I don't hate bicyclists. I just think many of them are extremely foolish in the risks they take with their lives, which is OK with me except that their risk involves drivers of other vehicles. That kind are arrogant elitists who insist that all traffic and the rest of the world give way, go around them no matter how inconvenient or unsafe, and leave their little slowly moving patch of roadway sacrosanct. FWIW, on the stretch of curvy highway heavy with logging traffic, I have come around a corner with rockslide boulders on the road, deer and elk in the road, a tree down in the dark one morning.. and have hit none of them. None of them have been as much hassle or hazard as a bicyclist claiming the lane as his and requiring everyone to cross the center line to go around him.
I do hate some bicycle traffic channels that are designed to cause bike/vehicle collisions for those who obey the traffic signs. Don't know if it is still there but there used to be a designed disaster bike lane on a quarter mile long hill in the north end of the Seattle sprawl. A four lane street with a 35 mph speed limit ran straight down the medium steep slope, with a couple of cross streets, the one near the bottom of the hill with a stop light. The traffic folks added a bike lane on the far right hand side of the downhill lanes.
Bikes going down the hill could easily get up to 35 mph. A driver going downhill who was turning right at a green stoplight could have a bicyclist speeding past him on his right perfectly timed to hit the side of his car. It is normally illegal to make a right turn from a center lane, due to the risk of a vehicle on the right of the one turning... but this fiasco is DESIGNED that way! Both the car turning right and the cyclist going straight through have a green light!
I learned to not only look for pedestrians and cross traffic but to watch for some hard-to-see nitwit bicyclist with a green light whizzing past me on my right as I made a right turn. I never hit one but it was not due to cyclist caution, ever. They had a green light and seemed oblivious to other traffic. That suicide bike lane is one of the reasons I'm glad I moved.
Okanagan is spot on.
I ride a fair bit in the warmer months but limit it to back roads and trails. I get fairly disgusted with what I call the "roadie" mentality by many bikers that maintain the attitude that Okanagan describes. Arrogance and stupidity rules the day with many of these people and they pay the price for it at times.
Paul, you are correct that the amount of time it takes a driver to move around a slower "biker" is not much in the big scheme of things, in many cases, but as Billy Goat Gruff mentioned, the traffic here in this part of MT. has gotten too crazy for sane people to spend much time on the highways riding their bikes. I used to ride sections of our local HWY 93 to access forest service roads but have stopped that because of of increased traffic and the danger involved. Instead I drive my truck to the trailhead/FS road for access. When I do ride pavement on the farm roads I ride outside the white line if there is one and am more than willing to pull off into the ditch to let traffic go by if there may be a safety issue. It takes me no longer to do that and get going again than it does the motorist to slow down and go around me. And contrary to popular opinion, I defer to laws of physics long before I ever look to traffic laws to claim innocence.
I have never been to Louisiana, but I can tell you(as an example) anyone who rides a bike on what we refer to as the High Line(hwy 2) from the Flathead in the west corner of the state east to where SamO lives is an idiot. This is a narrow two lane hwy with 70 mph speed limits and many miles between towns where people need to make up time traveling long distances to get the basics, like food.
I had a near head on with two "roadies" coming off Marias pass on hwy 2 last summer when trying to pass a motor home. There was plenty of time between oncoming traffic but the two bikers were in a section of highway with guard rail on both sides. Because of the angle of the curve and timing they were hidden behind the motor home because of their size. A car would be easy to see but two bikers side by side hunched over their handle bars hugging the inside left lane guard rail disappeared until I moved into the left lane to pass. As soon as I did I saw them and hit the breaks and moved back into my lane. They may have had the right to ride the road but they were idiots for doing so, especially on that section during summer time traffic.
On the flip side, albeit very rarely, I've had a motorist act like a total Ricardo Cabeza for no reason other than they hate "bikers" and honk just as they pass, try to side swipe me with their mirrors, make threats etc. This has occurred while riding on back roads, no oncoming traffic, or any other excuse for them to be a-holes, and me minding my own business, riding in a safe manner.
Thing is, a-holes come in all shapes and sizes, operating all kinds of vehicles/ objects. It's part of life and the trick is to hold blame where it belongs, with the individual, not the entire population who use the same "thing" they are associated with. Kinda like guns. ,
Last edited by SBTCO; 01/05/20.
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