i saw some major injustice being enacted here, so i HAD to act.
do NOT ride your bicycle opposing the flow of traffic. ever. there is
not one, single solitary positive point about this. as one who has ridden
bikes on many long trips, across many states, and logging many miles i think
i can speak with a great deal of experience. cons- (there arent any pros)
a) you increase the velocity of a head on collision by a considerable ammount.
b) roads are designed for traffic going ONE way. where are your red lights
if youre going the wrong way? your stop signs? as a bicyclist you ARE a
vehicle and you must abide by the laws, if not only to prevent YOU from
great bodily harm. tell me this: how are you to make a right hand turn? bzzt.
c) oncoming cyclists scare the hell out of drivers. a small steering input on
the handlebars can INSTANTLY throw you into the path of the car. this doesnt
happen on the other RIGHT side or the road.
d) claims of "seeing the cars" hold ZERO water. buy a goddamned mirror.
the technology is centuries old.
e) the best way to be seen is to put youself in the right place at the right
time. cars look for other cars (sadly enough) more than they look for soft
humans. act like a car, and you will be treated as such.
okay, i guess im done wiht my ranting and raving. i angers me to no end when
i see uneducated people making grand sweeping FALSE observations like:
ride opposing traffic, its better.
hell, the motorcycles and mopeds and scooters could do the same! its better!
why not?
asinine.
-mark
In article <0gVfyQq00WB3Afp…@andrew.cmu.edu> "C. Mark DelSesto" <s…@CMU.EDU> writes:
>e) the best way to be seen is to put youself in the right place at the right
>time. cars look for other cars (sadly enough) more than they look for soft
>humans. act like a car, and you will be treated as such.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
First of all, let me say amen!
I do that, but according to my university student handbook, that is illegal.
The book says I must ride my bicycle as far to the right as possible, where
some shithead can easily shove his Oldsmobile sport mirror up my butt. (This
actually almost happened to me once in Houston.) Stop making sense!
Dhruva
- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text -
>-mark
Greetings all!
On bicyclists:
Just having recently graduated from Cornell Univeristy, and having ridden a
bike around for virtually all of my stay, the best way to *drive* a bike
is just like a car, and aggressive as you can get. Why? Because cycling
the normal way will get you hurt. Cars will and do not know you exist
unless you show them that you are there. Case in point: I was cycling
(in full gear, and in the bicycle lane), when I came up to a right turn.
The car on my right did not even see me, and cut me off to the point of me
hitting her car.
Also, something else to consider, especially in a university environment.
Cars, for the most part, tend to be a *little* more cautious, due to the fact
that they know that there are lots of people about. But the pedestrians are
a hazard as well. They walk right in the middle of streets, nearly cause you
to hit them, and then yell and scream and moan at you, don’t look where they
are going, and are generally self-made targets. I was bicycling once
(in full gear, and once again in the bicycle lane), when a person walked into
the street, did not look right or left, realized that she forgot where she
was going, and turned directly into my path to begin walking back towards
the building she just left. You wanna see a person do an endo in a hurry?
I then rode in full gear, offensively, in the middle of the road, or in the
opposite lane if I had to, at high speeds, and watching like a hawk. I never
had a problem, at all, and never came close to hitting anyone (except for
pedestrians that didn’t look both ways when they were crossing, and them I
just avoided with plenty of room to spare.)
Just my .02.
Rusty
Demon bicycler from hell, and very proud of it.
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