Cyclists are perceived as the opposite: hobbyists who go too slowly and hold everyone up. By the simple act of riding down a busy street, a well-placed cyclist can necessitate hundreds of questionable overtaking maneuvers as each car has to pass them. "Trail of chaos" in other words.
And most of those cyclists would love to be on a bike lane instead, but those often just don't exist.
From personal experience it's also annoying when I get hate from car drivers who assume I deliberately use the road instead of the "bike lane" which is in fact only meant for pedestrians, but try to explain that in half a second while passing and when the official road markings are only visible with forensic tools.
I think that may be from people who are in a rush. As a novice driver it may be difficult to deal with cyclists, but anyone with sufficient driving experience should be able to easily handle that.
The only time I've ever been annoyed at cyclists is when there was some kind of a parade procession in front of me, with cyclists fanning out across the entire road. It happened suddenly as well, which startled me moreso than making me angry.
While LA is hardly a paragon of bicycling accessibility, it does have a ton of dedicated cycling routes (I’m talking 8-12+ ft wide, dedicated pathways) that can get bicyclists to most of the major hubs throughout the city. Even still, you’ll see the occasional bicyclist(s) who wants to drive down Washington Blvd during rush hours Because-They-Can(TM) and the cycling path is a little too inconvenient for them, holding up hundreds of cars.
I have nothing against the majority of bicyclists, but those occasional entitled few are the only ones people see; which can easily paint their opinions of all of them.
There are lots of roads in the US where there’s no sidewalk and you have to walk along the edge of the road if you’re a pedestrian. What’s silly about this? In general, it is perfectly legal to use roads for cycling and walking (though I'm sure there is some variation between jurisdictions).
It's silly because it's often dangerous. A lot of these roads are busy, and the speed limits can be 35-50 MPH. For better or for worse, drivers are just _not_ anticipating pedestrians on these sorts of roads, but some people have no better choice.
It's silly that you think that this is anything to do with being a person. Why can't I walk in the middle of the road, you know, like a person? It's just such a bad faith argument.
The context was cycling on rush hour Washington Boulevard, which isn't absurd if it's the easiest route to your destination, any more than walking down a road is absurd if you don't have an alternative.
The context (sigh) here is that I'm saying "like they're people" is not a good argument. Drivers are also people. It's not an argument. I don't know why the topic keeps drifting off this.
Being a person is a good prima facie argument for being allowed to access public infrastructure. There may be countervailing considerations, but you didn't provide any (other than by apparently suggesting that it was somehow absurd for people to walk on roads).
But I'm not the author of the "like they're people" comment, so I'm not particularly interested in defending that particular line of argument.
It's almost like, in a society, you sometimes give up some of your personal entitlements for the greater good.
It's why you'd also be called entitled for using an elevator for your personal enjoyment, for defecating in a public pool, for playing around in a turnstile or for refusing to get vaccinated during a worldwide pandemic.
Yeah, you're the one comparing riding a bicycle on a public road to shitting in a pool. I really cant imagine why you think other people are acting entitled.
I also compared it to right-wing antivaxxers...come on buddy, that's the easier claim to discredit!
Or, you could use the rational side of your brain (the portion that most people develop in their preteens) and apply it to the abstract concept of your singular need/want being less important than another hundred's. Especially if there's a dedicated piece of infrastructure built just for you. Kind of like a bike lane 30ft away, or a restroom six feet away from the pool.
In other words, the literal definition of being entitled.
We all paid for the roads too ("we" includes cyclists), and we paid for them to accommodate any vehicles that are legal to operate on them, which in most jurisdictions includes bikes.
But cars can't drive in bike lanes. Therefore cyclists enjoy EXTRA privilege at all taxpayers' expense, which I'm fine with. But if cyclists aren't going to use them, they should be removed and the space reclaimed for ALL vehicles (including bikes).
So, your assumption is that they are all just a bunch of uppity jackasses instead of semi rational human beings? Go give those routes a ride chum, you'll probably figure out whats going on in a hurry.
I think we’re trying to figure out what conclusion you draw from that. Do you think the cyclists are doing it just to annoy you? If not, then why? Isn’t it likely that the dedicated cycling infrastructure is less adequate than you assume?
I don't care why they're doing it. The case I witnessed involved a generously wide bike lane with excellent visibility, and bikers deliberately riding outside it and blocking traffic. Do they all do it? No. But it happens.
Except that I gave a specific example (Washington Blvd) which has a notoriously well maintained and accessible bike lane 30ft away; to give a specific example of the entitlement I was referring to.
But then why do you think the cyclists are not using it? Again, do you think they are doing it just to annoy motorists? This doesn't seem plausible on the face of it.
I can’t answer for what’s going on in their heads, but why do you immediately assume everyone has good intentions? Maybe they didn’t like the traffic in the bike lane and wanted to move faster, maybe they had a chip on their shoulder, maybe they are simply oblivious to the world around them, I don’t know. I can just say that I could literally turn my head and see dozens of cyclists on the bike lane riding with zero issues. The fact that he couldn’t do the same means the problem is his, not mine and the other hundred+ people they were impeding.
You seem to be missing the entire point. This isn’t about the 999 cyclists that use the lane, as expected; but mostly go unseen. It’s about that 1 cyclist that acts in a completely entitled manner being the one everyone sees.
Just go re-read my original post that you downvoted, I wasn’t blaming cyclists in general. My point was an occasional entitled cyclist (who 100% exists, just like entitled cagers and motorcyclists) gives a bad name to all cyclists because the good ones go mostly unseen.
It seems weird to me to think of this in terms of good or bad intentions. The cyclists presumably want to get to their destinations as quickly and easily as possible. In some cases that means going on a road.
Bikes are allowed to go on roads, so I don't really understand why this annoys people. I guess if you really don't like it you should advocate for legislation to change the rules.
The annoyance is that they have a car free road 30ft away, while the cars do not have a bike free road.
It’s well understood that bikes can impede traffic. The world accepts this, especially on a normal day. It’s why we build special lanes for them (in addition to their safety concerns). But if you have your own special infrastructure, just for you and you’re using the other infrastructure, adding 15-30mins to hundred’s of people’s daily commutes for your convenience, that’s the literal definition of entitlement.
Yes, you’re allowed to do it; just like I’m allowed to get into the elevator and press all of the buttons for my own joy. In either case, we are assholes to most people.
>It’s well understood that bikes can impede traffic.
I haven't seen this myself. Here in London there are lots of cyclists on the road, and it doesn't seem to interfere with car traffic. It's relatively dangerous to the cyclists, of course.
cycling is my dominant way around the city during the warm months here. i used to take complicated, meandering routes to stay on the residential roads during my trips so i could avoid that type of passing. but at a certain point, i step back and realize that it doesn’t make sense to radically inconvenience myself in order to make auto drivers’ lives more convenient. we both pay for public roads: i have as much right to the good routes as any other resident; if it’s not working for you then vote for better infrastructure (in this case, perhaps a bike lane).
also FWIW this same problem exists in dense residential streets, just with the roles reversed. all those narrow intersections with no clear right of way and so many cars parked by them that you can’t see far: cars have to slow down way more for that whereas cyclists have maneuverability that lets them go a bit faster — until they catch up to a slow car on the same street. so anyway, don’t think that slowing down other classes of vehicles is a problem exclusive to bikes: on a mixed-use road every class of vehicle, including yours, will at some point require another vehicle to slow down for you.
I get annoyed at cyclist and I am one! I just won't ride a bike on a road without a bike lane because it terrifies me and morning commuter traffic on a road with a half-meter shoulder with barely awake hurried drivers going 50+ miles an hour is the worst place to bike.
Eventually I just moved within walking distance of work but would have loved to be able to get exercise biking 5-10 miles each way.
