Did you break the mirrors?

I commute to work on my bike. .I live in fear of getting pancaked in a car door opening in front of me. You can't always see a driver in there.

I live in fear of hitting a cyclist or motorcyclist when I'm driving. There's a pretty graphic advert on TV in the UK at the moment warning drivers to look out for motorcycles.

Scroll down to "Take longer to look for bikes" to see it. It's certainly made me be more cautious.

I understand why you are shaken hellbient - all accidents are scary. Glad everyone is safe.

The Escalade had a breakaway mirror, and I didn't even know I hit the other guy's mirror until he told me I did. I think the people in the Escalade were tourists, they didn't say a thing. I just felt like "damn, thanks for the space." I do it all the time and never hit those things, but I guess this passageway was particularly narrow. It was the only route with all the traffic.

Yeah danf, I've been doored 3 times in NY so far. I'm much better at avoiding it now. The one thing I hate about riding a bike is - it's only a matter of time before you wreck again.

I'm also much less of a dick on a bike now. I used to have that entitled, underdog attitude that a lot of bikers have towards cars and even pedestrians, but I've learned that when you ride a bike, you ride for all bikers, and an example needs to be set.

Thanks EJ - I'm glad my two wheels aren't motorized.

Even with a moving car, passing on the right doesn't mean the passenger won't decide to open the door enough to dump out the ashtray, and my friend has the broken collarbone to prove it.

If you are riding close enough to wang mirrors, you are also close enough to get pranged by an door-opener ambush. This is an example of natural selection in action.

As far as the atrocious road-manners of cage drivers: there are roughly the same number of bicyclists as there are NRA members. If there were more armed bicyclists, we would have a politer and more relaxed society.

Just look at the NRA -- they gained political power and prominence following the assassination of President Kennedy by defending their God-given right to travel about prepared to commit murder at the drop of a hat. To drive home the point, gun-toters have committed a large number of mass murders accompanied by copious publicity. The result? Murder and arms dealing have become pillars of national policy.

Similarly consider the humble motorcyclist: once a motley collection of social misfits despised by society, they now routinely occupy a position of respect, fear and control of the methamphetamine market.

Why, you ask? Very simple.

The promotion in the middle and late 60's of the Hell's Angels as the epitome of scooter trash culture. The aura of power and romance surrounding the Angels has now spread by social diffusion to the point where ribbon clerks and bank tellers now ride around on fat, noisy motorcycles incapable of accelerating, turning or stopping and which look as if they should be equipped with a chute for the delivery of cement while their riders sneer in disdain from under their coal-scuttle Nazi helmet replicas. It is astounding what a few chain-whippings, knifings and rapes can do to restructure the social order.

Bicyclists should take a page from these two examples and start to get themselves organized.

First of all, every bicyclist should be armed to the teeth and prepared to commit mass murder at a moment's notice. Secondly, a few road-rage murders of car drivers (accompanied by the appropriate publicity directed at the jaded population of TV watchers slowly amusing themselves to death by planteration while ensconced in Barcaloungers) would do wonders in educating the car-driving public of the sheer suicidal folly of messing with two-wheelers. Thirdly, bicyclists should discard their namby-pamby image of spandex and safety helmets and conduct more naked bike rides, Critical Masses and such, while armed to the teeth and appropriately decorated with hammer and sickles, Osama Bin Laden t-shirts and "born to lose" tattoos. Gangs of deranged, drug-crazed bicyclists descending on small rural villages to murder, plunder and rape would also be of great assistance in the public education campaign.

Bicyclists would also to well to align themselves politically with a group that is widely loathed, such as the Moonies or the Democratic Party. Once the driving public (huddled sheeplike masses that they are) acquire the proper attitude of cringing respect for the two-wheeled knights of the road, we will be on the path to a better, saner and more polite society.

Thank you for your concern and have a nice day.

Dr. Thompson! Welcome back!

If you are riding close enough to wang mirrors, you are also close enough to get pranged by an door-opener ambush. This is an example of natural selection in action.

Sometimes there simply is no choice, as with my situation this morning. Riding a bike is dangerous sometimes.

And Sticky - it isn't just about riding on the right, which yeah, I try not to do. And in NY, you're always on somebody's right (either a parked car or a car in the street).

Riding naked with an Uzi clenched in each fist appears to be an option you haven't given the full weight of your attention to.

There are always choices.

I used to have that entitled, underdog attitude that a lot of bikers have towards cars and even pedestrians, but I've learned that when you ride a bike, you ride for all bikers, and an example needs to be set.

Man, this should be insribed above every bike shop and bike club door everywhere.

People that buzz through crowded sidewalks make all bikers look like jerks.

warbaby, wouldn't it make more sense to be on a unicycle so as to better aim the Uzi's? And, of course, to afford people a better view of your jewels?

Riding naked with an Uzi clenched in each fist

that seems dangerous...you need your hands for things like steering, breaking and punching troublesome pedestrians in the neck - methinks the Uzis should be mounted on the handlebars.

...when you ride a bike, you ride for all bikers...

That's exactly how Sonny Barger felt and look where it got him.

Ah, so every revolution needs a manifesto, and warbaby's the man for the job! Up here in the Great White North the carrying guns thing doesn't really work, ya know... that's why we just have to stick to kryptonite.
A friend of mine is biking in traffic, safely, and gets cut off by some dickhead who had just seen him a minute before! Probably talking on the phone, or stirring a latte or something. So the driver decides to merge with the car, forcing my friend to jump the curb and almost wipe out in the process as it's one of the higher ones. Said friend realises if he had've taken a fall, it would've landed him down the embankment and 30' into bushes and pain. Ok, so now it's revenge. The motorist pigdog is stopped at a red light when my friend rides past him, top speed, swinging his kryptonite lock in a circle and wham! hits the rearview mirror so hard that it takes off like a rocket. Two quick cuts down side streets that the car can't follow because he's still behind the red light, and the bicyclist is safe.

Bike riders on crowded sidewalks deserve the equivalent of what I described above. I like biking. A lot. My bike got stolen years ago (haven't had a chance to replace it) but if it didn't, I'd be biking now. I've almost managed to knock at least two bikes into poles as they try to squeeze by me on sidewalks. Now, I don't know if the designation has been changed over the years, but in Vancouver, bikes are considered vehicles, and you cannot take a vehicle onto a sidewalk! So I have to nudge them to let them know. You know. Just as a reminder.

Two wheels good, four wheels bad.

I've been cycling in New York for a couple of years now and I've only even been close to getting in an accident twice (that I know of). The first time was coming down the Astoria side of the overpass crossing Sunnyside Yards. I had the green, sped into the middle of Northern Blvd. and hit the asphalt around that manhole cover right in the middle. This of course made my bike to a sweet jump. What I only noticed at the last second was the guy in the black Jeep screeching out of the Western Beef parking lot East-bound, who missed my rear wheel by between one and three inches.

The other time was going down Greenpoint Avenue on past the fire department across from 1st Calvary Cemetery. I was shunted pretty far over to the right by a semi and narrowly missed being doored by an EMT getting out of one of the two ambulances usually parked there.

As for being a humble cyclist, I always remember that no matter how things are supposed to work, there are people operating machines which could easily kill me. Assert yourself, but don't be an idiot to reality.

hellbient: your profile email does not work.
email me about that thing.

Yes, email StickyCarpet about your thyroid problem!