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Comment by eggie | Hacker News Reader

Cyclists aren't trying to "own" the lane any more than you are. Really, both of you own it, as citizens and road users.

The reason for being in the lane is safety. In many situations, impatient people who feel they are impeded will try to squeeze past a cyclist who is not riding safely in the lane. This is among the most frightening and dangerous things that can regularly happen to any road user.

I'm not trying to chastise you. I just hope that you can imagine the situation that other travelers are in so you don't hurt someone in impatience.

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I know this is ( hopefully ) not a common occurrence, but let me tell you something that I recently witnessed.

I was driving on back-roads to my parents house, and it's not uncommon to see bikes on these roads since they are pretty good biking roads as I understand it. The difference is that these bikes were riding 4 wide on a single lane road, and they had a car in front of them driving between 15-20mph with their hazard lights on, presumably in an attempt to keep cars from passing them.

How is this not "owning" the lane? That was not the first time I've seen this happen either. Bikers also need to understand that this behavior is not reasonable.

So, if theres some farm vehicle on the back-road going 10mph, presumably you will be writing to the farmers association to say that you think "farmers need to understand that behavior is not reasonable"?

I think you need to understand that 1) roads aren't for cars going the speed limit 2) the speed limit is a limit.

I think that if the farmer does this often and does not pull over to let cars pass it when it is obstructing traffic, yes, that's a problem. For example, in my state, drivers of slow vehicles are obligated to turn off the road so that others can pass them. In my experience, drivers of slow commercial equipment tend to comply with this law, while cyclists do not.

So in other words, you believe that "sharing" means bikers own the road. I think you need to understand what sharing means, and it doesn't mean that you get to be an unnecessary annoyance to others.

This is the type of attitude that does not help driver/biker relations.

You've gone from mentioning a behavior that you have observed on a few occasions (cyclists apparently deliberately blocking a road, with help from a car - most likely some sort of race training) to stipulating it as the norm, which is clearly not the case. This is like the false premise of the poster above that '[s]ince bicyclists want to own the lane, they'll ride to the outside.' You're both taking examples of the worst behavior by cyclists and generalizing it to encompass all cyclists.

Incidentally, I don't own a bicycle and haven't for a long time, nor am I any fan of rude or irresponsible cyclists, whose existence I happily acknowledge.

If that's how you interpreted my response, then I apologize; that was not my intent. It was simply an observation directly responding to the post immediately above mine, not intended as a generalization.

The vast majority of cyclists that I've encountered are perfectly fine and do not engage in those behaviors I was referring to. I've simply noticed that often the ones that are loudest and most outspoken about "sharing the road" in these debates are often the ones that seem willing to share the road the least, and that immediately changes the tone from a productive one to one of "us versus them".

Ah, I see. I certainly agree with your observation that the most vociferous cyclists frequently turn out to have the worst road manners.

In my experience, farmers do not purposefully try to block the road. If you come up behind two farmers driving their tractors side by side down the road, they will almost certainly switch to single file to let you pass.

I don't get it. Why would two tractors be side by side in a single lane road? You can barely fit one on a single lane.

I think one of us is confused about the exact setup we're talking here. But of course it is wholly irrelevant; some time ago a cab in NYC jumped the curb and crushed a tourists leg, yet I'm not here screaming for cabs to be banned from the roads or asking the cab driver association why they think they can drive on the sidewalk.

As someone who grew up in a farm house and shared many roads with tractors/combines/etc, this is absolutely correct. In fact, I've never seen or heard of tractors driving side by side on a road (except, I suppose, if one tractor were trying to pass the other, but this would be highly unlikely).

> these bikes were riding 4 wide on a single lane road, and they had a car in front of them driving between 15-20mph with their hazard lights on, presumably in an attempt to keep cars from passing them.

How repugnant and arrogant. I'd pass out of spite alone.

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