Rider responsibility on trails?

Joshua Putnam wrote:
In article ,
says...


Then I thought about it for a moment. Isn't it your responsibility to
read the road in front of you? If we were cars, he would have been
guilty. No doubts at all.


I must have missed the part where you slowed down and signalled your
turn, right? Making an unsignalled U-turn in front of traffic isn't
automatically the other guy's fault.


Correction: left turn, not U-turn. The left turn was in front of
oncoming traffic (there wasn't any). He actually hit me in the oncoming
traffic's lane.

However, you're right that I did not signal. I wasn't paying attention
to what was going on behind me. Should he have still plowed into me?
After all the good discussion I'm left with my original conclusion that
even though I was pretty stupid, the guy who hit me was stupider :^)

Besides, it forced me to do my first wheel build. Kinda fun riding on a
solid wheel you built yourself.

He must have been going at a pretty good clip to a: not be able to stop in
time and b: still be able to get an entire sentence out B4 he hit ya...

The relative severity of the wheel damage gives it away also: he contributed
a lot more kinetic energy to the collision, if his wheel was destroyed,
while yours only needed a rebuild...

On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 05:12:13 GMT, Collin wrote:

Okay, this one's been gnawing at me. Friday night I was hit by a
bicyclist while riding my bike on a bike/pedestrian trail. It was night,
there were street lamps, traffic was light, I had a front light and rear
reflectors, and noone had passe dme for about three miles. Riding
about 13 mph, looked to my left and saw a turnoff I should have taken.
With no oncoming traffic, I braked and swung to the left...

From behind, the guy who hit me had enough time to say "Oh **** I can't
believe you did that" before he hit me. I never detected him until I
heard "Oh sh..." I must weigh much more than him because he actually
bounced backward, and I just fell down. My front wheel was far out of
true, and his was tacoed.

Initially I felt really bad and thought I'd offer to get him a new
wheel. But the guy was REALLY MAD. He was trying to control his anger.
I was trying to offer help while being ready for a punch. He asked a
couple of accusatory questions about my bicycling and riding behavior.
Obviously he wasn't going to calm down so I picked up my bike and walked
away.

Then I thought about it for a moment. Isn't it your responsibility to
read the road in front of you? If we were cars, he would have been
guilty. No doubts at all. What about a bike path? He had no lights,
so we was visually limited and probably had a delayed reaction time. I
have to admit I did a stupid thing, because I know from experience other
people are like him - not paying attention to the road in front of them.
And he put all of his thought into "Oh **** I can't believe you did
that" instead of steering out of it.

So, for you experienced road cyclists out there, what do you consider
proper riding? Is the cyclist responsible for what's behind as much as
what's in front?

When I first read this, I wondered why the other cyclist didn't just go around
you.

Then, yesterday, something happened that gave me some insight into that puzzle.

I was approaching a road junction quite fast, intending to turn left. I was
slowing down, ready to look for traffic before turning.

As I got nearer, an old lady stepped off the traffic island, that is about 3
metres back from the junction, and started to cross the road.

It would have been simplicity itself to have simply gone behind her (or, for
that matter, in front of her - there was room, but it would have given her a
hell of a fright), so I breaked very hard, and came to a stop about a foot away
from her.

It seems that in the couple of seconds the incident took, I could work out it
would be dangerous (or discourteous) to go in front of her, and so come to an
emergency stop, but could not do the simpler and more fluid manouver of altering
my intended path to go behind her.

I thought of saying: "You wouldn't have done that if I'd been a bus", but she
was very old, and I wasn't really annoyed, since it was a simple error on her
part compounded by a failure on mine to mitigate against her mistiming.

It did, however, remind me of your 'collidee'

Graham

On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 08:41:43 GMT, (Graham
Gooding) wrote:

It seems that in the couple of seconds the incident took, I could work out it
would be dangerous (or discourteous) to go in front of her, and so come to an
emergency stop, but could not do the simpler and more fluid manouver of altering
my intended path to go behind her.

And if you don't practice evasions, your first response is to head
toward what you are looking at - which is whatever popped in front of
you.

Curtis L. Russell
Odenton, MD (USA)
Just someone on two wheels...