Bicycle Salmon, How I Despise Thee

[lph]

Yah, these are maybe the only cyclist group that will really make my blood boil. I seem to mostly find them moving uphill, they seem to think that because they are moving slowly it doesn't really matter which side they are on. But if I'm coming fast down a hill, using my designated space between cars on one side and the sidewalk on the other side, I have just nowhere to go if one of these dorks turn up. Plus they're totally unpredictable. Which side does a salmon swerve to?

Maybe they're the same people who use the bike lanes to park their cars in, "just for a moment cause I have to pick up something".

[hebe]

How annoying and dangerous!

I saw someone cycling the wrong way up a cycle lane on a two way street, if that makes sense. The cycle lane there is about 60cm wide so really not wide enough to abuse it.

[Eden]

Maybe its because we don't have mandatory bike lanes here, but I encounter very, very few people doing this around here. There's a one way street on my commute that I occasionally see people going the wrong way on - but sometimes I probably see as many cars go the wrong way too!

I do sometimes encounter wrong way joggers on MUPs - I think its because they've been trained to jog on the left when they are using the shoulder of the *road* and they think it translates to the trail too - which is dead wrong. I almost ran into (I think) the same dude several times last winter because he would insist on jogging on the wrong side, with no lights or reflective material on a path with a bunch of blind curves after dark. To add to it, he was always a complete @ss about it - when he was the one on the wrong side doing the stupid stuff.

[jelee1311]

I just encountered 2 salmon today on my ride 1 wasn't wearing a helmet the other one almost hit me when I wouldn't move over, kid(20 ish)thought I wasn't serious. I got mad, I yelled, I got over it, I wished a bad case of jock itch on him.

[DMC]

I just encountered 2 salmon today on my ride 1 wasn't wearing a helmet the other one almost hit me when I wouldn't move over, kid(20 ish)thought I wasn't serious. I got mad, I yelled, I got over it, I wished a bad case of jock itch on him.

They are almost always NOT wearing helmets, aren't they? Some people just have a death wish.

[Crankin]

I am seeing more and more salmon. First, it was just immigrants who are used to riding that way. But now, I see a lot of older people doing this. Well, older as in older than me . My drive home from my internship parallels a bike path for about half of the way. I see a lot of horrible stuff when these riders are getting on/off the path, crossing a main road, to get into their neighborhoods. On Monday I seriously considered stopping and helping a couple who were riding the wrong way down Rt. 27 to make a left.
What gets me is when I see a parent riding the wrong way, with their kid following. Of course, the kid is wearing a helmet (usually on incorrectly) and the parent is not.

[PamNY]

Explanatory note: NYC has a lot of one-way streets -- in fact, in Manhattan most of the streets are one way. Probably in Brooklyn too.

This doesn't justify anything, but it does explain why we see so much wrong-way biking.

[emily_in_nc]

Wrong-way biking is the worst. And the worst of the worst is if you're taking a semi-blind right turn and they're on the wrong side taking a left; a head-on collision is just waiting to happen. Been way too close to this situation before, and it's scary and infuriating!