I'm a slightly larger than average man - imagine how much of a nut job people would see me as if I did that all that because a little old lady was slowing me down in a narrow supermarket aisle.
But somehow this behaviour is acceptable from inside a giant vehicle.
It's also not an "I'm being slowed down" issue - roads here all single lane and often used by farm tractors, I've never heard a single person go into a rage fantasy about that.
On the other hand, if I were in a grocery store and I found the aisle I wanted blocked for 60 seconds by a middle-aged man wearing a spandex uniform who had decided to barricade the entire aisle while he does a calisthenics routine - I would get quite frustrated. Especially if I eventually got past him only to find another such person doing the same thing in the next aisle over. I feel this is more analogous to the situation I regularly encounter with bicyclists.
My frustration would be oriented around the thought "Can't you do this at home instead of selfishly inconveniencing everyone else?"
The cyclist is not.
I’d reconsider who is really “selfishly inconveniencing everyone else” in this scenario.
Also bicycles are vehicles, by any definition.
This isn’t true. I think it would shock many HN nerds just how much flight and driving many athletes do. Nobody is cycling 100-3000 miles to attend a tour or enduro event. That’s not even counting the emissions from our eight-cylinder 4WDs, trucks, SUVs, vans, RVs, etc.
If you see a road cyclist athlete, chances are high that the person travels around the state/country/world, and you aren’t seeing their sport- and lifestyle- related emissions. It’s like observing someone behind a desk and claiming, “Wow! You are so climate-friendly!” even though they drove to work.
You can try to restrict the subject to the minuscule echelon of car-opposed cyclists, who nobody in our cycling communities takes seriously, but it’s a misleading look at our actual cycling culture.
No athlete is going to forgo the conveniences of flight/driving and wear themselves out before a distant meetup or race. It’s not even logistically possible. Our vehicles also carry our supplies, tools, components, and backup bikes.
Nobody is going to bikepack up 13,000 feet of elevation for 12 hours, to begin a brutal 100-mile race through the mountain passes, when they can chill in an air-conditioned SUV instead.
Is cycling instead of driving better when you can? Yes, obviously. But it’s not a complete picture.
The smug superiority that comes from message board commuter cyclists is clueless. The disdain toward drivers is a self-blow. It is hypocritical naïveté.
It just makes the reputation of cyclists unjustifiably worse.
But it is no problem when drivers go out on the road purely for a fun and/or unnecessary drive.
UPDATE: My point is that many drivers go out for 'wasteful' reasons, such as recreation or e.g. because they forgot to combine trips. Such drivers cannot easily be spotted, so they don't attract ire. But they slow us down. Such situations lead to much more inconvenience when you add it up.
You can't bike for transit "at home".
You can't bike for enjoyment "at home".
And biking to exercise is a different form of exercise than riding an exercise bike. Raising resistance is not the same as going uphill. Maintaining your bike in balance and steering/controlling it is not the same as sitting on a static frame. Not to mention, the overall experience is completely different, and that can also matters for reasons related to quality of exercise.
Yes, but you aren't alone, and most people have their limits.
It is really interesting when/why people have feelings of entitlement. What about getting in a car should create the expectation that a drive will go smoothly? That one day a year when the all the green lights align and you arrive to your destination 5 minutes faster? (And then many of us proceed to fritter away that 'saved' 5 minutes on our internationally interconnected web of decentralized tubes running a bewildering array of unnecessary computation to fuel what companies put in front of our eyeballs.)
The real issue is the complete lack of infrastructure available.
And yes, many cyclists rock the spandex. And they should be, because no one wants an angry nether region.
The classic country lanes in the UK are 1.5 cars wide at most. Far too narrow to overtake a cyclist without their help and good visibility (which you typically do not have). I am trying to go from a village to a town to buy some groceries, and instead of doing a comfortable 40 up the hill, I'm doing 5. Because three cyclists are in the way and have no interest in allowing anyone to get past. These will not be the last set I encounter. Turns out the Saturday I have off to go food shopping etc is when all the cyclists like to go out and enjoy themselves.
Side note: Horses have a similar impact, but always ensure people are blocked for the minimal amount of time possible. Similar with walkers. Cyclists rarely do anything at all to allow people past in my experience.
Anyway, I don't get angry or aggressive. But it is frustrating especially when the cyclists using these roads are not local and act like the cars who have to use them to get around in their local area are the baddies.
Recumbent bikes are just so much better in every aspect, yet the market for them is so small that they often cost as much as a used car.
I'd rather zip around in a Milan(velomobile) than something that gives as much seating space as two palms of my hands put together.
Your problem seems to be entitlement, not impatience btw. You feel entitled to feel people should use the road your way. That realization might help you fixing the issue.
Of course, using the back roads often also means taking the "long road", albeit just by a couple of kilometers. I understand the urge to take the shortest route, but I think people should think of others on the road too.
On my eBike commute there are a lot of bike lanes which mount the curb and share space with pedestrians. At 15mph and 250lbs of loaded vehicle — me + the bike — I feel that it’s just too much risk for me to ride there so I ride on the road instead. It’s definitely the safer option for the pedestrians. This brings a lot of abuse on me but thankfully only in terms of shouting and honking. It’s certainly been an exercise in building patience.
Would cross town journey times really be that awful if we dropped everyone down to 15mph? I’m talking urban Europe. When you take traffic and stoplights into consideration, what’s the lowest maximum speed possible before the speed limit is the decisive factor in journey times?
No worries. I've been out on the roads for a couple of decades, and so these days it's not the occasional person who throws a hissy fit that concerns me. I'm a lot more wary of the motorists who aren't at all aware of what's happening right in front of them. This includes those who literally can't see me because the front of their vehicle is so high up that it completely obscures me from their vision as they turn across my lane.
E.g. https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/26/world/expensive-car-drive...
The most dangerous ones are those that pay an arm and leg to get a big car. Given a typical distribution of income an analysis will of course still find a correlation to price. Especially as not many people being able to buy a RR are taking part in such studies.
If I see a Skoda Octavia (especially white or grey-colored) in my rear-view mirror somewhere on a curvy road I know for sure that that person will try to surpass me no matter the incoming traffic and the visibility.
So I see it more like it a curve when it comes to the obnoxiousness of the drivers vs the price of the cars, those that have the cheapest and most expensive cars are relatively ok, those that are approaching the average price are so and so, with those that are just above that average being the most obnoxious.
Oh, and owners of new Mazda 3s, for some reason.
But yeah, Audi is a prestige brand, and the Ford Ranger (lifted, with expensive mags and tints) is the prestige brand for cashed up / ticked up tradies, and the VW Amarok is the prestige brand for that tradie's boss.
Beemer drivers used to have a bad reputation along similar lines, but since a large second-hand market established itself, the BMW isn't as prestigious here as it used to be.
No clue what's going on with those Mazda 3 owners though.
Around here, BMW is an ultimate wannabe brand, usually bought (very) used by some young guys, full of testosterone and not very smart. If there's a tragic accident where a car full of people steers off an empty road, hits a tree and kills everyone in it, during the middle of a weekend night, it's usually a BMW too (the scenario is usually such that a group of young people are coming back home from some disco and the owner, young, stupid and possibly drunk, is trying to impress them with his driving).
Hopefully the SH value of decent enough E46s going all the way up will price those people out of that market, so that they'll turn back to front-wheel rides that are not as easy to throw into a tree.
What I've noticed is that if I pass really wide, everyone behind me - actually everyone - passes just about as wide as I do.
One thing that does my nut in is cyclists not taking the lane when there's nowhere to pass. Just stay in the middle, stay consistent, don't try to let me past if you're not happy to move over. I can wait because I need a lot more room than you think, I can see much further up the road can you, and I'll decide when it's safe. Literally yesterday I was behind a cyclist who was waving me to pass on a quiet country road, but he couldn't see the other cyclist coming towards me just about 150m further up the road. If I'd gone because the guy in front of me was waving me past, I'd have splatted the other guy who he couldn't see.
I ride my bike the same way I drive - as slow as possible and as fast as necessary, right up the middle of my lane, and with really stupid fuel consumption.
I also agree that taking the lane is often the safer option for cyclist, however I also understand the motivation of cyclist trying to move to the right and getting the following car to move through. I also have one too many times being essentially tailgated (not really the right term for a bike), by a completely nutcase motorist who then overtakes very aggressively and purposefully close. Better to get them in front of you as fast as possible.
Imo the likelihood of an unhinged motorist killing you on purpose out of rage is vanishingly small compared to likelihood of one killing you without even noticing.
Motorists beeping at me is the joyous song of angels, they can see me!
I also can't know what you consider to be an 'unsafe pass' but these days I think cyclists and road rules seem to expect cyclists to need a totally impractical amount of extra room. I think a few feet is often comfortable, depending on context, when I'm cycling, but official guidance in the UK is 'a car width'. How then should cars pass people cycling side by side? Not at all? I personally think these rules have created a more toxic situation on UK roads. They need to be more practical if they want better conformance. They do also need to be policed. But I strongly advise members of the public to not try and enforce them themselves.
If a driver gets so annoyed at another road user that they'll honk at them or become agressive, then the driver is by this definiton trying to police the other's behaviour.
But really this should not be a battle between 'drivers' and 'cyclists'. Most people can be both, and certainly most cyclists are also at least occasionally drivers.
When a cyclist 'takes the lane' they are trying to signal to the drivers behind them that a narrow pass is unsafe, if they need to pass then they need to wait for a clear road from the opposite lane, just as if the cycle was a large slow motor vehicle. Except the cycle gives the passing driver excellent visibility and an easy pass.
Another reason can be if the cyclist has an upcoming left turn, they obviously need to position themselves towards the left of the lane (s/left/right/[UK,AUS,NZ,IN,etc]).
I don’t know what you’re expecting a cyclist to do when legally using a road ? cram themselves into the leftmost 50cm of carriageway so the truck can skim past through oncoming traffic, leaving no room for error ?
Your “strong advice” against cycling defensively, as the GP was describing, is harmful. Positioning yourself to allow maximum room for error and unforeseen circumstances is literally the first thing that you’re taught on any cycling proficiency course.
I don't know where you got this statistic from but it's not true where I live.
>Your “strong advice” against cycling defensively
I didn't advise that, I said don't try to enforce rules. I think you should "take the lane" sometimes.
These cycling proficiency courses that tell people to cycle in the middle for no reason sound harmful.
>I don’t know what you’re expect a cyclist to do when legally using a road ? cram themselves into the leftmost 50cm of carriageway so the truck can skim past through oncoming traffic, leaving no room for error ?
As I said, depends on context. This is safe depending on vehicles involved, road, speed, conditions. I'm going to cycle like this, you don't have to.
Exactly. The law allows a cyclist to “take the lane”, so many of us do. This isn’t “policing” other drivers, it’s simply following the rules of the road and staying safe.
But sometimes it's not necessary, then you're just blocking people unnecessarily. Which is not very sociable in my opinion, but I won't freak out and be aggressive/dangerous. But insane people will. And I don't get why someone would choose this confrontation when they can just share the road.
Context has nothing to do with it. Just obey the law and let cyclists ride the roads without someone in a metal box deciding what level risk they should be exposed to.
Just pass like you would a slow car, by using a different lane. I do it all the time, I promise you it won't make much if any difference to your arrival time.
Every car takes a lane, all the time.
Middle of the lane is a perfectly good spot to aim for.
Anyway, I am yet to see a cyclist in the middle of the lane without good reason here but I keep seeing a lot of entitled angry drivers.
There might be a reason people are angry, and it might be that some people are simply more likely to let you know.