Bikes and Traffic

As someone who spends quite a bit of time on my bike for training purposes as well as in a car for transportation purposes I am constantly doing battle with myself on how I feel about bikes on the road. When I'm on my bike, I want cars to see me, but not do anything drastic because I'm there. And, along those same lines, I do my best to ensure they don't have to. Riding in traffic can be fun but I'd be naive not to realize the insane danger of putting myself in some of those positions. However, in most cases, if the cars simply drive predictably with the flow of traffic, we'll all make it home for dinner.

I have plenty of friends who hate bikes on the road. I'm pretty sure my friend Durlak has dreams that night where he's given the right to run them over in his own arcade game style of revenge. I'm not sure what any cyclist ever actually did to Durlak, but I'm going to make a confession, I don't really blame him. Since moving to California I have encountered about a billion times more people using the bicycle as their main form of transportation. While it saves the environment, is affordable and a bunch of other pleasant things, it's actually a huge pain the ass for me as a driver and as a cyclist.

The problem with most people riding their bikes is that they have no idea how to do it and it's not really their fault. I don't know who's fault it is, but let's blame someone. While on a bike, you're supposed to act as if you're a vehicle and vehicles are supposed to act as if you're a pedestrian. This has never made any sense to me because how many pedestrians do you see walking in traffic through city streets? Well, actually, if you're in downtown San Francisco you'll see this a bunch because the crazy homeless people have long since stopped caring about cross walks or stop lights. But I digress.

Another issue with bikes in the street is that there is no uniform way that people ride them to get from point A to point B. That might not make any sense so let me try and explain. Cars use lanes in order for their to be a sense of order to the road. When someone is going to turn left, they are in the left lane, they have turn signals on their cars, traffic lights, stop signs, and general right of way rules that help things, for the most part, flow in a manner of chaotic poetry. While driving a car is a dangerous act, if you consider how many people are driving on a daily basis in an urban environment and how few accidents there actually are, I think you'll agree that the traffic system we operate under is pretty efficient. But bikes don't have this. Some people on their bikes do their best to actually follow traffic rules when riding. They'll turn left from the left hand lane. They ride in the furthest right hand lane (in most cases, even when riding fast, we're far slower than traffic) as close as they can safely get to parked cars or the shoulder allowing cars to pass us. While others ignore all of these rules they would follow if they were driving and use a mix of sidewalks, cross walks, the street and in a lot of cases, riding in the middle of the lane is something that could only be described as a wobbly line.

When I'm in my car and I see a cyclist who falls under the latter description I get just as frustrated as my friend Durlak. Not only because this person is going to cause a delay in my getting where I'm going, but also because later, when I'm on my bike, someone is going to hate me because they hate them, even though I'm not causing any of those problems.

I have defended cyclists rights to be on the road to many people and will continue to do so because I need that right for myself. Bike paths and trails are great in theory but not an effective system for actual training. This could be another post all it's own so I'll just leave it at that. Still, I completely agree that 90% of bikes on the road are a huge clog due to all of the factors I mentioned above. But what can we do? I personally wouldn't be opposed some sort of license requirement to ride a bike on the road. However, I couldn't imagine police actually being willing to enforce this as most of them are already annoyed when asked to enforce traffic violations for cars.

Since moving to San Francisco I was introduced to a weekly event that takes place every Friday called Critical Mass. Critical Mass is an organized bike ride that takes over downtown city streets during the afternoon rush hour to basically clog up traffic and get in people's way. Due to the fights that used to break out (and I don't blame anyone at all for wanting to beat the crap out of these idiots!) between the idiots on bikes (they are no cyclists) and motorists they now have a police escort which stops traffic along their route, which also changes weekly. I have only only seen critical mass once and I wanted to punch those idiots in the face. They claim their mission is to help promote cycling as a means of transportation and raise awareness but it just seems to me that they make everybody in a car hate everybody on a bike even more. It won't not make me sad if during a critical mass ride the entire group had a huge pile up, all their bikes broke, and they all sustained some freak injury that wouldn't allow them to pedal a bike every again but could go on with whatever else they do with their lives just fine. Rant Over.

I'm obviously torn as both a cyclist who needs to ride on the road and a driver who gets incredibly annoyed by the average bike rider swerving all over the place as they go grocery shopping. I guess all I can do is continue to try and not be a nuisance while I'm on my bike and avoid fulfilling Durlak's fantasy while I'm in my car.

And, just to kill it before Durlak leaves a comment on it, I've pretty much stopped running red lights. I'm not really sure what prompted it, but all of a sudden I find myself stopping at them these days and waiting with traffic. Probably, most of this is due to the $300 tickets I hear of people getting.