Haire of the Dog

These new bike paths are frikkin dangerous.

Good gracious, you guys are never happy. It's not the bike path that is dangerous. It is the decision to ride a bicycle in automobile traffic in the first place that is dangerous. If we have 3' to use on Chapel St., we should be adding a bike path to the sidewalk and pushing the parked cars into traffic. If you are riding to the right of the parked car, when you do get doored, you are pushed into pedestrians instead of city buses. In case it's not obvious, this drastically increases your chances of survival. Also it would be the passenger side of the car, reducing the likelihood of having anyone in that seat to begin with.

Of course, widening streets or sidewalks would take more money than painting two lines on the road. Chris, what do you guys ever bring to the table except complaints? Is anyone in the cycling community advocating any bicycle related tax increases to pay for the projects you feel are needed? Not likely. You want to steal it from gasoline taxes that you don't even pay. So just settle down and stop complaining about the small size of the handout you were given.

City officials need to stop wasting money trying to cater to the sport cyclist lifestyle in order to win marketing designations. They need to spend more time considering the safety of each transportation choice. Bike paths are safest when separated from automobile traffic by medians, curbs, and rows of parked cars. It would be much safer to widen or improve sidewalks for multiple uses than to have separate bike lanes and sidewalks along the same side of the street. It's seems like the problem within the biking advocacy community is that super expensive racing bikes don't ride well on bumpy sidewalks. Oh well, that's a lifestyle choice. Our roadways don't cater to the needs of Ferrari's and bicycle transportation safety shouldn't be held hostage by the needs of those wanting to ride for sport.

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The City is nuts. How about if the bikers were all in cars? If bikes are a problem it is a MINIMAL problem.

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First of all, people have a right to ride bikes when & where the choose within the bounds of the law. Don't like it, don't drive, bikes are here to stay. The economy itself will prove this to be a fact as gas prices escalate in the months and years to come.

Second, Chapel St. is a joke of a location to put in any type of bike lane/guide marker/path or other. It is a relatively quiet neighborhood street which I have ridden countless times over the years.

It seems that the location is just political pandering to a need that gets the city off the hook and gives them more of an excuse to blow off the cycling community by saying, "You have bike lanes/guide marker/path, quit your bitching!"

The cyclists are the ones getting run off the road, into parked cars, objects, words and insults thrown at us and in the worst of scenarios, hospitalized and killed.

The outcome?

It appears the the cycling community has gone out of it's way with educational pamphlets, classes and meetings with the city & police to end up basically apologizing to the city, police & obnoxious drivers for the bad behavior of the aforementioned.

Why are we apologizing to the criminals for getting assaulted, insulted and killed doing what is within our legal rights!

Real bike lanes, real police enforcement of driver ineptitude, and real PSA action on the part of the city and sate are what are needed.

Most drivers in the area are decent people who show reasonable care and respect for cyclists. That is the experience as witnessed by other cyclists and myself.

It is the smaller percentage of rage riddles motorists, who by the blind eye of law enforcement at all levels, have been given full latitude to do as they please, when they please with absolutely no, or minimal punitive action by the police or courts.

It is not unlike the old question of; "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is present, did it make a noise?" As per CCPD and I quote directly the words of one of the officers, "If we didn't see it, we can't do anything about it..." It's an easy-out that alleviates all accountability.

This is unacceptable!

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Well, lax enforcement goes both ways. Cyclists should be held accountable for their blatant disregard of traffic laws, too. This includes minimum speed limits. I'd guess that bikers currently get ticketed for moving violations in about the same proportion as people get tickets for jaywalking. Enforcement of traffic laws requires licensing and registration of vehicles. Traffic cameras have the potential to greatly improve the cost effectiveness of enforcement efforts for all types of vehicles including bicycles. In order to register the vehicle, we should insist on minimum safety requirements such as helmet, running lights, turn signals, and a horn that can be reasonably adapted to this mode of transportation. There should also be laws against texting while riding and other forms of careless operation. I'd like to see more effort placed on educating cyclists about their own responsibilities. I think it's arrogant to constantly bemoan the need to educate motorists. Motorists don't care. They won't be the one who dies when there is an accident.

So I agree with hagakure, let's step up enforcement and improve the safety of everyone.

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I agree with "fishpimp"! Enforcement needs to be across the board. Each time my wife or friends and I ride, we see the annoying disregard on the part of cyclists, more often than not, the college crown, completely ignoring red lights and other traffic signals and signs.

On glaring example of non enforcement was the other day when an apparent college student ran a red light at the intersection to the east of the main library. My riding partner and I watched him run the light and a CCPD officer was directly behind him and did nothing! Not a siren chirp, horn honk...nothing! Both of these people are at fault!

As for turn signals, the old fashion hand signal is required by law and needs to be used more by both cyclists and in the case of motorists, hand or turn signals.

Horns or bells on a bike in Charleston are little more than a joke. Many of us use them most specifically on the Ravenel Bridge to no avail. Peds use the bike lane constantly and with total disregard for cyclists or their own safety which by law and by declaration on two signs at either end of the bridge is illegal unless passing. When a bell or horn is used, peds just look back, if at all and more often than not, arrogantly step even further into the bike lane.

The police refuse to patrol the bridge! The DOT says tough nuts, peds have the right of way. This is not the case! The law clearly states their lack of right of way unless passing another ped. What is worse, is in most cases when peds do attempt to pass one another, they step into the bike lane without so much as checking to see if the way is clear.

There is moronic behavior on both sides, the city needs to do its job and enforce the laws on the books and not go out on a cyclist witch hunt as they did just after Edwin Gardner was killed.

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