On a road without shoulders, bicyclists tend to ride on the wrong side of the white line. They also pedal along lazily at 18 miles per hour. Try to imagine the danger that deer represent to cars, then add a sense of entitlement right before they pop through my windshield. That's the level of danger bicyclists represent on country roads.
Last night I rounded the bend on a section of Kelly road, outside Duvall, WA. I was doing 40mph in a 45 zone, the sun was out, and my windows were down. As I kissed the apex of the corner with my passenger front tire on the white line, a bicyclist came into sight just ahead, sitting a good 3 feet into the road. I lifted off the throttle, lost my exit line on the corner, and swung the wheel wide so that I was now on the wrong side of the road and losing speed rapidly.
Then he flipped me off.
I drove around him, his beady little bicyclist eyes trying to bore a hole through my skin. I waved and drove on. The rest of the trip, I dropped my speed even further and approached each blind corner as though another wingnut who can't afford gas was clogging the road.
Here's my thought: let's start enforcing minimum speed limits on all roads, especially small country back lanes with high speed limits. Or, in the same line of thought regarding safety, we could require bicyclists to wear bells around their necks so we can drive safely around them.
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