No Place For Cyclists

I got yelled at the other day while riding my bike. This isn’t so unusual, given that I’m regularly being yelled at while I’m riding- except that this time it was coming from a pedestrian. Okay, I could understand if I was riding on the sidewalk (I’ve wanted to yell at cyclists riding on the sidewalk before!). Or it would make sense if I didn’t stop for pedestrians who were crossing at a crosswalk or intersection.

No, these people were crossing in the middle of the street, which in my world, we call jaywalking, and I got screamed at for not stopping. I’m sorry, I thought as a legitimate vehicle travelling safely and legally down the road at 20 miles per hour, that this herd of jaywalkers would respect me as such and pause for me to continue so they could finish their jaywalking. Instead, they saw me coming, and decided they were going to walk right in front of me anyway and expect me to stop.

Stop, I didn’t. I’m about tough love on the road, sorry. I had the right of way, and it was their job to respect that. If I had been a car, they wouldn’t have walked right in front of me just hoping that I wouldn’t hit then. They would wait for the car to pass before finishing their illegal maneuver.

But I’m not a car; I’m a cyclist, on a bicycle- a vehicle that’s hardly respected by motorist and pedestrian alike. Well most of this herd, seeing that I wasn’t stopping, clustered together in the road and backed out of my way. One man, though, decided that he was going to continue walking right in front of my path. Realizing it was too late to stop and hoping to avoid a collision, I swerved and barely missed hitting him. I looked back and watched as this man’s face turned turnip red and he began screaming profanities at the top of his lungs. I shouted the first thing that came to my mind: “Sir, there is no crosswalk here, and therefore I have the right of way.” That didn’t bode so well with him, because he started screaming how pedestrians always have the right of way. If he weren’t so irate, I might have considered stopping to have a reasonable discussion with him about how I really had the right of way, and he really should respect bicycles on the road the same way he does cars. But I decided to let it go, and leave this screaming man to sit in his own furry and hopefully he may come to realize the error of his ways.

The truth is that pedestrians don’t always have the right of way. That’s why there are jaywalking laws. If someone walks in front of a speeding car and gets hit, it isn’t the driver of the car who’s at fault, it’s the dumb pedestrian who stepped right in front of it. Similarly, one should respect a bicycle in the same way and wait for it to pass before crossing.

It’s frustrating that a lot of people just don’t seem to take bicyclists seriously. At best, we are seen as a nuisance or an obstacle in their path. And in many cases, we are hardly seen at all. My hope is that people can begin not only seeing cyclists on the road and taking them seriously, but also learning to give them the respect they deserve!