"... will do nothing to deter the behavior and should be revised, officials said. The group of around 30 cyclists zipped onto Interstate 93 south at Leverett Circle and, to the astonishment of the people in cars around them, took up the two right-hand lanes as they pedaled over the Zakim Bridge and through the tunnel.... Boston City Councilor Tim McCarthy said risky behavior by people on bikes, dirt bikes and various other means of transportation creeps up this time of year — and he’s going to ask the cops to take a look at their policies and enforcement.... He said he’d been at a lacrosse game recently when a group of 10 or 15 dirt bikers screamed past, doing wheelies for the people gathered in the parking lot. 'It’s like anarchy,' McCarthy said of the dirt bikers and this week’s highway cyclists. 'The temperature hits 40 and this starts back up.'"
The Boston Herald reports.
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Law-evading dirt bikers are a serious problem in the D.C.-Baltimore region. In many cases, the ATVs are stolen.
Interstates used to be fine bicycle routes and I used them all the time. Wide shoulder, good pavement, no crossing traffic. Then NJ started using the shoulder for traffic and that was the end of that.
We had large groups of dirt bikers in Nashville for a couple of days last month. They disappeared, but how were they organized?
There's a subculture of bicycles and motorcyclists 'claiming the streets'. Part street gang territoriality, part fun for social media. Like the story says the weather starts warming up and these groups start showing up...
A not uncommon Sunday afternoon can look like this.
Of course the bike advocacy groups do a good job placing blame on law enforcement for injuries to the cyclists. Once the advocacy groups get the ear of politicians they become apathetic or out and out refuse to retaliate against those who flaunt the laws.
My son, who is a paramedic fireman, had an interesting case last weekend. IT was a head-on collision between two motorcycles. It takes good aim or quite a coincidence to accomplish that. One motorcycle was racing through traffic punching cars as he passed them. The other was just rounding a curve when they met.
No fatality. Just an idiot not watching where he was going and on the wrong side of the road.
Good thing they did it Saturday evening. If they did it during a weekday rush hour they might've been run over by infuriated commuters.
Making conservatives.
You kids stay off my streets!
I think they should fine a bunch of gay dudes tying up traffic too with their ridiculous parades.
Civilization means putting up with the occasional assholes who do asshole things. I say this as someone who is against what they did.
But in the long and large amounts of problems in Boston, the corruption and illegality behind the Big Dig weighs far more than the fact that some (Liberal) activists tied up the (Liberal) commuters in Beantown.
But I checked out of Urban America a long time back. They want to continue to make their little enclaves more and more like Singapore but without an accurate understanding of human nature, they can be my guests.
I guess if it isn't a deterrence; you should just get rid of the fine.
I watched the video and recalled that Nancy Pelosi thinks these kids should be able to vote.
Hell, just charge them the tolls, penalties and interest for not having an "EZPass" or "PayByPlate".
Trust me, that's punishment enough!
Physics is not on their side.
On the upside/downside ( depending on your point of view). our trauma programs are doing wonders with saving severely head injured patients, even if they don’t regain meaningful function. ( and at that point Medicare and Medicaid kick in.)
And if the patient is too far gone, there will be organs to donate.
In the early 1990s I worked in downtown San Francisco where the social movement called Critical Mass was founded. Once a month on a Friday, bicyclists blocked the evening commute for hours, provoking fights with drivers and acting like self-righteous fools. After three months or so of this I noticed my strong support for bicyclists’ rights had been replaced by a suspicion they all were assholes, a prejudice I carry to this day. Sometimes people react irrationally to the irrational actions of others.
forced the kids out of the tunnel, but didn't chase them because of safety concerns
Because "Could only follow them through the tunnel then watch helplessly as they turned off the road, scattered and disappeared" wouldn't be good for relations with the Dept.
What about rabbits who inappropriately use the bike trail in your backyard?
There are two types of people in the world: those who ride dirt bikes, and those who hate dirt bikes.
When we lived in San Diego, I used to bike to work fairly often. Where there wasn't a bike lane, I made a point of staying as far to the right as was safe and practical (essentially the same as my political views!), so that cars could go still use the lane I was in. The bicyclists who would go out of their way to not leave room for cars to go around them always irritated me.
Kids going to be kids. $20 may not be much of a burden to the spokesman, probably a bigger slice of the kid's net worth though. If the risk of being run over, injured, and killed isn't deterrent enough, why do they think a fine they are incapable of paying would be?
I'm a meh on this as a burning issue society just MUST address.
I would suggest confiscation of the bikes, as well as a serious fine. Anyone know why "kids" is in quotes - the video certainly makes it look like they were actual kids, much younger looking than I would have guessed?
"One of the bikers pulled in front of Lien and slowed dramatically. Lien said that he struck the bike from behind, stopped his vehicle, and was quickly surrounded by bikers, who began beating on his SUV.
He testified that he feared for his life so he accelerated, running over several bikes and striking one of the bikers, paralyzing him. A chase ensued, ending in Lien being pulled from his vehicle and beaten.
The media later reported that the involved bikers were members of a loose association of high-performance motorcycle enthusiasts known as "Hollywood Stuntz" who had previously been observed and filmed engaging in reckless driving and threatening motorists.
Among the bikers was an off-duty New York City Police Department officer. The attack was caught on video and garnered international attention."
Nonapod said...
Good thing they did it Saturday evening. If they did it during a weekday rush hour they might've been run over by infuriated commuters.
Not likely. To run someone over, the car has to be moving. During rush hour, they aren't.
The big dig will cost $22 billion by the time it is paid off. That's a lot of money for a bike path :)
To run someone over, the car has to be moving. During rush hour, they aren't.
That's why thoughtful drivers carry a case of beer to share with the other stalled drivers. Callahan tunnel memories...
Dirt bikes have motors and are often very high performance specialized machines. Bicycles are bicycles. I saw a pack of anarchists dirt bikers in San Francisco a few months ago and wondered how the all African American riders got, used, and maintained the bikes. The machines are not cheap and the nearest place to legally ride one is about 100 miles from San Francisco and so requires a truck to transport it for any legal use, which is an "all day" activity, like skiing. I am a dirt bike rider and have never seen an African American rider on an actual trail. A few Asians and Latinos, but mostly its a white guy thing.
There was an incident in Boston last year where a cop shot one of the dirt bike riders on the freeway. That was an aggressive bunch, they mobbed ed us in traffic a few minutes before the shooting.
Sorry those arent 'dirt bikers'. I am a dirt biker and ride quite a bit in CO and UT. Those are idiots and thugs that are illegally riding non street legal motorcycles and ATVs that were developed for offroad riding and motocross racing.
I have apparently moved to the bicycling capitol of the world - Tucson AZ.
Everyone bikes. Every road has a bike lane, but riders go with (not against) the traffic and stay away from curbs. That makes them extremely vulnerable to less than fully attentive motorists. Lotsa people get killed.
Ironically, we have a massive bike loop that recreational bikers use. However, there are semi-pros who stick to the streets so they can go faster.
Bicyclists are some of the biggest jerks on the roads.
Impound the bikes. Charge them what they charge for impounded cars. That crap will end quickly.
More lawlessness. I can't imagine bicycles on Interstate 80 in Nebraska. I-80 runs right through Omaha. I also thought there was a federal law prohibiting bikes and hitch hikers.
“Good thing they did it Saturday evening. If they did it during a weekday rush hour they might've been run over by infuriated commuters.”
Some things don’t change much. Was back in DC 8-10 years ago for a committee meeting, and brought my kid along. Showed them where I had honked at a bicyclist by the Lincoln Memorial, right by the bridge to Arlington, one Friday afternoon during rush hour. The bicyclist was right in the middle of the lane, and refused to pull over, causing a backup for probably miles, as everyone was trying to get home for the weekend. After I honked at them, they got off their bike and started throwing rocks at my car. Joke was on them - it probably took them a bit of time to get the traffic to slow down enough again for them to merge into the lane and shut down traffic again. And just jumping out into the lane would likely have made them a nominee for a Darwin Award. This was almost 40 years ago (probably 1981).
“I can't imagine bicycles on Interstate 80 in Nebraska. I-80 runs right through Omaha.”
We do get bicyclists on the state highway through town where we live in MT. Not really that smart. Speed limit is mostly 70, the road isn’t really that wide, and probably half or better of the vehicles are full sized pickup trucks, or their SUV counterparts that share a lot of parts. Big trucks. A lot with big add on grills for brush and the occasional deer. Even bigger are the 18 wheelers taking a shortcut to Missoula. Yet, you are guaranteed to see them pumping along at 60 mph or so below the speed limit (70 mph below traffic flow at times), with their tiny orange flags flying bravely high above their bikes. A lot of little white crosses along the side of the road. Originally I thought that they were mostly drunk drivers (still are those around who count distance by road beers required - such as the trip into Missoula might be a 4 beer drive), but wonder if some of them were bicyclists.
Ultimate karmic enforcement will probably entail a spatula.
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