Postby fatdudeonabike » Tue Jan 08, 2013 10:48 pm
This is nowhere near as bad as some of the things I read in this thread - but as a cyclist, I get more angry now at dumb cyclists now than I did as a driver. My experience as a driver tells me that all cyclists are tarred with the same brush - inconsiderate cyclists make us all look bad.
Driving up a busy 2 lane road in Canberra (Gungahlin Drive for locals) this afternoon... the road should be 3 lanes, and the 2 lanes they have arent wide enough. Traffic flow sucks. It's an 80km/hr road, but traffic rarely gets much above 60km/hr at that time of day.
It was worse than usual today. Traffic was being backed up because... a really, really slow cyclist was taking up one of the lanes doing no more than 25 km/h in this 80 km/hr zone.
"He's entitled to a lane" I hear you say - and I know this. He's absolutely entitled to a lane.
But its one of the little things that give us all a bad wrap when someone is so inconsiderate to do this.
Why?
Because there was a bike path about 5 metres to his left.
Technically its a shared bike/pedestrian path - but this path is in the middle of nowhere. I sometimes see a guy walking his dog along it early in the morning - but aside from that, I literally dont remember ever seeing a single other pedestrian on that path in the 18 months that I've lived out here.
I know that legally he's not doing anything wrong, nor is it particularly idiotic - it just made me really angry though that crap traffic flow is made that much worse because of one inconsiderate buffoon who thinks he's Mark Cavendish is too good for the bike lines when people much, much faster than him are happy to use it.
Edit: Is he actually entitled to this lane? After writing this post, I think I remember reading somewhere that you arent allowed to ride on the road where a bike path is provided. Did I make that up?