Dear Bicyclist

Dear Bicyclist,

Despite your accusations to the contrary, I am fully aware of you when you are on the road “sharing the road”.  I have talked to other automobile drivers and they share my feelings about this.  We are hyper-aware of your presence and we give you the widest possible berth that we can in almost all circumstance.

Why?  Because you do not obey traffic laws.  Not that automobile drivers are innocent, but if I were to bet whether an automobile or a bicyclist was going to commit a traffic violation, I would bet on the bicyclist and I would win hands down.  The worse part about this is that if you commit a traffic violation two things are going to likely to happen.  First, if it is serious enough, you are going to get hurt far worse than I am.  Second, regardless of the evidence, I will be considered the guilty party.  After all, I should have been looking out for your – right?

If you think I am being too harsh you are misguided.  Two examples:

• One recent trip downtown, I encountered 17 bicyclists and 14 were violating traffic laws when I watched them.  Generally speaking they were taking advantage of their ability to weave in and out of traffic and running stop signs and red lights but that does not abrogate the law.  It also does not mean that it makes it easy for automobiles to travel in your wake.
• A bicyclist ran a stop sign from a side street and ran into the side of a pickup truck.  It was reported on TV and the newspaper as the driver was the guilty party even while showing the bicycle dent in the side of the pickup’s bed.  Crazy.  Oh yeh.  A week or two later, it was reported as an afterthought that maybe, just maybe, the bicyclist just might have been at fault.  Right.

As I said at the beginning.  Not only do I “Share the Road”, I give you wide berth on the road because I do not trust you to be a decent person.