Quote:
Originally Posted by Deschodt
The problem I believe is that the road sharing assumption is 100% flawed... To me it's like opening a portion of the airspace to Air force jets AND handgliders, and open some popcorn...
I mean roads were created for transport of goods and people and at some point bikes were a valid and safe option but now, it's really more of a sport/recreational activity, not a necessity for actual transport. And they aren't even paying for usage honestly. If you follow that reasoning, why not have the right to play tennis or volleyball in the middle of the road too and share with everyone (and expect to be killed)?
Doesn't help that cyclists are by and large acting like *********s (please don't pretend you've never seen it happen), and drivers..... just as much so, but at least they got armor! Plenty of blame to go around. A bike is a magical device that allows its dickish user to disrespected traffic signs and rules because you know, it's TIRING to stop (wait, wasn't it exercise?)... and also to magically to turn from a vehicle into a pedestrian, in a blink of an eye. Red light ? Zip, I'm now a pedestrian on the crosswalk... If I had a penny for each cycling idiot pulling bonehead moves in a city, or acts like a $%#$% blocking the road a 20 mph with his buddies, I'd.... nothing, because drivers are $%$#%$ too... And sometimes they cannot be expected to comprehend that the bike is magical and somehow allowed to disrespect all the rules cars should follow (but also don't)...
You need bike paths, this road sharing is nonsense... Hang glider vs jets.
|
Absolutely spot-on. Couldn't have said it better myself. There is such a disparity in mass, speed, visibility, maneuverability, and many other factors that the two simply do not belong on the
motorways together.
I don't have any qualms with someone who is actually
commuting on their bicycle. They are normally confined to urban and suburban areas and their surface streets, where traffic is moving at a much slower pace than it is out on our rural highways. They can move with, and in and around cars, busses, and trucks with little difficulty or danger.
The only ones I have had any trouble with at all are the recreational riders out in the country. Not a damn one of them is "commuting", nor is their behavior in any way "green" - they have all driven their SUV's, with their bikes on racks on the back, out from Seattle, some 20 miles away, to ride purely for fun and exercise.
As a side note, just where do they park those SUV's when they get out into "the country"? We've covered this before as well. In at least one small town out in one of our popular riding areas, they use the street front parking in a very small area, just a couple of blocks that are home to the "downtown core" of this small town. Lots of quirky little businesses whose customers rely upon that parking to do business with them. Yet it fills up with cyclists' vehicles before those businesses even open, with those vehicles sitting there most of the day. When done riding, of course, these cyclists simply load up and drive back to Seattle, having visited none of the shops whose parking they had blocked all day. Entitled pricks, one and all...
Many of them, of course, appease themselves with this kind of rot:
Quote:
Originally Posted by brshap
|
Of course they were - there weren't any goddamned cars yet.
Funny, I've seen a parallel expressed by an entirely different group - truckers. Peruse their blogs, forums, and websites and you will notice the exact same attitude. Their claim is that our interstate highway system was constructed to better haul goods during wartime and other times of emergency. Which is entirely true. Can't argue with that. But, like our entitled cyclists, they go on to claim that they therefor have some sort of "first rights" to our highways, and that private vehicles are merely "guests", or "secondary users" that they only have to tolerate, but never accommodate. Truckers' rights to our public highways trump the general public's rights, because, dammit, those roads were built for them...
Quote:
Originally Posted by brshap
And I bike as part of my commute to work every single day which saves me over 3 hours of commuting time per week. Hardly recreation. And as far as pay to play, only 40% of road construction is funded by gas and license taxes in the US, never mind the fact that a bike causes almost no degradation to a road surface compared to a passenger car or a truck which destroys roads in short order.
|
Here in Washington, it's actually 63% of our road construction and maintenance coming out of vehicle license fees, gas taxes, and the like. Which, of course, is absolutely irrelevant.
We all pay for our roads in at least some small measure, whether we even use them or not. Our roads bring us the very goods we rely upon to live and thrive (see "truckers" above). The fact that well pay for them, however, does not mean that we can each choose how to use them, in our own way, regardless of compatibility with other uses.
As Deschodt points out, I cannot pursue my favorite forms of recreation out in the middle of public roadways, just because I help pay for them. That is no justification whatsoever to, say, stretch a tennis net across a road and expect traffic to wait while we finish our point. Or set... or match... And that is
exactly what these groups of cyclists demand when they are blocking traffic.
Bicycles give an illusion of compatibility only because they are on wheels. And, in a large part, only because the majority of riders are polite and courteous, doing their best to stay out of the way and to allow motorists to pass at the earliest opportunity. There is another comparison to truckers - most of us pass, and get passed by, hundreds of semi trucks every day. They go largely unnoticed. Until, of course, the one jack ass blows it for the rest of them, and we remember him for the rest of the day... "those damn truck drivers"...
Quote:
Originally Posted by brshap
As far as following the rules, the amount of death, injury and property damage caused by bikes vs cars amounts to a rounding error. Jaywalking is illegal too but nobody cares about that, why? Because it doesn't really matter. And if a cyclists is using the lane at 20mph then you wait until its safe to pass and then do so. The amount of hate cyclists get is unreal.
|
Another totally irrelevant attempt at self appeasement that I hear all too often from cyclists. The fact that few get seriously hurt, or little property gets damaged, has exactly zilch to do with cyclists behaving like ass holes and blocking traffic. What - are the rest of us supposed to simply fall in line behind the pack doing 15-20 mph in a 55-60 mph zone, for mile after mile after mile as they refuse to move right to let us by, as they pass turnout after turnout without using any of them, while we content ourselves with how much "safer" they are? Nonsense.
And yes, the amount of hate cyclists get is unreal. A few bad apples have made it that way. The cycling community has done
nothing in the 45 years I've been cycling to dress these people.
Nothing. As a matter of fact, reading cycling blogs and forums leaves one with the distinct impression that these people are somehow celebrated, or worshipped, as some kind of erstwhile "bad asses" or "bad boyze" in spandex... I would even go so far as to say it's gotten
worse over the years, what with these dicks being able to share their stories of "daring-do" with one another across the interwebs...