Originally Posted by
CptjohnC
I find on the 'serious' parts of the bike trail, most people respond well (and correctly) to "On your left". On the casual parts of the trail, and on feeder trails, the bell is 1000x better. Also, I notice the bell gets more attention from the iPod crowd -- it seems to cut through the haze better.
It does. A bell has a very sharp leading edge on the tone, which is a fairly unnatural and attention getting feature. You can perceive it even over fairly loud music. Someone talking to you, even someone yelling at you, requires quite a lot of cognitive processing; you have to realize that they're talking to *you*, figure out what they said, and figure out what to do about it. A bell means "bike behind me", and requires less actual thought. Lots of people who complain that pedestrians don't react well to variations of "on your left" are going too fast, not giving enough warning. f
I rarely ride on MUPs, but I do walk a fair amount on one. I've taken to yelling "get a bell" (with a variable number of obscenties thrown in, depending on how fast the moron rides past, and the amount of spandex or carbon fiber involved.) at morons on bikes who pass with out announcing their presence.