A guy in a Ferrari. Drinking a Starbucks. Talking on an iPhone.
By adamg - Thu, 07/10/2008 - 9:20am.
And that's why he couldn't signal to let Sean Roche, bicycling behind him on Beacon Street in Brookline, know that he was about to cut in front of him to get a parking space. No free hands, you see, sorry about that, old chap.
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Here come the bike
Here come the bike police!!!
He knew he wasnt in trouble, and the guy knew he was there. He didnt use his signal, but it doesnt seem to have affected this guy in the least, except for the fact that he found it offensive.
Sounds like someone has a boring life
Mine, not yours
Oo, oo. Is it true that drivers can ignore any law or regulation that is inconvenient? Check out over 400 comments to Bella English's piece in the Globe on sharing the road (like the laws require).
There are some by angry and injured cyclists. The vast majority are the driving version of get-off-my-lawn, ya punk! There's some serious attitude adjustment in order that only law enforcement on the hundreds of scofflaw cyclists and many thousands of reckless drivers would fix. Walking down to hand out the tickets should do cops bodies good.
The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles - Driver's Manual
Signaling
When you are traveling on a roadway, other people expect you to continue straight ahead,unless you indicate otherwise. This is why you must use signals whenever you make any move in traffic. Your signals notify pedestrians and other motorists of your intended moves and give them time to react.Regardless of the kind of vehicle you are driving, you must use signals. If the electronic signals on your vehicle are not working, you must use the three hand signals shown in the margin. Signals should be made throught he driver’s side window.
You must signal in certain situations:
•Changing lanes
•Turning at an intersection or into a driveway
•Pulling away from a curb
•Pulling over to the side of the road
•Entering or exiting an expressway or a freeway
Once you have completed your move, you must turn your signal off. Any time you want to turn, merge, join traffic from a stopped position, or change lanes, you must...
1. Check your mirrors for traffic behind you and check your blind spot on the side you are
moving or turning toward.
2. Signal your intent to move.
3. Make your move
http://www.mass.gov/rmv/dmanual/index.htm
It seems to me like this
It seems to me like this wasnt a close call, and that the signalling would not have made a difference. If we are going to malign drivers for not using a signal everytime they make a turn to pacify some cyclist whos not even affected by the "crime" I would also suggest we follow that cyclist around and hand him tickets for every infraction he makes. How often do we see bicycles running opposite traffic, on sidewalks, through red lights , across traffic ect. I was hit by a bike while I was crossing the street in Harvard Square the other day... I had the walk light and he was going the wrong way down a one way street and the lights were all red. Some cyclists hate car drivers, some of us T bound walkers hate those cyclists.
malign or criticize?
I don't know how close it was but the law is clear and the driver did not obey it.
If bloggers here are maligning drivers, having or displaying ill will; wishing harm on others that's just malicious. I know people are angry at drivers who don't obey the law or don't drive with courtesy or don't demonstrate any concern for bike riders and pedestrians safety but I don't recall anyone wishing drivers harm. Maybe I need to read more closely.
Holding cyclists accountable to the same standard as drivers seems reasonable.
Bella English Article
I think the vast and largely annoyed response to the English article was due to the fact that she made sweeping generalizations about how all cyclists followed the rules of road. At least that was my impression from reading a large number of the comments by drivers pointing out such.
Endemic Issues
Take another peek. After the first dozen or so, this long, vitriolic thread devolves into drivers and cyclists insulting each other, and many drivers justifying hating or even maybe even harming cyclists.
I confess that this is one of many such comment threads I have tracked down in the past six months. Around the country, many drivers express similar sentiments. These include all cyclists disobey all traffic laws. Drivers rarely act dangerously. The Spandex crowd deserves any injury or threats just for being on the roads that rightfully belong to motor vehicles.
Both sides are melodramatic. Yet cyclists have that big card of 3000 to 4000 pounds of motorized metal and plastic kill thousands of drivers, pedestrians and cyclists a year, in contrast to a handful of cycle-caused fatalities (almost always to the cyclists themselves).
In fact, our laws here do require drivers to share the road and slow, stop or yield as required, as with any person or vehicle ahead. The attitudes won't shift until cops get the orders to enforce the laws.
A couple of years ago when I was working in Kendall and commuting from lower JP, I saw that in Central Square. Cops began ticketing scofflaw cyclists as well as motorists who used to get a pass. For the former, it was largely passing red lights and for the latter, it was that plus one, two or more cars following another through a light to turn. That got everyone's attention, word got around and behaviors changed pretty quickly while that was in full force.
Many Boston cops seem to have a no-blood-no-ticket policy, but enforcement works even if a red-light ticket is trouble and not as exciting as pretending to look for felons.
These include all cyclists
These include all cyclists disobey all traffic laws. Drivers rarely act dangerously. The Spandex crowd deserves any injury or threats just for being on the roads that rightfully belong to motor vehicles.
Sitting at a table at a party and wearing a cast from when I was hit by a car (driver ran me down from behind as we left a stop light), I had to sit and listen to a douchebag Harvard postdoc declare that a)cyclists know it's dangerous and b)if they want to cycle, they take responsibility for those injuries.
This was in response to my assertion that there is no such thing as an "accident"- someone is always responsible, and drivers don't take responsibility for their own actions (such as driving too fast for conditions, being distracted, etc.) The state and insurance companies support it- insurance to a lot of people is just a reason to not care about how safely you pilot your vehicle, because hey, who cares, right? Insurance will fix your car, and you'll be protected by all your airbags. Fuck the cyclist you pinned to the wall, but you're safe!
I agree.
I largely agree with you. These threads always seem to devolve into drivers yelling at cyclists and cyclists yelling at drivers. It's too bad they couldn't be more productive.
Even aside from the bicycle issue
A guy with both hands already occupied is going to have a bit of a problem reacting to an emergency, but, of course, we all know that nothing like that could ever happen on Beacon Street, so it's cool.
No, it sounds like someone is pointing out
Pointing out an incredibly huge douchebag, acting like a douche, driving like a douche, and accessorized like a douche.
Douche!
2-3 times a week I end up
2-3 times a week I end up banging on someone's roof or rear door window because of this, but usually its them coming into the bike lane on cambridge street to go around someone turning left.
They usually wake up, sometimes yell at me to stop touching their car (this as they are sandwiching me into a parked car, the nerve), but either way I make sure I try to leave a couple of wedding ring dents or scratches as a reminder.
Maybe you should be more
Maybe you should be more aware of the vehicles around you.
I ride my bike Savin Hill to Central sq, pretty much entirely down Mass ave and back 3-4 times a week in the summer. Not once have I been brushed by a vehicle.
Are you kidding me? The car
Are you kidding me? The car comes up next to me, then slides to its right towards me, squeezing me up against the parked cars. If I was unaware as you suggest, i'd be under the wheels, moron. If I slam on my brakes, i still can get hit. So I have to steer and slowly brake with the right hand, stay aware of side mirrors on parked cars, and i take the liberty to use my left hand to wake up the idiot in the car.
Its nice that you go for your little bike rides in the summertime, but I have been bike-only for over 5 years at this point, and I am well aware of the vehicle around me.
Such hypocricy
You bicycle enthusiasts are all about "sharing the road", but you'll be the first ones to point and scream in terror when I roll my Hyundai around on your bike paths. Even at *moderate* speeds, I get dirty looks like I just punched the Pope or something. These things are narrow, and we're just going to have to share, ok?
Not okay
You breaking the law by not watching for other vehicles, using turn signals, yielding where legally required, and following other laws of the road is not in any way an excuse for you to break a further law by driving in the bike lane.
bike *paths*, not bike
bike *paths*, not bike lanes. My car doesn't fit in the bike lane.
Interesting
So you've got a Hyundai that doesn't fit in a bike lane, but does fit on a bike path? Interesting.
How do you get it by the bollards?
You poked holes in my
You poked holes in my otherwise completely believable 100% somber story
Aha!
The Perry Mason Moment!
I wield my rhetorical U-lock with pinpoint precision. En garde!
assumptions
who said anything about not using turn signals?
he was close enough to see the type of phone?
or just trying to make the driver sound like more of an asshole?
He was stopped, we chatted, ...
I saw his iPhone right up close.
how about people who pull out without signaling OR LOOKING?
I just biked into work this morning, and less than 100 feet from my apartment, some dumb bitch in her SUV pulled out of her parking space without looking and got the surprise of her life when I was 2 feet away and screamed "HEY!" to keep her from running me over.
Half a mile further down the road, another #$@!ing idiot pulled out of his space without looking.
But hey, since some of my fellow cyclists don't signal, don't wear helmets, go the wrong way up one-way streets, go through red lights, or pass stopped cars (OH NOES, WHAT IS THE WORLD COMING TO, PASSING STOPPED CARS!) that excuses drivers from safely operating their two ton lethal weapons in a responsible manner and of course justifies driver road rage against bicyclists who can be seriously or fatally wounded by even a minor collision with a car.
Im hearing from all these
Im hearing from all these cyclists that it is not safe, and is a hazard to their health riding their bikes in Boston.
Does that make riding a bike a destructive behavior?
Riding a bike is not a hazard
Cars are a hazard.
I'd be perfectly happy to say driving cars is destructive behavior, and they should be banned from or limited on most city streets.
Au contraire
Bicycles are vehicles. Any vehicle can be a hazard if operated by an idiot. Like, for example, the woman with the reflector pinned to her pony tail pedaling down Washington Street in Roslindale last night around, oh, 7 p.m. who blew right through the light at that weird intersection by Healy Field without even looking (I had time to watch her because I was stopped for the light). She was a hazard to herself and the only reason she's not dead or somebody else isn't is because she got lucky and there weren't any cars or pedestrians crossing at that moment.
people who don't bike, don't "get" going through lights
who blew right through the light at that weird intersection by Healy Field without even looking (I had time to watch her because I was stopped for the light).
Adam, if you biked regularly in the city, you'd know what one of the pleasures of riding a bike is excellent field of vision and hearing. A bicyclist is also moving at anywhere between ONE FIFTH and one HALF the speed of a car doing 25mph, and thus has much longer to verify an intersection is clear before proceeding through it.
Also, the reason so many bicyclists run lights- there's so many goddamn lights. It takes me on average ten minutes to bike to work (2.6 miles I think?), and I spend about 1/10th of that time sitting at lights, of which there are TWELVE. I'm usually lucky enough to only hit one or two of them.
I only 'run a light' when I've figured out what part of the cycle it is on, and can see far enough along the road to my left and right to assure there's no oncoming traffic. I also don't run lights at rush hour, or at big/crazy intersections. For example, Brigham Circle = BAD idea.
I've actually had more close-calls going with the flow of traffic, than running a red light. I've had several taxicabs make left turns straight at me, and several drivers cut me off making right turns (without signaling, AFTER PASSING ME.) The dream for cyclists is a walk signal- a completely clear intersection save one or two pedestrians.
So it's ok to break the law
So it's ok to break the law as long as you have a good field of vision and/or if you think there are too many traffic lights. Oh man...
It would make sense to change the law
to state that bicyclists can proceed when clear after stopping at a red light. This is a reasonable compromise between what the law now says and what most bicyclists actually do.
I really do not agree that
I really do not agree that is reasonable. How is it safe to let a bicyclist ignore red lights? As a driver, I do not want to have to worry about hitting a red-light-running person on a bike. They should just wait like the rest of us. Treating red lights like stop signs is not the answer, imo.
The suggestion was to allow
The suggestion was to allow bicyclists to proceed when the intersection is clear and safe, not ignore red lights. It's a good suggestion because it helps to clear the intersection and reduce the congestion at a red light. In heavy traffic, it doesn't make sense for everyone to sit there waiting for the green light if you can get the bicycles out of the way.
By that logic, cars should
By that logic, cars should be able to go through red lights too if it's "all clear" right?
Roads existed before cars
Roads existed before cars did, you know. Bikes and pedestrians got by just fine without traffic lights.
I realize the tech for bikes
I realize the tech for bikes existed before lights, but I dont recall seeing an abundance of spandex wearing people on bikes criss crossing the US during the 1700's. Maybe its just me?
1 if by land, 2 if by sea, 3 if its a yuppie on a bike!
Then I bet you recall
The only way to get around the colonies in the 1700s being on or behind a horse.
The motorists came quite a bit later... a few decades after the bicyclists literally and figuratively paved the road for them.
That's just water over the dam
Colonists got around a lot on ships, too. Also, a lot of people just walked (I love that Old Connecticut Path in Framingham is named that because it's the path three guys took to walk to Connecticut). One could even argue Rhode Island was settled by a guy riding a white ox down from Boston.
Yes, yes, being excessively pedantic as I sit here in
Darwin'sErnie Boch's waiting room while the horseless carriage is serviced.The point being
That some people seem to have such a poor grasp of history that they think cars have always been here and bicycles are some faddish interloper.
I believe that by the end of my life, bicycles will still be the daily conveyance of choice for billions, and we will look back on the internal combustion automobile as a largely extinct technology. Bicycles predated automobiles and will outlive them.
Yep
Sorry, I am being driven insane by whatever cable network they have on here, where they are reporting on exactly two stories: Those three Americans held by Fark, um, FARC for five years and the new iPhone. And the American-captive story is being done over and over and over, like this:
And then they show the same two or three clips over and over and over and they keep telling us "you won't believe what they said in their exclusive interview," and, yes, it's terrible the rebel commander pretended to be the Dread Pirate Roberts and threatened to kill that captive every day but never did, but, gah, hearing that same exact clip repeated every five minutes is getting to me.
Some people seem to have
Some people seem to have such a poor grasp of history they think ocean-going ships were pulled by horses.
History has nothing to do
History has nothing to do with this. I know my history and yet still think bicyclists should obey the rules of the road. If they did, more power to them and no problem on my end.
Roads existed before bikes
Roads existed before bikes did, you know.
not really, in america at
not really, in america at least. It was the League of American Wheelmen, a booster group started by a Boston bicycle manufacturer named Pope, that created and drove the Good Roads Movement. Before then american roads were mud pits basically, economic sinks that ate time and money. European visitors were aghast that people could live like this, and it was a symbol of still being a post-colony, a second world nation.
The invention of the bicycle revolutionized movement, and sustained high speeds were for the first time possible, and roads became paved. You know.
To paraphrase the ministers
To paraphrase the ministers wife from the simpsons:
"Oh wont someone please think of the PEDESTRIANS!"
All this talk about bikes being able to run red lights, and bikes hating cars and cars hating bikes , and you forget to mention the safety of those of us who dont use either mode of trasnport (and some of you are bound to get off your metal machines at some point too!)
So your bike runs a red light, and you say its ok because you can see all the cars. How about that woman stepping off the curb who you blind sided because she looked both ways and thought she was clear (and all lights were red, and theres a little walk signal.) What bikers dont realize is those of us on foot hate you more than we hate the cars...
Somerville Pedestrian
The two times I'd almost been seriously (potentially fatally) injured have been as a pedestrian on sidewalks coming head on with bicyclists. One guy I stopped when his front wheel was between my legs and my hands on his handlebars. He apologized and I dressed him down seriously for
a.) being on a sidewalk
b.) not having lights, reflectors or even white colored clothing at night (was 8:00 pm in late autumn/early winter)
He got all indigant and said that if he were to drive on the road, he'd be injured or killed and rode off to my hollering at him that, yes he would, if he drove as badly on the street as he did on the sidewalk.
The other time I got forced off the sidewalk, it was by non-English speakers who I asked politely (in English, I must admit, mea culpa) to move. I posted it on my blog, had it picked up here, and was rather bemused by the # of nasty comments and emails I received.
almost seriously injured means
not seriously injured, or not injured at all?
Almost seriously injured
Almost seriously injured means, due to quick thinking and reaction, I didn't end up in the emergency surgery like I did long, long ago in a faraway (considered to be more enlightened) land when I had carnal contact with the front wheel/handlebars of a Tour de France wannabe cyclist.
Apropos
The San Franscico Metropolitan Transportation Commission is considering just such a law right now. The law would make a red light like a stop sign for a bike - stop, look, and roll.
I disagree - it's a RED light
I guess it comes down to, what's safe? Suppose you deem that it's safe to cross even though there's a red light and you get whacked by a car with a green light. If you were, by law, allowed to cross, this raises all sorts of legal bullshit.
I get a kick out of the people that say they obey all the laws, use hand signals, stop at red lights, etc. Then in the next sentence, they say they only go thru red lights when it's safe. I'm sorry, but that's not obeying the law.
Re: So it's ok to break the law
I would rather break the law and go through a red light than stay in an intersection. After slowing down, If I have a clear view and it's safe to go, I will. Intersections are the most dangerous place to be and I wont stay there any longer than I need to. Break the law vs get rear ended at the red light; I wonder which one I should choose? Some lights don't even turn green for a bike, we have to wait for a car to come before it changes. If there is a marked spot for me to wait for the light to change, I will wait for green. That being said bikes should NEVER hit pedestrians and cars should never hit bikes or pedestrians. 18 wheelers should never hit anything. If you weigh more and travel faster, it's your obligation not to hurt anyone.
I disagree with you, anon.
A bicycle is also considered a vehicle, and therefore, when one rides his/her bicycle, they, too are subject to the rules of the road, just as cars and other vehicles are. Also, plenty of cyclists who run red lights get killed or maimed, and, 80 some odd percent of the time, when there's a cyclist fatality resulting from a car vs. cyclist incident, the cyclist has been found to be at fault.
I disagree, cars are
I disagree, cars are equipped with protection equipment. Many new cars even have side air bags. A car bumping into a car at low speeds is not a big deal, and even at high speeds (unless supreme stupidity is present, or your using really high speeds IE non city speeds/highways) normally doesnt result in injury. Where as a person on a bike can hurt themselves going over a rock!
high speed auto accidents
high speed auto accidents normally don't result in an injury? Are you sure about that?
A bike at normal speed isn't a terrible threat to the rider's safety, but a bicycle is poorly equipped to handle a collision with a car, just as a car is poorly equipped to handle a collision with a semi truck or a train. I fail to see your point.
I tend not to drive on train
I tend not to drive on train tracks , I see that I am outmatched and avoid the remote chance of a collison.
As for trucks, I also avoid truck routes, and tend to stick to areas where trucks shouldnt be to start with.
So you avoid interstates and
So you avoid interstates and rail road crossings? How do you manage to get around the city?
Interstates I head for the
Interstates I head for the left and pass trucks as fast as I can. I always try to keep at least one car between me and any truck in view.
As for trains, I dont share the tracks with them. I cross their path and then get the hell out of the way. I know full well a train can come at any time, and actually do slow down a tad and check before proceeding. I guess if I were a bike type person I would pull around the safety gate and zig zag my way over before the train came barreling down on me, then would honk my horn and swear with a lisp when he almost hits me.
Consensus?
There are a whole bunch of assholes on the road. Some of them drives cars, while some of them drive bikes. We should all obey the law and be respectful of our fellow drivers, no matter what vehicle is being driven.
Now that we have that settled, can we talk about pink hats again?
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Pink hats
How about road hogs wearing pink hats and toting guns?