Dear Motorist:
OK. You don’t like me, and I don’t like you. I don’t mean ALL motorists. Just certain ones. You know who you are. You refuse to acknowledge my right to be on the road, and it eats your guts that the law is on my side. I ride as far to the right as I can, but the law allows me to take up as much of the lane as my safety requires. Sometimes that is the whole lane. Accept it. If the right hand lane is a dedicated right turn lane and I am going straight, I cannot stay in it. I have to move to the center. Accept it. If I am turning left, I have to be in the left hand lane. Accept it. At an intersection where you have a stop sign and I don’t, I have the right of way, and you have to wait for me to pass by before you can pull out. Accept it. Or run for public office and try to change the law. As some tool of a motorhead that posts regularly here likes to say, a bicycle will always lose an argument with a car. Are you really willing to kill me to prove that point? Stop trying to bully me just because you can. I’m not going away.
Dear Cyclist;
Do you have to be such a fucking idiot? Not all cyclists. Just certain ones. You know who you are. You want the best of both worlds. Well, you can’t have it. You’re a driver, or you’re a pedestrian. PICK ONE. You don’t get to ride across pedestrian crosswalks. You don’t get to coast through stop signs and ignore yield signs. You don’t get to ignore traffic signals. You don’t get to move to the front of a line of stopped traffic and weasel back in. And get the fuck off the sidewalk! You make life bloody hard for the rest of us. Some of us actually follow the rules, but you are the ones motorists notice, and they tar us all with the same brush. I hate you.
This article appears in Jun 5-11, 2008.
Dear Poster: BEAUTIFUL!!!! An excellent piece of work. I am a driver and a cyclist and this bitch sums it up beautifully. I wish the whole of HRM would read this bitch and recognize their role in sharing the road. Salut!
I agree, Katz – I really like this bitch. Great to see someone who’s able to see both sides without bias.
That was me. Stupid cyclists are the bane of my existence. I hate them with a fiery hate. Motorists who hate me on principle, I can deal with. But the kind of cyclists who make motorists hate me, I want to beat them with a stick with a nail in it.
Miranda, your eloquence never fails to amaze me. You rock.
I always ride up to the near front of the traffic line – I figure it impedes motor traffic far less than if I were 15 cars back – I would probably make it throught the light but the cars behind me probably wouldn’t because I would probably slow traffic up. Certainly cars pass me if I’m way over to the right and there’s room – why shouldn’t I pass them if I can? Especially if its at least partly in their interest? I try to follow most of the rules, but I will not wait in traffic behind cars if I can get up to the front – 9 times out of 10 I’ll zip right up there and you know what? It’s great!
There’s a time and a place for that kind of maneuver, I agree. But you have to be careful, and a lot of cyclists aren’t careful. They blissfully ride to the front of the line of traffic on the right, and then they go ballistic when they nearly get right hooked. If you pass a car on the right, and that car is signaling to turn right at the intersection, and you get right hooked, it’s your own fault.
Ludicrous! Cars are the enemy. Cyclists deserve to rule the streets. Planet-destroying morons in denial deserve nothing but contempt and maybe some slashed tires.
Cyclists need to realize they are an inferior form of transportation and defer to the motorcar whenever there is a question of who has the right to a piece of roadway. .
That same mentality led to the Halifax Explosion(tm)
If I may quote myself, Keith: “Accept it, or run for office and try to change the law.”
Miranda, the law may be on your side, but that is cold comfort if a lack of common sense means you’re dead because you lost an argument with 4000 lbs of Detroit iron..
Keith, I have been commuting by bicycle for almost ten years, and I have never had so much as a close call, in spite of motorheads like yourself who would like nothing better than a semi-legitimate excuse to run me into a ditch. There is nothing wrong with my common sense. The question I want you to answer is, if a cyclist did something stupid which forced you to choose between placing your foot on your brake pedal, or killing someone, what would you do? Your attitude says you would run the stupid fucker over just to prove your point. You say cycling is an inferior form of transportation. That’s your opinion and you’re entitled to it. But it’s just that: an opinion. Nothing more. You have expressed that opinion a number of times, but have never offered anything to back it up, other than your tired assertion that “a bicycle will always lose an argument with a car”. A BMW will always lose an “argument” with a garbage truck too. By your logic that would make the BMW the “inferior method of transportation”.
Ah, Miranda, you look but you do not see. And that is what happens when two vehicles of any sort collide — nobody does it intentionally. Not me, not anyone. The problem is that if I’m in a BMW or a Buick or a Bentley and I collide with that garbage truck, I still have a pretty good chance of surviving unscathed because I am surrounded by a structure and safety equipment. But you, on a bicycle, have nothing to protect you. You are totally exposed. Hence you need to exercise extreme caution and discretion as you travel. Few seem to actually do so.I actually agree with your original post. But the problem is that I seldom see any cyclists like you claim to be yourself. Most of them are the asshats who you describe so well. They just don’t get it.
After the fifth attempt on my life by vehicular homicide today I realized something.Motorists are jealous of me. My mode of transportation is cheaper than theirs, they know it and it burns them up inside. Hence why the cut me off in intersections turning right while I’m going straight through.I know they can see me. I know they didn’t see a stop or any kind of signal from me at all since I didn’t give one. They know that I’m using bike routes, they’ve been posted for all to see on the HRM website. So they must enjoy scaring the shit out of me at intersections.They must enjoy trying to kill me. Making a mockery of the fact I’m kind enough to stay to the right so they can pass me by. All for revenge for using a mode of transportation that at most costs $70 every two three years to replace worn tires, helmets and chains. And $10 every year for new brake pads.And of course the part that really gets their goat, no insurance, license plates, registration and other yearly costs that put them over $3000 in the hole.I say fuck you assholes if you want to spend more to try and kill me fine. I’m getting a helmet cam so that when you finally succeed, I can get the posthumous laugh. Or better still evidence against you for the lawsuit should I live through the ordeal.