Modern Vespa

I was watching peasap's video of his commute and an "near" collision with a pushy driver and I started thinking...

What is the most dangerous portion of your daily commute? Is it a freeway exchange with multiple merges? Construction zones? Is is a pot hole stewn street? Is it a four-way stop that is a constant battle?

These are areas I am sure you are used to riding by now, but can be pretty dicey.

Describe and then give your approach to dealing with it.

I'd have to say when freeways merge or split for me as I cross a couple everyday to and from work. As you've seen.

Statistically? Getting out of bed.

LMAO, That sounds about right

More specifically for me, not tripping over the cat who is soooo happy I've awoken as I get out of bed

The most dangerous part is the slowest part, along Shaftesbury Avenue. It is full of pedestrians, tuk tuks, roller bladers, cyclists, double decker buses, coaches, taxis, tourists that look the wrong way when crossing the road, white van man and other bikers/scooters. A mix of people who drive professionally combined with lots of people who aren't used to London traffic or are looking at the buildings presents all sorts of hazards.

I am not afraid of big junctions but this street requires eyes in the back of your arse. Take it slow and look, look and assume that no pedestrian will even look at the traffic before stepping out.



Shaftesbury Avenue, London - it is not normally this fast.

The most dangerous part is right beside my bed. I often trip on the dog when I get up. The rest of the commute to my living room is generally uneventful.

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For me it is the potholes here, created because the weather extremes are so... extreme.
Dealing with it? Simply trying to look enough in advance.

Also, definitely the aggressive truck drivers here. People love their massive trucks... <sigh>
Dealing with them? Driving with the right combo of offensiveness/defensiveness. <SIGH>

There's a stretch of the road I commute along which starts with an off-ramp from the interstate merging into the road - it adds a lane, so now I'm not on the right lane anymore, I'm in the center, and people are trying to get over. After the onramp, there's about four or five miles of strip malls, one after another. Tons of people slamming on brakes as they finally spot the dunkin donuts, and other people pulling out into traffic with the "well, they have to let me in if I just pull out" mentality. So, in that case I tend to stay in the middle lane anyway, except that right now there's also construction going on, mucking things up more.

Even still, it's only a 45 zone (people usually do 55+ on it, but it's not a freeway), and sitting in the middle lane usually means I can keep an escape route open to my left and that people can pass me if I'm not going fast enough (although I usually keep up with it). I'd hate to ride on the freeway in my LX 150.

I would say it's my almost daily commute to the local Subway Shop. Sometimes the roast beef has sat out a little too long, and it gives me an upset stomach.

Turning left out of my neighborhood on to the state highway. It's only 2 lanes and full of congestion during rush hours.

Kilburn high street - see Wonder's post above, pretty much the same thing - vehicles charging out of side streets, heavy goods vehicles all over the place (parked and moving) and a completely anarchic approach to pedestrian crossings.

Swiss Cottage intersection - 6 lanes of traffic merging and crossing from three different directions, all in a 100m stretch. i was hit there late last year

Oddly enough, a 25MPH stretch through a residential community where SUV driving numbnuts want to pass you going 40+ while (of course) chatting on their mobile. Asshatery of the highest order.

BY far the most dangerous part of my commute is at the end in the morning: on campus and in the university parking lots. I teach at a commuter school and there are dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of anxious students wandering around or zipping through congested areas, desperately looking for a place to park. They definitely are not looking for other drivers and especially not looking for old farts on scooters.

Ditto for me x 3.

I mean, I take the 101 to work every day, with all the merges, HOV (black diamond) lanes and so forth that implies. But every day I must contend with Sprocket, my whiny orange fuzzball who despite being accidentally kicked on almost a daily basis is determined to make me a quadrapelegic on my way to his food dish.

The most dangerous part in my commute is the biggest traffic circle in The center of my city, because nobody is looking before cross it. The worst one are van drivers .

I'd have to say it's the route to the highway,
Also the on ramp before the on ramp where drivers are always trying to cut in line.

Also there is the people that use the off ramp as a passing lane on the highway,
Then there is the people that like to bumper drive me in the fast lane on the highway,
Lets not forget the people that want to pass me on the off ramp in my lane,
That's when I put my turn signal on in the opposite direction, That usually throws them off.

Just before my first cup of coffee.

Part of my route is on the highway, but I don't consider it the most dangerous portion of my route as I can stay in the curb lane and there isn't a lot of lane changes that occur in that lane for the stretch that I ride.

The most dangerous portion is a street called Church St. This street is fun filled with many pot holes, poorly filled in areas of road, street car tracks along with parked cars. It is always busy when I take this street southbound during the afternoon rush hour. As such, I have to dodge traffic getting around parked cars (illegally parked at that time I have to add), watch out for the pot holes and dips and bumps along with the streetcar tracks. As well, there is a section of two blocks where a University campus is so there are often students darting out into traffic who are very distracted and not looking before they walking or run onto the street in front of you.

Here it is. Between the National Gallery of Canada and the Chateau Laurier.
Merging traffic, people fighting to get in line for the bridges to Quebec and (occasionally drunken) Diplomats. I've almost been creamed there, when some one left an opening for a person leaving the Gallery parking; he decided to gun it across two lanes of traffic and nearly broadsided me.


Harvey

KHS what a pleasure it was back in the late '60's! Rode daily from Cavendish Rd to Marble Arch. No helmets no Toreador Pants. Just a business suit! Survival of the fittest .. great fun.

You young 'uns take it so seriously!

The most dangerous due to sheer volume and impatient people is around the Montlake bridge. All Seattle traffic heading south of the ship canal has a choice of 4 drawbridges and 1 freeway bridge. Only the Ballard bridge is worse due to the speed and longer route without escape.

Last 500 meters around our lovely King County hospital is also a bit dicey due to all of the local crazyness on each given day... just about got nailed by a speeding cop in the parking lot, who circled the block and later just about ran me down walking across the street.

The first two steps of my basement stairs on the way down to my workshop with my coffee in hand.

I'm not currently commuting, but when I do, the only real dangerous part is my own street, if it's winter. They don't generally plow the side streets, and there's enough trees to keep ice and snow from melting.

I have been known to shovel the sidewalk for 7 houses down just so I can get out onto the main road.

Hey, you make it sound like that's a bad thing!

For a section of my commute, I travel on a 2 lane road about 1.5 miles long that has at least 16 driveways from apartment complexes along the east side of the road. Shrubs planted along the roadside make the view for exiting cars a little limited. I'm always watchful for cars pulling out. Last May I actually was hit by a car coming out of one of those driveways. I must have been about 5 feet away from him at the time. I swerved to avoid t-boning the car and if there wasn't a curb, I could have avoided the car by riding onto the shoulder.

The roundabout just blocks from my house - nobody wants to give a scooter the right of way.

For me, the most dangerous part is the immediate neighbourhood to my house. The people drive fast, the street has a blind hill that curves on the top, and neighbours/landscapers/service vehicles seem to randomly park on the side of the road, causing traffic to move to the center. I creep along when in my neighbourhood, never certain when a car will come flying over the hill directly at me.

and I'll add making it to the potty with a full bladder.

On the way home, I'm accelerating from a light and there is a ramp on to the road I'm on. Many of the people on the ramp want to cross quickly over three lanes and then take a left. I used to move to the middle lane to give them clear entry from the ramp, but have found that while they are careful about merging, they are very careless about crossing the other two lanes.

Now I stay in the right lane and work on a smooth merging process. It it counter intuitive, but seems to work better.

__________________________
For those of you in the Boulder area: I'm going west on the Diagonal and the ramp is off of the Diagonal where it joins Foothill Parkway....onto the Diagonal. (Yeah, it is an odd intersection.)

Kate - the problem appears to be that the double yellow stripes on Shaftesbury Avenue are on the right side of the road, not the middle. Easy fix, though, CalTrans (California Department of Transportation) can take care of that in, ummmmm, four years and forty million dollars.

+1

couldn't agree more!!

Getting out of and back into our parking structure...cagers have a tendency to speed and take their turns too wide. Hence, I will toot my horn (Wolo Bad Bog, aka Stebel Natilus) whenever I leave or return.

The road in front of our house in April and May!



It's tamped dirt and stone over solid rough marble, and after the winter rains, the dirt has eroded and it's like a miniature rendition of the Himalayas! Maybe an 18 inch winding swath is passable on scooters.

The amazing thing is it connects to a 1,200 year old Byzantine trail, which, while concrete paved for some 700 meters, is in much better shape up the mountain where the original cobbles pave the way to Lefkes!

Al

we have to take it seriously it's really bonkers. the pedestrians are the worst - small, wildly unpredictable, and completely invisible until they wander out in front of you from behind buses/cars/bus shelters - usually dragging a small child by the hand

The traffic in 1960s London is laughable compared to now, when was the last time you were here? My parents lived in London in the 1960s and report at least the traffic moved! KHS is bad, often completely gridlocked.

Of course the traffic on Carnaby Street has improved, I'll give you that

Kate wrote:

The traffic in 1960s London is laughable compared to now, when was the last time you were here? My parents lived in London in the 1960s and report at least the traffic moved! KHS is bad, often completely gridlocked.

Yes, but the roads were often cobbled and in the rain.......... the tyres were unbelievably bad, brakes were rarely hydraulic, testing of cars, drivers and riders rudimentary, clothing, ex military waterproofs, hence the parka, and we were surrounded by a whole bunch of people who had survived the second war and had a slightly different attitude to life!


And Marty wrote:
we have to take it seriously it's really bonkers. the pedestrians are the worst - small, wildly unpredictable, and completely invisible until they wander out in front of you from behind buses/cars/bus shelters - usually dragging a small child by the hand

Round here they push a pram out first to see if anything stops before crossing.

Fay

actually that was me ... and i see the pram trick all the time too - i've referred to it elsewhere as 'testing the waters'

Sorry!

Okay, my commute isn't mostly urban, it is mostly urban. By fart he most dangerous driving I do is coming through the Chickamauga Battlefield (a state park) at dawn on my way to school. The deer population is huge there. Deers have this unfortunate habit of not running with headlight or obeying traffic laws. Indeed, they regularly just pop out of the underbrush beside the road. Go slow and keep your head on a swivel (sp?) so that you are looking ahead. Other than that, prayer is pretty much all I can think of . It is a pretty commute at least.