Critical Mass Prague: April 19th, 2007

[tholub]

Originally Posted by rob.northcott

It is *legal* to ride two-abreast in the UK, but it is surely courteous to give way to faster-moving traffic if there is not room to pass safely. When riding in traffic where I'm as fast as the cars I will often ride in the middle of the lane near junctions or other hazards to discourage people trying to force past, and I think that's a reasonable practice, but I was talking about faster-moving roads. I'm pretty sure nobody has the *right* to hold up other traffic unnecessarily, do they? Even tractors have to pull over to let people pass.

The right to use the roads is quite well-established; what is new is the strange concept that car drivers have the right to go as fast as they want to, all the time. Yes, it is courteous to let people pass when it is safe to do so, but car drivers are terrible judges of when it is safe to pass a bike/unicycle on the road.

[saskatchewanian]

I have only been in one critical mass and my opinion of it was a very positive experience. I'm sure it was smaller than most of the other critical masses that people talked about. We had about 30 bikes and my friend was on a unicycle. By the end of the ride we had about 10 or 15 more people join. The group stayed close enough together that we did not have to block traffic to prevent cars from getting between the bikes. We were also traveling at a decent speed with my friend on the unicycle having a hard time keeping up. At the end of the ride we went to memorial park and had a big potluck lunch and a game of Ultimate Frisbee

I don't remember seeing a single angry face in the people we may have inconvenienced, and got a lot of smiles and waves.

[jmando]

Hey all, just a little update. I was looking for new cyclepaths in Prague, doing my best with the Czech language and ended up on a little report on the ride I took part in recently. Well, there was a video on the page and guess who made an appearance? That's right! I was pretty excited, even though it's only two shots and a combined total of 2 seconds, maybe 3. Anyways, here's the link for those who are interested. The video is the first one on the page, about halfway down, under the heading PRAHA and a block of text. I appear about 45 seconds in.

http://www.nakole.cz/vemeste/clanek.php3?id=232