Nothing can go wrong here, everyone will happily wave to you as well! The one finger thing is just a weird custom, don’t worry about it!
If there’s no dedicated bike lane it means we get to share the road… right?
Yeah…the negligence I see is noise canceling headphones and that’s about it. Cyclists should be aware of their surroundings and sometimes that includes being aware there is a vehicle behind you that is bottlenecked in traffic.
But cyclists aren’t beholden to car speeds and sometimes riding in the middle of the lane is a matter of safety.
It can be dangerous to skirt the outer lane because it’s often outside of clear view of the drivers who are behind 2 ton vehicles moving at ~double the rate of speed.
Same story over and over again.
The vulnerable traffic members must be acutely aware of their surroundings all the time, and so they have to „enjoy“ the sound of 2-ton metal cages zooming past them with > 50 km/h.
Meanwhile, nobody thinks it’s problematic that said metal cages are better soundproofed than the average US home, and are allowed to enjoy Wagner‘s Walkürenritt at 90 dB on their 1456.32 hi-fi surround system while running over some bike. How dare you inconvenience my right to feel completely alone in the middle of millions of people.
If you want to make a bike more secure, add a mirror. That gives you way more awareness of your surroundings.
My tinnitus forces me to bike with noise canceling headphones. I mean sure, I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone. But listening to sounds provides a false sense of security. I’m extremely aware of my surroundings since I started using my AirPods. Never do I stop looking around me. This has without a doubt made me a much safer person in traffic.
So even that might not be all to dumb. Though if one is to use headphones, it’s no casual stroll, it’s a constant game of looking out.
