ucdavis: bicyclist fail

kelp. (

itskelp) wrote in

ucdavis,
@ 2010-05-06 16:21:00

bicyclist fail
so this guy on a bike yelled at me because he almost ran into the side of my car as I was turning right out of the post office on Pole Line and 5th. why didn't I see him before attempting to complete my turn?

said guy was biking the wrong way down Pole Line. gg, dude. just because there's a bike lane doesn't mean you're magically allowed to go against traffic.

so car-driving members of ucdlj, i would like to hear any of your bicyclist fail stories, as given all the bike friendly infrastructure in Davis, it's a testament to human stupidity/ignorance? that they still occur.

ps: to preempt any possible comments, i <3 bicyclists and pedestrians. i don't <3 people who don't follow basic traffic rules :) (i hope there is a special section of some religion's hell for people who don't understand the "traffic has the right of way" rule for roundabouts /grumbledon'tyouknowhowwhatyieldmeansgrumble)

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tarzxf
2010-05-07 12:00 am UTC (link)

I actually struck someone doing that on 5th. Thankfully, I wasn't even fully off the clutch yet, it just knocked them over.

Another near-miss was at Olive Dr and Richards, someone was barreling down off the 80 overpass towards downtown, on the wrong side of the street, complete with signs along there saying "Bikes wrong way".

The way drivers are (were) trained is look left, look right, and look left again through the turn to make sure no one's coming super fast along the flow of traffic that you may have to avoid, not at idiots ignoring the basic rules of the road.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	itskelp 2010-05-07 12:16 am UTC (link)
	yeah luckily since I did look right as I turned I saw the dude and stopped, but as I was already partially pulled out into the road if he stayed in the bike lane he would have went straight into my passenger door anyways. . .so I think he was actually going to pull into car traffic proper to try to bike around the front of my car? who knows. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	panzers 2010-05-10 12:10 am UTC (link)
	I just had a near-collision with a biker who was going against traffic. Mere minutes after my last comment XD (Reply to this) (Parent)

	sun_star_n_moon 2010-05-07 12:23 am UTC (link)
	I think I get annoyed most when bikers feel the need to ignore stop signs. I've had bikers blow stop signs right in front of me so many times, its only a matter of time before I hit someone. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	itskelp 2010-05-07 12:40 am UTC (link)
	i always feel sorry for the buses over at the bioletti/hutchinson intersection (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	jennifairy11 2010-05-07 12:50 am UTC (link)
	lol freshmenz (Reply to this) (Parent)

	(Anonymous) 2010-05-07 03:36 am UTC (link)
	you have NO idea. i want to plow through them every top of the hour. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	peaceful_kiwis 2010-05-07 07:01 am UTC (link)
	This goes for cars too. I'm a biker and I've had instances where three cars will go at once. It's not a multi-car stop sign, it is ONE CAR PER STOP. Or they'll just ignore it altogether. Just...traffic law breaking in general. Ugh. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	mstr_talkative 2010-05-07 01:23 pm UTC (link)
	I've experienced the same. I stop at a stop signs and whenever I let a car on the right go first because we got there at the same time, a bunch of other cars on the left and right will just go right through without stopping. What the heck? Every car has to stop at the stop sign, not just the several times you have to stop waiting for the cars in front of you. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	kit1508 2010-05-07 03:29 pm UTC (link)
	Huh, I've never noticed that. I almost got hit 3 times this year by the occasional idiot that stops at the stop sign at then does the mad swerve to turn without bothering to check that there's a pedestrian crossing the street...AT THE CROSSWALK. In broad daylight even. There's no excuse. If only they didn't drive so quickly I can't get their license plates... (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	kit1508 2010-05-07 03:33 pm UTC (link)
	That said, I did almost get hit once this year by a really stupid biker who was biking quickly on the wrong way on the sidewalk with no lights on at night on a low-visibility street. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	ucdshoelace 2010-05-07 08:23 am UTC (link)
	This. Period, the end. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	panzers 2010-05-09 11:05 pm UTC (link)
	IAWTC I feel sorry for the biker who runs a stop sign. The next driver may not be as vigilant as I was. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	vt127 2010-05-07 02:53 am UTC (link)
	Everyone should read this from the wiki. http://daviswiki.org/Running_Stop_Signs Plain and simple. (Reply to this) (Thread)

	vt127 2010-05-07 02:56 am UTC (link)
	Oh and one more thing. http://daviswiki.org/Bike_Stings Bike stings where they do a crackdown on stop sign runners and folks without bike lights. One of my pet peeve is bikers who do not have a bike light. I almost hit a biker that was all in dark clothes and barely saw him. Bike light is to make yourself visible to others and to some extend see the road ahead. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	_terra_ 2010-05-07 06:17 am UTC (link)
	I LOVE it when the cops park themselves over near SciLab and scare the crap out of people who run the stop light. The best part is the surprised look on their face that they got in trouble for gasp not stopping at a stop sign. (Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

	panzers 2010-05-09 11:10 pm UTC (link)
	Oh man I remember this from a couple of years back (at Hutchison and Bioletti). I was waiting for a bus and watched a cop shouting at bikers through a megaphone. PLEASE STOP YOUR BIKE AT THE STOP SIGN. PLEASE STOP YOUR BIKE AT THE STOP SIGN. He was polite about it, but I think he had enough because he stopped yelling and resorted to stopping the bikers instead. (Reply to this) (Parent)

_terra_
2010-05-07 03:29 pm UTC (link)

You know, I just realized this is really the kind of things they need to talk to freshman about while in the dorms. I remember having that little drinking seminar thingy the first night with my RAs, couldn't they do the same with basic bike rules? Pretty sure most people aren't speeding through stop signs and riding the wrong way to be dicks, they're just horribly ignorant about the basic rules of the road.

(Reply to this)

panzers
2010-05-09 11:01 pm UTC (link)

I've plenty of sympathy for bikers since I was one of them for my first 2 years at Davis. I've been in my fair share of bike collisions and traffic circle debacles, but now that I'm a driver I'm much less forgiving of bikers. My greatest pet peeves are (1)night bikers who don't use bike lights and (2) bikers who block traffic behind them. The latter is usually due to a lack of bike lanes (i.e. part of Russel/5th Street) but sometimes...sometimes they are just biking in the middle of the lane for no reason. Don't be a dick, man, please use the bike lane when you have it.

(Reply to this)

(Anonymous)
2010-05-21 07:42 am UTC (link)

I was biking at night with my light on and another biker, who didn't have a light, crashed into me. I couldn't see him until the last second and swerved towards the fence. Don't people know to not ride into the bright lights and stay on the right side of the path? I'm always having close encounters with cars at the LaRue light by the ARC. I thought right on red meant you could turn right after you stopped and if the way was clear. Did that change in recent time? Cause most people either pull a California stop and turn without paying attention to the billion pedestrians about to cross, or they flat out ignore the light and barrel into the parking lot.

As a driver I try to be conscientious of the bikes and yield to them, but the bikers who blow through stop signs, go the wrong way, don't abide by traffic laws, don't have lights, etc. drive me nuts and make themselves super easy targets.

(Reply to this)

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