To all joggers and cyclists, PLEASE take off the earphones while you are on the road! Holy moly, how do you expect to hear a car or another cyclist if you are plugged into the ipod?
How can you hear anything dangerous that might be coming your way?? how can you run along a busy road totally unaware of approaching cars or bikes??
Today while biking, I had a jogger out in front of me, as I approached, I yelled, "passing", the jogger nearly tripped over his feet as he was startled by the noise.
Especially troubling to me is a single woman jogger, out in the country, alone with earphones stuck to her ears. This is just so unsafe. Am I just an old fart who thinks this way??
Why would anyone run or bike on roads with cars on them and not be totally able to hear approaching cars, trucks or whatever?
6 comments:
Let's agree to disagree on this one. I don't have my music too loud. I can hear cars and I run against the traffic. If I didn't have music, I wouldn't run.
uh, are you suggesting that i should ride my bike without headphones so that i can hear everything going on behind me so that i can get out of the way of cars/trucks/motorcycles that might decide at any time to run me over?
how does that work?
"oh shoot -- i think that's a 2003 4-door toyota camry speeding up behind me at 55 MPH...now that i recognize he is directly behind me instead of just-off-to-my-left-and-behind-me, i think i should perhaps swerve off the road, possibly into these parked cars, within the next 0.5 seconds because my radar hearing has allowed me to make out that i am about to become road kill, and if i am just mistaken, well then better safe than sorry."
we already get terrorized enough when we ride -- why give us heart attacks several times per mile on top of what we already have to endure?
doesn't make any sense to me, but to each his/her own.
i am a safety freak for sure, just not so sure how you can be safe on the road if your ears are covered with earbuds and music
if you run on quiet roads with no cars, ok,
but on the bike, no way, to me it is like driving a car while talking on the cell, your attention is elsewhere and this brief lapse might be the difference between being safe and not being safe
better safe than dead
Elaine hit on the other topic -- pleasure. we know more bikes on the road means safer riding, but if you force people to wear helmets, stop at stop signs, take out their music earbuds, etc., you're directly attacking their ability to enjoy their ride, which means fewer bikes, which means less safety.
at some point we have to make a choice, sell bicycling through the culture of fear, or something more accommodating?
the culture of fear is very slowly losing its grip in many places, which is why cycling continues to grow in those places, and all bikers are riding safer.
hey pete, go have fun, tell me all about it, but make sure to tell me how much fun you are having when not wearing a helmet and hemorrhaging on the side of the road,
that looks like tons of fun
using your logic, let's all drive cars and eat meals while doing it, talk on cell phones and pretty much make ourselves a lethal 2 ton moving vehicle with no one at the controls
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