by:  Diane Benjamin

The McLean County Regional Planning Commission conducted a poll a few months ago.  Their results showed 72% wanted bike lanes!  Of course, most of the people who took their poll were members of BLONO because they were the only ones who knew it.  http://blnnews.com/2012/10/25/blnnews-verses-mcrpc-poll/

Normal is huge into biking, maybe their mayor owning a bike shop has something to do with it!  Now they are advertising another event:  http://www.normal.org/DocumentCenter/View/3244

I have nothing against bike riding.  As a kid I was always on my bike, but not on main roads.  Committing suicide wasn’t my idea of how to have fun.  But that is exactly what the new bikers are doing – but they want to blame the drivers of cars for the danger they put themselves in.

We live in the country, not in the City of Ellsworth, it just the closest city.  All summer cyclists are on the country roads, many heading to Dawson Lake.  It’s a great place to ride, safe and very pretty.  The roads to get there are not safe when the cyclists have no common sense.  A few years ago a cyclists was killed on a nearby road.

Nobody in the country wants to hit a cyclists, but many of the cyclists are making it a great possibility.  Last week I was behind 3 cyclists who were riding side-by-side on a country road where the speed limit is 55.  There are hills that would have made them invisible to me if they had been just on the other side.  Instead they blocked traffic from passing them by taking up the whole road, moving at around 10 miles per hour.

What if they had been just on the other side of the hill?  Swerving to avoid obstacles at 55 miles per hour usually doesn’t have a good outcome.   What if a car had been coming from the opposite direction?  Do you think I would have picked colliding with a car or colliding with you?  A crash with another car, also going 55 mph, probably would have hit the cyclists too as the cars spun out of control.  Do cyclists have a death wish?

If you want to ride in the country, just follow some simple rules:

Don’t ride side-by-side, especially on a hill

Get over to the right when going over a hill, a car may not see you when they are traveling at 55 mph and you aren’t

It’s your responsibility to be safe.  Riding in the country doesn’t give you the Right-of-Way, it’s not like riding in slower in-town traffic

Have life insurance, your heirs may need it to bury you if you ride without common sense

If you think cars in the country are going to slow down until winter because there may be cyclists on the roads, you also need a psychiatrist.