Counter-current riding (what BikeSnobNYC calls "bike salmoning" has escalated rapidly in the last five years.
A friend of mine was on the citizen's police review board of Richmond, CA a few years back. His explanation of the original behavior came from street cops: Allegedly, the practice was originally done by drug dealers, who rode against traffic in order to sight police cruisers quickly enough to ditch contraband. That can no longer be the case, or else there are hundreds of drug dealers biking around my neighborhood. Some of them are little old ladies of advanced years, and some are 12-year old kids. When I first complaint about this to my 74-year old mother, who'd been out of the US for several years, she told me that in her 50s youth, pedestrians were advised to walk on the pavement against the flow of street traffic, so that they could see dangerous vehicles in advance. She also said that it was advised in women's self-defense classes. I certainly don't remember such advice from my own 70s yoot; does anyone know whether this advice has resurfaced? On the occasions where I come to a near-collision with a salmoning cyclist, I've wanted to interrogate them: What's your reasoning here? Why do you think this is a good idea? It's gratifying to think that some people really don't have a self-justification for this silly, dangerous behavior, beyond "I saw somebody else doing it", and they'll change if someone just tells them that they aren't wearing any clothes. Unfortunately, I live in a big college town, where a large percentage of the bike population are 18-25 year olds away from adult supervision for the first time in their lives. Upsetting other people and defying rules are often features, not bugs. Peter Adler that's when I turn on the highbeams, to blind the idiots in Berkeley, CA/USA On Sunday, July 5, 2015 at 3:58:33 PM UTC-7, Lungimsam wrote: > > It happened again today! Some guy in carbon kit came up the wrong side of > the shoulder at me and the wife. For his safety I told him "Don't ride > against traffic. You'll get hit.". That's about all the speaking time I had > while he passed by. > > Later, on the trip home I saw him riding on another street but this time > with traffic. Don't know if that had anything to do with what I said or not. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rbw-owners-bunch@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rbw-owners-bunch. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
