There is no excuse either bike riders or drivers running stop signs and red lights regardless of your vehicle. We all need to obay the rules of the road and share the road with everyone else. Bicycles have the same responsibilities as a motorcycle and the same right to a full lane as a motorcycle.
I can't speak for not using the shoulder or bike lane when one is available.
The bicyclists that are holding their lane on two lane roads with no shoulder and on-coming traffic do that because it isn't safe for someone to pass them yet.
Next time you're in that situation just imagine you're following a group of folks in funny looking caps and overalls having a good time slow driving down the road at 11 MPH on brightly colored John Deere B's, Case DC's, Farmall A's, Oliver 70's, and Allis Chalmers WC's instead of a group of folks in funny caps and short pants having a good time slow driving down the road at 15 MPH on brightly colored bicycles. Now-a-days there are more and more funny looking people on bicycles than on tractors.
Would you put a tractor driver in danger by passing when it isn't safe?
As for a group of bicycle riders or a even a single bicyclist holding a lane when there is oncoming traffic on a two lane road with no shoulder, that is actually the safest thing to do. Hold the lane until oncoming traffic clears and pull over when it's safe to let others pass. Here's why:
If the bike rider pulls far over out of the right hand wheel track with oncoming traffic, inevitably someone will take that as a signal to try to squeeze by without crossing the centerline of the road. There isn't enough room on a single lane to do that safely. By pulling over the bicyclist has put himself in danger of being struck at high speed, of being runoff the edge of the road, of being forced to make drastic manuvers and be left swerving all over the road in the slip stream of the passing car, or worst of all crashing flat onto the road with more traffic still at speed right behind him, unable to stop without either running over him, steering right off the road into the right hand ditch, or steering left into oncoming traffic. That's why those bicyclists don't let you pass against on-coming traffic until the on-coming traffic has cleared. It's to keep you from getting them killed.
It's much safer for bicyclists to hold their lane until it's safe for cars to pull halfway into the other lane and pass. As soon as it's safe to pass is when I pull over and give a couple of full left arm swings to wave the cars behind me to go around to pass me. Most drivers appreciate it, very few flip me off, and I'm still alive.
It's easy to get impatient and angry with someone who inconveniences us. Most people get just as upset as you are by any slow wide farm machinery or combine that also move at just 15 miles an hour, won't move over to allow others to pass, and must pull out into the on-coming lane or must stop and wait for oncoming traffic to clear before squeezeing past every mailbox and road sign along the right side of the road. All those slow, noisy, overloaded 30 year old grain trucks and equipment haulers with burnt out lights, rusted out mufflers and poor brakes aggrivate other people just as much as well. Especially if they are throwing mud, rocks and manure all over the road for a half mile. Sometimes those vehicles are out of line and sometimes there is no other alternative for those vehicles and we just need to make allowances for them. New drivers, elderly drivers and lost drivers all drive others nuts too, we've all been in there place too, it's best to just make allowances for them.
Pedestrians are very vulnerable to injury in any accident. Children too young to drive simply don't know the rules of the road yet and they are easily distracted so they don't always pay attention to traffic. We've all been there, many of us wouldn't be alive if others hadn't made allowances for us too.
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Today's Featured Article - Good As New - by Bill Goodwin. In the summer of 1995, my father, Russ Goodwin, and I acquired the 1945 Farmall B that my grandfather used as an overseer on a farm in Waynesboro, Georgia. After my grandfather’s death in 1955, J.P. Rollins, son of the landowner, used the tractor. In the winter 1985, while in his possession the engine block cracked and was unrepairable. He had told my father
... [Read Article]
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