I've been wanting to write about this for a little while now, but doing the graphic for it was kind of holding me up. I finally got a copy of Macromedia Fireworks for my Mac, which is one of my favorite graphics packages, but wholly unsuited to this particular task. I used it anyway, of course. It probably took me about an hour to do, which is nutty.

Anyhoo, I was commuting to work one morning on my bicycle, and was set-up to cross a good-sized intersection. The rightmost lane is for traffic going straight through and right, while the left lane is left-turn only. The middle lane is straight only. Since I'm going straight, I'm set up in the rightmost portion of the right lane. This is because bicyclists should behave like normal traffic, but should do so while staying as far right as possible. In this position, traffic intending to turn right on red can work around me, and do so (although many don't).

How Not to Set Up in an Intersection
(I'm the green dot, the other guy is red)

As I was sitting there, I noticed motion to my left, and realized there was another rider on the road. However, this guy was set up between the two rightmost lanes. I wondered what the hell he was doing there, but instead of asking, I just nodded my head in his direction. He acknowledged the nod, then dragged his bike through the rightmost lane, and over next to me. "Riding to work?", he asked. I replied that I was, and he commented "I love riding, but not on the roads." I replied "how come?", to which he said, "too dangerous -- I've been hit by cars twice."

The light changed before the conversation could go much further, but I couldn't help thinking, as I left him in my dust, "no wonder you've been hit, you damn fool, if you set up between two lanes of traffic potentially going straight. What other stupid things do you do?"