Getting a handle on latest 'bikelash'

OK, you can stop now. Message received. No need to send in any more harrowing tales of bicyclists behaving badly.

I've now heard hundreds of stories about bicyclists playing chicken with buses. Mowing down toddlers. Riding three abreast with no care about traffic piling up behind.

If one reader in West Seattle is to be believed, some bicyclists carry rocks to pelt cars that get in their way.

"I can explain why I'm bitter about bicyclists," phoned a Metro bus driver, riffing off the title of my column last week: "What's with all the bike bitterness?"

"It's because they act like 5-year-olds. I'm driving a 60-foot-long bus, and I'm completely responsible for their safety. I'm tired of baby-sitting them."

"I used to love walking around the city listening to music on my headphones," another fellow wrote. "I'm too frightened to do that now because of the fear of being hit by a bike."

Yowza. I know bicyclists can be annoying, or militant or erratic in the streets. But the depth of animosity about them is remarkable. That column drew more reader response than anything I've ever written — 900 online comments, plus more than 400 emails.

That's a lot of fuss over what one emailer fumed is "a tiny minority that wears little pants and huge egos."

(For a hilarious twist on that, go check out the YouTube video clip from the TV show "Portlandia" — forwarded to me by a few of you — in which the actor Fred Armisen rides a bike around Portland, blowing a whistle, screaming detailed instructions at cars and shouting "Bicycle rights! Bicycle rights!")

I still think this backlash against bikes, or "bikelash," is so over the top it must be about something else. But a few readers actually made constructive points about how to soothe our bike pains, so I'm going to move on to that.

But first, bike critics — please stop arguing bicyclists are freeloaders who don't pay anything for the roads. It just isn't true. In Seattle, for instance, the top source of funds for roads is the property tax. So we're already all in this together.

Jana Lauderbaugh, of Seattle, made two good points. One, this has long been a city almost pathologically wedded to rule-following: "Where pedestrians don't jaywalk, cars don't honk, and no one cuts in line," she writes. So when one group is perceived as going its own way, it hacks everybody else off.

Two: But what are the rules? Nobody seems sure. In recent years, the city has painted on bike lanes, climbing lanes, "sharrows," green bike lanes and "bike boxes" — all without much explanation. Driver and cyclist alike have been left to hash it out.

Bicycling already exists in what one reader called a "neither fish nor fowl" state. Bikes can legally ride on the road or the sidewalk, for example. Some bicyclists adhere to "vehicular cycling," in which they act more like cars, while wimpier cyclists like me always keep to the shoulder or even default to sidewalks on the busiest streets. To a lot of drivers, this looks like anarchy — even though it's all legal.

"Throw everyone on the road together, without a standardized set of rules ... or communication or training," Lauderbaugh wrote. "The result is chaos and resentment."

Some training or public education to teach drivers and cyclists how to share the road is needed, she said.

I suppose that could help. In the meantime, how about we all just consider the laws of physics?

I am pro-bicycle — I once rode one from Maine to Seattle — but I agree with reader Nathan Pride, of Woodinville. He wrote in to suggest bikes only help themselves by getting as far away from cars as possible.

"You are smaller. You are slower. You can stop faster. Is there a shoulder? Use it. It is not worth your body or life to make your point," he wrote.

Said another reader: "As nobody is clear on the rules, and they are situational and sometimes conflicting anyway, how about a simpler guide: Whoever is bigger, yields. Cars yield to bikes, bikes yield to peds. Everyone gets where they're going."

I like both these rules — even if they don't perfectly square with each other. But will we all get along?

I bicycled in for Bike to Work Day last week, and I saw no bikelash on such a pleasant day. But the Seattle Weekly's Nina Shapiro emailed me that the day before, she watched as a "beefy guy" driving a Buick got out, pushed a bicyclist against a wall and then picked up the bike and heaved it at him.

Bike rage heats up, she wrote. And it's not even summer yet.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.