I feel like every time I ride my bike on the streets, it’s a war between me and the cars. People either don’t want to yield to bikes or aren’t paying enough attention to bother to look if I am there. I have to always assume that a driver is going to act like an idiot, because if I don’t, I could get hurt.
WHAT DRIVES ME CRAZY:
2. Failing to yield to me in a crosswalk when I have the "walk" sign. I have the right a way. Stop already. I know you have more important things to do than slow down for a mere bike rider, but I can sue your ass if you run over me.
3. Cutting me off. Drivers assume they can turn right in front of me without my body doing too much damage when it bounces off of their car, but it’s a dangerous gamble. I might get blood on your pretty clean car.
4. Honking and swearing at me for no apparent reason. If you are having a bad day, why don’t you go to a therapist or something. Don’t take it out on me.
5. Not giving me the legally required three feet of space. You don’t have to run me off the road. Really.
If I am not contending with idiot drivers, then I have to deal with bad street design. It’s obvious some intersections weren’t designed for anyone not in a car.
1. Intersections where I have to push the walk button in order to get across and the walk button is located in a weedy patch of gravel that I have to drag my bike over to get to. Some cities have the walk button right by the curb. Why can’t every city do that?
2. Intersections where you have to guess whether you have enough time to get through the intersection on a green light. Kudos to Phoenix for putting in countdown numbers for the light change. I wish this was everywhere.
3. Intersections that don’t have a right turn lane, but the drivers make an illegal one in the dirt on the side of the road. In one instance, I couldn’t even cross the road on the green light because cars wouldn’t yield to let me through.
4. Intersections where there is no crosswalk on the right side, so you either have to wait in the lane going straight and hope a car triggers the light or you have to cross the intersection in three places to get back to the right hand side of the road.
I don’t know if drivers are worse in big cities, but it seems like drivers in Phoenix have a need to go ten miles over the speed limit and have to be somewhere ten minutes ago. If I get a polite driver that lets me go through an four-way stop intersection, I get confused. I know some drivers hate cyclists. Some cyclists run through red lights, don’t stop at stop signs and generally act like traffic laws don’t apply to them. I think they are the exception and besides, they don’t kill anyone other than themselves if they make a mistake.
Sometimes I have a fantasy that all the cars are off the road and I can ride my bike without fearing for my life. Riding a quiet street is a relief because it restores my inner peace and I can relax. The war is over, at least for a little while. I try to ride on streets with low traffic, but you can’t totally avoid busy intersections. It helps to ride with people so that drivers are more likely to see you, but that isn’t always possible.
So, unless I want to ride on a trainer indoors all the time, which I don’t, I have to gird my loins and do battle with the metal enemies. Victory is getting home safely.
Understand....Thank God most of my riding is done on country roads. However, most of the time the vehicles are going 60-70 mph. The best thing about that is, if they hit me, I probably wouldn't live through it; no life of disability. : )
ReplyDeleteGenerally though, most of the people in the vehicles either know me or have seen me numerous times riding and most wave. We generally have a good relationship. I had a flat once and had trouble repairing it because so many stopped and asked me if I needed any help.
But I have ridden in the city too..and it is scary, real scary...It's war out there-for sure