Cyclists Groups

  Science

• Human Alcohol Absorption: Alcohol in bloodstream will keep rising after you "down in one" the last of your beer, & jump on your bike, & test the brakes - hard - before going down that steep hill ;-).
• Stress laws: Tensile steel brake cables will break when hardest applied = most needed (just after hardest tested ? see above).
• Kinetic Energy: (The "over the handlebars" law ;-)
  1/2 mv^2
  (If its cooler at end of evening, its easier to cycle faster without overheating. (+ alcohol might accelerate). If you go 20% faster, That's 1.2 x 1.2 = 44% more energy for brakes to dump before bike stops.
• Braking distance : The law of Crunch ;-)
  
  s=ut + 1/2 at^2
  
  ie first part of braking distance doubles if tipsy slow thinking distance doubles
  + if brakes can dump kinetic energy into heat at a fixed maximum rate, if you have double the speed, you quadruple that second part of your braking distance.
• Friction coefficients: Few pedestrians or car drivers have any clue that wet bike wheel rim brakes in heavy rain can easily take over 4 times the distance to stop. (Not [hydraulic or other?] disc brakes, they seem to suffer less from wet)
• After kinetic energy flies you off a bike, The law of Gravity kicks in ...
• Then Murphy's / Sod's Law: "I'll buy a crash helmet now I've crashed ;-)"

  Defective Humans

• Few car drivers cycle regularly, few understand problems of cyclists. Some cyclists act like idiots, provoking car drivers (eg cycling in parallel when it might be legal but also obstructive, or jumping traffic lights. Such provoked car drivers probably then treat the next cyclist badly. Pedestrians are clueless eg wandering the entire width of Diener Str (S of Marienplatz) where yes, its their Right, but if they had a brain cell, they'd leave middle of road clear for bikes. Cyclists provoke each other, eg 2 fat slow cyclists can block a path completely, never overtaking (there's a fine for that BTW!).
• The Law Of Evolution, or "Some Are Foolish, Some are stupid, (some aggressive), they won't learn, & Will walk or drive into you."
  Evolution ceased in Europe. Many humans remain foolish &/or spatially clueless (or drunk) etc, & it will only get worse. Society removed previous evolutionary "survival of fittest" selector mechanisms. Since Europeans could breed & have their offspring supported by the state, there's no reason to suppose there's evolutionary incentive for humans to improve. Lack of intelligence doesn't preclude any from breeding, rather the opposite, more who will foolishly misuse all of cars, bikes, ... & shoes ;-)

  Local Munich Hazards

• Don't be misled by bike friendly PR you hear about Munich. There's lots of room for improvement, & most cyclists who ride fat slow City Rad don't realise how bad most (not all) city bike paths are & how dangerous tram tracks are to bikes with narrower wheels.
• Munich is only really bike friendly if you bike is a clunker, a fat tyred slow City Rad! Planners will learn little new from average cyclists who may eg attend ADFC city Innen-stadt cycle tour days on fat tyred slow bikes (Agonisingly slow rides BTW, high risk of zero speed collisions from jams !)
• For better understanding ask someone who cycles fast, on narrow wheels
• Many local car drivers are clueless don't cycle (or if so, just fat tyred slow clunkers, called a "City Rad" in Munich).
• Best get the views of people who regularly cycle (inc. fast, on narrow tyres), & regularly drive a car too, useful for understanding different views & perspectives.
• Tram Tracks:
  • Many car drivers don't know bikes with narrow tyres (tourers, racers) can't cross a tram track at speed at a narrow angle (more so if wet), else they would catch in the rut, crash & risk being run over. They're too clueless to realise the narrower a bike tyre, the more the cyclist has to slow down, to achieve a sufficiently acute angle to cross tram tracks safely. You can get chased between tram tracks, too fast to cross the tracks, & cant slow down cos vehicle behind too close.
  • Or drivers would like to force you to cycle between tram track & line of parked cars, with risk of any opening car door (from many careless Car drivers & rear offside passengers opening doors) causing Major injury, with no possibility to swerve across tracks with narrow wheels.
  • A few drivers don't even realise, crossing tram tracks at a dodgy oblique angle is not the time to expect a cyclist to evolve a third hand, or cycle one handed, to signal turning with the other arm.
    (Reminds me of a moron driver coming down a steep hill in England , driving too close, who wanted to then cut round outside me & turn left, forcing me to turn left when I couldn't, who shouted I should have signaled left, to which I shouted back "I need Two hands to _Brake_ with !! & further knowing I wanted to turn left too, but could only do so if & when I could decelerate enough to do so. & & if I'd evolved a third hand in a millisecond to suit the moron car driver, it would have still done him no good, as I couldn't have decelerated before the middle of the junction (very steep hill). The aggressive driver moron ignored bikes don't have foot brakes, don't have 4 wheels, & can't take tight corners downhill at speed. Every country has fools at the wheel. None I know of requires an intelligence test before a driving test.
• Wet Braking Distance Triples ! How few car drivers & pedestrians know that happens with rain, metal rims, & rubber blocks ?
• Some Pedestrians assume they will hear motors of all vehicles, & too lazy to look for bikes & electric/combi cars.
• Most Pedestrians assume all bikes are slow, & eg a bike bell is a signal to later slowly consider strolling off the bike path. Not all bikes can or will stop in time. Some stand in bike lanes & deliberately don't get out of the way.
• Munich pedestrians & cyclists sometimes cross junctions as soon as their light goes green, without first looking left for vehicles turning right. (The Ich habe Recht mentality ;-) Ignorant that foreign eg British & some other car drivers are used to a different traffic light timing pattern, & will Not expect them to start crossing just then. A pedestrian or cyclist knocked down by a foreign car driver in such circumstance may usually have law on their side, but it will be No less painful or injurious.
• Ignition Key Syndrome
  Munich car drivers mentally become encased in their steel car, the second an ignition key is in their hand, while they step out from kerb, & open drivers door, further obstructing the road.
• Big City aggression
  Munich being a big-ish city, drivers are more aggressive than smaller German cities (eg Aachen), or UK {Canterbury, Tunbridge Wells etc}.
  (If you wonder if this author's perspective may suffer from lack of experience of Big cities, not so: I happily drive a car in London, I've been around Hyde Park corner London, a few times on a bike, not Too often, risky, & round the Arc De Triomphe Paris ( a few times, car only).
• Germanic Recht Haben
  Native English speakers generally consider locals on average as more obsessed with their rights, laws & insurance than we are, & less flexible. More people (car drivers, cyclists, pedestrians) seem to be less flexible. Supposing the law to be on their side gives some people a deluded sense of security but doesn't stop accidents, pain & injury, it merely influences who might pay if people get caught.
• 1st Sunny Days In Spring - Cycle Morons! ... Cycling on the left !
  Beware too many cyclists in Spring act like morons, as if they've not seen all 4 wheel traffic all winter drive on the right, & never learnt to cycle on the right, so they cycle on the Left & middle of cycle paths, & assume all cyclists oncoming are slow enough to & & will stop for them. Of course there's a law against it, doesn't stop the morons. Apparently the first few sunny days in spring the ambulances scrape up an excess number of cyclist off the cycle paths. ! Bells of course are completely useless you'd wait beyond collision time for these morons to react at all. Shouting "Rechts!" loudly, aggressively, & in agonised stressed tone at these morons sometimes helps avert a collision, far more effective than a bell if you have a Loud voice. Sometimes morons ignore that too, sometimes they shout back Links as if it's their counter proposal for a political debate or other moronic abuse. Sure there's a law & fine to enforce cycling on right, but being morons, neither Kinetic energy of a fast oncoming bike, nor German law persuade morons to cycle on the Right.

  The same morons, (both cyclists & pedestrians) have to learn afresh each spring, that on a red light on a cycle path at a 4 way junction, one shouldn't roll bike or walk those last 3 metres up to 2nd white line at a crossing, 'cos any moment there'll be a pile of bike traffic at 90 degrees on the flank that the morons will be obstructing.
  By high summer the danger from morons recedes... till next Spring, every year, zombies never learn.

• Summer Clueless Tourists They swarm in summer & Oktoberfest, they often innocently have absolutely No idea they're standing in a bike path, on what casually appeared to them to be pavement.
• Föhn (On sunny days, if wind from Mountains in South, dry air, (positive ions apparently), Many more people act stupidly. (Simple proof to observe: Count the stupid mistakes on such days, compared with other days. Only count objective mistakes you remotely observe, not any subjective mistakes where you are either the wronged party, or you made the mistake). I used to think Foehn was maybe a local gullibility joke on visitors, like supposed existence of Wolperdinger, ; it's not, Foehn is a real traffic hazard, not a joke!
• The dangerous continental habit/law of "Give way to the right",
  which aggressive "my right=law" obsessed inflexible drivers convert to "Screw any traffic to the left, I'll pull out regardless, Es ist meine Recht ("It's my right") ...,

  I'll pull across that single or line of car driver[s] or cyclist[s] on the left, ignoring any/ all of: common sense, courtesy, risk, kinetic energy, bad road surface, poor visibility, possibility of bad brakes, T junction, or narrow road ahead I want to turn left into -

  (The French to their credit, on their major routes, reduced this dangerous continental habit on their major routes, decades back),
  Munich re-introduced greater use of this daft legal system (maybe around 1995 ?), when they removed white lines & signs from city junctions (in the stupid name of Verkehrs- Beruhigen") . That would have required more courtesy & sensible flexibility in case of near simultaneous arrival at junctions. Of course that often didn't happen with "Es ist mein Recht - Muenchners" - I saw many more near accidents after.
• Taxi Drivers
  Though Munich drivers are aggressive, Taxi drivers are far more so, & brainless. I've had taxi drivers shout at me to use cycle paths, paths they've doubtless never tried at speed, drivers too stupid to even guess the paths are damned unsafe at speeds I can cycle. Some taxis have dangerously tried to use their taxi body to force me off the road, real road swine some Munich Taxis. (I'm a car driver too, Munich taxi drivers more dangerous than normal Munich drivers, & less disciplined than London black cab Taxis.

  Some summers back I cycled to Wolfratshausen & back to Munich, it was night, cool & I was going very fast, needed smooth tarmac, & a long braking distance in the dark, not bike paths; I wasn't so much slower than cars, all no problem, till I got back to outskirts, when multiple brainless taxi drivers started horning & harassing me. 'cos I wasn't using the crap city cycle paths, where I could have only gone a 3rd the speed or less, cos of bumps, jags, irregular edges, protruding brambles & abrupt terminations of path with no notice. Impossible by bike light.

  Typical Munich taxi driver aggression was exemplified in 2013 at a 2 to 1 funnel heading south along Isar, West bank, south of Fraunhofer- Str, Here 2 taxi morons drove sideways into each other, as so used to intimidating all other vehicles, must have refused to allow each other to take the lead, & rammed each other, As a pedestrian that day, seeing no human damage, just 2 taxis, remembering how often they cut up other cars, I burst out laughing, hoping 2 moron taxi drivers might learn to be less aggressive.
  

  Wouldn't so likely see that from black London taxi cabs, not only better trained in knowing the roads ("The Knowledge"), but taxis not allowed on roads if scratched. ) (Yes london cabs will cut corners in city of London endangering pedestrians, but after someone I know got sick of it every day & held out his long umbrella , brass ferule at end toward the taxi sides, to prevent them clipping the corner, that they avoided : A scratch on a London black taxi means off the road & no earnings !
• Sex Narrow Focused There's a dangerous bit of cycle path on Landsberger Str. North side, West just after junction with Friedenheimer Brucke. Heading West, early evening cycling fast, late to focus/ host a Beer Garden start: I've several times narrowly avoided collision between camper van doors & idiot males crossing South across cycle path to prostitutes in front passenger seat of white camper vans. I've learnt to beware as soon as I come over the rise & see the van rooves.
• Bike Paths:
  • Everyone (planners, car drivers, police) assume all bikes are dead slow with fat wheels. They don't realise the bumpy tarmac , swerves, crossings, cobbles & reduced visibility to cross streets is jarring and Very unsafe at a decent tourer/race bike speed, & it's much smoother & safer on the road.)
  • Police: I've had various police tell me one Must use lousey cycle tracks if there. They seem ignorant & uninterested how bad adjacent tracks are. One young policeman from his warm comfy car seat stopped me & told me in mid January that I Must cycle on the cycle path covered in snow & ice, & not on the cleared road. Was he legally correct ? ( let me know.The road surface was clear & safe, the snow & ice track was very dangerous, near impossible without deep track mountain bike tyres.
    I had road tyres, as his BMW did; I did not have mountain bike deep track fat tyres, just as his BMW did not have off-road tractor tyres. His BMW would not have held with the dangerous snow & ice surface he (with 4 wheels) insisted I must balance on with just 2 wheels.
  • Taxi Drivers sometimes fancy themselves as unpaid policemen, shouting at cyclists to get on the bike path, despite a bike path may be totally unsuitable for tourer/ racing bikes at decent speed; many inner city bike paths are junk, fit only for fat old clunkers going very slow. Occasionally some taxi drivers even use their cars to drive too close to force cyclists off the road, one even pulled across to block forward motion, provoking an emergency stop. Criminal idiocy when the bike is fast, as it was !
  • Even many car Drivers have no road senses, eg, get out of car & stand idly on bike path blocking bike traffic!
  • Car passengers don't look before opening doors across cycle tracks
  • Nearly everyone stupidly assumes all bikes are slow & can & will stop near instantly, & that everyone has a right to block cycle paths.
  • Munich's bike paths can sometimes be a liability, it's sometimes safer to cycle on roads that do Not have cycle paths. Some cyclists don't understand that, I've never known a cyclist to challenge that assertion, who didn't turn out to be a slow cyclist, who usually (not always) rode a clunker (fat tyred city rad). Only those who regularly drive cars, bikes (also at speed, not just slow!), & also walk in crowded pedestrian areas, interlaced with bike paths, are likely to have good understanding of all perspectives.
• City Planners: They mistakenly plan for all bikes being fat tyred slow City Rad.
  • Cobble stones (pflaster- stein) Junctions eg Holz & Muller Str.
    They made road junctions More dangerous in recent years: They dug up the tarmac & replaced with cobble stones (pflaster- stein) so badly laid, they have gaps between wider than tyres of tourer bikes. They planted these cobbles at junctions in the name of "Verkehrs Beruhigung"(thinking of slowing cars with the bump). Look for classic stupidity at eg junction of Holz & Muller Str The gap between stones, with no tarmac, is wider than my bike tyres. The only saving grace is 45 degree angle.
  • Reichen- Bach- Bruecke (South East of Fraunhofer- Str)
    Cycle East on the south side of bridge, & suddenly the cycle track swerves 1 width to the right. A path just wide enough for 1 bike to overtake another, suddenly becomes barely wide enough for 1 bike, often with oncoming pedestrian congestion hazard on /near path (from stairs & river path), & in dusk with poor visibility, easily overlooked, if the tangent is missed, it would then toss a cyclist out Left in to the road, to be run run over by 4 wheel traffic (& ca drivers are not there focused on adjacent bikes, but ahead on junction & funneling 2 to 1 car lanes ahead). No 4 wheel vehicle could ever pull over as hard & sharp as that kerb does, so that first bit of road tarmac can Never be used, It was even always like that, it is a stupid exaggerated alteration, that can't help cars, that does hazard cyclist.
    openstreetmap . org
    google . com / maps A tree just about blocks the satellite view, maybe next time the satellite may pass in winter, & the hazard will be clear.
  • Stachus
    A bit of paint would reduce risk to a lot of cyclists & pedestrians at the East-West pedestrian crossing north of Stachus.

  German Fines