Biking on PCH can be paradise but the two cyclists who wrote the paper last week are exactly the kind who use the California Vehicle Law to justify their stupidity. Just because a law is a law doesn’t mean that it is wise to blindly hide behind it for all situations and locations. As a cyclist, do you think it is wise to occasionally dart into the right hand lane on a crowded weekend with lots of sightseeing tourists who may not be familiar with PCH or to ride 15 mph in large groups that may dart out in front of cars that are traveling up to the speed limit. Unless there is an official bike lane, which I would love to use, the law should be changed to make riding single file mandatory.
Riding in large groups in the right hand lane could be allowed as long as groups get a permit and are followed by a safety car with a flashing light bar that some smart groups have done. Can’t Caltrans or the Malibu Safety Committee lobby for a local ordinance to make some reasonable changes and cite offenders of unsafe riding practices specifically for our stretch of coast?
In both letters, driver negligence is cited as the cause of cyclists’ deaths on PCH and not cyclists fault. Hello? You make my point! Death is death no matter whose fault. The highway is full of idiotic, distracted, sometimes drunk, stoned, texting, spaced out, emotionally traumatized and careless drivers. Riding PCH early on a weekday in the winter is risky. Susan Tellem is not alone in her awareness of how arrogant bird flipping cyclists have become. Since I wrote my letter about my near death experience involving the irresponsible erratic peloton, I have been inundated with conversations around town about other similar experiences on PCH. Many of these disturbed residents are avid road cyclists who are embarrassed by the etiquette displayed on the road every day by cyclists playing El Matador with the herds of four-wheeled bulls.
Steve Woods