Re: Driver admits killing Marine cyclist

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:19:19 -0700, h squared
<clevistoreplyremovethisbit@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Wayne Pein wrote:
>
>> Oh, I bet you mean you are working to get those pesky bicyclists out of
>> the road and onto bike lanes.
>>
>> Wayne
>>
>
>speak for yourself. i like when roads have bike lanes. when i ride on a
>busy narrow road without them or any shoulder and with a constant stream
>of steady traffic passing within inches of me at 40mph, all i can think
>about for the entire ride is painful death or dismemberment. doesn't
>really motivate me to get out and ride, being in that state of mind- i
>had a friend who used to call surviving rides like that "cheating mr.
>death".
>
>h

This is the next thing to the helmet wars, but if they are that close,
how does a stripe make them move further away? If there is room for a
lane, then it tends not to be an issue - and a lane stripe cuts both
ways. In DC all I see is it extends the stupidity of the sidewalk
riders into the street. It is less than amusing to see the twits try
to ride both ways on a bike lane clearly marked with a directional
arrow on a one-way street (say, like Q in front of our building, or R
the street up). They see it as one more excuse not to ride a whole
block up and ride with traffic.

And on narrow streets there is a phenomena that can be observed (every
work day in my case) that cars will drive often drive much closer with
a line, using more of 'their' space, than when they have to set the
appropriate cushion. Perhaps the average driver actually has more
common sense than the average traffic engineer trying to meet too many
objectives.

OTOH, the average rider in DC ranks among the worst of any I've seen
anywhere. The wonder is that more aren't killed, maybe on a weekly
basis. I walk instead, occasionally with a shillelagh. There is one
Japanese kid that rides the wrong way down 15th Street oblivious to
pedestrians that will exit with no front spokes one of these days.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...

.

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