As mentioned in my previous post, there were two encounters during yesterday’s ride I deem worthy to share and this second one involved a textbook self-entitled red-running cyclist. What makes this blatant demonstration of jerktastically sociopathic tendencies so remarkable is the street he crossed illegally. This wasn’t Clinton and Larchmont or Virgil and 4th or 7th and Cochran. This was San Vicente Boulevard: three lanes in either direction split by a double-wide median. Big sucker.
I want to make it clear: I totally hate this shit wherever it happens. It makes me want to make police siren noises. It makes me want to turn to the motorists beside me and plead for them to stop shaking their heads and lumpsumming me in with “gawdam bikers” like him.
I also want to make it clear: I’ve run red lights. But the reds I’ve run are some of the aforementioned ones at quieter, smaller intersections. And usually laaate at night when the only creatures stirring are zombie mice. And when I do it’s only after fully stopping and waiting/hoping/praying an appropriate spell for the light to change and after that then looking left then right, then left, then right, then left again to make sure the immediate vicinity is not only clear but that it’s vacant as far as I can see.
Then? I go for it. And you know what? On those ones run when I have timed my launch to coincide with the surprise arrival of headlights either way up or down the block? I actually feel a twinge of guilt. Even if there’s only the slightest chance I was seen transgressing, I feel like an assbag.
Not this guy, though. This guy’s the honey badger of assbags. He don’t give a fuck.
And you know what irks me most of all? The run saved him absolutely no time. Zilch. The light on Redondo there above turned green the moment he’d hit the opposite crosswalk. And wouldn’t you know…
Honey badger assbag spent those few ill-gotten few seconds doing what? Yep, waiting at the next red down Redondo at the much busier and unrunnable Pico Boulevard, giving me time to casually catch up to him and not have to wait nearly as long as he did for the green.
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