Just read the bitches section in the latest Coast regarding bike committing. For those drivers out there who feel the need to be aggressive in your cars when you see cyclists, I bet you were bullied in school and now you wanna give back a little with 2 tones of steel and petroleum products. I don’t ride my bike because I don’t have a car. I ride my bike because I think being stuck in traffic sucks. What if I push the button to go across the cross-walk and then ride across? Are you gonna run me over to teach me a lesson?
Do you really see bikes and cars as the same form of vehicle? First of all, bikes don’t kill people. Secondly, they don’t pollute. Third, they don’t take valuable real estate in the city centre. I could go on but it’s futile. If you feel road rage when you’re driving around cyclists, perhaps you should reconsider driving and take the bus. Cyclists are people just like you. And no they cannot accelerate as fast as you can in your piece of shit car so why should they follow the same laws. We’ll it’s HRM law that cyclists follow the same rules as cars you say. There’s problem number one Bob.
The city should give incentive to bike commuters like other progressive cities around the world do. Everyone wins, even if you in your car coming into the city by yourself everyday (spending hundreds of dollars in fuel you idiot) so no one has to smell you’re morning farts but yourself, can’t understand.
If you don’t or can’t see the benefits of a bike friendly city then you’re a complete idiot and you must believe that dinosaurs didn’t exist (even though you’re powering your car with dead ones). You must think that you’re lazy fat ass lifestyle of driving everywhere is going to last forever. You got another thing coming Sheila. And if one day you find a bike lock flying through your windshield when you cut off the guy on the bike then don’t be surprised, shocked, or feel like a victim. You deserve it.
Sincerely,
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.
I’m sorry but providing incentives to bikers that already do not follow the rules of the road is not a solution to any of the issues that drivers and bikers are experiencing…I think enforcement is what is needed.Enforcement of traffic laws and also ticketingcharging the drivers that act like their car is a weapon and that it’s alright to threaten people with it. A guy running around downtown threatening people with a knife would be tazered and hauled off to jail, road ragers should too. On the same page…bikers riding on sidewalks or riding across crosswalks, or otherwise just plain failing to adhere to any Motor Vehicle Act rule should be ticketcharged and hauled off as well. There are shit-heads on both sides of this issue and people spewing forth the one-sided crap you just posted doesn’t help the situation. You may be the one cyclist that adheres to the Motor Vehicle Act…and if so, I applaud you! On the other hand…I have consistently seen bikers being a primary cause for many of the near and not so near misses on the roads that I have personally witnessed. Now in defense of bikers, yes there are plenty of inattentive drivers out there as well, my biggest gripe about drivers…I DO NOT CARE IF IT IS NOT AGAINST THE LAW…GET OFF YOUR DAMN CELL PHONE BEFORE YOU FUCKIN KILL SOMEONE.
This bitch is pathetic. You complain that drivers are too agressive, then threaten violence when they ‘cut you off?’ (by the way, if you’re passing a car on the right hand side when it has signaled a turn you are completely in the wrong–and have a death wish.) You say that you want drivers to see cyclists as people “just like you”, but you treat drivers like shit. People who don’t agree with everything you say must be idiots who think that dinosaurs didn’t exist? Insightful, mature, thanks for adding to the debate. I don’t have a problem with cyclists in principle, but nearly every accident or near accident I have seen in downtown Halifax has been at least partially the cyclist’s fault. It’s not “HRM law” that treats cyclists the same as other vehicles, it’s provincial law, and it’s the same as everywhere else in this country. Grow up, and learn how to ride your bike properly.
What is it with the cycling community getting on such a high fucking horse? If you can get passed that fact that this person obviously has their head up their ass, they do make some good points.This city is in dire need to be more cyclist / pedestrian friendly. We just don’t have the space to get any more traffic in and of out the halifax core. More cyclists & less cars (not to mention a better mass transit system) would go a LONG way in improving this city. At least from a congestion side. The staggering violence and useless police force are items for another bitch.Cyclists… I’m really trying not to paint you all with the same brush, but you really need to choose better candidates for your figure heads. Dumb fucks such as the one above who loath drivers with such contempt need to be brought down a peg. I’ll work on the arsehole drivers… you help me by doing the same with these prissass cyclists.
Look we don’t have a club with a secret handshake like all of the car drivers out there, so we aren’t as organized and as such are not able to ‘pick a leader’. How do you car people organize yourselves so that stuff like accelerating from 50-80 from the rotary up to quinnpool goes unnoticed? Or running red lights? Speeding up through yellow ones in front of cars facing you turning left? talking on your cell phones an rear ending people? drinking and driving? driving without registration or insurance? parking in handicapped spots? parking in front of the doors of grocery stores waiting for your other to come out? cutting your fellow motorists off?Let us know, it’d really help us out. Is it some kind of ‘cloak of invisibility’? What?
Now you’re just being an overdramatic twit. Are you the only cyclist you know? Do you bike with anyone else? Do you pass a cyclist on the road at any point in time? When I’m the passenger in a vehicle with a friend or relative and they do something they shouldn’t be doing, I let them hear about it. They’re less inclined to repeat said action and hopefully would in turn stop someone they know from doing the same or any of the other road infractions. Is it so much to ask that cyclists be able to police themselves? If I can call out a driver for doing something stupid can’t you guys do the same for cyclists?Just this summer I followed a lady who was eating with one hand, talking on her cell phone with the other all while driving through clayton park. When she stopped, I ripped her a new one. Take some fucking responsibility for your own and I’ll continue doing the same.
I don’t look forward to reading about you in the paper when you ‘call out’ the wrong person, or do you just single out women drivers because its ‘safer’?Anyway, I have given shitty cyclists a piece of my mind, but for the most part, like honking your horn at an idiot driver, its pointless.
It wasn’t my meaning to suggest I singled out a female driver so where the hell you got that from I’ll never know. Simply giving an example. However, you did manage to make the exact point of what’s wrong with this city and perhaps the world at large. You think I’m worried about calling out the “wrong person”? I’d rather call out the wrong person and hope to to do right by all than sit back in a cofortable cloud of indifference. Indifference is the equivalent of cowardace.
a: The OP is an idiot. This kind of Us vs Them attitude benefits NOBODY. b: Somebody somewhere on this board once made a statement to the effect that the ratio of idiots to non-idiots is pretty consistent regardless of the number of wheels involved. I think that was a pretty cogent comment. No single group has a monopoly on stupidity. c: Peer pressure can be a positive force. I try to influence people I know whose cycling skills could use some tweaking. As an occasional driver, I also try to educate my driving friends. But I am cautious about going off on strangers, no matter how glaring their stupidity.
Exactly. The one wrong person could make the difference between an alive ‘coward’ and a dead/maimed one. And for what? Sorry, MY life is worth more than following some twit and telling him to hang up his phone.
I have discovered an answer for cell phone drivertalkers…its a pocket-sized cell phone signal jammer. Its about $114 and from the testimonials, well worth the hilarity. You see someone driving by while chatting, just pull within 30m, turn it on and BING! no more cell phone conversation. Only wish it could fry the phone too.