Playing Victim
More Cluster B(ike) Advocacy
The Youtube video, “Stopping Drivers from Driving Through the Group Ride” has made some rounds on Twitter. Adam Deusche wrote, “When drivers think they can drive their car through a group of people riding bikes, they need to be stopped and told to wait.”
Normal people might smell something: projection.
Twitter user @MonarchWolf write in reply, “I will translate the confused driver’s confused noises: ‘Why am I being inconvenienced? I have the bigger vehicle so therefore I mean more! Look I am red that means I am an emergency vehicle. What do you mean closed? What does “closed” mean? Does that mean I can still use it?’” and they continue, “Halfway suprised the driver didn’t claim the cyclist was attacking him by gently tapping on the hood of the red death machine.”
Again, likely projection.
So far there is a lot at stake here.
The driver did what to the bicyclists?
This is the video in question.
It’s not tremendously difficult to use the video to figure out approximately where the bicyclists were riding.
And it actually matters.
The video description is quite obvious from the title in the video - this takes place in San Diego, CA. The title and video description provide more detail.
For those not familiar with “the lingo” the term “the 15” is Southern Califorianese for “Highway (or Interstate) 15.”
From there one can see in the video the presence of a Costco location which makes it easy to find on Google Maps.
More precisely, this Costco location.
The video roughly follows the following:
Southbound on Gateway Center Drive
Right turn onto Market Street.
Finally passing through the intersection with 36th Street
In other words, this or this:
It’s vital too to note some other things - this appears to be a large group ride. A simple search online reveals that over the past weekend, part of the I-15 freeway in San Diego was closed to motor traffic due to maintenance and made temporarily available to non-motorized traffic such as bicyclists and pedestrians as a part of the California Department of Transportation’s (CalTrans) “CommUNITY” event.
With the exception of a select few areas where no other route has been provided, bicyclists and drivers of slow moving vehicles are prohibited from limited access roadways. However they are legally allowed the use of the full lane on almost any other road. “Bikeway advocates” often neglect and undermine this right in order to fuel both their victim-led narcissism and to line the pockets of thieves masquerading as “planners” and “traffic engineers.”
The eventual destination in the video appears to be the freeway itself of one of the entrances is in the left-most lane at the ned of the video.
In the video they encounter two different motorists which are described as “stopping drivers driving through a group ride.” Well it doesn’t appear as if any of the cyclists were actually stopped. If anything they were simply inconvenienced. Motorists have been known to exaggerate on similar things although ultimately never having been stopped let alone delayed for more than a typical traffic signal cycle. It’s ironic to see a similar mentality in bicyclists.
Since the person who posted the video did not clip their video prior to the encounter with the first vehicle, it’s difficult, and not fair to any party to comment on what happened. The start of the video shows a bicyclist stopped perpendicular to the direction of travel in the same lane as a grey car. The bicyclist has an obviously visible open palm, denoting “stop” to the driver of that car.
If however, this motorist was already on the road (first come, first served - traffic 101) and the group of cyclists overtook them, the cyclists would be in the wrong.
The real uncontroversial issue, at least to those willing to play in a world of objectivity, is slightly later in the video.
This is at the moment where the group of bicyclists approach the intersection with 36th street. Notice the traffic light is red, the red SUV is in the middle of the intersection making a left hand turn, and several cyclists in the group have disobeyed the red light. These are indisputable facts proven by the video.
Bicyclists in the state of California have the same rights and duties as drivers of vehicles despite the discriminatory laws the state’s largest organization CalBike and more local ”coalitions” have failed to repeal instead wishing to enrich pro-segregation rent-seekers. This however doesn’t dismiss bicyclists from their legal duty to obey traffic signals.
From there one can see in the video the presence of a Costco location which makes it easy to find on Google Maps, too.
Bikeway segregation dogmatists having damaged, likely forever the reputation of cycling have instead opted for the “we’re better” than every one else on the public roadways which allows them to break these rules. It’s this grotesque arrogance that elevates damned near every stereotype non-bicyclists have.
Normal bicyclists have to mop up this mess too.
In the case of the narrcisistas few things matter, especially facts.
The driver of the red SUV pulls into the left-most (and closest) lane - potentially unaware that lane is for entering the (closed) freeway. An orange sign indicating “Ramp Closed Ahead” is present and a sign further up ahead indicates that a left turn marks the entrance to the northbound direction of the 15 freeway.
On both the motorist’s left and right bicyclists pass. A voice in the video says, “you’ve made a mistake,” ironic since the video at least shows several bicyclists disobeying the traffic signal while it’s highly likely this motorist had a green light. The motorist has no where to go however as they are surrounded on both sides by bicyclists. It’d been a standard of traffic law for over 120+ years in left-side/right hand drive countries to pass on the left instead of on the right. This incident ocurred in the United States, not the UK, India, Australia, New Zealand, or Japan.
The bicyclist then proceeds to then cut in front of the motorist, clearly alarmed by their presence, and yells, “stop, stop” with their hand open and facing the motorist. They even tap a few times on the hood of the vehicle.
Quickly the bicyclist demands, “stop, stop your car.” There’s audio from the motorist but it’s at first largely inaudible. The bicyclist screams, “people are gonna get hurt,” it’s there where it’s more clear that this is likely a woman driving and it’s obvious a male is the one shouting. The motorist does attempt to move forward, and it’s understandable that someone driving a multi-thousand pound vehicle could be considered a threat, however none of the bicyclists do the common-sense thing and move out of the way of such a threat. It’s then that the voice of the motorist becomes more clear, “it’s an emergency. I have an emergency.” Once most of the bicyclists pass, the bicyclist demands, “now you can go!”
The motorist proceeds in the right-most lane once the remaining bicyclists clear, while the bicyclists spread themselves among the left-turn only lane that goes onto the freeway and the left-most thru lane.
The end of the video, after the driver of the red SUV is well out of sight, that it’s evident the bicyclists make the left turn onto the I-15 freeway. Several of the bicyclists are shown making this turn illegally from the left-most thru lane as in not from from the turn-only lane itself.
Competent bicyclists - as those who obey the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles, aren’t grotesque narcissists, and don’t cause drama - face very few issues while cycling on even the most often called bicycle-unfriendly of roads while platitide-driven cyclists wallop in their victimhood (it’s a currency in Woke and “progressive” cults after all) and demand virtually the entire world change for them - with propagandists such as Streetsblog and Woke ideology at their side - both which are threats to normal people and enrich parasitic “traffic engineers,” “city planners” and other thieves of the hard work of normal people. (Unfortunately for Californians, no scratch that - for all bicyclists, CABO - the last organization to have been remotely close to being a legitimate cyclist’s org have seem to taken that direction as well!) Motorists can at many times be at the least - neutral too - although there are plenty who are not aware of the bicyclists right to use the public roads. This is also a two-way street however - as many will both correctly and incorrectly exclaim.
Bicycle activists, especially of the platitude-driven type, often and unfortunately offer little to not help in this endeavor as they continue to tarnish the reputation of competent, principled-driven cyclists who are not only aware of the facts but who clean up after the messes of the others.
There are proper (and legal) methods for large group rides. For starters, obeying traffic laws is one of them. Slow and steady lane changes are another as is recognizing that if other road users are already present in front, they have the right of way. Bicyclists regularly complain - more often than not - of motorists who don’t understand this concept.
It’s a shame that both special interests usually in the form of no-skin-in-the-game parasite government jobs, where “engineers” no longer have to obey to the profession’s code of ethics and where shitty central planners demand domain over our lives have to ruin things for bicyclists. But to have bicyclists who undermine basic rules of the road and take out their inability to obey such on others is another thing. Bicyclistd are unfortunately largely taught and or encouraged to be different than other users of the road - often “better” and “above the law,” which feeds into the stereotype and thus the demands to ban us from the roads. It takes seeing past the shit-stained lens of narcisismo to see that in the long term, such thinking is not beneficial.
I commented on the original video. They lied and said the motorist had run a red light. Clearly, at 15 seconds in, the cyclists had a red light and the motorist was already in the intersection. He was not in any way aggressive, either.
I have been on organized bike rides, and we had teams of fit cyclists who would sprint to each intersection and clearly block it, rather than chastise people who had innocently entered the road. But, one symptom of narcissistic personality disorder is the one's inability to admit that anything could be his fault.