Yesterday on the ride in a driver in a Saab honked at me.
"Huh? Saab drivers are supposed to be sensitive architects" I thought.
On the ride home I decide to take the bikepath to avoid traffic. This route gives me about 10 miles of lightly traveled, well lit roads, 8 or so on the bike path and is about 3 miles longer than just riding the road the whole way.
5 miles from home, I approached an intersection that has two choices; right turn only, or left turn only. I was turning left. Very little traffic. As I pull up behind a car turning left a big pickup pulls up behind me. The road we are turning on to has no traffic so there is no hold up. When I get up to the stop sign the gentleman in the 4x4 behind me gets on his PA and shouts "Hey Pal you don't own the road", passing me in a blue cloud of diesel.
My bubble is slightly burst.
I purposely go out of my way to avoid traffic, and run into this fellow. I had been convinced that things had gotten a lot better with motorist sharing the road.
I hope it was just a bad day and not foreshadowing of things to come.
4 comments:
Unfortunately this problem is happening everywhere now. As more cyclists take to the roads more people envy their freedom to ride a bike and there are more clashes with motorists. Maybe you can talk to your city government about installing "Share the Road" signs? That can at least give cyclists in your area a little more recognition.
That stinks, a lot has to do with motorists not understanding that you are properly navigating roadways, there's too few cyclist around. I was shocked when I saw how road cyclists acted like vehicles when I moved to a city, turns out they are riding for the most part accordingly. I can see why ordinary people just don't understand.
I ride year round, and I notice that incidents like these increase as the weather gets colder. I think some drivers have a limited tolerance, and expect there to be no cyclists on the road between October 1st and June 1st. We're breaking the unspoken rule I guess.
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