Dreaded cyclists

hey, if you were a bicyclist, you would follow the rules and thus not get mowed down by 7000lbs of F-350 :D also, you wouldn't have to pay tax, insurance, license, etc. either... so there!

i wholeheartedly agree though, and as a cyclist myself am strongly in favor of registration and compulsory insurance for bikes. nobody can tell me it wouldn't make the streets safer... if they're afraid people would switch back to their car, so be it. i for one don't buy it.

sidenote: massive deja-vu moment, writing this out. o_O i don't know why (honestly i don't, i'm not trying to say "here we go again")
 
Fuckin Backstreet Boys, seriously?

The car driver probably should've been in the left lane (I think), but that doesn't excuse the cyclist. Temporary Australian.

nah with the dual lane roundabout he is allowed to go straight from that lane so he is not breaking any laws.

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the only reason he changes direction is to avoid the cyclist, hence why he has to do a loop of the roundabout to get back to the exit he wanted.
 
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So today I pretty much got so angry that my calves cramped up

I was going down a pretty steep hill in a residential area, following the 25 mph speed limit, like anyone should in a residential area

but then I got passed by a pair of bicyclists just coasting down the hill, they were going at least 35

oh wait, never mind, it was all ok, they were riding in the bike lane!

Worst thing is, the city leadership is making a big push to attract bicyclists to my town, so I fully expect this to get even worse.

the whole situation makes me want to smash furniture, and also deport my mayor and city council to Somalia.
 
I was going down a pretty steep hill in a residential area, following the 25 mph speed limit, like anyone should in a residential area but then I got passed by a pair of bicyclists just coasting down the hill, they were going at least 35
oh wait, never mind, it was all ok, they were riding in the bike lane!

:hmm: I was told frequently that speeding some mph over the limit was standard practice for cars across the pond - and even quasi-legal in many places -, why shouldn't a bike be okay to do the same?
 
On the freeways, yeah that's pretty much the case. But not so much in a small town with bored cops. The kind of cops who do things like give tickets for not signaling a turn at 3 am with no other cars in sight.


NOT THAT I'M STILL BITTER ABOUT THAT OR ANYTHING
 
:hmm: I was told frequently that speeding some mph over the limit was standard practice for cars across the pond - and even quasi-legal in many places -, why shouldn't a bike be okay to do the same?

That is true on highways and freeways, however, in towns and especially in residential areas it is frowned upon. I posted several months ago about a child who ran out from behind a parked car right in front of my SUV on a residential road that has problems with speeding. If I had been going even a tiny bit faster, I would have been unable to stop and probably killed that child. If you push the limits out on the open road where there are huge distances to cover, that is one thing, but 35 in a 25 mph residential area is far too fast.
 
That is true on highways and freeways, however, in towns and especially in residential areas it is frowned upon. I posted several months ago about a child who ran out from behind a parked car right in front of my SUV on a residential road that has problems with speeding. If I had been going even a tiny bit faster, I would have been unable to stop and probably killed that child. If you push the limits out on the open road where there are huge distances to cover, that is one thing, but 35 in a 25 mph residential area is far too fast.

I don't think narf understands situational awareness and discretion, in his mind you are either breaking all the laws or none of them.
 
So today I pretty much got so angry that my calves cramped up

I was going down a pretty steep hill in a residential area, following the 25 mph speed limit, like anyone should in a residential area

but then I got passed by a pair of bicyclists just coasting down the hill, they were going at least 35

oh wait, never mind, it was all ok, they were riding in the bike lane!

Worst thing is, the city leadership is making a big push to attract bicyclists to my town, so I fully expect this to get even worse.

the whole situation makes me want to smash furniture, and also deport my mayor and city council to Somalia.

Welcome to California, where the bicyclist is a superior life form and can usually do no wrong.

who rides in the outside lane on a busy 70kph road

A dick who's going out of his way to be obnoxious to others and doesn't realize that's a very good way to get very dead.

I don't think narf understands situational awareness and discretion, in his mind you are either breaking all the laws or none of them.

+1.
 
I don't think narf understands situational awareness and discretion, in his mind you are either breaking all the laws or none of them.

Sheldon Coopers long lost German cousin? :p
 
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I don't think narf understands situational awareness and discretion, in his mind you are either breaking all the laws or none of them.

"Black and white thinking" is a symptom of mental illness. :D
 
I don't think narf understands situational awareness and discretion, in his mind you are either breaking all the laws or none of them.

"Black and white thinking" is a symptom of mental illness. :D

The thing about laws is that it's not for you to pick which to follow and which to break. It really is black and white, legally speaking - speeding in a residential area is just as illegal as speeding out of town. You may get larger fines, sure - but both are just as illegal.


On the freeways, yeah that's pretty much the case. But not so much in a small town with bored cops. The kind of cops who do things like give tickets for not signaling a turn at 3 am with no other cars in sight.

NOT THAT I'M STILL BITTER ABOUT THAT OR ANYTHING

Same story here, following laws or not is black and white. You turn without indicating, you're breaking the law... even at night with no other cars in sight. Except for the cop, obviously - which goes to show your assumption of "no other cars in sight" was wrong and you really should have indicated. You'll find it's much more easy to just tap the indicator switch out of pure habit than making sure there's someone around to see it before that. Does an indicator produce light even if no-one is around to see it? :nod:



Note, I'm not saying it's good to speed in residential areas. I'm saying your perception when observing others breaking the law vs you breaking the law yourself is skewed by your own convenience.
 
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The thing about laws is that it's not for you to pick which to follow and which to break. It really is black and white, legally speaking - speeding in a residential area is just as illegal as speeding out of town. You may get larger fines, sure - but both are just as illegal.

Same story here, following laws or not is black and white. You turn without indicating, you're breaking the law... even at night with no other cars in sight. Except for the cop, obviously - which goes to show your assumption of "no other cars in sight" was wrong and you really should have indicated. You'll find it's much more easy to just tap the indicator switch out of pure habit than making sure there's someone around to see it before that. Does an indicator produce light even if no-one is around to see it? :nod:

Note, I'm not saying it's good to speed in residential areas. I'm saying your perception when observing others breaking the law vs you breaking the law yourself is skewed by your own convenience.

I think the thing about speed limits is that they're set up to be more of an average, rather than a true maximum. They don't have different speed limits for different traffic and weather conditions, nor different speed limits for driver experience or capability of the car you're driving. They make one speed limit whether you're driving in the dark, during a light shower, with moderate traffic, in a rusted out old VW bus with drum brakes, or in the middle of a bright sunny day in a modern sports car with zero traffic. And the cops know it, for the most part. The speed limits are supposed to be legally justified, but they also know full well that driving over the speed limit at certain times during certain conditions is far less dangerous than driving just under the limit in other conditions.

It really just comes down to common sense, and again, the cops know it too. 25mph in a residential zone is plenty fast enough. I usually don't even drive that fast in my neighborhood. But out on the highway and main streets, the real speed limit seems to be 10 over the posted limit. I'll drive right past cops doing 7-8mph over the limit without worry. I remember getting pulled over in California once while being passenger in my cousin's new lifted truck. We were doing 85mph on the freeway, which had a 65mph speed limit, when a motorcycle cop materialized beside us and waved us over. The cop proceeded to issue my cousin a "fix it" ticket for his illegal tint and let us go without a single mention of slowing down or obeying the speed limit.
 
I think the thing about speed limits is that they're set up to be more of an average, rather than a true maximum. They don't have different speed limits for different traffic and weather conditions, nor different speed limits for driver experience or capability of the car you're driving. They make one speed limit whether you're driving in the dark, during a light shower, with moderate traffic, in a rusted out old VW bus with drum brakes, or in the middle of a bright sunny day in a modern sports car with zero traffic.

Over here, the law states speed limits are posted for ideal conditions. It includes provisions about adapting speed to traffic, weather, load, vehicle, experience - but that's always an adjustment down from the speed limit, not over the speed limit just because you're in a P1 on a sunny Sunday morning.
 
Over here, the law states speed limits are posted for ideal conditions. It includes provisions about adapting speed to traffic, weather, load, vehicle, experience - but that's always an adjustment down from the speed limit, not over the speed limit just because you're in a P1 on a sunny Sunday morning.

You guys do a lot of things more intelligently than us, like coming down hard on idiots in the outside lane driving slow and holding up traffic.

Most of our speed limits were set decades ago and haven't been raised since. Every time they propose increasing them, the cops come out against it, claiming that it's a safety concern. But not because they think driving the higher proposed limit is dangerous, not at all, but because they know how accustomed drivers are to doing 10 over the limit and that they'll probably break the new proposed speed limit by a similar amount, which could then be dangerous. So they keep the speed limits where they are and let everyone continue to break them. And hand out speeding tickets, when they feel like it, to fill quotas and generate revenue for their department. They really are ignoring the problem, but also arranging things so they can profit off it.

Even the argument about how much better cars are today, compared to what they were back in the 70's when most of our speed limits were set, is dismissed with the argument that even though cars are better, there are more of them on the roads, which means more congestion. And yet they'll still give out tickets even if you're driving on an empty road completely free of traffic congestion.

Our speed limits are definitely not set for ideal conditions. More like mediocre, at best, or even unfavorable conditions.
 
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Our speed limits are definitely not set for ideal conditions. More like mediocre, at best, or even unfavorable conditions.

Ours aren't either - most places I could safely take my heavy, flexing, winter-tyred car faster than the speed limit says. That's reality though, not the law. The law says "under ideal conditions, do not exceed X" - no matter if your Beetle is an actual one or a modern Porsche'd up one.

You guys do a lot of things more intelligently than us, like coming down hard on idiots in the outside lane driving slow and holding up traffic.

That's legal theory again, reality could do with a lot more enforcing - especially on Elefantenrennen.

 
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The thing about laws is that it's not for you to pick which to follow and which to break. It really is black and white, legally speaking - speeding in a residential area is just as illegal as speeding out of town. You may get larger fines, sure - but both are just as illegal.

The Black&White effect is exactly the side-effect of laws, that they can be taken to the letter and generate more complications than they should solve. It is why a person could go to jail for stealing medicines out of need and a man might be free after stealing millions from others just because he found a nice legal loop around a law.

Laws can be very blunt tools, they're just there to set a standard, a behavioural direction, Laws tell the rules of a society and reduce quarrels and fight, but the justice they do is only dependant on how good they are written and enforced, not on the fact that they exist or that you are respecting them.
Also, it's not the law that decides if you've broken it, it's another man who's been given the authority to deicide whether you are breaking it or not. Be it a judge, a policeman, a militia, a priest, it doesn't matter. The law in itself is inert.

Laws can be well written or poorly written. If your only concern is that they are respected, you risk becoming freezingly fierce and cruel, or dowright stupid. And greatly inefficient.

In our speed limit thing: it is probable that speed limits in the US are quite more realistic for residential areas than they are for freeways. That can happen for a variety of reasons, for example the fact that the cars available when the law was set were incredibly less safe, efficient and performant than the cars we drive today. This fact might have had an importantly lower effect on slower road because of the fact that the only real major safety feature that is important in residential areas is the total stopping distance, and that includes the driver reaction time, which at the moment can not be improved and which has an increasingly greater impact (%) on the total stopping distance as you lower the vehicle speed.

Also, 10 over on 65 mph is 15% more. 10 over on 25 mph is 40% over. 10% over 25 would b e 27,5, and there's a very noticeable difference between the 27,5 and 35. Yet, they are both "breaking the law", but do you honestly think that 27,5 mph and 35 mph on a 25mph speed limit is exactly the same because they've both broken the law? Beacuse that is what you say that 10 over on a Freeway and 10 over on a residential area (albeit with different vehicle) is the same.
 
Also, 10 over on 65 mph is 15% more. 10 over on 25 mph is 40% over. 10% over 25 would b e 27,5, and there's a very noticeable difference between the 27,5 and 35. Yet, they are both "breaking the law", but do you honestly think that 27,5 mph and 35 mph on a 25mph speed limit is exactly the same because they've both broken the law? Beacuse that is what you say that 10 over on a Freeway and 10 over on a residential area (albeit with different vehicle) is the same.

he never said those two were the same, only in the way that they're both breaking the law. what you cited here is the exact reason there are varying fines for different surroundings...
 
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