I don't want to make this a bicycle vs cars debate, but, some perspective from a frequent bicyclist in a large city:
Bicycles that use the main roadway when there's a nice paved bike path a few feet from the road.
Paradoxically, bike paths are often
more dangerous for average bicyclists (not kids or so), because cars simply don't know notice them when they aren't on the street; and where bike paths cross with streets and cars turn right/left they just run them over. That's exactly the way most of the deaths of bicyclists happen where I'm from.
Besides: bicyclists see them themselves as part of regular street traffic, and if you dispel them from the streets you just create a new friction point between bicyclists and pedestrians (who are even more vulnerable).
Again with the turning cars! A bicycle in a crosswalk is
not a pedestrian unless you get off and walk the bike. Otherwise you're another vehicle and need to yield to vehicles using the cross street, including turning cars. Use your mirror or swivel that head to check for turning cars.
You might have less trouble with pedestrians if you would use the bell or horn the law requires you to have instead of quitely riding up behind them. The combination bike path/sidewalks here are quite wide enough to pass pedestrians
if you let them know you are there! Don't forget that pedestrians probably can't hear a bicycle coming over the noise of the passing auto traffic.
Bicycles that use the rain gutter, right turn only lane or shoulder to squeeze past cars stopped at a red light, forcing cars to repeatedly have to find gaps in the lane to their left so they can pass the same bicycle again every block. Of course the people riding the bicycles become highly offended if the clearance between the car and their elbow is anywhere near as narrow as it was when they passed the cars waiting at the light. This issue is particularly bothersome when the bicycle rider runs the red light or a stop sign.
Bicycles don't pass by cars standing at red lights at the same speed cars do on the street, and the worst thing that could happen if a bicyclist misjudges the clearence is a scratch on the car. The other way round serious injuries are a real danger.
And the main reason I
always do that as long as it's in any way possible, is not speed (that's secondary), but that the cars' exhaust fumes are really annoying when you're physically strained already and standing right behind the car. When you're at the front at the red light it's much less of a problem.
I don't understand why that particular thing bothers some car drivers so much.
Because we end up stuck behind a bicycle that can only manage one third to one half the speed limit while waiting for a gap in oncoming traffic or traffic in the next lane that's able to travel the full permissible speed (sometimes until the light behind us turns red again). While this is understandable once as we initially overtake the bike it's
rude for the bicycle rider to make us endure this repeatedly after every stop for a light.
Note: If you are on a bicycle and get cut off by a car turning from a lane that the car is entitled to turn from it's you own d@rn fault!!!, especially if the car used a turn signal. Same goes if you get clobbered running a red light. Don't expect sympathy from my direction.
Uh, no. Using the turn lights doesn't absolve you of the responsibility to react to your surroundings. There's no minimum speed in the city, bicycles have as much right to be there as cars.
And unless you want to kill a bicyclist, the situation you explained there, is a really, really stupid thing to do.
The big problem is a vehicle (the bicycle) passing another vehicle in the periphery of
the same lane or a adjacent space (like a shoulder or sidewalk) where there shouldn't be any traffic to watch for. It's just plain reckless, especially with a smaller lighter vehicle that can "see" a
lot easier than be seen. Don't forget that things like door posts, passengers and legaly mandated head restraints often create blind spots at angles behind automobiles. Trucks and vans often can only see behind through mirrors which often have
huge blind spots that sometime even hide an automobile. Drivers of pickups, vans and SUVs might only be able to se the head and possible the shoulders of bicyclists behind them. There's plenty of things people need to pay attention to in front without people coming up behind them in a tiny vehicle that's essentialy silent. You're already looking ahead, just use those brakes for a moment and let the car or truck turn the corner.
Right or Wrong, Legal or not, the bicyclist is going to come out on the short end of a collision. Everybody can see ahead
a lot easier than they can see behind and needs to be the more cautious party when overtaking another vehicle. While there's no
legal requirement for a minimum speed on city streets you
are being unnecessarily obnoxious when you use your narrow width to pass cars only to make them wait behind you to repeatedly pass you every block.
