I have a real hard core biker friend. He asked me if I have ever smashed a window with my elbow. I have personally never had the need to smash someones window quite honestly, and it is a little beyond the realm of what I would consider, being a good citizen. My biker friend said it takes three tries....LOL
This week I rode up along side of someone who very aggressively passed me on the queensway. I told him he almost hit me. And he said, I will try harder NEXT time!
Wow.
I have thought a lot about this and generally people will go quite comfortably up to 15 kmh above the speed limit. A select few will go over that, the crazy people like this guy. I am a supporter of going with the traffic flow. If everyone is going 75 in a 60 zone, stay with the traffic, unless everyone is acting crazy, darting around and erratic, then I find another way to work. (remember sometimes your speedo is not accurate. Compared with my GPS my digital speedometer reads consistantly 4kmh faster than I am actually going.) Sometimes it is like that, too many nuts in one area. I can deal with one nut, and keep him in front of me, but too many nuts, and I turn and go somewhere else.
Another difficult area is beside left turn approaches at an intersection without boulevards. I got used to staying to the left in my lane, and blocking off the ability for someone to go into the left turn lane, because if you are on the right side of your lane, you will have cars coming dangerously close to you to get in the left advance lane. The problem is, when there is no boulevard and just yellow lines painted, people will do it anyway.
The only possible answer is just stay really alert. Try to always have an exit strategy. I heard that is how pilots learn, they constantly consider if they had to go down, where would they attempt a landing, given the wind direction, speed etc...
So when you are stopped, always look what is happening behind you. Dont stop right behind someone else, give yourself enough room that if you had to, you could go between the cars if you had to.
When riding, that is a tough one. If there are three lanes, and I know this may not be popular amongst other riders, I like to be in right side of the center lane, if someone decides to turn left into me, I have options, and there is more room and time to react than if I was in the left lane. Same thing if I was in the right lane, you constantly have to watch out for people turning right into you, watch them anyways when you are in the middle lane.
Limit your risks, I ride with the flow, and maybe a bit on top of it. You still can not guard against that idiot who screams by you, but if you read the traffic, and it just feels to you that too much craziness is happening around you, just turn off the street and go somewhere else.
Other people likely know more that me, this is just my opinion...
Michael
