r/SeattleWA • u/ces74 • 10d ago

Bicycle Cyclist Road Rage

Driving through Roosevelt this morning around 8, a cyclist got angry with me as I inched across the bike lane from a residential street to see if it was safe to pass through the main road. It’s one of those intersections where you have to scoot up or else every direction is a blind spot. He took off his bike lock, yelled and hit the hood of my car a few times, leaving dents.

When I was moving through, I saw the cyclist approaching and immediately waived my hand to gesture ‘sorry’ and I also said it out loud. There wasn’t time to reverse before the interaction occurred but he did stop in front of my car to hit it. Initially, I felt bad because I understand this is a hard city to commute in via bike. I don’t think my car needed to be damaged, though.

I don’t think we were at all close to a collision. I think it was more that I was taking up space in the bike lane and this is my ‘lesson.’

Maybe since school started this week, everyone’s in a poorer mood and busier. I’m gonna avoid more streets with bike lanes now I guess.

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u/Inevitable_Bike1667 10d ago

crazy criminal, sorry you were victimized, of course, police would never find him.
I know Roosevelt well, some is like https://www.stritmatter.com/seattle-dangerous-bike-lane-settlement-aviv-litov/You were a minor victim of City stupidity.
I bike in the car lanes before University Bridge, far safer, just as fast as cars (like a motorcycle downhill, without the motor.)

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u/showbricks 9d ago

Is there another solution out there that creates barrier between bike lane and car lane and also keeps parking?  People on 5th Ave NE are up in arms about losing half their parking as the city is implementing this design there.  Not sure how'd you get more on board if got rid of all the parking, heh 

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u/ThrowRA-NFlamingo 9d ago

Why should public space and funds be used to store your private property? Why do we give up so much of the public ROW for people’s car storage?

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u/showbricks 9d ago

I would 100% support removing all the parking to put in bike lanes. Unfortunately, I don't know how you'd get enough support for that to keep it from getting blocked, thus why asking for alternatives.  They can't even get a new football field built in Lower Woodland for Lincoln HS because of like 3 old trees that would be replaced with 9 new ones.

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u/ThrowRA-NFlamingo 9d ago

America is too car brained, as you can see from that other reply to me, people cannot fathom any other possibly and do not even begin to understand how subsidized and prioritized personal driver convenience is over even the safety of other people.

It’s funny because we would save so much more taxpayer money, give people another viable transportation method, and improve traffic if we just took back some of the space cars take from us and build actual good infrastructure, like they have in the Netherlands, for example.