State of the Traffic Union

I'm strolling along Richmond Street and bright flashing lights distract me in the distance. As I get closer I notice a motorcycle cop has someone pulled over. The criminal? A responsible-looking helmeted cyclist. The crime? Unknown. He hands her a ticket. Maybe she was endangering the lives of those cocooned in 2-tonne steel cages by not having a ding-a-ling bell to warn them she was there since checking mirrors is becoming passé.

The fine for not having a bicycle bell? $110. Cyclists are getting stopped for this infraction at random as part of the police's plan to make cycling safer entitled Safe Cycling – Share the Responsibility.

The fine for improper opening of a vehicle door? $110. The driver that recently committed that exact offense resulting in the death of a cyclist on Eglinton West? Not ticketed. According to the police ''If she didn't look, would that be negligence? It'd be very hard to label that as negligent,'' said Sgt. Burrows. Share indeed.

Over at I Bike T.O., many cyclists have weighed in with comments on their recent traffic tickets. Sadly, the police campaign is only serving to discourage cycling as a mode of transportation. As one reader points out, after receiving two hefty tickets (one for the bell!) for rolling through an empty four-way stop after deciding to take his bike rather than his car out, he'll think twice in the future.

I admit that my bicycle bell is sometimes useful in waking up drivers about to make a right turn off a side street without looking to their left. But the manic bell ringing seems to do nothing to stop the door flinging without looking. Maybe they do look, and they think whacking cyclists is funny.

Sure its safer to ride outside the door zone. But on narrow downtown streets like Queen, often doors open right out to the cyclist spilling streetcar track rut. Ride between the tracks in the only mixed traffic lane? Often its too congested, and way too slow moving for sanity - filtering next to the parked cars is the only choice. Faster moving? Gee maybe I would feel incredibly self-centered about slowing down a streetcar packed with 70 people on it, something that the SOV motorists making a left turn don't seem to give a second thought to. No streetcars and moving along? Better watch out for Angry Motorist (TM). After about two seconds of ignoring his horn, he will put his vehicle in park to get out and start a fistfight.

More effective than a bicycle bell for a cyclist alerting others to their presence is their voice. Clearly staking out my safe space in the center of a lane too narrow to share, I often find motorists, in particular cabbies, changing lanes right into mine so that if I kept my speed constant we'd collide. Maybe they didn't see me. Maybe they looked right through me. "HEY!!!" I bellow. "Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?" replies the cabbie. Maybe he does see me. Maybe he just does not give a shit. Stopped at the next red light seems like a good time to have a discussion to educate him, but you know what, if he doesn't understand what he was doing wrong, no amount of conversation is likely to clue him in. In the interest of road peace I keep my eyes focussed straight ahead and my mouth shut.

Handheld cell phones are still legal while driving in Ontario. The premier might think about. Without fail, every single clued out motorist conflict I have on my bike, has one glued to their ear. Oops. Sorry, one exception. Someone was eating lunch with no hands on the steering wheel.

Clued out drivers it is possible to be defensive against. Actively hostile ones are another matter. And one only gets a split second to judge if someone is just a hurried honker, or may have potentially lost their marbles while in control of a potentially lethal weapon directly behind you. Anger seems to be going in the direction of gas prices.

You would think that downtown SOV traffic would be on the decrease with the higher cost of gas and the excellent alternatives - if pedaling is not for you, it is well served by public transit. 6:30 pm downtown (past prime rush hour) its more logjammed than ever and frustrating on a bicycle. My Kona Dew has pretty wide handlebars, and with the rearview mirror sticking out another couple of inches to the side, filtering through it is tricky.

My rule on filtering? I won't pass anyone that is likely to have to repass me in the next few blocks. Its just rude. But when all the wide vehicles have to merge to get around one parked car, a bicycle can use that dead space to continue right on by. Its frustrating when drivers squeeze up so close to the next stopped car that there's no way to reach the dead space.

I watch as the majority of cyclists squeeze next to one car stopped at a light. There's no room for the motorist to start driving where they are as the cyclist starts riding. I'd almost feel sorry for the motorists having to deal with repeatedly passing these vulnerable cyclists - but I don't. We simply don't have enough room downtown for everyone to be sucking up valuable public space with a wastefully large vehicle. If people do not-so-smart things that cause drivers to have to drive slower (and thus safer for everyone) and with more attention, then that is a Good Thing.

I'm not meaning to sound so gloomy and doomy. Some days though in the traffic madness its easy to lose sight of the bikey love. I give brief thought to trading in the bike for another way. But what better way is there? The speed, the freedom, the virtually zero cost, the familiar motions of legs moving in circles that distract even when sick, low hassle parking, connection to the surroundings, ease of interacting with people, and the smiles.

The whimsy of it all. Zooming along at 30 km/h, but in an instant able to flick up a kickstand and fill a wicker basket or milk crate with goodies from the sidewalk fruit market. Detouring off the road into the canopy of trees on a ravine path. The orange glow of dusk and utter silence except the chirping cormorants or the scurrying of a bunny at Tommy Thompson Park.

Smiling at other cyclists. The fashionista with a red PVC rain coat and flowery messenger bag on a matching red Dahon folding bike. The elderly Chinese woman with a wizened face toodling along a busy street, looking anything but afraid. Staring curiously at the interesting geometry of a Moulton. All kinds of cargo being carried solely by human power - from the precious cargo of a smiling infant, to paddles on cycles heading for the lakefront. A one-legged cyclist who I can barely keep pace with.

Life happens on a bicycle. At a pace we can see and interact with.

The madness has to stop.

My blood pressure cannot take it. Commuting by bike is making me edgy because of all the motorist road rage that's out there. Its a really small percentage of drivers that are bad - but because of the number of motorists you encounter in any given day even 1% is too much. Add in a much larger percentage that are not paying a great deal of attention to driving due to cell phones, passengers, eating, or whatnot. Put 20% more of them on the road total after Labour Day. And add mind dumbingly slow gridlock to the mix - so that when I don't get harassed or yelled at I just get frustrated I'm either dangerously splitting lanes or going nowhere.

I'm on the way home tonight on Adelaide. Traffic has started to open up a bit (I think its around Church) after blocks and blocks of gridlock. I'm in the curb lane (I don't remember if there are 3 or 4 lanes here, its a one-way arterial). The curb lane is really narrow, there's no way it is safe to share at any speed. (filtering gridlock going super slow was tricky enough) I'm riding in the middle like the rest of traffic. I hear a car come up behind me at the red light and you can tell by the sound its a road rager, and he gives a toot as well. I can predict he's going to try something stupid when the light turns green, but what am I going to do? There is no where for me to move out of the way to let him pass unless I go into the crosswalk or onto the sidewalk, and why should I have to?

He revs the engine and tries to accelerate into me after the light, narrowly missing me as he changes lanes and also I need to swerve out to the right to avoid being hit. Making a mental note of his plate, I try to catch up. Its not hard to do, even without the gridlock, and a few lights later I see him at the front of the queue in the next lane over from the curb. I pull up next to the car in the curb lane and knock on the passenger-side window.

They do roll it down, a 30-something full of himself guy driving an Audi and his girlfriend. First he goes on how I can't be in the middle of the lane. I try to explain that bicycles are vehicles. Basically he tries to claim that if I can't go the speed limit I need to get over - when its clear there is no safe place to get over - he thinks then that should be off the road. I try to explain that a speed limit is a limit and not a minimum. The red light is too short to have a whole conversation about if I'm really slowing him down how come we are waiting at the same light? (I broke no traffic laws to catch him by the way) And that nobody is going the speed limit after a red light. Or that if vehicles going slower than the speed limit should get off the road, then he should have gotten on the sidewalk between University and Yonge when car-created congestion was slowing me down. We didn't get as far as being able to discuss whether endangering someone's life is ever an acceptable response to any of the offenses he perceived me committing.

So the red light starts up and we go our separate ways, but I have a note of his car type, license plate, and physical description. I think of calling the cops but it seems so commonplace that why are they going to care?

I wonder what can be done to ease this anger. Its quite contagious I know that. I find myself because of the mean streets out there often scowling at other road users. The wrong way cyclist without lights in the dark riding head on towards me. People walking to their cars that don't even look up when you ring your bell that step right in front of you moving at 30 kph. The 5 or 6 other cyclists that all ran the red light I was stopped at this morning (at a T-intersection) without even slowing down to check for legally crossing pedestrians. Most of them got lucky, but the poor terrified woman that kept trying to cross the last few feet to the sidewalk when someone else went whizzing by, was obviously not your fan.

Add to this the number of cyclists I know that have been hit by cars (mostly just minor incidents) this summer, but several of which DID NOT STOP. A critical mass ride where I witnessed the usual madness, where someone becomes so mad about a 2 minute delay that they lose all sense of rationality and try to get out of their car to fist fight cyclists when they are greatly outnumbered. What was different last time? The guy didn't even put his car in park before he jumped out! It was creeping forward out of control (fortunately noone got hit). People yelling things out their window, but fortunately the noise of the traffic muffles it so I cannot hear. But I don't suspect its "Hey sexy biker chick" by the way they accelerate after the garbled comments.

There are tons of cyclists on the road right now - I was happily grinning away sitting at Queen and Bathurst on a sunny September day seeing more cyclists going by than cars. But a majority are not asserting space in the road. They ride in the gutter inviting brush bys by drivers that don't know how much space to leave. I know I'd rather get honked at than hit by the mirror of an ignorant driver, but I just wish for calm. Some respect. I'm not slowing anybody down, and I try to find safe places to let people pass if I am. These cyclists give the perception that its safe and possible to be out of the way in a 9 foot wide lane and its not. I wonder how much motorist anger just stems from ignorance - that they truly don't realize the highway traffic act allows us to use the whole lane in many circumstances.

And God forbid you stop someone from turning right on a red light. The safest place to be at an intersection is in the middle of the lane. On the right side you get right hooked by right turning vehicles, on the left (in line with your destination if there are parked cars) aggressive drivers trying to pass the vehicle to your left will cut across your path from the right at high speed, very dangerous. Several days ago on a rainy night I was at a red light and heard honk. I ignore it. Honk again. A brief glance to ensure its not someone who has lost their marbles. The taxi driver has his window down and is demanding "aren't you going to move over?" gesturing towards the side of the road. It was a very satisfying answer "No I'm not". I think my rational as to why got drowned out somewhere but I think the no was enough.

Here's hoping that tomorrow is a good day when I can remember why I love riding my bike. I started questioning today why I ride if I'm finding rush hour too much. But how else would I get to work? (and indeed I've ridden my bike every day of the 3 months I've been at my new job) It would take an hour to walk. The streetcar gets stuck in traffic congestion and it would take me twice as long to get to work on an overcrowded vehicle where the fares are going up. Oh yeah can I say I'm thrilled about the fare increase, which always seems to drive more people to their cars? If we completely ignore all economic, social and philosophical reasons behind not driving a car - it still comes down to it would be slower and more stressful to drive, and I would be stuck in a big steel box in congestion. No thanks.

And so I keep riding. Maybe a different route is less stressful - bike lanes for instance mean you don't have to fight people wielding deadly weapons for road space. But then there's all the clueless right turning traffic that don't realize you're there. I've tried all the east-west routes I can think of to go home and picked the ones that seemed the best in terms of time, congestion and least road rage. (okay really Adelaide and least road rage cannot be used in the same sentence, drivers treat it like a raceway to the major north-south highway)

I can only dream of my Queen Street - one where the dominant users of the road (streetcar riders, cyclists and pedestrians) become the only users of the road, and its more efficient and calmer for all to travel.

Never say I've never...

I remember as a kid saying I've never been stung by a bee, and then presto - the next day I think I stepped on one barefoot. Today someone was telling me that they would like to bike in the city, but that everyone they know that does has been injured by a door prize. I've never been doored I mention, and then I knock on some wood.

Better than knocking on wood of course is not riding within the door zone of parked cars, but on narrow downtown roads with streetcar tracks this means riding in the only main traffic lane (between the tracks). If traffic is light you'll incur lots of road rage and "what the f*%& do you think you are? A car or something" comments. If traffic is heavy, you'll sit in line all day waiting to cross town when you could be easily zipping past all the stopped cars in the gap between the parked cars and slowly creeping forward ones. So you ride in the door zone but as far out as possible. You are aware of who's behind and beside you so you can swing across the tracks if you have to (or a vehicle is particularly wide or badly parked), you are aware of which vehicles are occupied so potential dooring hazards, and you ring your bell approaching occupied vehicles to remind them there is a bicycle, and you certainly don't ride like you're in the Tour de France in this space - moderate speed is the key. Most drivers driving on a road like Queen will just have passed oodles of cyclists getting to their destination which is a good reminder. Most people check before opening their doors, and most people also open their door in two phases, first a crack, then wide.

Anyway today is a positively glorious sunshiney warm day. The kind where you just want to be outside. Some people's idea of being outside seems to be driving around in a car with the sunroof open or their arm hanging out the window. So traffic on Queen is lined up for miles barely moving. I love Queen street though because it feels like bikes and streetcars own this street. I'm riding from west end to east, and not in a particular hurry. So when there's a bike jam of several bikes in the narrow space between the empty and not empty cars I am just smiling at seeing so many bikes out rather than cursing the slowness. I could ride along Adelaide instead (four lane one-way road) to have more space, but Queen is by far nicer for calm traffic and people watching. Life happens here. Adelaide is more for getting somewhere quick in a car.

So I mostly am paying attention to doors from parked cars, rather than doors from moving ones, of course I am always alert that people can step out of any side of a taxi whether it has pulled over or not. Then whoosh. Passenger side door flies fully open from a car in the center lane that has not bothered pulling over (despite there being an easy gap in parked cars to do so) I'm like whooooa, I'm going at a not fast pace but certainly not slow enough to stop in the space available. The car is actually over in my lane a bit already, which is not uncommon as driving on streetcar tracks is unpleasant and some stagger their wheels too far to the right. I swerve hard right and lean my body so that the door won't graze me. I hear "oh shiiitt" coming from somewhere inside the car.

And I pass the door unscathed. That knocking on wood really must have done the trick. But that's the closest a car door has come to me in a very long time and it has me rethinking my whole I hate helmets in summer weather policy. I'll be knocking on some more wood again too.

I'm sure someone will comment that passing stopped traffic on the right is a bad idea, but really if I had lined up behind them it would have taken me all day to get across town. Not very practical to pass on the left either because of the width of streetcars.

Soaking up Spring

Finally after so many days of cold gloomy rainy April, one that really feels like spring. Where just being out on the bike is gleeful. Soaking up the sunshine. No having to put on gloves or balaclavas or rain pants. Not even a coat. Stopping to grab a slice of pizza I sit and watch all the other smiling people on bikeys going by Queen street. I love bike watching.

Destination: Bike Pirates. A new volunteer run space where you can buy secondhand bikes and parts that have been donated, and work on your bike. Last weekend a friend of mine had a social bike tune-up day. I had thought my city bike was in good working order but now have a shopping list of repairs to make: the rear rim has a ridge worn on it, and I had remembered from before a friend suggested I replace it after winter was over - the ridge is probably from a long while ago when I was running worn brake pads that screeched metal on metal - it does seem to affect the braking somewhat, and the cassette is rusty anyway/never replaced in the 9 years and many thousands of miles I've ridden it; the recently replaced rear brake pads had worn a lip "who put these on?" the bike geek at the party asked, "the nut is on backwards". Hmm okay so I was trying to learn things by doing them myself; the front wheel goes clickety click and so could use to have the hub repacked; the front brake pads are also due for replacement.

I'm in spring glee mode, and paying perhaps a bit less attention than I should to surrounding traffic. I'm loving the feeling of the wind in my hair. I left the helmet at home, not wanting to spend the time futzing with the sizing to adjust it to no longer need to put warming headgear underneath it. Besides I do not believe that riding a bicycle on pavement at moderate speeds is a dangerous activity. Sometimes its useful though to just convince ignorant road users you aren't an idiot. I'm not feeling particularly aggressive and forget to block the curb lane as I go over the Don Valley and a streetcar is passing in the center. There is not room for a streetcar + passing vehicle + bicycle to all be going in the same direction unless the vehicle is travelling exceedingly slowly because of the highly precise narrow path it must follow, the bicycle is very close to the curb and does not falter and you feel comfortable riding a bicycle with a car passing that close to your shoulder. So its POSSIBLE just not very practical. Since most drivers are too clued to figure out how wide their vehicle is and when they can overtake a bicycle safely or not its best to make that decision for them in the form of taking the lane so they need to wait behind either you or the streetcar until a gap develops.

At any rate, I haven't been glancing in my rearview mirror, and suddenly a car is passing far too closely and yelling something out the window. Sounded like SPAZ. Got to love it when people do not know how to drive so instead blame the person they were going to hit.

This seems to bring up the question of how much responsibility the cyclist has for driving defensively versus how much infrastructure we should provide so that people can ride a bike without having to put so much attention span and effort into avoiding the dangers inherently created by automobiles. In an ideal world people driving cars would overtake responsibly. Always. (Though quite honestly in an ideal world people would be driving personal automobiles a lot less frequently than they are now.) But the world is not ideal. Another ideal solution is to have a bike lane over the bridge. Bike lanes on bridges work well because generally there is no reason for a car to stop on a bridge, and there are no intersections to worry about position conflicts. But bridges are expensive to widen. And there is no room to create one otherwise, we have already determined streetcar + car + bike don't all fit on one side of the road.

Fast forward a bit and I'm riding on Gerrard which has a bike lane. There's a red light at Gerrard and Bay and a delivery truck is in front of me half in the bike lane, half in the next lane over. I figure he is either stopping to make a delivery or going to make a right hand turn, and stop well back of the truck. Another helmeted cyclist (I point out the helmet because I wonder if he thinks the helmet will save him from his own stupidity) passes me on the right and squeezes in the very narrow space between truck and curb, and is riding directly in his blind spot as the light turns green and the truck starts up. Fortunately for him the truck was actually going straight through rather than turning right, because if the truck was turning right, there's a decent chance said cyclist would be dead. I thought I should say something to the cyclist because maybe he just had never really thought about his actions. So I'm following him, and he turns right on Elizabeth - a side street that connects up the bike lane on Gerrard with the one on College. There's a car stopped in the bike lane. I glance over my shoulder, the road is perfectly clear so go around plenty in advance. On the other hand, he rings his bell angrily at the driver, makes gestures, and rides right up to it, at which point he goes around (I'm not even sure if he looked). We get up to the light where we both are making left turns, while I go into the empty lane on the quiet street, he rides through the crosswalk over to the corner to wait to ride through again like a pedestrian (except not really like a pedestrian as he's still on his bike)

These cyclists frighten me, in the sense that I worry they will end up as roadkill. They wear helmets to protect their heads but they don't actually use their heads. They feel safe when they are riding in a bike lane, but they have a false sense of security. They have no idea how to interact with traffic, and like it or not, they still need to interact with traffic. Even if the world was ideal and bike lanes were never blocked by debris, slow cyclists, or parked cars - there's still the need to interact with other traffic at every single intersection.

With recent publicitly and a gorgeous spring day, Bike Pirates is just a zoo of people when I get there. They don't seem to have any 7 speed rear wheels around so I'm out of luck on that front, and its too busy and late in their day to do any work on the bike. But it was good to check it out and I'm sure I'll be back.

On the way home, traffic is busy. Its rush hour anyway but add to the nice day and there's just more people outside soaking up the sun - whether on bikes, foot, or with their windows down in their car not really focussed on the task of driving. On College again, for some reason the bike lane is filled for several blocks with sawdust. One of the pitfalls of course of bike lanes is that debris from the main lanes is swept by cars to the sides of the road - in this case the bike lane. I don't want to ride through this crap. So I'm riding in the next lane over - in this section there are 2 lanes + bike lanes each direction. A taxi comes up to me and honks despite the fact the center lane is CLEAR, so he is just trying to be an intimidating ass. Cluelessness I can handle, I think every road user has to assume any other road user may have lapses of attention span and react accordingly. But intimidation and aggression, there should be zero tolerance for this shit. Anyway its too nice of a day to deal with being honked at so I'm fine I can ride over sawdust and move over into the bike lane (a bit later on, I did not give the taxi the satisfaction of conceding to him) You would think that driving for a living the taxi driver might be a bit more conscientuous than the average driver, but no apparently not.

Between sunshine and complacency in the bike lane and constant turning head to figure out what was up with the cacophony of horns going (hmm not at me I don't think as I was no longer "in the way"), it was ME who was next on the list of inattentive bad driving. Oh speaking of in the way, there was a parked car in the bike lane at some point but too much traffic in the next lane over so I signalled to be let in. Which someone lets me in. But after I'm back in the bike lane they feel such a need to make up for this "lost time" I have cost them by gunning it to the next car behind them. They did not get very far or very fast, I just found this hilarious. While the average speed of a car in the city and a bike in the city may not be all that different, car drivers sure like to accelerate through gaps even though they will just have to stop again.

Oh yeah back to my inattention. I didn't realize the streetcar was stopping beside me and there were pedestrians stepping off the curb pretty much in front of me. Crap. I try to brake hard, but remember my list of bike repairs included pretty much everything related to brake? Yeah. That didn't work. The bike just kinda warbled instead. I went wide, the peds stopped moving no doubt cursing me, and they probably didn't hear my "sooorrry". Technically I think they were overeager hopping off the curb a little early as I was ahead of the streetcar and did not blow the open doors. (it was yet to come to a complete stop)

I am very happy there are bike lanes, it made for an express trip home as I was by far passing the speed of the car traffic. Ha, and they think its bikes that is making things slow for them. While some would argue the same thing could be accomplished by wide curb lanes, in congested traffic some stop right and some stop to the left, and I'd have to be making figure 8's to bypass it. This straight line idea is much more efficient. But I passed once person riding the wrong way in the lane balancing a large parcel, and another riding the wrong way in the lane with a toddler in a car seat on the front. Do these people not realize that they are going to be invisible at intersections?

Somewhere in this chaos we need to figure out the right balance of education for cyclists, education for motorists, and infrastructure that helps (like bypassing congestion) more than it hurts (the uncountable number of drivers turning right across the bike lane without merging into it first among many other reasons). Some demand why can't we have barriered bike lanes in Montreal. I say absolutely no, but that's a subject for another post!

If you could have any wish what do YOU think would make it better to ride a bike in Toronto? (or where you live)

Mad Mad World

Trying to be more observant of my traffic interactions the past few days, I just have to come to the conclusion that traffic is a crazed mad world out there, and so to survive you just have to kinda play along with the crazed mad game, which can mean you will sometimes come across as aggressive or inconsiderate.

Here's a sampling of the interactions:

• A cop car cuts across me from the other side of the road. I figure he is pulling me over for something, of which I am completely clueless as I have been obeying the law. I have to brake reasonably hard, and I'm annoyed he hasn't stopped me in a safer manner. Then he waves me by, and it becomes apparent he was not stopping me at all, he was making a three-point turn to go the other direction, and just didn't see me.
• Yet another bad professional driver - I'm riding along with another cyclist when a taxi driver opens his door right in front of him so he yells "BICYCLE" and the taxi driver - the one who opens his door without looking (which is a 2-demerit point offense by the way) yells "IDIOT" at the cyclist.
  
• Friday at rush hour a friend and I meet up on our bikes to go to an outing in the direction that most commuters are heading. It always baffles my mind why people want to drive every day in mind-dumbingly slow traffic moving at about walking speed. Anyway we are on a road with a bike lane, so there's theoretically a path for bypassing the congestion, but ah the jam of cars going nowhere slowly is making this difficult. Drivers always seem to assume there is a reason they aren't moving, which is different from the simple fact that there are too many of them crammed into too small of a space. So every few cars there is one stopped to the right, across the bike lane line, in order to crane their neck to get a view of why this is happening. Most of these are just slightly into the bike lane, so its possible to pass them. One luxury car driver is fully blocking the lane, as she turned the corner when there was not space to complete the turn. This annoys me and I wait behind her continually ringing my bell. Hey outta my way. Of course another cyclist behind both of us yells at me because oh yeah I could pass her if I leaned my bike to the side and kicked my foot against the curb. (difficult to do without scratching the car)
  
• We are taking a route with a lot of four-way stops to avoid rush-hour nutcases on Yonge Street, and its also easier to ride while chatting on the residential roads. So I get a better chance to set a good example and come to proper stops as I rarely take roads peppered with stop signs. I notice cars do not come to proper stops at these either and roll through. Coming to full stops seems to irritate cyclists behind me who ring their bells as they roll on past. But the worst is a driver rolling through the stop sign from the cross street when it was my turn to go! What did he think because I came to a full stop I was taking a rest break there or something? It seems in aggressive traffic if you you want your turn you have to roll through too. Drivers have no patience it seems for anyone following rules to the letter no matter what their vehicle.
  
• A driver honks me as is typical when I am stopped in the center of the curb lane at the red light because he wants to turn right. Oh okay I'll be nice, and I push my bike over a bit further to the left so he can squeeze by. The next driver is going straight through (although there is a parked car not too far ahead in the lane). I signal with my right arm straight out, so I can move over and switch positions with him. He just really aggressively guns it straight through the intersection without letting me over at all.
  
• At night I realize that a bike headlight is harder to notice when you are looking for traffic before making a turn than a car headlight is. So in an effort to make myself more visible, I also have a VERY bright headlight on my helmet, which I can then point in the direction of a car waiting on a cross street so I can be sure they see me. I'm out far from the curb, I point my head towards the drivers window. Yet still a car turns right in front of me. Yeah okay I have brakes and everything but this is annoying. I'm sure the driver must have seen the light. Does the driver a) just not associate the light with a vehicle? or b) figures its a bike but totally misjudges my speed, or c) figures he is more important than a bike so who cares?
  

I would not consider any of these close calls, you sometimes just have to anticipate the idiotic things other people are going to do in traffic so you can avoid them. I did however have a "close call" about a month ago. I am riding along Queen Street in the left side of the right lane (since there are parked cars in the lane, and I also do not weave in and out through gaps in parked cars, that just makes you invisible). This was the day after my brevet ride so I was really sore and moving at a slower-than-usual pace. Out of the corner of my eye it is apparent the car beside me is turning right onto a small side street. HELLO. What the hell are you doing, turning right from the center lane of the roadway? I suddenly turn right too, and I'm not sure if I countersteered or leaned to make a hard turn, or just turned, I was just concentrating on where the car was and not colliding with it.

Now perhaps I should have stopped, and asked the driver what he was thinking. I had passed him at this point because he stopped no doubt when he realized he could hit me, I look back, see his license plates (California, so far far from home), tinted windows so I can't actually see the driver, just sigh, make a u-turn, and then turn back onto Queen again. There are two possible explanations for what he was thinking. He was lost, not paying particular attention to his surroundings, so did not really notice me at all as he passed me, and then when I was in his blind spot, he saw the street sign went OH CRAP that's where I wanted to turn, and seeing nothing in his mirror makes the turn. Inattentiveness is annoying. But its not as worrying as idiocy or aggression. The other explanation is that he wanted to turn right, but could not change lanes at that point in time because I was there. So he probably figured a bike is slow, and if he just speeds up a little he can make the turn faster than if he waits for me to pass so he can change lanes. If it was the second explanation I have a much less forgiving attitude....

edit:After I wrote this I had a positive motorist interaction so I thought I would add it for balance. Going across the Bloor viaduct, traffic was too heavy and too fast to merge over a lane (the rightmost lane turns into an expressway on ramp) I signalled left anyway, shoulder checked and noticed the frontmost vehicle slowing to let me across his path. I waved a thank you, and then happily carried on. This is not unique to bikes, cars signal all the time where someone slows down to let them in their lane. I think its nice though to wave so the driver knows its appreciated. Too often people don't let others in since being nice often gets taken advantage of by aggressive drivers.
Comments (16)