Posted on 05/19/2021 11:48:32 PM PDT by 4Runner
It's the idiots behind the wheel that are texting or talking on their cell phones.
“Cycling is inherently dangerous, even given the likely fault of the motorist in this instance.”
In fact, it’s hard to think of a hobby more dangerous. Where I live they just take up traffic lanes. Sure, most drivers manage to get around them, but counting on EVERY driver to do so, for thousands of miles, starts pushing one’s luck. And these deaths could be avoided, as there are options for getting exercise short of sticking one selves onto highways filled with cars and trucks.
When I lived in Wichita Falls, Texas I was biking about 100 miles a week with the bicycling club on empty Farm to Market roads.
I moved to healthy Greenvilles SC, thinking it would be a perfect place for a guy like me. At the first Bike Club meeting there were people missing arms and legs and they memorialized somebody who was hit by a car and killed.
That was pretty much it for me and biking.
I was just thinking the same thing, no physical barrier is just asking for an accident. I believe it to be foolish to allow bicycles on any public road with a speed limit over 20 mph. A quick search shows the average speed in a bike lane to be 12-16 mph. Evidently drifting outside your lane is so common that most states now have rumble strips on the outside of exterior lanes to let people know they’re drifting outside the roadway. We’ve got a lot of two lane blacktops in the rural area’s and it’s pretty common to come around a curve or over a hill and find a couple of folks riding bicycles in the road. Had a local female Doctor got killed a couple of years ago nth of town riding a back road. Had a young lady get killed last year riding in a service road by I-20.
My dad was in a serious biking accident this week, a loose dog ran out at him while riding in from the country into a local village. He, and other cyclist like us, did nothing wrong. The dog was off the owners property. The illegal immigrant who owns the dog likely has no insurance and my family will be stuck paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bills. There is no incentive for the people to do the proper thing, chaining their dog, because financially and criminally, they have no liability due to their economic and immigrant status.
Sorry, you’re all just wrong. You need to drive safely, put your cell phones down, quit drinking and smoking pot while driving, and keep your dog tied up. Driving, regardless of cyclist or not, is a dangerous act for someone who is distracted. Northern Indiana has issues with drivers hitting kids at bus stops, and Amish in buggies. I hear no one here blaming children or the Amish, and cyclist shouldn’t be blamed either for impatience speeders who have zero respect for another’s life, liberty or property.
How is it that any of you are Conservatives and yet you have no respect for the life, liberty and property of another person.... Even when they are annoying to you? This sounds like liberal talk, not Right thinking people.
The road is not your personal fun zone where you may do whatever you want, and I mean that towards cyclists too. But sometimes cyclists ride the way they do for a reason, and not for the purpose of ruining your chance to drive dangerously whenever you want. Pot holes, traffic ahead, hills, wind, and your vehicle all make a difference in how a rider is cycling. Cyclist try to avoid pot holes, animals, bad drivers, etc. We move to the center up a hill so you don’t pass us, not only so we don’t get hurt, but for your safety as well.
Let he who is without bad road usage cast the first stone.
This is a tragedy. No doubt about it. However, bikes and cars do not belong on the same road together, paths or no paths. Soft-bodied humans riding on unprotected “vehicles” are no match for 2,000 pounds of motorized metal force.
It’s physics. It’s reality.
A truly dedicated bike path would be a separate STRONGLY barriered zone. That is not what we build.
A lot of the FM roads here in Texas have speed limits of 65-75 mile per hour speed limits. If your hauling a load of water, oil or just a trailer full of farm equipment, coming over a hill or around a curve and into a cyclist or pack of
cyclists running 15 mph can put you in a ditch. That’s the absolute worst place to be riding bikes. In no way should they be allowed to share the same lanes as motor vehicles. In Texas you can be given a citation for impeding traffic, running 15 in a 45 to 75 definitely qualifies for impeding traffic.
“Around me bicyclsts do not understand there are laws and road rules for them as well.”
Bumpty bump bump!!
I live near Tallahassee. There are bike paths everywhere. Two roads are already very narrow because they have been declared “canopy” roads. They are the only two major routes from the northeast section of the city where there is a large number of remote subdivisions. At rush-hour the traffic is backed up for miles. These roads are designated for bikes and sport happy little signs saying to drive safely and share the road with bikes. But, the roads are already narrower than standard roads. The political purpose of the canopy designation and the interwoven jogging and biking paths that periodically cross these roads, is to prevent any development outside of Tallahassee to the northeast, where there is a huge amount of good land for development. (It hasn’t worked and it never would have worked, but there’s the “stop” mechanism still in place despite this. Politically, no elected official could either widen the roads or outlaw biking/jogging across these thoroughfares.)
A cop told me, approximately, “Yeah, we are out there several times a month for car/bike/jogger hits. A lot of them are fatal. And, no, it’s kept out of the news. Anyone who uses the paths or rides a bike on those roads is insane.”
Having ridden a bike on roads large enough to accommodate them, I have still had close calls. Then, on successive days. after a series of near misses by the same woman driving her BMW, I read a book titled, “The Sociopath Next Door.” According to the author, one in ten people are sociopaths (form no emotional connection with others) and that means out of every ten cars passing you, blipping the wheel and clipping you is an option for at least one of the drivers. Not once did this woman ever glance at me, but each time she went from straddling the centerline to forcing me to bail out in the ditch as her tires left the pavement. I never road a bike again.
F’er should be executed!!
That's a good point, but in my (professional) view it has nothing to do with the speed of traffic on the road. It has everything to do with the size and weight of a motorized vehicle compared to the bike, and the operating configuration where the cyclist has his back to the traffic in which he operates (as opposed to pedestrians, who have a clear view in both directions when crossing a street at a crosswalk).
In professional settings, I usually demonstrate the idiocy of these bike lanes by rattling off a list of all the protective measures that have been added to passenger vehicles over the years: seat belts, air bags, crash-protection technology, rollover protection, etc. Then I point out that the only "protective measures" the cyclist has in a bike lane on a public street are a helmet and a pavement marking. In my humble opinion, no responsible engineer should consider this an adequately safe roadway configuration under any circumstances.
That’s what I thought when I read the headline.
In this case, there was a physical separation.
They take up traffic lanes... Legally. Because it’s allowable. Let me guess... You want to ban bikes from roads?
Word.
Bingo! I saw the carnage coming when they started converting road shoulders to 'bicycle lanes'. Stupid.
Is the “physical separation” just horizontal clearance with continuous pavement along the paved road, or is there a curb or other barrier between the roadway and the bike lane?
It was an entirely separate roadway. The driver left the road, crossed a 7 foot wide grassy swale and killed the cyclist. All the road engineers usually say is “Well, was she wearing a helmet?”
Well, you've answered this perfectly. Thank you!
I'm not even sure I'd consider this a "bike lane" in the nomenclature I use in the industry. It sounds like it's basically a wide sidewalk or multi-purpose path within the road right-of-way.
These days they need to engineer for drivers who are higher than a kite.
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