fish@ihu1g.UUCP (Bob Fishell) (05/08/84)
I've put together a list of the top ten nuisances for bicyclists
coming from my own personal experience. Can anybody else comment
or come up with new ones?
1) Motor Vehicles:
a) Carloads of teenage punks -- invariably harass rider.
b) Trucks, especially when driven by ill-tempered rednecks.
c) Geriatric drivers -- slow down and follow you.
d) Drivers who *insist* on honking the horn, no matter
how much room they have.
2) Kids playing in the street.
3) Joggers with headset radios on the bike paths.
4) Glass and debris on the pavement.
5) Bugs sticking in clothes and hair.
6) Potholes and rough pavement.
7) Dogs.
8) Horses on the bike paths.
9) Road dirt in the chain.
10) Water on the pavement.
This is the top ten for me, in decreasing order of obnoxiousness.
Can anybody add? Change? I'd be interested in knowing if others
have about the same opinion as I do. I'm particularly interested
in my number 1 nuisance, 1a. Is this a universal phenomenon, or
local to this area? Or is it me?
I'm also interested in possible solutions. I built an extremely loud
horn which takes care of joggers and draws attention to my salute to
horn-honking motorists, and I try to keep my chain clean. Also, I
use tire savers, which seem to prevent most of the punctures you can
get from small particles of glass. However, These are only partial
solutions.
--
Bob Fishell
ihnp4!ihu1g!fishgrt@hocda.UUCP (G.TOMASEVICH) (05/08/84)
Bikepaths are pretty useless. Most around here are glass highways.
More, in no particular order:
11) Shoulders that vary from 3 ft of good pavement to nothing or potholes.
12) Sand left over from winter on right of road.
13) Vandalized street signs at intersections.
14) Motorists who ask for directions when you have no idea where you are.
15) Diesel-powered vehicles with low tailpipes (e.g. cars).
16) Bike riders on the wrong side of the road, and hence approaching
you head on.
17) Bike riders at night without lights.
George Tomasevich, AT&T Bell Laboratorieskathy@gatech.UUCP (Kathy Moore) (05/09/84)
A major annoyance to me while biking (jogging, walking, etc.) is to be
whistled at and yelled at ("Hey, baby!") by guys driving by. I usually just
ignore them, but I always feel like punching them out!
--
Kathy Moore
School of Information & Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet: Kathy @ GATech ARPA: Kathy.GATech @ CSNet-Relay
uucp: ...!{akgua,allegra,rlgvax,sb1,unmvax,ulysses,ut-sally}!gatech!kathyron@brl-vgr.ARPA (Ron Natalie <ron>) (05/11/84)
In defense of bikepaths. The Maryland Department of Transportation actually did one correcly! They built a demostration (i.e. if this one works, more will follow) path in my home town. First and formost it is totally separated from any motorized vehicular traffic. Most of this was easy for them since the first mile and a half was an abandoned road that was left after they built a wider one. The path is about one car lane wide at the places where it had to be built from scratch, sometimes wider when they usurped a piece of older road. When crossing the busiest street they left the curbs in (you really need to dismount at this point anyhow), at other places where it crossed some road a post was installed in the center of the lane to keep anything larger than a bike from going through. I used to get to school via 2 miles of this everyday. It was a fairly useful and necessary improvement as it followes two of the busiest highways/roads thorugh the city. One of the roads is impossible to bike safely on, although the other had nice paved shoulders. The road went from one of the Jr. high schools through the city park over to the high school, and into the center area (three shopping centers). -Ron
jeff@dual.UUCP (05/12/84)
> A major annoyance to me while biking (jogging, walking, etc.) is to be > whistled at and yelled at ("Hey, baby!") by guys driving by. I usually just > ignore them, but I always feel like punching them out! > > Kathy Moore I don't know what it is like out your way but in California this sort of reaction is a way of life when on the roads. Mind you when I ride its the gals who usually are doing the whistling and yelling things like, "Hey, cute legs...". Now, most of the time its all in fun anyway, and I even get these kind of comments from the gang at work (most comments are from the females [This isn't quite the Castro District of San Fran]) when I come riding in with wearing my riding shorts and jersey. I'm not gonna start worrying until some big trucker starts whistling at me. Just ignore em and keep rolling. Still trying to bridge the gap, Jeff Houston Dual Systems Corp., Berkeley, CA {ucbvax,ihnp4,cbosgd,amd70,zehntel,fortune,decwrl}!dual!jeff
mats@dual.UUCP (Mats Wichmann) (05/14/84)
Maybe I don't get aggravated so easily - my list of top ten annoyances would list cars (drivers and riders of same, actually - I find it hard to hold the cars themselves to blame) SEVERAL times. The only other item to make the list would be road conditions - consisting of glass and other debris on the road and potholes and other little goodies that they don't fix in California, even though there is no excuse like it freezes every winter (which I know tends to break the pavement up). Only places they fix the pavement is where they are trying to create a good public image (expect lots of road repairs in SF for the convention and the All-Star game) - mostly the `affluent' communties. I would present this as the seven hazards of bicycling (swiped from Monty Python....) 1. Cars 2. Debris (glass) on the road 3. Cars 4. Potholes, cracks, and other road hazards 5. Cars 6. There is NO 6th hazard 7. Cars Mats