Sunday, September 07, 2008

When is a bicyclist not a bicyclist?

When they are pretending to be a pedestrian.

Let me just state for the record that I think that the City of Boston gets a big thumbs DOWN when it comes to being bicycle friendly in anyway shape or form.

While I had zero qualms about tricycling my way around Provincetown, I am scared of the mean streets of Boston because there really aren't many concessions to biking, meaning cyclists have to literally share the road with cars, not just share side-by-side lanes.

However today I noticed a peculiar trend in bicycling which is to bicycle like a pedestrian.

Twice today I had to slam on the brakes for bikes flying through a crosswalk (not at a set of lights) which is particularly scary because the cyclist seemed to come out of nowhere. Usually I can at least see a pedestrian waiting at a crosswalk. And believe me, I might shake my fist, but I do NOT ever EVER want to EVER hit anyone with my car ever.

I then got shouted at for opening my car door, facing the sidewalk mind you, to yield to a cyclist barreling down the sidewalk. Without a helmet.

That's the other thing, no helmets. That scares the crap out of me. Too many police and EMTs have told me horror stories about brains and blood and bits of bone blatted all over the street. Blech. Totally worth the helmet hair if you ask me. Please wear a helmet. Please.

I wonder what it would take to make Boston a truly bike-friendly city. Because I really want to get a tricycle of my own.

2 comments:

Geoff said...

When will they realize that they are called side WALKS and cross WALKS for a reason?

Anonymous said...

Ha! I really hate that. Then there are some who ride against the traffic,And those who fail to use hand signals as they cut across three lanes after you spent 20 minutes following carefully behind them going 10 miles an hour. And there are more bikers to come! Check out my post about the citys bike program.
http://simplybosstin.blogspot.com/2008/08/sounds-good-in-theory.html