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When to honk at a bicyclist



 
 
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  #41  
Old October 19th 04, 12:47 AM
R.White
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Zoot Katz wrote in message ...
Mon, 18 Oct 2004 17:58:34 GMT,
, "neil0502"
wrote:

Rule #1 in negotiations: understand what's important to the other side.


Their erroneous sense of exclusive entitlement is being challenged.
What's important to them is to reassert their dominance.
They're childishly selfish and idiotic scum.


You are describing YOUR own behaviour but are to blinded by
your rage against cars to even see it. Classic!
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  #43  
Old October 19th 04, 09:32 PM
R.White
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Zoot Katz wrote in message ...
18 Oct 2004 13:40:30 -0700,
,
(R.White) wrote:

Get real. I'm neither. I'm just
looking at things in a rational manner instead of a being a ****ed
off, emotionally charged hot-head like yourself. Seems that every ride
you take is a constant battle of you-vs-them. Go ahead and keep it up.
Your posting and riding days will soon be over due to your stubborn
stupidity.


Get real yourself.
You're infected with a totally irrational fear that some lunatic is
going to assault you with their scud because I'd scared them by
"popping out of nowhere" or taking the lane when the situation
warranted that.


Wrong answer. I don't ride with any fear of the sort. If I did, show
me where.
I also never claimed anyone would be assualting anybody with a car,
that was something you dreamed up do to your being unable to control
your anger at cagers. It could be a bottle thrown, spit upon or any
number of things. Point is a$$hole cyclists make it bad for all.
Period.


Worse still is you're spreading your infection with
the retelling of a myth. Where'd this story come from that you're so
willing believe it and repeat it?


No more than you cannot prove it. Joe blow is riding down the street
on the shoulder when out of nowhere a beer bottle smashes into the
back of his head, thrown by some bubba who had been held up in traffic
a few days earlier by some selfish, Critical Mass moron. You don't
want to believe this can or has happened because in either case, you
are the selfish moron who had something to prove.


Have you ever been victim to a raging cager ****ed off at me or are
you just looking for a scapegoat?


I'll bet some poor cyclist has.
  #47  
Old October 20th 04, 03:24 AM
neil0502
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After asking for a single example . . . "Zoot Katz" raved thusly:

No, flat-fizzed. Cagers learn their crappy attitudes from other
cagers, not from cyclists.


Daley Ranch, Escondido (San Diego County), California -- about six
months ago.

Three of us on mountain bikes, just toodling through at reasonable
pace on a double-track. Approaching us were four people on horseback.
Respectfully, we pulled to the far right of the trail and slowed to
about 5mph. The lead rider charged my friend, yelling "I'm sick of
you bikers. I'm gonna' ride this horse right up your @ss" and--true
to his word--begins to charge my friend's bike with the horse.

We'd never seen this person before. His actions were inexplicable.
Totally confused, we took off as quickly as we could.

About an hour later, we crested a hill only to see the same yahoo and
his posse. Said yahoo--about eight feet away now--again started
screaming at us, threatening bodily harm, and lunged his horse at my
bike and me. I hopped off my bike and dashed away, asking him what
his problem was. Fortunately, he provided copious detail: "I'm sick
of you rude f***ing mountain bikers."

Ok, Zoot. Easy enough for you to say that his actions had _nothing_
to do with any prior encounter with a discourteous cyclist, but I'm
willing to take him at his word that somebody didn't follow simple
rules of courtesy and that he was taking it out on us.

He might have been primed and ready _anyway_, but somebody else set
him off . . . and we had to pay for it.

Again, _no_ downside to operating (horses, bikes, and cars)
courteously.


  #48  
Old October 20th 04, 05:44 AM
Tom Keats
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In article ,
"neil0502" writes:

Again, _no_ downside to operating (horses, bikes, and cars)
courteously.


Actually, there can be. Traffic flows best when everybody
sticks to the program and does what's normally expected of
them. So many times I've had cross-traffic drivers
'courteously' try to give me a break - when I've got the
stop sign, and they're holding up a line of car traffic
behind them (maybe that's a variation on what Jobst calls
'the contrived hinderance'.) Sometimes courtesy just
screws things up. We just need people to do what they're
s'posed ta, while we take care of our ends.

To put it another way, it's more 'courteous' when people
don't unnecessarily and incorrectly cede their ROW.

If some drivers get angry because cyclists don't cede
their R'sOW on demand, tough tittie.


cheers,
Tom

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Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats [curlicue] vcn [point] bc [point] ca
  #50  
Old October 20th 04, 04:11 PM
Tom Keats
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In article ,
dgk writes:

Very good point. Overly polite drivers are a pain. Moreso when I'm
driving than biking. I hate being at a stop sign and the other guy
starts waving for me to go.


To be fair, I should mention that I draw a distinction between
being courteous (going above & beyond what's required to keep
the traffic flowing), and not being discourteous (just smoothly
going with the flow).

I get to see lots of fellow riders every day, and I rarely see
any deliberate discourtesy on their parts. There's the
occasional wrong way rider, or those with red blinkies on
the fronts of their bikes, but I put that down to blithe
ignorance rather than malevolence. We've all heard complaints
of cyclists suicidally barging through red lights across
6 or 8 lines of heavy traffic filled with cement trucks and
buses, but I've never seen it actually happen. If anyone tried
to, in situations as so many people describe, they wouldn't
make it across to the other side. Cyclists simply can't afford
to be deliberately discourteous, and I think complaints about
discourteous cyclists are generally overblown.

The post that spawned this whole subthread describes how 4
riders (briefly?) hogged 2 lanes of road until the leftmost 2
relinquished the passing lane. Okay, maybe that /was/
discourteous. Or maybe they just assumed there wasn't any
other traffic around and were startled when they discovered there
was a car coming up behind them. I suppose the case could be
made that inattentiveness is discourtesy. At any rate, the
poster/driver was able to pass them, and planet earth is still
rotating on its axis as per usual.

As for courtesy: sure, courtesy is fine when road/street users
can be individuals not affecting other traffic. But in the
long run I figure there are no individuals in traffic (except
emergency response vehicles en-route to calls.) So my approach
is to do what I can & should to keep the whole traffic (including
myself) flowing, rather than cherry-picking individuals on whom
to bestow random acts of kindness. Traffic just isn't the place
for such unpredictable behaviour, and it often turns out that
such kindness given to one is at the expense of others. Better
to just unbegrudgingly give what we must, and unselfishly take
what we need -- including the lane, when needs be.


cheers,
Tom

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Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats [curlicue] vcn [point] bc [point] ca
 




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