Candy Cranks

I feel like I’m the “unofficial” writer for Chicago since it’s my hometown and I spend 4 months of the year there (the other 6 I’m here going to school in Missouri).

I frequent the Chicago cycling forums to see if anyones posted links to articles about biking in the city, or anything else interesting and it seems biking is getting a lot more attention these days!

One of the first big articles was this one, New bike study measures where rubber meets road, where on a part of one of the busiest streets for biking they counted 3,121 cyclists in one day. This street is one of the few diagonal streets in Chicago and goes from NW side of Chicago, through some of the more “hip” neighborhoods, and SE right into downtown. So for commuting its one of the fastest and most convenient ways to go. I used to ride it downtown every friday for a few months and I was always amazed at how many bikers were riding with me! I’m excited they actually counted because now we have some attention and hopefully more bike lanes will be built and some steps to safer cycling in Chicago.

Now for the problems…

Bikers call for state to count “dooring” accidents – Currently Chicago does keep track of the number of dooring accidents and reports them to the state, but unfortunately the Illinois Department of Transportation does not count dooring accidents as car/bike accidents since the car is not in motion. Now this isn’t even the worse thing – at the bottom of the article you’re allowed to comment – and wow I couldn’t believe what some people are saying! Such as:

I lump these biking folk into the same catagory as I put smokers crying that they can’t pollute our collective lungs. If they are stupid enough to ride a bike in traffic, are they really worth saving from themselves? You know the risks yet continue this destructive behavior? In the end you get what you deserve then.

And there are worse comments than that. When I’m in Chicago I ride a lot – to work, to hang out with friends, to see family, to go grab some groceries. You have about 3 feet in a bike lane, between moving cars and parked cars. So now I’m making sure no car is in the bike lane, and watching the intersection in front of me, and looking at parked cars.

Sometimes people are parked for awhile before they get out of the car, I’ve almost gotten doored PLENTY of times. Once even by a semi truck who’s passenger was getting out in the middle of traffic! Luckily the door was high up and I could duck/swerve right in time. Plus I’ve almost ran into random people walking out to their car while talking on cell phones and they walk right into the bike lane.

I really don’t think a solution is going to come anytime soon. And I’ll admit, I see a lot of dumb cyclists in Chicago. Mostly people running yellow/red lights, not looking both ways at intersections, but I also see a lot of dumb drivers on their cell phones and don’t signal when they turn.

And last but not least: “Why drivers hate cyclists” – this was a response to the comments on the dooring article. To summarize the article the the author wrote:

As a driver, cyclists scare me, they make me tense and wary, because I know how easy it would be for me to hurt them. I think there are a huge number of Americans whose reaction to being afraid, especially in their cars, is rage. They can’t acknowledge that they’re afraid, so they channel it into anger.

So to conclude – bikers need to be more careful, cars need to be more careful, and hopefully one day more respect will be there for each other.