Take the Lane

Moron of the Week, #31

Homer Watson and Manitou in Kitchener, on successive days within the last 10 days.

On two occasions, a cyclist passed a motorist in the right-hand-only turning lane, on the right side. On one occasion, it was after dark and the cyclist was wearing dark clothing and was lights-free.

The motorist who wrote to complain is cyclist-aware and says that she always checks for riders, but notes that some cyclists aren't doing themselves any favours by wearing black, going lightless and passing on the right in the wrong lane.

Ya think? How has natural selection missed these guys? Shouldn't their death-wish riding styles have weeded them out of the population by now?

Here's the right way to go straight through an intersection: pick the lane that goes straight through the intersection. Situate yourself in the right-hand portion of the lane. At a four-way stop, wait until your turn. At a signalized intersection, wait for the green light. Then ride straight through.

This goes against the grain of curb-huggers, who tend to follow the gutter even when it is clearly splitting away from the main road to a ramp or right-turn lane. BREAK THE HABIT. Or ride on the sidewalk and walk your bike through the crosswalk.

But anyone who rides along the right-turn-only lane and then decides to go straight through, and passes a turning motor vehicle to do so, surely is the Moron of the Week.

Moron of the Week, #30

OK, this is really four morons, in the space of 10 minutes!

Four different cyclists on King Street in downtown Kitchener, around 7:30 p.m. Dark as pitch. One on the road and three on the sidewalks. Not a light among the lot.

I mentioned this to one in passing, but he declined to stop and discuss the matter. I cringed as the one on the road was nearly run down by an overtaking motorist who noticed him and put on the brakes too close for my comfort.

Will Darwinism weed out the dumb cyclists? I think the cycling community needs every cycling voice it can muster, so I would just as soon have these morons alive, with lights.

If you know a cyclist who is dumb enough to ride at night without lights, I have a suggestion for a necessary Christmas gift: get them a light!

Moron of the week, #29

I've fallen behind on the moron-citing, but I rediscovered a lengthy email from Christina Mills of Waterloo describing her encounter with one earlier this month, which she calls MOTW.

Seems she was riding west on Columbia Street in Waterloo, when she saw a cyclist who was riding on the sidewalk, until he approached a pedestrian, when he would move off to the adjacent bicycle lane, and once past the ped, would swerve back onto the sidewalk. Mills caught up to the cyclist and a conversation ensued that went something like: "Just curious, why are you riding on the sidewalk when there's a bike lane right beside it?" MOTW replies: "I like the sidewalk." Mills asks, "Do you know it's illegal?" MOTW says, "Yes." Mills says, "Oh, do you also know it endangers pedestrians and gives cyclists a bad name?" MOTW simply shrugs.

So, she passes MOTW only to meet yet another moron going the wrong way on the bike lane she was in. His response to a near collision was to swerve up onto the sidewalk and narrowly miss a pedestrian.

Mills says "So many morons, so little apparent chance of getting through to them."

Moron of the Week, #28

I think it's me, this week, although I am willing share the blame with the cyclist who I offended.

It was almost 9 a.m. today on the sidewalk on Homer Watson Boulevard. I was walking and talking on a cellphone, when a cyclist whipped around from behind me, very fast, and passed me on the left.

As I have tried to do in such cases, I shouted after him: "Use your bell or yell."

The Lycra-clad cyclist turned around and, in a booming voice, replied, "I did. You're on a cellphone."

I shouted my apologies and he continued on, but I did wonder after: if he had yelled with that voice, how could I have not heard him? As well, how wise is it to bring road behaviour (fast riding) to sidewalks? And finally, how much should we depend on the yell-once-at-the-ped-and-then-I'm-blameless approach to cycling? On the lakes, the faster watercraft have to yield to the slower ones. That seems like a fair traffic model for sidewalks.

Nonetheless, I have sounded off enough about the walkie-talkie of sidewalk cellphone users that I believe I qualify for moron of the week, with a bit of moronic sticking to the sidewalk cyclist. 

Moron of the week, #27

Actually, two morons, although the motorist might have the edge here.

You were both travelling north Saturday around 1 p.m. on King Street in Kitchener, approaching the Frederick Street intersection. Construction has closed King north of this intersection, so traffic has to go either left or right. There is a right-turn-only lane and a combo straight-through/left turn lane on King Street at this intersection.

The motorist (large grey SUV) was in the combined straight through/left turn lane, not signalling, with a cyclist (adult, MTB, wearing his helmet) coming up behind him and beginning to pass him on the right, apprently intending to turn left.

As the light turned green, the SUV driver, instead of turning left, flicked on his right turn signal and began to turn across the right turn lane, directly into the cyclist. The cyclist yelled, "What do you think you are doing, a--hole?" The SUV driver stopped, the cyclist pulled around for his left turn and the SUV driver hit the gas to complete his right turn.

I believe I saw both motorist and cyclist shaking their heads in disbelief.

Now you might wonder why I would cite the cyclist as a potential moron. Well, I didn't see him signal. He pulled up into the blind spot of a motorist who wasn't signalling his intention and he insisted on his "right" to make his left turn across the line of travel of a big vehicle driven by a not totally aware motorist.

Yeah, the cyclist was most likely "in the right," but at the potential cost of being a statistic. How moronic is that? For the motorist, clearly this driver gave the most perfunctory of blind-spot checks, if he did one at all, and is a road hazard to himself and others.

In my reading of this, they both qualified to be morons of the week.

Moron of the Week, #26

Not having had a moron of the week for a while, I almost forgot what number this one should be.

Thanks to Christina Mills for her report of today's moron, seen this morning on the Iron Horse Trail near the University of Waterloo campus. As Mills approached a pedestrian, she called out "Passing left" and swung left to go around. And as she reports, "I almost fell off my bike when another cyclist whizzed up silently and passed me: on the right, between the pedestrian and me!"

No bell. No warning shout. Just bicycle ignorance. No wonder so many pedestrians are afraid of us, or angry at us.

On the plus side, the resulting adrenaline hit meant that Mills didn't need a coffee.

Oh ignorant bicycle trail cyclist, you are our Moron of the Week!

Are cyclists blissfully self-absorbed or simply self-centred?

I asked this question earlier this week, when I was in Toronto helping my daughter and son-in-law make some fixes to their new house. Their house is right on the corner of a four-way stop in a tightly-packed suburban neighbourhood. Some traffic. A few kids in hot cars. The odd contractor barrelling along with a lot of lumber.

And lots of bikes.

Between jobs, I spent some time in the front yard and on the front porch, watching the bikes breeze through the intersection. I'm pretty confident that over three days, I did not see a bicycle stop for the stop sign. (In fact, a few cars breezed through the stop sign, as well.) Women with baskets of groceries. Guys on BMX bikes. A mom hauling a kid-trailer. A dad with an add-a-bike. Father and son on their separate bikes. You get the picture.

It's a four-way stop. I suppose the cyclists all thought the same thing, "I can see there's no one coming, and if there is someone coming, well, I'm on a bike, and he has to stop." At least, I hope they were thinking. Judging by the expressions, or lack thereof, on some of the faces, I wondered if they were thinking anything at all.

Great photoblogger, not so great a road-user

Sam Javanrouh is a photoblogger in Toronto. More than that, his blog Daily Dose of Imagery has been cited by photoblog.org as among the best photoblogs in the world.

But based on "Biking with 5D Mark II" I can't say that Javanrouh is among the best cyclists in the world. This video is about four minutes of Javanrouh using the Canon 5D Mark II to grab some test footage facing forward while riding in the Yonge and King areas of Toronto about a month ago.

A lot of the footage was "hands-free," (and some of that was on wet pavement and beside parked cars). He apparently ran a yellow light, passed a lot of stopped cars on the right (in a space too tight for me, but maybe it was the wide-angle lens) and entered a street that police had blocked to traffic. Oh, and he appears to pass on the right a vehicle that is about to turn right (hello, officer!).

So, he's a top blogger. I'm a top curmudgeon, and I couldn't help but think as I watched his test footage: Man, this guy is a moron.

Moron of the Week, #25

On Sunday, I thought I had a candidate for Moron of the Week, but I didn't post. Then I saw five candidates on Monday. Still didn't post. A couple more on Wednesday. One y'day. Today, another one.

And no one candidate merits the venerated Moron of the Week award. But all of them get a piece of it. As for specifics, my memory has been pummeled: the woman in the red, reflective cycling jacket who was weaving on to sidewalks and back on to the road along Stirling Avenue; the hotshot tearing down the sidewalk on King Street; the adult on a BMX bike that was WAY too small, bunny-hopping curbs between the gaps in traffic; the kid going the wrong way on a bike lane, heading right at an older rider coming the right way.

Have all the cyclists in this area gone crazy? I was a cycling curmudgeon before, I admit it, and perhaps taking that CAN-BIKE course has just added to the curmudgeonryisticism, but holy doodle people, can't you at least slow down on the ped-filled sidewalks? No wonder pedestrians hate us when we come barreling down a hill on the sidewalk, staring right at the ped in our path with that don't-mess-with-me stare.

I figure it's spring. It's spring and we want to be on our bikes and we're joyous and stupid all at once. In the natural world, the joyous and stupid rabbits get eaten by foxes. A whole bunch of us are going to be eaten by grabage trucks, buses and old men who stick umbrellas in our spokes as we go by.

And when that happens, we will deserve to be called the Morons of the Week.

Moron of the Week, #24

I had already picked out my Moron of the Week when I got an email from Liz Leedham with a superior suggestion.

On Thursday, April 30, at about 9:30 a.m., she was driving on Charles Street East in Kitchener when she saw a man riding his bicycle in the oncoming traffic lane, almost dragging a black lab behind him.
Leedham said the dog was older and running fast to keep up.

As they reached a traffic light, it turned red and instead of stopping, the cyclist (or animal sadist) dragged the dog behind him, making a left turn across traffic in both lanes. Said Leedham, "I was appalled both by his cruelty towards the dog, and by his oblivion to traffic rules and safety concerns. I bike most of the roads around here and have never seen anything so stupid."

Oh, this is so clearly wrong. If you ever see anything like this, call the KW Humane Society at 519-745-5615, the Cambridge and District Humane Society at 510-623-7722 or the Guelph Humane Society at 519-824-3091.

This guy is clearly the Moron of the Week.