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You want bikers to ignore the speed limit, not stop during turns-on-red, honk at bikers and pedestrians, not indicate turns, block the box, and roll into the right-of-way of pedestrian crossings when making a right turn? Great idea."

Save for blocking the box, bikers already do all of these things with common regularity, but you also missed ignoring every redlight they come to, swerve between moving lanes of cars without signaling and jumpting from the street to the sidewalk and back to the street at full speed to avoid said redlights.

People like to make fun of MD drivers as the areas most reckless, law flaunting and self absorbed, but the average MD driver has nothing on the average DC cyclist.

There are literally 50 times the number of trips taken in the District very day by vehicle than there are bike. If you added up the number of cyclists per average day on the streets of DC, it would be approximately the traffic volume Connecticut Ave sees during the day...one street!

I am sorry the bus had the temerity of honking at you but you admitted you lost control of YOUR bike, and YOU hit the bus which was atleast half in front of you at this point (i.e. had the ROW). It wasn't a hit and run, you hit him. You biked into the side of the bus.

You weren't injured. You turned down medical assistance which every bike handbook ever printed tells you not to do. $500 dollars is nothing...it is the base fee for walking into any emergency room in America, which you admit you did later.

Every cyclist loves to run to the blogosphere and tell their one sided story and we are to all take it as gospel, the readership clucking their disapproval on cue but as a daily bus rider in DC I can tell you that atleast twice a week, a bus I am on has to slam on the brakes, or swerve into another lane to avoid a cyclist who blew through their sign or signal, turns onto a one way street, or (my favorite which happened last week) cuts across 3 lanes of rush hour traffic on K street without signaling to make the side access road and came within inches of the bus which slammed on its brakes, full of people toppling about.

Many metro buses have front and side cameras. They should stream all the close calls caused by bikers on their website. I imagine it would be a 24/7 affair.

by Wonderland on Jun 7, 2012 12:26 pm • link • report