Big Kids
When I was a kid, biking was my favorite activity (after drawing.) Luckily I had a lot of space to do it.
When I started biking to work I hadn’t ridden a bike in 10-15 years. I’d never experienced biking for transportation. So it was not surprising that getting on a bike made me feel like a kid again… except I found myself biking in this:
It was anything but carefree. I realized pretty quick that I couldn’t bike like a kid and I had to pay attention. The city was an entirely different thing with potential for dangerous situations and the need to be careful.
However at least once a week I see someone do something careless like this:
Without even flinching or showing any awareness that they were almost killed. I just wanna say you guys SCARE THE SHIT OUT OF ME!
I’ve heard some brush it off and say they’re only putting themselves at risk. But, last time I checked, cities have more than one person. So when you do something careless like take a sudden left from the far right of the right lane…
You could set off a chain of events and put others at risk. Nope, you can’t bike like a kid anymore.
Red light running cyclists that are oblivious to the fact cause me indigestion also, but I have been looking at Hembrow’s videos of cycling in Holland, and all that stuff happens there too. I think it’s a common state of the human condition that we can’t indulge in in this country because the infrastructure is crap. As you pointed out, the roads aren’t made for people here, but people have to use them, even people in cars.
Over the past five years (40,000 miles), I’ve had, by probably a ratio of 10:1, more near misses from careless cyclists vs. with cars.
Hear hear! We’re all in this together! It’s up to every one of us, whatever mode of propulsion we’re using. Just yesterday I almost got run over by another cyclist accelerating through his stop sign. Thanks for this comic!
These days only a woman can draw a cartoon depicting other women obliviously riding their bikes. And people wonder why more risk-averse people don’t ride.
The problem is that so many drivers and cyclists are not educated about the laws of the road. I will admit I suspect that the majority of cyclists that run red lights know it is wrong but just do it anyway. However I also feel majority of drivers who miss-use the bike lane are not educated about the laws of the bike lane. This lack of education has lead to a lot of drivers assuming that the road is for cars only and then they make actions on that assumption without checking if it is true. This is what leads to what we know as cyclist/motorist road rage.
Just one of the reasons I feel we need to make people go through a drivers ed refresher course at least every 5 years.