Originally Posted by Owltooth
Well, an important point is that I'm a PART of traffic, so it's not at all a matter of holding it up.
While you may be right technically, unfortunately 99.9% of motorist are going to vehemently disagree with you. And while it's sad most will never understand you had a right to be there unless they're brought before a judge after some tragedy, that's simply the reality of our situation.
Originally Posted by Owltooth
And to clear something else up, I'm not terrified of riding over debris etc... the idea that I should be made to always ride in that 18 inch wide gutter terrified me at the beginning of my commuting career...
Well I guess that's the problem with exaggerating in order to make a point. But thanks for clearing that up.
Originally Posted by Owltooth
My wife is French and I've gotten a couple chances go go to France and other European countries. The streets in France are much worse than they are here in OKC, 2 lanes, winding around etc... but the cyclists and the motorists seemed to coexist much better than they do here. My wife is quite shocked at the treatment we cyclists recieve daily. So, I think it's a bit unfair to place the blame for short tempered drivers on us cyclists.
Well bicycles have been an accepted, viable part of European transportation since they were invented. And I'm going to go out on a limb and surmise that a much larger cross section of the populace actually rides over there. This puts a human face on the cyclist that America motorists simply do not see... until it's too late, that is. And I doubt we are going to change our car dependent ways anytime soon. At least it's going to take more than $5 gas. Perhaps we had too much room to begin with, but our urban sprawl is a done deal, here to stay, and with it, the need to drive far greater distances on a daily basis than our European brothers. I might be a 'cup half empty' kind of guy in this regard, but I just don't see the day when enough of the U.S. population will actually get out there and pedal in order to make a difference in the average motorists' attitude. We daily, or even weekly commuters are a very, very, small minority.
DanO
Last edited by DanO220; 05-11-06 at 03:46 PM.