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

[lostingeekdom]

Being over cautious is also a recipe for trouble on the street. I've learned that if you don't assert your right of way, the drivers won't respect your right of way. It does help that we have defined bike lanes on some of the main streets,but it's still not fun to stay within it when a big rumbling truck or bus goes past me, while trying to take a good chunk of my small lane. I do try to ride through the side streets that have less traffic, but during the morning commute, t here will always be some.

Now I gotta get ready to ride to work :-)

[dathon]

if you don't assert your right of way, the drivers won't respect your right of way

Yes. That's what I meant. By "riding defensively" I meant paying attention to cars and recognizing that they might do stupid things and not grant you the right of way.

Have a safe trip!

[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!

Re: rant

[dathon]

I like it! Thanks for feeling comfortable enough to rant in my lj.

If a sidewalk/trail/path is designated as a bike-way as well as a pedestrian-way, then by all means cyclists should jingle their bells (hee!) to call my attention to their presence. If it's a sidewalk, though, I have the right of way as a walker.

Your comment about entitlement is along the lines of what I was pondering as well.

Re: rant

[sravenk]

I disagree with you entirely about your assertion that only young middle-class people ride bikes. Most of my friends who ride bikes are poor. Very poor. And being sworn at by middle-class people in cars. And they are all ages. And many of them are new immigrants, many from places where everyone rides bikes. I adore you and truly do respect your intelligence, Psim, but what the fuck are you talking about?

[mantaraggio]

I am going to ride my butchy bike in the streets. I rode it to work for the first time this week and it was a bit terrifying, I admit. I am not a naturally assertive driver, whether in a car or a bicycle. You would not believe how long it took me to learn how to change lanes in a car, for instance.

I think, like lostingeekdom, that with a bicycle you definitely have to be assertive because cars will not allow you in any other way. I think it's annoying when car drivers claim that bicyclists seem entitled because it's sorta like when men get call assertive women bitches. Men are allowed to be assertive by default, because society is built to accept that from them, so when women do it, it sticks out, because women aren't supposed to be assertive. American culture is designed around the car, and car drivers are constantly behaving in entitled, asshatty ways, but they don't see that about themselves, because it's the status quo. When a bicycle does it, suddenly the bicyclist is behaving like a jerk, even if they're behaving in a manner

[sandyosullivan]

On what I hope is a totally related issue... but another one about cyclists and drivers and pedestrians... the shared zone one... I wish they didnt have one. If a cyclist is on the footpath, well I cant guess at that, but with shared zones (like that one that I take to the market) I cant wear an ipod or move about normally at all, because I have to think about whether a bike is going to come speeding past and knock me over, and my experience is that they do tend to act like I should have been paying attention... and I guess I think I was ambling down looking at a pretty view, and assumed I didnt have to worry about being run over or causing an accident. It's a funny one, and again the main issue for me is that the same attitude that some cyclists (like the ones that I'm talking about here, not me when I was a cyclist or good people) think that should be uber-protected compared to pedestrians, like they are more fragile... the reality is that one is going high speed and the other is virtually standing still and not engaged in a high