I’m going to rant a bit today (quell suprise ?), and today it’s going to be about …. bicyclists.
Living in Denmark, we have a pretty extensive traffic net for cyclists, and the traffic laws benefit this type of transportation, and in fact it is my favored one as well, to the degree that I’ve never bothered getting a driver’s licenses. Why do that, when I can get where I need to go as fast, much cheaper and much healthier then using a car …. well, most of the time anyway.
‘Cause biking exposes me to my main pet peeve in the traffic, which is other cyclists.
Being a cyclist myself, I really get to see all the stupid and annoying thing other cyclists do in the traffic, and I fully sympathize with the drivers who get annoyed by these moving speed bumps.
Everybody who’ve ridden a bike knows the types I’m talking about, and thankfully, having been hit once to many times by the pavement via automobiles and lorries, I myself now mostly bike very politely, yet I have these urges to do bodily harm to other cyclists cause of their inconsiderate movements.
1) My main pet peeve of these annoying moving speed bumps are the ones whose life is so danged interesting, that they are forced to talk on their cell phone while biking. Easily identifiable by their wobbling movement across the entire path with just one hand on the handlebar (if you are lucky) while they have to convey their fascinating life via the phone at the total disregard of their own safety and worse … others.
You see, I have little problem with people doing reckless behavior, if they’d only take themselves down – however more often than not, innocent people get hurt.
Now, I usually bike at a decent speed – not especially fast as such, just around a couple of twenty km per hour, but still fast enough that I’ll have to overtake most of these people, and I must admit that I have a secret fantasy of jamming a stick into their front wheel while they do this – I think, fair’s fair – quid pro quo and all that.
Of course, being the gentle and respectful human being I am, I would never do this in real life, but a guy can fantasize.
2) In the same group are the one who’re texting on their cell while biking. In fact I might be tempted to label these as worse than group number 1, cause they at least look where they are going most of the time. These texting menaces mostly look down as their thumb dances across the phones keypad … where was my stick?
3) Another group I dislike in the traffic is the ones who just can’t seem to keep their bike going in a somewhat straight line, but have to utilize the entire path akin to how we see people stopped for drunk driving stumble along.
These people fascinate me as much as they scare me. If they truly are that taxed by cycling, you’d think that the old geometry knowledge from preschool: “The straight line between two points is the shortest path” type thing would really come in handy. But apparently they are so tired from their long bike ride that they hardly have the strength to keep the bike going straight, so they’ll take the double length route from the left, to the right, to the left, to the right of the path. These people are annoying to overtake, because if you startle them by passing – then they’ll surely swing out a lot.
4) Group 3 is often the same people who find it so taxing to bike through the city that they look like a non-epo doped rider going up Alpe d’huez in Tour De France. They seem to have to touch the handle bar ever second thread with their forehead.
At least these people aren’t dangerous, just amusing.
5) Finally comes the group of oblivious people. These – people – seem oblivious to what else goes on in the traffic, so they’ll come from a side path, just straight out in front of you, or worse – motorized traffic … or is that worse, I forgot.
They are also the group who find it fun to ride half way across a traffic light while waiting for it to turn yellow, so they can ….. slowly ….. ride along, simply cause they are too impatient to wait for green. Or at least it might because they are too impatient, but it could also be that because they bike so slowly, that they do not have 5 seconds to wait. I do not have count on how many times I’ve seen a car come late and run a red light from the other direction, simply because he knows that it is still red or yellow for other traffic, this group of cyclists are just waiting to get run down.
Now, I’m by no means a perfect cyclist myself but I do signal in the traffic, I keep a sharp eye as to minimize problems for myself and that is why I see these people – or moving speed bumps as was mentioned to me by a friend several years back. At least I do not belong to any of these groups.
And of course, I would never wish bodily harm on other people (okay, that’s a lie – some are just so reckless, that I would not mind nature taking its cause, as long as nobody innocent gets hurt) but the apparent lack of respect for other people just annoys me.
Rant off for today.