I fucking hate California.

So do I.

yay texas?

I hate Texas too.

I fucking hate California.

Wait, have you been to California? We don't all abuse the elderly out here.

I have indeed been to California.

We don't all abuse the elderly out here.

I believe you.

No intolerance like hippy intolerance. Except for the kind that strips you of your rights and detains and tortures you indefinitely, I mean.

The last time I was in Berkeley I had to drive around the place and it was very annoying because every other block of every other street is closed off to through traffic by local ordinance, enforced with barriers, etc. Every little block association has gotten itself a bylaw entitling it to do this. It struck me at the time that pretty much everyone living on these streets would be self-righteously snotty about the rise of Gated Communities and their obnoxious, negative effects, blah blah. But closing off their own streets to traffic isn't remotely the same thing at all, of course.

What exactly is the problem? Seems to me like a pretty restrained reaction to what could have been an ugly confrontation. God forbid someone who runs over three bikes should receive . . . a scolding!

The last time I was in Berkeley I had to drive much less than where I was then living. I went to a library and read stuff. I bought food and ate it. I did this on more than one occasion. No bicycles or elderly were harmed.

B, I appreciate your love of controversy, but we don't actually know how those bikes ended up under the car (story here), and I'm sure that yelling at a couple of old folks, and falsely claiming that someone is trapped under their car, is not helpful. And the larger point, about Californians and hippies enjoying abusing the elderly, stands.

Dick Cheney takes righteous heat for going all monster truck rally on a heap of aluminum tubing and writhing limbs, and ogged complains. Incredible.

Granted, I wasn't watching with my full attention.

We don't all abuse the elderly out here.

Some of them specialize in retarded kids.

The guy's uncanny resemblance to Dick Cheney made me disinclined to sympathize with him, but those hippies were being pretty obnoxious.

And if you've been there a while you work out what routes get around which barriers, which of course are just like having a private security guard screen all passers by and passers through.

Thanks, apo.

And Critical Mass has always been irritating.

What hyperdramatic people. I loathe hyperdramatic people.

Anyway, the video shows him as he begins to go over the bikes. It looks like they've surrounded the old couples car (to protest its size or something?) and he gets sick of being surrounded by an annoying bike gang and decided he's leaving whether they like or not.

Unless there's other info, it seems to me like the bike people decided to be assholes and lost some of their bikes because of it, and had a big panicfest afterwards. Tough about the bikes.

And Critical Mass has always been irritating.

They should try that shit on a tougher crowd -- where I live, by no means the worst city for bikes, running cyclists off the road and throwing beer cans at them while driving by is a common enough pastime.

Oh, wait. Last time I was in Berkeley I was waiting for my order at a pizza place and a woman kept rejecting perfectly good slices because they were "too burnt" and her kids would refuse to eat them. They didn't look burnt at all and her kids never saw them before she sent them back.

Also note that the old woman asked who started it, and the camera guys replies "yeah, we started it."

I'm pretty sure the early days of Critical Mass - clogging up rush hour traffic not just in Berkeley, but in SF - were a lot more violent: arrests, etc. I vaguely remember claims that the violence came from unsanctioned groups breaking off from the peaceful main pack of riders. I also remember not particularly caring enough to look into it.

Yeah, people never act like self-righteous dicks in any other part of the country.

It's not just the self-righteous dickishness.

After reading the story Ogged links, I'm afraid I think these bikers need some more running-over. Not because I think they morally deserve it, but because they seem to have forgotten basic survival instincts (be careful with things bigger and more powerful than you are) and they need to get back to nature.

Critiical Mass is no longer a Berkeley only phenomenon, it's in New York too.

I think I agree with B; I think the worst thing that can be said about many of the cyclists is that the situation could have gotten worse than it did and that they were quite insufficiently worried about that. We can't tell what was said to the wife, it'd be relevant.

Are you serious? I must be watching this with very different eyes. I do see the Berkeley orthodoxy, and it to me that was what salvaged an ugly situation.

To my eyes, the van driver was surrounded, probably impatient, and decided to use the mass of his van to edge his way out and caught bicycles under his van. That would have been really scary to the people as they got off their pinned and going under bikes; you forget how big and menacing cars are when you don't have a steel shell around you. So they are all adrenalized and don't know what is going on. They wig out and pound the car, and I can't tell you how much you want to pound on cars when what seems like a small drift from inside the car could mean months in the hospital or your life and it happens ALL THE TIME. So they wig out and shout for a couple minutes, and even in that context, they never look like they're going to haul the driver out and beat the crap out of him or anything. The wife interacts with the cyclists to no one's detriment and even in the throes of the shouting, a cyclist asks the driver to "Back up the car, please." The wife is guided back to the car with a 'Ma'am" and a pat on the back.

The Berkeley orthodoxy is annoying as fuck a lot of the time (and way worse in Santa Cruz), but I think it saved this situation, not worsened it.

and even in that context, they never look like they're going to haul the driver out and beat the crap out of him or anything.

I thought they did. According the story Ogged link, they broke the guy's windshield. You have to hit really hard to do that.

Oh well, I'm going to go to bed and probably not get around to defending Berkeley tomorrow (surely others will but I feel like I should too), but: since when does one activist group stand in for a whole city? Which is not to say that there aren't a bunch of things to criticize about the place. (Like the vacant storefronts in business areas. What happened to that late 90s revival?)

By contrast, when the drunk driver t-boned another car at the intersection I live on (no injuries), seven or eight minutes later there were five or six men pounding on his hood, trying to reach in his car and haul him out to beat him up. I was incredibly relieved when the cops came, because it was gathering steam. That didn't even look close to happening in this incident, and I think it was because they are hippies. Yeah, they behaved like stereotypes, but considering how scared and angry they must have been, I think the stereotype reined them in.

I cringed at the Indian Rock footage, myself, although I wasn't dressed like that when I used to relax at the sacred Indian Rock.

I don't mean they looked like they were going to go all mad-max, but with that many people screaming at you and beating furiously on your car - that's gotta be scary.

Lemme watch it again.

Critical Mass is also in Boston, a city founded by Puritans that still has blue laws. Speaking of liberal authoritarianism.

And Boston drivers + cyclists are a mess.

All of this is just to say, 18: Yes. Critical Mass has always been annoying. It's not just California.

The Indian Rock footage was truly cringe-inducing. The confrontation footage was replete with douchebaggery ("We are your victims!") but there's no way it should have taken the driver that long to engage his reverse gear, and Megan is completely right that for all the drawbacks of smug hippiedom, it could have been a lot worse. I also question the reporting: I didn't see any evidence of the guy's windshield being "shattered," for instance, and forgive if me if I don't exactly rush to believe the cop story about the protesters throwing their bikes underneath his car.

On second viewing, I'm seeing the same thing. Driver accelerated from a stop into a group of people. (The people may not have been following traffic rules by surrounding the car, but he changed that to a physical confrontation because he didn't understand the difference in scale between a car and a bike + person.) It dragged bikes out from under two people, which would have felt scary.

They freaked and pounded on his car. The windshield is shattered in the background as the wife gets out of the car. Yeah, that's a shame. But I listened again and they never even verbally threatened him. For every angry thing they said, not one person said "I'm gonna get you, kick your ass, shove you under a car." They were scary pounding on his window, but verbally polite "Please back up your car. Back up your car, please." when he rolled down his window. Honestly, I think they did pretty well.

The moral of the story is that handicapped people should have to ride bikes in California so they can understand what it's like.

Or so the mullahs would have you believe.

Especially Mullah Dadullah. He was very concerned that you believe that to be the moral.

It's very hard to read comments from people who think that the Critical Mass crowd are a problem. It's equally hard to read comments from people who think that blocking streets from car traffic, is in any way, shape, or form comparable to a gated community.

Driving your car is not an inalienable right. It isn't even remotely comparable to the right to not be harmed in your person, to not suffer physical assault by a two-ton vehicle with ~200hp. And those blocked-off streets? If you'd get out of your car, you'd find that they were on problem to walk down.

Really.

If, on the other hand, you would like to travel absolutely anywhere from the overwhelming majority of locations in the United States, you would find that motorized transport is essential.

Gastromancer, I am totally with you, because I don't have a car and I enjoy every minute of the bike righteousness. But that conversation about cars and bikes turns into cliches and generalizations really fast; surely they've had that conversation here before. See? Teo already took the bait.

I'd rather argue the point of the post: that the drivers suffered more in this exchange because of the doctrinaire intolerance of bike-hippies. I don't see it. I think the hippie doctrine helped the situation.

I totally concede that the Berkeley norm is rigidly enforced and annoying in other contexts, as when I sneer at out-of-season produce.

Critical Mass rides, which happen monthly, are annoying. Normal driving by shitheads, which happens every fucking day, is vastly more annoying, especially when you're on a bike and get hit.

I kept waiting for the part of the video where they yank the people out, then overturn the van and torch it. Useless hippies.

40 is totally correct. Also, when hippie douchebaggery annoys me, I sometimes find it useful to compare and contrast.

I can't believe anyone's complaining about the cyclists either. Can you imagine anyone winding down the window or getting out of their car to talk to a bunch of NON-hippies banging on their bonnet? I'd be scared - the old couple in the van clearly weren't.

People, read the article. Two witnesses saw them throw bikes in front of the guy to impede him. Fuck them. They're lucky to have gotten off so easy. That old guy should have plowed through them.

46: Two witnesses saw them throw bikes in front of the guy to impede him.

Again, forgive me if I'm not convinced by this on the cops' say-so. Not necessarily for charitable reasons, but because they don't seem to me like people who would throw away expensive bikes on such a stunt.

I'm finding it quite easy to imagine a couple people in that crowd putting themselves and/or their bikes in the path of the van to prevent it from going forward.

To elaborate, my experience with the uber crunchy crowd is that they are quite proud of their willingness to to human shield type stuff, whether it's chaining themselves to a tree, "human chains" to impede access to research facilities that do animal research, etc.

My experience with the uber crunchy crowed suggests that the majority of them are a lot more materialist than they're willing to admit. Sit-ins and human chains are one thing, but their bikes?

Come on, this was out-and-out douchebaggery. Pointing the camera at crying kids and sternly saying, "I hope it will be okay. I hope it will be okay." We seriously don't know what actually happened, but the way they were responding, it was obvious they were having to pump up the situation with lies to make it as dramatic as they wanted it to be. If they had actually been scared or felt genuinely threatened, they would have been yelling about things that were true. And it looked like the bikes were wedged under the van after the fact.

These people are trying to make a point with the ride, and I totally think Critical Mass is an interesting project. But all I heard from them were lies (no one was trapped under the car) told to scare this elderly couple, all because this event was meant to symbolize car violence against bikes, and they seemed eager to jump on a minor confrontation and make it do all this symbolic work for them. And "Everyone who has a bike and is not injured, please move over there! Everyone who is injured, please sit on the curb." There were like 15 people on the curb. WTF?

51: If they had actually been scared or felt genuinely threatened, they would have been yelling about things that were true.

I dunno, I'm kinda willing to give some credit for human dramatic instinct (e.g. the sort of thing that makes spectators to a car crash absolutely sure that someone's been killed until they've been proven wrong). But maybe that's excessively charitable. It is pretty hard to see how the people shouting "there's people under there!" couldn't have know they were falsifying.

Not every van is a tank on Tiananmen Square.

Yeah, that really was the kind of register they were reaching for.

I often feel the same as Ogged about my neighborhood in Brooklyn. Park Slope is like a little Berkeley--bourgeois homeowners constantly getting outraged about what they see as their oppression, which involves everything from a mislabeled non-organic apple to developers building something that will block the light on their porch.

The Atlantic Yards project, in which a huge stadium and apartment complex is being plunked down in the middle of a neighborhood, really sucks. There isn't any funding for schools or sewer systems, though it will create the densest population in the U.S. by twice as much as the current densest population, in a housing project in Harlem. That is, it's totally a disaster fueled by corporate greed and must be stopped. But every conversation I hear about it ends up in the same place: "And we so loved sitting out on the deck of our Brownstone and having dinner in the last rays of the sunset! It is an aesthetic tragedy!" They'll throw their bodies under the steamrollers, yes, but not for all the kids who will be forced into overcrowded public schools. They'll do it for their sunsets.

At some point, there seems to be a blur there between actual suffering and bourgeois angst. To be able to work yourself into a froth about symbols of suffering means you don't actually know anything about suffering.

Brownstone s/b brownstone

Perhaps I, alone among Unfoggers, have actually been on a Critical Mass ride? Admittedly, in Minneapolis, where things are a lot more light-weight.

I don't really like Critical Mass rides as a routine thing. I don't like Buy Nothing Day either, because both of them are a misuse of dramatic tactics when the audience seriously isn't going to be able to respond with any way but exhausted anger. (After work on a Friday, and the traffic's already bad? Way to win sympathizers!) Also, Critical Mass is just candy for the cops. At least around here, there's nothing like knocking around some little punk chick in a punk rock crop top--it's like living your own porn video.

That said, I don't think a lot of the Critical Mass people get what life with a car is like. A lot of them are too young for a serious job; a lot of the others have accepted crappy jobs in order to live a bike-and-activism life. There's just no visceral sense of how scary it can be to drive around bicyclists, for example. (A minor reason I got rid of my car? Terrified that I'd hit someone!)

At least around here, Critical Mass is radical, not liberal--there's a substantial political and lifestyle difference, although there are of course minor exceptions.

When you make it harder to drive, too, and there's mass transit available, people tend to take the mass transit, which benefits everyone--so I'm not too sorry about the wretched driving, although as a former driver I know it would make me nuts. Mass transit isn't perfect, but it's okay. And when I was in Berkekely and San Francisco, I was stunned by how many buses and trains there were. Getting around here can be a fair chore, and we've got a lot of buses by mid-sized US city standards.

Critical Mass makes a lot of sense as an occasional tactic, and a mini-Critical Mass, taking over one lane completely or something, would make sense as a regular tactic.

Well, I have to get up and walk to work now...

Not enough data for me to form an opinion aside from a fundamental prejudice that I have about the elderly in South Florida. Generally, I find them rude and self-righteous and constantly in-your-face; they steal your shopping baskets and parking places and then get surly when you complain; they drive 20 mph in a 50 mph zone but honk their horns at you as soon as the light changes; the argue with every checkout clerk about every item as the line of impatient shoppers wraps around the isles; and forget about using public restrooms - they leave it a filthy mess. Too bad about global warming - we can use more ice flows to put them on.

the elderly in South Florida. Generally, I find them rude and self-righteous and constantly in-your-face;

Florida's got that no retreat law now. Just shoot those old fuckers. The elderly are way slow on the draw.

Writing as someone who neither drives nor rides a bike, I'm more sympathetic than not to the Critical Mass folx. In this specific confrontation, it was pretty obvious to me that the driver thought he could escalate and escalate and the bikers would be too intimidated to stand up to him. It's clear from the video that he could see that there were people and bicycles right within inches of his car and he deliberately accelerated at low speed to frighten the bikers and crush the bikes. Also, it was obvious that after he'd caught several bikes under his car (which must have been audible and obvious to his sense of touch) he accelerated further in an attempt to further damage the bikes. It's harder to say whether anyone was legitimately concerned that there was a person under the car, but how exactly did the driver know that there was not? And yet he kept moving forward, until there was a critical mass of people all around the car.

Frankly, this just seems like the one-in-a-million occasion where a driver does something wrong and gets called on it. I'm a fairly paranoid pedestrian -- I don't jaywalk, I look both ways before crossing even when I have the right of way, I don't stand in the middle of the street when the light's against me, waiting for the last car to go by -- and yet I've been hit by cars three times, luckily never sustaining any serious injury. The fact is, there is a significant minority of drivers who are completely zoned out when they're behind the wheel, and if you get in their way, you're going down. That's the social context that this confrontation occurred in.

I can't find the link right now, but there is a great piece by the editor of Profane Existence from a couple of years ago about being hit and seriously injured (required hospitalization, broken bones, etc.) by a clueless suburban SUV driver while biking. The SUV driver actually stopped to find out what she'd hit, then got back in her truck and drove off. And surprise, surprise, since the driver was white and middle-class, while the editor was punk, and since he wasn't "almost killed", the police declined to prosecute or even investigate, because it didn't meet their threshhold for prosecution.

This is a Mr. Show outtake, right? The guy saying "how dare you be so violent" has got to be David Cross.

Rancid hippie privilege. The bikes are symbolic. It's about exerting control over others while being as self-centered as possible. They'll be Republicans in twenty years. They already have the outrage machine tactics down.

Perhaps this is why Cheney didn't run them down in the street: he recognizes his younger self, in bad whiteboy dreads.

Single issue group intimidation-and-inaccuracy is the central method of political mobilisation in the United States. Get over it.

I'm happy to stay out of this one, but in general I think that Ogged should suppress his political instincts more.

I'm sympathetic to none of these people. Comments 1–3 get it exactly right.

Meanwhile...

62: 62.

Single issue group intimidation-and-inaccuracy is the central method of political mobilisation in the United States.

Or anywhere else. When the issues get as complex as "Land, Peace and Bread", you're in danger of having a revolution.

As a habitual pedestrian, I am used to being treated by cyclists in exactly the same way that they habitually and loudly complain about being treated by drivers. So my instinct is, "Fuck those hypocrits and the bikes they rode in on". Or, what 'smasher said.

64 is underinclusive: 4 too.

No real sympathy for either side. Dude shouldn't have run over the bikes, but for the love of little apples, staged "crises" are obnoxious. "The Attack?" Could you be any more obnoxiously middle class?

I can tell none of you ride bikes. All most bikers want is to ride in peace. Sure, there are people in CM rides who take things too far, but a lot of them are just trying to make it clear that bikes are allowed on the road too, and it would be nice if drivers would give us some space. I know people who've been killed just trying to ride to work. I know people who've been run off the road by cars. Now we see a clip of a guy deliberately running over bikes.

I don't think anybody here has pointed out that a girl was actually trapped under the car. It looks like her foot was clipped into her pedals, so she couldn't get it out for a while. All the people there were surprisingly calm.

I don't see what the problem is with somebody saying, "how dare you be so violent?" How is that authoritarian? It seems like a fairly restrained response to a guy nearly running over your friend.

CM rides do often cause problems, and they do sometimes have an authoritarian streak. This video, however, in no way demonstrates that. All it shows is an admirable response to an old man nearly seriously injuring or killing an innocent girl.

this site sure is going to shit.

two people were injured, according to the story. i think that makes it an attack.

Our route just happened to take us around the van! Come on. Doesn't part of being a responsible bike rider include not being a douchebag?

I am much more afraid of being hit by a bicycle than I am of being hit by a car.

being a douche bag doesn't mean it's ok for the guy to run them over. also, it sounds from the story like what happened is that he drove into the middle of the ride, trying to go through it, and they then surrounded him. CM isn't some rampage where they ride around trying to find cars to surround. Given past events (why do you think this was being filmed?) they're reasonably worried about the risk of cars driving through the middle of the group and hurting people. And this guy did in fact hurt people. Maybe you can argue he was provoked, but once you deliberately hurt people, it qualifies as an attack.

The problem is not the inherent crappiness of drivers or bikers, but that roads aren't built to easily accommodate both cyclists and cars, making everybody stressed and testy.

73: Agreed, and with reason. It's happened far more often.

obviously, if you don't ride a bike, you're not going to be worried about cars hitting bikes. 73 and 76 add nothing. I've been hit by cars twice when on my bike, never when walking. Moreover, getting hit by a car is a hell of a lot more dangerous than being hit by a bike.

Go Ian.

Also, Critical Ass.

I'm not saying my fear is rational, Ian.

Driving your bike isn't an inalienable right, either, if we're going to start that kind of shit. Even walking (at least in the US) isn't, because you can't walk onto private property without permission.

Frankly, it's less the actuality of the protest and more the hyperdrama around it that gives me hives. "The Attack". Come on. If this was all as nice-nice as some of you are letting on, it wouldn't even part of the video. It would just be, "jeez, that old guy got tired of being trapped by us and ran over a couple of our bikes. What an asshole" among the riders after. This is the kind of thing that these kinds of protests dream about: it validates the whole thing. "Come see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" They ought to mail Dick Cheney's brother some coupons or a check: he made their day. Lights! Camera! Action! Let's get overwrought! Tears! Oh the humanity! Let's go back to the sacred rock now and be martyrs.

Of course the guy in the car was being a dick. Big deal. There are a lot of ways to think about what might have been going through his head once the bikes started going under, not the least of which is just confusion and a bit of panic. I'm kind of glad that he didn't really freak out and either gun the car or reverse suddenly: an elderly driver once drove her car through my mother-in-law's living room wall because she thought she'd accidentally run over a cat in a parking lot.

I've been a bike commuter in several places (including Harare, Zimbabwe, in the early 1990s when the only bikes you could buy were these badly-made Chinese models that weighed about 100 lbs.) and bike riders have every reason to ask for more effective subdivision of the roads. In Atlanta, I had to ride in the traffic lane and frequently had city buses honking at me for one part of my route. I'm completely sympathetic to asking for accomodations, even protesting for them. But you know something? If I were protesting for bikes, I wouldn't be an asshole about it. Like, parking my bike in front of a car at an intersection and giving the car owner a lecture because, wow, he's in a car. First because that's being an asshole and second because it's goddamn dangerous. If you're really a bike rider, I hope to hell you view all cars as dangerous and do your best to stay away from them. Not because cars are evil, but simply because of what they are, even if they're operated by the most sweetly considerate and hyper-safe person on earth.

I have to admit, while I've had some close calls as a bike commuter, the only time me and a car connected it was my fault.

I was a bike messenger in DC, and I regularly ran lights (current day me follows traffic laws carefully in order to properly sustain my indignation at drivers). One time a driver stopped suddenly for a pedestrian, I caught my handlebar on her trunk, and whuppa - I was on the street and my bike was laying on the back of her car. The driver was really freaked out, but I just skinned my hand.

All most bikers want is to ride in peace.

Yes, but these are not those bikers.

I suspect all most old people want to do is to drive in peace, too.

30 or so of those bikers should spend a month in jail pondering how much fun it is to call themselves "Critical Mass" and go around being assholes.

obviously, if you don't ride a bike, you're not going to be worried about cars hitting bikes.

Not even sure what fallacy that is. I worry about all kinds of things that don't directly affect me: I don't serve in the army, but I worry about the poor buggers that do in wartime.

The point that the pedestrians in this thread are making is not that bikers aren't entitled to civility on the raod from drivers. Of course they are, and we all see appalling incidents every day. The point is that bikers should extend to more vulnerable people the same civility that they rightly claim for themselves, and that they don't. And that, whatever the rights and wrongs, this is not calculated to win sympathy.

Ian, I didn't say it was okay to run the bicyclists over. Very first thing I said.

And the video doesn't indicate that cars are mean to bicyclists. It shows that if you surround someone's car and bang on it, the chances are an elderly guy is going to overreact and run over your expensive bike are non-negligible.

It's like they had to manufacture some outrage after the other cars on the road just stopped and let the big ride go past.

you all are some old, bitter, depressing people. i'm sort of confused by why you would use the fact that old people can't drive and one put her car into your mom's dining room as a defense of a crazy old man injuring two people and nearly running a girl over.

Way to read, Ian.

I'm driving right now.

you all are some old, bitter, depressing people.

That is so untrue. Now get off our lawn.

Doesn't it look like they're in a parking lot when The Attack happened?

I'm sorry, I'm not seeing a motorist running through a crowd of riders. Video oddly doesn't show that.

as a defense of a crazy old man injuring two people and nearly running a girl over.

"Defense" may be the wrong word. I think "celebration" may be better.

How dare you be so cranky, Apo.

And those blocked-off streets? If you'd get out of your car, you'd find that they were no problem to walk down.

Genius, mate. It's not like I was on my way anywhere far away or anything.

I haven't watched the video yet, but my instincts are with Ian. I don't care about the circumstances, anyone deliberately accelerating a car toward people to intimidate them into getting out of their way is threatening deadly violence. If it's not a situation where deadly violence is appropriate, then it is absolutely, categorically, wrong -- not even a little excused by other people being assholes first.

Okay, I finally watched the video. I can't figure out what street that is! Somebody, help a sister out.

If it's not a situation where deadly violence is appropriate, then it is absolutely, categorically, wrong -- not even a little excused by other people being assholes first.

It's just that attitude that keeps the Democrats down.

"Accelerating" = "letting the car drift forward."

WheelsOfChange: "Nonmotorists suffer for and subsidize the car-dominated system. This has been extensively studied and proven."

FFs, how do you say stuff like that without laughing at your own ridiculousness?

How can anyone watching the same video I saw believe the claim that the bikes were thrown under the car? At 1:13, no bike under car. Car starts moving at 1:17, and at 1:24 bike is under car. Maybe this is the Rodney King phenomenon, videos taken in the state of California don't represent reality.
Now, there's no way 15 people were injured unless you use some sort of spiritual, "Seeing this upset me and injured me" crap, but the guy shouldn't have even had the car in gear. I'd believe the person with their foor stuck under the tire at 1:28 was injured (twisted ankle), and maybe one of the people pushing the car cut their hand.

I just watched it, and the driver should have been arrested. He deliberately (albeit at low speed) hit at least one person with his car (the woman whose foot was caught in her bike).

You may find the hippies esthetically distasteful (the cameraman, focusing on the completely irrelevant little kid? Tool.) but the rights and wrongs are absolutely clear -- irritating people on the one hand, and threatening death or serious injury on the other.

What is wrong with all you people? (Barring Megan, minneapolitan, and Ian.) Deliberately hitting someone with your car isn't 'being a dick', it's battery.

If it's not a situation where deadly violence is appropriate, then it is absolutely, categorically, wrong

On paper, or even onscreen, this is self-evidently correct.

But let us imagine the old guy standing on the sidewalk, holding a loaded pistol, and surrounded by hippies deliberately getting in his face, taunting him, preventing him from walking -- secure in the knowledge that if he shot them, they would be "right" and he would be wrong.

For some reason, if the old guy snaps and shoots somebody in the leg under those circumstances, I'm not inclined to condemn him as the source of the problem.

99- Are you by any chance a Florida legislator?

96: Bullshit 'letting the car drift forward.' A car is a big fucking hunk of metal -- if it's moving forward at all, (a) the car isn't doing it by itself, the driver is responsible. If you don't want your car to be moving forward, you have your foot on the brake, or you put it in park; and (b) any speed at all is fast enough to injure someone if they can't get out of the way, like the woman who's foot was caught in her bike. The driver doesn't get to decide that people should be able to get out of his way -- if they were standing with linked arms in front of him, making faces, he would be solidly wrong if he drove into them.

Deliberately hitting someone with your car isn't 'being a dick', it's battery.

Ah, but which is worse? I think that's the important threshold question.

For some reason, if the old guy snaps and shoots somebody in the leg under those circumstances, I'm not inclined to condemn him as the source of the problem.

Barring a situation where he believed himself to be being threatened with deadly violence, this is insane. You don't get to shoot people for being assholes. Not even if you 'snap'. What the fuck is wrong with you?

I'm driving right now.

You know, it's dangerous to drive with all those bicycles on your grill obscuring your view of the road.

"If it's not a situation where deadly violence is appropriate, then it is absolutely, categorically, wrong -- not even a little excused by other people being assholes first."

If you don't fight them over there, the bicyclists will just follow you over here.

Cala, you're just asking for me to drive over your rhetoric when you lay it down in front of me like that. The guy had to have his foot on the gas, and that's not just, like, so uncool, it's dangerous, and it doesn't matter how many in-your-face hippie douchebags were surrounding his van.

And yes, nonmotorists definitely suffer for and subsidize the car-dominated system, in ways ranging from cavalier attitudes toward cyclists getting hit to urban sprawl.

102: This is setting off all of my humorlessness, but battery is worse. If this horror in the car is allowed to attack people because he objects to their inconsiderateness, where the hell do you draw the line at making it open season for shooting kids with their radios too loud in public places.

Everyone who's supporting the driver should grow the fuck up.

Knowing the kind of hyperbole that goes into press releases, it thrills me no end to read this (in the list of casualties of the incident): "Two children who were traumatized cried...."

However, what they fail to mention is that Daddy gave them both biscuits afterwards and patted them on the head for performing on cue.

Even better: Mom violence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7b-Yk9IAN4

I don't know, seems to me like there should be more level headed riders taking charge and less "FUCK YOU"s and shouts of victimising (and definitely more bike helmets).

I've already said twice that the guy was wrong for hitting them, LB. On the other hand "he accelerated into a crowd of riders" Doesn't seem to be true.

And Ogged especially.

There's a sense that there are 736 Rules of Correct and Tolerant Behavior and god help you if you break any of them;

736 Rules of Correct And Tolerant Behavior my ass -- I don't want to live in a society without the "don't deliberately hit people with your car, other than when you're being threatened with deadly force and need to to escape" rule.

ot: is anyone in New York free for a drink or something on memorial day weekend?

109: Were there riders in front of him? Yes. Did the car go from motionless to moving forward (i.e., accelerate)? Yes. Did he actually hit one of them? Yes.

Everyone who's using stupid analogies should grow the fuck up. Seriously? Where do you draw the line between this and shooting someone?

We are victims of you, ma'am.

111: Crap, I've got around five things going on that weekend, and I'd really like to meet you. But name some times -- even if I can't make it, someone will.

And swampcracker's in town this upcoming weekend, we should plan drinks.

113: You mean Anderson? But seriously, it's not a bad analogy. The guy was still moving forward with that woman caught in her bike. He could at least have broken her leg (didn't, but because he got lucky, not because of the choices he made.) The distinction between deliberately hitting someone with your car and shooting them is a pretty fine one.

My schedule's pretty open. Saturday night or anytime Sunday would probably be best. The only time that really won't work is Friday, as I'll probably need to go to bed early & sleep off the giant summary judgment oppositions that we're filing that day.

Stupid analogy? Well, aren't they all?

But a car *is* a deadly weapon -- so I don't really see much difference b/t deliberately shooting someone & deliberately running 'em over.

And to reiterate: whether it's right or wrong, is it terribly *surprising* that the person being harassed would snap? Is it not, perhaps, the *purpose* of the harassment to cause the person to snap (so it can be recorded on video)?

The word is "provocation."

where the hell do you draw the line at making it open season for shooting kids with their radios too loud in public places.

Yeah, I think you're making an unwarranted assumption about where I come down on the "shooting kids" question.

I haven't seen the video. Of course you shouldn't be allowed to kill someone for being annoying. Even if they're super-annoying. I'm joking around. That said, communities have often used informal methods for enforcing community norms. Losing your bike to a car is one of them. Other kids beating the shit out of Yoo's kids every day until the Yoos decide to find more congenial climes is another. Furthermore, bullies (and similar) often take advantage of this "annoying" vs. "threatening" distinction to make life uncomfortable for other people, in the sure knowledge that the law isn't quite up to the task of punishing them for such behavior. (I would think the distinction is, for example, the first thing taught in Stalker 101.) Which means that people who respond inappropriately are going to garner some sympathy.

Other kids beating the shit out of Yoo's kids every day until the Yoos decide to find more congenial climes is another.

I'd be so happy if you abandoned this theme.

Yeah, second that.

Once you're saying that threatening deadly violence is an acceptable informal method of enforcing 'community standards' against annoying people, you start running into questions of who's the relevant community? The bicyclists?

Saying "Ma'am, we're victims of you" makes them sound like tools, sure. Would it have been an acceptable informal method of enforcing 'community standards' against annoying people if they'd pinned him against the hood of his car while they put some dents in it with their bikes? Not hitting him, personally, much -- just the same sort of property damage and minor injuries he inflicted. It would have been more authentic and less annoyingly hippieish, and by 'community standards' his actions were annoying enough to justify 'just snapping'.

I don't think that would have been appropriate, and I think he should have been arrested for doing pretty much the same sort of thing.

I'd be so happy if you abandoned this theme.

If three's a trend, surely you need more than that (or two, I think) to get to a theme.

Yeah, second that.

Oh, fine. I'll stop. Don't blame me when he and his confederates try to kill the very heart of America. Again.

Best I can tell, John Yoo doesn't have children.

The other day I applied to a craigslist ad for housing in Santa Cruz. The housing ad was searching for a couple -- a female couple specifically. I applied on behalf of my wife and myself, nonetheless, and swiftly came the reply: "Sorry, the place isn't big enough for two."

California: Same bigotry, different bigots.

124: Okay, in that case I'm fine with beating the shit out of them.

"Other kids beating the shit out of Yoo's kids every day until the Yoos decide to find more congenial climes is another."

I would also be happy if you stopped with this.

It's not that I think you're advocating violence against Yoo's kids (if he even has kids--I don't know that he actually does); it's not even that I think you'd condone it if occurred. It's the idea that staying stuff like this is just how you express the depth of your anger. This would seem to imply that people who don't have any impulse to bring the asshole's kids into it are less angry--which is pretty much of a piece with the idea that if you disapprove of bringing KSM's kids into it, you're just less angry about September 11.

I don't know that that's actually what you intend to express...honestly I'm not sure what you do intend.

Also, it couldn't possibly be any more hypocritical since the whole thing that makes Yoo so repulsive is his advocacy of, y'know, torturing people we don't like, particularly by abusing their children. At least to me.

I'm happy to let other people take over this argument, but I want to make one last point. thus far, we've mainly been stipulating that the CM kids are in fact assholes. While this does keep the argument moving forward, I'm not really convinced it's the case. We can't really know what started all of this, but from the story that ogged linked to, it seems like the old man tried to drive through the procession. I doubt the bikers went out of their way to surround some random car -- I've been on CM rides and this simply isn't what happens. Rather, they got really pissed when he tried to cross through the group (again, I think this is what the chronicle article indicates).

Now maybe we can call them assholes for getting pissed that he would try to drive through. On the other hand, I think it's reasonable for them to get upset at somebody doing this. It's patently dangerous. I recognize that they're interfering with him getting wherever he needs to go, but that doesn't excuse him trying to drive his car through a crowd of bikers. If anybody is the asshole here, it's the old man. He started the confrontation in the first place, provoking the bikers. They then got angry, he injured two of them and nearly ran over one, and they stayed surprisingly calm. Good for them.

117: The guy didn't snap. He was being a dick, not a victim. Look, Critical Mass is the Earth Liberation Front of cyclist advocacy, and their antagonistic m.o. pisses me off. But if you spend a lot of time on a bike and/or hang out with cyclists much, you'll understand why there's so much pent-up -- and totally justified -- frustration over cars vs. bikes.

California: Same bigotry, different bigots.

Not for nothing--and that sucks for you, sincerely--but different bigots makes a big difference. They haven't had time to institutionalize their bigotries, so those bigotries are less powerful.

Would it have been an acceptable informal method of enforcing 'community standards' against annoying people if they'd pinned him against the hood of his car while they put some dents in it with their bikes? Not hitting him, personally, much -- just the same sort of property damage and minor injuries he inflicted.

LB, didn't we find ourselves on different and reversed sides of a similar issue when someone was neighbors with someone who had been convicted of a pretty bad crime (paedophilia or rape). I thought D^2 advocated finding a hard man to explain to the convict that he should move, and that you agreed with such a plan. I don't particularly want to rehash that specific issue--in part because I think I might have been wrong--but rather I wanted to point out that people seem to be comfortable using informal violence to enforce norms that are very important to them.

Right. There's no obvious reason for them to have been victimizing him specifically, rather than just hampering his progress generally as part of the Critical Mass ride -- these are hippies making a point about bicycling generally, not a street gang of muggers.

(And I should say to OFE that I hate inconsiderate bicyclists too -- people biking on the sidewalk, or the wrong way on streets, make me want to put sticks in their spokes. But I don't.)

I'm with the Critical Mass people on this too, unaesthetic though they may be. The guy could have just stopped his car, got out and watched all the hippies ride past, then got back in. Couple minutes inconvenience, tops. What's the big deal?

131: You know, without looking back at that thread, I might have said something close to that, but meant as hyperbole -- what I'm remembering is saying something along the lines of "An attractive idea, but no."

The guy didn't snap. He was being a dick, not a victim.

Here we disagree.

Look, Critical Mass is the Earth Liberation Front of cyclist advocacy, and their antagonistic m.o. pisses me off.

They're dicks, IOW.

But if you spend a lot of time on a bike and/or hang out with cyclists much, you'll understand why there's so much pent-up -- and totally justified -- frustration over cars vs. bikes.

Maybe this old guy didn't do these things, & hence failed to understand why a lot of loud, offensive people were surrounding his car?

Anyway, to be clear, however obnoxious the cyclists were, it was *wrong* for him to drive over anyone's bike, let alone anyone else -- just like it would be wrong for him to shoot in my analogy.

What I'm saying, and I think a jury might well agree with me, is that he was being provoked into doing something rash, and that his culpability is thus lessened.

I'm not excusing the driver, but there's certainly an 'I'm not touching you' aspect to what the riders were doing, that would be pretty sure to get a nullification if the driver was charged.

'Accelerating into the crowd' is only true is a savant literal sense: he was inching forward, seemingly hoping they'd get out of the way, which is different from pushing forward hoping to do harm.

Somebody should run over that old guy's grandchildren's bicycles every day until he decides to find more congenial climes.

LB, it's possible to think that the entire self-aggrandizing over-the-top martyr-complex bullshit surrounding the incident and the way it is presented on film is pure douchbaggery and also think that the driver was doing something wrong and dangerous. That's what being a dick *is*: doing something careless, stupid and aggressive that very, very fortunately doesn't result in serious harm to anyone. If the YouTube video labelled that section "The Dick" (with the extra-special double pun bonus due to the guy's looks), that would be fine, as long as it didn't also feature protesters telling the guy that there were the crushed bodies of cute little toddlers under his wheels of military-industrial death and various granola-fed birkenstockers weeping for the sheer terror of the whole experience.

Ach. Somehow Apo has managed to shame me when no one else could. (This is why I'll end up supporting Edwards despite an uneasiness with some of the rhetoric he uses.) All references to Yoo's non-existent kids withdrawn as totally and terribly wrong.

When the incident starts, he's basically at a stand still, with no bikes under the car. But, they've already surrounded him. People who want to play human shield shouldn't whine when the obvious consequences occur.

various granola-fed birkenstockers weeping for the sheer terror of the whole experience

Fantastic line.

140: see 133. Also see common sense. And 138 has it pretty much right.

136: Dude, he was actually running over their bikes, and at least one person was caught in a bike that was going under the wheels of his car. Yes, he was going slowly, but exactly what he did could easily have broken her leg, and he had no way of knowing it wasn't going to. That's not "savant literal" -- what he intentionally did could very easily have badly hurt someone.

And Tim? What I said in the thread you were thinking of was:

I do like the picture of wandering down to the local gangster's and ordering up a spot of mayhem, but in real life I'd have to be on the moral qualms bench about it.

It shouldn't be a surprise where my sympathies are on this one. Maybe the statute of limitations hasn't run out.

People who want to play human shield shouldn't whine when the obvious consequences occur.

*This* is what I'm saying. (And LOL at the weeping birkenstockers.)

138: Oh, sure -- I was watching with the volume mostly down, so I'm sure I missed the full impact of how greviously annoying they were. I just don't care much that people make annoyingly lame videos, while I do care a lot about people threatening other people with serious injury.

Somehow Apo has managed to shame me

Without trying. I'm not much offended by the Yoo kids thing, especially since he doesn't seem to have any. Given that, I'd be content with his wife being waterboarded.

So, when is the First Annual Unfogged Bike Ride? I'll see y'all there [revs engine].

140, 145: So, the next time someone thinks you're an asshole, you're not going to whine if the threaten violence, and hurt you some. Not really badly, but some.

(Responses along the lines of "I would be too manly to be successfully threatened" will be noted as ridiculous.)

As long as she gets lemon chicken afterwards, that is. I'm not a monster.

Can we condemn the old dude (although I'm hesistant to say that anything an old guy does behind the wheel of a car is "deliberate") and the cyclists, but rule back in jokes about John Yoo's children? You people are killing me.

135: About a decade ago, while driving someone some 200 miles to ATL for a transplant, two car-loads of kids decided to play blocking games near the end of the trip. They'll never have any idea of how close the drivers came to being organ donors 'cause if I couldn't get around them I was going to shoot them in their little pointed heads. We got within a few seconds of that. I was a little stressed at the time, and not inclined to dialog.

IMX a confrontation doesn't have to go where any particular party thinks or hopes it will. If I were surrounded by a bunch of people pounding on my car they'd have tire tracks all over them in an instant. I saw the Reginald Denny video, that's not happening to me.

Given that, I'd be content with his wife being waterboarded.

Don't even go into their private consensual practices, okay?

(although I'm hesistant to say that anything an old guy does behind the wheel of a car is "deliberate")

You want to take everyone's license away at that age? Bold, but maybe you could talk me into it.

And, it seems worth noting that the post wasn't really about the rightness or wrongness of people in this particular circumstance (like I always say to my friends, "Old people'll kill ya"), but about the reaction of the CM folks, which really is illustrative of a particular mindset.

They're dicks, IOW.

It's not that they're dicks. They're radicals participating in a leaderless, loose-knit set of protest activities involving a certain level of sabotage. In the case of CM, the object of the sabotage is the normal functioning of traffic, so it's inherently confrontational. As for the provocation, I'll take CC's word for the legal view, but I also think that Nakku has it right in 133.

So, the next time someone thinks you're an asshole, you're not going to whine if the threaten violence, and hurt you some.

No one is saying anything so broadly, and I think you know it. We're talking about a specific example where they're intentionally putting themselves in the path of a moving vehicle.

Sorry, are you arguing that he was moving too fast to stop? I don't think so. He deliberately hit the bikes, and at least one person, because he thought they were being assholes by being in front of him. If it's okay for the driver to do that, what's the difference between that and the next time you piss someone off?

He deliberately hit the bikes, and at least one person, because he thought they were being assholes by being in front of him.

Or, because having your car surrounded is a threatening situation.

Hey ogged, what street is that?

151: Fine, if it turns out that the kids in the video are John Yoo's, I totally support the old guy.

You want to take everyone's license away at that age? Bold, but maybe you could talk me into it.

You needn't go that far. Here, you have to renew your license when you turn 70, and every three years after that. You don't need to take another test, but you need a doctor's certificate that you're (physically and mentally) fit to drive. Seems OK to me.

Yoo's married to Peter Arnett's daughter--at one point she worked for Knight Ridder; I don't know what she does now. She apparently doesn't agree with him about this stuff and learned about the OLC memos when they were leaked to the press. I don't want her waterboarded, but she clearly had a moral obligation to go Lysistrata on him years ago.

Sorry, are you arguing that he was moving too fast to stop?

Are you arguing he was moving too fast for them to get out of the way?

Plus, can we get past the Birkenstock thing? I thought we went over that last week.

He deliberately hit the bikes, and at least one person, because he thought they were being assholes by being in front of him.

And/or because he thought that starting to move the car would motivate the protesters to get out of the way? Isn't that pretty much what you do when someone's blocking your car, play a little slo-mo game of (not-gay) chicken? And given all the confusion, he may not have understood that there was a bike in immediate danger of going under the wheel?

ogged, what street is that?

I can't tell. In the first minute, it looks like they're going down Shattuck, but I don't know where the confrontation happens.

164: Being in front of a car isn't threatening to the car -- the situation isn't symmetrical.

Isn't that pretty much what you do when someone's blocking your car, play a little slo-mo game of (not-gay) chicken?

With pedestrians/bicyclists? No.

Being in front of a car isn't threatening to the car -- the situation isn't symmetrical.

Against my better judgment, I wade in: being surrounded when you're in your car is fucking terrifying. See the Reginald Denny example above. I long ago promised myself that if I were ever surrounded like that, I would run over anyone in my path and deal with the law later. I imagine this is particularly true if you're an elderly couple surrounded by angry young people.

And that woman is unclipped and free to move away long before she actually does move away.

Upon preview, what Ogged said.

With pedestrians/bicyclists? No.

Seriously? I see people do something like "chicken" in the parking lot of any major event. There's not even any animus on either side. Just a recognition that someone has to go first, and if you sit around and wait, you'll never get out of the parking lot.

When you see this sort of incident it's easy to see why Critical Mass exists. It's very illuminating when they reveal that drivers are willing to commit aggravated vehicular assault over a minor inconvenience. That guy would've been delayed far more if, say, there had been a fender-bender blocking the road.

FWIW, the only one of these I ever participated in turned every two or three blocks in order to prevent blocking any particular set of commuters for a very long time. The point, as I got it, was more of a 'take back the street' thing than a "hey cars! look how annoying we can be!" thing. Of course, Berkeley may well be another world. I didn't watch the video but it would not surprise me if they were hoping for such an incident/

The only person who really seemed annoyed on that ride was the guy who followed us through 15 blocks of zig-zagging in his pickup truck. This was also illuminating: He wasn't mad because we delayed him -- he sought out a delay by following us. So what's to be mad about?

169: Have you ever had someone blocking your car?

168: Honestly, I don't have much sympathy for the bikers or the old man. Dickery all the way around, and looks to me like they mostly deserve each other. But. This is what it sounds like:

"Look, I need to go. Let me out of this building."

"We're having a protest. You can leave when we're done and we say you can leave."

Holds a mace canister up. "I have to leave. I'm going to spray this in five seconds. How 'bout you not stand in front of it."

"Not moving."

"5, 4, 3, 2, 1." Pssssht.

"JESUS CHRIST, THIS GUY JUST MACED ME!!!"

Well yeah, but.

which really is illustrative of a particular mindset

To me this is about anger. As much as I'm sympathetic to bikers on the road, I'm uncomfortable with the confrontation - especially directed at an elderly driver. I'm a lot happier with the people at the end who are toning it down than those amping it up in the middle.

I think LB and B are explicitly comfortable with the idea of using anger to change things - just look at LB's approach to the comments here.

But it's more than just a personal style. I see angry people everywhere, and it seems like so many stressed, righteous people are just looking to escalate situations. I feel I seen tons of confrontations where things could have come out much better if people had been willing to set aside their anger and assume the other person is a human being.

"JESUS CHRIST, THIS GUY JUST MACED ME!!!"

You forgot to include weeping and birkenstocks.

See, all that anger is what you get when pot smoking goes out of fashion.

Against my better judgment, I wade in: being surrounded when you're in your car is fucking terrifying.

Bullshit. If he was terrified, then what he did wasn't so bad, but I don't believe he was terrified. These were hippies being an annoying delay, not attacking or threatening him until he started running over their bikes. (At which point they were speaking firmly to him, not particularly threatening him.)

169, 172: With another car you do the inch forward, inch forward, see who's going to give way think. With a pedestrian or a bicyclist you wait until they're clear.

Bullshit bullshit!

I feel I seen tons of confrontations where things could have come out much better if people had been willing to set aside their anger and assume the other person is a human being.

Perhaps, the sort of human being that is at risk of injury when hit by a car, rather than those that cars bounce off of like Superman.

180: If he was running over their bikes to get away because he was scared they were going to hurt him, he's right and I'm wrong. I just can't see looking at that tape and coming to that conclusion.

175: WTF? So it's OK to mace people if they get in your way?
I work in central London. Traffic, tourists, protests, roadworks, police blocks, film crews. There isn't enough mace. Sometimes you have to use patience instead.

These were hippies being an annoying delay, not attacking or threatening him until he started running over their bikes.

To me, the act of surrounding the car is a threat.

Related: I saw this video linked somewhere and I don't think it was here. No pushy activist bikers -- just one very Christian rider.

Related: I saw this video linked somewhere and I don't think it was here. No pushy activist bikers -- just one very Christian rider.

especially directed at an elderly driver

Who are unpredictable and dangerous even at the best of times. Pick your adversaries wisely, people!

184: You really think he thought they were going to hurt him? Or do you think something more like "Surrounding someone's car is something that happens in genuinely threatening situations, so he was entitled to react as if he were actually threatened." Because if the latter rather than the former, no, he wasn't. Violent reactions to threats have to be based on a genuine belief that one is at risk, not a belief that one is entitled to behave as if one were at risk.

So it's OK to mace people if they get in your way?

No. But when somebody says they're going to mace you (or drive forward) and you essentially dare them to do it, I stop choosing sides and sit back to enjoy the show.

A 72-year-old man driving the Chevrolet minivan and his 70-year-old wife were surrounded by bicyclists who rocked their vehicle, police said

I know, I know, if the police say p then -p, but still, if true, scary.

LB, seriously (and I say this as someone who does think the old guy was wrong, though not so wrong as to warrant arrest), have you ever been surrounded when you were in your car? I'm telling you, it's terrifying.

They rocked the vehicle before or after he started assaulting them?

Well, at least we can answer ogged's prior post: people do still rock.

You really think he thought they were going to hurt him?

Hard for me to say what he's thinking, but I would have taken it that way, and driven out of there.

191: I've been in cars surrounded by demonstrations in Indonesia several times. Quite frustrating, and occasionally frightening. And you could turn that situation into a genuinely life-threatening one by losing your patience and trying to run people over.

191: Surrounded by what? I've been surrounded by other cars, driving, surrounded by people and grocery carts in parking lots to the point that I had to sit and wait until they got out of my way. The video didn't show the beginning of the interaction, but I doubt that the cyclists were doing anything to focus on this guy specifically until he started trying to drive over them.

I'll say it again, if he was really scared of them, then he's right and I'm wrong. But he doesn't look scared on the video, and I don't see what's to be scared of with a crowd of slow moving bicyclists.

Again, look at the tape. The man and the woman are both getting out of the car being confrontational and aggrieved. I don't believe they're frightened.

and driven out of there.

Christ I need sleep. "Drove"

198: I believe the word you are looking for is "driveded".

Ugh. I also haven't watched the video so maybe I'm not speaking to what actually happened, but as I said before, I've ridden in a Critical Mass before, and the main thing that the cyclists there get aggressive about is people trying to pass them. (Now that I think of it, the pickup truck who followed us was following us because he wanted to pass us to make his own point, I guess.) It seems likely to me that the only way he managed to get into the middle of the pack was by being inappropriately aggressive. But Critical Mass is all about being inappropriately aggressive.

So there we've got a situation where one person decides to respond aggressively to a group of people behaving aggressively, and both sides end up getting hurt. It's hard to assign blame, but it's also hard to see either side as innocent. So in my view, the judgment is awarded to whichever side suffered more grievous damage. Sorry, old guy, you were the one operating a deadly weapon, so the onus of responsibility weighs more heavily upon you.

The man doesn't get out of the car. Remember, they have a handicapped plate; it's possible that he's the one who's partly immobilised.

Right -- she gets out of the car, he just rolls down the window.

I'm going to take a nap and dream of running over hippies.

LB's exactly right, and all y'all arguing that the bikers were threatening/provoking/intimidating the driver are really reaching. The driver is angry--you can see it in his face.

Look, you do not use your car to intimidate people. Period. If you're caught in a group if hippies on bikes and can't move forward, you turn the ignition off, engage the break, sit there, roll your eyes and curse at them until they get out of the way.

If, as happened to us last weekend, you're trying to pull into a legal, metered parking space and a valet for a restaurant half a block up runs down the street to stand in your way so that some dickhead in a Porsche can have the space instead of you, you do not--as Mr. B. did--keep moving forward in order to get the valet to move. You yield to the fucking pedestrian and find another parking space.

And yes, I read Mr. B. the riot act. Just as the guy in the van's wife damn well should have.

Having your car surrounded is terrifying, but you have a steel shell around you. Being attached to a bike that is being sucked under a car is also terrifying.

I don't think this guy's motivation was fear. I think he was impatient with the hippies and felt safe inside his car and thought he could nudge them out of the way (which is battery) because humans inside cars do not understand how big cars are and how much force they apply.

I think you guys are letting the obnoxiousness of the hippies blind you to the fact that they actually behaved very well. After a physical threat to them, they didn't return the threat to people, they stated the actions that would reverse the situation (back up the car), and in the heat of all that, were both heated and polite. If they weren't hippies, you'd think they did great.

And, speaking of perceived threats, nice job assholes. I think this is pretty safely my category of "do this to my kid and I'll beat you with a pipe."

And if they weren't hippies, I think the situation would have been FAR worse, not just annoying. (Since I've seen that happen.)

you do not--as Mr. B. did--keep moving forward in order to get the valet to move.

Before I sleep, I need to point out that your husband rules.

You yield to the fucking pedestrian and find another parking space.

Example #1 of why we've never had a woman president.

206: Comity! Although a bike chain would be another attractive option.

(Again, sadly, not in real life. But a stern letter would be written; or whatever my best option for getting people in the worst trouble I could.)

206: WTF? What was even the rationalization behind that crap?

206: I almost blogged that yesterday, but got distracted. Amazingly poor judgment.

208: Yeah, it would have been real nice if the pedestrian hadn't moved and had gotten bumped.

"Papa, why did you just run into that man?"

I almost blogged that yesterday, but got distracted. Amazingly poor judgment.

It's okay. You just try to be the best Apostropher Blogger possible, and don't beat yourself up over it.

I think you guys are letting the obnoxiousness of the hippies blind you to the fact that they actually behaved very well.

This describes me. I'm so pained by their irritating antics that it's hard to be objective.

"Papa, why did you just run into that man?"

Because he was totally asking for it, son. Now stay in the car while I go punch him in the nuts.

The reason Critical Mass rides are often a dumb strategy is simply that when you're doing them you know you are going to provoke pathological rage from some people, you know there's going to be at least one ugly confrontation, you know that the police are going to want to mix it up with you, and you also know that this isn't going to win you much sympathy.

A sustained Critical Mass campaign about a particular issue--"we want a bike lane parallel to Lyndale Avenue so that we can ride swiftly along that geographically important stretch without being in danger"-- makes perfect sense. Then when people get pissed off about the bikes, you can say to them "Well, everyone needs to travel along Lyndale, give us our fucking bike lane and we'll call it square".

But when what a protest says is "We're going to be annoying once a month until you give up your car", that's stupid. The people with cars have way more power than you do, and you're not inconveniencing them enough to make them change their behavior. It's much easier for them just to either put up with you or act aggressive than to give up their cars.

If you want to change things, you need the people and the resources to sustain a total campaign long enough to change things. Doing things half-assed often does more harm than good.

The thing is, being in cars really messes with people. They will get angry, they will hurt you. Provoking that unless you can win is so fucking stupid as to defy belief. Radical protest, violent protest, militant protest--don't start it unless you seriously think you can win.

What was even the rationalization behind that crap?

My guess is that they envisioned it like a fire drill.

Didn't they break the windshield of his car?

216, 209: I know you're joking, but I want to punch *you* in the nuts.

If I do, will everyone justify it, since you provoked me?

When I get irritated with the hippies, it's because I'm a hippie (well, not really--more of a post-hipster activist) and I get so mad when they screw things up. They are my people and they shouldn't be so stupid.

217: This is probably right -- Critical Mass may be ill-advised, tactically. But it doesn't change the rights and wrongs of this individual situation.

219: Maybe, but not on tape, and not before he started driving into people on bikes. If it's true, it's exactly as wrong as the equivalent amount of property damage he did to the bikes he ran over. (That is, absolutely, if it happened it's wrong. But given the sequence of events, it doesn't either explain or excuse his behavior.)

The correct course of action was to put the car in park, but rev the engine really loudly. That way it's threatening without being dangerous, and the hippies would flip out because of the added contribution to global warming.

Joking aside, B, metered parking spaces are first come first serve. Just because somebody drives an expensive car, doesn't mean they get to elbow their way to the closest space ahead of everybody else. The valet wasn't going to let himself get run over.

222: Exactly. And confusing one's aesthetic objections to tactics with actual judgments of right, wrong, and blame is way more fucking annoying than hippies ever are.

Roll down the windows and crank the AC up.

The windshield was broken after they drove- it's not at the beginning, but at 2:11 you can see behind the woman that it's been cracked. That's probably why she got out to yell.

blame is way more fucking annoying than hippies ever are.

Debatable.

But when what a protest says is "We're going to be annoying once a month until you give up your car"

Is that what it's about? I thought it was a way of forcibly reminding drivers that there were cyclists using the roads and they have rights.

225: Yes, apo, I know. The fact that the valet was being an asshole doesn't mean it was okay for Mr. B. to be an asshole--especially since his assholery actually had the potential to injure someone, as opposed to simply annoying them.

I'm sorry, if people can't keep their cool when driving, they shouldn't drive.

aesthetic objections to tactics

Also strategic and moral objection to tactics. Aren't actions like this causing too much irritation to be justified given their very low chances of resulting in productive change?

Also, B, you're lame, but your husband rulz.

232: Okay, fine. Object to the tactics all you like and on any grounds you like. Just don't conflate your objections with the issue itself.

Bah, I hate men.

222: Oh, of course it doesn't. It's never appropriate to knowingly risk driving over a cyclist unless they're a guerilla cyclist armed with a Glock or something. (That would nice up the Critical Mass rides, huh?) I just view the visceral rage of many posting here as good solid testimony to the ineffectiveness of the tactic--that so many people who (I believe) are more or less sympathetic to bike-riding are so angered by this situation that they feel a really intense sympathy with someone who is letting himself risk squishing a person. That's not just hating on hippies!

Sometimes being on this site is like having six or seven angry wives.

Sometimes being on this site is like having six or seven angry wives.

Like the Prophet commands.

Sometimes being on this site is like being surrounded by guys who say annoying things just to wind you up so they can tell you how cute you are when you're mad.

You're not that cute, B.

The windshield was broken after they drove- it's not at the beginning, but at 2:11 you can see behind the woman that it's been cracked. That's probably why she got out to yell.

Right, right. They weren't breaking the car before the guy ran over the bicycles. So the guy wasn't reacting to that. Still, their response isn't exemplary, exactly. You have to hit a windshield pretty hard to get it to crack.

The hippies didn't look to be very threatening, but one of the earlier rides, according to the newspaper article, featured someone picking up a bike and smashing the car window. If Mr. Get-Off-My-Lawn had read that article, and I'm going to bet he doesn't hang much with hippies, he probably was pretty freaked. Still doesn't excuse him running them over, but I think 166 is probably what he had in mind.

Is that what it's about? I thought it was a way of forcibly reminding drivers that there were cyclists using the roads and they have rights.

I'm pretty sure it doesn't work that way. The driver gets the same message he gets at a protest where people are marching down the road. That message being "Here are some douchebags blocking the road for no reason. Sometimes they're on foot, now they're on bikes. Either way, it's illegal, and you have the right of way, so they're baiting you to run over them, which would also be illegal, so all you can do is wish the cops were here to get these people off the road."

217:
The reason Critical Mass rides are often a dumb strategy is simply that when you're doing them you know you are going to provoke pathological rage from some people, you know there's going to be at least one ugly confrontation, you know that the police are going to want to mix it up with you, and you also know that this isn't going to win you much sympathy.

Hey, riding a bike down the street alone provokes pathological rage from drivers, ugly confrontations, and police hostility. This, perhaps, is the greater problem.

A sustained Critical Mass campaign about a particular issue--"we want a bike lane parallel to Lyndale Avenue so that we can ride swiftly along that geographically important stretch without being in danger"-- makes perfect sense.

Bike lanes are a very very bad idea, and no one who's serious about urban bicycling advocates their construction.

Then when people get pissed off about the bikes, you can say to them "Well, everyone needs to travel along Lyndale, give us our fucking bike lane and we'll call it square".

This is exactly the opposite of what urban cyclists want.

It's conventional wisdom that if your car is approached by street toughs you should slowly drive away (rather than staying put or, worst of all, getting out of the car). I once saw this guy give the audience that exact advice on the Oprah show.

Obviously, we know that the bikers weren't "street toughs", but I don't think the old dude could have known that. We don't know that he intentionally drove through the demonstration. He might have been lost for all we know. Then suddenly his car was surrounded by a group of shouting strangers.

From a Physics 101 standpoint he "accelerated" into them, but he was going really slowly. He probably just let his car coast on automatic transmission (i.e. without ever stepping on the gas pedal) and didn't realize how close he was to the person in the front. If they had been on foot, they would have been able to get out of the way easily, but the peculiarities of a bike wheel made things different here.

In general, this was all just a misunderstanding. I don't understand what everyone's getting all mad about.

We can hate on everybody, right? The driver behaved badly in driving over the bikes instead of waiting out the riders, and the riders are tiresome self-righteous drama queens who inconvenience people for no good reason and knowingly provoke confrontation (or at least knowingly create situations in which confrontation is much more likely).

Can acts of will be caused?

As best as I can tell, they're all in the wrong, but they're wrongness caused inconvenience & his caused injury and property damage.

No one on the roads has the right to deliberately obstruct traffic. (and the video--while it's hard to tell--looks like they've deliberately stopped their bikes in front of his car--a car with handicapped plates no less. Nice) If a car or a bunch of cars drove into a busy intersection & just parked they wouldn't get a much better reaction.

The main people they annoy in my neighborhood is pedestrians, who have no fucking way to cross the street because there is a bunch of vehicular traffic not obeying traffic laws. Way to stand up for the little guy.

That said, the driver looks like he is deliberately accelerating to damage property & maybe cause (minor) injury, not panicking. He is using violent force; it's been almost deliberately provoked but it is not, in fact, in self defense, and it's a situation where someone could have gotten really hurt. Everyone's in the wrong.

Bike lanes are a very very bad idea, and no one who's serious about urban bicycling advocates their construction.

This is my first time encountering this position. Could you elaborate?

Fuck if I know, FL.

I wish there were more, not bike lanes, but dedicated bike paths for commuting on. To my mind, that would be keen. Of course then probably I would try to bike on one and get run down by a bunch of hardcore urban bikers with their fixies or whatever.

Can acts of will be caused?

This was the biggest argument I ever had with a high-school teacher, during an AP English discussion of Paradise Lost.

I thought it was a way of forcibly reminding

See, that's why they're dicks. They want to "forcibly" do whatever? Get a job beating people in Gitmo, then.

Why are bike lanes bad? I don't bike often, but I like the roads better that have the bike lanes than the ones that don't.

No one on the roads has the right to deliberately obstruct traffic.

I know many drivers feel this way when I stop at a light that just turned red, when they wanted to run it.

a car with handicapped plates no less

So?

Hey, riding a bike down the street alone provokes pathological rage from drivers, ugly confrontations, and police hostility. This, perhaps, is the greater problem.

A lot of advocate activists use tactics that are arguably counterproductive, and they always have a reason that they believe in those tactics.

data point: my husband commutes to work on a bike. We own a car but he uses his bike more. I mainly walk & take public transportation--I do take cabs to the airport. As far as he's concerned, bike lanes good, Critical Mass bad.

Bike lanes can be dangerous because of the way they interact with: (1) buses; (2) parking cars & people getting into and out of parked cars. I'd imagine left turns are tough too; I don't bike on streets so I don't know for sure.

I still think they're preferable to a lack of bike lanes. What really might make sense would be to put them along streets where there's no parking.

I know many drivers feel this way when I stop at a light that just turned red, when they wanted to run it.

So?

Everybody seems to agree on a basic reading of the events that has Dick Cheney's brother punishing the bikers for their annoying behavior by running them over. That seems wrong, and is where most of the analogies have fallen short.

There's a difference between driving through an angry mob of hippies who are intentionally obstructing your path (who knows why?), and plowing through a crowd of hippies because you find their attitude to be smug.

Bike lanes are bad because they reinforce the idea that bikes are not meant to share the street with cars.

Bike lanes are bad because they encourage cyclists to ride on the sidewalk in places where there is not a bike lane. (In my city, the bike lanes are so close to the sidewalk that they are effectively the sidewalk. Not helpful).

Bike lanes are bad because they generally have all the same problems as cyclists on the sidewalk. Cars don't look for bikes when crossing a bike lane. Pedestrians are willing to walk in a bike lane since there are no cars there. Cars park across bike lanes all the time.

There's a difference between driving through an angry mob of hippies who are intentionally obstructing your path (who knows why?), and plowing through a crowd of hippies because you find their attitude to be smug.

In the absence of a genuine belief that the driver is being physically threatened, both are equally wrong.

195: Similar experiences in a nearby country. (Are you rancid-bat guy?) I've also been surrounded in a car by hostile drunk frat boys -- hm, actually, more than several times -- in the US. It's very unlike being surrounded by grocery carts in a supermarket lot.

Like I said, I'm surprised that Cheney guy didn't rev up his van and mow them down. Maybe I'm becoming inured to horrifying tales of road rage.

Working out the numbers, it's about as much momentum at that speed as someone riding a bicycle. If one is potentially deadly force, so is the other.

Ritual admission that running people over with cars, no matter how slowly, is wrong wrong wrong. (I've only ever run over a phone. It offended me.)

204 is exactly correct. 208 is just moronic. There is absolutely never any justification for using a vehicle to intimidate/force people to move in any non-violent, non-threatening situation, period. If you do this, you pretty much deserve whatever you get (in a perfect world, an assault charge. In reality, probably nothing but sometimes a keyed car or busted mirror, or occasionally a beating)

People here manage to feel encouraged to ride on the sidewalk all the fucking time, even though there are no bike lanes to speak of. I hates them. (Of course, pedestrians here also tend to feel pretty happy to walk in the street even when there are cars there, so there's that.)

Back when I commuted by bike, I bought into the line that cyclists are safest when they demand the space they need on the road. Sometimes, e.g. when there isn't enough room for passing safely, this means being in the middle of the lane or doing other sort-of-aggressive things. In urban environments this is more sensible than it sounds because it's not that hard to keep pace with traffic.

262: that is absolutely true. If you are cycling at pace with traffic, it's best to be out there and visible. Forcing people to pass you by not keeping pace is dangerous though.

Bike lanes are a very very bad idea, and no one who's serious about urban bicycling advocates their construction.

This is my first time encountering this position. Could you elaborate?

They're usually 'dual-use' parking lanes - lanes diamonds painted in them, but where it's still legal to park. The result is that you can't ride in them because they're blocked by parked cars, but if you don't, drivers get very angry that you're not in the bike lane where you belong. Furthermore, lanes of this type encourage a lot of unpredictable weaving and lane changing, kind that makes drivers at first confused and then angry.

When they're not dual-use lanes, they're badly designed in other ways. There is never a provision for left-turning on streets with otherwise well-designed bike lanes. The result is that when you leave the lane to make a legal left turn, drivers, again, get confused ('Why did you leave your lane?') and angry ('Get out of my way!'). Also, they're usually in the door zone. That is, they're a meter's worth of street set aside right next to a parking lane, which is exactly the most dangerous place to ride a bike: right where someone who didn't look could kill you by opening their door.

They're badly maintained - street sweepers don't clean them (often because they're parking lanes) or, if they're separated from the road, street sweepers are actually unable to maintain them.

And finally, and above all else, in every case, badly designed or not, they encourage ignorance amongst car drivers - where there are bike lanes, there are drivers who are unaware that in most jurisdictions in North America, cyclists can legally use any part of the lane they want, as long as it's safe.

I note that with age my tolerance for riding in traffic has decreased significantly. That Michael Bratman and Peter Railton were both seriously injured in bike accidents didn't help.

No one on the roads has the right to deliberately obstruct traffic.

That's my justification for lane splitt: "How is traffic supposed to move with all these cars in its way?"

Er, lane splitting.

That Michael Bratman and Peter Railton were both seriously injured in bike accidents didn't help.

In grad school I knew some philosophers who would have gone out on their bikes and gotten knocked down by a car for precisely this reason.

Forcing people to pass you by not keeping pace is dangerous though.

In my experience, almost every cyclist I've ever seen on the road forces people to pass him/her by not keeping pace. Are we presuming that the default urban cyclist doesn't? If so, just being bothered by them would be an asshole attitude.

Bratman's accident, though, didn't come from his riding in traffic.

Good cyclists are safest when they demand space on the road. Occasional cyclists, or those teaching small children how to ride in traffic, appreciate bike lanes very much, thank you.

In the absence of a genuine belief that the driver is being physically threatened, both are equally wrong.

I agree that Dick's actions would be wrong under either interpretation, but how on earth are you arriving at equally wrong? Under, Dick is the aggressor; under the second, the granolas are.

272 to 258

"under" s/b "under the first"

I am not talking about "obstructing traffic" in the sense that all traffic obstructs other traffic, and a critical mass of bikes going at bike speed prevents you from riding at car speed. I mean deliberately coming to a dead stop when not forced to by some obstacle. This isn't allowed, and cars that do it don't get a good reaction either. Maybe that's not what Critical Mass is supposed to do but that seems to be what the video shows.

272: Because even if the granolas are being aggressively annoying, Dick is still a grownup with a license to drive a car, and therefore in charge of his own actions.

This is probably anti-hippie or even Republican, but the fact is that we don't have the infrastructure for bicycles as a primary mode of transportation in the US. The law might say that bikes are entitled to use the road just like cars, but this is insanity--it's just blind luck if you don't get seriously injured when riding your bike here (while riding, I've been hit by a car once--car's fault, no serious injuries--and almost hit another time--my fault, no injuries, but would have been killed if not for the driver's quick reaction). The trouble is that a reasonable infrastructure would require so much political and financial capital that it seems unrealistic, and people try to make the best of a bad situation, but it's not going to get much better except bit by bit in progressive urban areas.

269: I guess it depends on the city. I've seen lots of people pacing just fine (you are perhaps less likely to notice them and remember it). In most reasonable sized cities, downtown traffic doesn't go really ever go any faster than a fit cyclist can. When I used to cycle to work in Canada, I'd average about 35km/h and could sprint to 60 for short bursts (I rode a lot). This easily matched urban traffic in, say Vancouver. Usually you are slowing down for cars, actually. As soon as you hit the suburbs though, it's a different story.

Having now looked at the video, I switch sides. Neither oldster is very attractive, even for oldsters, and that--as always--is determinative. Also, I think LB's right: they aren't afraid, they're just angry.

That said, I feel a certain sympathy for the oldsters because effective harassment, including the kind we are all clearly against, often takes the form of irritating behavior that could turn worse and against which there appears to be no effective counter-action except to grin and bear it. That has a real cost for the harassed person. And it seems possible for older people to misinterpret the possibility of targeting when faced with a crowd of surrounding young people.

270: I don't know the details, but it served as a reminder that very bad things can happen on a bike. What's the story?

276: This, I could agree with. I'd love to ride a bike in NY, but I'm too chicken, and the people I know who aren't too chicken have generally gotten hurt pretty badly once or twice. I don't know how to make NY safe for cyclists (bike lanes around here are a cruel joke) -- while I'd support it if it could be done at any reasonable cost, I don't know how it's supposed to work.

264: Thanks. That all makes sense.

Seriously, bike lanes are less safe even (especially?) for inexperienced and young cyclists, because they promote the illusion that you are safe from cars. It ain't so. Someone is going to back out of their driveway, or open their door, without looking to see if there's a bike coming, and if the biker is unlucky and/or inexperienced, he will have a nasty wreck. Off-street bike trails are a good way to go for learning.

269: You just don't notice the bikes that are going the same pace as you because you don't pass them.

LB is a republican!

Occasional cyclists, or those teaching small children how to ride in traffic, appreciate bike lanes very much, thank you.

What about badly designed or actively dangerous ones (i.e. the vast majority of them), B?

The law might say that bikes are entitled to use the road just like cars, but this is insanity--it's just blind luck if you don't get seriously injured when riding your bike here (while riding, I've been hit by a car once--car's fault, no serious injuries--and almost hit another time--my fault, no injuries, but would have been killed if not for the driver's quick reaction).

I can trump your experience with my blindly lucky years of riding bikes safely in urban environments. We have the infrastructure - we just need drivers who don't actively want to kill cyclists.

276: My dream that came to me while walking down Michigan Ave one day was an elevated series of bike paths, built off supports in the centers and edges of streets. These would be a whole second set of roads, accessible by stairs, that would be unobstructed by cars and allow bikes to travel on most major routes through the city for a very reasonable cost compared to most mass transit infrastructure.

Also, the paths would be built out of clear polymers, because it would be sooo cool looking to look down on the car traffic below you.

57: I have participated in Critical Mass rides, too. I did one in Chicago, where for almost the entire ride, the bicyclists were moving faster than the bumper to bumper traffic. It made for an effective visual. Imagine being stuck in traffic, not moving at all, and seeing hundreds of bikes whiz by, completely free.

My friend Pippy regularly joins the Chicago rides. Her friends also have a project where they chain up a bicycle painted entirely white in locations where bikers have been killed in traffic accidents.

I haven't read the full thread, so I don't know if anyone beside Frowner has defended the Critical Mass rides, but I want to take a stab at it. Confrontational tactics are designed to polarize. The goal of a Critical Mass demonstration typically should not be to win the hearts and minds of the people whose path you are blocking. The goal is to take people who are already sympathetic to you and radicalize them, to get them to believe that dramatic action on this issue is both necessary and possible.

I agree with Frowner that confrontational tactics need to be well thought through, and part of a larger strategy. Focusing on local achievable demands is certainly a good move. Critical Mass is not functioning like that, most of the time. It works more like a low level anti-car insurgency. I think there is some value to that, too.

You know, the reason NYC is so bad for bikes is the UAW and the transit workers' union....

277 typoed 50 to 60 --- i was never that fast.

- we just need drivers who don't actively want to kill cyclists.

This will have to await Gozer the Gozerian.

LB is a republican!

I think this is the highest form of compliment, but I warn you that I said something similar to this to LizardBreath once and I still bear the scars from the response. So be careful.

we just need drivers who don't actively want to kill cyclists

This is the unrealistic part.

But seriously, sharing lanes can work in dense urban environments, but very little of the US is like that. And when you compare the US to the system they have in Amsterdam, for example, you realize how far we are from having a real space for bikes.

All my near misses have been due to doors, so putting a bike lane right next to them is poor planning. This is the shit I have to deal with every day. There's a major bus stop that's in one of the bike lanes- genius, we can kill everyone who's trying to save gas in one fell swoop so the world will be left to the drivers.
285- And they'll have giant fans that reverse direction so you're provided with a tailwind both ways on your commute!

well, the Chicago rides I've seen managed to alienate my husband who rides his bike to work 5 days a week--and it's not because we've ever been driving during one. If your target is motorists you might want to think about how pedestrians feel.

270: I don't know the details, but it served as a reminder that very bad things can happen on a bike. What's the story?

I can't remember the details, but it was at an intersection and involved some guy (the driver) blasting through. You have to cross streets eventually, whether you're in traffic or not.

the fact is that we don't have the infrastructure for bicycles as a primary mode of transportation in the US

Aaagh! We have streets, they work just fine. The point of CM -- to which I am sympathetic -- is that if you get enough cyclists on the street, you make drivers realize that they have to accommodate bicycles. And then cycling becomes mainstream, people realize that it's something you can actually do in urban areas, and future development and policy become increasingly bike-friendly.

And clearly, in B's case, the solution would be to have the driver pull up and the passenger get out to persuade/cockpunch the valet to get him to move.

Are there any cities in the US that are well-designed for bikes?

259: Are you rancid-bat guy?
Don't pigeon-hole me. I'm a complex human being with feelings, desires, and aspirations. Jeez, you eat one rancid bat...

Also, I don't know about ogged in particular, or the guy who we now seem to be calling Dick Cheney, but most drivers have a strong desire to not hit cyclists or pedestrians -- this is about the only thing I find a cyclist can safely assume about the motor vehicles sharing the road. If they see you and if you behave predictably, they will not hit you. Safe cycling techniques are about helping the drivers not hit you, rather than staying away from the evil drivers who all want to hit you.

we just need drivers who don't actively want to kill cyclists

This will have to await Gozer the Gozerian.

This is the unrealistic part.

Really? I figure it'd only take a generation to have the majority of drivers be safe and comfortable around cyslists with a few easy changes in driver education and licensing procedures.

I was thinking about that -- wouldn't a firm but non-dangerous move be to pull up next to the parking space, blocking it, and roll the window down and explain to the valet: "I got here first. I'm going to sit here until you leave, and then I'm going to park, but I'm not going to get out of the Porsche's way so it can park, regardless of how long you stand there."

We have streets, they work just fine.

No, they really don't. Cars and bicylces differ very much in their manueverability and rates of acceleration. When you mix the two, someone always feels constrained or at risk.

I understand that Amsterdam is actually one of the worst cities for bikers in the world. Slippery cobblestones all over the place.

Uggg, I haven't watched the video, I haven't participated in Critical Mass rides, but I am a bike commuter and this whole thread is depressing.

230 gets it right. As I understand the point of Critical Mass rides is to make bike riding visible. It will annoy some people but, hopefully, it will also remind some people that if they want to ride a bike, that it's a viable option, and if they're driving that they should be somewhat conscious of bikes.

I was hanging out at the community bike shop (all volunteer, strongly activist) on Saturday and someone came in and was talking with the staff about his experience of bike commuting. After talking about almost getting hit several times he said that his tactic when he's on the road and cars are not paying attention to him is that he will merge into the lane and, once he's obviously taking up the lane, slow down forcing the cars behind him to slow down to 5mph and then, once they've slowed down, pull over to the side and wave them past him. He said the remarkable thing about this is that most of people, when they pass him, look either apologetic, or thank him for making himself visible. Some get pissed off, of course, but it sounded like a lot of people get the message, that he isn't trying to be an asshole, but that they don't need to be in such a hurry.

Hearing that story made me think positively about bicyclists doing things to create visibility.

Speaking of which, May 18th is Bike To Work and School day.

I could see how the Mass Ave bike lane would put you off bike lanes forever. That thing is a menace.

The trouble w/ riding in traffic, I think, is that riders get the same average speed as cars, but they do it by maintaining 10-15 mph a higher % of the time, whereas cars spend a lot of time at 25-30 and a lot of time at 0.

In Chicago the lake path is so good that it's frustrating that there aren't just a few crosstown streets w/ good lanes.

282.1: Around here, the bike lanes are as wide as the car lanes--wide enough to park in (which yes, people do) and still have quite a bit of clearance on the left. Yeah, you have to look ahead to see if anyone is in the car who might open the door, and to see if people are backing out. Then again, you have to look ahead in traffic, too. If you've got to turn left and you're me, you glance behind and move over when there's plenty of room; if you're me riding with PK, you go on to the crosswalk, dismount, and walk across.

If you're learning to ride properly, you don't assume that being in a bike lane means you don't have to pay attention. Same as learning to drive properly.

when he's on the road and cars are not paying attention to him is that he will merge into the lane

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't this totally insane?

Oh, and this is my favorite bike lane feature. It's bike-car death match!
Also, bike helmets- not as great as you may think. Increased chance of surviving an accident, but also increased chance of being in one in the first place.

301: Yeah, I don't think anyone would say that the US has a good bike infrastructure if they had seen what other countries have. I've never been to Amsterdam, but the new roads in Beijing designed to accommodate both bikes and cars are fantastic. The bike like is separate from both parking and moving cars, typically just as wide as the car lane, with accommodations for turning left.

In Chicago the lake path is so good that it's frustrating that there aren't just a few crosstown streets w/ good lanes.

Yep. One summer living in Hyde Park and working in the Loop, the six miles riding to downtown were an absolute pleasure, and the five blocks from the path to my office were a misery.

I understand that Amsterdam is actually one of the worst cities for bikers in the world. Slippery cobblestones all over the place.

Maybe. I was only there for a few days, but the bike paths are physically and not just notionally separate from the road, which seems to be what's necessary for a biking culture in which people other than risk-taking twenty-something males can be regular bike commuters.

Also, bike helmets- not as great as you may think.

Until a truck runs over your head.

IME, biking is a lot safer in cities where a lot of people bike, and drivers are used to them.

Also, I don't know about ogged in particular, or the guy who we now seem to be calling Dick Cheney, but most drivers have a strong desire to not hit cyclists or pedestrians -- this is about the only thing I find a cyclist can safely assume about the motor vehicles sharing the road.

That's funny - I assume the exact opposite. That is, I assume that every single driver out there wants to kill me. My one safe-cycling directive is to not give them an excuse to do so. I find not depending on the wisdom or skill of others does wonders for my well-being.

If they see you and if you behave predictably, they will not hit you.

Are you one of them vehicular cycling advocates?

304: I think it really depends on the city geometry. I'm out of shape now, but when I was cycling a lot my `downtown' riding experience was very different. Unless someone was jackrabbiting, I would just be faster light to light, period.

Also, the paths would be built out of clear polymers, because it would be sooo cool looking to look down on the car traffic below you.

Eep. I was so with you until this part. Vertiginous!

307: Yep. That's a good one. Similar to what I got used to in California, where in many streets, there's a half-size lane for bikes that's separated by a solid white line -- except when you get to an intersection, when the line breaks and becomes the right turn lane for cars.

Cars are supposed to merge into the bike lane to turn right, and there is a question about it on the California driver's test, but in my experience, most drivers just turn right across the bike lane. Another hazard for bike lane users to deal with.

311: Heh, I pulled up that article and have left it open, so as to show PK when he gets home from school. "See? This is why you should ALWAYS wear your helmet!"

305: I found that ok about california, but the parked cars are a constant door hazard so not perfect.

What I did find worked very well was parts of teh Bay are have a residential street paralleling a busy street --- where cars can only drive 1-2 blocks along it but bikes can continue on. This has the dual advantage of keeping heavy traffic from spilling onto the residential street, and giving a low volume route for bikes.

301: But the point is priority of use. The streets themselves work just fine; what doesn't work is drivers' sense that they have greater rights to the streets than cyclists. There are many approaches to dealing with that, and with accommodating bicycle transportation in general. An interested person could start here and here.

This is how bike lanes should be - they just built these near MIT. The proper order is sidewalk, bike lane, curb, parking, car lane. Left turns are still difficult because you have to move into the car lane, but at least it's obvious what you're doing- since my biggest fear is doors, this eliminates that threat.

320: but what happens at lights? That scheme is useless if the cars are right turning across your lane, you have to stop/slow at every green light.

320: wow, I'd use that.

Unfortunately the trend in the U.S. seems to be more places w/ no sidewalks at all.

Are you one of them vehicular cycling advocates?

I don't know what that is. I came to my cycling philosophy in a couple years of commuting.

And I do firmly believe that cars want to avoid hitting me. I mean, in California, anyway; in Colombia I might not apply the same rules. The problem, which I may not have emphasized enough, is that you can't trust them to be any good at it.

I also apply a generalized distrust of drivers, but not that they want to kill me -- rather, that at any moment they will do something that they wouldn't do if they knew I was there. So I would never cross an intersection with a car flanking me such that if it turned right, it would knock me over. And if the street is too narrow to pass on, then I ride in the center of the street -- I'm not invisible, they're not going to drive right into me, but they might well try to pass without gauging their clearance well enough to avoid running me off the road.

The first picture in 307 is really funny.

No, they really don't. Cars and bicylces differ very much in their manueverability and rates of acceleration. When you mix the two, someone always feels constrained or at risk.

But, drivers are constrained or put at risk all the time by other drivers. But when it happens with a bicyclist, suddenly it's all "bikes and cars shouldn't be on the same street." It's just that people have (more or less) accepted that having other cars get in their way is part of the nature of driving on roads, but they don't accept bicycles in the same way.

I should also say that, as a bicyclist, I get pissed off when I see people riding bikes on sidewalks, or the wrong way down one-way streets. They give bicyclists a bad name and are dangerous.

I'm perfectly happy to agree that if we can get people used to the idea of bikes riding, legaly, on streets, that I am perfectly willing to yell at the people riding on sidewalks.

320: that lane is pretty good. But do they sweep it in the summer? Is it ploughed in the winter? Does it get salted if it's icy? Sidewalks usually get this care after roads do. Also, what do you do at a light? And I'd guess that if I wanted to turn left, I'd have to hop the curb and cross a lane of traffic to do so.

321- Yes, that's still a problem- Here's what happens at the intersection at the end of the street, it merges back into the road like a regular bike lane (complete with bus stop in the bike lane again.)

They managed to build a few bike paths like in 320 in Paris. Awesomeness.

The other bike lanes are either non-existent or shared with the buses, though. Not as good.

In a city like Paris, though, a cyclist really shouldn't expect to be able to bike down any road he or she pleases. Major axes, yes. Enough roads to be able to get from A to B in a reasonably efficient way, yes. But the pedestrian streets are for pedestrians, the Arc de Triomphe is for suicidal drivers, and those twisty little medieval backalleys are just dangerous for anything faster than a wheelbarrow.

I suspect that other cities have their own inherent constraints on what can be done to optimise bicycling as well.

320: That is not a bike lane. It's a strip on the sidewalk with bike arrows and logos painted on it. Those are absolutely the worst. You'll always have pedestrians meandering across it, or obliviously walking on it, or so close to it that you'd have to bike at near-walking speeds to be safe. And it sucks to be a pedestrian on those streets too, with bikes whizzing right by you, and invariably swerving on and off of the 'sidewalk' region because they're passing bikes or pedestrians.

The best bike lanes I've ever seen are in Rio de Janeiro, along the beaches. There's a road, then a curb up and down, then a bike lane, then a curb up, then a sidewalk. The bike lane is separated from the road by a barrier, so nobody parks across it; it's adjacent to the beach so no roads cross it; and it's at a different elevation from the sidewalk so pedestrians and cyclists have a clear physical demarcation.

The older I get, the more often the hippies seem to have a point. The idea of shutting down through traffic on minor streets seems like a good one for sufficiently dense urban areas that are marbled by many streets. Perhaps that's not doable.

if we can get people used to the idea of bikes riding, legaly, on streets, that I am perfectly willing to yell at the people riding on sidewalks.

If you spent much time walking on sidewalks, you'd be willing now.

Oh, and the best bike lanes in Paris actually have their own traffic lights for turning left. Basically, you go with the pedestrians. There are only a few of these awesome lanes, though. One of them runs from the Pont Neuf to the Tour Eiffel, and it fucking rocks.

I don't know what that is. I came to my cycling philosophy in a couple years of commuting.

Vehicular cyclists think that if you act like you want to be seen and behave predictably, you won't get hit.

I also apply a generalized distrust of drivers, but not that they want to kill me -- rather, that at any moment they will do something that they wouldn't do if they knew I was there.

My definition of "want" includes criminal negligence - i.e. "I wasn't paying attention and he came out of nowhere!"

But yeah, I see your point. I have a reflective jacket, I have bright lights, I take the lane and signal and behave predictably and otherwise do everything right. I don't think this makes me safer, I think it makes me courteous.

No, the design is supposed to be with a separate sidewalk and bike lane, like this schematic.
Of course, there are still people who think they suck, but they're much better than the rest of the city. Damn hippies complain about everything- if there's a foot of snow, what the hell do you want? Heated bike paths to melt the plowed snow?

I am closer to Q-Tip status than I care to admit (definition of Q-Tip - those obnoxious South Florida retires who live in sell-manicured communities and terrorize the working population), so I shouldn't be expressing my disdain of them, as I will soon be one. Nevertheless, what I saw in the video strikes as typical of what I see here almost daily - aggressive behavior with a phony air of innocence and piety.

(Please refer to my previous litany of complaints - comment # 58.)

I should mention the numerous fender-benders I have had - usually an 85+ year old driver who bangs into my parked car. Two months ago, I caught one red-handed. He dented my left side panel as he was pulling out of a parking space. Lucky for me, I saw the accident and stopped him before he got away. On the police report, he claimed that my "parked" car actually banged into his Lexis.

In local bars and restaurants, Q-Tips often leave no tip. I know the single moms and college students who work these establishments, and it galls me. One day I confronted one of those Q-Tips who did not leave a tip, and he said: "I live on a fixed income, goddamnit!" So no one else is entitled to earn a living, support a child, or go to school because the bastard lives on a fixed income but eats his meals out!

My report from South Florida would not be complete without mentioning "Condo Casanovas," i.e., those older men resuscitated by Viagra and enjoying the seven-to-one female-to-male ratio of the retirement communities. The rate of AIDs and new HIV infections is up 25% within this population. Retirees don't give a shit; they think they will die of old age before HIV catches up with them; meanwhile, damn the consequences to the health care providers who take care of them.

As you tell, I have little respect for the retirees in South Florida. I hope an alligator claims me before I reach that age.

328: But surely those aren't commuter bike lanes. Great for the beach, but probably not for getting to work.

Allegheny County has an awesome bike trail that's all 'improved surface', and apparently you can use it to go places (not just out for pleasure rides), but it's not exactly an intuitive route. The choices for bike paths seem to be either along the main road, with all the turning problems, or as nice paths that don't go anywhere near the main roads, and are less useful for commuting.

What I'm saying, and I think a jury might well agree with me, is that he was being provoked into doing something rash, and that his culpability is thus lessened.

KKK logic. It worked for them, too.

Sorry, couldn't help myself. I'm with LB pretty much.

276: In various parts of the east coast, the urban infrastructure wasn't build for cars, and would in fact be much more suited to bikes.

There's no reason that cars and bikes can't share the road: it happens all the time all over the world. That cars don't want to share the road, because bicycles are slower and they don't want to slow down, I can understand. Still doesn't make it an optimum way to think about urban transportation.

I used to ride a bike everywhere in the city. It was before I'd owned a car, and I was certainly lacking in sympathy for the frustrations of car owners. That said, somebody almost hitting you with a car, especially when they do it on purpose? That is completely enraging: you're just trying to go on your merry way, using the same roads you pay for as somebody else, and somebody tries to use a deadly weapon to harm you, simply because they feel like you're keeping them from getting where they're going quickly enough?

I used to ride in Critical Mass rised in Boston, and people would get super, super angry even though we didn't even block the whole road. People really feel like bicycles should not be in traffic lanes, and that attitude is legally wrong, unsafe, and incorrect in terms of good transportation policy. So screw them.

On the other hand, SF (and presumably berkeley) CM take it way, way too far, both in terms of the generalized anger involved and the confrontational nature of many of the participants. I think it's long past time they tried to figure out what they're actually helping.

Incidentally, in the (traditionally Republican) part of the world I live in, there are excellent bike lanes (including turning lanes) and cars and bicycles tend to exist in a state of mutual respect. Go figure.

In the first minute, it looks like they're going down Shattuck, but I don't know where the confrontation happens.

Yeah, the opening footage is at Shattuck and University. This article says the confrontation happened in the "north part of the city"...

Ah, here we go: Monterey and The Alameda. Stupid place to take CM, if you ask me; that's probably the best place in Berkeley to be riding a bike.

Of course, there are still people who think they suck, but they're much better than the rest of the city. Damn hippies complain about everything- if there's a foot of snow, what the hell do you want? Heated bike paths to melt the plowed snow?

I think it's more about what the municipal government wants. If it wants winter cyclists off the road, it's gotta plough the paths. If it wants winter cyclists on the road, they can build things like the path you linked to in 320 and dump snow all over them.

The rate of AIDs and new HIV infections is up 25% within this population.

Holy shit.

307: I'm very hesitant to draw much of a conclusion from that bike helmet study. (Even apart from the obvious methodological problem of the study not being double-blind.)

The type of accident the researcher found was more likely when wearing a helmet, i.e. being hit by a passing car, is the rarest sort of car-bike accident. You're much more likely to be hit by someone pulling out from a driveway or side street without seeing you, or making a left turn in front of you (the one time I've been hit). If the driver sees your helmet, she sees you, and that's 90% of the way toward preventing an accident.

Then there are the (vast?) majority of bike accidents that don't involve vehicles.

So I'll keep wearing my helmet.

(And my spandex shorts, no matter how much you laugh.)

I call bullshit on this "the problem is with drivers" and "we just need drivers who don't hate cyclists" thing. On several levels, it's either a useless or actively misleading premise for some kind of activism aimed at promoting bicycle use for transportation. (Again, I've been an active bicycling commuter in several cities, both inside and outside of the United States.)

It may be that there is a problem in the US with careless drivers who don't look for cyclists. In fact, I'm sure there is, based on my own experiences. Guess what? The people who are careless about cyclists often tend to be *bad drivers* in general, the same people who pull other kinds of dickery on the road. They pose a special issue to cyclists not because they're gunning for cyclists while behaving sweetly and generously to other cars, but because cyclists are riding fragile vehicles that a car can safely hit with few consequences to the people in the car.

If you were to put that in front on you as a public policy problem, what's the easiest way to resolve the issue? Change the attitudes and competencies of drivers of cars to a much higher universal standard than is presently the case, or ban bicycling on many roadways as intrinsically unsafe? The latter sure sounds like a lot easier way to resolve the problem in terms of policy or law. We don't let people walk down the shoulders of freeways because of the risk, so maybe we should save bike riders from their own dumb selves.

I'm not advocating that: I want to be able to ride my bike when and where I want to ride it. I'm just saying that if you want to ask for political or legal solutions to a problem, framing it as a problem of bad attitudes or generalized competencies is like picking a tall mountain to climb and then tying your ankles together. You think reminding people that there are cyclists on the road is going to change the way that an asshole in a car behaves? I haven't noticed that endless public campaigns against aggressive driving behaviors around these parts has had much of an impact on aggressive drivers. You think somehow making it much harder to get a license to drive would do it? Come on, how likely is that in a democratic society? Let's make life more difficult for most people to make life easier for fewer people! Great plan.

Small wonder that some CM people end up basically saying that the political objective is to reduce the number of cars in toto: the whole political vision starts from a bikeocentric, automotivephobic premise. Which sounds all groovy and earth-loving until you recognize that to make the problems of transportation in American society into a matter of more bikes, less cars, is unbelievably fucking parochial. More bikes is a stupid response to suburban sprawl: it gets the cart about ten thousand miles out in front of the horse. You'd have to completely redesign the entire footprint of most American communities to have bikes play a sensible role in routine transportation. That would be cool if we could get there, in many ways, but starting with bikes and cars is ass-backwards.

In the interim, if you're really just concerned with urban bicycling, I'd concentrate on well-design bike lanes, which I think have to involve lanes *inside* of curbs or otherwise set aside or away from roads, and only in highly appropriate (e.g., concentrated urban spaces and suburban downtowns). I've seen a few examples of the former design that work well. As far as set-asides, certainly the best way I've ever gone from point A to point B on a bike is via the bike lanes down on the beaches in Los Angeles (which works only if you're going to and from places in beach areas, say, Venice Beach to Hermosa Beach.

I should add that ogged is completely correct about Berkeley being annoying because of all these orthodoxies that everybody's getting all overdramatic over all the time. I'm just more sympathetic to cyclists getting angry than drivers, in most cases.

My report from South Florida would not be complete without mentioning "Condo Casanovas," i.e., those older men resuscitated by Viagra and enjoying the seven-to-one female-to-male ratio of the retirement communities.

Hey, don't diss this. I've been looking forward to it for quite some time now.

Eh, I'll take annoying hippies--who at least one doesn't feel guilty about being annoyed by--over, say, friendly suburbanites who'll be embarrassed for you if you're unfortunate enough to be different.

334: On the police report, he claimed that my "parked" car actually banged into his Lexis.

My father had a pedestrian corpse collide with his car down there. After the cops and Medical Examiner sorted it all out, what happened was that guy had had a fatal heart attack and fell, hitting the mirror on the right side of the car just as it passed him.

I'm with you about feeding the alligators.

B, I know what you're saying, but after a few years in the SFBA everything just got to seem so insular and navel gazing and unnecessarily outraged I could hardly take it.

Also, there's something to be said for being willing to acknowledge that somebody is not just different, or put upon, they are in fact a jerk, and therefore somebody it is not fun to hang out with. Too few of my friends in the SFBA understood this fine distinction.

Bratman's accident, though, didn't come from his riding in traffic...

...it was at an intersection and involved some guy (the driver) blasting through

Maybe you should have chosen law school over philosophy, Ben. That's an awfully narrow definition of traffic. I thought your original post suggested this was some sort of bmx accident, maybe, or perhaps human powered flight.

More bikes is a stupid response to suburban sprawl: it gets the cart about ten thousand miles out in front of the horse. You'd have to completely redesign the entire footprint of most American communities to have bikes play a sensible role in routine transportation.

But the car established the current design for cities and suburbs. How is it that the car got to set the agenda for regional planning for sixty years, but when people want bicycle transportation to set the agenda, they are being unreasonable? I call bullshit on your bullshit calling.

Well, provincialism is annoying no matter where it crops up. But there's a difference, too, between genuine jerks with hippie affectations, and the very nice hippie types who often get lumped in with them.

If you were planning someplace new, then you could make it bike-centric. But you can't make the existing auto-centric places bike-centric by fiat; they just aren't laid out for that.

Some of the reactions this video has created:

B.PhD.: I like hippies!
Swampcracker: I hate old people!

350: A difference it is vitally important to understand, I've found, lest you find yourself hanging out with jerks who present themselves as very nice hippie types.

There are too many people in the SFBA who believe themselves to be kind, good-hearted hippie types, and who therefore blame any problems they have on others, because they themslves too consciousness-raised to be simply neurotic.

That was also the only part of Tim's post I disagreed with. A lot of people, I think, move to the suburbs because it's too expensive to keep a car in the inner city. So, instead, they should get rid of their car and get an apartment downtown.

349: You go to work with the infrastructure you have? I think it's reasonable to want to have cities and suburbs designed with bicyclists in mind, but it's unreasonable to expect the number of cars on the road to go down considerably. The distances are too far, and the weather sucks for 8 months of the year.

Oh, come on, Hippy-Chalk, Tim's right to point out the interdependence of cars and sprawl. It's unfortunate that things are this way, but that doesn't make it reasonable to proceed as if they aren't this way.

In my neighborhood in NYC, the streets go:

(road) (median) (bike lane) (median) (sidewalk)

protecting the bikes from the cars and the people from the bikes. Most places wouldn't have room for all of that, I'll admit, but it does seem ideal.

Cala: faster and funnier. Damn.

In the long run, we all know that that only thing that will create real change is if driving becomes more expensive. This can happen one of two ways. We can do it now, in a controlled fashion, with gas taxes and congestion taxes. Or we can wait 15-20 years for the oil to start running out, and deal with all the additional atmospheric carbon and bloodsoaked wars over the last remaining productive oil fields.

Where's that? BPC? Because it's not like that over any broad area, is it?

351: Yeah, but, Boston, say, or NYC aren't car-centric. Even Berkeley itself (excluding the surrounding towns) isn't, really. All three were largely designed before cars existed.

If a small, dense area is organized such that the best way to get around is to park your car and walk, or bike into it, this does not strike me as a dramatic, implausible change in the American urban landscape.

Shoot, combine a serious congestion tax with bike-friendly road design and you could rock yourself a livable northeastern metropolis pretty easy.

The car has functionalities that bicycles alone simply don't possess and can't possess; that's what made the car as dominant a force in planning as it was. It wasn't just that Judge Doom was busy scheming to destroy Toontown and build his freeways, comforting as that kind of conspiracy history can be. You can ask that bicycles be a player at the table in the rethinking of communities, but bikeocentrism is parochial. They aren't a viable alternative even in the Granolavilles of the future for elderly or disabled people, for transport of the sick and injured to emergency care facilities, for the transport of goods to points of sale, for communities built on hilly or difficult landscape (yeah, yeah, I know that the calves-of-steel contingent is going to cry out that they can keep pace with Mario Andretti in central San Francisco: fuck off), and so on. Bikes are a small part of the puzzle of the future; the compelling arguments are going to have to come from somewhere else.

And again, really, if you're specifically demanding something here and now, ask for what's possible, not for Berkleytopia. Better-designed bikeways strike me as possible in some places under some circumstances. You can campaign for those without having to demand the complete retraining of all drivers in specially-designed gulags.

342: bikeocentric, automotivephobic

This is me.

I call bullshit on this "the problem is with drivers" and "we just need drivers who don't hate cyclists" thing.

Note: the second was in response to the claim that the United States didn't have the infrastructure for bicycling (where the obvious problem is the definition of bicycling infrastructure. For people like me, (and you, I imagine) it's clean and well-maintained asphalt; for people like ogged, it's a separate series of bicycle paths that will inevitably go from nowhere to nowhere and be of no use to anyone but dog walkers).

You think reminding people that there are cyclists on the road is going to change the way that an asshole in a car behaves?

I think a whole lot more people cycling in general and responses-in-kind (i.e. a broken windshield for every bike run over) will keep the assholes in check. I jest, natch.

352: I like some hippies, and I'm tired of hippie-bashing. Yeah, yeah, hippies are annoyingly self righteous and all we normal people want is to be left in peace to drive our cars and eat meat. You know, relax: if the most annoying thing in your life is smug hippies, you've got nothing more to complain about than they do.

Shoot, combine a serious congestion tax with bike-friendly road design and you could rock yourself a livable northeastern metropolis pretty easy.

This. I don't think much of Bloomberg generally, but I've got my fingers crossed hoping for a congestion tax.

362: And bikes have functionalism that cars don't possess. So?

297: no, it's respect. Beats rancid lechon.

Copenhagen is almost ridiculously friendly to bicycles. It might be the dominant mode of transportation in the city. Bicycle lanes, often separated by curbs, a clear system of traffic signals, vehicles behaving respectfully towards one another, and to pedestrians.

On the other hand, I am pretty sure that a deliberately confrontational bicycle rider would be treated by the police in the same way as a deliberately confrontational car driver. (It's gotta happen, since drinking is a national pastime, but I never saw it.)

Also, bikes seem to be very utilitarian there. There doesn't seem to be much "bike pride". (I think some of the hippie rage in the video was due to a fairly expensive piece of equipment getting mangled.) In Copenhagen, there are a lot of clunkers and junkers. I didn't see anything like the gleaming bikes of Park Slope, and it's something I began to look for.

360 - Yeah, the BPC/Tribeca area. I don't know how far north the 3 lane part extends but they've got a really long and well designed greenspace that goes along the West Side Highway up to the Upper West Side for joggers/bikers/walkers.

In Copenhagen, there are a lot of clunkers and junkers.

And I bet a lot of people ride without $80 spandex shorts, too.

362: You can campaign for those without having to demand the complete retraining of all drivers in specially-designed gulags.

I don't know, but are you dealing with what I said? Maybe not. But what I said was this: "I figure it'd only take a generation to have the majority of drivers be safe and comfortable around cyslists with a few easy changes in driver education and licensing procedures."

If by 'a generation' I meant immediately and by 'few easy changes' I meant authoritarian crackdown, then I suppose I could see where you were coming from.

369: Man all the elderly triathletes around here look at me funny when I don't wear spandex. It's like, look, I don't care if you're 62 and can burn me up this hill, I want fucking pockets.

367: I think some of the hippie rage in the video was due to a fairly expensive piece of equipment getting mangled.

Alternate interpretation: the bikes in question were the only means of transportation available to their owners, and/or their means of material support (if they were messengers).

I like some hippies, and I'm tired of hippie-bashing.

I like hippies too. They have the best pot and they usually cook really well. Some combination of those traits played a not insignificant role in me marrying the hippie that I did.

It's hard, too, given the way suburbs are actually designed now, to get from point A to point B if you are toting small children around, as many suburbanites do. Where I grew up traffic was light enough that you could just jump on the bike and go, and if the car needed to pass you, they could swing into the other lane. (Suburbanites need to get over their fears. It's a residential road. You can ride your bike in the middle of it!)

But I can't imagine doing that and trying to take the three-year-old and four-year-old to preschool.

but most drivers have a strong desire to not hit cyclists or pedestrians -- this is about the only thing I find a cyclist can safely assume about the motor vehicles sharing the road.

Neil is quite right about this, which makes the "we must SHOW OUR POWER!" Critical Mass stuff all the more obnoxious, in my obviously not-so-very-humble opinion.

Lots of recreational bikers abound in my part of Mississippi, which as you would guess has minimal bike infrastructure (we call it "road") -- and drivers are quite cautious. When I did some biking myself, I was pleasantly struck (ha) by this.

A "Critical Mass" event however would piss drivers off against bikers in general. I suspect some dark Leninist motivation by the secret biker overlords.

Also, how many people who bike regularly do not own a car? I'd guess a small percentage.

372: They have legs. It's all I've got in terms of owning transport.

377: Ah, but bicycles possess functionalities that legs alone simply don't possess and can't possess.

336: Ah, what's a gratuitous comparison to racist terrorists between friends?

342 puts the case quite well, better than I can, evidently. Listen to the Burke!

I think Critical Mass makes as much sense for rural Mississippi as congestion tax.

375: I think the phenomenon of cars being mad and/or aggresive towards bicyclists is highly tied to traffic being lousy and the cyclist being identified as somebody who (a) gets away with things the driver can't (b) somehow threatens the sanctity of the driver's car or (c) impedes the driver somehow in their effort to get where they're going at rush hour. At least, that describes all the situations I've personally been involved with.

I should say, when I used to ride in Boston I really did act like a big jerk, and had I died by accident it would have perhaps been cosmically fair. But I still maintain it was inappropriate for people to try and kill me on purpose, and I further maintain those people wouldn't have tried to kill me on purpose if they hadn't had a big ol' combination deadly weapon/armor at their disposal protecting them from me. I could certainly be wrong about that last point, but it fits what I know about road rage.

Hypothesis: everyone needs to accept that other people don't do things the same way we do--whether those other people are die-hard cyclists, shrill leftists, smug middle-class drivers, or crazy people who like walking--and it's not okay to hit them.

How's that for doctrinaire California liberalism? Now I have to go finish my article.

381: I think there's a fair bit of being nervous around cyclists, too, in that they are small, can dart through traffic, harder to predict where they might end up, and if you sideswipe one accidentally, you've harmed someone more than you would were they in a car.

A. I ride to work sometimes on weekends, and around town otherwise from time to time. I'm not anti-bike at all. That said, I'm not that interested in following someone riding a bike at 5 mph up any of the long hills on my commute home. Bikers can ride on roads that are not arterials -- it might take a bit longer, but it's going to be safer all around.

B. Where the fuck does anyone get off telling me that I shouldn't be in such a hurry? They have no idea at all where I'm going, what time I need to be there, and why.

C. My first time ever in court was representing myself over a ticket I got riding my bike in Berkeley. In the bike lane. Wrong way on a one-way. The argument that the bike lane going the proper direction was unavailable (because it was full of parked cars) didn't do me any good..

I think the phenomenon of cars being mad and/or aggresive towards bicyclists is highly tied to traffic being lousy and the cyclist being identified as somebody who (a) gets away with things the driver can't (b) somehow threatens the sanctity of the driver's car or (c) impedes the driver somehow in their effort to get where they're going at rush hour. At least, that describes all the situations I've personally been involved with.

See, but Critical Mass does all these things deliberately. And it only occurs in places where most people are already aware of bicyclists and inclined to support them, which makes the deliberate confrontationism much more poorly advised, and also makes the "Help, help, I'm being repressed" claims that much more laughable.

It's like, look, I don't care if you're 62 and can burn me up this hill, I want fucking pockets.

What you need is a pair of baggies. Best of both worlds.

Bikers can ride on roads that are not arterials -- it might take a bit longer

vs.

Where the fuck does anyone get off telling me that I shouldn't be in such a hurry?

Hmmm.

And it only occurs in places where most people are already aware of bicyclists and inclined to support them

Kind of like the assholes who blockaded the base of the Fremont Street offramp from the Bay Bridge on the first day of the Iraq war. Yeah, making it difficult for me to get to work is really sticking it to the man.

383: Yes, absolutely, and even at my jerkiest I strove for predictability. But people have definitely aggresively tried to hit me with their cars twice, and run me off the road once. These were not ambiguous situations.

I was a jerk in terms of claiming my space, not in terms of causing other people to behave dangerously.

384.B: anybody who's in your way can tell you it doesn't matter how big a hurry you're in, because you ain't going that way right now. This also applies to cars and buildings.

You can believe they should get out of your way, but that's pretty much when your right to go directly through them ends.

383 also gets an important part of it right - in the normal flow of traffic, bicyclists (and motorcyclists) get to do things that people in cars and trucks don't, because they're smaller and can fit more places and are at least theoretically accepting the risk. As any motorcyclist will find himself repeating ad nauseam: "We can see you, so as long as you use your turn signal and don't drive erratically, we'll avoid the accident." This only works when both sides make the effort.

A cyclist should get the full lane, just like a motorcyclist or a car, no?

392: A cyclist should have the right to split lanes when safe, and take a lane when necessary. The rights should be no different than those of motorcycles, but bicycles should ride to the side when possible and let faster traffic pass.

In fact, I think that's what the law currently is, and if people understood and obeyed it, things would be fine.

389: actually tried to hit you? or drifted over to give you a little scare? I've never actually tried to hit anyone with a vehicle (maybe a couple of times with my friends on a dirt bike), but have no doubt that if I tried to hit someone I would succeed.

I really think education would go a long way: if I am taking a left turn on a three lane road, the safe and legal thing for me to do is to wait in the left turn lane, and get the heck out of the cars' way as quickly as possible when the light changes. Often, when I do this, people act as if I were intentionally rolling over their hoods or something.

394: actually tried to hit me, yes. Drove onto the sidewalk after me, in both cases. In both cases, traffic was heavy enough that I could get away from them. The other was a woman who, no doubt, was only trying to scare me by trying to run me off the road, but she was in a Porsche and did a darn good job of pretending.

378: So do cars. They're both privileged. Being a bike messenger is a lifestyle choice.

Also, I have to say, bikes are much less tolerant of prescribed pedestrian areas than cars are. I've only had cars run me off the sidewalk a few times.

As any motorcyclist will find himself repeating ad nauseam: "We can see you, so as long as you use your turn signal and don't drive erratically, we'll avoid the accident."

I once came all too close to hitting a motorcycle cop (WHOOPS! That was awkward) who was in my blind spot. I certainly used my turn signal and waited a normal amount of time to make the lane change, but I didn't do more than a highly perfunctory over-the-shoulder glance in addition to my not-perfunctory mirror check before changing lanes, and the timing was such that he showed in my mirror while I was glancing but was in the blind spot when I was mirror-checking. I should have done a more proper over-the-shoulder check, but I don't think I'd characterize that as driving erratically, exactly. He was not pleased with me. I suppose he did avoid the accident, though.

I think there's a fair bit of being nervous around cyclists, too, in that they are small, can dart through traffic, harder to predict where they might end up, and if you sideswipe one accidentally, you've harmed someone more than you would were they in a car.

Yes...frankly, I feel very nervous being behind someone on a bike (as I said earlier, this is generally someone on a bike going about half the speed that I would like to go, because most of the serious bikers who might be taking my route are instead going through the park or along one the trails set up on former railroad sites, as Cala cited).

I never know whether I should enter the oncoming traffic lane to pass them. I agree fully with all the share-the-road manifestos, but the point remains that the bike is going much slower than any car would prefer to go. If a car was going that slowly, because of a flat tire or a bewildered driver, it would be fully expected that the cars behind it would pass the slow car. But I feel like passing a cyclist going 20mph on a non-congested but narrow street is rude, or dangerous, or something.

I think that maybe the protocol should be that the cyclist periodically gets into one of the turn-only lanes so some cars can pass him. Sometimes cyclists do this, but I don't know what the protocol is, or what the cyclist is hoping will happen. As an openminded driver, it would be good if more cyclists were around so their actions become more predictable to the rest of us.

(also, it's a bit frustrating to be in a car going half the speed that I could go if there wasn't a bike in front of me...and then when we get to a stoplight, the bike treats it as a stop sign and zooms away while the rest of us have to obey traffic laws. This doesn't happen nearly often enough for it to be a justified complaint, though.)

Drove onto the sidewalk after me

Holy shit, dude. I am objectively anti-driving-on-sidewalks.

"I should have done a more proper over-the-shoulder check, but I don't think I'd characterize that as driving erratically, exactly."

I would, although I've certainly done it more times than I'd care to admit.

"Being a bike messenger is a lifestyle choice"

This is an odd thing to say. More so than any other job? Not all messengers are wealthy dilettantes, after all.

384, 392, 393: Yeah, I'd say that where a bike is making it impossible for a car to pass them for any extended period of time, they're at the least acting oddly -- either deliberately making a point and trying to annoy, like CM riders, or they just don't know what they're doing. For a minute or two here and there, I have no sympathy for the driver.

397: So the messenger, having had his or her bike run over by Dick Cheney in a van, should serenely accept it's time for a lifestyle change?

Note, I was disputing your 'bike pride' claim, as if these were people unreasonably angry about a luxury item or piece of sporting equipment being damaged. That might be true; but it's also true that bikes can be transportation and/or capital. This is my point.

400: Arguably, I shouldn't have been on the sidewalk either. But in these cases I felt like it was sort of justified.

Motorcycles need the whole lane, usually, even though they're skinny, to take turns properly.

The biggest thing I'd be worried about with a cyclist is that if I pass one, and then there's a parked car, or an open door, or someone who jumps out, the cyclist has nowhere to go but into my car. Oddly, they're easier to deal with in heavy traffic because no one's going that fast.

I can tell none of you ride bikes.

Haven't read all the comments but I feel especially entitled to bag on the self-righteous cyclists because cycling has been my main method of transportation for nearly the last twenty years. The only people in that video who don't look like total douchebags are the driver's wife and the little kids.

I'm totally in favor of more cycling, more bike lanes, and more rails-to-trails--or better yet, more rails and trails--but really, the first lesson of cycling is that cars can do a lot more damage than you.

I never know whether I should enter the oncoming traffic lane to pass them. I agree fully with all the share-the-road manifestos, but the point remains that the bike is going much slower than any car would prefer to go. If a car was going that slowly, because of a flat tire or a bewildered driver, it would be fully expected that the cars behind it would pass the slow car. But I feel like passing a cyclist going 20mph on a non-congested but narrow street is rude, or dangerous, or something.

Huh. I'd think that it would be exactly the right thing to do -- give them a wide berth to the extent possible, but pass. It's what I do, anyway, not that I drive all that much.

I definitely think I was in the wrong, and felt terrible about the whole thing. All I mean is that there's a little more to it than, "Don't worry, just don't drive erratically" -- in order to be driving not-erratically in that sense, you really do have to remember that there are things that are not nearly as visible as cars that nonetheless can come zooming up just as quickly as a car can. I would have seen a car, under the circumstances, no problem.

Oddly, they're easier to deal with in heavy traffic because no one's going that fast.

That's not oddly, it makes perfect sense.

398: Yikes. But yay for turn signals.

395: Actually on the sidewalk? Impressive - what were you doing to provoke that?

399: I say pass them with a reasonable cushion, more cushion the closer they are to the right side of the road. Lanes are actually pretty wide, and on anything other than the tightest roads you shouldn't have to go more than a couple of feet into the other one. The California Vehicle Code includes sections saying that you have to pull over if there are more than five cars backed up behind you on a two lane road.

405: It's a lot easier to deal with biking in slow traffic, in general, so gridlock is kind of a bonus. Outside of Boston, where nobody can pick up any speed, and here, where people are basically courteous, urban biking has scared the crap out of me. I don't need to be on a road where I have no way to get out of a problem should one develop.

Oddly if you think that heavy traffic means more cars to hit the cyclists. I'd take my chances down near CMU and Pitt, but almost anywhere else I'd probably cut through the park.

Huh. I'd think that it would be exactly the right thing to do -- give them a wide berth to the extent possible, but pass. It's what I do, anyway, not that I drive all that much.

But I've had friends who are serious about bikes being given the same rights as cars, and they've made me think it's a slippery slope situation, where if you start out passing bikes that are going really slowly, you then start looking for any opportunity to pass a bike, and seeing a bike as something that's probably going to get in your way, and that's not conducive with the "share the road" attitude. So we need to set a good example by respecting the bicycle rider who is pedaling as hard as he can.

410.2: In one case, the guy pulled out of an alley and looked like he was going to hit me, so I put my foot out and I think he thought I kicked his bumper. In the other case, I ran a red in SF (no cross-traffic) and the guy at the front of the light (it was bumper-to-bumper) drove out into the intersection and onto the opposite sidewalk after me. Last time I biked in SF.

399T is so exactly the problem with car/bike interactions. Not, as Timothy Burke would have it, that we are upset about the occasional asshole and what are you gong to do anyway. It's this general sort of nervousness about cycling that is the problem.

I never know whether I should enter the oncoming traffic lane to pass them.

Yes, you should! As long as there's no actual oncoming traffic, but you knew that.

I feel like passing a cyclist going 20mph on a non-congested but narrow street is rude, or dangerous, or something.

No, it's not!

I think that maybe the protocol should be that the cyclist periodically gets into one of the turn-only lanes so some cars can pass him.

They absolutely, definitely should not do that, for obvious reasons.

Sometimes cyclists do this, but I don't know what the protocol is, or what the cyclist is hoping will happen.

The protocol is that you pass when it's safe to do so, and at a reasonable distance from the cyclist.

(also, it's a bit frustrating to be in a car going half the speed that I could go if there wasn't a bike in front of me...and then when we get to a stoplight, the bike treats it as a stop sign and zooms away while the rest of us have to obey traffic laws. This doesn't happen nearly often enough for it to be a justified complaint, though.)

Lights are triggered by ferrous material, and many bikes are made of non-ferrous aluminum. So, rather than make the aluminum-bike rider wait until a whole lot of ferrous material shows up, many jurisdictions allow cyclists to treat red lights like stop signs.

Ned I dunno, I've always assumed that, by having the advantage of a vehicle so small it will fit between lanes, you're accruing the problem of having to share those lanes. It's obviously common courtesy to not pass a bicycle closely with a massive speed differential, but as long as you're careful I think you should go for it.

413: Maybe. I'd think a workable share-the-road strategy would recognize that the two types of vehicles have very different top speeds. Now, passing a bike just because you can, where you wouldn't have been going faster than the bike in its absence, seems to me to be on that slippery slope, but I can't see courtesy to bikes requiring that you drive at 15 where the speed limit is 30 if you could safely pass.

244: I am an urban cyclist. I live in Minneapolis, which is a (smallish) city. I own no car, although I owned one briefly a couple of years ago. I get around town on foot and bike and very occasionally by bus.

But if you think that an abstract, essentially demandless protest is going to create the revolution--and that everyone who thinks different is some kind of sell-out--well, you can bite me.

I have no position on bike lanes; my goal was to point to a concrete demand that could conceivably be made by cyclists.

Utopianism is all very well, but mindless utopianism is just stupid.

See, the idea is that you start with something winnable and then you scale up; you don't start with "give us a car-free utopia now!", unless you think you can get one, now. When people win small, they start to get committed to winning big--it's like broken windows in reverse. This isn't new; it's fairly standard organizing. People expand their desires for freedom and democratic practice once they get a taste of them. That's why, for example, a lot of governments will beat down even small attempts at labor organizing or whatever.

And 370, while we're at it: if you take your only precious bicycle, on which your livelihood depends, to a fucking Critical Mass ride--where, for god's sake, the cops are likely to confiscate it....well, that's foolhardy. Don't risk more than you are willing to lose, for god's sake!

I would emphasize that I have been on Critical Mass rides. I have, personally, in my own aging flesh, helped pull someone away from the cop who was arresting her after knocking her off her bike. It's amazing how it works on the left--criticizing any radical tactics means you're a compromise-prone centrist liberal, even if you share goals.

399, 407: It's exactly like getting caught behind a Winnebago on a winding road. Suck it up until it's time to pass, and be ready to pass quickly, confidently, and safely when the opportunity arises. The cyclist is probably aware of you and aware of the inconvenience they're posing, so they're going to look for, e.g. a stretch of road with no parked cars, and duck over to the right.

Anyone know if it's legal to intentionally kill a cyclist riding a fixie, with no helmet, no lights, on the wrong side of the street, by the way? 'cause, damn, what a quick way to improve the species.

399 is exactly the problem I have w/ cyclists. I don't hate them, I do find it stressful, because I'm caught between wanting to give them a wide berth, & not wanting to go too slow/piss off all the other drivers behind me. But I apparently handle it the right way.

This same wussiness, I will confess, does cause me to bike on the sidewalk sometimes to get to and from the bike path. I only do it when the sidewalk is empty--if someone's coming I get off & walk. But I probably should just walk it the whole way.

...the safe and legal thing for me to do is to wait in the left turn lane... Often, when I do this, people act as if I were intentionally rolling over their hoods or something.

I do this all the time around town and on my commute, and drivers around here take it right in stride. If I'm coming out of a bike lane to go to a turn lane, I signal, check for space in traffic, signal again, and then make the move.

Around here we've got some bike lanes, some streets wide enough for both, and some narrow country roads. For commuting, I appreciate the wide lanes on busy roads. With my kids, I'm with Bphd, the bike lanes on residential streets are a great resource. My kids are learning to be very careful bikers - watching driveways and side streets, stopping at stop signs - and the bike lanes on residential roads are a nice intermediate step for teaching them safe biking.

For me, the main constraint of the narrow country roads is that I can't ride to or from work in the dark, which keeps me from bicycling during the winter. With longer days, I find them a good commuting route.

419.2: Auto-humorlessness check: you're not really saying that, if you'd met me at 21, you'd want me dead, right?

There is something sublime about this thread's breaking 400. Unproductive, but sublime.

I once came all too close to hitting a motorcycle cop (WHOOPS! That was awkward) who was in my blind spot.

OT, but if you have a blind spot, it means your mirrors aren't adjusted correctly. If they're adjusted correctly, a passing vehicle should appear in your left hand mirror just as disappears from your center mirror, and should be visible out of the corner of your eye when it disappears from your left-hand mirror.

To adjust your left-hand mirror correctly, move your head to the left until it touches the window, then adjust the mirror so you can just see the side of the car. Then you should have no blind spot.

422: Well, you weren't actually making it easy not to kill you at that age, were you? I'd still be trying not to hit you, but I'd have been thinking about it.

352
"Some of the reactions this video has created:
Swampcracker: I hate old people!"

Actually, Rob, I don't really hate old people. I am well on my way to becoming one myself. But I do have a sense of noblesse oblige that this wholly lacking among South Florida Q-Tips.

if you take your only precious bicycle, on which your livelihood depends, to a fucking Critical Mass ride--where, for god's sake, the cops are likely to confiscate it....well, that's foolhardy. Don't risk more than you are willing to lose, for god's sake!

Cops confiscating bicycle =! old man running bicycle over.

Also, note that I wasn't pointing out that blocking Dick Cheney's van-path with your only means of support is a particularly good idea, just that if you're upset that it got run over as a result it might not be simply because you kinda liked your bike.

I would emphasize that I have been on Critical Mass rides

Then you know that merely participating in one isn't illegal.

This was the right-hand mirror. I don't have a blind spot on the left. I'm sure there's some magical way to adjust the other one, too, though.

you're not really saying that, if you'd met me at 21, you'd want me dead, right?

No, not any more than we want you dead now.

422, 419.2: My humorless response to those riders is to think, "why the hell doesn't his mother make him wear a helmet and get a light?" and then, "shit, his poor mother, that kid should listen to her." If I ever catch PK doing that, he's grounded. Even if he *is* 21.

if you have a blind spot, it means your mirrors aren't adjusted correctly.

Nonsense. Even if you have your mirrors adjusted as you describe, there are still blind spots--someone could be changing lanes, or be varying their speed slightly such that you don't see them when you check in one mirror, and then when you check the other, they've dropped back/speeding up and you still don't see them. Anyone who changes lanes without checking over their shoulder deserves a ticket.

Has anyone considered that the audience for traffic-blocking protests may not be the drivers, but the city planners? Or the folks at home watching the tv news? Or the feds? If you protest in nice, polite, non-disruptive ways, you're guaranteed to be nicely, politely ignored.

431: Agreed, and count me as scared to be on the road with anyone who thinks "I have no blind spot."

"Well, you weren't actually making it easy not to kill you at that age, were you?"

I certainly wasn't making things relaxing for anybody dead-set on avoiding it, no.

I like to think that my ninja-like reflexes and incredible leg strength were enough to keep me safe - as indeed, they mostly turned out to be - but that doesn't mean I wasn't an inconsiderate jerk.

Now I am slow, old, and considerate. And wear a helmet.

I do check over my shoulder when I change lanes to the left, as well as to the right, I just want to say. I always check over my shoulder! DRIVE NEAR ME I AM PERFECTLY SAFE!!!!

If you were signalling right and made an effort to look, and someone on a motorcycle passed you on the right and got hit when you changed lanes, it's completely and totally his fault.

Not that this would get you far if it was a motorcycle cop, and not that you might not still feel guilty, but in a more global sense, he should have been paying attention. Which I guess it seems like he was.

429: thank goodness for that.

I think?

We could have some fun by listing other ways that activists are driven by their ideology to action which undermines support for their cause.

My favorite is how men aren't allowed to march in Take Back the Night. To me it seems like this reinforces the idea that men are intrinsically threatening, or that men can't support women's safety. But obviously the organizers have their own reasons.

I'm told by my CM friends (for what it's worth I think CM is stupid and I won't participate), that according to california law any number of bicycles in a single clump are treated as a single vehicle. (At face value this is sensible, as you want to allow two or three bicyclists to take up one lane.) This means that a group of hundreds of bicyclists can keep going through a red light as long as the bikes at the front made it through.

I'm pretty sure what happened here is that a very long stream of bikes got into the circle. Usually the cars inside the circle have the right of way (or rather the ones outside have to yield). This is why the driver is so annoyed, and thinks he should have the right to go. He then slowly pulls into the mass of bicyclists thinking that they'll have to let him go through since he has the right of way.

I'm also told by my CM friends that the traditional way to break the windshield of a car that has done this is with a bike lock not with a bike. (Although they say they wouldn't do that.)

From 362: "The car has functionalities that bicycles alone simply don't possess and can't possess;"

Exactly, and it is this genuine difference in functionality that makes cars effectively indispensable for living a busy, employed, family lifestyle in most of the U.S. We need to respect that. On the other hand, we have almost entirely sacrificed our outdoor urban space to the needs and demands of the automobile. Stand at a corner someday, look around you, and ask what percentage of the space you see is devoted to cars, and is not safe to enter if you are not in a car.

Right now, we could ban cars from many downtowns and parks, and put in parking around the edges that is well serviced by public transit. We could do that tomorrow, and make it work.

436: dunno about where you are, but it's legal to pass on the right, here.

RFTS, I'm good with you. Zadfrack, not so much.

434: Yeah, the reaction I'm having is "I really, viciously, hate people who put me at risk of hurting them despite my trying not to; I hate them enough that I kind of do want them to get hurt." Which, self-contradictory, but what can I say?

431, 433: I was just trying to pass a bit of useful information on about how to adjust your mirrors properly.

It was a revelation to me when I learned how to do it correctly after years of driving with improperly set mirrors.

443: seems perfectly legitimate to me. Have I mentioned I was being a jerk at the time?

To me it seems like this reinforces the idea that men are intrinsically threatening

Unfortunately, to women walking at night, you are.

Also, northern europe rocks for bikes. In the Netherlands, much of northern Germany, and in Denmark (and probably other places that I haven't been to) they really do have dedicated bike lanes everywhere, even through the city. They have to because during rush hour there are more bikes than cars. It feels very odd to be in a bike traffic jam for the first time.

I was very confused as to how they found space for those bike lanes everywhere, given Europe's narrow streets. And I eventually realized there's no street parking.

Someone earlier said that cars beat out bikes because cars are inherently more useful. After you visit northern europe you realize that that isn't true at all. Cars are more useful here because we've built our cities for cars instead of bikes.

Yeah, but I mean, is the way to solve that to announce that the only way that women can be safe is if there are no men around? Is that TBTN's goal -- no men on the street? (Maybe it is, in which case, I am naive.)

Abortion clinic protesters are probably also destructive to their goal, if their goal is influencing public opinion, anyway.

448: I think the goal of abortion clinic protesters is to intimidate women who are entering. Which I guess they're succeeding at doing.

441: Legal, but ill-advised. You have reduced visibility on a motorcycle, drivers have reduced visibility out the right side of their car; and car-vs-motorcycle collisions are almost as one-sided as airplane-vs-ground. If someone is signalling their intention to occupy space, and has a good chance of not being able to see you, and you try to move into that space at the same time, while I hope fervently that you don't get injured, you sort of have it coming.

422: No, I'm all talk. I'm half serious about wanting to yell at them, but not at all serious about wanting to kill them.

"I think the goal of abortion clinic protesters is to intimidate women who are entering. Which I guess they're succeeding at doing."

My personal experience has been that for every semi-normal, caring protestor there are 30 who do not otherwise function well in society. They want to control and harass women.

450: Fair enough. I would certainly never cut to the right around somebody signalling on a bicycle.

Which is why it's so goddamn annoying when people don't signal, but anyhow.

Maybe so, although they've also created a situation where the state has affirmed its responsiblity to allow women to safely (and in some cases, even privately) enter abortion clinics.

448: Some of the women involved in TBTN will not feel safe with men around at night until things change drastically.

That said, it seems like having twice as many TBTN events, alternating women-only and mixed-gender, would be more helpful. I'm jus' saying.

451: yelling I enthusiastically recommend.

Normally I'm pro-bike (ride all over town on the weekends) but godDAMMIT I hate the cyclists who ride on Connecticut in DC between Chevy Chase and Woodley. Every day without fault I end up piddling along at twenty MPH or less behind a cyclist for a mile or so who ends up creating his own snarl behind me, and I have no other options due to the always-occupied-by stopped-cars-turning-left left lane. It drives me nuts, especially when I'm trying to get home after a long day.

I seethe silently, though, and keep my distance. I could use the karma.

Reading the whole thread, I think I have a solution for Critical Mass and others who would like drivers to be more educated and mindful about bicycles.

All bicycles should come equipped with large explosive devices that trigger if the bicycle is hit with sufficient force by a car.

There's a sense that there are 736 Rules of Correct and Tolerant Behavior and god help you if you break any of them; which seems at odds with a looser live and let live attitude

The trick here is learning to assume no one would ever think you would be a racist/sexist/meatist etc. If you're constantly trying not to offend people, the enforcers will smell weakness. If you say/do something heterodox, do it confidently. Also, assume people with silly political attitudes are basing them on sound principles and reasoning, and act as if you expect reciprocity.

403: I happen to think rage about an expensive piece of equipment being destroyed is hypocritical when it's framed as a deep imbalance in power relationships, when it's actually an intra-middle class conflict about road rights. See 61.

I'd be more than happy to learn that bicycling in Berkeley isn't mainly a form of transport for people from privileged backgrounds. I'd love to hear that Critical Mass is out to make the world safer for the take-out delivery guys and the working moms who can't afford car insurance.

I'm not seeing it in that video.

448: No, dear, it's not about men at all. It's about, y'see, women. "Taking back" the right to walk at night and feel safe doing so. Which presumably you can do most of the time without needing a big group to do it in. Don't begrudge the chicks their one night in a blue moon.

Counterfly:

can't they rock creek park it?

Can we agree that 460 is at least as irritating as the 736 Rules of Correct and Tolerant Behavior?

for fuck's sake you chaps. get on the right side here. If it is punks versus auld gimmers in a car, be on the side of the punks.

In related news, if someone touches your bike, you can drag them out of the car and give them a kicking. I'm surprised the Californians didn't exercise their rights since it was the Hell's Angels (who are also Californian) who invented this convention.

And a special shout-out to Tim Burke, to the effect that when he becomes the leader of his own revolutionary movement composed entirely of middle-aged middle class people in tidy shirts and neckties, walking at a moderate pace down the pavement, muttering polite slogans (each of which takes ten minutes to recite because of all the subclauses detailing all the left-wing groups they don't want to be identified with) and tipping their hat to every passing policeman, then guess what? It will still annoy somebody, that person will still think you are "a dick" and then what are you going to do when he decides to get violent about it and the cop who you just bought a latte for just turns a blind eye. We tried having impeccable moral paragons leading a movement of quiet dignity, in the hope of gaining "mainstream support". It was Rev. Martin Luther King. They shot him. Given that, why fucking compromise.

I take the Chumbawumba line on this; as long as you chuckle when a mounted policeman falls off his horse, your politics is fundamentally in the right place.

462: I wish!

Yep, pretty much. The moral obligation not to drive your car into people doesn't depend on their class status. When someone has deliberately crushed your bike with his car, you're entitled to be aggrieved regardless of your social class.

(Next week's ethical lesson: Working class guys in motorboats -- surprisingly, not entitled to drown snotty rich kids in sailboats, regardless of how fun it would be.)

460:
The video doesn't tell you anything about bicycling in Berkeley as a form of transport. It tells you something about bicycling in Berkeley as a form of political protest. The two are quite different.

466 to 463.

"If it is punks versus auld gimmers in a car, be on the side of the punks."

Golden girls get off the, Golden Girls get off the, Golden Girls GET OFF THE AIR!!

OI!

447: how much money does it take to rebuild a city's transportation infrastructure to become more bike-friendly? Not a rhetorical question, some cities are probably more suitable than others. I'm going to guess that cities in northern Europe which are very bicycle friendly either expanded late, or were bombed and had to rebuild.

Maybe you'd have been happy, too, to learn that many of the people marching against the Iraq war were at risk of having their families killed or made into refugees.

But if they weren't, would you refuse to believe that they cared about people other than themselves?

470: I'd figure that cities that existed before cars are probably already pretty bike-friendly, if you just constrain the cars so as not to terrorize the bikes.

or were bombed and had to rebuild

This suggests an alarming new avenue for the *real* radical bicyclists. "Critical Mass," indeed ... we can't say we werent' warned.

460: deep imbalance in power relationships... intra-middle class... privileged backgrounds... take-out delivery guys... working moms

Note: I wasn't making an argument about class. You assumed the bikes were toys (I extrapolate this from your attributing the outrage to 'bike pride' - feel free to disagree). I pointed out that it was not possible to assume this.

I see maybe three bikes under that van: one's a fixie with bullhorns, one's a cruiser, and one's got a milk crate on the back (though that might be the cruiser). All of these could be utility bikes. Easily.

458 to 473. Don't tempt us!

471 -> ???

471 to 460.

The infrastructure problem is interesting. Cala et. al are quite right that you can't ignore the existence of a massive structural interdependence of cars & suburbs. On the other hand, at this point it is irresponsible to pretend this is ok and just go with it. Sprawl and the modern suburb are a city planning failure on a collosal scale; we're paying for it now and will continue to pay for decades, at the very best.. I'm even willing to believe that we mostly got there through plausible-looking localized decisions, even. But at this point (and for a long time now) we know the big isolated suburb without services fed by freeways just isn't a very good idea. Not trying to do better is an even worse error than pretending we aren't saddled with this infrastructure and imagining we magically make many cities more bike and person friendly overnight.

478: Right, and unwinding all of those bad decisions isn't going to happen easily or painlessly -- the fact that making areas more bike-friendly won't solve everything and will be annoying doesn't make it obviously a bad idea.

(Wildass utopian ideas: In Manhattan, close, say 2d Avenue and 10th Avenue, and every tenth cross street, to cars entirely, barring truck deliveries not to be made during rush hour, and keep them just for bikes. Why not?)

Mass transit seems more pressing than bike friendliness to me (much though I prefer to be self-powered as much as possible), particularly in places that feature serious weather.

479: my god, you do want to get cyclists killed!

Can you imagine how mad people would get? They aren't even willing to concede a lane!

But they'd be a block away, not able to attack the bikes. It could work.

Ultimately, you can't give motorists a heckler's veto over improvements for biking and other forms of transportation. Real improvements for bikes often have to come at some expense to cars.

"Taking back" the right to walk at night and feel safe doing so.

You should wear helmets.

483: dude I am so with you. Let's start a country that works that way.

During the transit strike in NYC a year and half ago, in the middle of December, there were loads and loads of cyclists on the streets. It's a viable form of transportation even in this sucky climate. I ride to work once a week or so and I see lots of other cyclists, even in the unfriendly (to put it mildly) road conditions we now face.

485: All I'm sayin' is, let's not negotiate with ourselves. Let the angry motorists do the objecting.

479: That's what I'm thinking. Create a grid of dedicated bike streets. Cyclists can also go on other streets too if they: (1) stay in a lane, (2) go the speed of traffic or allow people to pass & (3) obey all traffic rules.

Just briefly sticking up for pragmatic political reality. It'll pass.

463: I completely agree.

466: I've already made the ritual admission at 259. I'll expand it to boats, and in fact to all forms of running someone down. But you know, if boat owners start using the language of oppression and activism to describe their plight, I'm going to laugh at them, even if they nearly drowned defending their right to waterski. (Also, they're diluting the language and the tactics for the people who might need it more.)

482: Except at intersections.

487: By running over your bike?

488/479: That isn't so far from what I was describing in bits of the Bay area. Streets aren't dedicated, but if you are in a car you can only go one block before you are forced (by concrete barrier) to turn right. So nobody drives along them, but you still have local access. Bikes, on the other hand, can keep going. There are problems with timing lights, etc., but I think it's an ide worth looking at more.

288 (2) is unreasonable.

Also, re: expensive bikes being destroyed. The state of California is aware of the large potential harm that motorized vehicles can cause, and so requires those who would drive them on public streets to carry liability insurance. The people driving the minivan looked socially respectable enough to probably not be driving uninsured, so if they run over your bike, make them buy you a new one.

488 (2), I mean.

486- And didn't they restrict car access to the lower parts of the island, something like only taxis or cars with at least 4 passengers? The horror!

493: I don't follow. I was saying I averaged 35, and was perfectly happy at 50 for short distances (km/h). Typoed to 60 which is a perfectly attainable sprint speed but above my comfort range.

495: bah.

495: It's mostly reasonable, though, and should be the default state unless conditions don't allow it.

497: liiiiiiiaaaar!

496: Yeah, they required passengers in cars (I forget the details). They also closed an avenue or two to all but emergency vehicles the first day, then decided they didn't need to. The passenger restriction inconvenienced a fair number of people. And traffic was still a mess in Manhattan because there were many more cars than usual. But all the bike-riding was encouraging, and despite the automotive chaos it was actually fairly safe tor ride a bike because there were so many of us and cars were more aware.

was perfectly happy at 50 for short distances (km/h)

Then you're in better shape than most people. That's damn fast.

499: erm, no. (you did read km/h not m/h, right? that's not very fast, particularly for someone who was riding around 4-500km/week at the time.) The roadies I knew at the time all averaged closer to 40 (many above, which is impressive) and could leave me in the dust without breathing hard.

499: No, the default is and should be that bikes follow the traffic laws. But they're not going to be able to keep up with cars under most conditions, and it's frequently unsafe to pull into the gutter enough to let cars pass.

501: sadly, no longer. But see the 500km /week comment.

488(2) was not meant as an iron-clad rule--just: if you start to get a line of cars behind you, you should allow them to pass at the first available point.

492: cool.

I have a hard time seeing how it would work in a non-grid city like Boston, but in Manhattan or Chicago it really doesn't seem completely nuts. Chicago has the really long, uninterrupted trail along the lake--just a couple good east-west routes downtown, and one north-south that's a bit further west, would make an enormous difference.

As it is the street that the city recommends you go west on in the loop apparently takes you right past an interstate off ramp.

No one bikes in the winter, but you could shut it down in the winter months...

502: kidding, kidding.

"it was actually fairly safe tor ride a bike because there were so many of us and cars were more aware."
It's almost like you had a.... critical mass.

474: OK, misunderstanding about "bike pride". Copenhagen bicycles look a lot less expensive than the ones in the video, which would be fancy by Danish standards. (The trailers they used to pull children behind gave me the chills.) The bicycle equivalents of 1974 olive green Chevy Novas. I eventually concluded that bike thefts must have been so high, there was a race towards the absolute bottom of functionality.

Compared to their Danish equivalents, yeah, the ones in Berkeley look like rich kid's toys, even the one with the milk crate. I'll take your word for it they aren't. The attitudes, though, still scream "trust fund hippie" to me.

No one bikes in the winter, but you could shut it down in the winter months...

I rode all winter long when I lived in Chicago, and I know plenty of others who did, too. It's not so bad, so long as you avoid having exposed skin. That said, I no longer do any winter riding now that I own a car.

I don't ride in winter because it's dark at 4pm, not so much because of the cold.

I rode all winter long in Boston, and it sucked, but it sucked less than waiting for the bus.

508: If you don't have a car note, you can afford a pretty nice bike.

Also, I haven't watched the video, but I think I'd have trouble telling a $500 bike from a $2000 one on YouTube. And I don't think a $500 bike qualifies as a "rich kid's toy.."

551: Yeah, that's how it was for me, too. I could ride my bike to campus, or walk ten blocks in the cold, then stand 30 feet in the air on a windy L platform, then spend another 15 minutes in the air waiting for another train when I had to transfer to the purple line. Ugh.

"551"

But how did you know?

And I don't think a $500 bike qualifies as a "rich kid's toy.."

Not these days, certainly.

508: if Denmark is like the Netherlands in this respect, bikes are built tough and functional, and generally don't bother with too many gears (no hills), and they tend to have enclosed machinery, built-on locks and lights etc. They are everyday things, not something to be proud or excited about. That doesn't mean they are necessarily cheap - I was stunned by the prices of bikes there. You could get a decently tricked out MTB in the UK cheaper than (what looked like) an ordinary sit-up-and-beg boneshaker in the Netherlands.

Too bad this thread is so freakin' long; I'm not understanding the hating on hippies as aesthetically displeasing.

Hell, I find those who trick themselves out with highly-pomaded hair, hip $800 glasses, perfume and/or 4-inch high heels, looking essentially as though they can't leave the house without encasing themselves in armour, to be aesthetically displeasing.

I understand, efforts have been made to separate the objection to Critical Mass and the events depicted in that video from the objection to hippies. So this is a sidebar. I still don't get it, though.

Someday perhaps someone will explain.

514: I actually have a tremendously hard time telling the difference between three digit numbers that only differ by the middle digit and the middle digit for each is the same as one of the side numbers. All of the following numbers are nearly indistinguishable to me, and numbers I have had to differentiate today.

511 and 551
229 and 299
226 and 266

Does anyone else have this problem, or is it some very narrow form of dyslexia? (dyscalcula?)

We make fun of them, too.

soub, I don't mean to suggest that we can't do anything about infrastructure and city planning because the car is sacred, but any plan that depends on a certain percentage of people to give up their cars as a *first* wave solution isn't going to get off the ground. People aren't going to spontaneously pack up the kids from the suburban home and move into an urban apartment and get rid of their car if they're not already used to bicycles as a form of serious transportation. People who now live 50 miles away from their jobs aren't going to give up their cars.

Getting bike paths might only be an intermediate step, but I think it's a necessary one, to get people used to the idea that the life trajectory isn't college, job, new car.

Cala how can you mock rob for his disability?

520: It would be irresponsible no to.

I'm evil like that.

516: I think it's much lower, based on rental prices. It's about $30 per week to rent a bicycle around Denmark -- I generally took trains, which are ridiculously convenient, but I looked into it -- and it's about the same amount to rent a bicycle per day in NYC. So I'm going to say it's about a seventh as much. It might be weirdly subsidized, though.

483

Actually you want to give bikers a heckler's veto. The majority drive cars and find bikers a nuisance at best. Why should society fund a lot of expensive bike infrastructure which will only benefit a small minority.

Also bikes and cars sharing the same roads is inherently dangerous. A bike can hit a small rock or pothole which would not bother a car and fall or swerve into a car's path. And children are reckless which is why we don't give them driver's licenses.

519: Cala, yeah we agree, I think. Don't give up on changing the suburban sprawl dynamic, but look for realistic changes.

89, 94: The SFGate article said it was at The Alameda and Monterey. Satellite photo here. No parking lots around there, but it is a pretty large intersection. The large round structure on the triangular piece of land at the northeast corner of the intersection is a fire station, and the likely source of the authority figures on the scene. Either the firemen were standing out on the Alameda watching Critical Mass going by or the crowd around the van had to have been making a lot of noise.

(I'm way behind on this thread; sorry if I'm repeating something someone else already posted.)

525 was me

524: There are obvious flaws in the current car-centric suburban model, and I think part of this thread has wandered off into how-do-we-fixit territory. Besides that, aren't you basically taking a tyranny of the majority view? Should the bike riders be happy about subsidizing a bunch of expensive transportation infrastructure they don't get to use?

480: While we're working on building mass transit, those of us who don't have two cars want to be able to ride our bikes.

508: I agree that they're probably well off, since they seem to feel entitled not to be run over even if they're acting like jerks. But that seems to me a good thing, not a bad one.

Should the bike riders be happy about subsidizing a bunch of expensive transportation infrastructure they don't get to use?

Dear god, let us not start this libertarian bullshit.

524, 527: The issue is about much more than a minority of bikers having to fund a majority preference for cars. There is the basic fact that having all those cars around gets a lot of people killed. They get killed in Iraq. They get killed as the climate changes faster than they can adapt. And sometimes people just flat get run over.

529: that wasn't at all the way i meant that, bitchphd, even if it's easy to read that way. I think we can all agree that publicly funded transportation infrastructure can be a great idea, while acknowledging that how it is actually done in this country is sort of a mess, and that issues like mass transport and bicicyles etc. are important.

I probably could have put it more clearly to James.

524: If JBS rode his bike more, he'd know that this is pretty much bullshit. I ride ~1000 miles a year on often-shitty Pittsburgh streets and have never been knocked off-line, much less into traffic, by road conditions. I'm not saying that it can't happen, but that it's a meaningless consideration.

Also, just a general you-suck rant: All you assholes who complain about not being able to go 40 MPH on Residential Lane because a cyclist is in front of you, but then he blows through a stop sign, should think, for just a moment, about the presumed source of your righteousness.

Let him who has never exceeded the speed limit throw the first beer can.

And what the hell does Critical Mass have to do with getting people out of cars? Make them think that you can't be a bicyclist without being a dishonest smelly bomb-throwing hippie who has an incurable grudge against the squares?

If Berkeley were to make half their streets dedicated to bikes tomorrow, would there still be a Critical Mass next month?

527

Actually roads are financed by taxes on gasoline which bikers don't pay so the subsidy is in the other direction.

Serious non-trolly question for bikers: would you want or accept licensing for people who ride bicycles?

Hey James, ever been stuck in traffic or looked for a parking space? Subways, bike lanes, and everything that get cars off the roads don't only benefit those who use alternate means of transportation--and that's true even if you leave aside the environmental effects, which you shouldn't.

534, as I understand it, is just factually incorrect. Gasoline taxes are part of it, but only part. A lot of infrastructure is from property taxes and general revenue, for a start.

535: if it made sense, I think I would. Licensing requirements for cars are far too lax in a lot of the country ... perhaps as a general improvement (that included bike & motorcycle specific educational parts in both directions)

532

Its true I haven't ridden a bike in a long time so perhaps this is not a big problem but it does make me nervous when passing bikes. And when I was riding a bike I once took a spill after hitting a curb. I wasn't badly hurt but this was potentially quite dangerous.

Make them think that you can't be a bicyclist without being a dishonest smelly bomb-throwing hippie who has an incurable grudge against the squares?

What?

Serious non-trolly question for bikers: would you want or accept licensing for people who ride bicycles?

Depends on what bicyclists would get out of it, and what the reasoning behind it was.

Part of the reason for licensing cars is that it's much easier to kill people with a car than with a bike, so it's hard to see the necessity of licensing bikes. Similarly, there is much more of a tradition of bikes for kids which could be impacted by bike restrictions.

But if there was a scheme in which there was a tangible benefit to getting a bike license, and it didn't prevent people from teaching their kids to ride I wouldn't mind.

Walking to work this morning, I crossed the road with the walk sign and got zoomed around by a bicyclist running the red. Usually I notice them not braking for the light and pause before crossing. This near an intersection where three bicyclists have gotten run over in recent memory.

When the revolution comes, we will all have jetpacks.

Not sure what the relevance of this is, but dear lord.

531: Oh, sorry, I didn't realize who you were responding to, since I generally just skip his comments.

544: It's relevant to comment 311, certainly.

535: I'm tempted to say yes to licensing, if just to get the idiots who ride against traffic, and make the rest of us cyclists look bad, off the road.

The pwnage... it burns.

547 -- Hey!

547: You can get ticketed for breaking bike rules without a license.

Speaking of violence, this sure doesn't sound good.

I wouldn't have predicted it, but I was all pro-bike when I lived in the Bay Area and mostly drove everywhere (and even happily put up with Critical Mass delays). Now that I'm in New York and mostly walk/subway everywhere, I'm feeling much less friendly toward bicyclists, primarily because of all the times - and really, they are many - that I've nearly been creamed by insane food delivery guys. At least in Berkeley, the fuzz would ticket your ass for riding on the sidewalk.

208 is just moronic. There is absolutely never any justification for using a vehicle to intimidate/force people to move in any non-violent, non-threatening situation, period.

B's husband was 110 percent right in his actions. This belief I will take to my grave.

Oh, yeah I forgot to put my 2 cents in on that: B, sorry, but me too: your husband's right on in my book.

553: It's ok, you're allowed to take moronic beliefs to grave.

I understand the impetus to do this, but it constitutes a very real threat of bodily harm --- regardless of your intent --- which in turn justifies all sorts of actions on the part of the person you are threatening.

Heck, in this state I wouldn't be at all surprised* if the pedestrian could just shoot you and be backed up in court as a self defense.

(*) actually, I'd be surprised if this weren't the case.

I'm surprised that's Monterey and the Alameda. That's a busy intersection, although more so at the next light on Marin.

I understand the impetus to do this, but it constitutes a very real threat of bodily harm

Doubtless the parking valet was weeping hysterically into his birkenstocks with fear.

I'm now sort of curious if anyone I knew when I lived in the area was on a trust fund. With such a high concentration of them in this video probably so.

557: ok, gswift, I know you are trying to play up the humour of a cartoon version of this, but think about it a minute. I know a girl who lost both legs below the knee because of a jackass playing this sort of game outside a club. It doesn't matter that you think you are in control and there is no real danger, it is simply a stupid thing to play around with because any error can be serious.

If some guy pulls you out of your car and hurts you a bit to make this point, it would be a shame, but I can't say unjustified.

Parking valets do not wear birkenstocks.

555

What state is that? In most states there is a duty to retreat (when in a public place) if you can do so safely which would clearly apply in this situation.

Even in states which allow you to stand your ground you must have a right to be there in the first place which I doubt the valet in the parking space has.

In most states there is a duty to retreat (when in a public place)

Or at home, if you're a woman and the person threatening you is your husband/boyfriend.

Sorry, couldn't help it. That particular law burns me up.

550: True, but I was thinking that the written test required for a license could be a teaching moment.

Question 1: When biking in traffic, which side of the road do you ride on?

(a) On the right, riding with traffic.
(b) On the left, facing traffic.

And they could deny a license to anyone who answered (b).

It probably wouldn't work though. People would just ride without licenses.

I was sentenced to traffic school for my Berkeley bike riding ticket. Not once over the course of the whole thing was riding bikes the wrong way on one-way streets mentioned.

A fellow inmate had some outstanding reef, though, so the experience was not a total loss.

564: Was your class made up of bicycling offenders, or were you thrown in with motorized offenders?

If some guy pulls you out of your car and hurts you a bit to make this point, it would be a shame, but I can't say unjustified.

I'll choke him with his own unwashed hair.

557: If not, we need to find him and terrorize him a little more, just in case he's tempted to pull that shit again.

546: I can't visualize the intersection. Given the pattern of traffic on campus, you're much more likely to be cut off by a left turn in the bike lanes. [digs] Okay, he was on the east side past Willy Street, where the isthmus constricts. Makes sense, those are bad intersections for car, bike, and dirty hippie alike.

566: yeah, yeah, I'm sure your such a hard man nobody could do this to you.

Actually, `justified' should have been `understood'. But, it stands.

566: Valets are generally well-groomed; this one had very short, clean hair.

A cop tagged me for running a red light on my bicycle at 2 AM on a Thursday. I probably could've told him about the non-ferrous frame thing, but between wondering whether I should've tried to escape and hoping he didn't give me a breathalyzer, I didn't think of it in time.

In California, a DUI is a DUI whether you're riding a tricycle or driving a school bus.

I can't believe this thread is still on topic after 570 posts. Something has gone terribly wrong.

Violence is an easy topic to stay on.

Well, I'm totally late to the game but I wanted to make a few points:

1) Critical Mass is not particularly organized, and its behavior and quality varies wildly as a function of who is participating/taking charge. A quote from one of the "founders"

This focus on good shopping leads people to ridiculous, philosophically retarded syllogisms like "Cars Are Bad, You're In A Car, You are Bad." Motorists are not bad. They are not moral failures, nor thoughtless, greedy or rich, just because they are in a car!

2) This is a tiny fraction of the total Berkeley bike community. I know tons of people who ride bikes, don't own cars, and have never been to "Mass." Believe it or not, there are even Republicans in Berkeley!

3) I know this intersection very well. I agree with Josh that it's an absolutely bizarre place for this to happen as that's one of the nicest bike and drive parts of the city. I'm guessing the crowd of riders was coming out of the fountain, down Marin, and left onto the Alameda. Whether or not California law protects a mass of riders that has started through an intersection, I think it is unforgivable to edge forward just because you have a green light. The law is that you can preceed forward through a green light once it's safe to go forward. When the light turns green you are still supposed to check if the light turns green. One could imagine, for instance, that a car making an unprotected left turn might still be finishing up, or that a slow pedestrian is not done crossing. You let whatever is going on finish up before you let go of the brake. If Dick Cheney's Berkeley Doppelganger (!) was already going through the intersection when the leading edge of the mass came through, that is clearly the bikers' fault. That would mean they were biking into an already red light, however, and this was not made clear at all by any of the articles. If the bikers were already streaming through the intersection and the back of the mass simply did not stop when the light stopped--that is toolish behavior which may or may not be protected by California Law (see 439*)--but it is STILL the driver's responsibility not to let go of his brake until it is safe to go forward. I find the notion of cyclists throwing their bikes under a car *extremely* unlikely.

4) I have long maintained that getting a driver's license should include a special section of training on how to properly interact with bikes, horses, motorcycles, crowds, etc.. I think a lot of drivers would like to be more considerate of bikers, they just don't necessarily know what the best thing to do is all the time. And since they are in the big hunk of metal, they should be made responsible for knowing that, and given the opportunity to learn.

5) I only learned how to ride a bike a year and a half ago and have yet to ride for commuting purposes, so my stake in this game is still purely as a driver---and I've never had a problem with bikes on my road. Like Cerebrocrat, I will even cheerfully pull aside and let CM go forward if need be. The one thing I find dangerous is bikers speeding across a hatched cross walk, because when driving you check the edge of the crosswalk for pedestrians as you approach it, but the legal driving speed is usually too high to comfortably slow down for a bike zooming across your path. I think if you're going to use hatched cross walks meant to give pedestrians right-of-way, you have to walk across it.

I sincerely think one reason why I've never had a problem with a bike on my road is that I am empathetic to them, and appreciate the fact that I'm in a big hunk of metal and they are using muscle instead of oil. I usually slow down behind them and they usually pull over as soon as they can and let me pass. Friendly nods are frequently exchanged. I learned to ride after I went to India and part of my family almost died (really), partially b/c of the intense pollution which is choking the country. I came home with bleeding sinuses, and the minute I got better I worked on learning. I suck at it, but one day I will take my bike for a ride where I would have previously used my car, and that will be a happy day. Despite the fact that I'm good friends with some of the originators of CM, I don't particularly agree with the general attitude it's associated with. (I would note that it frequently happens quite happily, and no one seriously minds, and it's as much of a Friday afternoon mini-parade as anything else.) I also, however, am a little taken aback by the equally holier-than-though reactionary machismo of "fuck you, hippie, I'll show you who's boss." Biohazard's organ-donation story is the only presented example of when this might be warranted. Seriously people, chill out. Humility is an amazing sweetener in life.

*btw, 439, this was pretty far away from the circle, see Magpie's 526.

574.5: enough hippies have told me that I wasn't acting my race to have soured me on their subculture as a concept. I will grant exceptions, along the lines of, "they're one of the good ones".

Oh man, my church organist lives right around that corner. Nice lady, great organist.

571: I was once in a car-on-bike accident with a drunk bicyclist in San Francisco. He came flying down a hill, through a red light, and bounced off my hood. I pulled my car out of the intersection (which technically I probably shouldn't have done) and came back to see if he was all right... in time to hear him telling onlookers that a black woman (which I am not) driving a red car (which it was) had hit him and run. He had a broken leg and a very high blood alcohol level and I had a clear outline of his bicycle pedal impressed in my hood.

which I am not

Maybe you're just in denial.

I saw this thread had reached 575 posts, so I scrolled to the end. You're still on fucking topic! I will never forgive Critical Mass for this, the dirty fucking hippies.

It happens, from time to time.

Not only on-topic but surprisingly hostile. Can't we build a little comity around the idea that Dick Cheney and anyone who resembles him is fair game? Dirty hippies may also be fair game (or not; comity, dammit, you clownfuckers), but at worst they're still not Dick Cheney. Unless they look like Dick Cheney, in which case you can crush their kids' testicles with a beagle puppy. Even the girls.

565 -- With the car people. I can't imagine that there were enough bike people for a traffic class. (It was summer, and plenty of students were out of town). Although from the way the judge intoned there's no greater hazard on the roads in this city than bicycles violating the rules of the road you'd have thought there was something bigger going on.

My next losing court case was -- to hearken back to a recent thread -- Dog At Large. Young man, this city has a dog problem.

Well, hell, I don't know if anyone else has linked to it already, but if this doesn't take us off-topic, nothing will.

Ok, that's pretty wonderful.

What. The. Hell.

Here I am sitting completely alone, no chance of anyone looking over my shoulder, and I was very nearly too embarrassed to watch that.

I liked it. Way political.

The link in 583 is fantastic. Just totally and completely perfectly awsome. I wish I could come up with something more articulate to say, but I'm like McManly in the presence of puppies: words dissolve on the page before me as the awesomeness strangles my brain.

Oh. Oh my God. All I can do, really, is endorse 587.

I prefer the one with the Christmas tree in the background. It really makes you wonder if their parents have a clue.

Warning: may cause wet panties.

583: I have tears streaming down my face. Please let the world be beautiful enough for those guys to have been completely in earnest.

All I can do is endorse 590.

590: I have to assume that their intent is to get crazy laid, and I have no doubt they will succeed wildly.

I have no doubt they will succeed wildly.

Wait, you're saying THAT would WORK?

589: Never mind the Christmas tree -- is that a portrait of dear departed grandma to the right of the fireplace?

593: No on most people, no, but how many people are going to see the video?

Mother of God. One was enough, but... it appears to be a genre?

Man, I am SO GLAD this technology wasn't available when I was young. It's so touchingly stupid that they made up "street" names for themselves and then gave their real names in the credits.

Is it a genre with contributions by anyone but this particular group of wonderful freaks?

I dunno what I would have thought if I'd seen something like this 10 years ago, but all I can think now is how great it would be to be that flexible. Sigh.

Also, we get something like 576 and nobody grabs the low-hanging fruit? Dragons live forever, but not so little boys.

600: I assumed if I went for it I'd get pwned.

That was the dirtiest video I've ever seen.

Oh my. One wonders if they have any idea how it works.

Oh, thank god this finally got posted here. I saw it yesterday, but couldn't decide which poster to email it to.

It's so touchingly stupid that they made up "street" names for themselves and then gave their real names in the credits.

This was the part that cracked me up.

if this doesn't take us off-topic, nothing will

Dammit! I was saving that one for later!

Take it up to a post. Better than piling onto a 600 comment thread about bike messengers.

You throw your bike in front of a moving car, you lose your bike. That's just how it works.

I'm sorry, if people can't keep their cool when driving, they shouldn't drive.

Was Mr. B in a road-rage frenzy, or was he calmly and deliberately moving forward? My hunch would be the latter.

As the first car in line for the spot, Mr. B had the right to keep moving forward, and the valet had the right to move the fuck out of his way. Your husband wasn't the aggressor here; he was doing what he was entitled to do: park his car in a parking space. The valet was the aggressor because he was doing what he was not entitled to do: Stand in a parking space and prevent your husband from parking.

If the valet is willing to be a human shield for some rich asshole, fine. But being a human shield carries with it the likelihood that you're gonna get hit.

I'm inclined to agree with GB on this one. Although, ideally, one wouldn't use the car, but rather, have gotten out and had a quiet word.

Serious non-trolly question for bikers
I think trolley questions on the license test would be awesome- "If a car is going to hit five pedestrians, but you could throw a CM rider in front of the car to stop it, should you?"

Actually, reverse the premise (5 CM riders, sacrificing one innocent pedestrian could save them) because the original is a no-brainer.

609: "quiet word" s/b "swing at his nuts"

re: 612

Never! That'd be uncouth.

593: Maybe word of mouth doesn't work like it used to?

You guys have got to take those videos to a post.

609: The problem isn't that he wasn't in the right about the parking spot (he was) but that he was using the car. The vast majority of times, nothing bad happens --- but the potential is there. It just isn't ok. LB was probably right that the best bet was to stop, blocking the parking spot, and just talk to the guy.

I don't know the street, but isn't there a good chance he'd then be blocking traffic to argue? The valet's going to get out of the way.

Doesn't matter. You don't push people around with a car, and you don't even threaten it.

Arms are for pushing.

Arms are for pushing smashing.

It's actually recommended as a self-defense technique. If people are surrounding your car and threatening you, let the car creep forward. Better than gunning the car forward, or getting out of the car and provoking a violent confrontation, or waiting until they break your car.

Not that valets fall under self-defense. But surely you guys have had a friend or a valet stand behind your car while you get into a tight parking space or teach your kid to parallel park, right? Creeping towards someone? Not really the sort of thing likely to land someone in the hospital.

621: Did I mention that I know of (two, in fact) people who did end in hospital this way? The nasty one (double amputation) had alchohol involved, granted, and was maybe intentional so is debatably connected. The other one was an unintentional little `bump' (Officer, I didn't mean to hit him, just scare him a bit, really) but the geometry of the bumper and leg was just right to snap his knee back.

Clearly things are different if you are surrounded by threatening people, I was talking about using such a tactic offensively. My point wasn't that there is never ever a situation where it is sensible to do this. My point is that although it may look harmless from the drivers seat, doing this constitutes a very real threat of harm. Don't be surprised if the person on the recieving end behaves accordingly, don't be surprised. For that reason, there is never any reason to do this unless you are physically threatened. Your example with a friend standing behind you is very different. You've agreed to do this, and they presumeably have reason to trust you.

Anyway, all this is far too earnest so I ban myself.

I understand that Karl Rove has identified bike politics as the wedge issue that will usher in the Romney-Brownback Administration.

Now that the amateur hump-dancers have their own thread we can return to violence against cyclists.

I ride in Critical Mass in Chicago, and have witnessed several similar situations as this. Often we have as many as 3000 riders in the summer months. In general, drivers realize that they have to wait for us, rather than plow us down with their vehicles, but when we have a confrontation, depending on how upset and/or recklessly homocidal the cager is, we tend to get someone to part the crowd and others to safely escort them out before their road rage kills someone. (We did have a drunk driver accelerate into us, he stopped when he got a u-lock through his windshield. The police saw the whole thing and arrested the drunk driver.No one got hurt.) Trying to reason with people isolated in their cars and feeling entitled and frightened only escalates the situation.
We also thank drivers for waiting, and hand out flyers about what we are doing and why, so people unfamiliar with Critical Mass don't think we are just a marauding crazy mob.

In my experience, too, riding topless and showing one's breasts to angry drivers waiting in traffic tends to distract and pacify them. Something those hippies in Berkeley might want to consider.

Something those hippies in Berkeley might want to consider.

I'm afraid the ones who would consider it probably already have considered it, to the detriment of all involved.

624: WTF? No one took that kid to the hospital? What if he had a concussion??