[SDCBC] Pet peeve: cyclists have "no choice" but to be unsafe/crazy

[Trevor Bourget]

At 02:18 PM 2/19/2008, Serge Issakov wrote:
>    * Sometimes the bike lane just vanishes and a bicyclist is 
> caught in the "gauntlet."  It reminds me of the crazy motorcyclists 
> flying in between lanes.  Yet I have no choice and am put in a 
> crazy motorcycle type position.

Bicyclists who don't notice what's happening in the roadway ahead 
aren't paying enough attention. It's one of my issues with traveling 
in groups, especially those in which the leaders of the group aren't 
informed traffic cyclists. Bike lanes don't "suddenly" disappear. 
Roadways narrow, but that is usually even easier to predict by 
looking ahead than the random wanderings of an irrelevant stripe of paint.

With all due respect, mtorcyclists who share roadway space between 
motor vehicles don't do it because they are crazy, and your judgement 
of them as being crazy to do it is really not much different than how 
motor vehicle operators probably feel about your presence anywhere in 
the roadway on a flimsy bicycle.

I do both, and the only practical difference in how I drive my 
motorcycle is that I am never anywhere near the bike lane except for 
making a right turn. Unfortunately this is only partly due to the 
fact that I'm usually going faster on a motorcycle. My considered 
opinion is that far right is rarely the safest place for a cyclist of 
either motored or human-powered kind.

-- Trevor 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.bikesandiego.org/pipermail/sdcbc/attachments/20080225/769e43ed/attachment.html