GUEST OPINION: Another angle on car-bike protocol GUEST OPINION: Another angle on car-bike protocol (September 12, 2001)

By Dr. Morton Grosser

After the exchange of letters in last week's Almanac, I feel that I have to join the bicycle-motor vehicle correspondence, because no one is addressing some basic issues.

Since many of your correspondents include pertinent credentials, here are mine: A more than 30-year injury-free record driving or piloting the following vehicles: multi-speed road bicycles (long before it became a fashionable pastime); motorcycles, on both roads and race tracks; many models of domestic and foreign automobiles; five different race cars; parasails; hang gliders; sailplanes; human (pedal)-powered aircraft; and various single and multi-engined airplanes.

My family has lived in Menlo Park for that entire length of time. We started residence here as pro-bicycle citizens, but the current crop of bicyclists has through their own actions earned our increasing dislike and disrespect.

Today I drove home from Burlingame via Interstate 280 and Sand Hill Road and found an Almanac with letters about Katherine Pope waiting for me.

Here is what I saw en route: At the intersection of Sand Hill Road and Santa Cruz Avenue I was first in the eastbound left turn lane, waiting to turn left on to Santa Cruz Avenue. While the Santa Cruz through traffic light was red, a bicyclist in a spectacular orange and blue coordinated outfit rode to the head of the line of traffic in the left turn lane for Sand Hill Road westbound, toward Interstate 280. He dismounted for a moment with obvious reluctance. Then he remounted, and, during the gap in the signal cycle, he pumped violently across all vehicular and pedestrian lanes, making an illegal left turn against the red light, in full view of perhaps a hundred motorists.

If any car in the next green light cycle, which was not the bicyclist's, had started quickly, we would have had another fatality. This arrogant rider was essentially flaunting his reflexes and physical prowess by betting that he could get across the intersection with no legal right of way, ahead of the cars.

Is that unusual? No, unfortunately it is not. There are several reasons for it. First, basic physics: many bicyclists are momentum junkies. They hate to get off their bikes, as you can verify at any red light where they are forced to stop. They think they have a privileged right to forward motion, and they have elaborate internal rationalizations for breaking the law. This leads to a peculiarly self righteous world view, in which bicyclists demand the right of way from motor vehicles, but refuse to surrender it to pedestrians, as specified by law.

My wife and I often walk in the evening near a four-way stop sign intersection at Lemon and Oakdell Avenues in Menlo Park. Many times we have waited to cross the intersection, sometimes with accompanying children, sometimes not, and had motorists stop at the appropriate stop sign and yield the right of way to us.

Do you know how many times bicycles have stopped and yielded the right of way over the past 20 years? Never. That's zero, nada, not once . They just fly through the intersection in all four directions, occasionally forcing us to jump back from the curb edge. Bicycles are vehicles, remember, subject to the vehicle code.

I will sympathize with bikers who write self-righteous letters about being victimized by cars, as soon as I see them riding in line in the single bicycle lane.

The answer to the question in Susan Doherty's "just l'il 'ol me" letter is this: is it a crime to ride a bicycle legally? No, it isn't. Is it a crime to force drivers to avoid you by crossing the center double line into the path of oncoming traffic, a life- threatening situation? Yes Ma'am, it is, and if that's what you were doing, you deserved your ticket. (Noticed many car drivers riding side by side and conversing in a single vehicle lane lately?)

I would also be more persuaded if I saw bicyclists abide by traffic rules, stop at stop signs and red lights, and yield the right of way to pedestrians. Bicycles are not divinely privileged, they're just another form of transportation, with advantages and disadvantages like all the others.

Do you as a bicyclist want respect from automobile drivers? Try stopping for wheelchairs at pedestrian crossings, as I have seen bicyclists repeatedly refuse to do in Menlo Park. Maybe if you acknowledge your place in the overall mix of transportation the wheelchair won't be occupied by an ex-bicyclist.

Dr. Morton Grosser is a financial consultant who lives on Lemon Street in Menlo Park.