A Colorado man received a traffic citation after a viral YouTube video showed him tailing two cyclists in his truck on a country lane for five full minutes, constantly blowing his horn.
Colorado State Patrol issued a citation Thursday to James Ernst, 75, of Erie, Colo., for harassment, impeding the flow of traffic and improper use of a horn or warning device.
The encounter between Ernst and the cyclists was caught on tape. Dirk Friel and his friend were out for a ride Sunday in Boulder County, Colo., when Ernst came up behind them in his Ford Explorer and laid on his horn for five minutes, Friel wrote on YouTube.
In the video, the cyclists are riding outside the white line on a two- lane road. The road did not have a shoulder.
“What’s even worse is we saw him approaching from behind and to be polite we ride single file to give him as much road as possible, as we did with every other car we encountered on this road,” Friel wrote.
“This is getting old,” Friel says in the video. “This is insane.”
Friel and his friend ended up slowing down so that Ernst could pass.
“This guy was so intent of bugging us that he backed up traffic behind him and cars had to pass him on a double yellow line,” Friel wrote.
Friel posted the video Sept. 16 and it has since had more than 182,000 views. Colorado State Patrol tracked Ernst via the license plate shown in the video. Authorities had several other calls about the incident, although no one was able to identify the driver.
“I don’t know what happened,” David Ernst, James’ son, told ABC affiliate KMGH in response to the video. “Maybe there was something that precipitated it. I don’t know, because he’s a gentle old man.”
The Bicycle Safety Act was passed in Colorado in 2009. It states that motor vehicles must give bicyclists three feet of space when passing and vehicles may cross the center yellow line to pass bikes. Bicyclists must ride as far right as they deem safe and they do not have to ride in the gutter. Under this law, bicyclists may ride side-by-side but are required to ride single file when a car approaches.
This guy’s lucky he was out in a rural area messing with the Lance set. In Seattle the cyclists would have stopped and beat the shit out of the guy. They’re much more militant here. Hell in Portland they carry padlocks on chains and if you’re lucky they only hit your car.
My experiences with them locally have left a bad taste in my mouth. Here they’re “saving the planet” so feel empowered to do passive-aggressive shit like gather in groups of 20-30 and ride three wide on the main thoroughfares to raise “awareness.”
Once I was riding with my uncle and some guy was trolling along way out in the lane when there was plenty of room for him to move over to the shoulder, and when my uncle passed him he turned to the side and hocked a huge snotball on the hood of my uncle’s Olds 442. You should be able to shoot someone for that.
Shoot… If a cyclist pulled some crap like that on my toy car I’d find and fling some road kill at his ass.
Cyclists in PDX and other places have good reason to be militant. Not a single ‘motorist’ has been killed in Portland by a cyclist. The city has ghost white bikes all over it from the cyclists killed by motorists who think ‘they’ own the road. And not a single one has been cited for reckless driving or manslaughter.
Nearly all of the fatal incidents were due to a motorist passing a bicyclist in their lane. In most cases, a clear violation of the law, yet no citations or criminal charges have ever been levied. Mostly due to Oregon’s now, newly vague law on lane ownership. This law was revised recently due to pressure from the motoring lobby. Before the change it was a violation to pass someone in their lane at anytime.
Other states are quite clear on the issue, it is a violation to pass any vehicle in their lane.
If a cyclist moves to the right as a courtesy, they are risking their safety doing so. They can’t been seen as well, the shoulders are dangerous and usually covered in debris. Cars are parked and could pull out or open a door. Rurally, there is a good chance of running off the tarmac into the soft ground and losing control.
And ‘three wide’. That is just for protection. It doesn’t have anything to do with ‘awareness’ except to be seen better and prevent those motorists with not a lick of commonsense or courtesy from injuring or killing another cyclist.
Slow down! Is a few moments more time worth somebodies life.
We are usually in a big hurry to go nowhere fast on a trip we really didn’t need to make or should have started earlier if we weren’t so lame.
Spend sometime on a bike, and your view of the situation will change…dramatically!
http://bikeportland.org/2011/05/26/bike-law-101-take-the-lane-legally-53505
Morning Deuce!
You’ve inspired me; see here: http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/09/22/on-cyclists-and-cars-and-common-sense-and-coexistence/
Saw this video elsewhere.
The chance of the driver of the SUV being a clover behind the wheel, the kind of driver that impedes other drivers, is nearly 100% IME.
Nothing upsets a clover more than bicyclists.
Clover for sure. Clover thinks he owns the road and how dare this cyclist challenge his authority.
You don’t say? Then again anti-clovers think they own the road because they want to treat it as a racetrack. But I s’pose they’d argue they pay their taxes therefore they get do own the roads.
Who does own the roads halfpint? The road scholars? The adopt a highway and free shit army corp of social engineers? That road is paved with serdom. Serfs build the roads. Serfs decree laws upon the roads. Serfs surveil the road. Serfs post their surveillance videos on SerfTube. Patrol serfs watch videos and see a serf and they they revoke your serf license and you revert to nigger status.
The railroad lawyer Lincoln freed the slaves by declaring a now 160 year old war on freemen. No property is owned anymoe. It is all conditionally held by serfs. Your land children wife animals wealth is all seizable at any moment for any purpose they declare. You are covered by universal serf care. If you protest you become a nigger. A nigger they can kill cage castrate or cripple at their discretion. Like the Romans all roads plumbing wires lead to Rome. Lead to the capitals of their senates and glass house skyscrapers full of tyrants.
Are you so craven as to enjoy your your serfdom under the rainbow coalition of the new kinder gentler KKK now with 50% less violence?
Or does your brain shut off when I use a word you flee like an elephant flees a mouse? Nigger is a perjorative of the river niger the watershed from whence they came. They don’t know their origins and neither do proles and bourgeoise in America. All we have is a serf certificate from a serf hospital.
We serf the internet and serf their plantation. A plantation planet becoming a prison planet.
You enjoy your identity as a nonsmoking nonlawbreaking nonextremist. Life is a random walk and one day you or a loved one will get chosen to be swatted with the nigger stick. The english language is a mockery of orthographic idiocy to confound I hope this cuts through.
I used googleserf to spy on James Ernst. His namesake son is a felon and stalker. He is on lifelock nigger status now because he sent threatening text messages to his friends. Serffmath demands texting=stalking=murder=harmful ideas=threatning tones=fear for her life=lethal injection its for the children.
This old man raped these cyclists ear canals. He should be killed for attempted murder of two innocent riders stirrups hammers and drums. Lifetime driving ban. Remove his vocal cords before he yells again at grand felon decibel levels. Take all his property he could misuse to make noise with. He should be made to keep keep 500 yards away from anyone who has ever ridden a bike just to be safe.
Hopefully the gmen and their geehodd. Will be quick and kill us with kindness and quickness.
If you look act smell talk and think like a serf you are a serf. A serf is superior to a nigger only while his masters allow.
I have a 4 Gauge on my bicycle. I would have given him a load of squirrel shot as a warning. If that didn’t work I would have hit him with a whaleslug. Costs me quite a bit per cartridge but that’s what fireams are for. My protection and right to peaceful enjoyment as a freeman like Metallica once sang Wherever I May Roam.
Typical Cloverite emoting and straw man “arguing.”
Wow, that is crazy. What the hell is wrong with that guy?
I live in Colorado, and I ride a bicycle on the roads in Colorado. I’ve had a few drivers give me a hard time, but for the most part I’ve found them to be overly courteous to me when I’m riding. I’ve also noticed plenty of bikers who take advantage of that courtesy and cruise in the middle of the lane when there’s plenty of room near the shoulder.
Couldn’t resist this Eric-G,
Bicyclists and motorcycles own their lane of travel. It is a nearly universal law and just plain old commonsense.
I have had to many yahoo’s pass me in my lane when I yield the center line on my motor. And, it is the first thing I tell new riders…’own your lane’, don’t tempt some idiot to pass you in your lane. If you don’t own your lane, your asking for trouble.
I always wait to pass motors and cyclists till I have a clear opportunity to pass safely in the oncoming or adjacent lane, and have room to come back in and leave them room them to stop if needed. When it is raining or there is a sandy road surface, I don’t come back in till well down the road. It is just safe, common courtesy.
Years ago I lost two friends to a driver who passed them in there lane and hooked them when he had to come back in because of oncoming traffic.
Last year my brother and his wife suffered the same type of incident, they lived, but my sister in-law, will never look the same. They had just made 70 miles on a trip to the Black Hills and Sturgis from Tacoma, Wa. when the accident occurred.
I have had too many close calls in this situation. I even had a guy pass me on the right.
Ride and drive safely with courtesy and commonsense.
Cloverman …Out! col!
They do that to motorcyclists too… oh my.
I’ve been in various driving discussion groups and a few in person encounters and sometimes I would ask them if they would treat a motocyclist that was moving slower than they would like the same way as a bicyclist. I did it because without fail there would be a dance about how a motorcycle was ‘different’ and they wouldn’t do such a thing in that case.
I actually find it surprising and not surprising at the same time that some drivers do indeed act that way towards motorcyclists.
Yes, they do Brent.
Years ago an older friend of mine, a noted motorcycle racer and the first Gold Wing owner I ever knew, showed me a little something extra he carried on his bike. It was a 15″ crescent wrench in a custom made hard leather sleeve attached to the right rear of his bike tank.
I just couldn’t figure what it was for as his bike was a shaft drive and didn’t need a wrench for the typical big axle nut.
He told me it was his educator and attitude adjuster. That he used it to rearrange sheet metal on cars that passed him in his lane or did some other unsafe stupid maneuver that endangered him… I thought he was kidding.
A few months later while we were on a ride out in the country, a car passed me and pulled back into the lane to closely to him. He accelerated and pulled along side them locked his throttle down and pulled his ‘adjuster’ and proceeded to menace the driver in the offending vehicle. I think that they were a lot more careful around motors after that, Brent.
Motorcyclists can catch up – that’s why!
I have a friend who keeps a couple large old bolts with him when he rides… you can imagine what they’re for.
I’ve caught up to a number of motorists. Often a red light or traffic allows me to.
Some of these arseholes actually do their idiocy mere blocks from their homes. I rarely lose sight of them as they head home. Yes, I’ve followed them when it’s been particularly offensive. I typically say something like ‘saved a lot of time nearly killing me?’ as they get out of their vehicles and ride off. Hoping that the message that they aren’t as protected and anonymous as they think seeps into their brain and maybe their attempted manslaughter on the road isn’t such a good idea.