War for the roads: cars and cyclists duke it out in Boise

Clearly marked bike path.

As any cyclist in Boise will tell you, the roads here are not always friendly. We can find ourselves the subject of random roadside ridicule, open harassment, and plain inconsideration for our safety. The generally sinister opinion here is that if you ride long enough in Boise, the question of whether you’ll get hit by a car is not if, but when. As somebody who’s had my fair share of auto-related cycling mishaps, I can attest to that. At Ironman Boise 2008, an errant car found its way onto the course (ignoring the flagger and barricades) and into my path, leading to a wreck that earned me a DNF. I am extremely lucky to have escaped with only minor injuries. The driver of that vehicle never stopped.

But the streets of Boise aren’t a closed course, and we share the road with two- ton monsters that win the fight every time a bike and a car come into contact. Three recent deaths in as many months in Boise, and a string of high profile cases prior to that, have lead Mayor Bieter to assign a task force to this problem. It’s hard to tell at this point if that chatter will lead to any progress.

As an avid cyclist and triathlete, I am at times guilty of reacting with my own bias, knee-jerk opinion on the car vs. bike issue. Cyclists don’t understand how it is that cars keep hitting them. We wear bright, reflective colors, we stay in our narrow, obstacle ridden bike lanes or shoulders, and we try to share the road responsibly. I’ve never met a motorist (unless they also happened to be a cyclist) that didn’t feel like they were collectively doing cyclists a favor by somehow “tolerating” our presence on “their” road. Even though the laws are clear that cyclists also have equal rights-of-way on most urban roads, many motorists are completely unaware of this, and their frustration manifests itself when the few idiots amongst them honk needlessly, throw things, or otherwise harass us as we train, commute, or recreate.

The cyclist in me thinks, “Damn it, pay attention at the wheel and stop hitting us!” But it would be foolish of me to assign blame solely to the motorists. Countless times I have seen cyclists riding irresponsibly by ignoring traffic lights even as cars approach or by trying to make expired crosswalks to the detriment of their own safety and to frustration of surrounding motorists. It’s this kind of foolish attitude, wanting to be hallowed like a pedestrian and simultaneously treated like a part of regular traffic, which leads to cyclist caused accidents. Just because you’re confident in your bike handling skills (or ignorant of your lack there of), that does not give you a license to ride in ways that make cars nervous. And let’s not kids ourselves here. The only person you’ll endanger is yourself, because they guy in the car isn’t going to get hurt if you run a crosswalk and end up in his grill.

I feel that it’s important to distinguish between true cyclists and the others. This is just my opinion but I know many people who share my sentiment. Basically, to me, cyclists know what they’re doing on a bike and the others really don’t. I hate to polarize an already polarized debate, but it’s true. I’ve honestly never personally seen a member of the true cycling community act like an idiot on the road, and we constantly police each other about safety. We practice what we preach by doing everything we can do separate ourselves from vehicles in ways that aren’t irritating to them on the road. We know the roads, we know the safe routes, and we know how to handle ourselves in traffic. When a cyclist gets hit by a car, you can usually bet your bottom dollar that the vehicle is at fault. There are of course the bad apples in the bunch, but they are few and far between.

But then there are the others, who give the lot of us a bad name. These are the idiotic, non-helmet donning, make you want to throw a tire iron at them because they’re so annoying out on the roads folks, who somehow got their mitts on a bike despite their complete inability to ride safely. People in the North End or Downtown on their cruisers and fixies failing to yield, taking up the whole road, and unsafely piloting through traffic as if they are the only person on the road fall squarely into this category, and I think a lot of motorists can relate to that. These are the people who need education on how to ride in traffic, but there does not currently exist any way to administer this. Adding a bike safety section in driver education classes is one idea, but do you honestly trust a 15 year old to put those lessons to task for the rest of their lives? I don’t.

And so the circle of blame continues ad nauseum until we end up exactly where we started. Nowhere. For every inattentive driver on the road there is an equally inattentive biker, and no matter who causes the accident, the casualties and consequences are the same.

Better education might be a part of the answer, and although I love the idea on paper, I frankly don’t think it will be effective unless it’s on a massive scale. I’m all ears if anybody has an idea on how to accomplish that. Treating both cars and bikes the same doesn’t make sense because they’re not the same. We need to stop forcing these two to coexist in an environment that clearly favors the safety of one over the other. Having only very few unkempt and narrow bike lanes in Boise makes this tough because bikes are forced onto the roads. And enough with this argument that the Green Belt is good enough; the Green Belt is only great if your start/end points are within the vicinity of it, and the vast majority of Boise residents don’t live anywhere near it. Also, you can’t train on the Green Belt. Can you imagine a peloton barreling along there? The Green Belt is for leisure riders and pedestrians only.

My answer is simple. If we can’t find a way to share the roads, then let’s separate. More cycling-only lanes that are wider, further separated from traffic when possible, and that actually serve routes that people need to commute or recreate. Look to Europe for an example of this done nicely and successfully, specifically in the Netherlands and Germany. There is little encroachment there because cars and bikes each have their own place. We need comprehensive, separate sets of laws for both vehicles and bikes. Finally, we need better enforcement on both side so of the issue. It just became a misdemeanor to harass a cyclist on the road. Why not also make it one if a cyclist is riding neglectfully or obscuring the flow of traffic? Give the guy a ticket, I say, and teach him a lesson.

Enough of this pointless blame game. To the cyclist who ran a red light and almost met the front end of my SUV, wear a helmet and pay attention. To the motorist who threw a full can of beer at me on 13th street last month, you’re and idiot. And trust me, it takes a lot for me to call somebody offering me free beer an idiot, but you earned it buddy.