I sometimes get angry at what motorists do when I'm riding, and despite the fact that I might be in the right (in theis case they weren't), I'd rather be slightly delayed than paraplegic.

Or two dimensional

I understand that fully. And my second comment was that I do understand that bikes and cars share the road.
But.... I have seen cars drive ENDLESSLY on bike routes, no, not to a business nor a residence. As a motorist I would rather drive on roads that carry traffic through than be hindered at almost every intersection.
Yes the cyclists were rude. I would be rather annoyed if cyclists did that to me.
Just as annoying today I was out on my bike and almost got hit 4 times. In any of those cases none would have been my fault. A taxi driver in particular (no surprise there) came close to me colliding... had a signal on and turned the other direction instead.
A few choice words were yelled out.

The cyclists are ignorant and in the wrong. It's a road first and a bike route second. I ride this road on a regular basis (when I'm not on strike[]) and find that everything flows well. It's a bike route because it has traffic calming as well as signals to cross the busier cross streets.

Sometimes I think it is a power trip for people to be able to control others. Cyclists holding up traffic are like the guy on the Sea to Sky Highway who has a huge line up of cars behind him and when getting to a straight two lane stretch speeds up so that only a few cars get past.

Common courtesy/common sense is in short supply at times.

For a while there I was commuting daily on my bike using the bike routes, and I have to say, it's getting more and more dangerous as drivers try to shortcut away from the Cambie disaster. I see them pulling U-turns in the middle of the street without so much as a glance to see what might be coming; cars zooming past at twice the speed limit with very few inches of space between them and the bicycle; cars going straight ahead where it says "right turn only (except bicycles)"; drivers who think a traffic circle means "cars proceed at top speed; cyclists give way no matter what"; drivers who think that a stop sign means "race out into the middle of the intersection and screech to a halt only if you should happen to notice a cyclist at the last moment" - - I'm telling you, it's war out there. I've had words with drivers trying to cut their commute time down by 5 seconds by breaking the law, nearly plowing me down in the process. I usually get "#*#@ you" in response.

That being said, I've been guilty of shortcutting down those same bike routes in my car before (say, if the major road I'm trying to use is jammed with construction, which seems to be every road in this city at the moment); the difference being, I'm aware I'm driving on a bike route, and drive slowly, carefully, and respectfully. And I don't do this routinely; only if I'm desperate to be somewhere on time and I'm encountering ridiculous and unexpected delays.

If the city really wanted to create safe bike routes, they'd make it far more difficult to drive onto them without doing a major detour. Instead, drivers use them because they know there's a push-button controlled light at the other end so they can get across the next intersection. If these were blocked off so that only cyclists could get across them, the bike routes would cease to be used as shortcuts for cars.

Currently, this is a typical bike route in Vancouver:

Wouldnt that be lovely to wake up to everyday, traffic...

No thanks!

Im a country boy for that reason...

I turn on 16th to Ontario because my home is only a couple of blocks away. I have always driven this route home and I don't think I should have to detour just to drive the minimum part of a bike route. I stay away from bike routes as much as possible when I drive because, frankly, some bicyclist can be careless.

As a cyclist, this has to be the worst when it comes to being almost hit the most times in a year. Funny, most of them were on bike routes and quiet residential streets.

As a driver and cyclist I take the most care and give the most courtesy. I guess this city is getting denser and more careless. I have driven more to work than drive because of the many close calls I've had on my bike so I have the most sympathy for cyclists.

Fortunately, the cyclists has been much better than the drivers from my observation, with the exception of the incident above.

I have been a cyclist for many, many years. I didn't get my drivers license until I was 26. I worked at a bike shop to put myself through university. I rode competitively through that same period and logged huge miles on the road training. In my years on the bike I had my fair share of unpleasant encounters with motor vehicles. At age 12 I was hit in a head on accident by a left turning motorist who simply didn't see me coming the opposite direction on a through street: my femur was broken and I spent a month in hospital in traction and another month in a body cast. I was knocked off my bike by cars on two other occasions with less significant injury.

The first rule of the road for any rational cyclist is yield to the "right of weight": an accident that won't even dent a car could easily make you dead. Second rule of the road: you are a vehicle and are subject to the MVA (learned this the hard way by twice getting ticketed for speeding on the 30 KMH roadway in Stanley Park!)

Among other things, being subject to the MVA means - even on a bike route - staying as far to the right as is safely possible. Riding two or more side by side means that the rider on the left is breaking the law plain and simple. Intentionally impeding traffic "because it is a bike route" is both obnoxious and stupid. Obnoxious behavior on a bike greatly increases the risk of obnoxious and stupid behavior from motorists and the cyclist will almost always come out the loser in that situation.

In the particular situation described on Ontario Street 3 out of 4 cyclists should have pulled into single-file echelon on the right as soon as they were aware of an overtaking car. A driver approaching from behind should do exactly what carmen did: drive slowly behind the cyclists until it is safe to pass. Many drivers would not have shown carmen's patience and - rather than getting all snitty - the cyclists should have been grateful that they weren't dangerously passed/abused by some road-rager.

Their behavior reminds me of the theory of a regular cyclist who used to hang out at our shop: many cyclists have a button in their ass that turns off their brain as soon as they got on the saddle. Their numbers would be much higher if it wasn't for Darwinism.

Cycling in the city, in the absence of a bike lane, I am really at a loose... should I consider myself a pedestrian or a vehicle. I pose a risk to pedestrian but am at risk to motorize vehicles. So most of the time, I just exercise caution and be considerate or simply yield. My logic is, I might have the right but it certainly won't be nice if that car bumped me or just ask myself if it was worth bumping that person or car with my bike simply because I had the right of way. Don't just avoid accidents, try to avoid arguments as well.

I'm not a believer of wearing helmets, I simply cannot believe that a piece of molded foam can save my life. But that does not mean I don't wear them. Because even if I don't believe in it, other people will still think about safety if they saw me wearing a helmet.

In short, etiquette or no etiquette, the best is still making a good decision. Which can easily be done by learning to be considerate and putting safety first.

>>(especially on the roundabouts?)

I noticed no-one had commented specifically on this yet.

What percentage of the driving/biking public do you think actually knows the correct procedure for negotiating one of these traffic "calming" roundabouts that the city likes to install on the bike routes ?

From my experience as a driver and year round 5 day a week bike commuter, the percentage is pretty low. Every time I approach 1 of these roundabouts, I just assume anyone else approaching it will do 100% the wrong thing and I assume the worst.

Either someone will try to flatten me even though I had right away, or I'll yield right of way to someone who doesn't relaise they have right of way and one of those "you go, no you go, no, I insist, you go" stalemates begins, with both vehicles stopped and a line up of other impatient vehicles behind them laying on their horns (or middle fingers).
I'm still trying to figure out the "calming" part of traffic calming circles.

Believe it man. Why do you think when you buy a new TV they pack it in 2" of Styrofoam? To stop it from breaking if it gets dropped on the ground, same thing goes for your skull.

That being said there is tons and tons of research that backs up the fact that bike helmets save lives. Now don't get me wrong, if you get hit by a car you are SOL with or without a helmet, but just a simple wipeout at 30Km/h without a helmet can be fatal if your head hits the road, that is what the helmet is for.

Helmets wont save you from everything, but I know of two people who didn't wear them who are now dead. They otherwise might have lived. Without a helmet I would surely be dead or severly disabled.

I think your response was completely reasonable, it's the shrugging it off afterwards that's a bit harder. This city sucks when it comes to cyclist respect so I'm never surprised when they act agro and feel the need to protect their turf. Doubtful the same thing would have happened were there only two of them though. Get 4 or more cyclists together and out come the anti-car big-balls. If every Vancouver driver could spend a month in Victoria and learn what sharing the road is really like it would be a whole new world. Bottom line is cyclists will never get the respect, support and infrastructure they need until it stops raining. As long as the weather is bad cyclist numbers will stay low and so will cycling issues in terms of real priority and funding.

If it helps I had the opposite experience this morning. I was walking down to the Port Moody WCE stations this morning in a torrential deluge. At a quiet residential intersection a cyclist actually stopped and let me cross in the crosswalk in front of him. I said thanks and asked how far his commute was. "SFU" was his answer. I almost felt guilty for walking to transit.

Off-topic:

First thing I did after I bought my first mountain bike 2 years ago was read about helmets. I was a believer. And my readings were initially just to find out if a more expensive helmet can provide better protection. My readings told me it doesn't really matter. A $15 helmet offers the same protection as a $200 helmet. Both covers basically the same area, about a third of our head. Both have inferior design with respect to what it is supposed to do, protect our heads. And both were accredited by the same safety organization... CPSC (Consumer Product Safety Commission). I do believe it can prevent minor injuries but a bike helmet design is actually just good enough to be effective for a 12mph impact (actually 12mph was for a motorcycle helmet, source is in 2nd link included below). That's really nowhere near your 30kph wipe-out. And if we have to be picky about that, marathoners would probably have to wear helmets too.

Regarding the tons and tons of research that backs up the "helmet saves lives", if you truly done your own research, you'd realized that these "facts" and "statistics" are not realistic enough or simply doesn't show the real picture. Try researching about other countries too. To some extend, you'd realize that it would not be surprising to entertain the "wearing helmets is a marketing ploy" theory. Or come up with some other conclusions. You'd also realized that the accidents with deaths for non-helmet users in those statistic involves automobiles. Which you basically admit is a no contest for helmets. And lastly, with due respect, dropping a TV protected by styrofoam on the ground is not comparable to a biker plunging head-on to a tree, the hard pavement or a car windshield. Besides, our heads is not made of wood, glass, plastic, or some metallic alloys.


Some info:
Here's a ton of researches that tells us about wearing/not wearing helmets and injuries. As well as some other info. http://www.cycle-helmets.com/helmet_statistics.html

Here's a couple of articles that shows some of the exaggerations of using a bike helmet.
http://www.ucolick.org/~de/AltTrans/helmyths.html
http://www.bikesutra.com/article_helmets.html


With due respect, you are contradicting yourself. You believe helmet is not a catch all but because of 2 incidents, you concluded that you'd be dead or in a real bad shape without wearing a helmet. Also, we never really know just exactly how many people not wearing helmets survived the kind of accidents that those 2 persons you know suffered. For all we know, the statistic of those 2 could either be 100% or just 1%. In short, it's not a realistic picture to draw any favorable conclusion for the helmet. But I have to admit that it still says a lot about being cautious.


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Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to bash helmets here. It was just an example for my message which is trusting on protective gears is not enough, being cautious is better. I mean, I still do wear helmets, I just don't trust them that much.

The reason I wrote that is because I had an accident that split my helmet in half. The impact on the back of my head was so strong I couldn't get up for several minutes without falling down again. I'm pretty sure I owe that helmet my life, or at least my mental well being. That statement had nothing to do with the other two people, who both died of head injuries while not wearing bike helmets. I saw one of them and I'll never forget it. Of course we'll never know if they would have survived if they had been wearing helmets, but it defies logic to argue that they might as well have not have worn helmets because the helmets may not have saved them anyway, particularly since that is not known. That is truely twisted thinking. (On topic) In addition to the cyclist I feel sorry for the driver, who wasn't at fault.