I am seeking advice on some bike/car interactions that my wife and I experienced Tuesday and Wednesday.
On Tuesday we were biking home from work on Tokay and were just about to stop at the light on Midvale heading toward downtown. Tokay is a divided boulevard, low traffic (at least at the time we were riding 6:30 pm) and quite bumpy. We were riding two abreast which to my understanding is legal as long as you go single file when a car approaches from behind. So that is what happened when we reached Midvale. We stopped for the red at Midvale, I positioned myself on the left side of the road so if the car wanted to turn right we would not be in its way. My wife was just a little farther over from me but still gave enough room for a car to turn if they needed to. So a car approached from behind and at first it appeared it would just get behind us because it was going to go straight or turn left but at the last moment it pulled up right beside us like it wanted to turn right. The driver rolled down his window and started harassing us about why we were positioned where we were. He said things like, I get to go straight too, you should be on the right of the road and we need to work this out. We tried to explain that we wait where we do so we don't block cars from turning right and that bikes follow the same rules of the road as cars and so we have a right to take this position. Are we in the wrong here in anyway? When we approach an intersection like this shouldn't we take a position as if we were a car so we do not block the right turn lane? The best thing about this interaction was the passenger who appeared to be his daughter, as she was apologizing to us and telling her dad to knock it off, she was obviously embarrassed. So as he was still harassing us the light turned and we went straight through the intersection then got over and the car passed with no further comment. Same ride home later that night we were traveling down Jenifer st heading towards the river. You can get some good speed on Jenifer as it is downhill so we were cruising along again riding sometimes two abreast when no cars were present. At one point a truck did appear behind us but because of our speed it did not catch up very fast so we continued two abreast. Finally at Jenifer and S Thornton we signaled to go right to take the foot bridge over the river and the truck was right behind us. As they turned left they yelled the oldest and most uniformed comment that is ever yelled at cyclists, "It's called a sidewalk." The occupants of the truck looked young, maybe high school or slightly older. I always felt this comment was usually uttered by older adults that remembered when only little kids rode bikes and they were usually on sidewalks. Third incident was yesterday as we were driving on Milwaukee heading East just past Fair Oaks. We approached a bike heading the same direction and I commented on how it was taking up a lot of the road. Now given our interaction of the other day I did not want to be hypocritical and so waited until it was safe to pass giving him three feet. Now in order to do this I had to cross a double yellow line. After I passed he yelled at us that we should not have crossed a double yellow line. Again to my understanding the law now says that in order to give a cyclist three feet clearance you can cross a double yellow line, is that correct? I wanted to stop and talk to this man to understand what he thought I should do in that situation and explain my understanding of the law. Without crossing the line I feel there would be now way I could give him the proper clearance with the amount of road he was occupying. The take home of this long diatribe is that we have a long way to go to educate and breed better relationships between people in cars and on bikes. I always try to be respectful when I am in either situation but these past two days I felt that I could not win as no matter what I did and no matter what from of transportation I took I was getting accused of doing it wrong. Thanks for reading. _Michael
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