I was reading a thread on the neighborhood site Nextdoor and the topic was bicyclists and cars sharing difficult roads in Howard County. And boy did it seem to start a firestorm. As you can suspect bad drivers were an issue but also bad cyclists also. There might be a few people in this county that have put more miles on a car and bike here but the number is small.
As a youth, I put on many miles on the bicycle. We used to live on our bikes as youngsters. A large paper route for a few years as I grew, peddling to jobs anywhere from 5-6 miles from home before I got my license. And yes I’ve been clipped by a car on a bike. I’m so old we used to ride on Rt 29. I’ve ridden motorcycles for 3 decades in this county. I was driving years before I had my license so 50 years in a car now.
These are just my observations. Pretty much no matter where you lived in this county in the 60s you could ride a bike and there wasn’t an issue for motorists or cyclists. In the ’70s with the expansion of Columbia and Rt 29 and other roads became much more active, wider, and faster. This is the decade police stopped me for riding a bike on Rt 29 to my job at the Mall. But it was still pretty safe in a lot of the county.
In the last 4 decades, the volume of both types of traffic continued to increase at staggering rates. And here we are today with beautiful back roads and scenes choked with cars and bikes. On top of that our tolerance for each other went out the window a few years ago and now we have games of chicken repeated in front of us over and over.
Uncaring people trying to pass in blind spots for oncoming traffic instead of having a few seconds of patience to safely pass on a good vision spot. Then there are the ballsy ones that Mr. Karma is about to take issue with who regardless of what oncoming traffic will attempt to run head-on to you because they are going to pass that bicyclist no matter what.
I’ve noticed bad behavior on both sides but far less from cyclists than motorists. But riding a motorcycle is by far the most dangerous around here because you are out on the major roads and people don’t look to see you. I’d say this is the highest incidence per mile ridden of almost being killed and that is saying something because I’ve been hit badly in two car accidents, one where it took them forever to get me out of the car because it was mangled so badly where the roof had to be cut off because they couldn’t get any of the doors open. That is after they took the pickup truck off the front and top of the car. Strange things happen to a car when it’s hit at a standstill by someone doing 60mph from behind.
I found some stats for Howard County from 2016-2020 from the state in a PDF that is all numbers. Numbers of people injured and killed in many situations including pedestrians, cyclists, motorcyclists, and vehicles. I hate numbers. Because when you are talking people, we are not numbers. I hate what I see us doing to each other on the roadways no matter what your mode of transportation is.
Selfishness is killing and injuring us needlessly. Some of these stats are not accidents.
Random Thoughts of the Day
- I got up too early.
- I’m staying up too late.
- Good thing I took a nap.
