Illusion shattered
Originally published at Disjunction. You can comment here or there.
I went out for one of my customary lunch rides today. Today was a ride out Old Gatesburg Road, then onto South Nixon, across Whitehall, and out to Pine Grove Mills. I’ve done this ride several times already and never had a car problem.
I didn’t have one today, either. At least, not one that I knew about until I got back to the office.
One of the guys on my test team said, “Was that you with the death wish out near Pine Grove Mills?” Death wish? What?
According to this guy, he was coming down a hill and around a corner and barely noticed me cycling along the side of the road. He says that had he been traveling faster (and that he normally travels 15-20MPH above the speed limit), I would have been toast. My day-glo eight foot tall flag? Didn’t see it because I was under tree shade at the time.
Gotta tell ya, this sort of pissed me off. I’ve always hated cyclists who demand the center of the lane, holding up all traffic behind them, but after hearing this guy, I’m starting to understand why cyclists do that - they do it to make sure motorists are unabashedly aware of their presence. Turns out that my normal course of action, which is to stay as far to the right as possible - is only serving to make me more likely to be hit by people who can’t be bothered to 1) travel the legal speed limit and 2) anticipate potential obstacles.
Sure, there has always been the chance that I’d be run over. That fear kept me from riding on roads for a long time, and it wasn’t until the RBR Rally that I gained any confidence for road riding. But even when I decided to ride on the roads, I kept to infrequently traveled roads and have always hugged the shoulder. When cresting a hill, I wave passing cars past so they don’t have to wait any longer than necessary to pass. By all measures, I’m a considerate cyclist, but this means approximately jack shit if somebody tells me that they can’t be bothered to drive safely.
Is it just because I’m on a trike? No, not according to this person. He says he still wouldn’t have seen me until it was nearly too late. Do people just not do visual scans of roads? I’m a six foot long, three foot high moving object traveling with traffic with a bright white helmet and a neon flag. You’d think people would perhaps notice that. Apparently not.
To make things even more fun in our conversation, he asked if I travel the corner that connects Old Gatesburg with South Nixon. When I said yes, he suggested I go through the gravel pull-off at that corner because he routinely cuts that corner short and drives on the shoulder. Hey, I have another solution… Don’t fucking drive on the shoulder! What time does one gain cutting that stuff short? .0001 seconds?
We also talked about obstructions on tight roads, like bikes traveling Whitehall between Atherton and College Ave. There is no shoulder on that road at all, lots of little hills/valleys, and near constant oncoming traffic. It’s a real bear to pass anything on that road. Both cyclists and construction/farm equipment travel it and hold up traffic, but guess which one is intolerable? Cyclists. Yep, because the heavy equipment is huge and slower than cyclists, it has to be tolerated, but cyclists somehow incite anger in drivers. Drivers who are, most certainly, not maintaining the speed limit through that passage.
Look, I don’t want to be a bitter cyclist, but I don’t want to be dead, either. If you’re a driver that doesn’t pay attention to the periphery or one that frequently drives through shoulders and bike lanes, could you please stop? At some point, there’s going to be somebody on a bike in that space and neither of you are going to enjoy meeting one another via a collision.
Years ago, while driving through Lemont, I nearly clipped a cyclist. He pulled up alongside the van, shouted some obscenities, and pounded the exterior of the vehicle. Every time I drive through Lemont, I remember that moment, and it reminds me to always be looking for objects in addition to cars. Don’t wait until you hit somebody to learn the same lesson.