No matter what The Law or your magazine says, cycle traffic mixed with auto/truck/Winnebago traffic poses a definite hazard and the allowing of that mix is wrong. Period.
If a legislature believes cyclists should be on the road then they need to come up with the money to build safe cycle lanes/areas. Period.
Fact is: cyclists
don't "belong" on most of our current streets and roads one bit more than skate boards and motorboats belong there. Period.
No responsible person wants to be in an accident. They surely don't want to cause an accident and they certainly don't want or harm/kill someone. Surely an elderly person (like maybe one of
your parents or grandparents) for whom loss of their driver's license may well mean loss of the ability to live in their independant home is terrified of anything (horse, cycle, ATV, Go-cart, motorcycle, large truck) that presents the chance of involving them in an accident.
But every time
any driver comes upon a cyclist their alarm bells have to start clanging because they don't know what that cyclist is going to do right in front of them. And because they may not be able to see the cyclist well enough to get passed them at a safe, comfortable distance - for a variety of reasons (like the driver of a Winnebago up on Trail Ridge Rd. in Colorado, or reflection on their windshield, et al). The presence of that cyclist always makes the driving (
of the vehicles the roads were designed for) hazardous and, to many, nerve-wracking.
How many times has it been most convenient for you to ride early or late in the day - when the sun is low enough to blind drivers with direct light or reflection ? How many times have you ridden East or West - during a lower Sun that may have made you virtualy invisible to people in cars until it may be too late for them to react safely to your presence ? How many times has Ethyl Schwartz, height 4'11", buzzed you in her Caddy - not from meaness - but because she can judge distance to large objects like parked cars but not as well the distance to small, moving unpredictable objects like a cyclist ? Should she be removed from the road just because you want to ride your bike where it really doesn't belong ? No. The local politicians should be hung for putting that small, quickly-moving, unpredictable vehicle on the same road with Ethyl !
It's not that those people "hate" cyclists or they are bad people - it's because the presence of a cyclist (or 50) presents them with an unaccustomed and/or dangerous situation for which they could face substantial consequences and they are not wrong to not want that.
I rode a motorcycle for 20 years and know exactly what you're talking about re: knuckleheads and people of lesser driving ability in cars. But the onus was on me to make sure I was safe just like it is when I'm on horseback and just like it's on YOU when you're riding your bike. The roads were
not built for my horse, or your bike or someone else's ATV, or someone else's Boston Whaler. Period.
That's why I said earlier that cyclists, like hunters, really need to be policing their ranks with a vengeance. They need to learn and preach
de-escalation, not escalation. They also should (IMHO) look for every opportunity to get legislatures and local governments to provide safe cycing areas, even if it means retrofitting some current roads.
Yes, I know that can be a tough effort - thank God The Minority doesn't rule
everything - yet. But
it is the only truly good solution.
All things considered, I still have to stand by the position that a cyclist who "carries" is very probably making a mistake that exposes them to an unacceptable level of risk. Cyclists had better reallize the courts recognize "road rage" as punishable regardless of what vehicle one was driving, AND regardless of who got hurt the worst !!! If you open up on,
or even threaten somneone with a gun, after they ran you off the road it is going to be YOU taking showers with prison soap. I think cyclists and CCW-types also need to realize what the Anit-gun media is going to do about the third time some hot-headed cyclist pulls a gun on somebody.
Local opinion may vary.
