It happens. I ride a bicycle to work when I can, and there is always some jerk on the road intent on trying to ruin my day. Unfortunately, a great many FReepers seem to hold anyone who rides a bicycle in utter disdain.
Well to take that to the extreme, there are a-holes in cars who will steer INTO a puddle to splash people on the sidewalk too. And I’ll bet that happens more often than a driver trying to “challenge” a bicyclist.
I can understand when there is no path for them but I just don’t get it when there is a bike path built for them and they still use the road. All throughout my neighborhood there are county built bike paths which they don’t use instead they insist on biking on the 45 mph road and wonder why people in cars get pissed.
They must be fat. ;-)
The utter disdain, although it may not apply to you personally, is well-earned. The bicyclists here in LA have a very bad, aggressive attitude, as if they own the roads. They ignore intersection rules, which evidently do not belong to them, and they are adversarial.
Funny, because they are just about standing in traffic, if facts were part of the equation. They impede the flow of traffic, ride in large clumps that force cars to go 12 mph, etc.
They have earned their reputation, imho.
“It happens. I ride a bicycle to work when I can, and there is always some jerk on the road intent on trying to ruin my day. Unfortunately, a great many FReepers seem to hold anyone who rides a bicycle in utter disdain”
Rightly so. I drive to work on a 2 lane road (speed limit 40) and its common to see some idiot biker riding in the middle of the road doing 15 mph even though there is 10 foot wide bike path that runs parallel to the roadway. Militant bikers suck.
Yes, and bicyclists ride with the angels...
Thanks for the laugh.
I bicycle too but the unfortunate aspect of bike riding vs. vehicles is that almost all of today's roads were designed in width for vehicles only. The natural response of a driver, as you probably well know, is to drift to the left of the bicyclist in order to prepare for any veering of the cyclist to his left due to any unanticipated obstacle in his path.......Bicycle riders are intruders in that safety zone.....
With most vehicles today being SUV's, the average width is over 6 1/2 feet which only leaves a distance of 5 1/2 feet between curb and the vehicle who stays on the right side of the road. Bicyclists who claim their right of way are riding in a zone only about 5 1/2 feet wide..........In my opinion, that is a definite danger zone!
Why, do you ask? Because of the manhole covers lining every street or highway that will cause the bike rider to swerve to his left in order to avoid them and thus putting them in the vehicle's rightful zone..........
Until bicycle riders are able to convince their communities to expand the roads and highways to accomodate them, they had better be prepared to accept the harassment they will inevitably receive from the vehicle drivers..........And as long as the cyclists continue to demand their "right of way", there will continue to be confrontations between the cyclist and the driver............
Tombstone of a cyclist: "He had the right of way"..........