living with cars on the road

Weirdly enough around here it is the opposite of what Grog and Xeney have experienced. When I go out in my team kit I usually get better treatment by cars than when I take the big old Marin out in my street clothes.

Yeah, I see a lot of those "hardcore bikers" (motorcycles) with ginormous bikes. Two weeks ago, a woman dropped her bike at a one-way stop T-section. Cars just kept goin by, not caring and she couldnt pick the bike up. My bf and I helped her move it to the side of the road and it took all 3 of us to get it up and the lady and I arent small. One of the first things she said was that it was her first time on a bike. :eek: :eek: She was wearing a helmet and she wasnt hurt, but still, she couldnt pick up the bike and it was her first time riding. What if this were in a major intersection! Not cool. Way to contribute to traffic problems:eek:

I get treated better when I'm on my commuter wearing street clothes than when I'm in my cycling clothes and on my road bike. I stick more to the less-traveled neighborhood streets on the commute, though, vs. the county roads with more car traffic (but wider lanes and shoulders) for the longer rides. Maybe that's part of it.

Last week, our city's Metropolitan Planning Organization had a public meeting to discuss future plans for the biking/jogging/walking path system. I went to that meeting and they had a presentation with statistics from a Federal government study about cycling safety. They did stress that a cyclist is 1.8 times more likely to be struck by a car when riding on a bike path vs. riding on the road. The most common location for the crashes is where the paths intersect with driveways (ie., business entrances).

So one of the proposed solutions for the bike path system is "road diet" (ie., restripe 2 or 3 of the 8 or 9 main east-west roads so that instead of four car lanes with no median, there will be two car lanes with a turn lane in the middle plus a bike lane on the far right in each direction). I'm all for a good bike system but YEEESH! Sharing the road with car traffic squeezed down to one lane each direction - no passing, etc. - to make room for BIKES??? Boy, if drivers didn't hate us already!

Deb

It may not be as bad as it sounds. They did that to a main-road-through-campus here, and now the lanes are wider so there's room for me, and cars can duck out into that turn lane to get around . Drivers are seldom obnoxious, tho' last week a probably intoxicated male hollered and stuck his hand out in the general direction of my face... then when I got right behind them in the queue at the light, leaned out and said, "Is there a PROBLEM?"... but they were pulling away. (It told me that he expected me to scoot to the front of the queue, which I avoid on the "don't make 'em pass me twice" principle and *certainly* when somebody has already been obnoxious in passing... though I had a brief visualization of just grabbing that outstretched hand knowing he might break a finger as they pulled away... tho' I'd prob'ly have gone down...)

They did that to several major streets in my city as well, and although I was really skeptical at first, they've worked out pretty well. I am generally nervous in bike lanes, but these bike lanes are a bit wider than the norm, and traffic has slowed down (or been redirected onto other streets or the freeway), and I find myself using those routes all the time.

Those are one-way streets that were previously three lanes, now down to two lanes with wide bike lanes on each side (one-way bike lanes, each going the same direction as the traffic). If you're in the left-hand bike lane you have to be sure to catch a driver's eye when a left turn comes up in order to avoid getting creamed, but I have found that the drivers on those streets are pretty attentive and even friendly.

how nice to have mindful drivers.

had two incidents yesterday for me. car coming from the opposite direction decides to make a left hand turn right in front of me. YEEKS :eek: :eek: both drivers locked their wheel. I locked up my wheels too. I don't want my bike to be cremed.

Then with the warm weather, too many beach goers who stepped off the sidewalk right in front of you GRRRR!!! They think I can stop in time?? Cars are doing 30MPH, why don't they step in front of a car instead??

Training ride yesterday was avoidance training.

My other pet peeve. Car drivers always want to go faster than you even if its unsafe for ALL OF US. i.e. coming down a winding narrow road. Yesterday was no exception. but with one added twist. He started to hit the brakes after he got in front of me. I had to brake around hairpin turns... GRRR!!! (and I'm no where near my old speed)

You may ask why not take a different route? All these dogem took place on my way to my training ground up in Palos Verdes Ca.

hope for a better ride the next time. (or maybe I should really not ride anymore. Last hospital stay I said no more)

Shawn