Cycling, cyclists' rights and ecology

Bro Deal

I think in the U.S. a cyclist dressed in lycra is viewed by most people as someone is doing this for fitness. There is not the implication that concern for the environment is involved. A rider who is commuting in regular clothes will be suspected of being too poor to drive a car. The general population view people who commute by bicycle by choice as a little crazy. It is definitely not normal.

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"You are like the wind and I like the lion. You form the tempest. The sand stings my eyes and the ground is parched. I roar in defiance but you do not hear. But between us there is a difference. I, like the lion, must remain in my place. While you like the wind will never know yours." -- Mulay Hamid El Raisuli, Lord of the Riff, Sultan to the Berbers, Last of the Barbary Pirates

threaded

As a cyclist who does about 20,000 kms per year on his bike I would like to ask for a great hand to come down from the sky and scoop up the precious few idiots who spoil the roads for everyone.

I see or am just about the first to arrive on at least one serious traffic accident a month and I really really am utterly fed up with it. Sometimes I would like the ability to look the other way and completely not notice a car in a ditch for example, and leave people injured and alone whilst waiting for the emergency services arrive, like so many other road users seem able to do. It would be cheaper on cycling clothes too.

Only last week I was physically attacked by a drunken driver who first tried to use his car to knock me off my bicycle for no better reason than I was a cyclist on my own, in the dark, on a relatively lonely stretch of road.

Yes, to commute regularly by bicycle one does have to be more than a little crazy, and the reactions of a Ninja cat on it's last life.

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JohnO

I ride for fitness and enjoyment. Where I am (KY, USA) it isn't practical to commute on a bike due to the distance I have to travel and the heavy traffic. Not that the drivers are intentionally hostile, they just don't pay attention. It's too dangerous, sooner or later your luck will run out. I'd love to commute on my bike, if there was a reasonably safe way to do it. About 21 miles each way, so it's definitely doable if it weren't for the careless motorists and lack of bike lanes.

I have noticed bike lanes beginning to spring up in the last few years, and there's a bike trail being built to run the circumference of Louisville, over 100 miles. So it's getting better, but still not to the point where cycling as commuting would be practical. A couple of guys that I work with do commute on cycles, but they're very devoted and don't have families to support (a big factor when you think of injury or worse).

I spent a wonderful week in Holland. Cycling paradise. Everyone rides bikes over there, motorists are friendly, plenty of bike lanes, and the high cost of petrol is a good motivator. Cheap beer and excellent coffee, too.

Powerful Pete

In Rome cycling is purely a fitness/sport thing. Only those too poor to own a car commute by bike, and it is definitely not fashionable to give up your car.

Your car, as a male, is viewed as an extension of your penis. A turbo-charged vehicle seems to equate (in the minds of many of my countrymen) in the feeling that you have artifically enhanced your weewee.

Unfortunate, really. Everyone knows that riding a De Rosa makes your weewee bigger and all the hot babes desperate to spend quality time with you.

Having said that, there are a number of the consular roads around Rome that are 'known' to be places where people ride a lot, so we tend to have to deal with the usual 10% of assholes on the road, no more or no less than anywhere else, I suppose.

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iglagol

alienator wrote:

Sounds quite wise, indeed. But you might be interested to learn the fact that cyclists in Norway are respected presicely more "than anyone else".

Well, guys, I would like to thank you for these interesting answers you have given and my question for this time is:
What is the situation about car-free zones in your area? D'you have many or little of them?

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