If you don’t like sharing the road with cyclists, stay on the interstates and controlled access highways. That’s where bicycles aren’t allowed. By your attitudes you’re not fit to drive anywhere else.

– know that some of the cars have “Uninformed Motorists” and watch out for them
– stay off the sidewalk where it is harder to be seen at cross walks, and easy to run over pedestrians.
– have a mirror and watch out for vehicles passing too closely
– stay alert, be prepared to stop if you get cut-off, and slow down at intersections.

All of which I do. The biggest thing is to USE YOUR MIRROR, to monitor the traffic behind you, just like you would if you were driving.
I also do anything else I can do to increase my visibility—reflective lighted vest,plenty of lights on my bike.

I don’t feel that bicycling is any more dangerous than just about anything else a person can do.

I also feel that most accidents are the result of illegal and dangerous behavior by one or more parties, not because bicyclists cannot safely co-exist on public roads, stated above in one of the previous posts.

Some bicyclists break laws a lot (and often shouldn’t).

Most motorists in Minneapolis drive unsafely.

And then people get upon these message boards and try justifying this stuff. Op- ed pieces are written about how “Bikes should get off the road” and “I’m going to run you over”. Cut it out, damnit. People are dying here (in Minneapolis a biker was killed today May 20; elsewhere in MN a biker was killed May 16, 2009; fatalities happen nearly every month. We who pay attention know people are dying.)

Motorists who take that cavalier attitude are basically homicides waiting to happen. Your cool intellectual analysis doesn’t clear your blame, and your “get off my roads or else” attitude makes people wish you were dead instead of your next victim. You’re going to kill a human being.

You should know by now this is not the way, tsk, tsk. If you want to be killing people you’re, um, wrong.

But who knows, maybe you’re right bicycles don’t belong on the road. Same thing with pedestrians crossing the road, motorcycles, mopeds, subcompact cars, Amish buggies, cops on bikes, joggers, etc. It could be argued that people who might fall to harm or death (ie all people) should be prohibited from being on the road.

Do bicyclists have to start carrying firearms to protect themselves? Motorists are trying to hit us. Really.

The biker should take responsibility for safety. Motorists should too, but many won’t.

– know that some of the cars have “Uninformed Motorists” and watch out for them
– stay off the sidewalk where it is harder to be seen at cross walks, and easy to run over pedestrians.
– have a mirror and watch out for vehicles passing too closely
– stay alert, be prepared to stop if you get cut-off, and slow down at intersections.

When motorists claim that bikes are walking path toys that should stay off the roads they are not selfish. They have not fully considered the benefits of cycling, and don’t realize that bikes are also a practical form of transportation. Bikes are better than cars in some cases. Bikes don’t pollute, are easy to park, are efficient and low cost, and are faster where there is lots of traffic.

If informed motorists can not be convinced that bicycles should be on the road I suppose that their vehicle makes them feel powerful and putting down bikes helps them feel better about their time spent in traffic jams, pollution, fuel costs and/or obesity.

The my-mass-is-bigger-than-your-mass approach to crash dynamics implied by “Selfish Motorist” is also a gross oversimplification. For one thing, a cyclist hit by a car absorbs only a small fraction of the energy originally possessed by the car. The forces and energies involved in two motor vehicles colliding are far higher and mitigate the protective features of the vehicle bodies (which is how you get 35,000 fatalities per year). In addition, the higher mass sometimes works against motorists. Motorists are often crushed between parts of their own vehicle body. Rollovers are a common crash type, and a bicycle rollover is not going to be as serious as a SUV rollover. Although less common, motorists also either burn or drown while trapped in their vehicles.

Crash data indicate that motorists, cyclists, and pedestrians all have roughly similar fatality rates that fall in the general range between 0.1 and 1.0 fatalities per million hours of travel. Motorcyclists, in contrast, are more like 10-15 fatalities per million hours. For reasons that are clearly not understood by “Selfish Motorist”, crash data also show that cyclists who use sidewalks are actually more likely to be hit by a motor vehicle than those using the road.

The real problem here is that motorists think a driver’s license is a deed to the roadway when it really is just a permit to operate a piece of hazardous machinery.

How about driving safely as an answer? SUDDENLY braking for a bicycle that is directly in front of you? WHY would you have to SUDDENLY brake this high speed vehicle? Can a motorist avoid running into a postal truck? A garbage truck? A stop light? If your looking where you are going, you route around the cyclist. If your not tailgating the car in front of you (2-3 second gap… it’s THAT easy)… you don’t rear end them or run over the bike that the car in front of you went around safely.

That is why those of us in the know do NOT take “Share the lane” as “Ride in the gutter/glass/stormdrains so that a car can clip you, right hook you, and then claim you must have swerved”. We move further out into the traffic so you can SEE us in FRONT of you at a distance, and you can simply use your turn signal to indicate you are going to pass and either change lanes or plan your pass when safe to do so. It’s the Selfish Drivers that think “Share the Road” means “Get the Hell out of MY Way”. Sharing is actually aimed at the drivers… not the cyclists. When I’m biking instead of driving I might impact your total trip time by almost… 5-10 seconds overall… maybe. More than likely not at all, since drivers with this attitude wind it out when they pass and get caught at a stop light 100 feet down the road. Ones that maintain a safe distance from all traffic in front of them (2-3 second gap in the dry daylight, 6 in rain, 10 in snow), when encountering a cyclist that is riding about where the vehicles right tire track is, rarely find their time effected at all. It’s just those drivers that are doing things besides driving, and driving in a dangerous manner for whatever reason… late for something? To cool to follow the rules? Got that 500hp motor and need to show it off in a 30mph speed zone?

The motorist is almost ALWAYS at fault and rarely if ever gets as much as a traffic infraction issued when KILLING a cyclist. Often the cyclist is issued one that got hit just to justify NOT charging the motorist, assumed guilty for being in an out group.

It’s human psychology and it’s ignorance on motorists part that gets cyclists killed. The motorist is the one driving the deadly vehicle, they are the one that should be shouldering the responsibility for their actions when operating it. You don’t blame outlaw Quicky Marts because people rob them… you blame the people committing the act, NOT the victim.