Cars and Bikes 

Cars and Bikes

In the last few weeks in my community, two bicyclists were killed in separate incidents when struck by drunken drivers. Somehow this has prompted a debate in the letters section of the local paper about bicycle safety and who is to blame for the fractious relationship between cyclists and drivers. The way I see it, it doesn't matter who is at fault, it is incumbent upon cyclists to always assume the worst and ride defensively when they are sharing the road with drivers. Many cyclists feel otherwise. They feel it is up to drivers to adjust to cyclists. I'm not too optimistic this will happen.

While riding my bike to the park the other day, I took a shortcut through a grocery store parking lot. It was a Sunday afternoon and I only saw a couple cars I needed to look out for. One of them was stopped at a stop sign and, although I had the right-of-way, he pulled out in front of me just before I reached him, causing me to have to brake and swerve behind him. There's nothing particularly notable about this; I expect all drivers to do that so I was ready for him to. What was disappointing, though, was that he had a bike rack on the back of his car. If this is how we treat cyclists when we are behind the wheel, how can we expect drivers who don't ride to treat us courteously?