<> shag: " is built on the assumption that no road user is privileged due <> to the kind <>> of vehicle they use - whether motorized or not. " <> <> [WS:] "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the <> poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal <> bread." (Anatole France) <> <> In other words, the idea of "equal rights" for a 7 ton SUV on a <> collision course with a 30lb bike seems a bit bizarre, to say the <> least. What this perspective seems to be missing is that different <> modes of transportation are not equal, legal formulas notwithstanding, <> and therefore require special protections - like physically separated <> lanes, safe crossings, etc. One of the most striking differences <> between US and European cities is the nearly total absence of any <> special provisions for the pedestrians and bicyclists in the former - <> no overpasses or underpasses - which a re a standard feature in most <> European cities, few separate walkways or lanes. DC is a relatively <> bicycle and ped friendly by the US standards, but it has no <> underpasses for pedestrian traffic. Even if a ped has a green light <> on a busy intersection, he/she has to compete with vehicles making <> right turns. <> <> I understand that many bicyclists ride as if traffic laws did not <> apply to them, but that does not change the fact that riding a bike or <> walking automatically puts one in the position of a second class <> citizen vis a vis drivers. Perhaps it has something to do with the <> car bubble you mentioned in your other post which makes one oblivious <> to those outside that bubble. <> <> <> -- <> Wojtek
I understand what you are saying. sometimes I want to agree. But I've cycled too long and am so involved in the politics - at such a micro- and daily level - that I really think that the best way to approach it is the way they originally did it.
Which is to say, I don't need special protections as a wheel chair driver, cyclist, pedestrian. What I need, instead, is a public and a law that refuses to privilege any vehicle, ever.
thus, take today's example. I pull up to an intersection where I turn right to merge into traffic. It's three lanes and I need to get to the left most, furthest away, where traffic is traveling ~ 40 mph.
I normallly take the lane, square in the middle of the lane. I this case, though, it's one way, so the driver behind me pulls up right next to me.
Now, if I were a car, she would stay *behind* me. But because she believes she magically has more privileges on the road than I do, because she's a car, she thinks she must pull along beside me so that she can merge into traffic.
This made it pretty dicey for me. I'm not sure if she's going to pretend i'm not there and pull out, cutting me off when I also try to go at a clear spot.
So, I just yelled, "Lady? Lady?"
She turns to look.
I yell, "I go first. Got it? You go AFTER me."
She nods assent.
But the fact was, she was going to cut me off. There was no other reason to pull along beside me other than to try to merge into traffic before I could. (The really ridiculous thing was, she already almost hit me as she left the parking lot of her apartment building. She was used to pulling out into the street with no one using it - it's a dead street mostly. But this near miss did not deter her from assholery at the intersection. )
the law is that she would have been completely at fault had she done so. Being the road user ahead of her, she has to yield to me. Pulling up alongside me as if I wasn't there is not yielding to me, it is trying to overtake me and make me yield to her traffic.
Take the bullshit about separate lanes.
I don't want or need a protected lane. I want drivers to deal with driving 20 mph in in a 25 mph zone. I want them to recognize that they have 2 or 3 lanes and I have the slow lane. Quit honking at me as if I don't have a right to be there. It's amazing how many people on a 45-45 mph road freak about riding in the rightmost lane. Their lives are apparently ruined by having to change lanes or slow down for 3 minutes until it's clear to pass.
speaking of slow:
Michael gave an example of the moral dilemma: be with my kids and speed to do so; or drive the speed limit.
there's no moral dilemma there. Driving 45 in a 40 or 75 in a 55 will not gain you that much more time to be with your kids on a daily commute.
but that is a nitpick because I do agree with his larger point.
BTW2, I think that the US problem with cars is slightly unique in so far as the road architecture of suburbia exacerbates the problem.
I mostly walk, ride, drive in a city - grid pattern - streetcar suburbs. there are a couple of arterials that spill into cul-de-sac'd suburbs at the outermost edges. But mostly, it's city streets with top speeds of 35 on the multi-lane arterials of which there are three major north-south ones, three major east-west ones.
Twice a week, I drive in suburbia. It's always a shock to get on the arterials that move you along strip mall after strip mall. You sort of feel like you are gliding along, passing all these strip malls and entrances to cul-de-sac's subdivisions. It's the most bizarre experience. It's like you are driving a great wide river.
That feeling is what contributes to the sense of driving around in a bubble. You don't feel it as much in a city because you are rarely, if ever, riding on these big arterial road rivers where the point is to drive... and drive... and drive. I don't know if I'm explaining this well enough, but the feeling is palpable.
I have no special animosity toward cars. I ride my bike because I like it and I'm lazy. So, it's not about hating cars or car culture. It's just this really palpably different experience. For me, it makes me crazy to ride on that river from stip mall to strip mall, from subdivision entrance to subdivision entrance, from industrial parkway to industrial parkway. It must have irritated me about living in limpdick, but without the ability to sharply contrast urban living with suburban side by side as I can now, I didn't notice it. It was only when driving home one evening after gym/class that I noticed how godawful ugly it all was, driving on the river. It's not aesthetic, either. Because there is plenty of ugly, dirty, and dilapidated about the city where I live too. Don't know. It's just nightmarish. It makes me feel closed in, distant, far away from the rest of humanity driving like that. In a way you don't notice when driving in the city where you are constantly interrupted by traffic lights, stop signs, narrow streets where you have to drive slow to avoid peds, kids, animals, bikes.