Last night I was out on a short bike ride that went through the campus area. Of course I got the normal smart remarks about a guy on bike with a light on the back and a helmet on (safety is looked down upon here), or just generally riding a bike. These have stopped really bothering me (though they are pretty annoying), but then I also got some of the less frequent, but scarier car comments. A good number of times, students will lean out of cars and shout at me as the drive past, which is just kind of stupid since most of the time I can barely hear them (and then normally the only word I can make out is some stupid swear word, yah, really insulting ). However, cars sometimes do dangerous things to me, like get within inches of my bike when I’m all the way over on the shoulder and then slow down so that they don’t pass me. This last time a car was going the opposite direction, when someone shouted at me, and then someone in the car yelled out “let’s hit the biker!”. Immediately the car came to a halt, maybe 30 feet behind me. Lucky nothing happened (they sounded to drunk to be able to even turn the car around) but stuff like this can be really scary. And I want to point out that as a tiger I have very big teeth, so they better watch out!
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Weeeelllll, I probably shouldn't recommend this, but after one too many close calls I have started packing a good sized rock wedged in the bars under the seat, right above my little tool pack. Haven't hit a car yet, but, in the day at least, I have whipped it out and brandished it like the dangerous weapon it is. Posts: 240 | Registered: Jun 2003
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that sucks, tiger. as someone who rode bikes to get from place to place for a number of years, I can relate. Though it does sound like you're getting the worst of the worst. Posts: 13123 | Registered: Feb 2002
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there is most definitly a biker v. pedistrian and biker v. car mentality here. i know i joke with you about it, but i really can't stand it from either side.
idiots. freakind idiots. sorry you have to deal with them at all.
yeah, indiana doesn't have helmet laws. you'll see a lot of people on motorcycles without them. how stupid is that? Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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She was driving to the hospital where she worked as an OB-GYN. She was just coming to a stop at a light when, out of nowhere, a cyclist rammed into her right side and fell on the ground. He got up quickly, and my aunt about freaked out. She wanted to take him to the hospital and have him checked out. The guy kept telling her not to worry about it and left really quickly. My aunt continued on to the hospital. When she got there she realized the biker had made a HUGE dent on her right side.
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Oh, dear, Hobbes! I don't like the sound of that at all. Any chance you can walk instead of biking? Especially after dark? It sounds very dangerous to me if people are acting like that. Grrrrr, am I going to have to come up there and make those people behave? They'd better hope I don't. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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You know, whenever I bike past a couple and the guy says something nasty about me, I always get the urge to yell out (to the girl) "I hope the sex is great!".
My best friend's brother-in-law used to drive around with a pal in the passenger seat. They would pull up next to cyclists and when they were driving right along side of one, the passenger would open the door and slam it into the cyclist to knock them down. The sad thing is that at least two grown men thought this was funny, and I didn't even think it was funny when I was in middle school.
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At college (BYU), I rode my bike everywhere, and had to put up with college-student-stupid-drivers.
One day, I was in a really bad mood, and this carload of co-eds turned right right in front of me (into the Wilkinson Center parking lot for those who care).
Well, I missed them, but I decided to teach them a lesson. I rolled onto the park strip grass, grabbed my knee and started "writhing in pain."
They were scared as heck. Just about the point that someone was going to call an ambulance, I jumped up and gave them the loudest safe-driving lecture they've probably ever had.
Man, it was fun. Posts: 524 | Registered: May 2003
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quote:We've all been infuriated with other drivers on the road, especially in the ever more complex system of one way roads and dead ends that make up the Purdue campus. But when has the frustration from this bubbled up to the point where you seriously contemplate following another driver to their house and killing them?
As chilling as that was to hear, it was actually a relief to many international students who feared this was a racially motivated crime.
Seriously.
Eventually, enough of the incosistancies added up to a much more bizaar motive. The guy actually thought that his fellow students were conspiring against him, and killed one of them so he could access her account and look for evidence of that conspiracy...I wish I were making this up.Ugh.
You think there's an interesting dynamic now between cyclists and drivers?
Posts: 3956 | Registered: Jun 2001
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Hobbes, move to Portland! We're one of the top 5 most friendly bicycle cities!! No one would hurt you and you'd have a bike lane most of the time. Posts: 6415 | Registered: Jul 2000
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Well I come from perhaps the most bike friendly city in the US, so this is rather a shock to me. But that's OK, so long as I don't get killed I'll survive.
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Well at this point I'm really just venting so everyone can just not read this post or hit me or something. But I came close to getting hit again tonight. I was just going down the road (pretty fast, but in the right lane and everything) when some guy accelerates very fast out of a parking lot right as I'm coming up. I managed to swerve out of the way by about 3 feet but this guy never slowed down! And I know he saw me because of the yelling coming from the car.
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Hobbes, this sounds like a very dangerous situation. Is there any way you can get around without biking? I really am worried about you getting hurt. If you've had so many near misses in such a short time.
I went to a bike friendly school, but the city as a whole just didn't have good bike lanes, and there were lots of small town drivers who would do unexpected things. They were totally used to being the only car around, and so they could do things like come to a dead stop on a green light when they had the right of way to let someone else turn left in front of them. That's very polite and all but in high traffic situations stuff like that can be dangerous because nobody is expecting it. Also it takes up a lot of time and really slows traffic down. So in college I biked most of freshman year but had a wreck once (not bad but kept me off the bike for a while) and just started walking instead. Sophomore year I moved closer into campus so I never biked again.
I wish you could find some way not to have to bike. It's dangerous enough without people deliberately making things worse. Given the bad atmosphere there it's downright scary!
Posts: 968 | Registered: Sep 2003
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AK, I've been thinking about that for a while. I definitly don't have to be out biking. When I'm biking on campus it's more likely something will happen but nothing serious, I never go fast enough that anything happens. All these times I was out on a recreational ride. The thing is, it's the one fun thing I do. really the only thing I really enjoy here, and the only excerise I get.
Something werid happened to day. I was biking along a path in the golf course (they're free of most things I don't like ) when a brown bird flys at my front tire, hit's it head on, and then dissapears.
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). However, cars sometimes do dangerous things to me, like get within inches of my bike when I’m all the way over on the shoulder and then slow down so that they don’t pass me. This last time a car was going the opposite direction, when someone shouted at me, and then someone in the car yelled out “let’s hit the biker!”. Immediately the car came to a halt, maybe 30 feet behind me. Lucky nothing happened (they sounded to drunk to be able to even turn the car around) but stuff like this can be really scary. And I want to point out that as a tiger I have very big teeth, so they better watch out! ![[Mad]](mad.gif)
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