Losing Patience

Today, I officially yelled at a fellow cyclist whose zest for dangerous riding pushed me over the edge.

See, there are many more cyclists out there, the majority of whom never think about safety issues on a bike. They wear headphones and listen to their iPods at top volume completely erasing the only method of signaling from behind that other cyclists have. When a passing cyclist calls out "on your left!" they don't hear, and even sometimes drift leftwards putting the passing cyclist at risk. I don't like being pushed into traffic.

Today, after dealing with many headphone wearing cyclists, I was almost taken out by a cyclist riding ::gasp:: on the wrong side of the road. I was attempting to make a left turn into a bicycle parking lot and was looking for oncoming traffic. This fellow came up from behind and almost hit me. I yelled, "watch out!" Really, though, I shouldn't have to yell. After he realized what had almost happened, I said something along the lines of "traffic laws apply to you too!" Dear. God.

And now, I end with a brief list of other offending actions only committed by irreverent cyclists in town:

• Passing on the right, especially when a cyclist is trying to make a right turn. Disaster waiting to happen!
• Switching rapidly between riding on the sidewalk and the right side of the road causing chaos among cyclists, pedestrians, and cars. Ack!
• Refusing to yield to anyone or anything.
• Riding two or ::gasp!:: three abreast on a busy street at a low speed, thereby eliminating the possibility of safe passing.
• Not looking before moving into traffic thereby almost causing a vehicle to hit a car/ cyclist.

And, my personal favorite:

• Completely running all red lights thereby making all cars hate cyclists. Boo!!

That's all. Someone needs to more actively promote basic courtesy among commuting cyclists. For the love of god, people.