Bike Pittsburgh

Bike rage

Interesting article

RE: Bike rage

guilty

RE: Bike rage

that was a good article. i often think about how i should be blaming the roads, not the drivers. it's hard to get over that, especially cause most of the time it's due to impatience.

i often think of how to portray that to drivers as well. blame the roads, not us.

why are we an obstruction, but not all of the private vehicles parking for free on a public thruway or public real estate?

RE: Bike rage

Nice article, and nice post, Erok.

I think the point to really underscore is that it's not drivers, or cyclists, but just people who have anger or rage issues--your choice of transportation is ancillary.

I used to be pretty angry on the bike, but I've mellowed a lot recently, and it takes a very serious close call to raise my ire these days, and my days are better for it, I think.

RE: Bike rage

I've found it interesting that my attitude on the bike seems to affect the drivers around me. I've also mellowed way out over the years and rarely get into confrontations with drivers, in fact rarely get honked at or yelled at or have things thrown at me.

I still have old people pass to closely and pull out in front of me weekly, but after awhile you kinda see these things coming.

What's the phrase? Be the change you want to see? Cheesy but it seems to apply. My wife attributes my lack of problems with drivers to the obvious utilitarian aspect of my daily commute. I've got some stuff and I'm going somewhere and I'm not out to bother you, cool?

We finally took a family ride to the grocery this weekend, kids in the trailer behind me, wife behind on her bike keeping and eye on the kids and traffic behind us. We found a pretty mellow route, bit busy on Highland Ave, but the trailer had an obvious affect on drivers. People waved us on through stop signs, gave us plenty of room, generally acted civilized. Even got a random "FAMILY FUN TIME, WOOHOO!!" yelled to us from a passing pickup. Really all in all much better than we expected, and we hope to make it a weekly thing, although a 4 year old a 2 year old and four bags of groceries don't make for a fast nor terribly fun ride home. I think some seats for the kids are in the Xtracycle's future.

RE: Bike rage

yeah, this article resonated with me because i found myself getting pretty ragey a few years ago and found that as often as anything it was just because I was getting into this 'rush to get there' or 'entitled to speed' mindset. And I find the more I'm in that state of mind, the more trouble I find. I find that if I don't rush, run red lights, pass on the right at intersections and really think about how motorists will see me, I much less frequently have rage radiating towards or away from me...

The other thing is that I have to remember to forget (or at least shift my perspective on) rationality, as that goes out the window when people are stressed/rushed/feel entitled. So while I know that pulling around traffic at a light will not slow the traffic, I also know that it'll likely agitate some driver and potentially cause problems down the road.

And I think it's great that the article emphasized channeling what can become rage into something positive and helpful to all people (versus stabbing someone in the neck with a screwdriver (!!!) )

RE: Bike rage

The only time I seem to get angry is when I come across broken glass on both streets and sidewalks when there is a trash can usually within 10 feet.

As for drivers the only time I get angry with them is when I know they see me and act as if they don't and turn or cut me off anyways. It seems like peopele in this city are starting to realize that there are more bikers on the roads but just don't care.

RE: Bike rage

i got bike rage. grrr.

RE: Bike rage

Makes me think of an incident that happened to me a couple months ago. The bike was on a bus rack. Where I signalled to get off, there were some cars already stopped at a red light. I did not notice just how close the bus had pulled to the car ahead, and so bumped my front tire against the back of some guy's SUV as I unloaded the bike and put the rack back up. The bike was off the ground in my left arm and I was standing still, so the amount of force was probably similar to hitting it with my elbow. I didn't even disturb dirt, let alone leave a mark.

Anyway, the guy pulls into a parking lot and starts chewing me out, looking for what he must have thought was a deep gash. I kept my cool, offered an apology, and upon his refusal, I just looked at him for a second, didn't say a word, but just rode away. He didn't pursue.

So, yeah, I should've been more careful, but face to face like that, if I hadn't kept my cool, that could've been really nasty.

RE: Bike rage

i just got back from a ride, and i was stopped at a light by myself (then one car came up on my right, and was turning right), and a fella in a pickup truck turned past me from the left and said something like "share the road, eh?" i have no idea what he meant by it, but he didn't say it in a manner that indicated he was happy to have to share the road, or that he didn't feel like i was. anyway, i didn't say anything back, and that was it.

i'm not much of a rager. when someone feels slighted by me (such as when i take up an entire lane on a four lane road) and yells something, i usually just smile and wave. i don't look for confrontations, and so i rarely get them.

one thing very nearly made me angry today, though. i was coming down troy hill road toward chestnut. pretty steep downhill, and i was going at a pretty good clip. a car pulled very slowly out in front of me (i'm thinking, ok, it'll speed up quickly and i'll be able to slow down a little and this will be cool), but then it turned into a parking lot immediately after the turn. it was a pretty dangerous move and i barely managed to avoid flipping over the thing. i want to think "why didn't you just wait until i got past?" but i already know the answer. the driver either didn't see me or didn't think i could possibly be going fast enough to be a bother, since i was on a bike. these are the kind of people i want to sit down with and say "listen, this is how you drive on a road where there are bikes." it's not that hard, but people just don't know.

RE: Bike rage

I think you've made a very good point -- a lot of people simply don't know what it's like to be the person on the bike. I tend to assume that drivers who appear to be giving me a hard time are all boneheaded jerks. Plenty of them are, but plenty of others may be unaware.

This point was driven home to me last week in an email exchange with one of my oldest, dearest friends. I sent her a link to an article I wrote for Urban Velo. She wrote back that she hadn't been on a bike in 10, perhaps 20 years. Neither of her two sons (ages 5 & 2) has ever been on a bike. She's not evil or anti-bike. The idea just doesn't dawn on her.

RE: Bike rage

you know, i was looking for a god place to put this, so here it is- anti-bike rage.

i was driving out to my volunteer EMT gig in fox chapel, which requires me to go straight down center to penn circle, negley run blvd etc.

on center about 2 blocks before the whole foods, this "middle aged" heavier (muscular) ish guy on a hybrid commuter (dark green, rear rack, straight bars) comes past all the slow moving cars riding right down the double yellow. Not SO bad. he then gets in to the lane, occupying the lane even though there's ample room for him to keep right (while i don't really want to get into the keep right or not debate, he was going about 10-15 mph ans there was ample room for him to move over to safely allow cars to pass). the driver in front of me isn't trying to wait so she passes him on the right, drawing a yel and a middle finger from him. at this point i'm on his side, and leave him a wide berth as i don't care much about being slowed down for a few blocks. what really irritated me is what comes next- when our lanes of traffic slowed, he cut across the yellow lines and began riding against the flow of traffic, in the middle (fast) lane by whole foods. Not only did he do this, but he actually forced a black pickup truck to change lanes so as to not hit him head on. then when we get to the light, he passes the SUV that had passed him on the right (using the wrong side of the road of course), knocks on the window and gives her the finger again, then without slowing, cuts in front of an oncoming car to turn left onto the sidewalk, almost hitting a woman and a kid.


i mean come on, if you're riding a bike like an idiot, you have no right to get mad at someone who "illegally" passes you, even though in my opinion it was safe (it was that grey area of center where it's wide enough to be 2 lanes but there's no lines, right before whole foods, where it's marked as 2 lanes just after the intersection)

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I'm guessing that dude was drunk. Sounds like it at least.

As Brad Q once said to me, "There are a lot of idiots in the world. Some of them ride bikes."

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we gotta start publishing brad's comments into a bathroom book or something. or maybe bike pgh fortune cookies. i'd love to open up a cookie and see
"There are a lot of idiots in the world. Some of them ride bikes. You're lucky numbers are: 4, 12, 37, 49"

RE: Bike rage

The only drivers I get angry at are the ones who do something aggressive and dangerous in order to get in front of me, when traffic is only moving at about 10mph anyway. And the ones who think they have to scream "share the road!!!" at me (god I hate those signs) or honk. I have been building up a little model of the drivers most likely to honk or yell, by race, gender, age and vehicle type. I might be skewing the results in my own observations, but there seems to be a pattern. I won't say what I think the pattern is on the off chance that maybe I'm a sexist, racist, classist, jerk, I'm just wondering if anyone else thinks there's a pattern.

I might have honked at a cyclist for the first time recently. I was turning left from Black St northbound onto Negley and a young woman on a bicycle came flying up Negley, ran the red light and I could easily have hit her. Negley just isn't wide enough there for moving autos, bicyles, and parked cars all together. I say "might have" because I tried to honk but couldn't find the horn button so if I honked at all it was more of a bleat. Guess maybe if I used it more often I'd know where it is. Any suggestions for a good place to go practice?

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The pattern I've noticed... Black SUVs. They're the worst.

RE: Bike rage

I have seen seriously stupid stuff done by drivers, and I have seen seriously stupid stuff done by bike riders. ... and I have seen both get angry when it was their own faults.

Drivers believe the road is theirs because they are big and fast and only should have to pay attention for other big and fast things (other cars) and that they shouldn't have to be bothered with looking out for bikers (or pedestrians). These people are idiots!

Riders (some) have a "Blade" complex where they believe they have all the drivers strengths, and none of their weaknesses. They believe they are allowed to to everything a car can, AND also everything a car can't (blow stop signs, wrong way on 1-ways, change lanes/turn without looking/signaling). These people are idiots!

There are good people on both "sides" and there are idiots on both "sides".

RE: Bike rage

erok: lol at the fortune cookie comment. :]

okay so i couldn't resist:

:)

RE: Bike rage

haha!!