Pride in protecting people by running bicyclists off the road

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It seems whenever bicyclists take to the streets in mass wither it’s because of nice weather, the cost of gas or just to lose some pounds or just to be healthy some motorists feel obliged to offer some discouragement. It used to be just verbal taunts and while not cool it was sort of like an initiation to a fraternity but times change, now it seems more motorists are using their vehicles to “scare” bicyclists off the road by threatening the cyclists life. But what’s really scary is the extent that this behavior has penetrated all segments of our society, in May we had a hit and run school bus who “needed” to get to a red light ahead of a cyclist and just last weekend I had a car with firefighter tags nearly run me off the road passing me unsafely on a blind curve just to block traffic to make a left turn a few hundred feet ahead to watch a ball game, totally senseless endangerment of life. Baltimore City has been making tremendous efforts to be a Bicycle Friendly City but with such going on it’s easy to see why they only got an honorable mention from the League of American Bicyclists.

I know some of you are probably thinking that some of the blame needs to go on the cyclists as well, as roads connecting neighborhoods to parks are no place to ride a bike, or the cyclists was not riding safely. In a recent poll of motorists here are motorists’ safe bicycling recommendations: Ride on the sidewalk even when there is no sidewalk, ride against traffic, ride with traffic or the preferred simple version; wherever a cyclist is they should be riding somewhere else. The sad fact is few know what the law is and what constitutes safe bicycling, so please do not take the law in your own hands, call the police if what you see is bothering you so much, if it is not worth that bother then just let it go, just think of all the money that is “saved” by not having decent accommodations for cyclists that is going into all the road improvements just for motorists, by doing this in maybe in 100 years we’ll save up enough money for some serious highway expansion, assuming we can still afford gas by then. If that does not get your attention please note across the nation more motorists are spending time behind bars for harassing cyclists, it’s not worth it. We need to seriously end the thinking that all roads should be dangerous to ride a bike on and it is ok for motorists to enforce that, motorists have bike free roadways called expressways everything else is public roads for use by all members of the public.



This is my second incident with Balto City firefighter tagged car in a month. I am flabbergasted that among such a high quality of individuals there are some that treat bicyclists with such abuse. I’ll strongly assert that if firefighters don’t get it then few get it, we need to improve our motorists’ education and we need to target education to those who need education, this is the cue that things are getting out of hand. Calling the police and getting the response that there is nothing they can do, is no longer acceptable, issuing warnings is something they can do and they can do it economically by phone or by mail. If someone points a gun at someone yet does not pull the trigger, do the police respond there is nothing we can do? If a person is swinging a baseball bat at people and saying “We don’t want your kind here!” do the police respond there is nothing we can do? Then why is it considered an appropriate response when a motorist threatens bodily harm to a bicyclist? These things happen to adult and kid bicyclists as well, it is totally outrageous that we allow it to continue.

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Baltimore Spokes
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