Monday, October 03, 2005

impediment?

Of a three paragraph letter to the editor in today's paper, the middle one is the critical one. I have annotated it below:

"The four-way stop is a situation where a cyclist is a major impediment. [This is the place where a bike is the least "impediment." If it weren't for cars my ride to work would be "unimpeded."] It is easy to follow the rules, but cyclists are comparatively slow out of the gate [speak for yourself]. A cyclist stands to delay the waiting further by occupying a space in the road where a vehicle would otherwise be. [Once again, who's delaying whom here? The same ride takes me 5-10 minutes more when there are cars on the road. And what is a bike if not a vehicle? Dog shit? And on a side note, if you "delay" the waiting doesn't that mean you are not waiting?] The herky-jerky nature of a busy four-way stop has a cyclist doing a dance of "on the bike, off the bike." In an attempt to eliminate this problem, I stay to the side and adopt a car to traverse the intersection. I watch the sequence at the stop and go when the adopted car is up for its turn. [Let's hope the driver is not turning right without his/her blinkers on and is watching for a cyclist. I would not like a bike to do this to me when I am driving my car.]

Crazy!

What this guy is advocating sounds pretty dangerous to me and I have explicitly told my kids not to do it. Plus, if I understand it correctly, the law is on the other side.

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