An adult person fully dressed as a cyclist with
helmet and gloves should be treated like a car. Period.
If they want to be treated like cars, they should act like cars. They often don't.
We have many bicycle tours coming to our island. Some of them are responsible riders. Many aren't.
How many bicycles come to a full stop at stop signs? In my experience, few. They look right and left and if they see nobody coming, they sail right through. Flat out illegal, but they do it. They never stop at crosswalks, but sail right by me as I'm walking, only a foot or two away. Flat out illegal. They ride on sidewalks, something forbidden to cars and to bicycles, but they do it anyhow. My office driveway is right next to a building which abuts on the sidewalk, so when I'm exiting the driveway I have to nose into the sidewalk to see whether anybody's coming from my left. I have plenty of time to see pedestrians and avoid them. But every now and then a bicyclist comes zipping up the sidewalk and there's no way I have time to see them or them see me. Had one run right into my car once.
Then there's a law in the state that if a slower moving vehicle gets several cars stacked up behind it, it's required to move over and let them pass. Bicycles often don't. A group of them will be congregated in the road chatting and have a line of cars piled up behind them who can't pass because the roads are winding and hilly and there are no passing zones for miles, but do the bicyclists obey the laws? Nope.
They also congregate in groups, on the road, at the top of hills where they were tired from pedaling or walking the bike up the hill and get to the top of a hill and stop to enjoy the beautiful view. Yep, it's a great view. It's also the top of a hill, on a curve, with effectively no shoulder. No safe way to pass bicycles stopped there in the roadway, illegally. But do they care? Nope. I had one group a year or two ago that laid their bicycles down in the roadway and crossed the road to take photos. If I had had my truck then, there would have been mashed bicycles. But I was in the car that time, so I just honked, and they looked at me as though I didn't deserve to drive on my own island.
So. I will treat any bicyclist who obeys the law nicely. The few of them. For the others . . . well, one of my clients has a bumper sticker I covet:
If this is Tourist Season, why can't I shoot one? |
