Frazz by Jef Mallett for April 05, 2014

@ Mr. Nabuquduriuzhur…I’m sorry you have had such bad experiences with cyclists who do not obey vehicular law. On the other hand, what about all the CAR DRIVERS about which one could say the same thing?! I live in a fairly bike friendly state but even here, car drivers get away with murder if they hit a bicyclist—even when the bicyclist is obeying road rules.

N, P & T: it is just a fact of life that when bicycle riders (who tend to travel 10-30 mph and for whom every joule of kinetic energy comes at great cost) and car drivers (who tend to travel 30-and-up, and for whom a stop-and-restart is just a couple light taps of the pedal) share the same roads, they will create a Mutual Annoyance Society. Not much different from bicycle riders sharing a “recreational path” with joggers and baby-carriage-pushers. It’s life. Whining about it on the internet isn’t going to change it.

But being compared to a golfer… now them’s fightin’ words…

I do ride, mostly on dirt roads with my dog, and don’t play golf, but I did learn to appreciate the game from my late husband and enjoyed going to occassional tournaments (before the Tiger madness took over). Golf courses are certainly more interesting than football fields or tennis courts.

The Masters got rained on last year. I felt bad for ’em. Well, not that bad…

Better’n baseballThe small one’s not doin’ 90mph…

Boy’s got a soapbox, don’t he?

One main difference, a lot of golfers can make good money doing it as a job, very few cyclists make a dime.

Runners will run in the rain more often than bikers will bike in the rain. For me its a safety thing. Too easy to wipe out on a road bike on wet roads. Scary enough out there.

Try highway 4 in New Mexico. 4 Circles the Los Alamos National Lab and there is an active cyclist community. I had to deal with these people for 25 years and their major feature is a dramatic loss of IQ, common sense and good manners when there are more than two on the road together. The good news is the auto/truck drivers haven’t resorted to road rage.

Lol

The one time I almost killed someone while driving was when a cyclist decided to cross against a red light. I was coming up to an intersection, the light turned green, my lane was clear, the van and car in the lane to my left did not move. I then saw why. I approached the cyclist at 35 mph, quickly swerved into the left lane, missed the rear of the bike by inches, swerved back to the right lane. The idiot cyclist just pulled up to the right side of the road, and I could almost hear his WHEW, THAT WAS CLOSE.

I hope 1, he pooped his bicycle shorts, and 2, he never did anything that stupid again.

Unfortunately, where I come from, my career was/is investigating fatal and serious traffic crashes.

Most cycling crashes where the fault of the cyclist running a red light or stop sign. We even have a group here that organizes night rides and then violate every traffic law they can riding to block the street running traffic signals, few have any lights to show they are there. And eventually I someone gets hit and killed or very badly hurt and THEY blame the driver. And yes I rode in the past and I ride today. Oh if you need to know I live in a major metropolitan area and have had to teach my now adult children to look both ways at stop signs on way street because cyclist DO drive the wrong way.

I have seen a fair share of cyclists over the years and maybe one in ten stop at stop signs. One guy was ahead if me coming up to a stop sign at a T intersection, and I was impressed that he signaled for a left turn. But then he turned left through the stop sign without even slowing down.

I happen to have played golf almost all my life, and really like it. To each his/her own, I suppose.