And on the other hand, a lot of bad behaviour is excused by saying "I'm just trying to make a living!" All sorts of things done by business, like Love Canal, are defended by conservatives because it is "business". Like you Jim, I think there should not be laws requiring adults to wear helmets or seatbelts. And until we give children the responsibilities and obligations of adults they should be required to wear belts and helmets. As far as cell phone use goes, maybe we should require all motorcycles to use special flashing lights and one of those long fiberglass poles with a flag so drivers of cars, who can't use their cell phones because they endanger other drivers, won't be endangered by having to make sudden evasive moves because they almost changed lanes into a motorcycle because it was in the car's blind spot. ERS
You make some good points. I would be perfectly willing to grant your request, if I got mine.
Visibility is a big issue - flashing lights on vehicles are typically illegal, unless it's an emergency vehicle - EXCEPT for the federal DOT exception for motorcycle headlight modulators. Many, many riders use these, because they enhance visibility.
Then you have things like high visibility gear, ranging from the safety-weenie vest to the blaze yellow gear that some riders wear.
I personally like to wear white helmets, and run 100 watt headlights during the daytime so that car drivers can easily see me.
And yes, there's a large contingent of riders with those poles and flags. Mostly they're called Gold Wing riders.
Most car drivers never make evasive moves to avoid motorcylists. They simply change lanes right into them and the rider crashes. Often the car driver just keeps right on going.
For the record, my entire TV viewing for a week consists of Survivor, CSI, and Without a Trace... *ALL OF IT*. I figure for a "budget" of 3 hours a week, I'm entitled to an "eccentricity" or two, and Survivor probably qualifies. :)
Uh... Jim? I'm afraid you misspelled "so that car drivers can't see anything but the glare of my oncoming headlight even at high noon"...
Dunno where bikers got the idea that "a brighter headlight makes me more visible" - Anytime I encounter those god-awful bright headlights, even in the daytime, I've got *SERIOUS* trouble figuring out exactly where the bike is, 'cause the glare simply buries it. I've had more than a couple close calls as a result, particularly with riders who insist on hugging (and in a few cases, actually crossing) the centerline. Hopefully, "close call" is all I ever have, but it seems like the riders around here are getting nuttier and nuttier that way.
I'm all for bikers on the road, and I'm hyper-aware of them when I spot 'em, but it seems like sometimes, they go out of their way to get into trouble. Take the damn fool the other day - Dunno what kind of crotch-rocket he was on, but for some reason, the idiot decided to match speeds with me to stick like glue in my blind spot for several miles. I'd bump up the speed a tad to try and get him out of it, he'd speed up to match. I'd slow down, he'd slow down. I kept asking myself "Does this guy have a death wish, or what?" Finally got clear of him when my turnoff came and he kept on going, but sheesh!
If he was right on your bumper I guess it's a good thing he slowed down when you did ? He was probably thinking " gosh I'd like to pass this dude but the way he's driving so eradicaly he'd probably speed up just the time I try to make my move"
Unlike Jim I think the route to visibility is poor fashion rather than bright lights and a white helmet. Since everyone knows it's the women takling on cell phones while smoking at their workplace that are the scorge of the highways I figgure they are more apt to notice my shoes don't match my Hat (when it's cold I wear one of those baseball type caps with the fuzzy fold down earflaps, warmer than a helmet looks goofy as hell and the dark blue clashes with the light blue of my venture) Then the intencity of my head lights. Face it women just don't notice such things as bikes or lights but get a little dirt on your trousers and they can see it a mile away.
Thank you. Most car drivers are amazingly coureous this way. Riders really, really appreciate that.
Any rider who loiters in alongside a car or truck for any length of time is risking his life. They're stupid and run a much better chance of being killed. I cannot say what he was doing but I do know he was an inexperienced foolish rider.
Hmm. This may account for the unusual behavior seen recently by my teenage daughter. She stares at me, and says "you're not going out in *that*, are you?"
Have you ever driven down the Garden State Parkway, toward the shore, on a Friday evening in July? Cars are doing about ten miles per hour, and the bikes are doing about 80, dodging and weaving in among the cars.
I don't mean it happens once in a while. It's virtually every Friday in the summer.
It seems to me that there is a growing percentage of nutballs on bikes. Either that, or I'm getting old and just noticing them more. d8-)>>
Actually, he was alongside me (or close enough to it - half a car-length or so behind my rear wheel, I'd estimate) in the (otherwise empty) lane to my right. EXACTLY the worst possible place to be - that spot where, no matter what he does, the driver of the car couldn't see doing an all-the-way-to-naked strip show without actually turning around and looking, at risk of plowing whatever is in front of him.
Hmmm... now that I think of it, perhaps he was like you, Dan: Clueless about where a car's blind-spots actually are. That may be the simplest explanation.
Like I said - I kept wondering if he had a death wish
Wondering how in anything I wrote you could find something to connect me with your example and then deem me cluless about you blind spot has made my sunday just a little surreal,, I thank you for that.
Truth is though I probably am a little cluless about car blind spots caus I havn't driven a car in many years, its been trucks and now trucks and bikes. The last time it was cars , it was cars, trucks ,planes and bikes. Now it's just trucks and bikes (did I say that already?). I give cars as much room as possible, cuse face it I just don't like cars. I give cars so much room that your probably right,I am cluless about their blind spots, can't remember that far back and can't see them from 1/4 mile away. I jsut figgure the cars blind spot is probably something Just past the drivers nose then treat them that way....
Realy I think it's about time we passed some laws requireing porper marker lighs on deer they just don't seem to know where a drivers blind spot is.
Perhaps it has something to do with your "right on your bumper" statement? As in, no vehicle that I know of other than a semi has a blind spot anywhere that would be applicable in the case of someone who was "right on your bumper". Almost by definition, a biker in a car's blind spot(s) is in "the other lane". There's not much other practical way to inhabit a car's blind spot without being so close to it that just being there is suicidal even if the driver of the car makes no maneuver not directly involved in maintaining speed and direction of travel.
We aim to please! :) A little surrealism helps you keep your perspective.
Lane-splitting is indeed illegal in NJ. They should be ticketed for that.
This is another one of those cases where folks *can* sometimes lane split without causing a hazard, but because the state has decided the practice is risky enough they make the bright-line rule that it is simply against the law. Yet another analogy with cell phone use.
I'm suprised the state cops don't pull them over. Most sport bikes that do that are piloted by unlicensed riders. They would get to write several tickets at once.
No, you are doing much more than this. You are scaling up the process and _we fervently hope_ applying extensive pollution controls at this remote point of generation. In terms of energy efficiency, it's a ruse, a wash, a con game, but it does hold out some hope for bicyclists like me who have to breath the shit in suburban traffic. So I say, no, that isn't all you are doing. Possibly creating an extra stage to the oil refining process, and more money for the refiners...many effects.
Yours,
Doug Goncz Replikon Research Seven Corners, VA 22044-0394
Should be ticketed?!? Jeez, how are they going to catch them? I saw a helicopter chasing a group of three of them down the GSP one night. On a couple of occassions the state troopers have lit out after them down the shoulder, but with no chance. The only way they're going to catch them, in traffic jams like that, is if they have a trooper at every exit.
I don't think so. "Splitting" lanes is something that car drivers are never going to be prepared for -- nor should they have to be. People on motorcycles are going to have accidents with cars if they do it. Splitting lanes in any traffic at all is just freaking nutz, and dangerous for everyone on the road.
As for cell phones, somebody here said that any use of a cell phone is going to distract the drivers' attention. They're quite right. It's also true that there have been enough accidents caused by it that it's well within the range of traffic laws that make the roads measurably safer, without even slowing down traffic. I drove for 30 years without a cell phone and somehow I think people are going to muddle through without driving and talking at the same time. Meanwhile, it will be safer for the rest of us if they don't.
See above. We're talking about full-blown traffic jams that are 50 miles long. The GSP on Friday afternoons and evenings in the summer is a parking lot. It's even worse sometimes coming north, on Sunday evenings.
Sorry to deflate your ballon, but the Love canal disaster was caused by the govt building a school where it was warned in the deed itself that the property should never be built on. The dump was perfectly safe if left undisturbed. In Europe they put parks on top of waste dumps, safely. It is not safe to build and cut utility trenches thru the sides of dumps.
Cops do that. The exits on the GSP aren't *that* numerous. When they do catch the riders, it's never a pretty sight.
Interestingly there are states where lane-splitting *is* legal. California, IIRC. I would never do it. But it's legal.
I agree with this. However the folks that use them holler like crazy when the laws are enacted. Right now in NY they're really not enforcing them that much, unless the caller - er, *driver* does something really dumb.
But this is how seatbelt laws were enforced in the beginning too. That is, not at all. But now along with the inspection sticker checks in the springtime, there are certain to be seatbelt checks on the local on-ramps. I suspect that after a few years they'll be seatbelt *and* cellphone checks.
It always was. I recall 'driving' back from the shore on several ocasions where we could definitely have walked faster from Pt. Pleasant to Closter.
The somewhat *ahem* antiquated tolls on that road really didn't help. I can recall the entire roadway coming to a steaming standstill every ten miles or so, so that each driver could toss *one**thin**dime* into the tollbooth basket!
Yes, because the city dug trenches thru the dikes keeping the toxic wastes contained.
Hooker Chemical sold the land for $1 so they could place unremovable warnings in the deed, and those warnings were on the deeds of all land the city sold when they finished building the school. The buyers either failed to read their deed or failed to understan the clear warning.
I have people do that all the time like they are reading the bumper stickers over and over. But, I had some guy doing that big time on a cross country trip at night. I knew it wasn't a cop and the guy would stick right there from 100 + down to 30 with his brights on and glaring in the side mirror. It got so bad that if I was by myself I would have stopped right there on the open desert highway. Later on in the night after getting rid of him he got busted for speeding LOL , maybe he was thinking I'd be the only one busted if he was a bit behind me...
I try to keep a inventory of the cars around me at all times. I see them going 10mph faster and they'll disappear into the blind spot and I'll roll my eyes to myself. If its a Volvo I'll get rid of him ASAP. I found a close second and its handy cap plates ! Third would be those mud flaps with chrome weights flapping and repeatedly reflecting the sun into your eyes.
Lets see , about the OP. The best I saw was a test that went something like. 'If your step father is a cloud and your mom is a tree, what would your sister be? A building, a X , ect. E all of the above. See, if you make your potential employees take this then you can discriminate against them for any reason you wish. I think it would be wrong to change the rules , maybe just for new employees and you just have to wait for the others to die off. No no no , everyone has to be a veg head as of thur. Just kidding , really really next month everyone is going to switch to nights. You don't like it then don't work here.
I really don't see why it is such a problem, the buildings and airplanes should be ventilated more anyhow. Smoking just makes sure the boss is aware that he's a cheap skate and won't ventilate the place better ! Hell , last time I flew (just before 911) they still had the ashtrays installed. I've been to those huge buildings that just stink from last weeks farts and lack of oxygen , disgusting !
By the way I can't get health insurance , guess there won't be any job worth having and we can let everyone else in for the other jobs.
The only way that I can think of at the moment to stop it would be to get our representatives to show us how we need lobbyist to control our representatives. Or this local witch who will probably here from me soon on how she thinks we need more cameras a 10 tickets a day in our mail boxes. Oh, they said oh, those are only for synchronizing the lights , yeah right ! We should petition the gov't to make the reps. outlaw lobbing. That an't gonna happen and they know it. If they are so much more than being in public and representatives of the public we should have audio and video from their front door to front door and no work over the phone , hell we want to hear *all* of that !. Honest, we won't let your children's schedules out. Somehow , the reps, have to be a job of service , not get much richer in office as it goes now.
I just love how they jab the cig co. for health issues and then give the $ to unrelated funds.
Given the horrendous traffic conditions in So. Cal..bikers, both civilian and police are the only ones to get anywhere during rush hour. And have few accidents.
Gunner
It's better to be a red person in a blue state than a blue person in a red state. As a red person, if your blue neighbors turn into a mob at least you have a gun to protect yourself. As a blue person, your only hope is to appease the red mob with herbal tea and marinated tofu.
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