Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by igz on August 12, 2010 at 10:36am

i dont think the answers to this are pretty.

too many cyclists are self righteous. sorry...its true. too many of us (myself often included) disregard traffic law and take advantage of the fact that we will often get away with these infractions like running stop signs and red light when no one is around. until we are held responsible and liable by means of penalty as motorists do, this mindset wont change. and it will be a shame when we do become accountable, because what could have been a respectable freedom will be taken away.

we recognize that most motorists have no regard for us cyclist. how much regard do we show motorists? drivers fear penalty for doing something against us, we fear injury or death doing something against them. that is the only saving grace that keeps us on the road together at the moment. yet we often see these lines crossed.

shall we try such an experiment, one of a 'civil ride' here in Chicago?

i would like to hear(read) every one else's reason why they would or wouldnt attend, or why such a movement is struggling.

conleyri said:

As a cyclist, why do you think this is?

Jera Sue said:

Also, that Seattle RideCivil group, looking at their Facebook group... seems like they're struggling :(

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Zomboogz on August 12, 2010 at 10:45am

Sup Iggi. I know that its really easy to "say" this but honestly I think I would attend this ride. Originally from the city, I wanted to read up on our laws out here in the burbs' and I found out alot of law I honestly was ignorant to the majority of my life. I had no idea that we were subject to the same laws as vehicles. I always stayed in the oncoming traffic lane so I could "see" the vehicles and move. I actually thought that this was correct lol.

But I never noticed how many laws are broken regularily until I road the streets around my house (getting used to the idea of riding streets and roads with high speed limits) with a few buds of mine. They were all over the place! crossing in the middle of the intersection, zig-zaging between cars that were stopped at lights to make their way to the front. They actually yelled at me because I didnt do it (thus I went slower)! I have alot of respect for cars for two simple reasons.

1. They are bigger.
2. They hurt.

I would love to attend this ride and shine a positive light on cyclist in the city and out here. Besides, I think it would be fun.


iggi said:

i dont think the answers to this are pretty.

too many cyclists are self righteous. sorry...its true. too many of us (myself often included) disregard traffic law and take advantage of the fact that we will often get away with these infractions like running stop signs and red light when no one is around. until we are held responsible and liable by means of penalty as motorists do, this mindset wont change. and it will be a shame when we do become accountable, because what could have been a respectable freedom will be taken away.

we recognize that most motorists have no regard for us cyclist. how much regard do we show motorists? drivers fear penalty for doing something against us, we fear injury or death doing something against them. that is the only saving grace that keeps us on the road together at the moment. yet we often see these lines crossed.

shall we try such an experiment, one of a 'civil ride' here in Chicago?

i would like to hear(read) every one else's reason why they would or wouldnt attend, or why such a movement is struggling.

conleyri said:

As a cyclist, why do you think this is?

Jera Sue said:

Also, that Seattle RideCivil group, looking at their Facebook group... seems like they're struggling :(

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by igz on August 12, 2010 at 10:59am

Anyone else up for 'ride of shared responsibility'?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Craig S. on August 12, 2010 at 1:27pm

I totally would, too many douchebags on CM for me. 

iggi said:

Anyone else up for 'ride of shared responsibility'?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Digital Dario on August 12, 2010 at 11:09am

I sure am. As a motorist and a cyclist (or is it the other way around?) I feel it rather necessary to reinforce the rights of everyone to safe and equitable access to public roadways and if this is another opportunity, it sounds fine to me.

iggi said:

Anyone else up for 'ride of shared responsibility'?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jera Sue on August 12, 2010 at 11:54am

Ok, so, as a cyclist, I reserve the right (that I don't actually have) to run stop signs and even red lights when I've deemed it safe.

I don't ride like an A-hole (swerving through cars, scaring pedestrians, etc). I ride safely. I don't follow the rules of the road, and I'm not apologetic. I don't think it's entirely realistic. Also, I think that cars would be just as frustrated with us if everybody did. They'll always think of something to hold against us.

If I sound a little defensive, it's because I know that there are people who feel like this is the reason cars don't like us. I have a hard time believing that that is the whole of the truth. Drivers (I'm generalizing here) don't want us to follow the rules of the road, they want us OFF the road.

I remember being an ignorant driver, myself, and resenting every cyclist who presumed to make me swerve over to the left just to get around their slow butts. They'll likely never understand us until they actually know and/or care about a cyclist or are one themselves.

Also, logistically, wouldn't you have to mass up after every light if your mass gets cut off? Or maybe if you have a well-defined-enough map, you could all just keep going in the right direction. Maybe distribute maps AND tape for putting the maps on handlebars so everyone could potentially be held responsible for the next turn.

But, YES, I'd be interested in this ride. I'm curious. Would that make me a hypocrite? I think it's diplomatically sound... if you could get the mass in line and message across.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by igz on August 12, 2010 at 12:11pm

Jera sue, I don't think drivers want us off the road, they just don't want us in the road, as another annoyance to their already fucked up commute with other bad driver, lack of traffic light management, really retarded traffic that holds no reason.

And I agree with what you are saying about 'reserving the right'. Problem is that too many cyclists are abusing this superficial right and really fucking it up for the rest of us.

I don't think you are being hypocritical. I think you are recognizing the double edged sword of this and realizing one must take a devils advocate approach to this, and assume responsibility.

The abuse of freedom will result in the revokation of freedom. We will be hearing things like 'cycling isn't a freedom, its a priveledge'.

We must be conscious of our actions.

Jera Sue said:

Ok, so, as a cyclist, I reserve the right (that I don't actually have) to run stop signs and even red lights when I've deemed it safe.

I don't ride like an A-hole (swerving through cars, scaring pedestrians, etc). I ride safely. I don't follow the rules of the road, and I'm not apologetic. I don't think it's entirely realistic. Also, I think that cars would be just as frustrated with us if everybody did. They'll always think of something to hold against us.

If I sound a little defensive, it's because I know that there are people who feel like this is the reason cars don't like us. I have a hard time believing that that is the whole of the truth. Drivers (I'm generalizing here) don't want us to follow the rules of the road, they want us OFF the road.

I remember being an ignorant driver, myself, and resenting every cyclist who presumed to make me swerve over to the left just to get around their slow butts. They'll likely never understand us until they actually know and/or care about a cyclist or are one themselves.

Also, logistically, wouldn't you have to mass up after every light if your mass gets cut off? Or maybe if you have a well-defined-enough map, you could all just keep going in the right direction. Maybe distribute maps AND tape for putting the maps on handlebars so everyone could potentially be held responsible for the next turn.

But, YES, I'd be interested in this ride. I'm curious. Would that make me a hypocrite? I think it's diplomatically sound... if you could get the mass in line and message across.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by buddaa38 on August 12, 2010 at 2:17pm

iggi,
Come join us tomorrow night in Karaoke Ride / N.S.C.M. Happy~Friday ride! This is a really nice ride with none of that stuff from C.M.

Craig S. said:

I totally would, too many douchebags on CM for me. 

iggi said:

Anyone else up for 'ride of shared responsibility'?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Dan Korn on August 12, 2010 at 8:07pm

Joel said:

I think Critical Mass is one of the dumbest things the cycling community can do to gain respect in the city. The massers might think they are promoting "share the road", but the message comes across as "fuck drivers".

Critical Mass may not be a great way to "gain respect" or to promote "share the road," but who said those were the goals? Those things may be some people's goals, but not everyone's. Some people's message may indeed be "fuck drivers" (and I'm not completely unsympathetic to that sentiment). It's a lot of different things to different people. But that lack of a single defining purpose does make covering the event hard for news-type people who like to reduce things to simple graphics and sound bites.

Personally, I would argue that cars, and the people who drive them and plan for them, aren't really giving us our fair share of the road. So we're *taking* our share. And our share is that for a few hours a month, we get our turn to take over.

It emphasizes everything drivers complain about in regard to cyclists: they are unsafe, break all the traffic laws, no regard for others, etc. To those inconvenienced by the mass it looks like a bunch of drunken assholes who just want to party and piss people off.

So do a lot of events; to name a few off the top of my head: Lollapalooza, the St. Patrick's Day Parade, various street festivals. You'll find jerks at all of these, and people who are inconvenienced. That doesn't mean the whole event is not worthwhile. Like I said on TV, I'm not defending any bad behavior, but I think that's a small minority of the Chicago Critical Mass ridership, as much as you'd find in any large group.

And I don't think that "bunch of drunken assholes who just want to party and piss people off" is everyone's impression of the ride either. A lot of bystanders seem to enjoy it.

But it's not just about making an impression on outsiders either. One of the things that Chicago Critical Mass in particular has been very successful at is building and energizing the cycling community. This website arguably would not exist if it were not for the community that CCM has fostered in the last decade, nor would many of the great things that the CBF/ATA have done over the years have been possible without the energy that Critical Mass fosters.

What do you think those people (a.k.a. voters) think about when bike-friendly stuff comes up? The thousands of good cyclists every day, or the night they missed a play because they couldn't turn left for 15 minutes because people were off their bikes standing in the intersection?

Honestly, I think they probably don't think much about "bike-friendly stuff" at all. People don't notice "thousands of good cyclists every day." Heck, as cyclists, most of the time we're lucky to get drivers to see us at all. But they do notice Critical Mass. Is it better that they get a tiny grain of thought about some of the issues related to transportation in their heads, even if they might be slightly annoyed? Maybe they'll think about how they got stuck in traffic that had nothing at all to do with bikes the other 29 days of the month. Someone once said that there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Before cycling significantly or knowing what CM was, I got stuck in the mess in a car and a bus. All it did was piss me off. I saw an ambulance, with lights and sirens going, stuck on Roosevelt by a bridge because people didn't seem to care to let it through. There was no "share the road" message.

I've heard this criticism of CM many times, that it holds up emergency vehicles. And I think it's mostly BS. I've seen a thousand cyclists clear the road much faster than 100 cars possibly could. I'm not denying that you saw what you saw, but I've never seen an emergency vehicle blocked by Critical Mass. It would piss me off too.

If you want to say "share the road", get a mass that shares the road. Get everyone to ride in the right lane and bike lanes. Signal turns. Stop at lights. Don't cork.

It's been tried. Unless you only have a few people, you'll get divided into a whole bunch of little groups which will foul up traffic much worse than Critical Mass does. And it wouldn't really be a "mass."

Don't ride drunk. That might actually show people that there are a lot of cyclists in the city, and in fact they can be good citizens and therefore maybe we should consider building facilities to accommodate them.

Don't ride drunk, yeah, I can't really argue with that. But I honestly don't believe that this "nice mass" idea will really make too many people think any better of cyclists. Most drivers just don't want cyclists in their way.

The biggest problem that Chicago Critical Mass has these days is that it's really big, maybe too big. It's a victim of its own success. When we have a few hundred riders in the winter and people have to wait five minutes, most of them don't really get too annoyed. When we have a few thousand riders in the summer and the wait stretches to twenty minutes, then people get upset.

What this proves to me is that, with the exception of a few really stupid things that happen, drivers' annoyance level with CM has much more to do with the amount of time they have to wait then with any particular behavior they see.

It might be a fun ride, but it isn't helping any cause; so don't be surprised when the news portrays it negatively.

I'm not surprised at all.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Joel on August 13, 2010 at 2:33am

I appreciate the actual responses. I kind of assumed I'd get flamed to Hell. I know that there are pros and cons for CM, but I'm not sure which way it tilts -- probably different directions for different purposes.

Dan Korn said:

Before cycling significantly or knowing what CM was, I got stuck in the mess in a car and a bus. All it did was piss me off. I saw an ambulance, with lights and sirens going, stuck on Roosevelt by a bridge because people didn't seem to care to let it through. There was no "share the road" message.

I've heard this criticism of CM many times, that it holds up emergency vehicles. And I think it's mostly BS. I've seen a thousand cyclists clear the road much faster than 100 cars possibly could. I'm not denying that you saw what you saw, but I've never seen an emergency vehicle blocked by Critical Mass. It would piss me off too.

I did see it, though only once. I think it was mostly bad timing and bad route choice. Roosevelt between Clark and Canal is more or less a bridge, and both ends were clogged with no where for anyone to move to quickly. I'm sure no one at CM actually wants to interfere with emergency services, but there always unintended consequences.

To be fair, I also complain about how poorly traffic is managed for events like Taste of Chicago, Air and Water Show, etc. Important services for the residents are screwed up for the suburbanites' fun.

The biggest problem that Chicago Critical Mass has these days is that it's really big, maybe too big. It's a victim of its own success. When we have a few hundred riders in the winter and people have to wait five minutes, most of them don't really get too annoyed. When we have a few thousand riders in the summer and the wait stretches to twenty minutes, then people get upset.

I think this hits on a general pet peeve I have. In general, I really dislike large protests. They lose their initial message. You get too many fringe groups protesting unrelated things. If it were advertised as a big, semi-legal moving party, fine. I have a much more difficult time accepting it as any type of real advocacy.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Zomboogz on August 13, 2010 at 2:58am

Joel said:

I think this hits on a general pet peeve I have. In general, I really dislike large protests. They lose their initial message. You get too many fringe groups protesting unrelated things. If it were advertised as a big, semi-legal moving party, fine. I have a much more difficult time accepting it as any type of real advocacy.

Actually, I don’t think its really meant to be a protest. I think it is a big moving semi-legal party. Its just a bunch of riders enjoying the streets of Chicago. I hate the feeling when I ride down town, obey the traffic laws, and ride safely, that I am still doing something wrong or illegal. Most drivers I talk to are actually surprised to learn that it would be illegal for me to ride on the sidewalk where pedestrians are (if over the age of 12, according to state law). So it’s about education, a little fun, and getting a taste of how it would feel to live in a more bike friendly society.

The most beautiful part of the Mass, at least to me, is that this is MY opinion. This is why I ride the Mass and will continue to for as long as I physically can. Others may have other agenda's such as improved body image, which this last mass was about by in large, or protest, of fun, or drinking, or whatever. I think when you break it down the mass is often portrayed in a negative light like everything else is. The best way to find out is to simply hop on a bike and come out!

And for the emergency vehicle bit, I saw the mass break into a tunnel or gap 5-6 times, within seconds, to accommodate those vehicles. I dont think anyone wants to cause trouble for those vital services.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• Next ›
• Page