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From: furuta@uw-june (Richard Furuta)
Newsgroups: net.bicycle
Subject: Re: life with cars - (nf)
Message-ID: <1623@uw-june>
Date: Thu, 21-Jun-84 03:50:20 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june>.1623
Posted: Thu Jun 21 03:50:20 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 23-Jun-84 03:48:01 EDT
References: <1529@zehntel.UUCP>
Organization: U. Washington, Computer Sci
Lines: 36

Well, I hate to say it, but I've found that other bicyclists are often as
much of a problem as are inconsiderate car drivers.  Admittedly most of my
riding these days are on bike paths rather than on streets so my
interactions with cars are blisfully limited.

There are two kinds of bicyclists who have caused me problems:  those who
think they are such hot shots that they don't bother to pay attention to any
conditions around them and those who are so oblivious that they are unable
to pay attention to their surrounding conditions.  In the first category are
all those guys in the funny outfits who decide to pass slower traffic at
high speeds without bothering to check first for oncoming traffic.  In the
second category is the wonderful fellow who moved over to the far left when
I called out that I wanted to pass and then made a sharp right turn directly
into my path (I had to bail out over that one).

Let me for the moment take the viewpoint of a car driver and list some
recent bicyclist behavior I've seen that would tend to make the car driver
feel less kindly about the bicyclist.

	- bicyclist runs a red light
	- bicyclists ride the wrong way down a road into oncoming traffic
	- bicyclist stops immediately behind a standard transmission
	  car on a very steep hill and leans on the back of the car
	- bicyclists riding between lanes of traffic (the complaint about
	  cars opening doors from the left kind of implies that the bike
	  might have not been in a legitimate lane to begin with).

The point here is that certainly there are many instances where cars ignore
bicyclists' rights and bicyclists do have the right to claim those rights
through manouvers like moving into the center of their lane.  However there
are also many cases where bicyclists fail to properly respect the rights of
the others on the road (other bicycles and cars both).  I think that the
irresponsible behavior of some bicyclists is probably directly responsible
for the lack of respect afforded to all bicyclists by some people.

					--Rick