so much italy

ITaly scoffs at our "American" Mario Kart

A pair of lame estes model rockets is no match for bottle rockets by the gross! Wow! How did he string the fuses together?

last one was, appropriately enough, a Roman candle

If only motorcycles could fly.

PS. I put fake 'Ridiculously dramatic yet apt analogy' html tags around my Palestine analogy but poetvs shitty parser swallowed them.

The cyclists in my town really like to present themselves as martyrs, even though half of them are jerkoffs who run red lights and race down the sidewalk when there’s a bike lane right there.

Its not really part part of my bike-bushido but my philosophy in the road is that the bigger should always defer to the smaller/squishier.
I *always* defer to pedestrians.

A useful part of my bike-bushido is: dont bother obeying any laws. The only laws I respect are the laws of physics. I do whatever is safest, if that means breaking a red light then so be it.
Conversely I dont assume motorists will obey the law, that would be a very dangerous assumption to make as they usually dont*. I only assume that they will obey the laws of phsyics, if its physically possible for them to drive straight into me for example, I'm prepared for that.

*Universal motorist infractions in Ireland: Speeding, driving on phone, breaking red, speeding up on amber, not yielding, illegal parking (in bike lanes usually)

In Ireland the laws massively favour motor traffic so obeying them can be pretty dangerous.
I happily explain this to any Gardai who stop me :)

Not stopping for signs and traffic lights doesn't make anyone safer, it just makes you an asshole that makes everyone unsafe and then bitches about it smugly.

This is why I stopped giving a shit about cyclists decades ago.

Motorists: somehow think that bikes should be on the sidewalk, and consider the bike lane to be free parking. Will tweet about it on their phones as soon as they see you (in between reading facebook posts). Natural habitat: liquor stores.

Cyclists: believe they are in some kind of personal Tony Hawk park, where they have the right to go anywhere and do anything without following any rules at all. Natural habitat: traveling the wrong way through a red light.

Raggamuffin only travels by personal blimp.

@meme Sometimes breaking a red on a bicycle is safer. Eg. at a crossroads, if there is no traffic on the road you are crossing its safer to get going before the traffic in your lane.
In the city a fit cyclist on a road bike will go at about the same speed as cars (speed limit is 50 kph (and 30 in some areas in the inner city)) But cars can accelerate a lot faster. By taking off before them you can get up to their speed before they take off.
When youre cycling at about the same speed as the cars its much safer because you can just drive like a car, and the roads / laws and drivers behaviours make that optimal for safety.

In other cases its not safer, all road users will not expect any other to break the red, and doing something unexpected is unsafe if your sharing the road with cars.

I just do whatevers safest and over the decades I've learned what works and what to look out for. I dont give a shit about the law, in Ireland they are not designed to protect road users other than autos in any way.

I've been a full time urban bike commuter for years and my road rage towards other cyclists FAR outweighs the rage for motorists. Like, at least 10 to 1, if not 20.

They, as a culture, DO NOT STOP. EVER. Stop sign? Red light? Pedestrians? None will slow down the asshat riding the carbon fixie in his full Lance Armstrong spandex getup. At best, they'll shout "MOVE!" to anyone in the way without bothering to slow down (or just not pedal over 20mph on crowded city streets in the first place).

I've been in 2 head on collisions with said idiots riding down bike lanes THE WRONG WAY.

Both times, they started red faced screaming at me like I was the asshole.

I recently moved from Austin, TX to Orlando, FL.

In Austin, motorists were generally respectful of cyclists. I lived close to a university campus, so pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists were all pretty terrible, but at least motorists gave wide berth to me when I was on a bicycle. I judged cyclists and pedestrians more harshly, since they were more likely to step or cut right in front of me without looking.

In Orlando, motorists have almost killed me half of the time I've taken out my bike. I no longer ride my bike anywhere, which makes me pretty sad.

Mr. Purple Cat Esq., I prefer to call it a dirigible

I wish bicyclists would use the side walk when there is clearly no bike lane and no room for a bicycle on the road.

Also don't blow through a green light, because I'm not looking 30 feet behind me when I'm making a right turn.

Also, yeah, incredibly staged

SolRo, a bike is a road vehicle. When I'm on a bike I'm traveling 12-15+ mph, and the sidewalks are typically dangerously narrow, in disrepair, and covered in pedestrians. I want to be in the middle of the road even less than you want me there, believe me, but the sidewalk is not an option.

Solro be trollin'

agreed -- unless of course it's one of millions of roads w/o proper bike lanes (if any at all -- but our Py-cyclist is in what appears to be a more narrow lane on the side of the road, until moped comes along. Personally, I choose not to lose my shit on motocyclists/cars in my bike lane(s) or trail them(I have and it doesn't end well) but the moped is either cutting the cyclist off on purpose or is just an unapologetic asshole. Fireworks, though..

(oh. what people said above)