JoeyBike

I find it to be more like gazelles running through a field of fat cows.

JoeyBike

Although I strive to not move my head around like crazy when filming, I look at my vids and can see my head movements. Sometimes pretty drastic movements too. If I had to guess, I would say that my field of view with my eyes is close to double what the camera sees. And often, I run a red while pedestrians are blocking crossing traffic which does not require much head turning to see.

A very slight turn of my head and eyes gives me 180 degrees of vision up front and 180 degrees behind with my helmet mirror. 360 degrees of vision is pretty much everything isn't it? Sitting in my office right now, without moving my head one millimeter in either direction, I can move my eyes and see a 180 degrees span. I don't think I could read a newspaper at the far edges, but I could recognize a friend's face!

-=(8)=-

Its ironic that some of the upite-a-saurus's I see post VC stuff in other threads
post the "yer gonna be pizza" stuff in Joeybike threads.
Ok, lemme get this straight.....VCealots say take the lane, be part of traffic,
confidence will build, be seen, cars will give you room... etc, etc, etc, etc,
and that is safe, but someone who does that stuff, but runs red lights, is
gonna die in a fiery ball of flaming flames ?? ...............O....... K.

TRaffic Jammer

^^^The irony is not lost. The Force™ is strong in this one^^^
We are indeed part of the traffic and will not be pushed around, don't wait for the car to give permission, you TAKE it...... just like they do and I swear they respect that. Some of the LEO's around here will tell me (when they catch up) how fun it was watching me rip through the throngs of cars. Unofficially, of course , because they can't condone that type of behavior.

noisebeam

My 'objection' is only to promoting this riding style. It is a self-centered, anti-social and not scalable to a larger cycling population. The positive take away is the importance of being hyper vigilant/aware and always thinking about your possible motion relative to every other possible path/position of moving and stationary objects. The lack of this mindset by others who may or may not ride like Joey is a greater personal safety issue that the chosen riding style itself.

Griffin2020

You are misquoting and combining here. The pizza comment was not "your gonna be pizza", but rather, "it only takes one car to make you pizza".

And sit and think about what you wrote: The VCealots as you call them/us, say take the lane, be part of traffic. Correct. A VCealot would never advocate (at least not publicly), blowing through stop signs and traffic lights. Another thing to consider when trying to put forth oneself as "the public face of cycling" is that motorists have no clue why we ride the way we do, and if they see a cyclist blowing lights and stop signs, they get upset and will remember that the next time they see a cyclist on the street.

daven1986

Maybe then drivers need to be educated better? This whole riding style is based around the fact that drivers don't know what is going on around them and are likely to plough their multi ton vehicle into a cyclist, which is not an unfair generalisation. Drivers in general are occupied with stereos, phones, conversations etc. things which most cyclists don't do while riding - it is why I love riding to uni / work, when I am riding nothing is in my head except riding, and what is going on - you cannot think about something else or you will lose concentration, for us that means injury, for a car driver it doesn't mean much - someone else's injury possibly.

If there were so many cyclists around that a serious danger was posed by cycling this way, then I wouldn't advocate it, back when there were only a few cars I doubt they had the large numbers of traffic lights they do now, they would have relied on what they could see. Same with cyclists. The only thing I see quite dangerous about this is if drivers do not expect such manoeuvres and slam on the brakes or swerve while Joey is filtering perpendicular to them, this could cause an accident. But again enough looking will enable people to filter without making traffic slow.

TRaffic Jammer

Logic dictates that the "remembering and harboring a grudge" is completely false. Generally unless you "get in the way", they simply don't care. My analogy is grouper fish swimming with sharks, you can get right up next to them, even into their mouths, just don't be there when they bite down.

In response to the "what if everyone rode this way" idea..... IF we reached a mass, then we'd no longer be invisible, therefore not in as much danger of being ignored, and cyclists would most likely change to riding more inline with cars, most likely senario would be the curb lane would be free of cars. The 'critical mass' would tip cyclists into the minds of drivers as a common part of the roadway. This is still a long ways away. I ride this way because it is safer than trusting motorists, despite being the larger massed, more powerful, overtaking vehicles, to do the right thing written in the current motoring laws.

JoeyBike

Good for you that motorists where you ride SEE you. I don't believe they SEE me, running lights and they won't SEE me the next time either. And if they run me over from behind, you know what they are going to tell the cops? "I didn't SEE him". Yep.

So there is the difference. You think they are seeing you, so you behave like a good ambassador should. I believe they are not seeing me, so I do whatever it takes to stay out from in front of their steamrollers. I will take a lane and block traffic briefly of course, but I prefer to just come and go like a ghost. No one is seeing me anyway.

Let me add, that I always yield right of way to other traffic if there would be a conflict. Like in the OP vid where those two cyclists ahead of me ran a stop sign right in front of a taxi. I waved him through. If I am going to "stop", I am ALWAYS going to wave the other guy through because it wastes less time for both of us and I might not have to lose every bit of my momentum. In NOLA - everybody wants to GO. The default is GOGOGO! So I wave the guy through, and he is instantly out of my way. Had he waved me through (it happens every day when I don't have right of way) I'm going through - pronto!

Then, as I am passing the second biker a black pickup truck completely blows a stop sign. Harmed no one, got the hell down the road. I respect that to a degree. At least he looked! Then he floored it.

-=(8)=-

I would even say that ninjas, wrong-wayers, sidewalkers etc, serve a
purpose. Like pawns in a chess game......If cars run into them(figuratively
speaking) everywhere they go, it will become habit to watch for bike riders.
Most car drivers dont dont differentiate between the 'good' riders and 'bad'
ones, so just for sheer number/awareness alone, all riders are valuable in
the food chain

VeloBusDriver

Absolutely true. I do the same thing when driving my bus to avoid killing people who aren't paying attention. I watch the traffic, when traffic in the opposite direction starts to slow or a gap opens up, I look at the light. When it turns green, I look back at traffic in all directions before pulling out. The list of cars, pedestrians, cyclists, mothers with baby carriages, etc... that I have avoided hitting is a long one.

My point? The light doesn't make you safe, but heeding traffic signals dramatically improves your odds, especially when used with good defensive riding techniques.

Santaria

My general commute to work is less than 3 miles in length, and has 29 stop lights and signs/yields. If I stopped, unclipped, locked both ways then reclipped and got back up to speed for (in many cases) the sub-200 yard distances between traffic devices, why wouldn't I just walk?

Joey has proven, consistently, that the theory that you must obey every single law without question is both illogical and wrong in many cases.

Furthermore, there are actual dedicated bike lanes in the town I live in (google up 802 in Brownsville for reference - or Alton Gloor Blvd.) and you'll see them. They're regularly used as traffic lanes at intersections. I can not convince you that sitting at some of these intersections in the bike lane waiting for a light to go would mean your death, but I can promise you it would happen. I can even promise you the driver probably wouldn't stop and if arrested would adamantly defend their assertion that you were in the wrong for blocking them. And I'd bet you cash they'd win in court, and you'd still be dead. Yes, it's that stupid here. Yes, you learn to adapt how you ride to survive over whether the law is on your side or not.

Traffic signals were not designed for bikes; bikes and their traffic patterns are an after thought. Ride like you're going to be victimized and learn to adjust will continue to be my motto.


Thanks for the vid Joey, very interesting and well shot as usual.

greparm

I have to hand it to you Joey you do seem to be very aware of your situation when riding. Your videos seem to support your statement that you are vigilant at all times. Especially at 1:27 into the video.
Red seems to be a trigger for you to take in all of your surroundings

JoeyBike

HaHa! You caught that! The empty streets that day allowed for that small indulgence.

JoeyBike

How SELFISH - wanting to stay alive and all. Geez.

JoeyBike

Let's say each stop cost you 20 seconds on average. Your 3 mile commute would be a full 10 minutes longer - almost double if you ride fast (I can bike 3 miles in 10 minutes with a headwind). How many MORE motor vehicles would you be exposed to? I can tell you from my experience that a 3 mile run with that many stops probably not one car would pass me most days. If you stop for everything, dozens if not a hundred cars will get a legitimate shot at you.

The math seems so easy doesn't it? Running the lights can actually be safer than stopping. That logic somehow is way beyond some here. Stubborn folk!