Yesterday I observed three bicycle incidents.

The first occurred about 3 p.m. when I saw my friend Nancy legally crossing Charles Street on Beacon Hill at a crosswalk with a walk light. A bicyclist weaved around a couple of cars and went speeding through the red light, narrowly missing her. When she stopped to talk afterward we agreed the best that could be said was at least he was going the right way on a one-way street.

About 6:30 p.m., when I was stopped in a cab at a red light on Mass. Ave. at the intersection with Commonwealth Avenue, I noticed a pink Zap Car—small, electric-powered and three-wheeled. Then I noticed the driver, who was staring straight ahead as a bike rider delivered a loud harangue accusing her of cutting him off.  When he finished yelling, the bike rider hopped on his seat, wove between cars and sped through the red light, amply demonstrating how difficult it would be for her or any other driver to see him coming.
I wanted him arrested, but there were no cops around.

I’ve had it with bikes. And to judge from conversations I’ve heard around the city, so have you. Bicyclists speed through red lights, zip down streets the wrong way and weave between cars. And then they are self-righteously furious when drivers don’t see them. They carry moral superiority like a chip on their shoulder, but their morality is definitely misplaced.

I can’t remember anyone I know being in an auto accident. But I know several people, myself included, who’ve been run over by bikes. It’s as if a good percentage of riders use their bikes as weapons, or at least provocations.

That’s why I’m delighted we’re going to have more bikers. The Metropolitan Area Planning Council has chosen a Canadian company, Bixi, to provide a bike-sharing program slated to start in Boston and expand to adjacent cities and towns. Bixi proposed a network for Boston that includes 2,500 bikes, 290 stations and 3,750 docking points, with the potential to expand to a 5,000-bike system. The city of Boston is now negotiating a contract with Bixi, according to Christopher Loh, spokesman for the Mayor’s office. They hope for a start date in spring, 2010, if they can get the details worked out soon.

With so many bikes, drivers and bicyclists will be more careful. “When you have more bicyclists on the road, everyone becomes more aware,” says Loh.

Since there would theoretically be dozens of bicyclists on a street at any one time presumably they would have to ride in traffic lanes, not in the narrow bike lanes where they are at risk of being hit by drivers leaving a parking space or opening a car door because they don’t see the bike coming. While riding in the traffic lanes and behaving like a car is scary for novice bikers, it is actually the safest way for bikers to ride in the city, according to the Massachusetts Bicycle Coalition.

If a lot of regular people are on bikes, aggressive or law-flouting bicyclists would have peer pressure to behave. It has worked with dog owners. There is still too much dog poop on the sidewalks, but the mess is less than it was a couple of decades ago. I credit responsible dog owners who got organized and raised the consciousness of their less responsible cohorts in how to walk a dog in a hygienic fashion.

David Watson, executive director of Mass Bike, believes the bike-sharing program will at first cause a few more accidents, but eventually the percentage of riders who are hit and hit others will go down. He suggests if you want to participate in bike sharing you first should start out on a path free of cars (the Esplanade is probably the best such path downtown) and take one of Mass Bike’s courses about riding on city streets—go to www.massbike.org and look under education. Both drivers and bicyclists can go to the web site, www.massbike.org/srsr, to read about mixing bikes and cars on a road.

The third bike experience I had yesterday was seeing my friend Joan on a festive balloon-tire bike with a lavishly decorated basket, riding slowly the right way down a one-way street with a flower in her hat. She didn’t actually stop at the red light, but she slowed down and let pedestrians cross in the crosswalk before she proceeded. Uh-oh. She wasn’t wearing a helmet.

You can’t be too careful in a small town like Boston. Everyone sees what you are doing.