Bike people are the worst

That all makes sense. But I don't want to be on a bike anywhere near "traffic flow." I just don't trust people to be paying attention, least of all senior citizens. At least on a motorcycle or scooter you have the benefit of the machine making noise to raise awareness of your presence. With a bike, all you have is your voice. Or maybe a cute horn. Trusting other people to react to you properly is not a game I want to play. I'd no more ride a bike in traffic than jog on the road.

 

I tend to keep my riding limited to the city and the trail that goes from Richmond to Williamsburg. I wouldn't ride in the suburbs here. Too many aggressive people going way too fast, even if there are a few roads with dedicated bike lanes. At least in the Fan/Museum District/downtown, speed is limited to 35-40 mph, just because of the amount of traffic lights.

 

A columnist on our staff (avid outdoorsman) would write a bleating heart column every time a biker got hit by a car. I would argue with him. If you don't want to get hit, stay out of the goddamn left-turn pockets. All they do it clog up traffic. He says, but they have rights. I say, bullshit, let's go back to the basics when you first learned how to ride a bike: Walk your bike across the street. Ha, take that.

 

Exactly. I remember the good old days when we used to play in the street. And you know what we'd do when a car came along? We got out of the fucking street.

 

You get used to the "sharing the road" stuff in California. And I tolerate (with gritted teeth) when there is one cyclist on a narrow road. But when there are packs, fuck em. Around my town we get packs of cyclists of 30 to 40 who just make it impossible to drive down certain roads. I almost killed a few of them when I started to enter the intersection (with the right of way) only to have one of these packs blow the stop sign.

 

On one of our club rides we had three members get hit by a driver who blew a stop sign. Do we get to say "fuck 'em" to drivers who break the law? Or should we just thank them for not killing anybody?

 

That's awful, but this is why I wouldn't want to ride in traffic, especially on the regular. You have zero protection against the idiocy of others. I'm a nervous wreck whenever I'm off the bike path and on the road, at least when my daughter and my lady friend are with me. Especially with morons texting and driving so often nowadays. I don't know how you can relax and enjoy the ride. My head would be on a swivel the whole damn time.

 

As a cyclist, I see on this thread a lot of the same misplaced aggression from drivers I see on the road.

Calm down. Jesus.

And read the fucking DMV handbook.

Thanks.

 

You go too far, sir!

 

I know, right?

Crazy!

 

Tough to train for a century ride on the 15 miles of mixed-use paved trails we have.

 

I was actually being kind of serious. When did bikers actually obtain the same rights as motorists? Has that always been a thing? Because I'd wager that most people don't know it. I certainly don't remember it being mentioned in driver ed.