Rear-View Mirrors

Blustering Bill Baka wrote:

As much as I agree with you in principle, there are roads in my area
that MUST be ridden on the wrong side or be suffer a Darwin. There
are country roads with zero point zero shoulders much less bike
lanes and people routinely drive 65 MPH or over and will not give
any respect to cyclists. If there is a bike lane I use it, but on
these zero shoulder roads I want to see what is coming and if need
be get off the bike and into the weeds. Safety first, regardless of
group opinion.

There ARE statistics concerning which is safer, Blustering Bill.
You could look them up. Oh, that's right. I forgot. You NEVER
look ANYTHING up. Once again you are giving bad advice which
could kill someone. Once again the reader needs to be warned
about your dangerous advice

Try riding them on a weekday with 5 semi truck trains going by at 65 MPH
and you might get knocked off of your high and mighty attitude, for good.
There is a damn good reason I ride wrong side on certain sections of
road. Get over yourself, you have been lucky. If you don't think it
washes, just ride Hammonton/Smartsville road between Linda and
Smartsville on a weekday and see if you survive.

And you imagine that none of the experience cyclists who have told
you that you are wrong are on similar roads?

To quote the X-Files, "Trust no one!". This is a country area next to
Beale AFB and has tons of red necks and fly boys who give new meaning to
idiot drivers.

Once again you show your deep disdain for the rest of humanity.
You have told us that all the Doctors you have seen are idiots,
that pretty much everyone in five different newsgroups are all
idiots, and now you slander those who live in the south of the
USA and those who serve your country in the military.

If there is a bike lane I will use it, but if there is not even a
shoulder I will go wrong way. Some of the roads have a passable shoulder
on one side, but not the other, so I ride those right way going and
wrong way coming home, just to stay in the 'bike lane'.
I just don't want to be the next tragedy. They really don't care about
cyclists around here, the land of giant pickup trucks.

You appear to also have a disdain for the law of the land, which
forbids you from riding against traffic. It is also common sense.
Riding with traffic reduces the relative speed of the vehicles by
up to 40 Kph. When someone in the USA pulls into traffic, he looks
left for oncoming traffic, not right looking for stupid wrong way
bicyclists. When you encounter someone on a bicycle who is obeying
the law, you endanger him as he is forced to swerve into traffic to
avoid hitting you head on.

Did he stop? No! He just floored it so I couldn't get his
license or let me catch up and give him my kind of justice.

You certainly do like to threaten physical violence, don't you?
That's when you aren't busy making death threats or threatening
to "mess up a person's Internet."

BTW, how is the "Get kicked off hes ISP" campaign
going? Not so good? How about the "send to prison
for calling Bill Baka a cocksucker" campaign going? That one isn't
going so good either? What a shock! How about Dan C? not him
either? I got a knock on the door the other day and thought for
sure that finally your "FBI" had come to Europe to arrest me, but
it was just a package delivery. Too bad, I was hoping to show
your "federal agents" the sights after explaining the concept of
"jurisdiction" to them.

A few of you just need to travel to Northern California and start
sucking face with Bill Baka.

Get it over with.

It'd be a favor to most of the rest of us.

On Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:25:50 +0000, me faxed us with....


BTW, how is the "Get kicked off hes ISP" campaign going?
Not so good?

It was with Bell (Linx) Canada last time I asked, why?



--
Replica Watches - TRY LIDL - Cheap meds? Visit your GP

Bill wrote:

if there was any chance that we could get the idiot kicked
from his ISP, then I would go for it.

What happened to your claim "I am an engineer so I know how"
or you "I can mess up your Internet with my UNIX skills"?

He has a personal vendetta against me for stating that I had
Apnea and and enlarged heart and was not fit to do anything.

No, I have a personal vendetta against you because when I first gave
you a polite and helpful reply, you flamed me. I then did a Google
search and found that you have been doing this in other newsgroups
for years. People need to be warned about you!

Me at privacy and blah need to be out in kill files.

But you *can't* stop reading my posts, can you?

I can ignore the childish thing he says.

Liar. You WILL respond. I ORDER you to keep responding.
You CANNOT STOP responding, because YOU HAVE NO SELF CONTROL.

wrote:

The sound of an approaching traffic is not engine or exhaust noise for
civilized vehicles, but rather tire noise, the sound of storm surf
given off by highway traffic. That hasn't changed in a long time and
some of it has gotten louder through the use of wide low cross section
tires... and SUV's knobby tire fetish.

Hmmm. I've been seeing stories on the tube lately about blind people
who want something done about how quiet hybrid cars are. They're saying
that blind + Prius = mortal danger at crosswalks, pretty much.
My experience with passing cars has usually been that I hear them
coming, and I'm sure part of their noise is tires, but as a rule, the
noisier engined vehicles (e.g. big rigs, SUVs) are generally also the
ones with the noisy tires.
Anybody know of any objective studies on this subject? I bought my
mirror after hearing about the blind/hybrid problem...


Bill

| No one is exempt from the call to find common ground.
__o | -- Barak Obama
`\(, | A dictatorship would be a lot easier.
(_)/ (_) | --George W. Bush

Having a mirror can never hurt, it gives you a better picture and that has
to be good.
I have never tried helmet/ glasses mounted types, they do not appeal.
Of the bicycle mounted ones the best by far is the original Mirycle. These
can only be fitted to non aero road levers, which suits me well becase 3 of
my bicycles have these levers.

wrote in message
...
Steven Scharf wrote:

Well, after five months of virtually no riding after my serious
accident, I finally found weather, my busted bones, and need in
synch, and I went out and rode today! (It's like riding a bicycle,
once you learn, you never -- wait a minute...) Being me, I was
loathe to start easy, so I biked/bused clear across town to an
appointment, around ten miles total of riding. Four hours
post-ride, my elbow is complaining rather loudly, but the shoulder,
the leg muscles, and the saddle-butt interface area don't seem to
have minded too much.

New to my equippage this ride were a helmet to replace the one that
saved my skull in September, and a rear-view mirror mounted to
same. But hmmm, maybe it's where I mounted it, or the angle, or
something, but I found the new dingus kind of difficult to use. (I
wear glasses, and maybe it was because the mirror was right at the
edge of the lens.)

So, question for others who have used helmet-mounted mirrors. Do
they take a while to get used to? Does anyone have any suggestions
about positioning? Any other sage advice for a mirror neophyte?

I'd dump the helmet mount mirror and get a handlebar mounted mirror.

Never ride without a mirror. It used to be a lot easier to hear cars
coming up behind you, but there are now a lot of very quiet cars,
including when the Prius is running on battery power (even though
that's not all that often).

It's amusing to watch someone on a bicycle in front of you turn to
look back for traffic or for someone else they're riding with. They
always tend to veer out to the left when they turn their head.

The sound of an approaching traffic is not engine or exhaust noise for
civilized vehicles, but rather tire noise, the sound of storm surf
given off by highway traffic. That hasn't changed in a long time and
some of it has gotten louder through the use of wide low cross section
tires... and SUV's knobby tire fetish.

As I said, mirror users seem to believe that car drivers would run
them down if they didn't invoke evasive action. I don't believe it
and have ridden enough miles in the USA and Europe to have tested it
for more then a half million miles. I suspect, moreover that these
folks ride too far into the path of traffic and move over only when
they see fit to do so. It sounds like a "take the lane" attitude.

That elitism is probably what needs more attention then mirrors of HID
headlights aimed into the eyes of oncoming traffic.

Jobst Brandt

Chris wrote in news:768e847e-02c4-4107-8f45-
:

Never used one and I doubt I ever will. They are distracting and block
part of your field of view. Some people like them, but I hate them in
all forms.

Chris


Your second sentence contradicts your first sentence. Not to be taken
seriously, I guess.

wrote in news:49860b76$0$1673
:

someone sniped:
Anybody know of any objective studies on this subject? I bought my
mirror after hearing about the blind/hybrid problem...

You mean a study on mirror use? Yes, I've been observing the
phenomenon for years. To me mirror folks appear paranoid, because when
I say hello as I catch up and pass, they are shocked and react as
though they had just been hit by one of those vehicles for which they
claim to look constantly... but apparently not.

Jobst Brandt


Every one of them?? Wow! Impressive!!!

(Tom Keats) wrote in
:

In article ,
blanny writes:
(Tom Keats) wrote in
:

In article ,
writes:

Any other sage advice for a mirror neophyte?

Learn to not use one before you do. And never
trust a mirror to give you the full picture.


cheers,
Tom


Do you, would you, drive a car without mirrors? I'd argue that car
mirrors are less important than bike mirrors. Most likely, no cars
are going to pass you. On a bike, "every" car from behind is going
to pass you. I want to know, just what level of effort the car
behind me is doing to account for me.

For someone who didn't learn how to use one, no wonder you didn't
learn to trust the device. If the helmet-mounted mirror is mounted
correctly, then I have a full wide-screen view of the road behind me.
Essentially, a much wider field of view than car mirrors. The trick
.. is to put that mirror as close to your eye as possible.

I don't need some ~thing~ occluding my forward field of vision.

I don't drive a car, but of the drivers I know, many
shoulder check despite having rv and wing mirrors
at their avail.

Shoulder checking both to the left and right without
swerving is an easily-enough acquired bicycle riding
basic skill (with practice.) Once one has the skill,
one doesn't really need to rely upon redundant
accoutrements along with their limitations, in order
to lazily avoid a little initial effort and practice.
And it seems to me, the more skills a rider acquires,
the more empowered he or she becomes.

Sure, shoulder checking works. But the mirror does more than that. When
we bike, we are eagle-eyed, when we look forward. We scan up the road,
not just 50 feet, but heck, a half-mile if it's a straight road. We want
to know what's up the road. Way up the road. I want the "exact same
thing", in terms of information, as to what's behind me. Maybe for no
other reason than INFORMATION. It's nice to know, if there's 0 cars a
half-mile behind me, or if there's 20 cars and 5 trucks a half-mile
behind me (and at that point, out of ear-shot). It's information. You
probably make eye contact with every vehicle in front of you, in the
oncoming lane, on the side streets. I want an assessment of the vehicles
behind me, for similar reasons. No ... for more important reasons. They
are coming up upon me, they are "all" going to pass me. Contrary to
other comments, gathering this data is at no loss of attention. A flick
of the eye, one second max., and I've got a bunch of information ... 360
degrees of data.


Looking at the thing itself instead of its reflection
gives the advantage of depth perception, and avoids
certain optical effects impinged by mirrors, such as
image darkening, washing-out of certain colours, and
distorted image sizes ("objects in mirror are closer
than they appear.")

All of this is patently false. I always advise, put that helmet-mounted
mirror "as close as possible", to your eye. The amount of depth
perception, and the amount of visibility, is greatly enhanced.


Shoulder checking also enables a rider to make
eye-contact communication with fellow road/street
users behind, and signals that the shoulder checking
rider is about to change his vector -- perhaps for
a lane change, perhaps for a turn. /That's/ what
looking rearward is for, not for seeing if some
intangible threat is there, like the Boogie Man
hiding under one's bed.

I confess to having a handlebar mirror on my main bike.
It's convenient for quick, half-the-story glances.
Sometimes it reassures me that the top of my cargo trailer
is still on, and my laundry isn't flying out all over the
street, while I still keep an eye on what's up ahead.

Non-cycling drivers see my mirror (along with my lights)
and feel reassured that I'm some sort of safe rider.

My mirror is sort of like an amulet, like a rabbit's
foot. I don't really believe in magic, but what the heck.
Maybe I should kick the thing off. It'll eventually get
bashed off anyway, like all the others.


cheers,
Tom

(pseudonym for "Jobst Brandt" one assumes)
wrote:

Stop inventing scenarios to support your claim.

Can't argue with THAT!

Bill "classic stuff" S.