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How should you ride an EUC? As a pedestrian or a bicyclist?


LanghamP

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Short answer is: you need to buy an 18 inch 30mph EUC. Any other choice is demonstrably false.

Long answer: being on an EUC means you can be either a bicyclist or a pedestrian. After two years riding an EUC and walking US streets a lot more than I used to, and observing an awful lot of collisions, I'm convinced crossing a street at an intersection (the crosswalk) is actually the worst possible choice to make.

As an example, let's take a four lane intersection. You, on your EUC, have decided to be a pedestrian and cross the street only when the pedestrian light turns green for you.

1. At no point are all cars stopped on your crosswalk. Due to right on red, cars can freely enter while you are on your crosswalk. This means you must look left.

2. When you reach the reverse lane, cars can make a left through the intersection into your crosswalk if they already initiated the turn. This means you must look to your right.

3. Also when you reach the reverse lane, if you crossed late or the timer is too fast for you (children and older people walk slower), then you must look to your left.

4. When you reach the last lane, since cars can do right on red, you must look to your right.

5. If the auto light turned green then the situation turns extremely dangerous for you; the car in your lane may be stopped and blocks the view of the car in the next lane. You see this a lot of youtube videos.

6. You will more likely have to cross 5, 6, or 7 lanes of traffic, as intersections most often put in extra turn lanes.

To sum up, to cross the street at an intersection you have to meet the following: be quite agile, look left-right-left-right every time, be patient.

As a pedestrian you can and should cross the street (illegally) in the middle of the block.

1. You need only to look left then right since there are only two directions traffic can come from.

2. You can cross faster since less distance is covered as there's no turn lanes; commonly a four lane turns into more lanes, and intersections more often means you have to cover more space.

3. Traffic islands, intended to separate cars from each other, provide you safe haven whereas most intersections do not have traffic islands.

As a pedestrian as a general rule, you should avoid using the sidewalk as much as possible.

This is because of a very simple reason; driveways. When a sidewalk has driveways where cars can freely enter and exist then it really isn't a sidewalk at all, is it? Especially in an urban area, buildings and other obstacles will encourage cars to "poke their nose out" and woe to the pedestrian or EUC rider who is there. As a pedestrian you're better off using parking lots and protected business fronts.

To me this is very clear: unless you're in an area where cars are forbidden (ie centrum Stadt and inside buildings), you should not be a pedestrian, ever.

Since cars and car like vehicle pretty much have the expected right of way everywhere, it follows that you should be like a car as much as possible. That means a fast EUC that for the most part allows you to hog your traffic lane; the 18 inchers are damn near as fast as to get speeding tickets these days.

--As a pedestrian you have no right to travel safely.

--As a bicyclist or EUC, you have some right, the faster you are the safer you can be.

--As an auto driver you have full rights to travel safely and comfortably...until you hit that next traffic jam.

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