At 10:00 AM -0500 8/8/03, Matt Logan wrote: > When is it time to put your foot down? > ... Is this state of affairs one that is acceptable >to everyone? Where is your threshold between common courtesy, and >caving in to roadway terrorism? >
A 'stop' should do 2 things: 1. allow the driver to determine when it is safe to proceed 2. communicate to other drivers that he/she is yielding the right-of-way. (where 'driver' means the operator of a vehicle) A conscientious and experienced[+] cyclist can usually accomplish (1) with a 'rolling'[*] stop. Inexperienced and/or careless cyclists should come to a complete, full, feet-on-the-ground stop. Item (2) is tricky, because it depends on the awareness of the other drivers. This is especially dicey when the other drivers are motorists[#]. But in my opinion, the standard should be that you are sufficiently 'stopped' that anyone could reasonably determine that you are in fact yielding the ROW. Obviously, a zero-motion stop is better, but sometimes you just don't want to lose those last few foot-pound-seconds[!] of momentum. -darin [+] experienced in the many-years-of-driving sense, not neccesarily in the Jimi Hendrix sense. [*] sometimes called a California stop, not to be confused with a California roll. [#] cf. Miller, in "Repo Man"; 'The more you drive, the stupider you get'. [!] I'm pretty sure those are valid units for momentum. _______________________________________________ Bikies mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.danenet.org/mailman/listinfo/bikies
