Spat at, abused and run off the road: why do some people hate cyclists so much?
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
We have a heavily-trafficked, 2-lane (1 each direction), hilly, winding road that runs along the river and is part of the Ohio River Scenic Byway. This is an old road that doesn't even have a place for cars to pull over: you would be in someone's yard or on a recently-installed sidewalk if you did that.
Widening this road would be a major undertaking because of all the houses and businesses involved. So rather than do that and add a real bike lane with barriers, our wise city officials put a big bicycle emblem in the middle of each lane to make cars and bicycles equal on this road. This is called the Ohio River Scenic Byway because you are supposed to be looking at the scenery. Doesn't seem like a good idea to be looking at scenery when there are bikers in your lane.
In another city with similarly narrow roads, the city decided they would just paint a bike line on the road. These roads were barely wide enough for modern SUVs. In some places where the road narrows even further, the bike lane just "disappears", then starts back up a block or 2 later when the road widens a bit.
While I don't hate cyclists, I do hate that cities are making stupid and unsafe traffic changes so they can say they have a bicycle-friendly city. Nothing could be further from the truth. When there is a bad-enough accident where people are killed, THEN the road will be widened and all that.
> Results suggest that not only are sharrows not as safe as bike lanes, but they could be more dangerous than doing nothing at all.
Before I get pounced on, not saying those reasons justify the level of vitriol or the actions of unhinged drivers or pedestrians.
Asking why the level of outrage towards cyclists is so disproportionate to the offenses committed by some cyclists is a good question, asking 'why would anyone ever be mad at bicyclists?' is not.
I once had a colleague (an avid cyclist) rage, without a hint of irony, how "his" special built bike paths in and around our rural area were suddenly allowing inline skaters to partake.
I see maybe one car a week run a red light in my Brooklyn neighborhood, versus hundreds of bicycle riders. It’s been over a decade since I saw a car driving the wrong way down a one way street, versus a dozen bicycles per day. I’ve never seen a car drive on the sidewalk, but I see a few dozen bicycle riders per day drive on the sidewalk.
And yet the bicycle activists in nyc are shouting for the police to crack down on cars, when bicycles are committing easily 100x more moving violations per mile driven.
If you've ever driven with manual drivers you'll see that they tend to creep at stops or run reds more frequently than automatic drivers because of the added difficulty of shifting into gear from a stop. It's all just based on vehicle design incentives.
There is car energy expended. A running car needs a lot more energy than a bycicle to brake. That's why the impact between a car and a bycicle puts the bycicle in disadvantage.
It's also worth noting that drivers tend to be less alert than bikers. Distracted drivers (e.g. drivers on their phone) are a major cause of vehicles running stops signs/lights. When bikers run stop signs/lights, they are generally very aware since their lives depend on them being aware -- they are acting with intention.
In any case, for these reasons and others, there are states that actually observe what is called an Idaho Stop for bikers which allows them to roll through stops signs and lights if it is safe to do so.
Look, if you're biking down the same road I'm driving on, all I want from you is for you to follow the rules, be visible, and be predictable. That includes stopping when you're legally required to stop, signalling when you intend to turn, using a headlight if it's dark, riding in the right direction, and either pulling all the way the fuck over and walking your bike through the intersection or using the left turn lane if you want to turn left (not riding your bike through the crosswalk). Do these things, and we don't have a problem. I'm more than happy to give at least 3 feet of space when passing (I try to give more and will switch lanes if it's practical to do so), and to generally give due consideration to the fact that you and your vehicle together weigh ~200 lbs, while my vehicle alone is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15x that, and I can go way faster than you.
For some reason, this appears to be controversial on the internets. I've written more or less the same thing on Reddit and gotten tons of downvotes for it. I attribute it to the "smugness" the article mentioned. And, I'm not going to go running people over or anything, but you should definitely remember that in California, people generally don't even get prosecuted for killing cyclists unless they're either impaired or leave the scene.
Govern yourself accordingly.
On the other hand, I see cars run red lights on a daily basis in my city. I've almost been t-boned twice on my bike from cars doing that.
As a (law abiding) life-long bicycle user I don't think this is it. You can ride your bike 110% conform with the law and still get a to of shitty situation thrown your way.
The truth is: there are many motorists who think bicycles are toys that don't belong on streets. Cyclists, for them are idiots who slow everything down and block a road that they are not entitled to use. They are in the right because they are bigger, faster and they will let you feel it regardless of how you ride your bike.
I ride a bicycle, but cycling is not my identity. I am a guy on a bike not a "cyclist". In fact I was a professional (car-)driver before. What I observe is that car culture plays a huge role in all of this. Motorists will have aggressions against trucks or agricultural vehicles. But those are heavy and sturdy. Bicycles are easy to scare off the street. And the cliché asshole driver in that BMW will do just that whenever there is a slight annoyance regardless of the law.
That being said many cyclists certainly would profit from learning how to behave in traffic in a predictable way, for sure. But I drive very predictably (and fast) and still have the same things happen to me.
This is unfortunately true. May be the same people that believe that normal cars don't belong on the streets, only sport cars.
I think some minimum bar should be introduced for cycling on actual roads with cars. Make it an online test, with a certificate. Then police the worst cycling offences.
It's like looking after bumbling toddlers. You shouldn't hit them just because they are annoying but they still are annoying.
It wasn't always like this. A decade ago, bicyclists in my town were actually very good. Then the cops stopped writing tickets to cyclists who broke traffic laws, and things went downhill fast.
I wish they'd start writing tickets again.
I also drive, and I understand the anger from drivers. But abusing the cyclists does literally nothing to improve the situation. Making a big stink about citing cyclists might.
Many cyclists want it both ways: to be a car when it’s convenient (ride in middle of road) and be a bicycle when it’s convenient (run red lights).
I have no problem with cyclists, I just think roads should be engineered with them in mind where applicable, self governance isn’t working well.
There's a fair bit of anxiety running the mental calculation of how much margin is between my left side and oncoming traffic, and my right side and those handlebars, at 60mph. Is this the day I die in a head-on collision because this asshole can't be bothered to utilize the other SIX FEET of the shoulder?
Otherwise I don't mind them at all. It's just the entitled attitude of "I'm going to endanger us both by riding as close to you as possible, and if you clip me, it's your fault, because the law is on my side".
The shoulder is typically 6-7 feet wide. It's paved just as well as the rest of the road (better, in fact, as it tends to be worn down less). There is absolutely NO reason for cyclists to ride on its edge rather than its center, other than ego and entitlement.
A bicyclist’s life is not always worth much. It is common in NYC for a bicyclist to be killed by an SUV or truck, it happens on average every other week. It is just as common for the driver to walk away without so much as a ticket, because the bicyclist will have been found to have violated a minor traffic regulation, nullifying the driver’s culpability. A sad state of affairs that leaves bicycling for only the daredevils in most American cities.
"These are MY roads. How dare a cyclist force me to slow down for 10 seconds? I'm IMPORTANT! Don't you understand how valuable my time is, and how critical it is that I arrive at my destination without delay? Roads for me, but not for thee."
They act with the urgency of an ER doctor en route to saving lives. While going grocery shopping.
I suspect that people who hate cyclists may also hate other groups of people who are not like them, and may be politically aligned with a party that fosters and embraces fear-based tribalism. Just speculation, probably wrong...
I definitely see many cyclists who behave badly and who think that both road and pavement belong to them while the law does not apply to them... especially as a pedestrian (perhaps there's an aspect of relative 'power' at play).
But an important point, I think, is that the cycling infrastructure in the UK is wholly inadequate, which certainly does not help cordial relations.
> is that the cycling infrastructure in the UK is wholy inadequate
I recently had a cyclist clumsily drift into the outside lane of a 40mph carriageway at around 10mph with one hand on the handlebar. A few metres to the side of the carriageway? An incredible stretch of smooth, fast, dedicated cycle path, separated from the road by a wide grass verge.
While he's one of the worst examples I've seen in a while, and not representative of all cyclists, he's proof that even the best infrastructure in the world won't stop some people acting like they own the roads and putting themselves in harm's way in the process.
- Perhaps the cycle way had issues that made it un-navigable. Maybe it got tacked, had a load of glass, perhaps it was not smooth. You don't really know how bad some off-road areas are until you are 2 feet away (then you notice, oh yeah, this is rooted to crap, or there are other issues).
- Maybe the cyclist needed to make a turn that was coming up?
- Maybe the cyclist had joined the road way not long ago and was going to hop over
- Maybe the road way was just safe enough rather than go on a path that significantly reduces speed of travel. A 20% reduction in speed, every day, two ways, over distance - adds up. It's not quite enough for something to be "safe", needs to be functional as well. If you make a commute be an hour when it could be 20 minutes instead, that infrastructure is not "perfect" (that is a real example, some infrastructure I've seen wants you to ride on super crowded side-walks where you can do at best 3mph for 2 miles. On the road that goes by in about 5 minutes, can sustain 25mph on it and 2 miles is done in no time; and this is just one two mile stretch of a 6 mile distance).
> he's proof that even the best infrastructure
It turns out what looks like "the best infrastructure", is really often a sad joke when you try to ride in it. Protected lanes sound nice, but turning left (in the US) out of one is a nightmare and is super dangerous because nobody can see you or is expecting for you to cross lanes.
This again goes back to perspective. Those protected lanes might seem lovely, but in practice can be totally useless. The far edge of the road might look ideal, but if you look at it you'll see it's uneven, full of debris, has grates, and places where the road crumbles away and is not even there. You won't notice these at all traveling faster than 20mph (let alone at 50mph) and from 20 feet away.
It's super common, people wonder why cyclists sometimes aren't fully riding at the edge of a bike lane, near parked cars.. etc. I've had drivers yell at me to get on a path before when they didn't know there was a very valid and very transitory reason to not being in it.
Part of the bottom line is that we assume too much and can insist that we tell others what to do. Meanwhile, we just don't have the perspective to know the reasons and are actually just wrong.
> It's one of the best I've seen, and part of a great network around my city. The road he chose to use instead is one of the busiest routes into the city centre
It does sound like a logical place to ride. Still questions arise. Some paths I've found are great when you are going 10-15mph, but are unusable for 20-25mph travel. Was it at all a busy cycle path, or was it crowded with dog walkers, kids and other cyclists? I clearly do not have the context to know (I'm picturing a clear sunny day, a perfectly open path next to an open field, but I suspect this is a horribly wrong picture).
Without ranting too much further, the point I make is that there are so many unobvious reasons that you can't really know. Meanwhile, we often think we do, so we yell "hey, get on that path where you belong!"
And you're right that there's a social kindness in empathizing with those people rather than loathing them. But that doesn't change that the behavior is reckless and elective, that there's value in calling it out as such.
One's not in the right just because they feel justified.
I was driving to take a right turn into Mathilda Ave, Sunnyvale at its widest point from a small inner 25 mph road. Naturally, I came to a stop before the six lane right turn. And then checked left for incoming traffic.
I saw a cyclist about 20 yards away on the left staring daggers at me and throwing up his arms in anger! Not exactly sure what he was angry about, as my car was stopped well outside Mathilda ave.
However, definitely better than being chased by a car for a whole minute because I merged from one freeway to another at the speed limit, so the person who was driving at twice the speed limit in the merge lane had to slow down.
It is and it isn't. There is something particularly ugly that happens when you put a person in a car. A driver, when walking down the sidewalk, would never spit on a slower walker in front of them.
Cars (the actual physical things, the technology) amplify harmless human traits into fullblown sociopathy. Being distracted, impatient, inattentive, a slight sense of grandiosity ... in a car, these, sometimes even endearing, human failings become murderous, violent, degrading.
The anger drivers express towards cyclists is not innate, it is not a kind of anger that finds expression elsewhere. That anger is specifically the result of _driving in an enclosed metal battering ram_. That kind of sociopathy only arises _in a car_.
The real ugly part here is the car itself. Cars are dehumanizing technology because they create an incredible power imbalance. Once that power is frustrated, because of a cyclist for example, the driver will lash out. When men are reminded of their impotence, they turn rageful. Thousands of years of literature and history are evidence. It takes a complete paradigm shift, a whole new set of community values, to counterbalance this. America (and apparently UK) has not been building these. Other countries have. It will take decades.
I've also noticed this anecdotally in my own experience across the USA. Is it really just the pandemic fraying social norms and mental health? I haven't heard any convincing explanations of why this is happening, but it seems like I'm not the only person who feels this way. It could, of course, just be confirmation bias on my part. What do others think?
And I say this because no matter the era people always say the same thing.
From 2004: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=gO0fAAAAIBAJ&sjid=n9kE...
Nearly hitting someone is still a shock, even if it's less of one. People don't respond rationally to stress, so you're not going to get someone shouting "you stressed me out there for a second, but I took a deep breath and got over it, no harm done" out of a window. But pretty much anything that stresses people will lead to angry outbursts which at that point will not be logically connected to the trigger.
A huge amount of this world is intensely short on scope, who dont really get beyond their first level emotional reactions. Very very very small & short OODA loop that they are mostly along for the ride on, hardly really deciding in.
Cycylists are unexpected. They- rightfully- have their own different circumstances they travel by. People already barely handle the very basic situation of driving at all, are already trapped in their aperceptiveness, trapped uncomprehending the potential limits of observability about them. Theur willingness to ease off, relax, allow some floe around them from fadter moving better/less encumbered forms of transit is low.
I'll stick to gravel and mountain biking, where at least my risks are set by me.
Australians have a "Darwinian" style to road usage. the bigger, louder faster or more agressive you are on the roads the more rights you have.
I really enjoy disabusing people of this notion.
Cyclists should be held to the same standard of traffic laws as vehicles are - full stop. Too many times I see cyclists:
- Flying up on the right of a car when there's less than reasonable amount of room to squeeze between the car and the curbing.
- Deciding to "run" red lights and choosing between the roadways or the sidewalks when it's more convenient for them.
- Not wearing a helmet (subject to location but some places it's the law)
- Not stopping at 4-way stops, not signaling their intent to turn/stop.
- Multitudes of other illegalities/dangerous activity on the roadway.
Bikes do not belong on roads. Like it or not society has decided that to get around in first-world countries (america centric here), you use a vehicle. It'll be a slow process to move towards bike-friendly traffic and more central walk-around locations to slowly wean us off using vehicles for everything. I'm not sure having cyclists weaving in and out of traffic made up of multi-ton death machines is a good idea either - I guess "rider beware" applies.
The best thing would be to make sure any bikes and their riders that are on public roadways are licensed and train current law enforcement to fine/arrest any unsafe cycling habits. (we do this with cars and trucks already, why are cyclists seemingly exempt?)
I don't have too much knowledge about current cyclist laws since I don't ride a bike and mainly drive, but I welcome more local traffic like bikes/walkers and less vehicles in urban centers.
> I don't have too much knowledge about current cyclist laws
Cyclists mostly put themselves in danger. Drivers mostly put others in danger. That's why traffic laws should be, and are, more enforced for drivers vs cyclists or pedestrians. There is plenty of historical precedent for cyclist laws and behavior -- including encouraging 'running' red lights and not stopping at 4-way stops -- if you look into it.
Police know they can't get large fines out of people who ride bicycles - unfortunately it seems a lot of cyclists might not be able to afford a riders license, or registration for their bike - maybe that's why enforcement is so low? I don't know all the factors and everywhere in the world is different with their laws and enforcement avenues.
There is some kind of shadow campaign across Reddit right now ... r/fuckcars that threatens the very meaning of the right to own personal property in the world. It has also become kind of a brigade that lobbies and protests in many other online and real world places too, without any clear message or leadership.
I may be wrong, but it seems like a lobby run by people who want bicycles and public transportation to be the norm for everyone worldwide. The logic seems highly unreasonable in a capitalist society at least, and as infectious disease threatens us all that these solutions could ever be imposed on a free society of people.
That also being said, pedestrian, public transport, and bicyclist infrastructure is also majorly funded in part by car-related taxes, to which there is no alternate source of funding if cars completely go away, meaning that biking, public transport, and walking would all see new taxes... Just imagine having to pay a daily toll just to walk across every single bridge you use, and then another toll to be able to walk or bike through a residential neighborhood.
It's very mysterious what the end game is for the r/fuckcars subreddit lobby, is it to sell bicycles? Or run by government employees that ride bicycles to work? I took some time to look into a few posters and found many of them spoke about the cars they own in other subreddits, so it's all very confusing to someone like me.
Tons of money is being wasted on alternate bike, pedestrian, and public transport infrastructure that just doesn't work to improve safety and harmony on roads by cities every year, there needs to be some sort of accountability for whoever is driving those decisions.
That being said, it's also quite hard to cart a newborn along with your grandparents to the hospital or to evacuate a city during crisis in snow, rain, tornadoes, and freezing cold weather on a Schwinn...
I think we all need a better dose of reduced sensationalism and more rational thought in this world when it comes to public safety and transportation, without veiled political agendas pushed online for profit.
Reddit is incredibly hateful not just "in the deep" but on the surface too. /r/FuckYouKaren/ which is basically a "I hate white women" sub is the prime example of that with 1.5m subscribers. Constantly being on the top of /r/all but it's all ok I guess. Wonder when it will go down.
This is unfortunately incorrect. Cars are heavily subsidized by income and property taxes. The cost to maintain and build roads far out-strip the taxes collected by gas and sales taxes for automobiles. Right now, the accounting is made to look like cars are funding these programs, however it is mostly sleight of hand.
Edit: Additional info https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/
I did not say that car related taxes were the only way that bike infrastructure was funded, I said it was the major source of funding for alternative transportation.
If you pick a city like New York or DC, maintaining public infrastructure without car-related revenue would be fiscally impossible. The Amsterdam model does not work in those cases. Amsterdam also has legalized and taxed drug and sex trade markets, which might explain how they closed their car-related funding gaps.
This doesn't seem right. 92.8% of New York's revenue comes from Sales and Income taxes.
https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_state_budget_and_finances#:....
Speaking from someone that once did a 20 mile, one way bike commute for a year (just a really notable example of a commute), it's quite something when for the third time on a commute you have someone in a car with no perspective literally almost kill you. Eventually you get a bit more aggressive with asserting road position and space in order not to have people try and squeeze around you and do other dumb and dangerous maneuvers. It's not just the internet for cyclists, just ride long enough and accumulate enough near misses on the same ride, it's difficult to stay cool.
Meanwhile, drivers do tend to get naturally a bit more aggro when they drive a lot (I notice this in myself). It's hard to stay super patient every day, when spending an hour or more in a car. At that point shaving 10 minutes one way is worth a lot, it adds up. To me, that speaks to unsustainability more than anything else.
> There is some kind of shadow campaign across Reddit right now ... r/fuckcars that threatens the very meaning of the right to own personal property in the world.
This is an interesting commentary. Car ownership extends so far beyond just you owning your car. The majority of city space is dedicated to car owners. On-street parking, the streets themselves, the vast parking garages. So, it's not just "your personal property", but the whole structure that revolves and around that. If there were no petrol stations, no roads for cars, you could still own your private property all you wish. That is all just to say is the societal accomodation for cars is actually quite extreme.
> It has also become kind of a brigade that lobbies and protests in many other online and real world places too, without any clear message or leadership.
Yeah, it's reddit; and /fuckcars is about memes and is not about advocacy.
> I may be wrong, but it seems like a lobby run by people who want bicycles and public transportation to be the norm for everyone worldwide.
I think you are right. Why, because our current state of car travel is not sustainable. We can't make all cars be EV, and we got to this place by building infrastructure assuming that everyone would drive 10 miles (no big deal). There are many towns where zoning as pictured in the opening of Bobs Burgers is illegal. This goes back to the 40s, where the US decided to build its cities around cars and highways. Europe did the same and their cities looked really similar. Europe decided to diverge in about the 70s or so when they saw a lot of car fatalities piling up; the US has stayed the course and is still building car-centric everything.
> The logic seems highly unreasonable in a capitalist society at least, and as infectious disease threatens us all that these solutions could ever be imposed on a free society of people.
This again is a car-centric view where public transit is there for the poor, not for general travel. In Japan and many places in Europe, the trains are excellent and are the way to travel. Now, you can't take a car on a train, so if there were no way to travel when you get off that train, then it wouldn't be a good way to travel.
I mention the above to note the hole in the logic. If mass, mass public transit were unreasonable in capitalist socieities, why is it so reasonable in so many other capitalist societies? (Just not in the US and several other select societies)?
> That also being said, pedestrian, public transport, and bicyclist infrastructure is also majorly funded in part by car-related taxes,
This is a common trope. Cars _do_ _not_ pay for themselves in the US. Federal slush funds & property taxes make up the large gap. Furhter, the cost of bicycle infrastructure is cheap, yet still often not funded to its proportionate due. Cyclists wind up subsidizing car drivers (if not, I'd love my property taxes back since a lot of those go to roads which I put zero wear on and do not otherwise use; and yes, those property taxes go far more into car related infrastructure than it does bike infrastructure; most bike infrastructure budgets are 0.2% of the car infrastructure budget even when the faction of cyclists far exceeds 0.2%)
> to which there is no alternate source of funding if cars completely go away, meaning that biking, public transport, and walking would all see new taxes...
So, this is therefore wrong since cars are being subsidized and do not pay for themselves.
> I think we all need a better dose of reduced sensationalism and more rational thought in this world when it comes to public safety and transportation, without veiled political agendas pushed online for profit.
I appreciate the even tone, but the points not responded to are dispersions or straw-arguments. Ever try to evacuate a city by car during a hurricane? How many cars run out of gas? Why did people fleeing wildfires have to abandon their car.. I say this to denote how invalid some of the other points are.
There are lots of people who are not able to ride a bike or walk to work, or even a hospital even though we as individuals may be... Many people don't have the vision, equilibrium, attention span, or stamina it takes to ride a bicycle. I am able now, but one day I will also be unable to ride a bicycle myself, and so will you be. God help us if Uber is a monopoly my then, a simple ride will be astronomical in cost.
You don't account for bad weather and just the shear process of making people surrender their right to owning a car just simply won't fly in many cities realistically unless you are suggesting a strange oppressive government control on individuals, which in itself is a slippery slope.
During the initial stages of the pandemic, public transportation was almost completely abandoned, it is still operating at an annual loss world-wide, and being subsidized heavily to stay afloat, just as it was prior to the pandemic. That is indicative of the kind of total chaos that can come if that kind of illogical moral control takes hold of our rights into the future. If riding a bicycle on major roads is not safe, one has the ability to make an individual decision to chose a better form of (safer) transport, than just complaining to restrict everyone else...
At the same time, cities should make dedicated bike and pedestrian infrastructure, without a wild assortment of scattered efforts n every road, and not wasting tons of money just to placate angry online mobs that want their individual perspectives catered to -- That's what is rational.
Some of the most vocal dictators on how all humans should live suffer severely from the inability to consider factors outside of their own experience, and it's a fatal flaw that often gets imposed on everyone else.
There's your answer, or at least for some substantial portion of people posting in r/fuckcars and others like r/latestagecapitalism, r/antiwork, etc - they aren't thinking in the framework of a capitalist society (merits of this aside).
> without veiled political agendas pushed online for profit.
Pretty funny to think that socialist agendas are being pushed for profit. Undoubtedly true in some cases, but I'd like to think some people aren't driven solely by profit, even if it's only people who don't have to think about things like paying for food and shelter.
From what I can see the agenda is for profit in some way because nothing on this scale is ever promoted without profit being involved. Ride sharing companies, and plenty of technology companies stand to make a lot of money if the right to personal ownership of vehicles disappears... It's not a stretch of the imagination, these days.. Almost all online campaigns and brigades can be traced back to some sort of profit scheme or organized political power move.
Spat at, abused, and run off the road: why do some people hate
cyclists
gay people
black people
trans people
poor people
secular humanists
immigrants
jews
...
Why do some people have so much hate for people who aren't causing them any harm and are just trying to exist in the world?
> "People can behave aggressively towards cyclists because they see them as dehumanised"
Yeah, if that isn't the problem right there in a nutshell I don't know what is.
And holy smokes, just like for all the other groups, the proposed solution is for victim to dress differently so they don't stand out. What about a movement to eradicate the cult of dehumanization? Where's that program?
I routinely take walks on a "multi use" path. It's intended for walkers, joggers, roller bladers, skate boarders, and yeah cyclists. The cyclists are the only ones who yell at people they pass. It's a park, no cars in sight. And these Lance Armstrong wannabes wearing their logo covered shirts (as though they're sponsored) can't stand to be inconvenienced so they bark at everyone else. God forbid they should have to slow down and re-accelerate to avoid hitting someone who is walking, so they pretend that it's the walkers who are dangerous. Entitled fuckers.
I've been yelled at and threatened by cyclist more times than I can count. I'm tempted to carry bear spray with me because these aggressive jerks frighten me. So yeah, fear breeds hatred, and I hate them.
I have zero sympathy for cyclists on the roads, because I know how they act on the sidewalks in the parks. This isn't new, and I've seen this in multiple cities in different parts of the country where I've lived.
The best part about this is that when these jerks are on the roads, they have no problem inconveniencing drivers in the exact same way that they complain about happening to them on the sidewalks.
Compare this with the recent cyclist who threatened to kick my ass because I wasn't paying attention to him come up behind me. I was on the right side of a sidewalk.