The last time I had to get my blood drawn, I was biking to the hospital (that's where the lab is) and had several people being idiots that I had to adjust for. There was someone coming from the opposite direction that was in my lane of the bike bath and I had to slam on my brakes and swerve to avoid hitting them....and that was a motorbike, so that would have been nasty. Then some guy walked out into the street without looking, so I had to slam on my brakes again...he apologized and said it was really stupid of him. And then in the last stretch some car pulled out in front of me where I was supposed to have the right-of-way, but I had been looking at him and he hadn't looked at all, so I kind of assumed he wasn't going to stop. I was prepared to stop, and I did...I don't think he ever even noticed I was there as he gave no indication that he had almost run me over. I don't know what it was that day...kept me on my toes, I guess. I kind of always assume other people are stupid, and even if I have the right-of-way, I wait until I see the person look at me and they actually slow down before I go. Too many people are lost in their own little worlds and don't pay as much attention as they should. Add in cell phones and it's just a recipe for disaster.
I'm curious....a BIG problem here right now is fatbikes. Do you have them there or is that just here? Police and EMTs are begging for age restrictions and helmet laws, and even possibly licenses. E-bikes have been popular here for a few years and there was already an increase in the number and severity of accidents because they go faster. But the fat bikes are RIDICULOUS, and it seems that the majority of people riding them are 10-25 year olds, and these young kids are just not equipped to handle them. They don't have the insight or experience to be driving in traffic and they do stupid things. I was riding my bike home from work and this kid was coming from the opposite direction and he was turned all the way around looking at something behind him, and I had to shout to him to watch where he was going because he was drifting into my lane. He mouthed off to me, and as I got past him, what he was looking at was what appeared to be a fatbike accident with I assume friends of his. There was a car stopped, 2 kids about 11 years old standing next to the fatbike, and a woman/girl on the ground. There were enough bystanders already there that I didn't stop because they didn't need more people gawking, so I don't know for sure what happened, but it looked like maybe someone had been pulling out of a parking spot and ran into the woman/girl who was maybe with the boys....there were a couple of fatbikes there in any case. Apparently it's easy to do something to make the fatbikes go faster, which is illegal, but people do it anyway. So now there's a public push for safety regulations to at least keep kids off of them. I was just wondering if that was a problem there, too.