Sometimes life is a slap in the face. Sad indeed.

Just so sad.

Oh that's awful. One of my coworkers is out injured too, from a car hitting his bike. Terrifying.

That's terrifying. I'm sorry to hear about your friend. Thanks for telling us. I will never ride a bike again.

This is why I ride on sidewalks.

That's not really a good idea either, Ardiril. I've nearly gotten hit by cyclists a couple of times recently while walking on the sidewalk. We need bike lanes.

It's the lesser of bad ideas. Bad drivers far outnumber the few people who still use sidewalks.

Bike lanes are not the answer either. I live in an area with plenty of bike lanes, and about once a month I see another rider who was hit . The woman whose room I rent is permanently disabled after being struck in a bike lane.

Here they rally cracked down on side walk riders for a while after a woman was killed by one as she came out of a store.

Being an involuntary bike commuter over the last couple of months has made me aware of just how dangerous the roads are for cyclists. In this time, I've been abused twice (once by a person saying I deserve to die for riding a bike on the road), deliberately run off the toad once and almost ended up under the wheels of the car following and collided with a car once when the driver pulled out of an intersection directly in front of me (think about how close you have to be that a bike can't stop in time). It's like a fuckimg war zone ou there.

It doesn't help that my route is mostly on country roads with a 100kph speed limit and no hard shoulder, but I have every right to be there and riding on footpaths is illegal and dangerous for pedestrians. The only enjoyable part of the ride is the section that has a bike path, but that's only about 800m of the 11.5km trip.

I've come to the sad conclusion that car drivers, while safely wrapped in their steel box at least, are the biggest arseholes in the world.

Many of the bike lanes in this part of Washington are actually bus lanes, thus a full travel lane wide. Yet bike riders are still struck by passing vehicles.

For anyone who does ride the streets, please peruse this website: CommuteOrlando. Dive into On the Road > Smart Moves (top menu bar). A good first article to read is You Lead the Dance. I am a firm believer that the best place to be is out in the traffic lane in a lot of situations. One other recommendation: Get, and use, a glasses- or helmet-mounted mirror. It gives you the security of knowing that traffic behind is, in fact, behaving.

For the record, the cyclist was struck on a two lane bridge on a country highway while she and the truck that hit her were heading into the sun.

I'm really sorry to hear that. If they were both riding into the sunlight, there might not have been much either of them could do.

A few months ago some new houses were built round the corner from me on the site of a small factory that closed down. Those houses have made my drive to the station so much safer on sunny mornings. Before they were there the sun would be so blinding that I couldn't see anything on the road, including other traffic, cyclists, road markings, etc. I was always terrified of hitting a cyclist (or straying across into the other lane and hitting an oncoming vehicle). The new houses block the sun and, eyesores that they are, I thank them for that.

After today's encounter with an idiot who deliberately tried to hit me, I am seriously considering carrying a gun for defensive purposes.

Just strap some explosives to your chest and take out the whole block.