City's bicyclists must follow the rules, too

First off, I appreciate the people who bicycle. I personally do not ride as much as I should or would like, but I do ride to work on occasion during the summer. With this in mind, I read Dr. Savarise’s article last week and was very glad that he reinforced that bike riders need to follow the appropriate rules. If they are riding, they need to follow the same rules as cars, except they can treat stop signs as yield signs. The unfortunate fact is, there are many riders who think they own the road and can do whatever they want.

During peak riding season, there is not a day that goes by that I don’t see a bike rider violating rules and putting themselves and/or others in danger. The majority of the time it is bikers riding on the sidewalks and using crosswalks. Many times they don’t slow down when approaching a crosswalk and ride into the crosswalk with disregard for traffic. A couple of years ago I experienced a biker who was riding down the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue in front of Mr. Sub. He decided to cross Fifth in front of me without slowing down. I had to slam on my brakes and almost hit him. He then started screaming obscenities at me. Last year I had a cyclist blow through the stop sign on Pine and Division heading toward the library in front of me and again I had to slam on my brakes and was subject to obscenities being yelled at me.

The other thing I see a lot of is bicyclists riding east on Cedar or Church downtown where it is a one way westbound. Since bikes are supposed to follow the rules of the road, this is obviously illegal.

These are just a few issues that I see regularly. I call upon the police to start enforcing the rules on bikes and issuing tickets so that riders understand that they are not above the law and have free reign of the roads for their safety as well as others. And if bike riders would make a conscious effort to follow the rules of the road and reminding other riders to do so, it also would go a long way in helping keep everyone safe and enjoying our area.

JIM CLAY

Sandpoint