A so far unpublished letter I sent to our daily rag:
UPDATE: Until today that is, here.
Hi. Say an average human pedaling an average bicycle together weigh two hundred pounds. And say our average speed on a roadway is somewhere between ten and twenty mph. We are no match for two tons of glass and steel moving at 40-60 mph. The other thing is, when you’re bicycling, it can be very difficult to hear and understand what people are saying, even when they’re right behind you. Much less someone in a truck with their window down speeding by at 55 mph. So please save your breath, as we cannot understand what I presume are the invectives some of you shout at us, that we get off the $%#@%^ road. Please familiarize yourself with the relevant laws in Anchorage governing bicycles on the roadway (AMC 9.38.020(a)), where I will remind you we are legally permitted to ride our bikes, even when — yes even when — there is an adjacent path. It’s a very clearly worded law. We thank you in advance for sharing the road, and seeing bicyclists.
My experience and observation of too many bicyclists is that in the effort to keep their road weight down, they leave their brains at home: “And say our average speed on a roadway is somewhere between ten and twenty mph (that’s probably optimistic). We are no match for two tons of glass and steel moving at 40-60 mph.” “…we are legally permitted to ride our bikes, even when — yes even when — there is an adjacent path.”
Just because it is legal, doesn’t mean it is a smart thing to do. What it is is arrogance on your part. I have no problem with you riding on the shoulder, as long as you stay out of traffic. Now, if you can match the speed of traffic, then feel free to go for it (like downhill).
I suspect there is also a law that states that vehicles that are not maintaining the speed of traffic must move over. In other words, you cannot impede the flow of traffic.
An example of stupid: I was riding a small motorcycle on a two lane mountainous road. When I came to the crest of a hill, I encountered 3 bicycles riding side by side in my lane. I was doing the speed limit (50mph), and could not stop in time. There was a pickup coming the other way. The truck passed the group as I slid between two of the bikes while braking so hard the rear tire was locked and the front was skipping. The shoulder was wide enough for a bicycle to ride on, but no wider. If I had been in my car or truck, two or three of them would have died, as no way was I going to go over the side of the mountain to save idiots like them. This sort of idiotic bicycle riding is what is common. This is what gets people pissed off.
If drivers are mad at you on a regular basis, the problem is YOU.
Ten to twenty mph is not optimistic, it’s quite usual, even for amateur cyclists like myself.
As to riding on the shoulder, of course. I made that point clear in a comment I left at the newspaper’s web site:
“But very often, for road bikers whose goal is fitness or even race training, we prefer relatively unbroken stretches of road shoulder. I stress “shoulder.” No cyclist is asking that we be tolerated on the roadway proper, in traffic. That’s silly, and I agree it’s dangerous.”
The kind of disrespect directed at me, while riding in Anchorage, has always been when I was riding the shoulder.