You are reading a single comment by @turpe and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@turpe
I'd be afraid of that. Very afraid.
Here in San Francisco, the absolute most dangerous cyclists aren't the messenger wannabes who can't stop their (fashionably brakeless) track bikes, they're the tourists who haven't ridden a bike for 15 years and decide that wobbling around a bustling urban metropolis in the granny gear of a hired Trek mountain bike is a good idea.
I can't count thee number of times I've nearly died because a group of these imbeciles have forced me into oncoming traffic by riding three abreast the wrong way down a busy city street because they're too fucking thick or arrogant to even vaguely respect the traffic laws. If you think that flouro-commuters ride like cnuts, you ain't seen nothing yet. Just wait until the day that a posse of shit-for-brains tourists (probably Americans) comes tootling down TCR from Goodge Street towards Centre Point and forces you to cut into the path of a bus.
I'm all for getting more people onto bikes, but putting them onto bikes when they can't ride the things and are utterly clueless about how to handle themselves in a city as, quite frankly, lethal as London is tantamount to changing the rules to allow 6-year-olds to drive hire cars.
There will be blood.