Regarding bicycles, pedestrians, and what happens when the twain do meet.

Short blog post before I piss off anymore bicyclists on Twitter. This path I’m talking about is a long very nice concrete two lane job running something like 18 linear miles along the Trinity River in Arlington, Texas. It’s a “multi-use” path, and is clearly marked as such throughout. It is also clearly marked with signs as follows:

· Speed limit 20 mph.
· Announce “Passing on left” when passing
· Bicycles yield to pedestrians.

As you can see, the warnings are mostly pointed at cyclists. Not many of us run fast enough to pass anything other than turtles and snakes. I’m pretty sure the world record 100 meter dash is not much above 20 mph, so that’s pretty much for bikes, too.
Now, the real problem lies in this whole “multi-use” business. Because of this, you have a range of users from high end cyclists on 2 thousand dollar bikes and competition dress to mother’s walking their toddlers. Not a good recipe for sharing. Having said this, though, for right or wrong, the signs say cyclists yield to pedestrians. Not “when appropriate” or “when I feel like it”, but in all cases. Are there jerky inconsiderate (mostly just clueless) pedestrians? Sure. They just tend to be outnumbered by bicyclists bent on pushing the speed limit, riding two across (in your lane coming at you) and not announcing anything except “Look out!” at the pedestrians when they get in their way.

The cyclists need their own path. That’s the real solution. But unless and until, as long as there is no enforcement out there, it’s actually dangerous to be a pedestrian. The difference is this: a pedestrian is not going to cause a pedestrian collision. Bicylces can not only cause these with peds, but also with other cyclists. I’ve seen two cyclists bitch each other out for not minding lanes. This is a pretty serpentine path. Cyclists sometimes don’t anticipate what might be around the next bend. On foot, that’s not a problem. At 19.9 mph on a bike, it can literally be a life or death situation.

So, at any rate, here’s what happened today.

I am running in my lane headed eastward. A woman jogger with child in a jog stroller in front of her is about to pass me in the oncoming, opposite lane. At this moment, a cyclist at or near 20 mph approaches in my lane from behind me. I don’t hear him, but see the woman jogger’s eyes go huge. The cyclist yells something at her while, at speed, passing BETWEEN US, in both our lanes, yielding to neither of us, not announcing his pass, not touching his brakes. If I had stumbled and fallen to my left, it would have thrown him into her path, her child’s stroller, at a speed easily high enough to kill the child. I was freaking furious. He didn’t slow down at all, but actually had the gall to call some kind of admonishment back AT US for not making way for him! If I’d been a cop, that guy would never sit on a bicycle again.

I have a theory. I was actually a cyclist too, up until I started running about 9 years ago. You don’t go to school, read books, take classes and tests to become a bicylclist like we do when we learn to drive a car. So, our dad pushes us down the driveway, let’s go, and the whole rest of the body of our bicylcle instruction is self taught. Kids don’t know about stop signs, yield signs. Ever see a kid on a bike stop at a stop sign? And a lot of that is because this sort of loose self taught, non regulated method for learning doesn’t have anything to do with the rules of the road. Most of us were too busy jumping sidewalks, hedges, sprinklers, whatever, to avoid stop signs. So, there we are, 20, 30 years later, gear strapped on, climbing onto our 2 thousand dollar bikes, with the same attitudes we had riding the neighborhood as kids.

So, yes, pedestrians can be jerks on the park path, too. The difference is that they don’t have any where near as much potential to do great physical harm. And there are a great many very good cyclists whom I pass every day. We say Hi to each other and sometimes even stop to talk.

This is not about all bicyclists. Neither is it about pedestrians. It’s about rules and safety. It is about jerks, and they can be on foot, in cars, on bikes, in planes, everywhere.