This was a Critical Mass event, which is why the bicyclists are taking up all of the street as a way to reclaim the streets and protest the lack of safety for riders under usual conditions. It’s not legal, but protests are never useful if they’re fully legal now, are they.
Idiots in cars, idiots on bikes. Hell yeah I’m pro bikes but setting a wheel on incoming lane? Yeaah… no thanks, I’m fine
In the bike party near me, we take over the traffic lane but not the oncoming lane.
Maybe that’s why bike party split off from critical mass
Imo it looks remarkably safe as long as we ignore the person in the car driving into oncoming traffic.
With her smartphone out, recording.
It doesn’t matter if a protest is legal. The word you’re looking for is “non violent”
This looks like Miami. If it is… critical mass usually has a police force in the loop they do usually to stop people driving right through the crowd. The loop is posted online about a week before and there is always police presence
Probably LA? Looks similar but police less likely to beat the shit out of white people on bicycles
How about they take this up with the officials who can actually make a difference in bike safety and quit making life worse for people who just want to get home?
Go bike around City Hall if you want to “raise awareness.” All you’re doing here is pissing people off.
People who are downvoting literally never leave their house. You are entirely correct. This is an issue of local policy, and that is something that can actually be changed by individuals choosing to be more active in their local politics. It just requires some organization and a coordinated political effort.
Cycling down the street will not only not achieve anything, but it’s also putting both drivers and cyclists in danger. If an accident does happen, it’s not going to be pinned on the driver because they didn’t do anything wrong. Instead, whatever these cyclists were trying to achieve is going to be scrutinized due to their recklessness.
How brain dead does a person have to be to see an entire parade in front of them and think, “this can’t be some organized event, I must just be able to drive right through here!” Main character syndrome. Or more likely, a sociopath just looking to murder someone.
Here’s an idea. Find another fucking route. They plan these events, publish the routes in advance, have a police presence there, and place them in areas where they won’t cut off people’s only means of getting somewhere.
Do you ever find yourself in this situation? Here’s how to handle it without being a fucking moron:
-
Pull off the road.
-
Pull out your phone.
-
Google “<your city>” critical mass route <today’s date.>"
Is that really that hard? Or are you someone who is so concrete sequential that you have one and only one route you can drive, and any other route home will break your mind? What if a sink hole opened up on the road you normally take home. Would you just blindly drive right into it because you this is the route you take home, and damn it if you’re going to let anything stop you?
-
This is a CM?
I have never been to a CM with oncoming lane blocked (or in this case - not really blocked).
Also where are the corkers?
I’m all for bike activism and fuck cars. But what they’re doing is illegal and the driver likely had no idea what’s happening. If they weren’t riding the wrong way, then everything would have been perfectly legal (at least here in Germany). As long as the cyclists form a mass, they’re considered one long vehicle and can even pass red lights that way, as long as the first person did so with a green light. But riding on the wrong side of the road and expecting everyone to know what is going on is kind of a dick move and just brings more hate on cyclists.
No idea what’s happening? Who doesn’t know what critical mass is? Even if you didn’t, if you’re so cousin-fucking stupid you can’t look at this situation and see that this is obviously an event you shouldn’t drive into, then you should be locked in a rubber room and not be allowed near sharp objects, let alone be allowed to drive a car. You’re too stupid too be allowed in public.
Running people over is also illegal. A defensive driver would stop and wait for the road obstruction to clear, or take a wide-berth, safe alternative path around it.
Why can’t the bikers stay in the right lanes. What about anyone walking, get out the way and fuck them too.
This is how cyclists feel when they are surrounded by cars on busy roads because the cycling infrastructure is shit.
Except, cyclists can’t kill people in cars with their bike.
So, lady, imagine our frustration.
Edit: spelling 🤦♂️
This gives me an idea. How about every bike gets retrofitted with a large titanium hook. The idea is that if you hit my bike, your car is pretty much totaled. Not just that but if you really hit me, the hook passes thru the radiator, thru the firewall and into the drivers asshole.
Put a little LED light on it as a warning beacon.
A tactical pool noodle with a very abrasive end should do the trick.
“Dangerous to drivers”
Because you’re going to give yourself an aneurysm over a minor inconvenience? You’re in a giant suit of armor. You could hit every single one of those cyclists without sustaining even a scratch.
If the cyclists were actually dangerous to drivers, do you think the diver would be accelerating aggressively towards them?
Whenever I’ve been on a Critical Mass ride, we’ve always had designated “corkers”, people whose job it was to block traffic with blockading/dancing/whatever while the others continued onward. Without people doing that, you run the risk of this sort of carbrained nonsense.
Something else that happened on mine was that as soon as we hear sirens, we drop the mass protest and prioritize making a path for emergency vehicles to get through.
Confused Portlander here. Why are these bikers fully clothed?
After last years was cancelled, I wasn’t sure if was happening this year. Apparently, a split in the org means there will be two this year.
I would expect Umbrella to sponsor zombie walks rather than this.
And ignoring a lot of traffic laws?
It’s a protest. Showing how dangerous the streets are to cyclists (and how many cyclists use the roads) is the message. A protest that challenges law and inconveniences people peacefully is how they garner attention (hopefully as a prelude to change and improvements).
So yeah, ignoring a lot of traffic laws.
Thank you. It was an honest question, downvotes are fuckin hilarious lol
I apologize as someone who fully thought you knew it was a protest and were just being a snarky ass opposed to their cause and sent you a down vote.
Never heard of the movement but as a cyclist the first thing i thought was no helmets, ignoring stop lights and riding outside the lane. Now that i know it’s a protest I guess i understand.
This is critical mass and each city does theirs a bit differently.
They are a form of protest but they’re usually done legally with the cooperation of police. The lead riders will stop at Red lights, but the mass of cyclists is treated as a single, long vehicle, and will continue through red intersections if the light was green when the front of the group went through. In my state at least, helmets are only required for children.
The official ride does not ride on the wrong side of the road, but there are usually some free spirits doing what they want.
They also have volunteer ride leaders, medics, and corkers who stand in front of cars trying to pass perpendicularly through the long bike “vehicle”.
Idk about the usa but here in europe its EXPLICITLY written into the drivers code that even if someone is driving illegaly if its in your power to stop an accident you have to. So if a person steps in front of you randomly and you have half a second to react thats usually not your fault BUT if you for example saw that there was a school bus dropping kids off and then you hit a child running across the road theres a large chance that theyre gonna charge you. Of course in europe you have to put like 30 hours into theory and then a lot of driving lessons to get a license while in the usa you basically get a drivers license instantly and nobody gives a fuck so thats why people dont know the rules…
The US license comes with the troop loops.
To add, in the Netherlands, known for it’s stellar bike infrastructure it’s exactly with actions like this that they reclaimed their cities from being purely car oriented.
That’s also because bike usage is encoded in legislation.
If you hit a cyclist with a car you are almost always considered liable. It needs a lot of proof to prove that is the cyclists fault.
Guess what, that makes people very careful around bikes.
Car brains are incapable of realizing that they’re the deadly threat.
I said it elsewhere but it’s worth repeating here that fighting drivers is fighting the wrong fight. Fight the government.
Even if you convince the drivers that you’re right, nothing changes.
You can do both
Those cyclists? Many are drivers. This is a community event that builds solidarity and changes driver attitudes by mobilizing them against the vehicular violence we are all currently subject to. A critical mass ride has hundreds or even thousands of participants. It changes the way THEY think about cars, bikes, traffic, and public safety.
If you don’t change driver attitudes, fighting the government is pointless. We’re getting bike lanes TORN OUT right now, because it’s popular politics.
NGL, you’re fighting the drivers for this, just in a different medium. You think the government is just doing shit for kicks and giggles? Nah, they don’t put in bike lanes because too many residents complain when they lose their parking lanes to bike lanes, or the road gets widened solely to add a bike lane.
Sure there are some cases where the govt is making a bad decision, but don’t think that you don’t need to argue with those same people, just in a Public Information Session instead of on the road.
The drivers are the ones pushing the government to not expand bike infrastructure. There are massive complaints anytime bike Lanes or other protection is installed in major cities and anytime it’s put up to a vote it’s the car drivers out there voting no
Seriously, like has that dude never heard of a NIMBY?
Drivers fight tooth and nail to prevent anything from being implemented if it means they incur even the most mild of inconvenience.
“Everyone except me is crazy.”
I agree that more bike lanes are needed and also cyclists need to be treated with the respect any life demands.
But flipping off a driver or generally blaming people who drive is fighting the wrong fight. I drive a car, I also cycle, being in a car doesn’t make me anti-bike.
Fight the government - flip off the government - that is refusing to put in safe infrastructure for the bikes (with protests like this, of course. But don’t flip off the driver, at best it does nothing, at worst it widens the gap between both groups and makes it easier to dehumanize and villianize the cyclists).
Fuck bike lanes. We need to dedicate a percent of roads to be car free
This isn’t about flipping off a driver. This is flipping off a bad driver who doesn’t understand that what they’re doing is unsafe. They’re flipping off bad behaviour.
