Cyclists

[bomelia]

...like I said "stupid people vs conscientous people". Does not matter how many wheels they have under their arse (and pistons or lack thereof)

Al, you posed some thoughtful, and well articulated points.

Me personally? If a sidewalk is available (or bike path) I use it. I only ride on roads with wide shoulders. I never would challenge a hunk of mass 100 times my own. Thats stupid. However, I hate those basturds who swing in to the wide shoulder so as to phuk with me. They are some of the same multi-wheeled idiots I was referring to. If they hurt me and I survive it, I will end up living in their (ahem, my) new house.

Now, lets talk about stupid truck drivers...you know, the ones that pull out and block all uphill progress just so as to not lose 10 mph? Or perhaps those folks that enter onto an entrance ramp, and stop, waiting for all traffic to pass so they can pull out onto a multi-lane hiway...

Mike

[Ron61]

Mike,

A lot of good points have been made in this thread. One thing you said about people stopping on an entrance ramp really hit home. I don't know if it is still this way, but years ago when they had me working in San Jose on a problem I started to go onto the freeway which was 4 lanes wide in each direction at that point and was really ticked off at the long line of traffic stopped on the ramp until I got up to where I could see. They actually had stop lights at the freeway entrance and it was a huge fine if you never stopped. Really made it more dangerous I thought as now you are trying to get up speed from a dead stop to blend in with traffic flowing at 60/65 MPH. Hopefully they have changed this by now. And it is 10 miles from my house to Redding and I have had to follow some of the darn 18 wheelers at 50MPH because one pulls out and instead of passing drives alongside a line of six or more for the whole 10 miles until I get to where I can turn off the freeway.

Ron

[Al Bockman]

Mike,

Thanks for the help, although by some of your comments I'm not sure if you're on my side of the fence on this or not! If anybody has been riding with something up their butt we know how it got there.

Barring another personal attack, I'm done with this discussion.

What did we learn from this thread?

1. Al is very glad he does not live in Texas.
2. Manners, civility, courtesy, respect and tolerance on the roadways can be placed on the endangered list.
3. Some people who cannot be inconvenienced by others are not averse to using violence to show their displeasure.

Guys, this has been a real eye opener for me. I didn't expect this level of violence and intolerance from fellow Cobra drivers. It's a good thing that large numbers of people don't have the same intolerant attitude toward noisy, little, gas-guzzling cars without current safety devices that require special legislation to operate on public roads as some CC members have toward cyclists.

As a final gesture of understanding and good will to bridge the gap between us, if any of you ever need a character witness in a vehicular assault trial involving you hitting a cyclist, feel free to let me know.

Al

[69boss429]

After reading all of the posts on this thread I would like to share an incident that happened to me.
And,I find this incident and countless others involvieng cyclists on the roadways(at least where I live) to be common and frequently dangerous for cyclists and motorists.The arrogence of most,not all,cyclists is what's so amazing.
While traveling on a narrow country road ,in my Ford Expedition, with curves and hills,I came up on a cyclist traveling in the same direction.
He was well into my lane and I had to slow down from the 35mph speed limit to wait for a stretch I could see far enough ahead to pass.Having driven this road thousands of times I knew what was ahead and passed him several hundred yards before a stop sign,at which point I swung back into the lane and stopped.
Well,it seems the cyclist felt he didn't have to stop at the posted sign and there was not enough room to get by my stopped vehicle on the right so he proceeded to swing out to the left and try to pass while I was stopped.
As I pulled away from the stop sign he was right on my bumper yelling and showing his IQ with one hand.
The fortunate thing for him was there was no one coming the other way as it is a blind spot over a short hill before coming to the stop sign from the other direction.Yet,because I followed all legal procedures he was upset.
Sorry to be so windy,but these common practices by cyclists are what get most motorists upset.
A little toot on the horn politely asking them to move over a couple feet almost always gets the 1 finger wave from them.
Respect,they need to earn it !

[392cobra]

Al,
I don't ride a pedal bike,I do ride a Harley though.

You can be sure we both have some of the same problems with cagers (cars/trucks).
Pulling out in front of us,cutting us off,throwing crap out the window in our paths,trying to "share" the same lane we are in,etc.,etc.. Generally being invisible to them.

So I ride like I'm invisible.

So relax,I was just having fun yanking your chain.