[cyclotic]

Skip,

Actually, in both collisions I saw, the cyclist went down and was injured. Also was bigger than the blader. One case was an accident. The other may have been a purposeful hit by the biker. He tried to sue the girl on blades. However, he still got injured pretty badly.

I agree and rag on poor bikers who do not respect the rules of the road. However, let's differentiate between a bike rider and a cyclist. Bike riders generally are riding a trashy bike, wearing jeans or cut offs, no helmet, lights or other safety equipment and often ride late at night and on the wrong side of the road.

A true cyclist wears safety gear. Spandex, (yea, you look like a dork, but the benefits of performance clothing after 50-100 miles of riding far outweigh the appearance)helmet. A cyclist will ride the road, but generaly as near the edge as is safe.

I occasionally will jump a red light. However, my justification is that I can get far enough ahead of traffic so as to allow the cars to spread out a little and cause little or no interference to traffic. If I see that I'm backing up traffic, I'll try to pull over, speed up, slow down or whatever else I can do to not be an impediment.

Another analogy. My drive to work is about 15 miles. Using the same route, it takes me 54 minutes to ride my bike. 53 minutes by car.

[SGCOS]

...Using the same route, it takes me 54 minutes to ride my bike. 53 minutes by car.

"If you don't like the way I drive, get off the trail!"

&^)

[Skip Ripley]

I have no problems with people who are safe and aware. I have as much patience as I can spare with the clueless newbies who don't know any better. It's the people that know better and still endanger others that piss me off.
Maybe I'm biased, but where I skate, most of those people are cyclists.