[kokomo61]

I live in Northern Virginia, and part of my commute is on busy 4-lane roads. While I've had some problems with buzzers, right-hookers and the occasional yelled comment, it's surprisingly free of hazards...

My home town though (population 60K or so), seems to have its share of aggressive motorists.

I'm not surprised, though. For it's size, the drivers are pretty much nuts.

http://www.kokomotribune.com/local/local_story_145213630.html

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[sggoodri]

The advice given to cyclists in the article was generally good. It's ironic that the accompanying photo showed two cyclists riding against traffic.

[genec]

Amazing article... the problem is the motorist “The woman’s hanging out the window yelling obscenities at us and the guy is honking the horn and hitting gas and hitting the brakes,” Windsor recalled. “I had my 2-year-old little girl in the trailer behind me.”

Yet the article then has a quote from Deputy Matt Tebbe with 5 paragraphs of how cyclists are supposed to act, but scant words to motorists about their actions.

It ends with this from the the guy that was hassled by motorists: “Just because someone is in the car doesn’t mean they own the road.”

A long list of what cyclists should do, and not one word about motorists paying respect to other users of the road... just a "ya'll be careful out there... " from "Deputy Dawg." Guess "Barney" was busy that day...

[unkchunk]

Hey, you got a four lane road... you don't live in a small town. Why the need to inflate things? Two teenagers in a car is scary enough. There is no need to inflate it to a "woman’s hanging out the window yelling obscenities at us and the guy is honking the horn and hitting gas and hitting the brakes". An article in the Kokomo Tribune becomes an official public saftey announcement from the state highway patrol.

I wonder what a soccer mom in a mini van talking a cell cell phone gets inflated to?

[kokomo61]

Hey, you got a four lane road... you don't live in a small town. Why the need to inflate things? Two teenagers in a car is scary enough. There is no need to inflate it to a "woman’s hanging out the window yelling obscenities at us and the guy is honking the horn and hitting gas and hitting the brakes". An article in the Kokomo Tribune becomes an official public saftey announcement from the state highway patrol.

I wonder what a soccer mom in a mini van talking a cell cell phone gets inflated to?

Sorry if I wasn't clear. I live in Northern Virginia - population roughly 1 million. (3 million in the greater Baltimore/DC metro area). My HOME TOWN (where I grew up) is Kokomo, IN, population roughly 60K.

When I bike commute (Herndon to Arlington, VA), I share a four-lane divided road for part of the trip, and most people give me plenty of room. There are a few JAM's, but I would expect a much smaller town to be more biker friendly than NoVA. I know the streets the person in the article is referring to - they're busy, not not nearly as busy as here where I live now. Knowing the town, though, I can picture the type of driver they're referring to. Whenever I visit there, I'm surprised at the level of aggressive driving which seems out of proportion to the size of the town.

[randya]

What do you expect, it's N-ASS-CAR country...

:(

[sgtsmile]

What do you expect, it's N-ASS-CAR country...

:(


And if it is, you at least won't have to worry about getting right hooked!

All drivers will do is tailgate while turning left!

[unkchunk]

Sorry if I wasn't clear.

Hey, there's no apologizing in the A&S forum! Just kidding. Probably no kidding allowed either. I lived in a small town in Kentucky that had one store. So I have reflex action to defend the people who's community is only big enough to support a Hardees, not a McDonalds.

But getting back to "aggressive drivers". I put it in quotes because I don't know what it means anymore. Maybe it's like the meaning of "small town". If you live in a place like Chicago or New York then yes, Kokomo is a small town. If you live in place like Prospect, KY then no, Kokomo is a city. So from Kokomo Tribune article and others that I have read about "agressive drivers", I wonder if the drivers really are aggresive.

In my experience the drivers that I would call aggressive, who have honked, thown bottles, cans, firecrackers, slammed on the brakes or shouted to startle me, have 99 percent of the time, been teenageers or in their twenties. Yet I never read that in the descriptions of these "aggessive drivers". The least ambigous descriptions tend to be: "man", "woman", "redneck" or "yahoo". They tend to reveal more information about the riders than the drivers. So I'm starting wonder whether it's aggressive drivers or riders who panic merely because there is a car on the same road.

I'm not saying that car drivers don't need to improve their driving any. I think everyone could, including riders. So what am I saying.. I don't know. From what I gather about their biking expectations, they would probably fall into a quivering fetal position if they saw what I have to deal with everday. And I seem to get by okay.