dfw

The article has a few good points, but they also played up the popular misconception of the extreme dangers of cycling and they included and obviously BS story from a local motorist. I expect ignorance and stupidity from motorists, but it sucks when it comes from the newspaper and the local cops.

https://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache...ient=firefox-a

I emailed the author of the story and was told the local cops contacted the paper due to numerous complaints from local motorists.

quatrecats

How creepy and frightening--next thing you know, bikes will be banned from streets. Hmm, Texas, big oil???? So sorry you have to deal with that! I ride in Seattle often, the actual city, not the burbs, and have found that cars and bikes can live together quite nicely.....
maybe a letter to the editor??

AndrewP

Groups of more than 10 riders together are hard to fit in with normal traffic, while keeping the ride enjoyable. That is what CM is all about. I usually ride alone, but drafting at 20% above my normal cruising speed is most exilirating.

ovoleg

that article is biased....It seems anti-cyclist in every way even with its false attempts at safety.

Citied for a traffic jam? Well thats impossible...If you see 20 cars behind you and your dragging up the whole lane, you should move over and let the 20 cars pass(common sense) but 2-3 cars? That is illegal and I would definately contest that in court.

We should ride between 9-4pm? Do they realize that we actually work? I know its hard for them to understand eating their Burger King in their Suburban driving 20 above the speed limit and cutting everyone off but we belong on the road.

The police in that area are ridiculous with their messages. It was basicly telling cyclist to get off the road.

20 cyclist holding up traffic isn't bad, Imagine 20 of those cyclist in cars, polluting.

Good thing I don't live there...

skinnyone

WTFever...

TexasGuy

The article is not really that biased imho. The picture is a clear example of what is WRONG with group cycling. We have a group that ride weekly on Helotes Loop in northern San Antonio. They ride 4-5 abreast on a road where people commute to and from work. The road is 1 lane with 2 way traffic with little or no shoulder. And people insist on cycling on it and there have been thousands of complaints yearly and several police incidents.

If the speed limit is 45 - 55 and there are a group of cyclists that are taking up the whole lane and I am on my way to work you can bet I am going to be pissed.

skinnyone

I agree that 4-5 abreast in a group ride is just stupid... Unless it is a race with volunteers etc.. I would never deviate from a single file paceline...

oboeguy

Completely biased BS. It starts with the premise that cyclists are the problem. Whaaaaaatever. Note also that it only has suggestions for what cyclists should do to mitigate the "problem", not what drivers should do. WTF? Also, agreeing with ovoleg, cars cause traffic, not bikes.

Edit: guys, the article can be biased while at the same time riding 4-5 abreast at all times is dumb. They haev little to do with each other, IMO.

DXchulo

Is the "BS story" from a motorist the one about how a group of riders ran a stop sign? What makes you think that's BS? I see idiots at the back of the pack (sometimes the front, actually) rolling through stop sings without looking or turning onto a street when they should wait on almost every group ride I go to. We bash the cars for not having patience, but would it kill us to wait for a car and catch up to the group later? The individual rider is to blame, but I think the group as a whole is to blame as well because a lot of times they don't treat stop signs as neutral and they'll drop cyclists who do the right thing and wait for a car to pass through.

I think the real BS is here:

Sounds like an exaggeration to me, or maybe your area does have a huge problem on its hands.

Another thing that gets on my nerves is when people in the group ride close to the yellow line and won't get over when people say "car back." If a car is coming, try your best to let it through. Anything else is just fueling motorist rage.

Sure the article is a little biased, but what do you expect? America is all about cars. But you have to admit that BikeForums is going to be biased in the opposite direction. Try to see both sides.

(I think the article made an honest effort to be unbiased, but fell a little short. Let's face it- it's hard not to be biased sometimes.)

TexasGuy

Actually - technically that is very accurate. If one person in that group has been run off the street or struck by a car, and everybody in the group knows each other.

Ineedhelp

This is why I ride on the bike trails around here even though the roads are nicer.

But then,

I also worked for one of the largest, most well-known health organizations in the country, where at first I was thrilled to learn there was a yoga group that met at noon to exercise instead of eating.

After joining, I learned that we had to meet in "secret" because upper management frowned on our yoga workouts, and I found out they actually referred to us as "heathens"--as if they thought we were in there chanting instead of working out!

Just another example of ignorance and lack of tolerance for differing interests.

TexasGuy

That has to probably be the stem for some of the biggest problems. Thankfully I don't see very much of it in real life, but whenever I participate in online forums, its very easy to see that problem creep up everywhere.

galen_52657

The article is the usual crap spewed by the smog-belching crowd. It's funny... you can get a long line of cars behind a piece of farm equipment or a delivery truck and nobody tries to run IT off the road. But, see a guy or a group on bikes - without the 'cage' of protective steel, well, just run them into the ditch!

BTW, with large groups, it is easier for cars to pass a double paceline than a single paceline that is twice as long.

chroot

People sit in their cars for literally hours in traffic jams around here. People all over the country are completely acclimated to sitting for five minutes at traffic lights. Then they get road rage because it might take thirty seconds to pass a group of cyclists?

I just cannot understand people's mentality anymore. It's some kind of mass hysteria, I think. You apparently have to go as fast as possible in between horrendous obstacles that are accepted as par for the course. Hurry up and stop.

- Warren

HRPirate

It's great when a pack of cyclists move to the side of the road to let cars pass.

It pisses me off when there's a group of cyclists in the middle of a lane going 20 mph on a 40 mph street, one of them looks back at you and notices that you're there, and then proceeds to stay in the middle of the lane.

Totoro

The article makes some good points that are worth paying attention to. I've seen a pack of riders blow through a stop sign. Fortunately where I live, we don't have issues of road rage that I've encountered. When I am on the highway though, that's a different story! But then I am in my car not my bike.

BTW: Fort Worth is ranked as one of the fattest cities in the country.

From Men's Fitness magazine:

Ft. Worth stayed out of the bottom five, but just barely. Deteriorating air quality and increased alcohol consumption nearly pushed the town into the "fab five" fat status. Nearly all scores were below average.

The city boasts the fourth fewest pizza parlors, but once again has by far the most donut shops, slam "dunking" the nearest rival, Long Beach. Access to health care remains dismal.

spingineer

Cyclists also should be obeying the laws just like everyone else. Stop signs should not be run as if it doesn't apply to us. Going 4 abreast on a one lane road is just not right. However, we should not be pelted with tomatoes and rocks just for riding on the road, especially if it's a quiet residential street. Not sure what the solution is there, but if you start breaking laws as if it doesn't apply to you, non-cyclists will react exactly the way they do in the article posted.

I do take offense to the copy, who states "To help minimize friction, Williams suggests that bikers ride in mainly rural areas between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. during the week and in the early morning on the weekend." Who's able to ride M-F, from 9 am- 4 pm? And what do they mean by early morning? 5 am - 7 am? This basically is telling us that it is illegal to go cycling in that county. Will they impose the same laws against scooters, skateboarders, and roller bladers?

fawelsh

To me the article suffers from a false sense of "balance", like most American journalism. Too cowardly to take a stand on the issue, it tries to present both sides as equal. The two sides are not equal. The cyclists are in physical danger, not by their own behavior, but by some seriously ignorant officials and vengeful drivers.

What people don't seem to get in all these driver/cyclist debates is that there is absolutely no correlation between rider "discourtesy" and accidents. Either the cyclist does something unexpected or foolish or the driver does something homocidal. One of these two things has to happen for a cyclist to get hit. A kindly inexperienced rider who stops or swerves in the middle of a tight pack without signalling can cause a pileup and throw other riders out into traffic. A pack of cyclists running a stop sign might infuriate a driver, but they're not behaving unpredictably. They might even give a honking driver the finger. The cyclists might be arrogant jerks, but I don't think they're doing anything that can be construed as "unsafe".

To me, the driver's heartfelt concern for the safety of the cyclists rings a little hollow.

ovoleg

I concur. I see no concern other than getting cyclist off the road.

The only safety the drivers are concerned about is their own safety when they have to deal with the accident and lawyers

timmhaan

cyclists on the road may cause a driver to slow down a bit. i hardly think that's a real concern since one of the biggest problems facing all cities is speeding drivers. how do the drivers react?

"Instead, members of the Fort Worth cycling club and other Tarrant County groups often are pelted with soda cans and jolted by the blare of angry horns."

like complete a holes. children trapped in adult bodies.

briscoelab

I was taken by the statment abou ther rider who was struck by an SUVs mirror and killed. It stated that the driver wasn't charged with a crime. Then, we see where a cyclist ran a stop sign in another thread, and is being charged with manslaughter. This is what pisses me off. While I don't know the specific facts of either case... my gut feeling is that both people should be charged. There is no excuse for running a stop sign and hitting someone. Likewise... there is no reason you should tag a rider with your mirror when passing them. Both instances are acts of driver neglect.

briscoelab

You don't think that someone running a stop sign is unsafe or an unpredictable action? NO one should be running stop signs when there are other motorists/cyclists/pedestrains around. Sure... I'll coast through a stop sign at 5-7mph around my house if no one else is around... but even then I understand that I am breaking the law. What would you say if a driver ran a stop sign and hit a guy on a bike? I think then you would say the action of that driver was in fact unsafe.

It seems to me that while cyclists don't deserve the bad rap that we get from some poeple in the public... that we also need to do a better job of policing ourselves to promote a better image.

DocRay

Yes, and no matter how long you sit in traffic every day, your next car needs more horsepower, wings, performance parts etc. And your next car always has to be bigger. I've seen drivers risk the lives of four cars around them and the kids in the back seat, just to get to a traffic light.

Road rage is one issue, another one is the FACT that some drivers just detest runners, cyclists, roller bladers, etc., because they are not part of the ****** majority of rolling couch potatos.

jwilson165

i absolutely agree with you on your first comment. cyclists must be aware of the rules that apply directly to them (ie, no more than 2 abreast) as well as those that apply to cars and bikes. if cyclists break these rules, a fine is in order. i dont know how anyone could dissagree with that, especially a large group of people running a stop sign.

that said, on the other side of the argument i feel that drivers need to become more in tune with what sharing the road really means. we are extremely vulnerable to injury even if we do follow the rules and cars should be aware and extra careful as a result. but this usually doesnt happen because they we in a gray area as far as what we mean to them. we arent exactly pedestrians because many driving laws apply to us and we're not a "vehicle" of sorts for obvious reasons. due to this gray area, some motorist do not treat us with the same respect as they should at times. i see this same problem with motorcyclists. small, quick vehicles that are difficult to see and thus receive less respect from drivers in general. so, i too think there is much to be learned by this article even though it is a little biased. but the point (i hope) is awareness on both side and that is what people should take away from it.

DocRay

Driver neglect, and lack of laws against obesely large vehicles. I saw a Hummer H2 mirror strike the head of a pedestrian waiting to cross at a light and split it open. People who drive these things are confirmed a-holes, but the NHTSA should be ashamed of themselves for not regulating these things, they don't fit on public roads.