Yeowsers! This has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever seen.

So I'm riding on Grace going East towards Lincoln and I come upon this:

Large enough that nearly half my front tire easily falls between the gap.

I am amazed at the level of stupidity that decided this was ok. What, like 3 guys laid this down while a guy "supervised" and about 5 people just standing around doing god knows what. Not a single one of them thought to themselves, "you know, this is a bad idea".

Needless to say I stopped and called 311 and reported the city's lack of intelligence. Ticket #11-03359763. These people should be fired. I have no doubt come night fall someone will get seriously hurt.

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Permalink Reply by Far'arned Retrogrumpalunkus #63 on July 14, 2011 at 5:04pm

I think they are even more dangerous to motorcycles than they are to bikes. Bikes are more maneuverable and if the rider is paying attention instead of texting on his phone, should be able to see and move around any cracks or just avoid the plates altogether. Motorcycles are pretty much stuck by law in the traffic lane (at least here in the US outside of S. California), are moving at higher rates of speed, tend to follow too close to the car in front of us (bad, but if you leave too much gap Chicago idiot drivers will smash right into it with no more consideration than they do to bicycles) and have a much greater PSI on the tire contact patch so the slippery bare metal is even more treacherous.

The damn plates really tend to creep up on you in traffic on a motorcycle even worse than they do for bicycles. This is why I don't bother to ride in town unless I'm leaving tow or coming home. It's just not worth it. A bicycle is more convenient.