sometimes you're the windshield

[dathon]

I saw a woman on a bike get into an accident with car while I was running this morning.  She saw it coming and was able to slow down and brace herself for it, so the end result was that she bent her front wheel and hurt her wrist as she collided with the rear passenger door.  The bicyclist had the right of way in the weird intersection, and the

Comments

[theholyinnocent]

I think when you ride in traffic, particularly in a city like NYC, you have to be aggressive. NYC is getting better about creating bike lanes, though. (Just by virtue of size, I can imagine Pgh. to be much more hospitable to bicyclists!) Still, shit happens & both drivers & bikers have to be careful. Although Manta's bicycle is so butch she probably has a machine gun mounted on it.

I think you are right in that some belligerence--and arrogance--does carry over sometimes. On several occasions I've had very close encounters with people riding bikes very fast and aggressively down sidewalks and the wrong way on one-way streets. I'm all for people biking more, but this is really dickish behavior. In fact several years ago when I lived in Philly I was actually hit by a bicyclist who was riding on the sidewalk--he was behind me, I was turning to cross at an intersection, and I guess he didn't expect me to turn. Public space does include us humble pedestrians too!

[lostingeekdom]

See ... that's why I prefer to ride on the roads. Even though they are scarier, the rules for being on it are pretty well defined, and 99.9% of time, people follow those rules, and are considerate of cyclists (atleast here). I never ride on pavements, because they will always have pedestrians, and I dislike trying to squeeze through an already narrow path.

It is dickish behavior to be aggressive on the walkways. If you aren't confident enough to bike on the road, then you have no call to be aggressive on the pavement.

[dathon]

Were you hurt? Do you think he was just being careless, or was it was an overestimation of his coolness and ability to navigate?

[theholyinnocent]

Luckily, I was not really hurt, just bruised a bit. In fact, I think he was hurt more than I was, because he fell off the bike and hit the pavement rather hard.

I think he was just being careless...he looked like a nerdy grad student (this happened near Penn's campus) and he probably just wasn't thinking that it would be potentially dangerous to go zipping down a sidewalk. Hopefully he learned otherwise!

[sandyosullivan]

It's good he got hurt, the dicktard... See I experience cyclists that treat pedestrians like annoyances too often to not be rather pleased when one that does it gets in strife... So they should...and they should be bloody sorry too!

[mantaraggio]

Haha, thank you for your faith in my butchness. I wish I had a machine gun. I could be like Tank Girl and Jet Girl. Bike Girl. I like the sound of that.

I have no patience for people who ride like lunatics on sidewalks. First of all, it's illegal. Second of all, it's dangerous for everyone involved. I will, on occasion, skirt around a dangerous pothole or a blocked bike lane by hopping onto the sidewalk, but I always slow down to a crawl and if it's a busy sidewalk I just dismount.