OTHER CITIES: 
Let's Go Ride a Bike - Part 2 of 5
- Posted by
- Filed in Sports
- February 19, 2006
Being a cyclist is tricky. If you're on the sidewalk you frighten the pedestrians and if you're on the road you're frightened by the motorists. We all know what the law is but damn there are a lot of us that make ourselves quite at home on the pavement.
Dude, that's wrong. If you're going to save the environment while toning your legs then the aggravation and fear those raging motorists like to dole it is just a risk you'll have to take. Pedestrians don't have any protective gear on and the last thing they expect while window shopping is a tire biting their heel or a handlebar in the rib. If it's absolutely necessary to be on the sidewalk then we should act like it's the greatest privilege in the world to wheel about our fellow bipeds. What always gets me is when I see a cyclist with full-on armour careening down a sidewalk - they've only gotten all decked out because they thing a pedestrian might deck them for their shamelessness.
Then there are the motorists. Why be a hater? Why do you hate cyclists? Are we too puny? Are we too poor? Are we too righteous? Or are we too elitist with our own little lane? You do realize we have minimal protection right? No steel, no airbag, no seatbelt. Our life is basically free for the taking but so is a kitten's and you wouldn't purposely sideswipe a baby tabby. Or would you?
Perhaps it's because of those few cyclists that have given the other, more conscientious, bikers a bad name. Like those that talk on their cell phone, cut cars off, run reds, don't shoulder check, use crosswalks to bypass the no left-turn rule. Those bikers are dumb and disrespectful but remember, two wrongs don't make a right. If anything, just keep in mind that running over a bike courier will not help with the flow of traffic.
I didn't get the whole "flow of traffic" thing until I got my license (less than two years ago) but ever since I've been a motorist I keep that in mind when I'm walking, driving or biking. Even on the dance floor it's important. So, please, regardless of what mode of transportation you use let's all remember that we're on public property and we've all got an important place to be. We don't need no ICBC claim to hamper our tight schedules.
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Wait, somebody reads my posts? Huh. I'll have to be more careful about composing them.
In most cases, I think what drives driver-cyclist "interactions" is impatience and confusion. The source of the impatience is self-evident, and in the case of cyclists riding legally, the drivers are just going to have to live with that.
The confusion is that you just don't see a lot of riders in traffic. On the bike routes in Vancouver, you will see something amounting to a real volume of cyclists (a critical mass, if you will), but those routes are deliberately (albeit softly) segregated from the mass of car traffic.
I commute in the suburbs, and on very busy routes. I do see other cyclists, but it's the same five or six riders every day, versus the hundreds of cars. When I'm driving to and fro, especially outside the downtown core, most trips I probably overtake (or otherwise have to interacti with as traffic) zero or one cyclists. I know how to drive around bikes, but it's still an oddity. How much more so for those who are not bike-aware in some way.