It's Not a Bike Accident When a Car Hits a Rider

Of course there are state laws and of course cars could brake or slow down and of course the occasional douchebag roadie could smarten up and stop triggering road rage. But I doubt it's going to change driver behavior. Whenever I'm on two wheels I assume I'm invisible to all the drivers except the ones who want to kill me.

One thing that frightens me is the difference in driver behavior when I ride with a safety message jersey - e.g., "DON'T RUN ME OVER" or "THREE FEET, IT'S THE LAW." Those get me a half-lane or full lane of clearance from 9 out of 10 passing cars. It's not like I'm invisible otherwise - bright jerseys and blinkies galore. But if I don't literally spell it out, drivers don't get it, and only 1 out of 10 would give me that clearance.

PS - Garmin Varia rear radar system = best bike $$ ever spent.

I don't care how dorky my bar end mirror looks, it gives a massive amount of presence of mind when riding on the road.

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Originally Posted by Peruvian

You may want to read the AK bike laws first. They are not exactly progressive when it comes to cyclists.

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I did....and, no, they're not. But they also don't allow GIANT DAMN AIRHORNS just b/c a driver is annoyed that they have to wait an entire 30seconds to get by someone.

I wrote, way earlier in the thread, that I understand...cyclists can be GIANT dicks and waiting behind them can be frustrating. But the idea that it's OK to fuck with them, run them off the road, or whatever is crazy to me.

That jerk on a bike could, at the same time, be a loving father to a 3yr old...or maybe a surgeon at a children's hospital...or a nurse who spent the last year doing COVID shifts at the hospital.

Many drivers should lighten up. As an added bonus, it's prolly good for their mental health to not get worked up over something so trivial as a cyclist slowing their progress.

But what if the cyclist is a local republican council member, telemarketer, used car salesman or cat lover?

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Originally Posted by Vt-Freeheel

But what if the cyclist is a local republican council member, telemarketer, used car salesman or cat lover?

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Well, fuck that guy


Sent from my iPhone using TGR Forums

"and"..."or"?

Yes

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Originally Posted by smartyiak

I did....and, no, they're not. But they also don't allow GIANT DAMN AIRHORNS just b/c a driver is annoyed that they have to wait an entire 30seconds to get by someone.

I wrote, way earlier in the thread, that I understand...cyclists can be GIANT dicks and waiting behind them can be frustrating. But the idea that it's OK to fuck with them, run them off the road, or whatever is crazy to me.

That jerk on a bike could, at the same time, be a loving father to a 3yr old...or maybe a surgeon at a children's hospital...or a nurse who spent the last year doing COVID shifts at the hospital.

Many drivers should lighten up. As an added bonus, it's prolly good for their mental health to not get worked up over something so trivial as a cyclist slowing their progress.

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Unless you happen to be an ambulance in Pitkin County, Colorado... you know as well as I that it very rarely has anything to do with "a cyclist slowing their progress"...

It's road bikers "having to" play in the fucking highway and increasing the anxiety and consternation of every driver who has to crowd the centerline and oncoming traffic to avoid turning you into a spandex grease spot...just like unsafe drivers increase anxiety and consternation. You're demanding little fuckers. You make the road more hazardous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR7U1HIhxfA

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Originally Posted by altasnob

To pay for things like this, the US's first (and only) bridge that is only open to bikes, pedestrians, and transit, and not cars.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...e_with_MAX.jpg

I don't like those bike taxes though, because they kill local bike shops and force us to buy everything on Jenson.

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So a $15 bridge tax on a $6000 road bike drives you road bikers to fuck your local bike shop and buy online?
You really do suck on so many levels.

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Originally Posted by highangle

It doesn't have a damn thing to do with your "cyclist slowing their progress" strawman, road biker.
It's road bikers "having to" play in the fucking highway and increasing the anxiety and consternation of every driver who has to crowd the centerline and oncoming traffic to avoid turning you into black jelly and tooth fragments...just like unsafe drivers. You're demanding little fuckers. You make the road more hazardous.

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I'm sorry...It has to do with "following the rules of the road." My point was: if you don't like the rules...change them. Lobby your legislature to change it to "bikes must use the bike lane."

Until you do, if you can't share the road with law abiding citizens without "anxiety and consternation" then perhaps you don't have the appropriate disposition to pilot a several thousand pound vehicle. I mean, not that you've shown this disposition at all in the 20 pages of this thread.

Whoever said "it should be much, much harder to get a driver's license" was spot on.

riding along in the bike lane, driver pulls up next to me and slows down, then speeds up enough to cut in front of me without signaling and stops. i hit the brakes and start to pass them on the left whereupon they make a uturn without signaling and I hit the brakes again. Just another day. I don't know that drivers are any worse to bikes than they are to other drivers, or get triggered more by bikes than other drivers--it's just human beings being entitled and/or paying attention to 3 other things besides driving.
I would like to see a function in the car that follows your eyes and if they aren't constantly checking the mirrors and looking ahead or if they look anywhere else for more than 1/2 second the gradually slows a very powerful buzzer in the car seat is set off.

Buzzer = electric jolt to the genitals, right??

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Originally Posted by Vt-Freeheel

But what if the cyclist is a local republican council member, telemarketer, used car salesman or cat lover?

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Don't forget, that Republican bike rider owns a gun and will shoot at the first sign that you are infringing on their freedumbs.

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Originally Posted by PB

Buzzer = electric jolt to the genitals, right??

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"Honey, your eyes are darting everywhere and what's that noise coming from the seat?"

"Don't bother me right now I'm driving."

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Originally Posted by highangle

It's road bikers "having to" play in the fucking highway and increasing the anxiety and consternation of every driver

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You poor delicate snowflake.

God forbid you ever visit the Amish country, your heart might explode.

Hopefully its rising, but if the sun is setting here, I wouldn't be dilly dallying just watching it.

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Originally Posted by smartyiak

I'm sorry...It has to do with "following the rules of the road." My point was: if you don't like the rules...change them. Lobby your legislature to change it to "bikes must use the bike lane."

Until you do, if you can't share the road with law abiding citizens without "anxiety and consternation" then perhaps you don't have the appropriate disposition to pilot a several thousand pound vehicle. I mean, not that you've shown this disposition at all in the 20 pages of this thread.

Whoever said "it should be much, much harder to get a driver's license" was spot on.

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Meanwhile, all I need to legally haul muh $400,000 36' long 12' wide Duckworth recreational offshore fishing penis with 3x250 Hondas is a OVERSIZE banner on my 40' $220,000 diesel pusher motorhome. And that section of road along the Lake is horribly substandard, lacking shoulders, sight distance, extra width in curves, and access limits...and it hasn't had a new coat of asphalt in 22 years...

Of course I realize the solution to this inherently dangerous bicycling environment is a cycling-only suspension causeway down the middle of Kenai Lake [with a monorail bullet train], but that's the headwaters of the Kenai River, and it's over 100 fathoms deep in places, calling for long spans between cable towers and lots of extra environmental bullshit "to protect the wittle salmon" which really adds cost to the job, if you know what I mean... But it's a nonissue because a large component of road bikers will find some way the Trillion Dollar Bridge is inconvenient, or a half mile out of their way, or they're just over it and would rather ride the roads with the amateur RVers and boaters...


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Originally Posted by jackattack

You poor delicate snowflake.

God forbid you ever visit the Amish country, your heart might explode.

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God forbid you ever move to Mishawaka and give up the feel carbon fiber next to your ass... Amish buggies and wagons get waylaid on a regular basis, usually when the corn's tall and there's not enough sight distance at intersections, or there's an ice storm and they can't keep their shit any straighter than the trucks. Moreover, you should have to mount a 9" hard plastic reflective triangle facing aft on your rig too.

I spent a year in Boston commuting from Fenway to Beacon Hill via bike with no issues.

Now in my small metro west suburb I regularly bike the 1/2 mile between my house and the schools where I work.

I don't know what everyone is bitching about... [emoji38]

People just like to bitch and argue about stuff.

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Originally Posted by Toadman

Don't forget, that Republican bike rider owns a gun and will shoot at the first sign that you are infringing on their freedumbs.

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Originally Posted by highangle

Meanwhile, all I need to legally haul muh $400,000 36' long 12' wide Duckworth recreational offshore fishing penis with 3x250 Hondas is a OVERSIZE banner on my 40' $220,000 diesel pusher motorhome. And that section of road along the Lake is horribly substandard, lacking shoulders, sight distance, extra width in curves, and access limits...and it hasn't had a new coat of asphalt in 22 years...

Of course I realize the solution to this inherently dangerous bicycling environment is a cycling-only suspension causeway down the middle of Kenai Lake [with a monorail bullet train], but that's the headwaters of the Kenai River, and it's over 100 fathoms deep in places, calling for long spans between cable towers and lots of extra environmental bullshit "to protect the wittle salmon" which really adds cost to the job, if you know what I mean... But it's a nonissue because a large component of road bikers will find some way the Trillion Dollar Bridge is inconvenient, or a half mile out of their way, or they're just over it and would rather ride the roads with the amateur RVers and boaters...


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Ask HA about revising his gun rights & whether he needs to answer to anyone in that regard.
He has subtly different opinion on that than he's expressing here regarding well-established bike rights in the ROW.

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Originally Posted by ::: :::

Ask HA about revising his gun rights & whether he needs to answer to anyone in that regard.
He has subtly different opinion on that than he's expressing here regarding well-established bike rights in the ROW.

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Your utter dumbfoundment to the contrary, no one has a constitutionally protected right to use the roads. It's a privilege that can be denied by any local magistrate.

I think the "constitutionally protected" bit is the crux for you.

here's a quarter
call your mama & tell her projection is your strongest suit

“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”

― Thomas Jefferson

Jefferson belonged to an age when people had a quaint belief in moral, political, and social progress. These days I fear that the arc of the moral universe Dr. King talked about ends in a pot of gold as illusory as the one at the end of the rainbow.

Since a core of skinny-wheeled ass massagers here, for want of an effective argument pro clowns on bikes defeating the metal, seems determined to change the subject and purity test one of the more forceful antiFump loudmouth fuckheads this forum ever bred...Let me take the time from more important matters, pro bono, to remind them that there is a method to amend the foundational canon of American law to be found within the documents themselves. And if one wishes to prohibit liquor or guns or automobiles or child-abusing road bikers nationwide, as if America were as homogeneous as a minor Dutch province ... the road is well marked. Have at it.

IOW: Wrong Thread JONGs

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Originally Posted by ::: :::

Ask HA about revising his gun rights & whether he needs to answer to anyone in that regard.
He has subtly different opinion on that than he's expressing here regarding well-established bike rights in the ROW.

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I would, but I don’t think I could hear him over his choking on conservative talking points and self-aggrandizing wealth slobber.

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Originally Posted by Timberridge

People just like to bitch and argue about stuff.

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I did a bicycle-borne as-built engineering survey of a large chemical plant when I was just starting out. They made vinyl chloride monomer and had an impressive rail yard.

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Originally Posted by jackattack

I would, but I don’t think I could hear him over his choking on conservative talking points and self-aggrandizing wealth slobber.

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Highangle conservative. Heh.

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Originally Posted by jackattack

I would, but I don’t think I could hear him over his choking on conservative talking points and self-aggrandizing wealth slobber.

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Originally Posted by JimmyCarter

Highangle conservative. Heh.

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jackattack, you don't spend much time in PA [be proud of that]

but, yeah, he hearts uncle joe & is a vigorous gun proponent, nttawwt

he does seem to be trying to own the asshole schtick, for sure

"Vigorous gun proponent" heh

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Originally Posted by highangle

"Vigorous gun proponent" heh

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“It is... awesome! I mean I've only had mine for like a few months, but I'll tell you, it's like having two cocks. If one of your cocks could kill someone.”

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Originally Posted by ::: :::

jackattack, you don't spend much time in PA [be proud of that]

but, yeah, he hearts uncle joe & is a vigorous gun proponent, nttawwt

he does seem to be trying to own the asshole schtick, for sure

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Fair enough, probably just my implicit bias bubbling to the surface from my experiences cycling in rural areas having been run off the road more than once by ignorant coal rolling fuckwits. I hardly ever ride on the road anymore, despite it being my legal privilege, because it’s just not worth being flattened by a distracted or impatient, heartless, self centered person isolated in a steel cage with powered hydraulic brakes and 400 hp at their feet. If the inconvenience of my recreation and exercise slowing them down for a few seconds or a minute of their precious time is gonna cost me my life I choose to acquiesce to their ego, but that doesn’t make them right.

Don’t kill anyone. Share the road.

I’m out.

It's all about doing the safe thing.

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Originally Posted by highangle

It's all about doing the safe thing.

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How your blood pressure Brah?

Really good for my age and bone mass, but I haven't been playin' chicken with traffic in quite a while.

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Originally Posted by highangle

It's all about doing the safe thing.

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You should take your own advice.

(You know...I have this image in my mind that Highangle is actually Lance Armstrong or Katie Compton...he's just trolling all of us. Once revealed, we'll all say "well done, sir! Well done!!!)

2903 miles of bike routes added in 5 states

https://snowbrains.com/us-bicycle-ro...s-in-5-states/

What's a bike route? The bike routes I'm familiar with are streets and roads without bike lanes--separated or otherwise--that are considered good for cycling for one reason or another. I'm not sure what criteria are used to select them.

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