cmtbiz

Right on!! That's exactly what I have in mind. If that brainless soul is on a suicide mission.. go ahead and do it by all means (to his hearts desire). But don't get other people involved and bring them down with you.

Oh I wish he is reading this thread and listen up. I should have snap a picture of him and I could have been posting his face on all available forums.

west coast girl

Perhaps you misunderstood - I'm not fighting to have a legal right to do it. I did say it was unintentional, i.e. a mistake. We ALL make mistakes.. We all have to make decisions at certain times and in this case I made the wrong choice.

HOWEVER, deliberately driving the car toward someone is not only illegal, it's uncalled for.

DaveWC

I did misunderstand. When you said "I was in a situation 2 weeks ago where I had to salmon for about 100 yards" I assumed that you meant that you knew what you were doing but had to do it because of the street layout.

THSdrummer

I think this might be why my new roommate does it. He doesn't seriously cycle, but when he commutes to class, he always goes to the left side of the road. I've passed him twice and given him a look both times. The campus here is not fun to get around on a bike, but the roads leading up to it are simple enough to fall in on the right (correct) side of the road.

Then again, I think the fact that he has been a runner for almost a decade and that he's from a small town, which may not have taught him differently, both attribute to his horrendous traffic riding.

I know there will be a day when I need to take a left, and he'll be there hanging out and smash into me or force me to halt traffic.

kv501

I got yelled at by a driver the other day who had to slow down behind me. She says, "Why don't you get on the other side of the road where you're supposed to be?"

I don't live in a bike-heavy environment.

WhyFi

When I was living in NYC, there was all kinds of salmoning, and a lot was justified with, "but I just have to go half a block!" (lots of one-way streets), which I always found to be an incredibly weak answer - dude, you on a friggin' *bike,* how hard is it to go around the block?

jralbert

An incredibly versatile aspect of urban cycling is the ability to transform yourself into a pedestrian at will. You just need to go half a block and you'd rather avoid going around the block? Get Off The Bike. You can do this. It is okay. Even though pedestrians and cyclists alike will stare like you've just grown an extra limb, it is both legal and safe to get off your bike and walk alongside it to your destination on the sidewalk. There is a segment of my city's cramped downtown which involves a series of one-ways and no-lefts that's diabolical to navigate on the roads, whether by bike or car - but I don't have to! I can just alternate riding on the road and walking the sidewalks and crosswalks that cut through the whole mess, and save myself both time and the risk of trying to safely ride a bike through some of the most accident-prone intersections in town.

WhyFi

Not me - pain in the ass to walk in road shoes.

katsrevenge

Not that my city is extremely urban.. but I generally wear Birks. Great on and off a bike.

ahsposo 

No kidding, King Kong.

Please post pictures of you riding in bikini and Berks, this will be most appreciated.

katsrevenge

After you.

rdtindsm

This isn't under the heading of urban traffic, but RAGBRAI traffic. For this that have only heard about RAGBRAI, and maybe not even that, the event simply takes over the road. Only an occasional car of someone that absolutely has to use that road. Riders in both lanes. "Bike up" indicates a "wrong way" rider.

So I had done a small portion of the ride and was "salmoning" home against the flow of traffic in the small Iowa town that was not only a pass through town, but a walk through town in the really congested part. A friend had warned me about riding the "wrong" way, but I intended to be very cautious. I was riding slowly inches from the right curb when a rider cuts across the road to high five some kids right next to me. He saw me in time, but just barely.

RIRview

Another dangerous thing about wrong-way cyclists is the closing speed in a collision. Two cyclists, each riding 20 MPH, if they hit head-on...well, it wouldn't bode well for either one. Like crashing solo doing 40 MPH.

Cookiemonsta

In Holland there are a lot of cyclist, and very clear rules that everyone knows and respects. In our infrastructure going "against" traffic is indeed stupid. Not only would you be violating traffic rules, but probably the biggest problem is that people do not expect it, leading to dangerous situations. Also because of the sheer number of cylcists it seems impractical, since people would be heading in each-other's direction all the time, causing confusion ever other minute.

Sometimes an argument to go against traffic could be made for joggers for example. But in my experience, never for cyclists.

JohnJ80

What really gets me and I can't figure it out, is how do people who spent all the time to get a driver's license, drive every day and know the rules of the road but when you put them on a bike, they get completely stupid about the rules. All the rules are the same and the only thing you need to know is that a bike is a vehicle. How simple is that?

J.

Nihilum

I see idiots like this all the time on the beach access roads where my brother and I ride. When we see these guys coming towards us, and there is no auto traffic, we switch from drafting to riding abreast and taking up the whole lane. It pisses these guys off, but here in FL, riding a bike on the wrong side is illegal.

Notgrownup

Sadly a club nowadays won't do much against a piece that most Dumba$$ carry and use....Most of the time i just ignore it and go about my day....You can't fix stupid, well you can run it over but then you're at fault so the cycle begins again...

RollCNY

This is not true. They are closing the distance at twice the rate, but each only has the energy of a cyclist traveling at 20 mph. This non-sense has been said in head on car collisions for years, and has been wrong for years, so much so that Mythbusters did an episode to clearly disprove it.

rdtindsm

A person at work was telling me that her son had almost been hit by someone turning in front of him, that she was going to make him ride on the left side so that he could see oncoming traffic to get out of the way.

I explained the whole litany: that he would be playing chicken with everyone on the road, that he might not have the opportunity to get out of the way because of curbs, and that he would be without legal recourse in case of an accident because he was disobeying the rules of the road, that a passing car always had the option of slowing down until it was safe. She looked at me like I was crazy.