Entitled Douchebag SF cyclist HITS AND KILLS A MAN, gets probation.

Everything up to your last paragraph is spot on. As soon as I'm on the road all your rules against riding on the sidewalk between cyclists and pedestrians also now apply to cars vis-a-vis cyclists according to your logic. If drivers responded to cyclists how you want cyclists to respond to peds then things would probably work out better all around.

That would be an unforeseeable freak accident. 300 pounds of speeding metal and dipshit is a foreseeable disaster.

I don't want bicyclists on sidewalks for exactly the same reason I don't want motorists in bike lanes. There's a reason why each of these kinds of thoroughfare exists. Pedestrians shouldn't have to watch for silent, speeding maniacs about to bowl them over like bowling pins.

A skilled rider can move at a speed an unskilled rider cannot attempt even with risks present. Expecting cyclists to walk their bikes on the sidewalk is both ridiculous and monumentally selfish.

Basically all you've said this entire exchange is, If you're in my way on the street you're in the wrong, and if you're travelling on the sidewalk you're in the wrong

Guess what, fuck you buddy, I can't wait to get in front of you

Because you fucking say so, basically. Proof would require you to follow me around with a video camera, and then you'd be disappointed by the complete lack of pedestrians endangered by my menacing rampage.

Just flapping your ass cheeks at this point. You know jack shit.

You go on dealing in your little stacked fantasies, I will continue disregarding your theoretical "wisdom" in favor of direct experience.

Skilled riders don't exist. We're all bumbling idiots, just waiting for a chance to plow into a baby stroller at 30mph.

Bike lanes are more dangerous for cyclists than riding with traffic, and are rarely given any sort of respect by automobiles, pedestrians, delivery vans, public buses, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

Either physically divide bike lanes (if you're going to bother having them) from regular traffic and treat peds that jump into them as endangering the cyclists and we'll talk - but either way most places don't have the infrastructure to support 2 methods of travel much less three.

Don't give a fuck what you want, tinkerbell. Your little "what-ifs" are wholly inadequate to demonstrate with any credibility that I endanger anyone.

And neither rider is psychic. Therefore, neither rider can predict how a pedestrian will react, and, in fact, cannot predict anything else.

You seem to think that you're some hot-dogging Top Gun badass who can weave and spin through pedestrians at 40 miles per hour, as if the real world is the Matrix and you're Neo or some shit.

Well, you don't get to take that risk with other peoples' well-being.

I like the way they do it around here. They built most of the trails along drainage canals. The bridges were already there, so you just pass under them without slowing down. You can go fucking 10 miles without having to so much as cross a street.

Yeah...they do where it's legal.

This is basically the same law in Massachusetts. One problem with such laws is that they often fail to define what is meant by downtown. The term here is central business district, but again, what does this mean? I can tell you that it is definitely not safe to ride on the sidewalk in my neighborhood, but I can't tell you whether I live in a CBD. Another problem, as many have stated, isn't a question of law, but of what is safe. Pedestrians are unpredictable. If the sidewalk is one on which a pedestrian might show up, my experienced opinion is that the bike shouldn't be there.

By that logic, nobody should leave the house.

More baseless fantasies.

And you don't get to fucking assume that risk by default.

Well

these

fucking

are.

Your convenience is not as important as anyone else's physical well-being, you self-centered fuck. Grow the fuck up and either ride with pedestrians at pedestrian walking speeds, or ride at traffic speeds in traffic.

And none of my actions demonstrate any belief to the contrary, despite your strained wish to portray them as such.

MY actions. Not the negligent deeds of strangers.

I don't give a good god damn whether it's legal or not. I'm not arguing that it isn't legal, I'm arguing that it's unsafe and unethical.

Wait, you can't predict things people will do? Then how do we know that cycling on a sidewalk is dangerous in the first place? Why do we even bother with speed limits on highways if the real world isn't predictable?

Oh that's right, you're attempting to have meaning to your words but you don't know what words to use.

Figure it out and get back to me, considering every fucking vehicle on every fucking travel-way is controlled by a human.

And to your hyperbole, if I ever got my commuter up to 40MPH I'd actually be such a bad ass that I could reverse time and make sure you'd never been born and we wouldn't be having this conversation. So, for your sake, lets try to keep things in the realm of reality, ok?

Safety is a dumb shit fantasy peddled as a viable goal by zero-tolerance fuckbrains. You are never safe. You have to be on guard for animal, mineral, vegetable, and things falling out of the fucking sky. You're assuming this ridiculous level of complacent risk-taking that simply is not fucking happening.

Just an observation, but we'd have a much easier time discussing all this if you didn't come off as an angry, raving lunatic much of the time. I'm sure there is a reasonable basis for your decision to occasionally ride on sidewalks, but it took 8 pages of interfering with the message.

That's your opinion.

If it's legal for him to be there you can't tell him he can't any more than I can keep the cyclists who make my morning drive a constant game of frogger off the roads.

I don't give a shit what you believe. I don't care whether you believe that in the split second before you smash a toddler into a concrete abutment that fucking unicorns will gently waft the tot up to a land of cuddly fucking puppies. What you believe is fucking meaningless. The statistics and common fucking sense demonstrate that what you're doing endangers lives, and the very fact that you have no regard for even the possibility of an accident only aggravates the odds that you're going to do something incredibly stupid and fuck an individual or a family's life all to hell for no better reason than that you were too chickenshit to assume the risk of injury for yourself instead of forcing that risk onto others.

Of course I can. I can't force him to alter his behavior, but I can sure as shit tell him to, and tell him why he should, and tell him he's a lowlife sack of fucking scum if he doesn't.

Nothing is entirely safe, and I never claimed it was, you toolbox. But that doesn't mean that we throw all safety concerns out the window.

Do you know why the nanny state arose? Do you know how that Mary fucking Poppins bullshit took root, you dumb son of a bitch? Because of the shit you're pulling right fucking here.

They decided to police all of us because assholes like you won't police yourselves.

Jesus fucking Christ.

See, here's part of the disconnect. There is no place within a few hundred miles of my house that remotely resembles that neighborhood. We have narrow urban streets or country lanes or limited access roads clearly marked for cars only. Typical for me would be the intersection of Centre St. and South Street. If you google it, use Jamaica Plain as the city. There are several intersections in Boston of streets by these names. I suppose any would do, but that's one that's near where I live. It's a vastly different environment and requires very different bike instincts.

Yeah, yeah. Everyone would be more receptive if I'd just be nicer about indulging the hair-splitting, trolling misrepresentation pigfuckery.

Indeed. What matters are demonstrated, real-world results.

Irrelevant to me.

No, it fucking doesn't. You have to deliberately ignore half of what I say to believe that, in which case this is just again of chickenshit internet trolling for you.

False. Constantly on my mind, with each breath and each movement of the pedal. I go WAY out of my way to avoid anything resembling your contrived little fantasies, and I'm supposed to take advice from someone who doesn't heave himself out of the fucking E Z Chair until it's time to roll pennies for another box of wine? Get fucked.

Nope. What it means is that situational discretion must be employed, and I value mine more than yours.

Nope. It's because of the brainless one-size-fits-all bullshit you're trying to apply here.

I "police" myself just fine, taint breath. All you can do is make unsupported accusations.

This is why I love Wordforge! It's a cripple fight and I actively want each one to bash the other in to oblivion. Go Albert! Go visionrazer!

Which I've linked to here, and which you obviously have ignored. How do I know you ignored them?

That's how I know you've ignored them. Because, just like I said you would, you're ignoring even the possibility of accidents.

Do you weigh 2 pounds and ride a 6 ounce bike at 1 mile per hour? No? Then you riding on the sidewalk endangers lives.

You don't know who's going to step around any given corner at the last second. You don't know from where they'll come, how fast they'll come, how big they'll be. Not on the fuckin' sidewalk, you don't. Because guess what people do on the sidewalk? Well, they do all sorts of things, but one thing they usually don't do is expect great huge fucking bald fatass Winston Churchill lookalikes to come barreling at them at 20 miles per hour.

And you know what you've been doing, this whole fucking time, throughout this thread?

You've been arguing against the same position you take in every other thread you get into on this board.

You're normally all about personal responsibility.

And, up until this thread, I could respect you for that. Because, up until this thread, it was a hallmark of yours. Personal assumption of risk.

Where is that now, eh?

Where is that principle now?

You're the one traveling at a higher speed, and carrying a greater weight, than pedestrians.

Where is your sense of personal responsibility with that, eh?

And as for your assumptions about me, fuck you. I bike for 2 hours, every single day. And every minute of that is in the bike lane or at the far edge of a normal lane. Because I assume the risk. I take on the responsibility of cycling.

What about you? Do you practice what you preach? I should say, what you preach outside this thread? Do you take responsibility for yourself, ever, when you're on a bicycle?

Unsupported? Bull fucking shit. You're the one proudly proclaiming that you don't give a shit about the numbers of cyclists who strike and injure pedestrians. Try coming at me with that flimsy shit when you haven't already destroyed it yourself.

You have not linked to my real-world results. I will not be judged by the actions of others.

Nope. On my mind constantly, and in a more substantial way than you are evidently able to grasp.

Not when there are no lives to endanger, which there aren't, because pedestrians get a wide berth. And spare me any more asked-and-answered fiction about blind corners. You're just parading your ignorance and desperate need to spin it in your favor.

They'd have to leap out of a fucking bush to catch me by surprise, in which case it's their fault. I do not go screaming around blind corners or any of the other fabricated bullshit you're trying to float to make your indolent ass sound more authoritative.

Nope. Perfectly consistent until you apply your own cutesy little distortions, which are your defect to confront.

And my riding on an empty sidewalk, where none of your imaginary blind corners and cloaked pedestrians are looming, is a responsible thing to do. Mostly, I'm on trails, where most people know the etiquette and announcing my presence is sufficient.

Same place they always are. In effect, in the real world, where your atrophied carcass would never dare venture. I do not place anyone at risk in reality, and I'm not responsible for what lives in your diseased mental organ.

Which is why I'm never anywhere near them.

Surrre you do.

My responsibility for myself never ends, and the word means a damn sight more to me than your insubstantial little invocations of it.