Bike Forums - Sometimes In Traffic, You Just Can't Win...

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- - Sometimes In Traffic, You Just Can't Win... (https://www.bikeforums.net/commuting/619269-sometimes-traffic-you-just-cant-win.html)

Quote:

Originally Posted by JeffS (Post 10360883)

The vast majority of motorists break a traffic law every single time they get in a car. So get off your soap box.

I already conceded I'm not the majority, and that JoeyBike arrives safely with his riding style. What more do you want?

Quote:

Originally Posted by AzTallRider (Post 10361055)

I've only been commuting a year, and about half way through that I realized I could take a slightly longer MUP route and avoid most the traffic I'd been in. But you go through a real learning curve when you start riding in traffic a lot. At first you either act like a pedestrian (riding the sidewalks - yikes!) or you try and follow all the car rules, like a good little bike-riding citizen, even though you probably don't even really know all the rules as they pertain to bikes. Then you find out what a hook is, have a bus almost take your handlebar off buzzing you, realize signals (or expecially the absence of one) really have no meaning to you, and have drivers honking at you for doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Then, if you are serious, you find forums like this, learn what taking the lane is all about, and begin to understand you need to be aggressively defensive if you want to survive. It's a process. I'm clearly still on the learning curve - it's hard for me to take the lane for an extended time in a 40mph zone where the cars are doing 50. But I learned pretty quick that the single most dangerous thing I could do was to wait at the curb (where a bike is supposed to be, right?)during a red light at a busy and narrow intersection in that 40moh zone and then peddle merrily across the intersection when the light turned green. Talk about taking your life into your hands, or rather, putting it into someone elses!

Nobody with any experience or brains is going to advocate breaking traffic laws in such a way that you are causing cars to have to avoid you. That defeats the whole purpose. Joey doesn't do that. I don't do that either, whether I'm riding, or driving a car. You can make a right turn (in a car) where a car coming has to slow or change lanes, and if they plowed into you from behind, they would likely be the one ticketed. But you shouldn't do that in your car, right? And you shouldn't jump in front of a car on your bike and force them to avoid you. The safest way to drive or ride is to make sure nobody has to avoid you. Sometimes that safety requires breaking a traffic law. So be it.

Pretty well put.

Yes the reality is that cyclists are often overlooked, hence the common thread amongst cyclists to consider themselves invisible. Also you are quite correct that the road laws favor the motorist... and thus cyclists do sometimes have to push the legal envelope to ensure their own safety. Joey does quite a bit more than push the envelope... and it works for him.

I think your bottom line however is the real deal: "The safest way to bike is to make sure no one has to avoid you." While generally true, not always possible... especially when taking a lane. Sometimes the safest thing is to use other road users as your shield. But that too comes with experience.

Keep spinning. And stay out of the gutter.

Hey! part of the fun of being a law and order, take the lane and wait your turn riding style is being harassed and engaged in tete-a-tetes with fellow road users.

hiding from that side of vehicular cycling is what lends joey to his rules breaking behavior. I don't blame him so much as wish the country came collectively to our senses about bicycle traffic. that is a tall and unrealistic expectation so its either

take the abuse or try to run from it.

Until the engagement is for something other than "get out of my way/off the road" I can't be bothered anymore. Too much breath wasted over the years, too much aggro. Occasionally I'll bite but not so much anymore. I tend to simply ignore them/wave them past in the other lane.

Just ride like you are invisible. This way you are being 'aggressively defensive' (I like that phrase, thanks AZTR). When I was a messenger all if ever heard when coming close to been smeared...'I'm sorry I didn't see you', then the epiphany happened... ok they claim they can't see me so I should ride like they can't. This allowed me to be all over the same direction lanes at will simply by virtue of the freedom given to me by the drivers' themselves with their claims of blindness. I rode where cars didn't want to be, and made sure I was gone when the light turned green. All the while being as careful as I could to not obstruct (because he can't me, he might drive over my backside). As I got stronger and faster I became less and less afraid of cars, now I figure one has to fall straight the sky to get me. This does not mean I get complacent. It's not completely unlike white water rafting, big and little obstacles, flow/blockages causing flow elsewhere.

Ride like you belong there and you will, ask permission and you'll be crunched.

yeah, i don't mean the escalation of road ragers, it's too easy to fall to that. that emotion only works to a cyclists detriment and has to me.

I mean, getting harassed and being subjected to low-grade attempts at being run off the road once every couple of years is pretty par for the course for any high mileage cyclist IMO.

A road bicyclist can accept/deal/react to the motorists hatred with their hand waving and the harangues, or the cyclist can run red lights and develop a rationale about this aggression avoidance in an attempt to insulate themselves from it.