Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Let Me Have It. I Am a Bicyclist

Oh man, not me. I do everything humanly possible to peacefully coexist on the roadways. I make myself very easy to avoid. I have read books on cycling safety and study it regularly. I ride with my eyes wide open and my head on a swivel. There's not a minute of my time on a public road that I am not processing safety and riding with an eye toward cooperative use. I ride with the attitude that if someone hits me they pulled off a remarkably moronic feat.

I never realized that northwest LA had so many cyclists that they had become a burden.

I expect people to be moronic, we all have moronic episodes, some more so than others.

You pretty much nailed that.

We don't have many. My wife and I travel a good bit. They are all over California and Colorado even on mountain and rural roads. Motorcycles also, but like I said motorcycles move along. Fort Collins Colorado was the worst I ever saw, even at night.

The part that scares me is my own bouts of moron.

Last one was in Montana, in a cold rain towards evening. I was standing while on my bikes on the shoulder of the highway trying to get the wet screen on my iPhone to work. my back to oncoming traffic.

Wasn’t paying attention, a semi riding the fog stripe missed me by way-too-close, woulda killed me in an instant. I’d have never known what hit me.

All day long, for many days in a row, I had been paying attention, that one human lapse coulda killed me.

Actually, I retired as a transportation manager for a County so I know quite a bit about transportation funding. I did it for a living.

The first article you sent says car don’t pay taxes. That’s true. But it doesn’t mention fuel taxes, or Highway Users Revenue Fund, or HURF. That’s collected by the government for every gallon or gas or diesel collected. Depends on the individual State, but it’s typically around $.40/gallon. That money is then dispersed to fund road construction and maintenance. Which by the way, are not getting a passing grade like most of the infrastructure (dams, bridges, water delivery systems, roads, etc.) rating here in the US.

So no, that bicycle shoulder on the side of the road is not in any way paid directly for that shoulder. True, that bicyclist probably buys gas and diesel too, but so does everyone else. But they don’t get special stuff for their fuel tax. By the bicycle community does.

If bicyclist had to pay say $20/day to use that bike path or shoulder construction and maintenance, I am guessing many wouldn’t. But they are getting it free now. And fricken complain about the condition of what they are getting free and don’t abide by traffic laws like the car next to them has to. The car that has fuel in it that paid the tax. Which that bike didn’t.

That’s messed up.

Pedestrians have a right to walk on a shoulders. Just as a bicyclist does. Or a farm tractor (if he is not burning the highway diesel - there are two kinds of diesel sold here in the US - stuff that is taxed for roads and stuff that isn’t). But when you boil it down, none are directly paying for that shoulder or sidewalk.

My rub is not so much that, it’s that the bicycle community can be so demanding about what they are getting for free. Not one time have I heard that farmer complain about the condition of a road that they aren’t directly paying to use. But the bicycle community is in your face about it. That’s what gets me. It’s that snobbish elitist attitude.

Bicycles are all over the place on the Colorado front range. I encounter them frequently when I am out there. Yeah, I have to let off the gas at times. Hustle around them at times. Shake my head wondering sometimes. That said, I'd still much rather deal with them than dumb, dangerous, distracted and impaired drivers that litter our roadways. In the grand scheme of things cyclists simply aren't a blip on the radar.

When driving the mountain west the cyclists I have encountered were easy to negotiate. When I have bicycled the mountain west I did it on relatively lightly traveled roadways. Motorists would sometimes come up behind me on a blind bend and have to wait a few seconds to safely get around. They were always respectful and were met with a friendly wave. When there was any real estate on the right of the white line, I'd move to the outside of it so motorists wouldn't have to slow at all. If it looked like a motorist would have to slow for more than a few seconds, sometimes I'd pull off the road and stop so they could get around.

Last summer I was pedaling CO 114 between Gunnison and Saguache. The western section of that road is narrow with nothing to the right of the white fog line. At one point I had a semi coming from in front of me and one coming from behind me. They were going to arrive at the same time. I dismounted and got off on the little stretch of land between the road and the ditch. It was unnerving as the semi passed within a few feet at 55 MPH. It was inconvenient for me. Ultimately it was the right thing to do. When semis would come from behind and there was no oncoming traffic, they happily moved well over when they passed. They were greeted with a friendly wave. To me it was an ideal environment of road users treating each other with respect.

At one point on that road I had not been passed in 20 minutes or so. It seemed odd to me. There wasn't much traffic, but a car would come from behind every 3-4 minutes. I had pulled off the road to take a pic. An RV passed me and had a dozen or so vehicles stacked up behind it. There were a number of places the RV could have pulled off and let traffic vent.

So you do understand that cyclists do pay for roads. In every jurisdiction I have studied, ad valorem taxes pay for municipality and county roads and general tax fund money is used for state and federal roads. Glad we were able to dispense with the myth that cyclists don't pay for roads.

Bicyclists aren't getting anything for free as long as ad valorem and general tax fund money pays for any of the building or maintenance of roads.

You invited opinions. You got opinions. Bicyclists are not overly appreciated by a lot of folks who have to navigate around them and anticipate what they might do in order to not inadvertently kill them.

And one of my goals was to offer facts to counter opinions that are based on falsehoods. Who doesn't like to learn?

Road bicycling was my recovery exercise after I had a hip and knee replacement, so now I can hunt deer in the mountains. I’m all for it. That said, I don’t like the jerky club riders, they are a bunch of weenies!

As far as road taxes go, so what if bicyclist don’t pay direct fees/taxes, almost all of them drive cars and pay taxes for the roads anyway.

laughing. If you don't want answers that upset you, don't ask questions. The only one struggling with reality is you trying to invent one that fits your kooky world view. No [bleep] wonder most folks hate dickhead bicyclists.

This^^^^

I wonder how many innocent people's lives have been ruined while trying to make a living by accidently hitting some asswhole on a bike who died because he was in the right.

Don't let my correction of errors lead you to believe I am upset. I invited input for the express purpose of clearing up bad information. Every post is an opportunity to for me to present facts.

And that's the attitude many dead bikers had.

How many dead bicyclists have you interviewed? Have you not yet learned that you need to bring your A game with me?