Submitted by Charles_Britt t3_10h0g7g in rva
Everyone hates cyclists. They run red lights, get in the way of traffic, and are generally aggressive towards motorists. Knowing this, a group of 100 something cyclists taking over the road sounds like hell. However, when people on this subreddit discuss ride outs they ignore almost every single aspect of being a cyclist.
I can already see the downvotes coming in and angry comments under this post, but I ask that everyone have an open mind and try not to start arguments, but rather discussions.
American infrastructure is a mess. It's built for cars, cars, cars, more cars, and a couple more cars, and then more cars. Being a pedestrian is a daily struggle to navigate the narrow and turbulent pathways you are allowed while surrounded by fast moving and impatient drivers. However there is another option for getting around: bikes! Biking around Richmond is incredibly dangerous. There are a tiny amount of bike lanes. Those that exist are unprotected, inefficient, usually blocked by a car, and almost always filled with branches, dirt, gravel, and broken glass. When biking outside of a lane you are surrounded by cars. Cars driven by hostile and distracted drivers. Biking around Richmond is a game of life and death. That may seem a bit of an extreme statement, but it's scarily true. Any driver could make one mistake and kill you. As a cyclist you have to keep your head on a swivel every second to avoid being killed by an SUV driver looking at their phone at the wrong second. You also have to be incredibly proficient in order to keep pace with the traffic around you. All these factors make biking an incredibly dangerous and at times terrifying activity. Though this is true, some of us love riding our bikes too much to let a little adrenaline stop us.
When we do bike there are just as many rules for riding as for driving. Most drivers don't know this, but some rules of the road are legally flexible depending on your vehicle, as cars and bikes are very very different things. Us cyclists are very aware of all of these road rules. We have to be or we might get killed. Following every legal rule to the tee, however, will almost always result in hostility from drivers around you. Punish passing, distracted driving, these may be inconveniences and maybe shocks to drivers, but to people riding bikes they can be deadly.
TLDR biking is dangerous and difficult and scary.
Because of all this, and because these problems only keep exacerbating with growing vehicle sizes and more distractions behind the wheel, we cyclists have started to band together to uplift and protect each other.
The first bike group rides in this vein were the NYC Critical Mass rides. The purpose of these rides was to overtake the city so as not to be invisible anymore. The idea was that if cyclists cause a fraction of inconvenience to drivers that those drivers would recognize there are problems that need to be resolved. The other idea was that people cycling together en masse makes them all safer on the road, meaning people can actually enjoy their ride rather than fear it.
Broad Street Bullies brought this to Richmond in the 2010s to great avail! People started joining quickly and the rides became a wonderful melting pot of all types of people. When you go to a BSB Thursday ride in the spring you'll see more types of bikes than you thought existed. Hundreds of people from different cultures and communities coming together to uplift and protect each other while raising awareness of the state of non-car transportation. BSB does take up the whole road. We do cause an inconvenience, but the inconvenience is liveable. We don't block the roads for any more than an hour. We don't sit at lights for any longer than we need to. We have group leaders to keep people safe and in order. There are rascals sometimes. The group organizers will tell riders to calm down when they cause too much trouble.
I think people in this sub are way too angry at cyclists and completely ignore what these ride outs are actually for. We're not just hooligans looking for trouble. We have been forced into this situation. This is what cyclist comradery looks like in car infested America. We didn't choose the design these roads, but we do choose to use them in an alternative way. If we could have our own separate infrastructure system we'd take it in a heartbeat. We don't want to have to cause inconvenience to bring attention to bike infrastructure, but here we are. People don't listen to us unless we're in front of their face making them wait an extra 45 seconds to take a left. We are just trying to make riding a bike a safer, more enjoyable, more communal experience, rather than the fear filled deadly obstacle course it is now.
I'm not interested much in anecdotes of "I saw a cyclist run a light one time" because it's been shown statistically time and again that drivers break road rules far more often than cyclists do.
I'm also not interested in anecdotes of "I saw a BSB rideout that was rowdy and unorderly." Bike ride outs are unorderly, but we check ourselves as a group. As someone who is a regular rider with them I can say confidently that the organizers care utmost about everyone's safety and sticking to the main point of the ride: Fun for everyone. We can't well all have fun if we attract police attention or angry drivers on our ass.
I love all of you. Car drivers are not evil people. Cyclists are not all angels. We are all trying. We should be a lot nicer and more understanding to each other. This is me trying to foster more understanding of an ultimately harmless group that everyone seems to want dead.
And if you still hate us, see you Thursday (Sundays for now til it gets warmer lolz) >:)