarding the cops you, dear moderator, are dead on with this one. When I was on the street I, and most of my bros in blue, had a loose rule that we didn't write anything less than 17 over. Part of my personal reasoning for this was that I liked to have tickets stand up in court and getting too nitpicky with the speed was a good way to develop a chicken$h!t rep among the attorneys. Also, I didn't want to spend too much time operating radar because there were bigger fish to fry in Wauktown, like my daily surveillance at Dunkin' Donuts. And, slower traffic should indeed stay to the right. On this point I had to re-read my original post because I feared that I had made a statement to the effect that I liked to be a rolling roadblock in the "fast" lane. Thankfully, in re-reading my post I found that I did not make such a statement. In point of fact I prefer the right lane (or the center if I'm on a 3 lane) and I leave the left one to the Grand Prix wannabes. Like I said, I hate being tailgated. I'm not going to set up a situation whence it becomes inevitable. Prix is pronounced Pree, right?Third, regarding who's the biggest *&^%$%&(**? Well, since that came from one of the moderators I must assume that it's me. Don't worry, it's not the first time I've been referred to that way (or worse) and I take only minor offense. What puzzles me, though, is the part about the license plate. Is the prerequisite for being an *&^%$%&(** being from the state of Wisconsin or in my reference in the license plate to Buddha? In any case I'm getting a little nervous on this one because it seemed somewhat personal in nature. BTW, did I spell *&^%$%&(** correctly?On the fourth point, I was totally unaware that any kind of accurate qualitative analysis had been done concerning the driving abilities of us Cheeseheads as opposed to people from Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, or the always feared FIBs. In any case, I think you are headed down the right road, hopefully in the unobstructed left lane, with this. Drivers up here are the reason I sold my motorcycle a few years back. Even though up here in the woods most of our county/state highways are 2 lane (one going this way and one going that way) tailgaters abound. Drunks, too. It took me a while to get used to it having been brought up in Logan Square in Chi and spending 20 years driving a squad car 8 hours a day in Waukegan. But one thing that cheeseheads are apparently better at than FIBs, at least this year, is football. This pains me greatly as I am a Bears fan and my buddies up here all like.....the Packers. Of course the Vikings are atop the division but they are led by #4, who is arguably the Ultimate Cheesehead. Whew, now that we've dealt with that I hope the other mods don't pull this thread, this is really fun.
What's an FIB?
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