How, exactly, are you harmed by having to share the road safely with non-motor vehicles? Your stated concern over protection applies equally to motorcyclists, yet you seem to have no problem with them.
Your real concern seems to a presumption that you would get to work faster if it weren't for bicyclists. This is very unlikely in reality, and certainly no more than a couple minutes in the worst case. A belief that your right to get to work 2 minutes faster trumps other citizens' entitlement to use and enjoy public rights of way safely is somewhat sociopathic.
I can relate, though. This is what car commuting does to a lot of people. It's dog-eat-dog and me-first out there, with few norms of or need for civility. I've been there. It eats away at you progressively and makes life objectively worse. Explore your options for transit or ride-sharing or find a job you can walk, bike or take transit to. It really makes a huge difference in quality of life.
Yeah, because heaven forbid a cyclist hits a rock or something and ends up as a bumper decoration on my car through absolutely no fault of my own. I don't want to deal with the risk or guilt of something like that happening and it's not the cyclist's right to make that kind of decision for me.
Cars are extremely dangerous to be around when in motion. Motorcyclists are also at risk, true, but they can move at car speeds and don't become a road obstacle to be avoided. I don't have any personal history of motorcyclists droning on and on about how unsafe the roads are when they're driving at some fraction of the speed limit and swerving in and out in front of speeding cars. But as the comments in just this thread indicate, cyclists seem to think the entire road system was purpose built for them and anybody not on two human powered wheels should adjust everything else they're doing just for them. No matter how you approach the topic, cyclists have convinced themselves this is true and it's every other person in the world's fault that they entered into an unsafe practice.
When my grandmother was learning to drive quite late in life (in her 50s). There were roads that she was literally unsafe driving on. Somebody recommended that maybe she should't drive on those roads. And you know what? She thought it was a good idea and didn't. She didn't blame all the people who drive above 60 mph, or the road engineers, or anybody else. She recognized that she was taking part in an unsafe practice and chose not to do it. She spent time finding alternate routes and ways to get where she wanted without dealing with those roads and as a result never had a road accident.
Runners, skateboarders, rollerskaters, motorcyclists, segway riders....in general don't act like bicyclists and don't have this specifically shitty attitude. A cyclist wants to meander along the middle of a high speed road and nearly get killed several times over, well that's the cars' fault. Cyclist runs a stopsign and nearly gets flattened? Cars' fault. Cyclist grabs my window well for a push off and damages the weatherstripping, well fuck me because he's on a bike and I should just know better than to expect a drive where my personal property doesn't get molested and damaged by cyclists.
Even suggesting that "maybe you shouldn't have been riding on that road" or "maybe you should be observing traffic signals" or "maybe you shouldn't put your hands on other people's property" is met with an almost militant rebut.
For fun find a cyclist discussion somewhere where they complain about something like this and post a mildly worded suggestion and see what kind of response you get. I absolutely guarantee it won't be "yeah, you know what, maybe we should be observing traffic laws like we're supposed to"
'For fun find a cyclist discussion somewhere where they complain about something like this and post a mildly worded suggestion and see what kind of response you get. I absolutely guarantee it won't be "yeah, you know what, maybe we should be observing traffic laws like we're supposed to"'
The East Bay Bicycle Coalition, at least, explicitly tells bikers to abide by the laws, and offers classes in (amongst other things) what those laws are. I fully agree that there are bicyclists that don't know what they're doing and ride unsafely, and I condemn that - as do a lot of other people I know who bike more regularly than I.
Part of the problem is that people get bikes as kids, then as they got older just start using them on the road without any real understanding of the laws and regulations on bikes. They don't realize that it's a vehicle, there's no required driver training, or licensing or anything to ride a bike on the road like with a car.
As kids you can kind of ride your bike wherever you want, as adults riders just sort of expand where they can ride to include roads and don't really give much thought to it. Police don't really seem to enforce the laws either, so you're kind of on your own to educate yourself or develop some method of ridership that works.
I agree that this is a root cause of some of the problems we see. I do think those problems are less prevalent than some assert, but I'd love for them to be less prevalent still. I approve of increased enforcement of the laws that apply to bicycles, provided the enforcement was sane and prioritized safety.
Note that the bicycle safety classes I mention above was not only free, they gave out free lights to boot!
> Note that the bicycle safety classes I mention above was not only free, they gave out free lights to boot!
Oh that's awesome. I would have loved to have had something like that. Do you know if they have local police come in and give safety talks as well? Cops see everything and they have all kinds of stories and advice to give.
There weren't any cops there the time I went - that could be great or go poorly, depending on the cop... but probably something worth looking into (idk if they have).
Lots of places have a dedicated community outreach officer. It would be worth calling the local precinct and finding out if they have somebody who can talk about road safety. You guys might even have some bike cops who can share and commiserate.
How, exactly, are you harmed by having to share the road safely with non-motor vehicles? Your stated concern over protection applies equally to motorcyclists, yet you seem to have no problem with them.
Your real concern seems to a presumption that you would get to work faster if it weren't for bicyclists. This is very unlikely in reality, and certainly no more than a couple minutes in the worst case. A belief that your right to get to work 2 minutes faster trumps other citizens' entitlement to use and enjoy public rights of way safely is somewhat sociopathic.
I can relate, though. This is what car commuting does to a lot of people. It's dog-eat-dog and me-first out there, with few norms of or need for civility. I've been there. It eats away at you progressively and makes life objectively worse. Explore your options for transit or ride-sharing or find a job you can walk, bike or take transit to. It really makes a huge difference in quality of life.