ChezJfrey

Limited access, no controlled stops/intersections, yet the vehicles are as stationary as tents in a campsite...I wonder how that happens without pesky bicycles to blame?

evblazer

That is why I said "Most times on most roads cyclists maybe cause a few seconds." Of course highways where bicycles aren't most of the time or total and complete gridlock isn't a direct results of cyclists.. However there must be times when someone on here besides me has held up someone for alot longer then 5 seconds or realized they were holding up traffic a bit?? That is what a drivers remember and tell me all the time. "Cyclists shouldn't be on the road they cause all kinds of problems. I remember two years ago this guy took the lane and we all had to wait for miles in rush hour till they turned off".
Am I the only cyclist with this experience? If so I guess I'm to blame why all the motorists of the world hate us
I travel a ~4 mile 4 lane stretch of road daily. It is 45mph and at peak rush hour it is packed with cars doing 45mph +.. I avoid that time. there is no other road to get from here to there but I have gotten caught once or twice recently where I can look in my rear view and see traffic slow down as they try and figure out how to merge and get around me and cars trickle by me then speed off. I think cars slow cars down all the time but that is just normal. A bike slowing down cars is well "get on the sidewalk" time

Note: I've only ridden on the sidewalk about 60ft in 3 months because the road was just impassable otherwise.

Az B

My evening commute takes an hour whether I ride or drive. The traffic is terrible. I love the logic in the post from the woman that complains that the bikes go to the front, make everyone wait to pass, then go to the front again at the next light. Is it not obvious to her that everyone is taking the same amount of time to get from point A to point B, and that the bikes really aren't the problem?

Az

KnhoJ

It's the principle of the thing, really. She passed the cyclist, establishing dominance. Insolent cyclists don't know their place, that's the real problem here!

kjmillig

Kind of a no brainer. Comparing the vast numbers of motorists to the nmber of cyclists on America's roads, motorist are, by sheer numbers, going to cause more problems. Just because a few motorists get pissed that they were inconvenienced by a slower moving bike, or saw a rider run a stop sign, or obliviously cut a cyclist off and were confused by the cyclists reaction, doesn't change the statistically established fact that way more illegal and/or dangerous activities happen involving motorized vehicles than with bicycles.

Nycycle

I have to drive a truck as it is part of my job, I am very sorry to say as I drove down a very busy 6 lane road
I saw most bicycles riding on the side walk against traffic, others running lights and everything that is
against all I have learned about safe riding, and very few had a helmet.

Sad but true, to all the motorists on that road that is the view they have of the average bicyclist.

JonathanGennick 

Those are all just excuses. Most people regard any deviation from what the greater herd is doing as "weird". Things just go downhill from there. People who complain about bikers not being licensed or registered or whatever really are people who dislike bicyclists first. Then they back into things like taxes and such so that they can sound more rational when they vent their irrational feelings. The dislike comes first; the justification second. It's that way with many things in life.

why2not

Whether cyclists want to admit it or not, there are many times they hold up traffic more than a few seconds.

Just last night I was driving a road that I travel frequently. Usually the 10 mile strech of road takes about 10-12 minutes. Last night, there was a "cyclist" on the road. It's a narrow 2 lane road & he was actually riding the fog line (note: no shoulder, white fog line is the edge of the road). He really should have been taking the lane, as it's too narrow for a cyclist and a car, but I suppose he was trying to be a good citizen.

In any event, because of not being able to share the lane, cars had to wait for a gap in oncoming traffic to scoot around him. The 10 miles ended up taking me 26 minutes. Had I not been a cyclist, I probably would have been feeling a bit put out also. I ended up passing him around the middle of the strech & I was about 30 cars back when I encountered the "pile up". There were a good 60 cars behind me by the time I got by him, so I suspect some people were stuck for the rest of the road, doing under 10mph the whole way.

Since they'd already been in line behind me, I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up taking some people 50 minutes to traverse that 10 miles.

To say that cyclists never impead traffic, or only cost people a few seconds is inaccurate. I'm not saying YOU do it, but there are cyclists out there who impead traffic quite a bit. Sure it's their right to do so, but don't act surprised when drivers react negatively towards cyclists because of it. I maybe pass (in my car) 2 or 3 cyclists a month, I assume that's pretty standard for other drivers where I live. If one of those is a major impedement, how to you think other drivers will view cyclists? As a problem, not as a fellow traveler.

FWIW, I bike that strech of road quite often, but avoid it during rush hour, and at quite a bit of a brisker pace than 8mph. There is also a drive way I can duck into about 1/2 way if I notice that oncoming traffic has been heavy & there is a line behind me. I've done that several times.

joejack951

If it makes you feel any better, every day I experience looking in my rear view mirror and seeing a line of vehicles waiting to change lanes to pass me because I'm doing less than half the speed limit. This can last for as long as two minutes. If it were a one lane each way road, I'd pull over and let the mob pass but since they have a passing lane, they can deal with it. I've driven the same route that I ride in a car and the time difference for the whole trip is within a couple of minutes either way (I can pass some big backups on my bike). Also, depending on the timing of the lights, I can sometimes keep up with traffic for a few miles even with a 45mph posted speed limit.

joejack951

I would do the same thing in your situation as it is the courteous thing to do when traffic really has NO other option to pass you.

rajman

By 'no shoulder' do you mean a relatively unrideable shoulder, or do you mean a cliff or solid concrete wall, or other impassable barrier? If that is the case, I would certainly find this to be an unpleasant ride, if I was stuck I guess I probably would use the driveway to let the pile up get past me. If on the other hand 'no shoulder' means unrideable loose or steep gravel, it seems to me a periodic dismount might be the solution.

Going back to the original poll - the meaning of 'problems' is quite vague. If we mean traffic fatalities, congestion, and general morbidity due to poor health and collisions clearly motor vehicles cause a lot more problems.
12 ft. wide roadway is quite adequate to 100's or thousands of two-way cyclists an hour, and such a roadway requires far less understructure, and much cheaper bridges than a motorway that carries an equivalent number of cars.

Bike on bike, bike on pedestrian, and just bike collisions do cause many injuries a year (including many devastating head injuries), but nowhere near the carnage caused by motor vehicle collisions to other motor vehicles, cyclists, pedestrians, and rollerbladers.

If by problems, we mean the trillions of dollars of infrastructure deficits, and the hundreds of thousands killed or injured every year, and the hundreds of billions of dollars of lost productivity while people are idling their cars in traffic jams when they could be working or spending time with their families, then I think motorists are causing problems.

Note that I realise that many people choose to drive, and I'm sure that they are aware of these problems, so it's a problem of consumers choosing to put up with these issues. I just get annoyed when people try to blame problems of their own making on cyclists.

Jeronimo_

Idiots cause more problems. There is 2% of the population that is pure idiot. There are millions more drivers than cyclists. 2% x millions more = easy math It's too bad so many idiots can't do the math.