Maybe he just had to use a bathroom badly. In any case, I thing lecturing motorists on dooring risk is a waste of time. As admirable as the motive may be, I don't think "self-policing" is trustworthy. The wise thing to do is just to stay out of the reach of opening doors -- all the time.
Perhaps; but I can't help thinking that if I had been in his shoes, a non-cycling driver who had never thought much about the chances of a bicycle passing by, I would have learned something from such a discussion.
Aggressive panhandlers and/or muggers (and there can be a very fine line between the two) will sometimes engage their prey in a little small talk to size them up, and to see just how soft a touch they are. If the subject looks like an easy pigeon, they'll momentarily appear to start going away, then come back with a much more aggressive demeanour.
True. However, this was a busy restaurant row in a nice neighborhood at 8:00 p.m. with dozens of people around. If this had happened in a place where a person could get away with violence, I wouldn't have stopped to talk.
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I think maybe you had your say the first time you spoke to the person. Going after him later might have looked like incipient harrassment to him.
I wonder how much money he was packing.
Rest assured, I'm certainly not saying you look like a panhandler or a mugger. But some people have weird notions about cyclists.
I look like a fat, middle-aged lawyer with a grey beard: about as threatening as Santa Claus. I'm not at all sure he was running from me, but he was running, and it struck me as comic after the second incident to have had something like this twice in a week. Maybe he was afraid I was Michael Moore and there was a film crew with me.
"KakenBetaal" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...
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I'm not sure I'd like to encounter you in a dark alley. LOL! j/kidding.
Those incidents are just too funny! How cool that they ended up in the folk running away from you and that nothing more serious happened.
-- KakenBetaal
that kind of [censored] happens to me almost every day. today it was a cabbie racing around me to get to the red light ahead so i pulled up alongside him and as he rolled his window down i said "hurry up and wait" and he just smiled. np. that was a cool resolve. last night it was more drunken people saying "lance! go lance!" haha i hate the blinking TDF just for that reason- ie it incites morons-countless morons everywhere... -alan
"Paul Turner" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...
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Peter Cole said:
Maybe he just had to use a bathroom badly. In any case, I thing lecturing motorists on dooring risk is a waste of time. As admirable as the motive may be, I don't think "self-policing" is trustworthy. The wise thing to do is just to stay out of the reach of opening doors -- all the time.
Perhaps; but I can't help thinking that if I had been in his shoes, a non-cycling driver who had never thought much about the chances of a bicycle passing by, I would have learned something from such a discussion.
Until you can get 100% compliance (which is never) somebody is going to swing a door in your path. If you stay out of the door zone you eliminate it as an issue. No crashes, no need for lectures. It's the only safe way.
Perhaps; but I can't help thinking that if I had been in his shoes, a non-cycling driver who had never thought much about the chances of a bicycle passing by, I would have learned something from such a discussion.
As enthusiastic as cyclists are, we often forget that most of the world flat-out doesn't give a tinker's damn.
Maybe he just had to use a bathroom badly. In any case, I thing lecturing motorists on dooring risk is a waste of time. As admirable as the motive may be, I don't think "self-policing" is trustworthy.
The
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wise thing to do is just to stay out of the reach of opening
doors --
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all the time.
Turner:
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Perhaps; but I can't help thinking that if I had been in his shoes, a non-cycling driver who had never thought much about the chances of a bicycle passing by, I would have learned something from such a discussion.
Cole:
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Until you can get 100% compliance (which is never) somebody is going to swing a door in your path. If you stay out of the door zone you
eliminate it
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as an issue. No crashes, no need for lectures. It's the only safe way.
Sure, I agree that the answer for cyclists is to stay out of the door zone. That's why he missed me. I had no time to react but I was far enough out for even a wide door. However, I see people all the time riding too close. Safety systems should be redundant. We should keep our distance and they should look before they open their doors. If there hadn't been a bicycle lane -- if there had been cars whizzing by three feet away -- he would have looked. It's not much use concluding that bike lanes are bad, either. They are ubiquitous here, and cyclists are inevitably going to ride in them, so parking drivers need to learn not to throw their doors suddenly two thirds of the way across them. There will never be 100% compliance on either end, but the better each group complies the less chance there is of an ugly collision.
I think Paul did the best possible. He firstly avoided door incidents by cycling out of reach, and was also right to tell the driver about his mistake. I'm a big believer in the power of one - he may have saved the next cyclist from getting knocked off by this guy.
It's not much use concluding that bike lanes are bad, either. They are ubiquitous here, and cyclists are inevitably going to ride in them, so parking drivers need to learn not to throw their doors suddenly two thirds of the way across them. There will never be 100% compliance on either end, but the better each group complies the less chance there is of an ugly collision.
I don't know, I've concluded (without much difficulty) that bike lanes in the door zone are fundamentally bad. Only one local community has an ordinance against doorings, which they need since they have so many badly designed bike lanes. They also had a fatality not too long ago from a dooring.
felt aggrieved and as he passed me he honked, yelled, and gave me the finger. At the first stop sign I pulled up next to him and asked him, "Hey, what's your problem?"
What was his problem, you ask? Why, the gentleman obviously had just taken an IQ test and wanted you to know what his score was!
Who is hunrobe and why does she/he think this way?
Hunrobe said:
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[email hidden] (Fx199)
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From: TomP [email hidden] Date: 8/7/2004 6:43 PM US Eastern Standard Time Message-id: <[email hidden]>
Destroying someone's property is not a good idea. Especially when there are likely, many witnesses. A better way is to place a small pebble under the valve stem cap. The screw it down until the air escapes slowly and undetected. Car or bike, there's nothing like a flat tire to spoil the mood....
I like it. Or spray something clear unto his paint job, that will ruin it. You're right it's not good to let anger from a near brush with death unfold your life.
Who is hunrobe and why does she/he think this way?
I think that way because I'm a responsible adult that realizes if one has to worry about "witnesses" to any action, the action is probably illegal, immoral, or just plain stupid. If it wasn't then why worry about witnesses?
On 16 Aug 2004 03:13:15 GMT in rec.bicycles.misc, [email hidden]
(Hunrobe) said:
I think that way because I'm a responsible adult that realizes if one has to worry about "witnesses" to any action, the action is probably illegal, immoral, or just plain stupid. If it wasn't then why worry about witnesses?
because the *other* party might have been at fault in an accident, and a witness might corroborate it?
because even if you didn't do something stupid, someone else might do something stupid and injure you.
of course, cops like you are *always* right, regardless of what witnesses might say. i've seen that syndrome over and over again, whether the cop is right or wrong.
I think that way because I'm a responsible adult that realizes if one has
to
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worry about "witnesses" to any action, the action is probably illegal,
immoral,
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or just plain stupid. If it wasn't then why worry about witnesses?
because the *other* party might have been at fault in an accident, and a witness might corroborate it?
because even if you didn't do something stupid, someone else might do something stupid and injure you.
of course, cops like you are *always* right, regardless of what witnesses might say. i've seen that syndrome over and over again, whether the cop is right or wrong.
I have to ask Dennis- did you even read this thread or are you just having a bad day and felt the need to insult someone? The question at hand had/has absolutely nothing to do with crashes. One poster wrote of how, if someone incurred his displeasure, he'd get even by damaging that person's property. A second poster offered another idea of how to damage property and added that his method was better because it was unlikely to be seen by witnesses, hence my statement above.
Who is hunrobe and why does she/he think this way?
I think that way because I'm a responsible adult
I see. So, do you routinely insult strangers to their faces, too?
Bob, you have a great day... Ride hard, eat well, enjoy the room in life for the two beers... -- Tp
First of all, the acts that were being encouraged and boasted of are all criminal offenses under Illinois law. The term I usually use to describe those that routinely break the law is "knothead". Specifically, the term I usually use to describe people that surreptitiously damage the property of others to get revenge for some perceived insult or rudeness is "cowardly knotheads" so I thought my "Mitty" comment was actually rather restrained. If calling someone one of the "Mitty twins" when they do the things that those two posters (I believe you may have been one of them but it really doesn't matter either way) were boasting of doing is an insult then yes, I *do* routinely insult strangers to their face. Personally though, I don't think accuracy is an insult.
