I struggle with just how bitchy I am. I hate hearing the complaints in my head. One of the loudest ones lately is my feelings about SUVs.
I now live in a town that was literally constructed to the width of pre-motorisation carriages. My road is a single track farm road. I measured it during the pandemic when we were told to stay 2m away from people and from one side of the pavement to the other it *barely* makes 2m so if you want to be a full 2m away from other pedestrians you both have to stand on the dirt on either side of the road, not on the road. Land Rovers are 1,996mm wide. So basically there is 4mm less than 2m wide for a fucking Land Rover. Not even a full fucking centimeter. Lots of people drive them up my road to the farm store on a Saturday. They have no fucking patience for me on my bike.
An accident with a pedestrian and an SUV is 25% more likely to be fatal than an accident with a pedestrian and a more appropriate sized car. Catastrophic injury is also significantly higher. If an SUV is traveling under 20mph it is fairly unlikely to kill someone in an accident. If it is going over 40mph it is pretty guaranteed to kill someone. I can ride my bike at 16-18mph through most of town. I get close-passed by SUVs (because they literally can’t give me the legal amount of space because they take up so fucking much room) every single day I ride. They are going much faster than me and they show their ire at me for existing on the road by gunning the engine hard. A minor misjudgment on their part in that case could very easily be fatal to me.
Fuck SUVs and fuck the selfish fucking pricks who buy them. If that’s you, I don’t know what to tell you.
SUVs pollute more, are less fuel efficient, and are substantially more dangerous to other road users. Sure the people inside the death-machine are “safer” than the vulnerable people they will roll over. Whoo. How fucking awesome for you selfish twats.
I absolutely understand why some people need trucks. I get that. I have never seen a demonstration of why people actually need to do their daily driving in an SUV. “I have hobbies that have big equipment”–get a fucking roof rack on a smaller vehicle. “I carpool”–how often? What percentage of the time? How much are you polluting the environment and risking the safety of every other road user for that tiny fraction of the time you drive your death-machine?
Yeah the vehicle that hit me recently was a fucking SUV. His justification for not fucking stopping? “I thought you should go through the intersection.” He couldn’t see the fucking car that was coming on the cross road so he thought I should get out of his way. FUCK SUVS. FUCK SUVS. FUCK SUVS.
Yesterday Eldest Child and I were stuck in traffic trying to get into the leisure centre. It was wall to fucking wall SUVs. We could not filter through traffic (as is recommended by cycling organisations to minimize our exposure to breathing your toxic emissions you selfish twats) because the entire fucking road was blocked from side to side. So we got to sit behind an SUV for 10 minutes trying to get into a parking lot breathing that shit. We aren’t inside a vehicle filtration system, we just get a face full of exhaust. If we leave too much room between us and the vehicle in front of us we get honked at and shouted at by someone behind us in a death-machine who is upset about a whole 2m of empty road in front of them during stopped traffic.
Fuck SUVs.
It’s getting to the point where if someone hops out of an SUV for a meet up I instantly don’t like them. I think they are a shitty, selfish person. I don’t think everyone must be on a bike. I don’t judge people feeling like they need a car. They are dead useful and not everyone can handle cycling because they don’t have the time/physical ability/whatever. I get that I will have to share the road with cars, no problem. But fucking SUVs? Naw, they should be banned. When they park on the side of the road they obliterate the bike lane.
Oh, and the close pass fuckwad who got out of his vehicle to come back and scream in my face and slap my hand when I took his photograph? SUV.
Fuck SUVs. And fuck you if you own one.
While I do understand the stupidity of people in SUVs, in fact it’s kinda disappointing, they take aren’t much different than Americans.
Since I drive buses for Marin Transit I would take appreciate it if the cyclists there obeyed traffic laws and at least had the slightest shred of a sense of self preservation. Half the effort of my job it trying not to kill a moron on a bicycle.
Just recently I almost annihilated someone who ran a stop sign as I was pulling over to pick up a passenger. A little situational awareness could go a long way.
However SUVs are literally the worst and Marin County is full of the most deployable people.
I am 100% on the side that says cyclists should follow the road rules. I do not in any way support cyclists blowing through red lights/stop signs. Err, with the one caveat that there are sometimes some lights that literally will not trigger for a cycle. I have sat for 15 full minutes waiting then eventually went through the red because it was late at night and there were no cars anywhere in sight. I don’t blow through that light. I stop and wait and very carefully enter the intersection when I otherwise could sit there till a car feels like showing up.
Cycles should let people pass on narrow roads whenever it is safe to do so. They should follow rules around stop signs and red lights. They should be courteous and considerate and try to share the road as much as possible. That’s just basic manners.
Here there is currently a lot of arguments going on because apparently people who are wearing high viz and a helmet are slightly more likely to be hit by a car, often because drivers view them with more hostility as “lycra brigade” and they give them less space than they do to someone cycling in regular clothing with no helmet. That dynamic bothers me a lot. After my brother’s accident where he was hit by a car on his bike I am rabidly in favour of helmets and it really bothers me that I am slightly at more risk because I wear one. 🙁