I’m a biker. Living in Minneapolis is a real treat for bikers, as we have dozens of miles of trails to take advantage of: the Grand Rounds circling the city, the Midtown Greenway, the Kenwood Trail, the path along Hiawatha and the LRT, not to mention all of the on-street bike paths there are. With more bike-friendly plans on the way (I’m not the only one to be happy that the insane center bike lanes on Hennepin are disappearing), it’s little wonder that Minneapolis is second in the country when it comes to people who commute on bike, despite our harsh winters.
Despite the bike-friendly nature of the area, though, if bikers continue to act like they are acting, we will soon wear out our welcome. I’ve always had an issue with bikers who blatantly disregard traffic laws: running stop signs and stop lights, going the wrong way down one-way streets, and so forth. In the past, the number of transgressions committed by bikers were outnumbered by the transgressions against bikers taken by people in vehicles, and so it balanced out. But lately, perhaps due to some kind of acquiescence on the part of drivers to the reality of biking, there are far more bikers acting like idiots than drivers.
I try to call my fellow bikers out on this when I can, but when I’m stopped at a stop light and some idiot zooms through, it can be a bit hard to catch up. Whether it does any good is questionable, but somebody needs to speak up.
I do this not because I love laws, but because I respect the laws of physics: in a war between vehicles and bikes, bikes will lose, and I see no need to antagonize drivers so they have an excuse to start in on bikers. When one biker disobeys the law, we are all put at risk.