On Thursday, 18 April 2013 at 18:45:56 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Thu, Apr 18, 2013 at 10:50:55AM -0700, Walter Bright wrote:
On 4/18/2013 10:42 AM, Iain Buclaw wrote:
>I certainly don't mind winding and narrow. Cycling isn't
>inherently
>dangerous, but the two main things that don't help are - lack
>of
>cycle paths; careless or inconsiderate drivers.
When you have cars brushing by your elbow at 40 mph, well, I
thought
that was very dangerous. When going around curves, cars
routinely
cut into the inside shoulder. They'll do it on blind corners,
too.
I'm actually surprised that a lot more bikers aren't killed
around
here, although many are. I walk a lot, and many times I've had
to
step lively off of the road.
Speaking of careless drivers... not long ago up here in
Canuckland (a
few hours' drive from Seattle, incidentally), I almost got run
over by a
car *while crossing a crosswalk with flashing lights*. There
was another
vehicle which had come to a stop in the outer lane, which may
have
obscured me, but the car in the inner lane obviously didn't see
me and
didn't notice the big flashing lights above the crosswalk (and
didn't
consider why the vehicle on her right had stopped at a
crosswalk with
big flashing lights above).
Fortunately I was keeping an eye on it (I wasn't sure if it was
slowing
down so I hesitated). The driver screamed (oh yeah did she
scream -- I
could hear it through her closed windows) and slammed the
brakes when
she saw me, but couldn't stop in time; I stepped back just in
time as
she passed in front of me about 1-2 feet at the most.
Since then, I no longer assume that red lights, pedestrian walk
signs,
or crosswalk flashing lights mean anything to drivers. You
might pay for
that assumption with your life. *shudder*
T
In quite a bit of mainland europe, red lights only apply to
straight on traffic and not to people turning. The number of
times I almost got killed by cars turning into me in a single
week in Rome was ridiculous!
