Of any kind. Commuting, road biking, touring, mountain biking etc.
Been a cyclist of various types for 20 years now. Never seems to be non-controversial. Even among other cyclists… many hate other types of cyclists. And now there is a lot of specific e-bike hate/controversy.
I don’t get it man. What do you think?
IME assholes are assholes regardless of being on a bike or not.
If you can go and maintain the speed limit, you’re fine on the road. If you’re going 1/4 of the speed limit and there’s no biking infrastructure, please stay off the road. I’ll probably get hate for it, but blame the state for not providing safe infrastructure for cyclist.
I’ve noticed a percentage of bikers don’t think they have to respect the rules of the road. Not stopping at stop signs, lights, or passing illegally when a car is stopped. I’ve almost hit one because they ran a stop sign and I did not have one. I’ve seen one hit trying to pass a car that was actively parking.
This goes both ways. If there’s no biking infrastructure, maybe its you who should blame the state for needing to go around or stay behind the cyclist. The road is theirs as much as it is yours.
People use the road to accomplish shit, going to work/school, get food, pick up kids, etc.
Someone decked out like Lance Armstrong to make their exercise take as little physical effort as possible and uses a route that’s not planned with others in mind both in time and location is selfish. Especially people who do it during rush hour, and inconvenience 100s or even 1000s of people.
There’s a big difference in that type of cyclist and someone that’s riding a bike in street clothes for a commute. And it doesn’t make sense to act like they’re the same.
Like, there are loads of cities with great bike trails, but they’re not going to be great bike trails on every street. And obviously cyclists who are inconsiderate aren’t exactly rare
No there isn’t at least not a large one, cycling costume or not has almost no bearing on whether the ride is for recreation/fitness or for getting from a to b, often both are combined. If you had a 30km commute on a bike you’d also try to wear clothes that make it easier to get there quickly and you would use the most direct route and this is what most cyclists are doing when people get annoyed by them.
Plenty of people are doing their commute as their training ride because it makes sense to do so, why should they have to drive their car half an hour and do an hour of cardio instead of their hour cycle commute, just so you can arrive a minute early come on.
Super convenient for them, but also very inconvenient for everyone else…
Which is my entire point about some cyclists being selfish assholes and them being the minority…
In another comment I mentioned how those selfish cyclists will always pretend they can’t be separated out, which I feel like is relevant here. And I know no amount of comments will change your mind because of that
Why should my half hour be worth less than your minute or 2 until you can safely overtake.
Not to mention that if their bike commute allows them to take a car of the road, you might be faster on average you just think that the bike makes you slower. Plus the 1000s of dollars in just waste if they would need to own a car instead and so on …
You know what’s super convenient for you(r group) but super inconvenient for everyone else, car centric infrastructure development.
That’s pretty much the opposite of what the comment they’re replying to was saying though. They were complaining about bikes going below the speed limit, so I guess they only want the Lance Armstrong types on the road and not the commuters.
Why though? With American roads being as wide as they are, shouldn’t it be quite easy to safely overtake slower cyclists? I manage to do that even on narrow European streets.
Car drivers break the law at a far higher rate than cyclists. The are way more accidents not involving bikers. Sorry people being healthy and helping the environment while reducing traffic is a slight inconvenience to you while you sit in a climate controlled box.
Some states give cyclists more autonomy at lights and signage than cars. In my state for example, cyclists can treat a stop sign as a yield and a stop light as a stop sign (meaning they have to stop at the light, but if it’s clear they can cross before it turns green). So that’s something to be aware of.
The big one here is sharing the road, which goes both ways. I don’t have an issue with bikes on the road, but most of our small town’s roads are one lane in each direction, and far too many bikes seem to think they’re entitled to hog the entire lane going 15mph and holding up traffic. The rules in this area are for slow traffic to turn off to allow others to pass (both vehicles and bikes), which bikes almost never do. Then you have the clowns that’ll ride 3 across and not let traffic pass, then get aggressive with drivers for honking.
Like yes bikes are legally permitted to use the road, but also be conscious that people have places to be, and your liesure stroll is holding up people from getting to work. Its almost always tourists that bog down the main highway and are jerks about it, most locals that ride bikes tend to stick to the many side streets that run parallel to the highway.
Now where my mom lives in the suburbs, they have the issue of kids on ebikes completely ignoring the rules of the road and causing accidents. These are little entitled rich kids with a big chip on their shoulders and zero supervision, blasting through intersections while ignoring signals, plowing the wrong way down a road, weaving through traffic, etc. Those little shits belong in jail.
I’ve noticed the same with younger ebike riders. Funny thing is that they follow the rules of the road whereas the older kids on dirt bikes could care less about the rules.
It’s too crazy to ride on the road with cars anymore. I live in a semi rural area that has been settled since the late 1600’s. Most of the roads follow the old established trails. When I was younger, I didn’t see any problems. Then again I was young, dumb, and bulletproof. Now I’m just dumb. We have a lot of rails to trails in the area so that’s where I ride anymore. It just kinda drives me nuts that I have to load up the bike and drive to a place to ride it.