I won’t hide from anyone that I don’t enjoy riding bicycles on city streets. It’s too stressful for me to enjoy.
Dirt trails with venomous reptiles and the chance to become lost or injured far from help? Never has worried me too much.
Riding in streets filled with drivers any one or more of which could possibly be distracted in any number of ways? Or murderously angry? Or half-wittedly malicious? Or off-handedly mean spirited? Or thoughtlessly daydreaming? That’s not even much of a gamble. In some cities, that ride’s a death wish.
But drawing a bunch of bicycles in a city? Pretty amusing, even if coloring it takes an extra minute or seventy.
I’ve been almost-smeared along the street more times than I want to count. A few times by cars going 75 in a 35 MPH zone. I’ve also had close encounters with a few diamondbacks. I’d take my chances with the snakes any day. At least with them, you know what to expect.
That’s why so many drunk drivers are forced by court to ride a bike a while.
Or take a city bus, which could be even worse.
I’m not sure how I should feel about your comment…
I’m a cyclist by choice, and a city bus driver… 😀
Had a rear tire bent 90 degrees when I was 18.
Driver sped up thinking he could beat me … I didn’t seem him speed up.
He bought me a new rim, tube, and tire.
My city keeps adding in “bike lanes” that are clearly aimed at recreational cyclists. Right. Because people who ride their bike in the city are doing it for fun. (Some of the bike lanes are nice for getting around. Others expect you to randomly have to get off your bike to cross major roads, and apparently teleport across because the island in the centre isn’t big enough if you have a trailer.
Years back the town I went to college, had more than one bridge across the river. One bridge had absolutely NOTHING for pedestrians or for bikes. If you wanted to go across that bridge, you had to place yourself in the left turn lane with the cars. And try to figure out how to place yourself so nobody would wedge by you. THEN, wait for the light and try to peel out as fast as you could so you didn’t become the world’s ugliest hood ornament and need surgery for your H’s…. I had my share of front of the turn lane, several cars behind me, left arm out for left turn… then standing on the pedals almost to get my rear through the turn and whip across that long bridge as fast as possible, miss being smucked at the other end and bail for the sidewalk, get off, light a candle to the saints that you survived, then proceed on your way. At least if someone was ahead of me the few times I went through there with a car, I was nice and ignored the horns behind me if there was a bike ahead of me trying to cosplay as a car….
Another. We lived in a dip next to a drainage crick. Big road came from two higher points, about 400 feet, down to the crick. Past one side was a much bigger hill. There was a light between bigger hill and the dip. There was a fellow that worked up the hill, who had learned to time the light and just put it in a freewheel position on his 10 speed, kick off and make all the way down through that light. At the bottom was two turnoffs and traffic cops like to sit there. It was posted 45. Guy came down the hill through the light and got nabbed for 85 in a 45 zone. ON a 10 speed. He went to court because they tried to put points on his driver’s license. He admitted to the speeding but he wasn’t in a CAR. He was on a bike. You didn’t need a drivers’ license to operate a bicycle. He paid the fine but didn’t get the points. Brave, stupid and lucky he was.
His grandma’s ahead of him, and has no patients with him riding his bike through her condo. Go Granny, go.
Hmmm. I just attended a seminar on developing AI for self-driving cars. The training data set included lane markings, traffic signs, other vehicles, pedestrians – but not one single image of cyclists.
Hubby rides his bike for pleasure and exercise, and only in extreme circumstances does he ride the city streets. Fortunately, we’re not too terribly far from one of those bike paths made from an old railroad line. Not only can you ride for miles (and if you go at dawn, not too many other cyclists), but there’s at least one tunnel that’s great fun to sing in.
There’s a railroad track near us that was recently taken out of service. If they were to convert that to a bike path I could rid 10 of the 15 miles to work on the bike path.
Bikers in my town can be really stupid, but there are a lot of stupid drivers out there too. I once nearly hit a biker because he came around a truck, a truck that was dumping off cargo at a meat market, taking up the whole street nearly, one went to go around the truck while the other was on the side I was passing, I was going to miss him but his idiot friend decided to fly around the corner because the other way was blocked and I nearly plowed into him and I’m positive he saw me before hand because he was looking straight at me at one point. People dont have common sense anymore.