Why the capitalization of 'female'?

Just wondering.

I can get the jump on most cars as well. Gotta watch those Toyotas with sticky pedals!

For the passer iceholes, I come right along side them and stare em down. I have smacked a window or 2 with the side of my fist!

Fixed it for ya. It truly goes both ways.

Some of us may be self-centred, some of us may even be arrogant idiots, but do you really think many cyclists think they have an 'exclusive' right to the road? Seriously?

An 'equal' right, sure. And in the eyes of many motorists that makes us 'uppity troublemakers who need to be taught a lesson'.

It doesn't go both ways. Not even close.

You're doing everything right - by controlling the lane, the occasional Bozos you describe are probably giving you more room than they otherwise would, and you've got more room to maneuver if they start to encroach back into your lane early. It's true that these drivers are impatient and see you as an obstacle, but by being a very predictable-acting "obstacle" to them you're less likely to collide with them. Eventually they will grow accustomed to cyclists using the travel lanes properly and drive better. The drivers on my commute seem to have relaxed over the last 10 years.

I occasionally have drivers badly misjudge distance and cross the double yellow to pass me when approaching a red light or stop sign on a two lane road (no turn lanes). They end up stopping on the wrong half of the road, facing oncoming traffic, because I stop in the center of the narrow lane at the stop line. This would seem pretty embarrassing for them. I suspect next time they will think twice about when it's a good time to pass.

I think the answer to that depends on where you are. But for the most part yes, I'd say I'm correct. As indicated by the responses to the many "do you stop for stop signs" or "do you stop for red lights" threads that pop up here. There's certainly a large contingent of cyclists that think that because they're driving something other than a car that the rules don't apply to them. Hell, even I'm guilty of some of those behaviors.

Combine that with the A+ personalities of a large portion of cyclists I'd still say yes.

There is a large contingent of humans that break any law when they think they can get away with it. But your post seemed to imply that that means cyclist scofflaws are an equal part of the problem. I disagree. When a cyclist breaks the law, he may do it through being arrogant and self-centred, but in effect he's being merely stupid because he's only endangering himself. When a motorist speeds (which they pretty much ALL do, ALL the time), he's being much more arrogant and self-centred than the cyclist because he endangers the lives of everyone around him. When was the last time you heard of a cyclist's poor riding killing a motorist? Even if you can find a single example (which I think would take a lot more than a quick internet search), there are literally hundreds of examples of cyclists being killed by driver inattention.

I think the A+ personalities we see in the bike community may have something to do with how vulnerable we feel when faced with a motorist community that wants us off the road and in some cases is willing to risk killing us in order to get it to happen, combined with a law enforcement community which routinely lets drivers who kill cyclists off with little more than a warning. Such attitudes make the development of an A+ personality a survival strategy.

In both cases you left a gap that is simply too much for rude impatient motorists to resist when behind what they perceive as a slower moving vehicle. You need to either tighten it up and remove the temptation, or hang back and motion for the traffic behind you to pass...falling in behind them.

Yeah, I rather agree as well. With the "I'm on a bike so I should be able to do whatever I want, stupid cars" attitude you see on the forums quite frequently here - and frankly I'm sure the worst offenders don't even come onto the forums - there's no doubt in my mind that the only reason a certain number of bikers aren't even more aggressive is because they're physically smaller than cars. Just take a look at any thread where bikers filter to the front at a stoplight, start up before the cars, then complain because the cars that now have to pass them aren't considerate enough when passing them (usually comments about "they couldn't gotten to where they're going 15 seconds later?", when that's exactly what motivated the cyclist in the first place).

Now to be fair, it *really* depends on where you live. I live with a fairly bike-friendly culture on the streets here in Minnesota. A lot of times I feel that I get more respect on the road on my bike than I get in my car. But I traveled an hour east into Wisconsin for a couple of rides, and it's a whole different ballgame. Motorists are more like the other poster described - pushy, aggressive, like they personally own the road and everyone should get the hell off it - sometimes even other cars. I've had people yell stuff at me in Minnesota (probably teenagers) as they pass me in my car, but that's the worst that's happened. In Wisconsin I had a truck speed past me in the other lane so close that oncoming traffic had to pull off onto the shoulder.

Whole different world. And that's why, I think, some of the arguments can go on forever between otherwise rational people on this topic - because they're genuinely talking about different behavior from the drivers they're interacting with.

I think the real problem here is that some of us are out there every day trying to make a point of obeying all the laws, being respectful of other road users, and doing everything right as much as we're able. When we see posts from other cyclists decrying poor cyclist behaviour, it often seems less than supportive. When those posts come from people who go on to admit that they too engage in such behaviour, it seems a bit hypocritical.

Rather than call her what I really thought, I wanted to be nice by calling her a FEMALE.