Cyclists and Pedestrins or Hood ornaments

If you pay any attention at all to the local news her in the Portland Metro area (Liberal Hell) you might have noticed the increase in pedestrian/Bicycle vs. Car accidents. Every time a car hits a cyclist or a pedestrian there is a great uproar about the safety of our roads and how drivers need to learn to share the roads, and to a point this is true we as drivers do need to share the road with pedestrians and cyclists, but they to need to learn to share. On many occasions I have watched cyclists ignore traffic laws such as stoplights, yielding to pedestrians, and giving proper right of way, yet if one of these morons runs a red light in front of me and I hit him I am instantly at fault even though he broke the law. According to the Oregon DMV bicycles must follow the same traffic laws that cars do, and still I see cyclists everyday that run reds and cut drivers off, and they yell at us to share the road. Where I live in Oregon is very bike friendly most of the roads in the cities have bike lanes for cyclists to use and the cops will ticket you for encroaching on them. I have no problems with this system in theory, but in practice the cyclists hug the line between their lane and mine if I can get a ticket for driving in their lane shouldn't the opposite be true also? Drive through the middle of Hillsboro on any given day and you will see cars slowing down to pass a cyclist the is riding on the very edge of a bike lane and impeding the flow of traffic for everyone. Its just a little insane to me, if you are on a bicycle that weighs maximum 50 pounds why in the hell are you trying to get closer to a lane of traffic where the average car weighs a minimum of 2000 pounds? In a collision you the cyclist have absolutely no chance of winning the war of the lug nuts. The laws of physics state that (force = mass * acceleration) so your little aluminum and steel contraption will do far less damage to the car than the car will do to you.
Now that I have beaten that horse lets move on to the other group I mentioned earlier the pedestrian. Lets start with a true story. Last week as I was driving my truck to work I noticed the jogger going down the sidewalk in the same direction that I was heading that's fine right? WRONG! As I rolled up to a major intersection the light had changed from red to green some time before so I started into my turn when the jogger from earlier ran right out in FRONT OF MY TRUCK!! Now here is where the real problem comes into play, I drive a red 1977 GMC 4 wheel drive truck with a big gas hog V8 engine my truck is neither quiet nor small yet this snapper head was completely oblivious to my presence until I locked up all four tires and scared the crap out of him. Luckily for the jogger I trust no one on the road and expected him to ignore the bright red DON'T WALK sign across the street, I can already tell you why he missed the fact that I was even there. Like most of the world his sheepness had his IPOD plugged into his ears and could not hear what was going on around him. It is either that or I really need to find and disengage the romulan cloaking device on that truck. I don't know about you but my parents taught me to stop and look both ways before crossing the street, they also taught me not to ride/walk along busy roads with headphones in. This guys parents must have encouraged him to play in the street or something. When my wife and I go out walking which we do on a frequent basis we are always careful to watch for traffic and obey the crosswalk signs as they are there for our safety. If these groups want drivers to share the roads maybe just maybe they should think about sharing the roads themselves. But what the Hell do I know I am just an angry Hillbilly.