dynodonn 

Too bad for the cyclists that didn't even participate in the yearly race, and that have to commute on a near daily basis with this woman. I must have met one of her distant relatives, a few years ago.

dynodonn 

.but only the real ass**** went to jail.

Chris516

How about 'Gone Batty', lol

stanman13

I see you are reacting to what you wish I said rather than to what I actually said. Saintly? No. But people who are comfortable with that level of cognitive dissonance don't deserve a second glance.

NVanHiker

As a bicycle commuter who drives a truck all day, I think all of you should read those comments and take a lot of them to heart.

dynodonn 

" These smug, self-righteous cyclist clowns behave as though they own the road, ignoring traffic laws, etc. I’ve seen it more times than I can remember."


Take a lot of them to heart, sure. Could have been the motorist in the truck posting that one.

Jimi77

Oh, okay. So all your friends don't exhibit hatred and are never irrational.

stanman13

Correct. Not like that. Otherwise they don't remain my friends for long. There are enough people out there who are not jackwagons so I don't feel any need to hang out with the ones who are.

DX-MAN

Jimi, hyperbole won't win the day; your "buddy" is a person who'd do the same to YOU if he didn't recognize you on a bike. If you want to be a social 'snake handler', don't blame the rest of us when you get bit.

If being at all popular is more important than what's right (which is NOT running down cyclists with a car), then WE don't wanna be friends with you. I have a co-worker, the only other person in my section, with whom I have always gotten along rather well; we have senses of humor that feed off each other. He's also a white supremacist, as well as a narcissist with borderline sociopathy (right & wrong for him are defined by what benefits him, even to the point of his marriage; when his wife was carrying son #2 , she was hormonal & grouchy -- he was ready to LEAVE!). I continue to gt along with him because it makes the workday go better. But the day will come when we no longer work together, and I won't look back for a second.

I have cut off KIN who gave me haterade. My family was down & out a few years ago, I swallowed my pride & asked my mother for help; instead of saying yes or no, all she could do was grill me about why didn't I do this or that(none of which were options to us). We barely had a relationship after that; the last time I saw her before she passed in hospice was three days before. Even from that deathbed, she was giving me shat.

Saintly? Not necessary. But there ARE limits, and a friend of mine who professes to hate and wishes to target people on the road LIKE me, exceeds those limits.

With friends like THAT, you're better OFF friendless.

SirHustlerEsq

It's sad to see the anger that comes from a 2-15 second delay. People need to relax.

dynodonn 

Fairly easy to do for many cyclists, since if angered, they can thrash the pedals for a mile or two, but most motorists don't have that option, and just sit in a sheet metal pressure cooker until they blow up.

daihard 

Yes, comments like "Motorists are no better than cyclists when it comes to 'breaking traffic rules.'" I just walked about 10 blocks in downtown and observed quite a few cars making a turn on red without stopping, as well as pedestrians ignoring the red light and jay-walking. They sure behaved like they owned the roads.

squirtdad

Another link about this what is more disturbing is links within this to anti-bike groups and anti-bike editorials


https://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoram...165443573.html

JoeyBike

I could coax someone out of their vehicle nearly every day in the city, and have them sent to jail based on video evidence. I have better things to do and more street sense. Those weekend warriors in the video shown above could have likely acted in a way that did not draw violence from that maniac. Bunch of amateurs.

My city is chock FULL of maniacs. I am wise enough to avoid confrontations with them. Then again, sometimes the maniacs catch us by surprise and have to be locked up for going too far. I don't know the law for "making" someone rear-end a motor vehicle. Carjackers and insurance frauders do that here all the time. I think it is always the fault of the following vehicle unless another crime ensues at the same time.

Is there video footage of the events leading up to the baseball bat?

genec

And within one of those links comes this comment:

And of course the irony of the above statement is that those increased chances of death come almost entirely from the fact that motorists are NOT doing their part on the road to drive responsibly.

sheesh!

daihard 

At the very least, those study results suggest that you'd be better off riding a bike than walking...

JoeyBike

What about heart attack and stroke deaths from sitting in a car too much. That should pretty much even up the odds of your car killing you (non-cyclists) than me (bike commuter).

plustax

Driving doesn't preclude exercising, cycling does preclude a metal cage around you.

DX-MAN

Maybe it's just ME, but I'd think that would be a great big RED FLAG to drivers! "There's more of us than anyone else, and people are dying all over the place; CONNECTION...?"

genec

Well we don't want to make big broad brush statements about motorists as some of us at one time or another ARE motorists... but indeed something about driving a car seems to deduct some IQ points along the way.

I think the classic case of this is the selfishness I see on a local on-ramp that is in a construction area within sight of my office. This ramp narrows from 3 lanes to one lane to enter the freeway. When drivers co-operate and "zipper merge" the traffic flows pretty well and the cars get onto the freeway at about 30-40 MPH and have room to run up the speed. When drivers get aggressive (and it only takes a few) and they block off other drivers so they can get to the on ramp scant seconds ahead of someone else, it fouls up the whole system... and suddenly the feeder ramps back up, and the whole thing bogs down so that cars end up crawling onto the freeway, thus congesting the whole right lane.

The problem is the "me motorists," the drivers that refuse to merge and expect to drive right on to the freeway without merging. You'd think they'd "get it" as this is a daily rush hour event that has gone on for months. But no, there is always a couple of selfish buttheads that start pushing and shoving, and then it goes bust.

The road department has a series of stop lights on a boom that they have moved about as the ramp is moved and shaped (as adjacent ramps for other entrances/exits get shaped), but the stop lights on the boom tend to be the last thing moved, so there are always several days of uncontrolled merging. It is somewhat entertaining to watch the merging motorists do their thing until the butthead comes along.

With the stoplights on the boom, the whole ramp works quite smoothly, and traffic just flows. But to get motorists to do this on their own... nope, fails every time... 'cause someone has to be selfish and tie it up for everyone else.

No one seems to make the connection that selfish driving screws things up... likely because perhaps they DO get away with it, and the motorists behind are the ones screwed. (the book "Traffic: Why we drive the way we do" actually covered this, discussed how and why the selfish driver does what they do, while screwing everyone else).

Bottom line, all it takes is a couple drivers ignoring "RED FLAGS" and things can go badly rather quickly.

dougmc

No.

The majority of motorists are intelligent, reasonable folk. They might not like having a cyclist in the lane in front of them, but they generally deal with it in an appropriate way.

Don't paint the many with the follies of a few.

txags92

Which is exactly why groups like Critical Mass are such a terrible idea. Sure, you can go and block an intersection for 20 minutes and smile and stick your tongue out at all the drivers going ballistic in their cars. Great, glad you had fun! Now, the next time those same drivers see a cyclist out riding alone, how likely are they to think "I should move over and share the road." instead of "Finally, I found one by themselves...lets see if I can park them in a ditch!" Many times we as cyclists help fan the flames of that irrational hatred by not doing the easy little things that would engender some positive feelings with motorists. When you see a car behind you while riding two abreast, sure, maybe the other lane is clear and the car can go around...but how hard is it to move over to single file and make it easier for the car to pass you? We whine because the motorists get upset about a brief delay waiting behind us, but at the same time, sometimes we don't go out of our way to minimize that delay either. Before you get too sanctimonious about how impatient drivers are, think about how many times you have watched other cyclists exhibit bad manners and not "share the road" well and have kept quiet and not called them out for it? Sharing the road is a two way street, and if we can't convince other cyclists to be polite and courteous towards motorists, then what right do we have to expect the same from them?

genec

Of course they are intelligent reasonable folk... just some of them are lousy drivers. If we all played well together, we'd see fewer deaths by auto and easier merges in the areas I just described... sharing is a kindergarten concept that seems to be missed by some drivers.

Please note in my tirade that I indicated that it was a few selfish people that tend to muck things up... and then others get trapped in the muck.

johnnymoses

and motorists, never act like they own the road, ignore traffic laws, etc?

AC1074

Just check you tube. There are countless videos posted where cyclists confront drivers. Yes, car drivers do stupid things but actually tracking them & confronting them is a bad idea period. Just let it go and keep doing your thing. The video seems edited to me so its hard to tell what happened exactly but yea luckily it was a bat in the man's hand and not a gun. Sometimes you have to be the bigger person and keep going. Avoid confrontations. I would be crying if someone ran over my bicycle like that.