The idea of this thread isn’t that bicycles are uniquely singled out for ridicule.
These article snippets all come from a time when the bicycle was just invented and usage was growing fast (eg like any new tech). In fact, I think they were taken from a defunct Twitter account called pessimists archive.
The point is that mass media will always court controversy and bemoan any new change in behavior regardless of what it is.
Those headlines look silly now, but they are the Industrial Revolution’s version of “AI/smartphones/social media/video games/ridesharing/etc are ruining everything” articles.
Those headlines look silly now, but they ... were featured in reputable publications at the time, said by reputable and in some cases domain expert people at the time.
I say that not to be one of those "mainstream media blah blah" people, its just that when it comes to new things or change in general nobody has a f'ing clue.
Cycling was becoming quite common in the UK and it was actively suppressed by urban planning because the stance was that "it was for the poors" and car travel (a newer mode of transport) was much preferred because it was luxurious.
People can't help but make this whole thread about cars vs bikes. It's a shame because there's a way more interesting story here about the humans instinct to blame "insert current thing" for everything.
I do not see how it can be anything other than cars vs bikes, or really, personal cars vs
walking/bicycling/public transit.
The space and design parameters optimizing for personal cars, especially at US vehicle sizes, is contradictory to design parameters for other modes of transport.
Nowadays you can buy a great bike for $1000 and be totally satisfied with it, ride it for years, or you can shell out $15000 for the top of the line model. And I'm talking about regular bikes, not e-bikes.
I paid 400€ for mine and it was the most expensive bike I've ever bought. And I honestly still consider that too much.
There's people who cycle as method of transportation, and those who cycle as a sport. It's only the ones cycling as sport who need this expensive stuff.
You don't get much bike for 400€ nowadays, maybe an entry level Decathlon model. I think I built my last classic road bike for a bit more than that amount out of a mix of second hand parts and a new cockpit, tires, chain and brake pads.
The city I grew up in and used this kind of bike just fine in has ~70m height difference between the hilly parts and the flat parts.
Sure, you won't be able to cycle up to the Zugspitze with it, but for cycling in a regular hilly town it's enough, 7 gears are fine and the brakes are good enough as well.
This is how I read it too. It highlights an intersting pattern, but how should that influence how we see new technology? I would hope people don't think it means we should just dismiss potential problems as needless fear mongering.
There's pretty legit concerns with social media and the engagement economy. It's better to be concerned when these technologies are new, rather than when they have potentially adjusted peoples' lifestyle for the worse.
Also, this bicycle case is clearly absurd in hindsight - but I question whether it may have been kind of absurd back then too. Sure, there are some major publications in these examples, but are these just cherry picked examples or were people genuinely concerned? Does this actually represent a large chunk of media coverage at the time?
Precisely. See this same trend with online shopping, social media, and app-based food delivery. If they sucked, they wouldn't be so ubiquitous. But they are.
Agreed. The lesson I take from this is that people/the media love to say X is bad because of Y. If they don't present evidence then we should probably ignore the claim.
Outrage over something new garners attention, and attention means more readers, more readers means more profit. The underlying takeaway here is that news organizations and their journalists have been successful manipulators for generations.
It has been the entire history of the human species.
We are slightly overtuned to find patterns, and apparently that has allowed us to exist better. The cost of missing something seems to have been higher than the cost of false positives. Having a bad explanation for something was better than no explanation and the struggle now is to teach people to know the limits of their knowledge and be comfortable with just being unsure while pursing the truth.
Indeed, many people now don't know that the rise of the bicycle predated rise of the car by a couple decades so people complaining about bicycles were also complaining about changes in the pace of life.
And generally new tech and new ways of living have gone together and so people who don't like a new order naturally use the tech as a short-hand and indeed simplify the situation imagine it the cause. And, of course, various new orders have always had desirable and undesirable qualities (from most points of view) and reducing the changes to the tech isn't correct, the tech is often necessary.
I'm not surprised in the slightest at these newspaper headlines in the linked tweets. They seem par for the course where I live.
I sold my car at a profit two months ago and have been walking, cycling, and riding the bus where I need to go. Occasionally my trip calls for an Uber/Lyft. Wow, I have become a pariah in some people's eyes. People have made comments to my face about how it's odd I don't own a car and how it would be best that I get another. Someone scoffed when I answered their question of how I got to their place from mine when I told them I took the bus on a direct route.
People do seem to be publicly supportive of me biking for short trips and for exercise, but they're mostly still in the phase of being introduced to the idea that someone could survive only biking. Biking as a primary form of transportation is still a foreign concept to them. I live in a very central part of the city, but this is a car dominated Texas city.
Unfortunately, biking infrastructure and car etiquette is extremely poor around here. I find myself having to carefully choose my routes and am unable to reach certain places by bike that are quite close because it's not worth the risk. I hope cars begin to open more to the idea of bicyclists being around. A lot of great people I know have expressed negative sentiments towards bicyclists, so I have to believe there's a larger cultural issue at play.
Same or similar, I sold my car at a profit in spring and went playing around in Europe all summer and then dipped out of there when they turned the gas off. best of all worlds!
Back in the states this year, I only had one social outing / date where it was "weird" I didn't have a car, in this car centric city.
I actually adjusted in a slightly different way, I got a second lease in another central area of town. (This city has no single "central" area, but multiple happening and trendy areas)
so I just uber between my places once a week and stay in the other spot. this solves the logistical challenges of wanting to hang out in the happening area, like maybe I go co-work in that area in the day time but now I have my laptop but don't want to go all the way back to my first spot to drop it off before hanging out, well problem solved I'm staying in my second spot in that area all week. although I avoided it, due to possible theft, I could have stored stuff in my car and used to sometimes. but now I actually get naps in between places by taking ubers or other forms of transit, keeps me fresh for longer, and I can indulge more if I wanted to at the event, and I have more peace of mind for my stuff being at my place.
Regarding cultural issues at play. I had begun thinking about inequality. Like, for the first time ever we can have multiple high paying jobs (instead of multiple low paying jobs, or one moderate/high paying job and a low paying moonlighting/moderate freelance gig on the side), and we can also have multiple places. Politicians and municipalities have no clue to address housing or whatever.
There is something about driving that seems to trigger mass mental illness. It’s such a deeply unnatural activity that makes otherwise normal people violent.
And there are plenty of studies showing car commute times directly link to mental and physical health decline.
It's the complete social and sensory isolation of a metal, sound-proof box. There is no spoken or body language (besides the occasional middle finger). There is no sensory input to the driver that conveys that they drive a 2000kg box of metal at 80km/h. The driver views the world through a windscreen that makes it all remote. Most drivers don't even realize other people on the road are living beings with feelings once they enter the sensory and social isolation of a car.
Don't forget the blood on the political class for this.
After all, they're the ones who made murdering with a car the most penalty free and easily forgiven way of murdering someone.
In some cities you can be comically negligent - I'm talking murdering people over on the side walk because you dropped a bottle of water in your car - and be perfectly okay.
The irony: the law admits that people don't have full control over the deadly power of their car, yet, it still allows people to drive a car in the first place.
This is why I cringe a bit at those bemoaning the horrible, awful, traumatic fate of journalism. Journalism is stupid. It always was stupid. It always will be stupid. That's not to say it has no value. But the reader has always been and always will be responsible to sift through the heaping mounds of dumb and find that value. I'm not exaggerating when I say, the New York Times, our paper of record has published some of the stupidest things you may ever read. Papers schilled for business, hacked for parties and confabulated for themselves since always.
On the other hand, the decline of local journalism is a serious crisis. Particularly the death of local investigative journalism. I would be very surprised if in 30 years or so we don't look back and see a noticable increase in local corruption correlated with the decline in local journalistic accountability.
"I miss the time when we could trust the news to just give us the simple truth!"
Dude, that's a time that never existed. The news has always been at least as much propaganda as it is simple information sharing.
Perhaps the only reason we think it's especially bad now is that we're all aware of competing propaganda organizations pushing conflicting narratives. In the past, you might only have one local newspaper, so it was easier to believe that the local propaganda organization that controls your mind is telling the simple truth. But the modern world forces all of us to face the reality that the news has never been something we can naively trust.
Let alone they are not even written by THEMSELVES half of the time. A lot of articles are literally paid ads disguised as news. Other "news" are forced by the management because it comes from their further higher ups.
Some of Mark Twain's funniest stories/articles mock and lambast newsmen, more people would be aware of this if they had read literature instead of biking around like a bunch of marriage and furniture hating communists.
All: come on you guys, this is not an occasion to have a generic flamewar about bicycles. The interest here (the intellectual interest, at least) is obviously historical.
Bicycle-vs.car flamewars are perhaps second only to cat-vs.dog flamewars as the lamest and most easily avoidable, and—perhaps this is connected—prone to getting surprisingly nasty.
There is nothing new under the sun. Today we have "Things people blame on cars".
I've read many Americans that argue that cars are somehow destructive to community live. Here in Europe, people in rural areas or small towns are entirely dependend on cars, even more, they love their cars (and rightfully so). Yet, they have healthy communities, live in large houses. Nature is near, history at hand (look, you have a nice, old forest, a lake, and a medieval castle over there!), and the air is clean. On the other hand, in large cities, you might not need a car most of the time and many people don't have one. Still, this does not create vibrant communities where people just spontaneously interact with each other. You just have more things to choose from on Uber eats.
I still like large cities for the sheer amount of interesting people you meet; but the ideal is a small, car-heavy community in the vicinity of a large metropolis. Note: Those communities grew organically, they have a long history, and you can feel it. This makes them different from the two prominent technocratic urban planning fantasies: McMansion suburbs as well as the new car-free "communities".
> Here in Europe, people in rural areas or small towns are entirely dependend on cars
My grand-parents lived in a small town (<10k) and never had a car. Walked, bicycled (X) or took the bus, train, or tram. Then, in the 1960s, cars became more popular, shops moved to the city limits to save rent (supermarkets), bus lines closed. The tram was discontinued because it was a "mode of transport of the past". Result: everybody became "entirely dependend on cars".
(X) That was in a very hilly town, with simple bikes without gears.
I lived in rural towns most of my life, never owned a car. I wasn't the only one, and i still have friends there whose most used transportation system is bike (either that or tractor).
Also buses are great there if you can organize yourself.
Cars by themselves? No. Car-centric design? Yes. The most obvious place to see this in the US is suburbs designed entirely around cars, where there's often literally nothing but cul-de-sacs and single-family homes for miles and miles and it's nigh-impossible to do anything out of the house without a car.
You can have backyards without living somewhere car-centric. Plenty of people used to, in fact, until cities went all in on banning or de facto banning new construction of townhouses and duplexes/triplexes as a way to drive out the poor and/or minorities.
> ...too many hours on a bicycle saddle can compress the artery and vital nerves leading to the penis.
> The result? A risk of numbness, pain, and erectile dysfunction.
> Male cyclists can place a significant percentage of their weight on their perineum, an area between the scrotum and the anus where the nerves and arteries to the penis pass. This pressure -- and a narrow saddle seat -- can injure the arteries and nerves.
> "The earliest warning sign is numbness or tingling," says Irwin Goldstein, MD, director of San Diego Sexual Medicine.
> Even a young man may lose the ability to achieve an erection, says Goldstein, who pioneered an operation that restores blood flow and sexual potency in 65%-75% of cases.
> This is why male saddles have a channel down the middle these days versus the old brooks style saddle
The article says those are actually worse:
> Bike saddles that feature a groove down the middle or holes in the center to alleviate pressure can actually make the problem worse by increasing pressure on either side of the groove.
> "They feel better," Schrader said of the grooved seats. "With the traditional saddle you're sitting on your internal penis. You can feel it. When it drops into the groove it feels better, but if you're increasing the pressure on either side, you're still compressing the artery and the nerves. The wider the seat, the farther back you sit, the better off you're going to be."
Now can anyone explain why male bikes have this annoying tube right where it can injure you the most? I'm deeply suspicious of gender specific bicycle designs.
I wonder if nowadays we still see most of these as undesirable. I don't mean appendicitis :) but the rest...
Reading books is nice, but better if balanced with exercise. Most other scares are really moral panic about people getting more freedom "than in the presence of chaperones" :)
Actually, it doesn't seem to be specific of bikes. Probably cars were too expensive for women and young people to own.
I found this article in an 1896 Australian magazine that bicycle riding was "a new disease is a kind of intoxication for movement, that is shown in an unconscious, or semi-unconscious bearing of the body, which becomes especially plain when great steadiness is called for, as for instance, in sitting for a photograph. It is shown also in an over desire for rapidity of motion, as if it were necessary at every moment to overcome time and curtail distances by labor of an extreme kind. The constant impression given is that the sufferer, from this general vibratory condition of the body, must jump on his wheel and be off, although the weather and circumstances are not opportune for riding. The whole manner bespeaks haste, although there is not the slightest occasion for it." https://twitter.com/martyvis/status/1562362136612859904
To be fair, bicycles probably did lead to more marriage breakups. Certainly in the UK they're considered a key part of emancipation. No longer, as a woman, is your dating pool limited entirely to the boys in your village. And if the boy you did marry turns out to be an angry drunk - well. Bicycles aren't fast, but they're faster than walking. And they're cheap.
And the latter, if we're honest, is the real reason for bicycle hate. The banker or tech bro on a carbon frame is both conspicuously consuming more than you and actually spending less than you. Much less. And, in a city, going faster. Hell, the homeless guy with three steel tubes lashed together might be too. That should be a right wing dream - a private investment, low regulation, small business friendly, with rewards going to the individuals who work harder.
But sometimes, we're just not nice people, and we don't like having our egos punctured.
I don't think the cost is the biggest driver of tension unless you listen to professional drivers. People don’t blame bus riders for not "paying the road tax" (a UK trope, that tax was abolished). It would explain why things got worst recently, but people don’t hate electric cars the same way for instance.
The most common angle of attack is territorial: "get off _my_ road". Cyclists shouldn’t belong there, because of the shape of the vehicle, and how it goes at different speeds (faster in traffic, slower on the free road). The hostility is shared with Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN), car-free side roads converted into cul-de-sacs. Those remind cars that they are not welcome. “Invisible” bicycles match the repeated trope that cyclists run red lights (in practice, they cross with pedestrian lights at three-phase lights, when it’s safe): the behaviour on the road is different, and forces car drivers to get out of their automated reflexes, and do things they should, but never do: check their mirrors, look back in the blind side, check before opening their door. Forcing drivers outside of the mental comfort of habit-driving is what is causing so much pain and anguish.
It’s also why drivers in countries where cyclists are common don’t have the same issue: they are used to bikes and drive habitually with cyclists in mind.
That matches the biggest issue cyclists point at drivers: using their mobile phones. You can’t drive and use a phone unless you are in a fully reflex-based flow. If those reflexes don’t expect a bike passing you, it yanks you out of your flow, which is physically painful. That explains the explosive and murderous reactions from drivers.
> The most common angle of attack is territorial: "get off _my_ road".
Yeah, but why do you think it's your road when in a car, especially when the same attitude exists in places without the tax, or with drivers cars that are exempt, or hell, if you've just not bothered paying it? My bet is it's nothing to do with ~£100 of tax, and everything to do with not wanting to admit you were misled by advertisers into thinking spending tens of thousands of your hard-earned cash on something you thought would give you effortless, fast, convenient transport.
A better argument that it’s not really how much it costs, but some territorial sense that anything paved with macadam is there’s is how violent conversations about parking gets:
* if someone “steals” a spot in a parking lot that you felt you wanted,
* if someone parks on the public road in front of one’s house,
* or worse, more recently when people started taking over streets for other use than car storage.
If this was seen as a commercial transaction ("as a driver, I paid the £100, therefore it is mine, and people who haven’t paid shouldn't be allowed in") then for-pay parking spots wouldn’t be seen as such an unfair tax, even when they aren't that expensive. The outrage comes from seeing those as the birthright of any car driver. Taxing that right is inherently wrong, even for a few dollars an hour (which is several orders of magnitude cheaper than the value and externality of any urban parking lot).
In fact, in the Netherlands, they just gave up on motorists and created a complete parallel infrastructure for cyclists (in addition to that for pedestrians).
That's seemingly the only way to keep people safe from injury.
My bike was stolen on Monday and I'm honestly still grieving the loss. A bike is more than just transport, it's freedom, exercise and a million times better at clearing your head than any other mode of commute.
This is hilarious. I remember a similar collection of headlines and opinion pieces calling out ‘newspapers on trains causing people not to talk to each other’, where ‘newspapers’ could be easily substituted for ‘smartphones’ to bring the title in the current era.
I wonder which piece of technology is currently cautioned as the root of all evil, bringing a laugh to future historians. ‘Video Games’ (causing violence and obesity) come to mind, and ‘AI’ (taking our jobs).
It's still the bicycle. In my city in just the last year, I've seen bicycling accused of causing gentrification (along with Little Free Libraries), traffic, juvenile delinquency, gun violence, falling tax revenues, poor road maintenance, property tax increases, and undoubtedly some more that I've forgotten.
I found it equally bewildering when I heard the claim, but perhaps because gun violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated by young men, and in the neighborhoods most impacted by gun violence, young men are also the overwhelming majority of bicyclists. No idea what causal mechanism the claimant was inferring from this correlation. Indeed, it's a highly localized correlation anyways: in less economically depressed parts of the city, the demographics of bicyclists are much more varied along gender, age, and racial lines.
I think there was also an incident in the last couple years in which a young guy was shot and killed by police after they got a "guy with a gun" call because he was very obviously carrying a handgun while riding a bike around his neighborhood. That was on the other side of town from me, and I don't think a whole lot came of it afterwards, so I might be a little fuzzy on the details.
> I wonder which piece of technology is currently cautioned as the root of all evil, bringing a laugh to future historians. ‘Video Games’ (causing violence and obesity) come to mind, and ‘AI’ (taking our jobs).
We live in a mountainous area that is quite popular with road bicyclists. We have a really great law that requires drivers to give them 3 feet of space when passing.
In this one nearby area there are essentially no shoulders (near vertical mountain on one side, guardrail with a drop on the other side). Additionally, there are many blind corners which logically means a double yellow line on a two lane road.
I was driving through this area with my family in the car and we come upon a bicyclist. We can't legally or safely pass so I slow down and start following him through the curves. At some point we start hearing pings on the roof of our car. Looking up the mountain side it is clearly the start of a rock slide. I wanted to zoom ahead and get clear of the slide as surely it would start to pick up. However, that came at the risk of going into the oncoming lane at a blind curve, as well as not giving the cyclist their required 3 feet. Luckily for me a giant boulder took the cyclist down the hill and I was able to floor it and quickly escape unscathed. Good thing the bicyclist was wearing his helmet, it saved his life!
I'm from the Netherlands, so very much proud of our bicycle culture which only works because it's a fundamental part of our road design and related facilities, like bicycle parking. It's questionable whether you can retrofit this into a city.
Anyway, even in our little bicycle paradise there's a new danger: electrical bicycles. Currently, about 1 in 3 is electrical, and it seems most new ones sold are electrical. They are most of all popular with people 50+ y/o.
Recently I saw an accident happen from the outside security cam of a friend, the incident explaining the danger very well.
A woman in a car is trying to cross a road that intersects with a bicycle lane, so she checks for oncoming cyclists. One does seem to be oncoming in the distance. She then concludes there's plenty of time to cross, makes the move, and finds the cyclists on the hood of her car.
The way she probably read that situation: pretty far away, old guy, slow leg movement. All adding up to a low speed estimate and a high time estimate. That's how all of us have been subconsciously trained for decades.
Until electrical bicycles. The "cyclist" came on about twice as fast as expected. The obvious solution is to watch longer, to monitor speed over time. Yet to effectively get through traffic and not spend forever parked at a crossing, you do need speedy judgement. Also, these e-bikes can accelerate in ways a normal bicycle can't.
Another common dangerous e-bike situation: One passing you unexpectedly when cycling yourself, on a bicycle lane. Normally, just about 2 bicycles fit next to each other, but only barely. You'd normally anticipate such a passing because you can hear one coming behind. Now they seem to come out of nowhere, passing you by an inch at high speed.
In my opinion, what’s on trial is the ease of mobility. The bicycle was the means so it gets a mention. Now we have airplanes which probably have exacerbated the issues. A wheelman then didn’t care about furniture? Well, review a digital nomad and see what you find. They probably don’t care about a traditional home to begin with. I don’t have the references on hand but various studies & reports exist on the specific societal and behavioral changes that arrived with new advances in human mobility.
It appears that in that period only heroine, cocaine, radium, and tobacco were harmless. Stay away from bicycles and you'll be fine. What a time to be alive!
This is really about causality and science. But searching the comments, there are only 3 comments contain key word "causal" so far, only one comment contains "science".
In my view, folks who totally disregard science are no more truly intelligent than say 2500 years ago when people believe that "the natural state of an object is to be at rest" (check Wikipedia page for Aristotle).
The first item, about bicycles ruining marriages (and to a lesser extend some other items), sheds some light onto Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. I didn't anticipate people would talk about bicycles ruining families seriously, thought it had been written just as a bizarre thing for a bizarre world, 100% invented, and now, it turns out, it's not 100% invented.
A big issue is infrastructure, which leads to frustration.
In many places in Europe, dedicated bike roads are built. Red lights are also much less used and often replaced with roundabouts.
If streets are built for a co existence, there is not need to fight about space.
Some of these are hilariously still true. I know plenty of hardcore cyclists who let their hobby get in the way of home life (disrupting marriage and homemaking). Of course there's nothing actionable here, but I think these should be read with amusement rather than outrage.
I saw appendicitis was on the list. I think appendicitis can (unusually) be provoked by blunt trauma (I think mine was!), so maybe there have been a tiny number of appendicitis cases attributable to extremely unlucky victims of bike accidents?
the only thing i don't like about cyclists (online, key distinction) is their insistence to group bikers/pedestrians together as some sort of coalition when lobbying solely for their own cause
Do you have evidence of that? Cyclists clearly ask for dedicated lanes, separated from the pavement. They very often mock pedestrians, often tourists, for blocking the lanes they have and not responding to calls to clear the way. It’s far too antagonist to be interpreted as fake solidarity.
They do welcome scooters, mobility aids, and powered wheelchairs in the lanes, often implicitly — and there could be confusion there, but honestly, that’s not something that feels inorganic. Anything faster than a jogger, non-polluting qualifies.
There are discourses about natural or active mobility, quieter street, and pollution that does encompass public transport, pedestrians, and cyclists. It is meant as a coalition of anyone who isn’t a giant pain for everyone around them, but I don’t think that’s a confusion. If you start seeing discourse about a clearer separation between bikes and pedestrians on quiet streets, sure, but that’s not really something cyclists talk about, or want: bikes are for mobility, not browsing between café terraces.
-- many years ago I was the exact same way. I adored cycling but would find something to swear at at least once per minute. Pedestrians in the bike lane infuriated me above all, but really everything -- potholes in the bike lane, potholes anywhere, cars not obeying red lights, bike lane missing for a couple blocks, etc. And otherwise in my life, I was/am a pretty chill guy, it was very out of character for me.
Funnily enough, it was therapy that changed it. Turns out people actually have the ability to choose whether or not to get angry over things, at least when it comes to run-of-the-mill daily annoyances. Obviously an HN comment isn't going to magically transmit that ability, it really does take therapy to understand your triggers and how to reframe things so you can just accept the things you can't change without getting angry.
The weirdest part was that it wasn't a gradual change -- it was literally overnight. After I "got it", went for a bike ride full of all of the same situations as always and it was... fine. Just enjoyed the cycling. And stayed that way ever since.
As someone who cycles everywhere (at least when I cant get a train/bus) cycling always leaves me quite relaxed by the end, although I do tend to stay away from roads when I can (benefits of decent infrastructure).
Everyone seems to get angry when on or near roads, this isn't really exclusive to cyclists.
Cycling is cheap, often faster than driving (in my city), healthy, less noisy, creates vastly less pollution, less dangerous to pedastrians...
And I'd guess that about 95% of drivers that I come across are respectful of the danger they present - overtaking with enough space, and not at too high a speed (my city doesn't have great bike lanes). Unfortunately, a typical journey involves passing more than 20 cars, which means experiencing at least 1 very close pass, or some kind of dangerous driving.
And the frustrating thing is that the drivers who impatiently pass dangerously are putting people at risk for the sake of ~10-30 seconds (or less). Often I'll catch up with them at the queue for the traffic lights.. Average traffic speeds for cars are around 8-12mph, including stopping for lights, congestion, etc, [1] which is fairly easy to surpass on a bike..
The problem of dangerous interactions between drivers and cyclists is much smaller here in the Netherlands, mainly due to two reasons.
The first reason is the infrastructure, both visible and invisible. Separated bicycle lanes are commonplace and in the few places where they intersect with car traffic, care is taken to make crossing safe and comfortable. This visible infrastructure is complemented by the concept of "Hoofdnetten", where the default routes to some place for different modes of transportation coincide for the least amount of time/space. For example, going somewhere by bike might take you through a residential neighborhood with barely any traffic, which is also slowed by speed bumps and narrowed streets, whereas buses will use a bus lane taking a slightly longer route, and car traffic has to go all the way around.
The second reason is that here, everyone is a cyclist. Going for groceries? Five minute bike ride, much easier and quicker than going by car. Kids cycle to school alone from a young age. Going out for drinks? Bike.
Because everyone is a cyclist and there are cyclists everywhere, cyclists are equal participants in traffic and are treated with care and respect.
The safe and comfortable boulevard along the Slotervart canal in Amsterdam that I frequently ride along into the city is not only lined with trees, but there are also lines of trees between the bike lanes and the roads on both sides, and separate dog walking paths and park benches in the trees between the bike lane and the canal, and big roundabouts with outer bike lanes at intersections! So cars don't mix with bikes, and bikes don't mix with pedestrians and dogs (and their poop). It's a really pleasant, stress reducing, smooth, green, cool, shady ride.
Another reason is that being really respectful around cyclists is an important part of driving lessons in The Netherlands. And I think you can fail your driving test if you pass a bike too close, open your door without looking if a cyclists is coming from behind, or passing over a bike lane at an intersection without looking.
I am from The Netherlands and I only realized since moving to Canada that my home country is such a safe place for cyclists. I find it interesting that no one in The Netherlands wears a helmet when cycling and yet serious cycling injuries don’t seem to be a common thing, whereas here in Canada I know of multiple people that got “doored” or otherwise have been in a bike related accident.
Cycling already has the lowest percentage of road traffic fatalities compared to other modes. The highest is pedestrians - should pedestrians wear helmets?
A helmet requirement is wholly incompatible with the role of cycling in NL. You hop on a bike anywhere, regardless of what you're wearing. It's a casual transportation mode, just like walking, not a sport activity. This proposal can only make sense for people who don't live in this reality.
In addition, as mentioned by another commenter, when the dutch traffic rules were written decades ago, it was found that helmet usage correlated to increased accident rates - people take more risks when they feel safer, and that in turn makes pedestrians less safe.
> In addition, as mentioned by another commenter, when the dutch traffic rules were written decades ago, it was found that helmet usage correlated to increased accident rates - people take more risks when they feel safer, and that in turn makes pedestrians less safe.
I'm probably a bit of an oddball in this respect, but I do not regard helmets as a means of preventing injury. Reducing the severity of an injury, sure, but even then they are of limited scope (i.e. they are only really useful if there is a direct impact to the head).
Helmets are not an excuse for taking risks. They are a means of reducing the impact of accidents.
>A helmet requirement is wholly incompatible with the role of cycling in NL. You hop on a bike anywhere, regardless of what you're wearing.
I don't really understand this. I keep my helmet clipped to my handlebars, so if I have my bike, I have my helmet. Is it really so much of an inconvenience?
I'm sympathetic to the overall anti-helmet-requirement position, even seemingly trivial concerns like "it messes up my hair" sound legitimate to me. The convenience argument in particular just never made much sense to me though.
Living in a city, the idea of leaving anything of value on your bike, and expecting it to still be there when you get back is completely foreign to me. When I visited Amsterdam, I even had the seat stolen off my rental bike. Biking in the states means carrying a helmet inside with you everywhere you go, and it absolutely sucks.
When I visited Copenhagen a few years ago, most of the bikes I saw were either unlocked or locked to themselves to prevent riding off but not carrying away. It was rather shocking.
uh, I normally lock my helmet by putting my u-lock through the double section of the strap. Sure someone could cut the strap but then the helmet would be useless. I haven't had any issues and live in a city with pretty high bicycle theft.
That helmet's getting stolen as soon as you go into a store or cafe or the office. Having inside bike parking where it would be safe is a luxury that doesn't exist in most places.
This argument gets rehashed nearly every time cycling and helmets are brought up. Usually be people talking past each other.
Here are some important conclusions:
1) Cycling as a commuter is quite safe, with or without a helmet.
2) Cycling is safer with a helmet.
3) If you found yourself in some binary where your only options were "cycle without a helmet" or "don't cycle at all", the health benefits of "cycle without a helmet" likely outweigh the risk of serious injury due to not wearing a helmet.
4) Because of #3 and other factors, helmet laws for adults aren't generally a net positive.
5) BUT - it's a good idea to wear a helmet whenver you can, and even the Dutch (fore example) would be better off if they kept their usage of cycling high, but culturally embraced wearing helmets as well.
6) Things are very different in higher-risk forms of cycling like BMX, road racing and MTB, where crashes are much more frequent and higher impact, and you'd be an idiot to not wear a helmet.
> Neurosurgeons in the Netherlands disagree with this
Neurosurgeons have a very skewed view of the statistical likelihood of head injury. They see such injuries every day, and it can most definitely make them believe that the risks involved are much greater than they actually are.
Reading the article they focus on children and e-bike users. Can kinda understand it from that point, e-bikes can go abnormally fast and children are vulnerable. Would've expected the advice to also count for elderly people. I'm a 30 year old reasonably in-shape guy using a regular bike, chance that something happens to me on a bike is small and it's even smaller that I'd get really hurt by it.
As I understand it there are 2 Dutch words for cycling [0]:
>Crucially, the Dutch distinguish between everyday cycling (fietsen) and competitive cycling (wielrennen). Fietsers (cyclists) are found everywhere.
...
The term wielrennen, on the other hand, is reserved for the sweaty, colourful and seemingly endless cycle races on which the people of Benelux are so keen.
In my experience, at least in my area of the US, mostly kids do fietsen - biking to their friends' houses, or the park, etc. Grown-ups on bikes are typically serious about their wielrennen and wear skin-tight gear and ride fancy road bikes.
I try to drive safely around any cyclists, but I think it's easier to cut folks in the first category a break - they're aware they're slow, they try not to be in the way, etc. Folks in the second category are sometimes frustrating to drive near - at traffic lights they cut to the front, only to advance relatively slowly when the light turns green, or they blow through a stop sign as a car is approaching, etc.
I wonder if we would have better rules, better set expectations, etc, if we similarly had 2 words to talk about cyclists in English.
at traffic lights they cut to the front,
only to advance relatively slowly when the light turns green
they blow through a stop sign as a car is approaching
I thought the former was entirely proper -- motorcycles do similarly, going up the gap between traffic. The latter, though ... I've seen that far too much, and is frustrating.
I also see kids and adults riding their bicycles on the sidewalk, sometimes even the wrong direction. I used to get mad at that, until I realized that our local cycling infrastructure is crap, and _on that street_ I'd not want to cycle on the road either.
In the US there's a derogatory slang for the most obnoxious form of the second category: Freds. Fred is a guy on a $10k bike that treats a pedestrian and commuter heavy bike path like their own personal tour de France.
In seattle I'm staring to see a lot more adult Fietsers than I'm historically used to seeing. E-Bikes have really opened up the audience for more casual cyclers (at least in the spring and summer months).
There are costs and benefits to requiring helmets.
Requiring a helmet has apparently been shown to depress the use of bikes for every day activities. Going grocery shopping with a bike is less convenient if you have to juggle a helmet along with a liter of milk.
Less biking means roughly more pollution, more obesity, bigger roads, more car accide ts.
On the other side of this equation is the death and injury that helmets prevent. This is non-zero, but apparently in the Netherlands we have judged this marginal benefit of helmets to be less than the advantages of more cycling.
The calculation might be different in countries with inferior cycling infrastructure.
I never used to wear a helmet, and I don’t think anyone should be forced to, but countless anecdotes about people being in comas and becoming permanently brain damaged due to no-fault accidents, combined with peer pressure from everyone I know, and finding one I don’t actively despise the look of, means that now I do. If I’m going grocery shopping I simply don’t take it off in the shop. I’ve incorporated it into my own punk self-image - can’t fuck with the system if I’m in an easily avoidable coma!
Don’t really care for requiring one at all really, our bonces inside out are our own business and if people want to take that risk it’s on them.
If my city were more like amsterdam I'd be happy to forgo the helmet, but in hilly seattle between the chances of getting clipped by a suv or taking a tumble on a steep grade.. I'll stick with the helmet. I don't find it too much of an inconvenience. I just clip it to my bag after I lock up.
Fyi, Amsterdam is one of the worst places as a cyclist in The Netherlands. It's very crowded and narrow with very few separated bicycle lanes. The average bicycle infrastructure in the Dutch suburbs are way better.
Helmets signal the choice for security over freedom which is simply not sexy. Moreover it signals your own inability to ride a bike and to recognise/avoid dangers rapidly. Just compare images of cyclists with and without helmet.
Is that what being punk means nowadays? Being sexy, and avoiding helmets / seat belts / health insurance / vaccinations because it's security over freedom?
The reduction of freedom has a cost as well. Not in the very visible form of shattered skulls but more hidden in the form of lives not lived and pills of various colors.
This is a debate that pops up a lot. I don’t think there is any consensus among health officials, but I think most public health officials tend to side on the no-mandatory but actively encourage helmets.
There are a couple of problem with mandatory helmets, including:
* It discourages a healthy activity.
* It shifts the responsibility from the person causing to danger (drivers) to the potential victims.
* It creates a false sense of safety (e.g. biking slower reduces risk of injuries far more then a helmet).
That depends on the way it is linked. If it's linked causally in the opposite direction, your advice is quite dangerous. Meaning that if higher per capita head injuries are causing more helmet wearing in sub populations (maybe because they see more news about deadly injuries), than your advice is for people in those sub populations to not wear their helmets.
So it's relevant information, but the direct effect of "wearing a helmet cuts the risk of serious head injury by 60% and a deadly brain injury by 71%" is more important information.
You're right in the sense that if you die because your head cracked open like a watermelon on the pavement, that doesn't count as a head injury - it counts as a fatality.
Yes, note he stated "if head injuries are more common with helmets".
There have been some studies that correlate higher levels of head injuries with mandatory helmet laws. The thesis was that wearing a helmet induces more reckless cycling (higher speeds, etc) due to feeling safer. I don't remember seeing any good follow-ups studies either way and don't necessarily agree with the study.
The other theory is that helmet laws reduce casual cycling by adding an impediment to just hoping on and going. And that those short trips to the strore tend to be safer.
Personally my wife can't find a helmet that fits, Asians have rounder heads and north American helmet manufacturers are oblivious. As a result we never cycle.
That's possibly true. I wear a helmet when I go for a bike ride (for pleasure/fitness) but don't wear one when I run an errand by bike. The former, speeds avg 18mph, top out above 30mph, and use different roads. The latter, speeds are closer to 10mph and use mostly bike lanes and wide sidewalks.
Third reason, law. In an incident between cycle and car, the car is deemed to be at fault by default. Unless the cyclist does something outrageously stupid bordering on committing suicide.
IANAL, but actually it's even stronger. If the cyclist/pedestrial is at fault, the car driver is normally responsible for 50% of the damage. The reason is that a cyclist (or pedestrian) has a higher chance of heavy injury due to the mass of a car. The primary exception to this is 'force majeure', which is apparently exceptionally hard to prove [1] (the example that the linked page gives is someone pushes a person in front of a car).
> Unless the cyclist does something outrageously stupid bordering on committing suicide.
Yeah, like riding a bike in the first place. Only thing worse is riding a motorcycle.
"The car is always wrong" has got to be the stupidest traffic law ever written. Every single day cyclists and motorcyclists do straight up illegal stuff near me and I have to accomodate them because of stupid laws like that. They do absolutely insane stuff. I get anxious every time I see one on my mirrors.
I remember I learned this on a "Not Just Bikes" YouTube video, but I can't find it now, but it blew my mind how simple intentional things make a huge difference. It was about the car lane, curb, and where people bike/walk in the Netherlands.
In most countries, the car lane is lower than the sidewalk, and when they have to turn, the lane doesn't change - no bumps, or elevation. A pedestrian / cyclist going from their space into the car lane has to usually face a down slope, so it's very clear the person is entering another area.
In at least this Netherlands city or video I watched, Not Just Bikes talked about how over there the car goes into ascent, as in, the car is entering the bicycle space. So it's not as smooth, or convenient, or the same mental model as the other way.
"The second reason is that here, everyone is a cyclist. Going for groceries? Five minute bike ride, much easier and quicker than going by car. Kids cycle to school alone from a young age. Going out for drinks? Bike. Because everyone is a cyclist and there are cyclists everywhere, cyclists are equal participants in traffic and are treated with care and respect."
that's how I felt in Munich. Bikes were everywhere and drivers were used to them. In the US in most places bikes are rare so drivers (including me) stop looking for them.
Amsterdam is not representative of Dutch bicycle culture. Amsterdam is crowded with narrow bicycle lanes that are often shared with cars.
The great thing about the Dutch bicycle structure is that it spans the entire country. It's not just the big cities. Every city, town and village has high quality bicycle lanes. You can easily bike around the country on dedicated bicycle routes in The Netherlands.
Just need a way to deal with bike theft. My number one concern is parking my pretty decent bike within view of where I’m sitting or not leaving it unattended for over five minutes. I’m insured, but I have a bond with my wheels!
If anyone has recommendations for stealth theft detection/tracking devices I’m all ears.
These are great, light u-lock style frame locks made of titanium: https://tigrlock.com/
Your wheels and components might still get stolen, but not much is really going to stop that. You can add a cable lock if you really want to but they're easy to cut through.
But really, insurance is the thing that will cover you. Many renters'/homeowners' insurances will cover theft of bikes too, even when you're away from home, so you don't necessarily need supplemental bike insurance.
The thing about the trackers is that they're for after-the-fact recovery, not deterrent (especially if they're stealth). It's just going to get parted out, so if you're lucky you might recover the frame and not much else.
Someone broke into my building and stole a bunch of bikes from the bike room (people weren’t locking them up once inside). The few that were registered to park at the university (big silver stickers) were left alone.
Often I don’t think the bike theives check if the bike is “good”. My cousins bike was just over $150 new and was stolen. He had a cheap lock because he thought who would steal this.
I’ve been riding 10 years a moderately decent bike. No issues but I use a U lock which is decent.
Please lock through the frame. I’ve seen like 6 front wheels locked to bike racks with the rest of the bike gone..
We had hundreds and hundreds of bikes at my previous job. It was amazing. You could just hop on and go anywhere. Nearly all disappeared. As it turns out, the scruffy looking guy I saw, riding one bike and steering another with his free hand, wasn't collecting and returning them in the whee hours of the morning.
The new bikes had GPS attached, but they limited the numbers, due the theft. Those slowly disappeared, too. Last I saw, there were just a few bikes at each bike rack, compared to maybe 50 at each.
Where I live the organized thieves (as opposed to the local drunks) disassemble the bike and get rid of the frame ASAP. Same with cars, they park them in large car parks with no monitoring to see if it had a tracker, after a couple weeks they drive it off to disassemble (with fake plates to avoid ANPR)
A few years ago my wife had her registered bicycle stolen after I screwed up and left the garage open. We reported it stolen and only took 3 days for it to make its way back to us. It made its way back to us because the cops stopped someone for looking like they too nice of a bike, so that's a whole other problem, but registration works.
In my experience it's mostly a matter of not having the most desirable bike or the shittiest lock. Put a $100 u-lock on a $300 bike, and you can almost be assured that you'll have neither. Put a nice enough lock on yours, and you can be pretty sure you won't have the most easily stolen bike either.
At least in the US, road bikes are pretty much immune to being stolen because they're seen as terminally uncool by the lay population. Would I leave a $5000 road bike locked up at a subway station? Not likely, but I'm not fast enough to justify owning one anyways. $2000, yeah probably, as long as I'm not leaving it there daily.
Anecdotally, police won't do shit to recover a stolen bike in the US. Having some kind of tracker is only going to help you once it's already been stolen. I'd focus my efforts on preventing the theft in the first place.
In my experience it's mostly a matter of not having the most desirable bike or the shittiest lock.
Right, in The Netherlands, where there are a lot of bikes, this is the basic rule: just make sure that there are other bikes that are more attractive to steal, even if it's a new bike. The second basic rule is: use a chain lock to attach your bike frame to an unmovable object, so that a thief cannot just throw your bike in a van and remove the locks elsewhere.
What I do:
- Use a ring lock for the back wheel. Makes it unattractive to steal just the wheel. The lock needs to be unscrewed from the frame to remove the wheel.
- Use a chain lock and make it go through the frame, front wheel, and attach it to an unmovable object. In order to steal the frame, the thief would have to saw through the chain in plain sight.
- If there is no supervised parking, park the bike in an area where there are enough people where someone will notice a thief trying to break the locks.
- Get bike insurance. It's usually only 10 Euro per month and if your bike gets stolen, you get back the bike's value.
- Some insurers also install a tracker. This has double value: bikes with a tracker are less attractive to steal. Secondly, bikes with a tracker are usually moved to a 'cool-off' location first. This is usually just some place removed a few streets from where the bike was stolen. If it's still there after a few days, the thieves know that nobody is actively tracking the bike and they can take it somewhere to comfortably break the lock. So, it's likely that the insurer will find the bike at the cool-off location without much damage.
I wouldn't want to confront a potentially aggressive person with a saw in hand either. I might call the police, but I'd assume that by the time they got there, the thief would be gone, and that's if the police even cared enough to send someone.
I think this is mainly an enforcement issue. The police could easily track these people down if they were willing to put any energy into it.
> The police could easily track these people down if they were willing to put any energy into it.
That's a bit of a myopic view - in many of these cities, the DA will refuse to prosecute someone for thefts like this, so it does no good to arrest someone. Police in many cities are underfunded and understaffed, and if they're getting no support from the DA they have to prioritize.
This very much varies by location in the US. In the central areas of most major metros your bike WILL be stripped if locked up on the street and not attended/guarded. I live in one of the most bike friendly cities in the US, and I can't even lock up my bike outside of a bar/restaurant downtown without having to chase off aggro dudes trying to strip parts off it in the broad daylight. And I'm talking a dirt cheap commuter bike from bikesdirect.com. A $2k bike locked up downtown here would last 2 minutes. They use battery powered grinders, so how uber your lock is doesn't matter anymore either.
It's a really frustrating problem, and has changed the way I feel about this city a lot. Being able to just casually ride around with friends socializing in summer evenings was really great. Now it's everyone taking ubers.
My experience having recently had my road bike stolen would disagree. You're spot on about fancy bikes automatically being a target and the importance of your lock job being at a minimum more difficult to get through than the neighbor's. I now have a cheap single speed for my "around town" bike along with a heavy kryptonite ulock.
This is something I never understood.
Why so many bike theft? a regular new one is 3-4 hundred$ and cannot be sold that easily (Say vs electronic goods). Why theft is so popular?
I mean thief can steal one for their own purpose, but then what? He steal another one every weeks?
Steal the bike, sell it on craigslist/facebook marketplace/etc for $100, profit.
It can often take less that 5/10 minutes to steal a bike which is a pretty good RoR.
How could we stop it? Probably the best way would be stronger regulations on community marketplaces/pawn shops/ebay/etc. ATM, they don't GAF about selling stolen goods.
I also think the police just don't take it very seriously. Certainly that's the case here in SF. I've reported a number of stolen bikes over the years and my impression was of massive indifference. After bike number 7 was stolen, I just gave up. A few years later I'm thinking about buying a bike again, and risk of theft is my number one concern.
Well, not to defend the police, but after a bike is stolen I don't know what you could expect them to do.
Even if they had a dedicated bike recovery task force, the most they could do is visit local pawn shops and browse community marketplaces for a bike matching the description (assuming it wasn't broken down for parts).
Now, before a bike is stolen, I'd expect police to actually patrol places where bikes are being commonly stolen from (or for that matter, places where cars are commonly broken into). That part is something I do blame them for. The fact that SF is basically synonymous with "don't leave anything in the car" is an indictment on local police.
I think it would be great if they actually policed not just the pawn shops and sketchier bike shops, but also the people randomly selling them on the street and the back-alley bicycle chop shops, which are easily visible. Instead of the theft victims wandering the neighborhood trying to find their bike and get it back, which is what happens a lot here, I would like the police to take a swing at it.
But from the air of the police taking reports, absolutely nothing will happen. One time a cop asked me why I was bothering, did I need it for insurance or something? No, I told him, it was a crime and I figured that being police, they'd want to know. That seemed novel to him.
But I don't just want them to do something for me after my bicycle is stolen. I'd like them to be energetic enough in running down organized bike theft operations that those criminals find some other line of work. And a good way way to do that is taking individual bike thefts seriously.
Here in Toronto I (and a bunch of other people) witnessed a bike being stolen in broad daylight on a major street downtown.
Naturally we took videos and called the cops. Naturally the cops didn't show up (the store manager we left the videos and pictures with said they did show up like 7 hours later). In the subsequent 10 minutes the thief came back and stole two more bikes, while we continued to watch and video (and not physically intervene, because fighting a guy with a power tool is a really stupid idea).
If the cops showed up promptly at the very least they could have prevented two bikes from being stolen. There's a good chance they would have managed to arrest the thief too.
It also seems like a good candidate for sting operations. Put expensive bikes out with flimsy locks in places with high rates of theft and have undercover officers watch them. When they're stolen, either arrest the thieves immediately or follow them for awhile to figure out who they're working for.
Having a dumpy old bike helps. I have accidentally locked my cheap u-lock to the bike itself instead of the bike rack a few times at a train station and nobody took it. The worst thing that has ever happened is that someone stole my quick release skewer, so I have a screw on one now.
Honestly (at least from my experiences in Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Essen, and Kiel): As long as your bike isn’t super expensive (e.g., I’ve got this: https://boc24.de/products/bocas-bari-trapez) and you’ve locked it with a lock that’s resistant to bolt cutters (even something as simple as https://www.kaufland.de/product/313003426/), it’s not going to get stolen.
Even if you’ve locked it overnight for multiple days at the main train station (tested in Düsseldorf and Kiel), it’s going to be fine.
About locks - nobody ever picks locks, only brute force is used.
If the lock is a cable lock, it's worthless. If the lock is solid metal over 5mm, it can only be cut by angle grinder. Once you are in angle grinder territory, whether it's 5mm or 15mm doesn't seem to matter. So i think there is no point spending over $100 on a lock.
Additionaly, you can use a hydrawlick jack to break d-locks, but that doesnt work on chains and is very dependant on how exactly you locked up
>If anyone has recommendations for stealth theft detection/tracking devices I’m all ears.
If you have a bike lock/chain that can resist bolt cutters, you're probably fine for everything other than leaving it overnight. Casual bike thieves are looking for easy money and likely aren't going to bust out an angle grinder in the middle of the day unless your bike is obviously worth a grand+.
Here in the UK thieves just use portable angle grinders that go through any lock like butter.
I have a hefty Abus “sold secure” (requirement of insurance) D lock that I lock through the frame, but I’ve watched enough lock picking lawyer to know this won’t stop thieves with angle grinders (most thieves now) or ones handy with a disc detainer pick.
In the US (at least for now) the angle grinder crews are mostly limited to nights when they can steal a lot of bikes a once and chuck them into a truck/van (ex: bike racks near student housing in college towns).
But the exception is always high-value bikes. That's why I called out bikes that aren't "obviously worth a grand+". If you leave out a nice eBike or a superlight road bike, the thieves have solid financial motivation to risk breaking out the cordless grinder and making a ruckus to steal it. Hell, sometimes thieves would straight up wait for people to come back to their bikes after brunch or whatever and mug them for it after they unlocked it in Albuquerque. No tools needed other than a knife.
What kind of society allows someone to use an incredibly noisy and obvious tool like an angle grinder in public, then ride off on a bike? Does everyone just walk by because they're afraid to get involved?
I've witnessed it, called the cops and took videos, but I'm not going to physically fight the guy with an angle grinder and little to lose - not even if it was my own bike. That was the same reaction everyone else around had.
Yeah... this is totally wrong, or maybe it depends on where you live... Here, cheap bikes get stolen all the time. I started riding my heavy-ass, ancient, steel, suspensionless bike that I had bought 20 years prior for like $200 from Target. Not even a pawn shop would want to take the bike, because they are cheap junk. It got stolen from me in less than a week after starting a biking commute. And yes I locked it up. The lock was cut right off.
The thing is people aren't stealing them to always sell them. Sometimes it's just easier to quickly grab a bike when the thief needs to get across town for some other reason. When they get to where they want to go, they just ditch the bike. Sometimes I think some people just want to steal a bike for no real reason.
In Seattle, I've seen gigantic piles with hundred of bikes in them just sitting in a homeless camp. They clearly aren't selling those bikes, as they've been sitting out in the rain for months, or even years now. And I guarantee those homeless camps aren't full of multi-thousand dollar bikes.
Amazon do bike alarms. $16? Kind of intended for motorbikes(?) but when i turn then both on - one wedged under the seat and another less permanently attached - the conversations generated guarantee me onlookers (bar/ cafe) almost look after the bike for me.
Decent lock, too.
Drop the chain off and whack it out of gear (it hurts if you forget).
If im inside and i see someone checking out thd bike i 'test' the alarm.
> Vote for politicians who promise punishing bike theft with multi-year prison sentences
Please don't - this is typical 'tough on crime' trick: promise long sentences, so easy - longer sentence-less crime, right? Wrong. Sentenses are useless if no-one ever gets caught. Look at countries with the toughest sentenses in the world, and you will find they have loads of crime
You actually have to use your brain, and think and plan, on how to make sure criminals are caught. You have to take real action like training investigators, installing trackers, registering property, etc.
For example in UK concervatives have been in power for 12 years, punishment got much harsher but crime is growing because they have cut police numbers, and you chance of getting caught is ~0%. The longer people get away with crime, the better they become at crime. Now we have a large 'talent pool' of highly trained thieves.
> Please don't - this is typical 'tough on crime' trick: promise long sentences, so easy - longer sentence-less crime, right? Wrong. Sentenses are useless if no-one ever gets caught. Look at countries with the toughest sentenses in the world, and you will find they have loads of crime
Perhaps the causality goes the other way here? Perhaps suffering under loads of crime makes people vote for tough sentences?
Idk, it seems theft is low in countries where they cut hands for it.
Bike theft is a very harmful crime. It stops the move to healthier lifestyle, it leaves people, often poor ones who don't have cars without means of transportation and it cause many to not commute by bike.
I want aggressive policing, including trap bikes set up by the police to fish out potential thieves and lock them for years once caught, alternatively make them wear GPS locator all the time. I want them to feel fear every time they think about stealing.
Maybe empty "tough on crime" promise isn't enough but it's surely better than typical approach of "let's all think about those poor thieves" or victim blaming (just lock your bike with 2 U-locks and keep your eyes on it all the time if you don't want it stolen).
Yes it is, but I disagree that turning bike theft into a 20-year sentence is going to help.
> Idk, it seems theft is low in countries where they cut hands for it.
Russia has 99% conviction rate, long sentences and torture in prisons, yet crime rate is sky high. US has more prisoner and tougher sentenses than UK, but UK has less crime
Half the people here are engineers, think like one, about systemic solutions and not revenge. Crime is a business, it only happens because its profitable.
You could setup a city-wide LoRaWAN bike tracking network for $100,000, you could hand out $20 trackers to every cyclist and weld them to the frame, from the inside if you have to. You could produce airtags-compatiable trackers, register every bike and check them periodically, etc.
You could install safe cycle storage throughout the city, that is alarmed and has cameras and calls the police when it detects sound of angle grinder.
Neither USA nor UK have tough punishment for theft. Theft is different than violent crime as that is most often caused by emotions/rage/etc. While theft is more calculated. It makes sense there is little consideration to punishment when committing the former but more when engaging in the latter.
Some people want to steal. Bikes are currently one of the easiest targets but if you make those difficult to steal they will move to another attractive thing like catalytic converters or purses until you lock everything. Aggressive policing and punishment wasn't tried yet in Western countries when it comes to theft. That would involve setting traps for thieves and taking the crime seriously instead of making naive calculation about the value of stolen items and ignoring long term cost and damage to social structure.
> Aggressive policing and punishment wasn't tried yet in Western countries when it comes to theft.
What is the basis for your certainty? We've done research on the subject, we know that certainty of punishment is a lot more effective than severity.
Noone thinks 'ow yeah, I am gonna do a year in jail', everyone thinks they will get away. I am not against setting decoy bikes that are actually traps, but thievs will learn to tell them apart. US police uses sting operations against hookers and drug dealers all the time, and there is no shortage of either.
> ignoring long term cost and damage to social structure
You could try that, but you cant just have a special calculation for one crime. Then we must equally apply it to corporate misbehaviour, like illegally selling customer data or manipulating the market.
I talked to police when I and my girlfriend were victims of a robbery. I have a few friends among lawyers (judges, attorneys and prosecutors). All of them say that the reason the police don't go after theft is that even if they catch them the courts are going to release them back or slap them on the wrist. Repeated thieves only go to jail if you collect series of cases and then they are back into it after half a year or whatever sentence they get.
The paper you linked doesn't mention aggressive, proactive policing. It wasn't tried anywhere in the Western world. It mentioned punishment comparison in UK, Sweden and US and is about general crime. All those countries have similar punishment and attitude to theft.
Meanwhile countries where they cut hands or has done so in recent past has very little theft.
I tend to agree it's more important to catch thieves than punish them harshly but the point is we are not doing either so I vote for people who at least acknowledge it's a problem.
Tbf, the danger of drunk cycling is significantly lower to third parties vs driving in a car. And you're unlikely to succeed if you're too drunk as well, as you still need to balance - which drunk people can't.
It's still illegal in most places however, so your point stands
Drunk cyclists can. Back in my wild years, on some occasions walking to the bike was the difficult part. Bikes are much better at self-stabilizing than legs. The main danger (outside of going too fast, if you happen to have the training) is losing track of traffic. This isn't much of a problem on deserted night-time streets, but can easily be overwhelming during the day. Don't ever consider the bike when planning for daytime drinking.
As for the law, it's good to have limits to drunk cycling, but it's important to have them tolerate a considerably higher BAC than those for driving.
The potential injuries from drunk biking is in a whole other league the the injuries from drunk driving. Most bike injuries can be patched up at you local clinic (or even your home; unless your injury involves a car; so safe bike infrastructure is essential in making drunk biking safe), whereas drunk driving can cause some pretty horrendous injuries, to you, or your victims. The two modes should not be compared.
Here is Denmark there is a BAC limit for cars, motorcycles, mopeds etc of 0.5
The limit for a bicycle is if you can cycle safely, and it is only a fixed fine. You can go to prison for doing it in the other cases (though you will typically not, for a first offence).
The other advantage is that you can walk home with your bicycle if you are too drunk to drive it. You don't have that option with a car.
In Munich I almost ran over a drunk bicycle guy because he suddenly swerved into my lane.
I am ok with people killing themselves but it's not OK do something stupid that makes another person kill you. An example would be jumping in front of a train to commit suicide. These things leave deep trauma in the people this happened to. I view drunk cycling in that category.
Cycling drunk is technically illegal, but often unenforced in the Netherlands. You should see the thousands of obviously 'drunk' people leaving festivals on bikes, under the eyes of the police.
You have to be careful about where you park you bike around drunk people. I locked my bike up in Leidseplein once, and when I came back, somebody had barfed on my bike seat!
achenet: The officer will direct you to the separate bike lanes for Ketamine and LSD.
ANother anecdote from The Netherlands: when we go out to drink we go by bike so everyone can drink! Worst case scenario: you bike there and walk back again. You can't take a car with you when you're walking.
Personally, while drunk, I lose the ability to walk straight before I lose the ability to bike.
When I've cycled to work and gone for drinks afterwards, I'll leave my bike at the office and pick it up the next day, using public transport to get there.
The good thing is, "too drunk to ride a bike" happens much earlier than "too drunk". And while with a car some push it and still drive drunk (sometimes with horrendous consequences), a bike has this safety mechanism where they simply cannot be ridden when drunk.
I am a practiced cyclist and an accomplished drinker, and I can tell you that I am able to operate a bicycle deeper into intoxication than I can reliably walk.
It's as if all bikes came with their own tamper proof drunk driver detector and drunk usage preventer: a built-in continuous driver balance testing system, even more reliable than a breathalyzer, and able to detect all kinds of other drugs too.
Drunk tricycle driving and bikes with training wheels: now those much more inherently dangerous problems!
Couldn't agree more. Not going to get into philosophical/cultural differences between life in your country and America but it cannot be ignored the gap between a cyclist's mentality and the right-to-road mentality of the average car driver, even in supposed bike friendly cities, in the US. This fundamental difference in thought is reinforced by infrastructure and the type and size of vehicles that are pervasive on American roads. Just had another white bike memorial erected on my route to work some 2 months ago that stamps out any idea of either being able to commute to work safely again myself or that this gap in thought could/is shrink/ing.
That said, I have seen and still see some questionable cyclist practices on these roads from type of bike, lane of travel, footwear (or gear in general), lack of helmet (or misfitting/unfastened helmet) and route choice though I understand, at least where I live now, there sometimes isn't a choice. In larger cities there was an unspoken agreement _most_ of the time between myself and vehicles in the road that we were "aware" of one another. I find sometimes cyclists being far too aggressive to assert that awareness on drivers here (or today?) where it could be an honest misconception that the person behind the wheel knows how to interact with a cyclist for any number of reasons.
Full disclosure; former bike messenger in Boston, Philly & Portland OR, long-time commuter when not riding for work.
Everyone is a cyclist and therefore drivers are very empathetic towards cyclists: a couple hours later or earlier they were the cyclist, and the cyclist was the driver.
This is a highly idealistic myth. Most drivers are not "cyclists a few hours earlier/later", and many definitely aren't empathetic. The split between bike lanes and car lanes, as well as the law favoring cyclists, should make that obvious. Cyclists even get away not showing their direction despite this being taught from early age.
It is very difficult to use the brakes and indicate a change in direction at the same time.
While cyclists should indicate, the nature of the vehicle does make it hard under some conditions.
Here's a question for you. If i am stopped at a red light on my bike in what is clearly a left turn lane, why do cars attempt to pull up in front of me anyhow?
Cant be bothered waiting for me to make the left so they just force themselves in front of me? is this because i didn't signal?
50% of my miles and 90% of my travel time is on a bike.
Signalling a change in direction should only be done with your left hand, per manuals.
Braking can be achieved with only the right hand (rear brake, typically).
Dismounting and signalling/braking is hard to do at once though. And you're right it should be obvious that a cyclist is turning left if they are in the left turn lane.
None of what you said has to do with the reality of the matter, nor does you trying to flip the script change things. Look past your own emotions instead of trying to low blow immediately.
Comment in question claims people are more empathetic because individuals seem to switch between biking and driving cars almost daily. This is not happening. Live a 30 minute drive away from work, most individuals would take the bike every weekend at best. Most individuals do in fact live that far from work. Furthermore, car usage continues to increase, and roads continue to be expanded as a result. You can say all you want, most individuals are not going to cycle after an 8 hour workday and spending at least an hour commuting.
>While cyclists should indicate, the nature of the vehicle
>why do cars attempt to pull up in front of me anyhow?
Way too focused on cyclist vs vehicle. There are plenty of roads where it isn't always obvious which way someone is going, no matter cyclist or vehicle. These are old roads, but they exist nonetheless. Vehicles are actively punished for not indicating, cyclists are not. Both are hazards for everyone else, themselves and pedestrians included. That's not exactly something that would instill empathy.
That should also make it obvious the inverse situation doesn't create empathy either. It's a two-way street and neither is particularly giving to the other. That has nothing to do with automobile vs cyclist vs pedestrian vs whatever, it has to do with.. who would've guessed, people being people.
Why do you think laws were made to accommodate cyclists in particular? Why do you think lanes are split? Why do you think many individuals have a particular distaste for sport cyclists, who go high speed through busy roads and expect everyone to adapt to them? It's not empathy, it's a lack of empathy, followed by individuals not wanting to get in trouble over petty little things, and a legal system not wanting to spend thousands of manhours covering he-said-she-said scenarios.
The comment in question is (I believe) referring specifically to how things are in the Netherlands, where my understanding is that long commutes are much less common than they are in the United States, and many more people cycle as well as drive.
Is it actually true that "[motor] vehicles are actively punished for not indicating, cyclists are not"? So far as I can tell, it's extremely rare for anyone to be punished for not indicating. (Which is probably the Right Thing; the police surely have better things to spend their time on than watching for drivers or cyclists who fail to indicate.)
Why should cyclists, who got the roads built in the first place, be driven from the roads by motorists?
Bicycles aren't the problem, the singular focus on cars in our societies is the real problem. Roads used to be shared between horses, carriages, bicycles, vendors, and pedestrians.
The car is a monotheistic religion, there can only be one god, the car, and you have to devote your whole life and society to it.
> Why should cyclists, who got the roads built in the first place, be driven from the roads by motorists?
This feels a bit like saying that the US shouldn't have abolished slavery since it was founded by slave owners.
> Roads used to be shared between horses, carriages, bicycles, vendors, and pedestrians.
Lead used to be in paint and gas. Doctors used to perform surgery without even washing their hands first. People used to use chamber pots instead of toilets. And roads used to be disgusting from being covered in horse manure.
> The car is a monotheistic religion, there can only be one god, the car, and you have to devote your whole life and society to it.
No, we just want different spaces to be used for different means of transportation, similarly to how you wouldn't want someone riding a motorcycle on the sidewalk.
> No, we just want different spaces to be used for different means of transportation, similarly to how you wouldn't want someone riding a motorcycle on the sidewalk.
So does every cyclist. Yet it's motorists that protest against that every time they'd have to sacrifice a lane.
Demand dynamically adjusts to supply. People have a distance they're willing to commute to work, and this distance is measured in minutes.
People also want to have as low rent/housing costs as possible, so they'll often want to move as far away from the city as possible.
e.g., I'll never move to a place where my commute to work is over 30 minutes.
If you add lanes, travel time decreases, so more people move further away. This increases demand, so that congestion quickly becomes just as bad as it is today.
This means there are never enough lanes. If you reduce the lanes, over the next years people will move closer to the city again, demand will decrease, and the congestion won't be any worse than it is today.
You can never have enough or too many lanes, all you can do is decide whether you want to subsidize people moving further away while making cars required for transportation, or if you do something against this, and reduce the lanes available to cars.
Considering this is a zero-sum game, if you reject replacing lanes with bike lanes, you reject bike lanes pretty much everywhere.
Isn't a current big problem that housing is way too expensive? If so, isn't it silly to do things that reduce the number of viable housing options for most people?
The issue of “housing is too expensive” is primarily because of zoning. Most of Germany has zoning only in new, in-development districts. Major parts of most cities are not zoned at all.
This allows development of mixed use, middle-density (think: 3-8 floors) buildings, which provide a lot of housing at far lower cost compared to high rises.
These mixed, often mostly walkable, neighborhoods are what can help provide living space. Single-family housing is something that just gets cities into debt, increases traffic, yet does not improve the housing situation at all.
I would argue that they are not the same thing. I find it easy to tell which direction a cyclist will go even when they don’t/can’t signal. I see it in their head movement, the orientation of the bike, etc. Especially when driving behind a cyclist.
When cars don’t signal, I find it harder to guess where they are going.
That's cool, but the stats continue to show wealth causes increase in driving and people continue to live pretty far away from work. Most people are not going to cycle after getting home from work or prior. The few Amsterdam anecdotes in this thread don't weight up against the masses driving 20+ minutes and the high traffic roads being expanded again.
Now add the many laws favorable towards cyclists and measurements taken to accommodate them. It's not empathy. It's saving one's own hide from causing a lot of harm, a sense of guilt and the potential lawsuit waiting to happen. There's no special empathy given to cyclists in particular, only universal respect towards any non-motorized vehicle and individuals (e.g. children, individuals with heavy groceries).
Your experience is dispelled the moment you take an hour cycling to and from work. That's pretty easy for anyone not on a SDE salary.
Amsterdam is a pretty shitty place to bike if you compare it to the rest of the Netherlands.
The point these posts are making is that you need dedicated infrastructure to get people to cycle. Roads need to be walkable as well. So NA's car centric infra is the cause. Not the cyclists.
Unfortunately our kids weren't allowed to cycle to school unaccompanied by an adult until they reached year 4 and had passed their cycling proficiency test (mid-way through that school year).
I've been cycling with my daughter to kindergarten for at least a year, she's fine with the cycling bit, it's the looking-out-for-other-vehicles bit that's not quite there yet :/ This obviously depends a lot on local road layouts, and unfortunately we have a junction more or less right outside the school and kindergarten that way too many car drivers come through at speed...
And my understanding is that this is a historically recent development, yes? That this bike friendliness comes from a conscious shift and a lot of hard work in the last few decades?
I saw a lecture a while back by the head of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, who spent some months in Amsterdam and talked about this. It was inspiring to think how much was possible here with relatively modest changes. Changes which seem even more possible with the pandemic, as a bunch of streets here got converted to low-traffic roads.
> That this bike friendliness comes from a conscious shift and a lot of hard work in the last few decades?
The infrastructure and safety comes from a conscious shift and a lot of hard work, roughly starting in the 1970s. But cycling used to be the predominant mode of personal transportation until well into the 1960s; the average Dutch person simply couldn't afford a car until then. There are films of throngs of bicyclists completely blocking the road for cars, purely by overwhelming numbers. There were campaign films "educating" bicyclists about "their proper place on the road".
Bicycle-safe infrastructure was as much about clearing the main road for motorists, as it was about making bicyclists safer, and relatively speaking, bicycles have dwindled in importance since the country started building bike-safe infrastructure; correlation, not causation.
So I'm a bit uncomfortable when people mythologize the infrastructural revolution of the 1970s. Yes, impressive work was done. But it happened within a specific cultural and economic context that doesn't exist anymore.
This is what is needed. Unlike coming upon a cyclist on a highway, in a blind curve, on a mountain road with a 45 mph speed limit. Where I live, there's no bike culture or infrastructure, and the rare cyclist in this setting strikes me as rather suicidal.
> Because everyone is a cyclist and there are cyclists everywhere, cyclists are equal participants in traffic and are treated with care and respect
Dutch cyclists are also more observant of the rules. In New York, cyclists regularly blow through red lights and cross walks going through wrong way and at high speed.
I can't say I've experienced that. But there are a lot of bicycles which you need to be aware of as a pedestrian to a much greater degree than many other places.
This kind of driver is the same that would accelerate towards you as you (legally) cross a road only to stop at a red light 50m behind you – a red light was clearly visible from where they were when they saw you. For them driving is just about their own emotion. The moment they see someone "who deserves it" their emotion takes over and their brain switches off.
People like that should have their driving license taken away, because they show that they cannot be trusted to operate a vehicle in a public setting.
Drivers go out of their way to pass me on a motorscooter, I guess because I remind them of a bicycle. My scooter accelerates from 0-60 before you can say "zero to sixty" and tops out at 80mph. Sometimes they're driving so dangerously that I slow down to let them pass both because they might hurt someone, and because I don't want somebody so crazy behind me.
I find it bizarre how much some drivers feel like they're imposed upon by other people who dare to be outside.
I was on an ebike doing 32km/h in a 30 zone and cars keep overtaking me
The entitlement of car drivers in unbelievable, they feel like they own the ourdoor space, park on sidewalk, and the only reason we havent paved every forest and ocean is their mercy
I keep wondering if this can be directly related to car advertising.
Most car ads always show the car as alone on the road or street, as a symbol of ultimate freedom ("own the road" often comes back as a catchphrase). Yet this can't be further from the actual reality of driving.
Maybe the cognitive dissonance is what drives (pun intended) driver entitlement and anger when challenged.
Just this morning I was walking down the street on a sidewalk and as I crossed in front of a driveway - having checked first - a car pulled out of the garage right up against my leg and stopped, and when I stepped away they started moving again to get close. The stuff people do in cars when they don't have right of way is absolutely deranged sometimes.
Yesterday I was at the four way stop in the parking lot next to the corner of the Costco building in Mountain View, after coming down the driveway from Rengstorff. As usual, many people were crossing the far side of that intersection as they left Costco, and of course I waited for them.
After I'd been there 30 seconds or so, a big SUV pulled up to the stop sign on my left. He was wanting to make a left turn toward Total Wine. Obviously, I had the right of way over him, and the pedestrians pushing their grocery carts out of Costco had the right of way over both of us.
After another 30 seconds, the SUV driver had had enough. He barreled through his left turn as shoppers were still crossing the driveway, barely missing one of them by a foot or two.
For some reason, driving a car causes a strong desire to move forward quickly in most people. Even for me, a person who hasn't owned a car in over a decade and always bikes or walks everywhere, whenever I get behind the wheel of a car, I get incredibly anxious when I'm stopped waiting for something, and I have to consciously tell myself it's OK if I wait for 30 seconds.
I have no idea what causes this, but I've noticed it in many others. Maybe because if you do wait a bit, some drivers behind you will get irritated and honk, flash their lights, tailgate, and pass you via some dangerous maneuver? That might be enough to associate waiting with anxiety for people who'd normally be ok with waiting.
You could be on something, as I must tell my wife all the time that she should focus on what's in front of her, not on what is behind her. She'd do silly things otherwise, like speed if she thinks the driver behind is too close, or miss turns to not bother... why??? For me it's the other way around - I was once stopped by a police barrage because a patrol followed me half the town with their lights on to tell me a stoplight was broken and I ignored them (didn't look back once)
Please try more actively not to be a bad driver and don't encourage others to be bad drivers too. You should always be aware of what's going on behind you. It could be the police or it could be an ambulance that you haven't heard because of the radio, it could be a tailgating driver ready to smash you into pieces unless you drive extremely defensively until they leave the road, it could be someone in an emergency, a truck with malfunctioning brakes hurling down the street and many more.
The road is a place when generally incompetent people are forced to operate heavy machinery and no one is really safe there, even inside a car.
It seems like people get irrationally anxious and angry having to wait behind people moving slower in general. On paths that cyclists share with pedestrians, cyclists are usually even more angry and aggressive with pedestrians than drivers are with cyclists (pedestrians are expected to move out of the way and often get yelled at if they don't). There seems to be this almost atavistic response people have to something in front of them impeding there movement.
A lot of people have no idea of the destructive power of the three ton death machine they are in command of. For that reason I think it should be mandatory to volunteer in a crash recovery ward at a hospital for 100 hours before getting a drivers license.
I’ve had a few bike accidents (usually me vs a trash can that suddenly rolled onto the bike lane, or similar obstructions of the road) where I had to go to the ER.
I obviously had to wait a few hours, because while I may have a concussion and broken some bones, there are people with far worse injuries in the ER.
One time I had to wait 12 hours because a major car accident had happened, and I saw them move the victims of that into the ER.
I was instantly reminded of the difference in danger, and very glad that my injuries happened with a 20 kg vehicle at 20 km/h, and not a 2000 kg vehicle at 100 km/h.
Which is why we should force them to see the reality of what happens when people do. And they'll talk to those people who are severely injured, who will say "it was never going to happen to me either".
I'd bet the number of licensed drivers would drop, people wouldn't want a license after seeing the harsh reality.
A lot of people buy these three ton machines to feel "safe". In turn they don't feel the need to protect others from that machine. In my LA neighborhood I saw a lot of moms barreling through the neighborhood in their big SUVs with their kids while talking on the phone or texting. I have had several occasions where I had to jump out of the way to not getting run over. I don't think the drivers even noticed me.
when I had my motorcycle most near misses were also with SUV drivers not paying attention when changing lanes. The more expensive the SUV the more dangerous.
And the worst thing is: when they do run someone over the DA won't prosecute because they want to be re-elected, and when it does end up in criminal court the jury won't convict because they know it might have easily been them.
How do you square the "three ton death machine" with the whole "recreationally gallivanting across Africa in a Jeep and blogging about it for internet points" thing? Your words say a car usage should be minimized. Your actions say another thing. It comes across a lot like taking your private jet to a climate summit. I'm genuinely curious how you reconcile this apparent conflict.
1. The person you're responding to is clearly aware of the responsibility required when driving a large car (their comment says this explicitly);
2. An outbacking trip through Africa is not meaningfully comparable to daily automotive commuting. It's probably safe to assume that the GP practiced outsized caution, given the logistical and legal complexity of such a trip.
For humans, a lot of the "dumb" stuff is rooted in our evolutionary history as primates, for whom dominance hierarchies are a big part of their evolutionary environment.
For our nearest ancestors, chimps, being a dominant male has a lot of value in terms of reproductive success. So it's not shock to me that humans males are prone to the same sort of dominance assertion and performance of being highly placed that chimps are. I read this sort of behavior as the driver asserting his "superiority", putting "lesser" people in "their place".
If you're interested, de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics" was a real eye-opener for me. There was a big chunk of human behavior that went from "what is wrong with him" to "ah, ok, primates gonna prime".
When cars were first introduced to US streets there were pedestrian clubs who wanted them regulated as much as possible. Sure, one could argue this was because it wasn't that common to own a car back then and therefore those who didn't liked to "stick it" to those who did.
However I think it is hard (and unwise) to ignore the role which (car) culture has played in this. Before car culture streets were a thing one shared with pedestrians, horses, carriages and cars. If you change that culture and priorize other things in your public spending for a decade you can end up somewhere entirely else [queue pictures of Amsterdam in the 70s vs today]. This influences culture and therefore the way motorists will treat cyclists.
I am not saying that the nature-side of the nature vs. nurture debate isn't existing. It is quite clear that both sides exist from what we can observe. Thr nature side is much harder and riskier to change in our favour than the culture side.
The way it worked in the Netherlands is a good example. If your bicycle infrastructure is good enough, more people will bicycle. If more people bicycle, more motorists bicycle. This means more motorists understand what it feels like as someone cycling. This in turn means there is less conflict for both sides.
I live next to a street which I cross daily (I am legally allowed to cross here in Germany, as the next pedestrian crossing is far enough away).
When I cross I make sure nobody has to worry about hitting the brake (provided they go with roughly the same speed they did before).
Yet it happenstwice a week that some lunatic thinks "hey the street is for cars" and starts speeding towards me (definitely also over the speed limit) just to get to a stop at the red light down the road.
This article is so insane, it just has to be some sort of outrage-bait (that actually worked for me, although my blood typically has a pretty high boiling point).
In this case the cyclist is the primary butt of the joke, not the driver. But the grandparent’s description of the article as “pure incitement to violence” is ludicrous hysteria.
"A Modest Proposal" is meant to make the rich think twice about their treatment of the poor. Do you think the Free Beacon wants its readers to feel worse about rolling coal and abusing cyclists?
Yea. I lived in Brooklyn, NY for many years, and definitely experienced aggressive driving there, too. Often times, the offenders would complain that the bike lanes were new and bicyclists were guilty of gentrifying the neighborhood. Now I live in Virginia, and it's usually huge trucks or SUV's with Trump stickers that tend to be the most aggressive.
Anti-cycling sentiment seems to be one area where the "both sides" argument has at least a hint of truth to it.
Rolling coal on cyclists, and proudly posting videos of it on youtube, and plowing trucks through the bicyclists, and writing articles portraying the perpetrators as heroes, is a hell of a lot worse than the common everyday "aggression" that American cyclists experience.
They're absolutely not equivalent.
Can you link to hundreds videos of left wingers with Biden bumper stickers rolling coal on anti-environmentalists, smashing their scooters and pickup trucks with Priuses, Biden supporters murdering right wing protesters with their cars just like a Nazi Trump supporter murdered Heather Heyer, and articles glorifying those attackers as left wing "heroes" and "man of the year"?
Or are you just trying to make another tired and dishonest false equivalence to justify and carry the water for right wing violence and aggression that is no way reflected on "both sides"?
And rolling coal is only a drop in the bucket of the mainstream right wing violence that's happening today. I can't recall anyone on the left wing rioting and breaking into the capitol, hanging a noose to murder the vice president, proudly marching and waving Confederate flags and flagpoles with spear tips, vandalizing and defecating through the halls of the Capitol, or shooting a nail gun at FBI agents as revenge for Mar-a-Lago then getting killed in a shootout with automatic weapons by the FBI. (Or do you agree with Trump that was a false flag operation? What's your evidence?)
Did I simply miss all those news stories about left wingers rolling coal and executing insurrections and attacking the FBI, just because of the left-wing media bubble I live in, and if so, can you please provide a link to them to prove that "you still see plenty of it on the left"?
Or are you just ignoring the whole point and moving the goalposts a few football field lengths to make a false equivalence?
Just as a note, the County and City have a somewhat antagonistic relationship, although County residents probably make up a decent number of drivers within City Limits.
Yes, that was my thinking. A lot of urban core drivers come in from the suburbs. I'd be willing to bet that people from outside the city are behind a disproportionate share of aggressive incidents.
Yeah, as a resident I doubt that. We have a pretty aggressive driving culture and I don't think we can blame it on Trumpers driving in from the Burbs to cause trouble.
> The right wing in the US is so pathologically sociopathic that they actually glorify assholes for rolling coal on bicyclists as heroes, and think it's hilariously funny.
Or, you know, perhaps the articles that make money based off of clickbaiting people with outrageous premises that make people mad are not indicative of the vast majority of people. I find that when I talk to people, you know face to face in person, we usually agree on 90% of topics regardless of which side of the aisle you fall on.
The internet and social media thrives on labeling your in-group as the heroes and your out-group as racist, homophobic bigots (left and right). I really hate this mentality because it paints a broad stroke on a whole lot of people that are not crazy and holding radical ideas.
I would hope on HN I could expect the average commenter to be able to realize this and recognize that there's a lot more commonality than social media and news media would like us to believe. And that the average HN commenter wouldn't resort to automatically pointing a finger at their out-group and casting all social woes and responsibility on them. There are jerks on both sides of the aisle. There are great people on both sides of the aisle.
And just as an example, here's Chris Cuomo bullying a bicyclist[0]. I'm sure there are others on the left like this as well, but I'm not going to automatically assume that somebody on the left hate or loves bicyclists. I don't know that because we're all individuals and make our own decisions at the end of the day.
> People like that should have their driving license taken away
Cyclists shouldn't even be allowed on the road without a license. It's unbelievable the amount of crap I have to deal with on a daily basis because of people on bikes and motorcycles. Cyclists going the wrong way and against traffic, on the side walk, blowing past pedestrians at high speed even on pedestrian crossings, running red lights, failing to signal turns, travelling at obnoxiously slow speed, a whole group of them travelling side by side talking while blocking half a dozen vehicles behind them, travelling in between the traffic lanes, weaving through traffic, colliding and destroying car side mirrors even stationary parked cars, driving extremely aggressively in general, doing wheelies near me... It goes on and on, and any number of these behaviors can combine into something new. Every day cyclists invent new stupid shit for me to deal with. It takes serious effort not to accidentally kill someone on a bike.
According to a study by the ADAC (German auto club), cyclists have a better understanding of the StVO (German traffic regulations) than motorists, on average.
> In fact, a car coming too close and knocking you off your bike is not a common cause of injury
Interesting question. I just googled for statistics and found some for German cities. In Berlin (2021), the majority (~50%) of accidents involving bicyclists in which the bicyclist was not at fault were caused by cars turning. But "insufficient distance" was still at 5%.
Both of my hits while riding a bike have been because of cars turning.
For one, the driver was turning right and only looked left -- I was still in front of him, and he never looked ahead; T-boned!
For the other, I pull up to a stoplight alongside a few cars, against the curb. There is only one lane for left/right/straight. No one had on turn signals. Light turns green, so myself and the first car go straight. Second car apparently wanted to turn right without signaling, and once again does not look to the right (looking left, maybe?). Cuts me off in their turn and I hit their right side door.
So yeah, can definitely confirm that people do not look when they are turning.
As a former bicyclist, I try to be extra mindful of bicyclists when driving. One of the right turns on a common route I take is on a downhill slope, and I've noticed cyclists passing me on the right even when I already had my turn signal on for several seconds.
I hate to use the common refrain, but it really seems to me that a higher percentage of bicyclists drive like maniacs. What purpose, exactly, does driving without a light at night serve? Especially when combined with barreling through a red light into a multi-lane traffic circle? And, of course, sidewalks are meant to be driven on — wouldn't want to lose your bicyclist card for ever pushing your bike. Leading to the ever popular driving across a crosswalk (I'm not so sure who's at fault if I were to hit a bicyclist on a crosswalk, and I'd rather not find out).
Granted, due to the lower weight of bicycles, accidents are considerably less deadly, but there is still a considerable injury risk to me as a pedestrian, and as an automobilist, I'd rather not have an accident on my conscience, whether I'd be legally at fault or not.
> Leading to the ever popular driving across a crosswalk (I'm not so sure who's at fault if I were to hit a bicyclist on a crosswalk, and I'd rather not find out).
It's you. If someone had left a dumpster in the cross walk it's also you. If you hit a cyclist without any lights in the dark, it's you.
You're in charge of a vehicle, unless someone jumps out at you, it's on you not to drive it into things.
> One of the right turns on a common route I take is on a downhill slope, and I've noticed cyclists passing me on the right even when I already had my turn signal on for several seconds.
So you expect to get unlawful right of way because your vehicle is big and dangerous. Allow me to not share your view about who's a maniac.
On a separate lane, no matter how early the signal is set? That would seem like an invitation to power abuse considering how much time queuing cars spend in that not-quite-standing state.
The situation I meant was for a bicycle passing in the gap between the right hand lane and the curb, not on a separate bicycle lane.
> That would seem like an invitation to power abuse
As in, cars could set their turn signals all the time? Pretty sure that would be against the law, and it would probably be easier to achieve that effect by hogging the right side of the lane (which is also against the law, except when combined with setting the signals and preceding a right turn).
Here in Germany filtering through the gap isn't allowed at all when the car is moving, turn indicators or not. Doesn't keep drivers from getting upset when it happens while they are standing (then it's permitted). And it's certainly allowed on a separate lane, just like pedestrians on the sidewalk aren't required to walk slower than the traffic-stricken cars to their left.
(when the lane is just painted and the right turn is unobstructed otherwise, I do like to change lanes to behind a right-indicating car: so much better flow than stopping them, while almost stopping myself to be prepared for a forced turn - one of the many reasons I prefer painted lanes)
That's probably a severity thing. Turning collisions will almost always destroy the bike, injure the rider, and result in a police report. Sideswipe accidents will cause a minor bike crash, maybe a bit of damage and some cuts and scrapes, and the cyclist goes about his day, pissed off, but with no official report.
A popular topic in my father's complaints during family trips was that you have to watch out for cyclists when you turn because some, well, will try to race you to the intersection.
I haven't seen many do that, but I still look over my shoulder when I turn.
Looking sideways from a bicycle is not something you do for fun, it's a way to see what drivers are up to. Especially when they drive up beside you it's pretty hard to know what they will do.
Let's be honest: given the opportunity (multiple lanes, etc.), the car would likely overtake a slow car as well, and stop at a red light right after that. I see that all the time (albeit I'm in Japan, not in the US)
Edit: point being, for some reason, some drivers really like to reach red light as quickly as they can, and that's not necessarily related to bikes.
I think safely overtaking a slow car before a red light makes sense, if you make the reasonable assumption that 3 minutes in the future they will also be traveling slower than you intend to go.
Very few of the people who do this are thinking that far ahead, though. Most of them are clearly only thinking about the gap between them and the next car – you can tell from how often they make high risk passes only to immediately brake hard for a turn or off-ramp.
Exactly. It's always better to pass slow vehicles as soon as it is safe to do so, red light or not. That they managed to catch up because of a red light is irrelevant. They're still behind me and no longer blocking my advance.
I just want as much distance as possible between other drivers. Less stuff to deal with.
I would imagine it happens a lot more than hospital visits would let on. Being nudged into the curb - or getting spooked by a too-close car and hitting it yourself - would likely result in just scrapes and bruises, especially if you're wearing a helmet. But it's terrifying.
It's controversial because it is often more dangerous to drive on a bicycle lane, at least outside the Netherlands with its well designed bicycle lanes. There is a higher risk that car drivers will not see you when turning right at a crossing etc. In addition, you are exposed to car drivers or passengers who open the door without looking. On the road, with a safe distance to the right, you are annoying to cars but far more visible. For this reason, many bicycle enthusiasts have recommended people to ride on the road if there is no mandatory and well maintained bicycle lane.
At least that was the situation a few years ago when bicycle lanes were just narrow lanes directly next to the road or the sidewalk. As I wrote, it can work if done correctly (see the Netherlands). Perhaps the road planners and drivers have learned "their" lesson in the meantime. I say that as a car driver.
>Hans Monderman (19 November 1945 – 7 January 2008) was a Dutch road traffic engineer and innovator. He was recognised for radically challenging the criteria used to evaluate engineering solutions for street design. His work compelled transportation planners and highway engineers to look afresh at the way people and technology relate to each other.
>de Kaden shared space.wmv: Shared space traffic intersection in Drachten, The Netherlands. Traffic signals removed in 2002. The junction handles around 17,000 vehicles per day. One of many projects led by the late Hans Monderman.
>Shared space intersection, Drachten - The Netherlands
3,824 views Apr 29, 2009 Drachten, Drift/De Kaden, shared-space-intersection. From the centre of expertise on bicycle policy: http://www.bicyclecouncil.org. The intersection Drift and De Kaden is an example of shared space in the purest sense. Despite a quite high traffic volume hardly any measures have been taken to regulate traffic.
>Unbelievably busy bicycle crossing in Amsterdam:
The Netherlands, Amsterdam, May 8, 2018 Bicycle and car traffic at the crossing Korte Prinsengracht and Haarlemmerstraat.
>Hans Monderman: Rethinking the design of streets and public space.
>An Urban Design London and Urban Design Group Lecture
Hans Monderman has been one of the most significant influences on the current debate about the design of streets and spaces in the UK. A traffic engineer and road safety specialist from Northern Holland, he is celebrated as the pioneer of shared space as a means to influence speed and driver behaviour.
Monderman has been the inspiration behind scores of towns and villages which work without road markings, traffic signs, signals, kerbs, barriers and bollards. ‘Most engineers, when faced with a problem, try to add something,’ he says. ‘My instinct has always been to take something away.’
Following a short introduction by Rob Cowan, Hans explains his approach, work and experiences.
Copyright: Esther Kurland. Director. Urban Design London
Bicycle lanes in many cities are close to unusable.
For example:
- they are right next to parked cars and you can't ride on them without constant fear of getting doored
- they abruptly stop and there is no obvious place where to continue riding
- cars park on the bicycle lanes
- bicycle lanes go right next to crowded bus stops and there are so many people that it's impossible to ride
- crossings are designed in such a way that you need to wait for three (!) traffic lights to cross a single road, leading to a waiting time of at least 3 minutes
There are only a handful of roads with usable bicycle lanes in my city. And guess what: In places where bicycle lanes are usable, people use them. Nobody rides a bicycle on the road if there is a usable alternative.
- if you want to turn across the road, you have to merge onto the road which can be dangerous and awkward, so it's better to be on the road for longer before you want to turn than you might expect.
- cycle lanes are often too narrow (if just painted onto an existing road), so push you closer to the curb than is really safe. i often feel like the best position would be on the edge of the cycle lane, but then cars will not overtake properly
- ungraded cycle lanes tend to fill up with the dirt and detritus that's flung off the road by vehicles if they're not cleaned regularly enough (this is especially a problem if there are bollards or other street furniture that is supposed to separate the bike lane from the road, as it makes them harder to clean)
- cars are more likely to cut you off when turning across a cycle lane, than if they are forced to overtake properly
most cyclists I've talked to here think the kind of cycle lanes we have are worse than useless
Pedestrians use much less space than cyclists and move slower, they typically also move away when they hear a car and most of them on such roads go in direction opposite to traffic flow so they see when a car approaches. Bicycles go in the same direction as traffic, sometimes swerve and go in small zigzag pattern, they don't have mirrors, don't look back and bicyclists are many times already tired from bicycling, they are also in more hurry than pedestrians (hurrying pedestrians also more often have accidents). In places where there are no sidewalks typically there are almost no pedestrians.
many cyclist don't understand this because they are bad drivers
the point of passing a bike on the road is to avoid the danger you as a driver pose for the bike in the case of an unexpected event.
like if the biker falls.
clearing up the way as fast as possible is safer for both.
Doesn't matter who's faster in the end, if that was the purpose, it would suffice for drivers to not respect traffic laws, like many bikers do, for the exact purpose of arriving to the destination sooner.
Of course you are faster if your parking technique involves blocking the road for pedestrian, especially hadicapped people, like this
(real pictures in Milan one of the cities where bikes are more popular in Italy and they have become a problem for everyone else)
the point is also that bikers should be in charge of their own safety, if a road is very narrow they are voluntarily endangering themselves for no reason, no other road user should be responsible for your safety more than you!
that also apply to motorbikes, mopeds, scooters etc
which are harder to drive because they rely on the gyroscope effect and only.have two wheels, they do not stand in case of sudden stop, the user can only fall or be shoot forward with grave consequences.
so they should care for their life more than a driver that is protected by the car case.
I wish I could show you the suicidal moves tourists make in my city (Rome) while riding electric scooters, two people, while the regulation says only one person can ride them, in the middle of high speed roads, with no knowledge of how the traffic works in a city they do not know, like it's OK to be idiots trying to die (and possibly ruin the life of someone else who happens to cross their path on a motor vehicle)
Not saying people shouldn't use alternatives means of transport, I do.not drive often anymore, I walk
As a pedestrian bikes are much more disruptive than cars for me, even though I'd like to ban cars from every city center in Italy.
> 40% of non-cyclists in London say the danger of cycling is a significant factor in their decision not to cycle.
people make a lot of excuses when confronted with something that they do not want to do.
if they asked them why they do not exercise they would say that they have no time due to work or that the water of the pool is too cold, but the real reason is that they prefer the couch with Netflix.
> the point is also that bikers should be in charge of their own safety, if a road is very narrow they are voluntarily endangering themselves for no reason
They really aren't endangering themselves, the city planners are endangering them.
In the Netherlands if there is a street or junction with too many accidents they consider it a design failure and redraw the whole thing, often to slow down cars, separate cyclists and to make cyclists more visible.
> people make a lot of excuses when confronted with something that they do not want to do.
So why do bikes outnumber people in the Netherlands but not in London? Why don't the Dutch make up excuses for not wanting to exercise.
Maybe exercise is actually enjoyable and healthy and the little in London would actually like to do it safely?
if a driver has to 'squeeze past', they are a bad driver.
if a driver is driving so close that they couldn't react to a cyclist falling, they are a bad driver.
You should drive within safe limits. If you cannot brake in the distance between you and the car in front, you are _too close_. If you squeeze to overtake, you are too close. Potholes exist. Wind exists. In the UK, the (edit) guidance is that you should pass a cyclist with as much a gap as you would pass a car (1m). The suggestion is 1.5m at 30mph (~50kmh). In other words, you should basically be in the other lane, as you would be if overtaking a car.
YES, driving slowly can cause accidents as drivers are impatient, but in most roads, waiting 10s for a clear passing spot isnt going to drastically change your journey time
...and if more people cycle, that means less people are in vehicles, so you have _more_ space on the road and less congestion. cars are very space-inefficient
It used to be like that around 2000s, things have vastly improved here though.
Have you ever tried Barcelona or New York or Paris or Krakow or Milan or, god forbid it, Naples?
Prejudices are fun, but usually they are grossly incorrect.
Also as I've said, I drive very little (less than 2.000km/year) and cyclists in Rome are still from Rome. they are not Martians so their mentality must be the same of everybody else don't you think?
if romans are bad drivers, isn't it safe to assume they are also bad cyclists?
I haven't driven in Rome, but I've tried the North of Italy, in Aoste. I'm from Paris and drive / ride my motorbike here quite often [0].
The only time in my life when I felt people were out to get me was in Italy. They drove like absolute maniacs. And I was on a big motorbike, not a bicycle going at 10 kmph. The road was wide, too (outside a city), with very light traffic, but for some reason they really couldn't be bothered to move over to the other lane when overtaking. Weren't going particularly faster, either.
---
[0] I'm not saying Paris is great, mind. I'd even say that in the last few years it has deteriorated a lot: whenever a light turns red, at least one person is guaranteed to run it.
> Cars must leave at least 1.5 metres room when passing bicycles - while revised guidance also says "it can be safer" for cyclists to ride two abreast.
Yeah. and it's usually much more than that, because people know that bikers can't go straight and compensate for that.
But cyclists will always complain, because they don't talk about reality. they talk about their perceptions because they are scared and need to blame someone.
Cyclist also make the worst drivers I know, because they really can't stop thinking they are the victims.
> if a driver has to 'squeeze past', they are a bad driver
if they do not kill you, they are not.
or maybe if you are scared of other road users and need a "safe space" you aren't a good road user.
just maybe
> if a driver is driving so close that they couldn't react to a cyclist falling, they are a bad
welcome to the reality.
I'm not driving too close to you, you are zig-zaging in the middle of the street and you wear noise canceling headphones and no rearview mirror and no stop signal when you brake.
Thanks, but no thanks, I'm passing you, I don't trust your abilities, sorry.
let's not pretend that the majority of cyclists are Tour de France participants, they are usually terrible.
The good ones do not complain and they are those passing you left and right because are very confident and know what they are doing.
I'm also simply trying to not be responsible of your injuries if you injure yourself.
By the law I have to stop and check on you and stay there until.an ambulance or the police arrives. It usually takes hours.
I ride daily through my country's largest city. I'm not scared. I don't need a 'safe space' (or your desire to start a culture war, as your provocative wording imples). I don't jump red lights. I pull over if the road is busy and fast and wave drivers to overtake if possible. I'm simply asking that, given we share the road, people should drive with some damn courtesy rather than entitlement?
Most people think they are good drivers and its "the others" that are bad, regularly driving and behaving in a way that leaves little to no contingency. You can't control the environment. You can't control other road users. So if you are 'squeezing' then you are reducing your contingency, making it more dangerous for you and everyone else, and leaving yourself much more susceptible to negative events. So yes, a bad driver.
> Most people think they are good drivers and its "the others"
Most cyclists think they can ride a bike and it's the cars.
How is that different?
The main issue is don't harm.other road users, you don't do that?
Fine with me
I've never been in an accident that was my fault in my career as a driver, than now spans 3 decades.
The only accidents I've been were:
- a bike hit me laterally because the rider was going too fast on a wet road, panicked and hit the front brake. He almost killed himself and ruined my day.
- a moped took a turn too fast and hit me straight on the drivers door. When the father of the rider arrived he apologized saying his son "is a bloody idiot" (my adaptation of his Italian words, which are probably NSFW)
- I stopped at a stop sign and two teens on a motorbike hit me on the back because they were running too close to me. They also attacked me for braking, I showed them the stop sign, I threatened to call the police, they calmed down and gave me some money asking me to not make it official or their parent would be furoious at them. it wasn't their first time.
people are people, people make mistakes, people who think cars are dangerous for bikes usually aren't aware how shitty as cyclists they are, I'm sure they are bad drivers too.
Riding is dangerous, do it at your own risk, but nobody is really trying to kill you, because you are not that important.
Be careful and you'll live.
Wanna be safe on a bike?
Don't use it! Walk!
have you noticed that in motor sports at 300km/h nobody dies while every year in professional bike competitions someone dies or injure himself badly?
> Most cyclists think they can ride a bike and it's the cars.
The consequences of riding a bike badly are much lower. 10kg bike vs 1500kg car? ~14mph cyclist vs ~30mph+ car?
> I've never been in an accident that was my fault in my career as a driver, than now spans 3 decades.
That doesn't say _anything_ about whether your driving caused an adverse reaction from other road users. Merely that there was nothing severe enough to legally mark you as 'at fault'.
> people are people, people make mistakes, people who think cars are dangerous for bikes usually aren't aware how shitty as cyclists they are, I'm sure they are bad drivers too.
Cars _are_ dangerous. Cars cut across cyclists path (hence why the UK highway code received clarification/updates this year). Cars pass without enough space and clip cyclists (which you just seem to completely ignore and think it's "safe enough" and "the bloody safe-space demanding cyclists' fault").
> Riding is dangerous, do it at your own risk, but nobody is really trying to kill you, because you are not that important.
Riding, in general, isn't dangerous. For the average cyclist who is using it for commuting, and _maybe_ getting up to ~20kmh? Other than slick road surfaces from spilled oil or deep rain puddles or ice, there's not much that would cause random danger.
> have you noticed that in motor sports at 300km/h nobody dies while every year in professional bike competitions someone dies or injure himself badly? Because bikes are dangerous.
Road racing, where the racers are travelling in bunches of 40 cyclists at average speeds of 30mph, deliberately taking risks to try to win, is _nothing at all_ like typical road use for a commuting cyclist. You seem determined to strawman cyclists, and think that cyclists should just accept dangerous roads. You seem utterly unwilling to accept that car drivers can be a significant danger.
I accept that there can be bad cyclists. I shake my head if I see one jump a traffic light. How much of your perception of cyclists is just because you _expect_ car drivers to be bad, and whatever way they behave is just 'typical' so doesnt stand out to you...but when you see a cyclist it's obviously different, so much more memorable? In the UK there were more than 150,000 road traffic accidents in 2019. In Italy, around 190,000. That suggests to me there is a lot of bad driving.
My general position is that most road users (not just cars) are incredibly entitled and so we should figure out ways (such as the Netherlands' road design) that make everyone's life better, rather than just accepting things are shit and saying "suck it up and find a safe space".
I find it kind of funny that your stance is basically "It's never my fault". Try to self reflect at least a little when you're attempting to make a point.
> let's not pretend that the majority of cyclists are Tour de France participants, they are usually terrible.
Let's not pretend that the majority of drivers are Formula 1 participants, they are usually terrible.
Your implication is that cyclists who don’t want to be close-passed are wimps who shouldn’t be on the road. You used the term “safe space”, which is usually pejorative. My point is that those cyclists are braver than the drivers who wouldn’t be on the road without a protective, climate-controlled bubble (their vehicle).
edit: and to follow on from your significant edits/addendums
>> if a driver is driving so close that they couldn't react to a cyclist falling, they are a bad
> welcome to the reality.
So you are admitting that they are bad drivers, and thats just reality? Ok. I'm saying we should face reality and give ourselves space to fuck up with less consequence.
Again, you seem very confident in your _own_ abilities. I don't know them. I just know that very few drivers ever consider _themselves_ to be at fault. Overconfidence.
I am comfortable weaving in and out of busy traffic. I can hold 20mph+ comfortably. I ride both for commuting and recreation, and have done 40mph+ on my bike. That doesn't stop me being able to see that other drivers are bad, and even if I know what I'm doing, can hope for society to be better.
You're the kind of driver who makes me want to kick cars off of roads in densely populated area. What a ridiculous notion that it's the soft participants in traffic that need to heed the hard ones!
> You're the kind of driver who makes me want to kick cars off of road
I'm also the kind of driver that when you trip from your bike because you are on death on wheels vehicle, stops and helps you
And when you burn. ared light, brakes
and when you miscalculate a turn and go wide, leaves you room, because I an actually looking around me when I drive, you aren't, because you don't care.
maybe I should stop doing all that, I guess a couple of weeks with a broken leg teach a lot of lessons to people like you.
We don't hand out medals to normal people, but incarcinate the ones "who want to teach you a lesson". What you just described is what normal people do on the road. There is a lot of research on this and cyclists are not any different than other road users.
if you die riding something that runs on two minuscule strips of rubber that requires movement to stay in equilibrium and has no protection whatsoever for the rider, that usually don't even protect themselves because "who cares", why should be other people's fault?
As a community, we decided bikes can use the road like they used to before cars. You are responsible for driving your vehicle around them responsibly. At no poiny have you considered thst the risk as actually the car, you think the lack of a car is the risk. If everyone were on foot or bicycles there would be no issue, but that's not reality so when we take our cars into the city we have to accept that we brought the danger into the city.
> the point of passing a bike on the road is to avoid the danger you as a driver pose for the bike in the case of an unexpected event.
> like if the biker falls.
In this scenario the driver is not leaving sufficient space ahead of them, given road conditions. There should always be enough space for the driver to react & bring their vehicle to a stop safely--if not then the driver is not driving safely.
There is nothing wrong with overtaking at a sensible speed and at a sensible distance. "car squeezes past you at high speed" means that the driver is failing on both accounts.
If you wanted to keep cyclists safe, you would just stay behind them at a safe distance until a safe passing moment appears, just like you must do for cars. It sounds to me like you aren't keeping a safe distance and you are percieving the risk you are putting on others. At a safe distance, the problem you describe is not an issue.
When I am near cyclist or motorbikes there is a lot of ways I can not put them in danger, but the biggest ones are being attentive and keeping safe distances when folllwing or passing. This gives everyone space and time to react to any issues. Simple stuff.
Cyclists are doing the best with an infrastructure built in favour of cars, if they could be riding on a separated bike path out of your way they would definitely prefer that.
> If you wanted to keep cyclists safe, you would just stay behind them
if they wanted to be safe, they wouldn't go when cars are allowed to go 90km/h, side by side.
if you are suicidal, I don't wanna be part of your plan.
> Cyclists are doing the best with an infrastructure built in favour of cars,
that's so boring that is gives me nausea
Americans don't understand that they are not the center of the world.
Most of the bikes accidents in.my country happen far away from cities.
Most of those roads are the same that 200 years ago were used only by mules and cows
people didn't complain at the time when they used them with bikes, but complain now that bikes are 100x times better and roads are 100x times easier and safer.
the only "new" infrastructure have been highways in the 60s of the 1900
Viale Trastevere is kinda new in Rome, it was made by Mussolini in the late 1920s
that's the "infrastructure" you're talking about.
It just happens that now the main users of roads are cars, get over it, they won and will keep being the most used vehicle's form factor even after the electric transition.
We might agree on one thing, ridin on high speed roads outside of the city is pretty crazy. But I would still say it's my responsibility to not kill the cyclist and not their responsibility, again it's my car, I am in control of it, it's on me to not hit stuff with it.
> clearing up the way as fast as possible is safer for both.
No. Speed kills, especially in the form of massive objects like a car. The car should slow and stay behind the cyclist until it is safe to overtake with adequate margin.
No - as someone who has cycled extensively in London, it is very obviously not the case that drivers are squeezing past cyclists out of a desire to keep them safe. It’s a pretty laughable idea.
The vast majority of drivers are actually totally fine and courteous on the road. But when a moderate cycle can take you past literally hundreds of cars, even a tiny percentage of discourteous drivers can make the whole experience of cycling extremely unpleasant.
they are not tying to save you, they are trying to save themselves from hitting you because the cars behind don't see the bike and assume you are going slowly just because and road rage is the most dangerous thing while driving.
please understand than bikers don't make a good judge, because they are biased to think everyone is trying to kill them because everyone hates how free and both environmentally and physically better they are than everyone else.
this thread started with someone claiming that bikes are "healthy, less noisy, creates vastly less pollution, less dangerous to pedastrians"
which are only claims, not facts.
the fact that I sometimes drive for 30kms with a car and walk the rest of the times, doesn't make me less healthy or more polluting,it's just propaganda fueled by self righteousness which doesn't help the matter at hands: why bikers love to take on cars, while, like it or not, cars are still the main users of roads because the astonishing amount of taxes road users have to pay, pay for those roads and their maintenance.
I hate cars in walkable cities, but I understand that walking is better for me, I don't blame people driving, I just avoid them.
I would like to avoid bikes too, but they use the pavement I'm walking on 'because roads aren't safe', like their right to defend their safety overrides my right to not be bothered where only pedestrian should walk.
I don't feel safe walking in the middle of the street, even though no law here prohibits it, I simply don't do it.
If a road is too dangerous to walk, I change directions.
There'll be a day when all of this won't b necessary, in the meantime, while some scientist invents the "no danger machine" everyone risk their life by simply living.
House accidents cause more death than accidents between bikes and cars in my Country, heck, they cause 4x more deaths than car accidents!, so bikes are still much safer than staying home anyway, enjoy the biking and stop complaining.
> I would like to avoid bikes too, but they use the pavement I'm walking on 'because roads aren't safe', like their right to defend their safety overrides my right to not be bothered where only pedestrian should walk.
Pretty telling that you think that but at the same time defend drivers squeezing past cyclists at high speed.
> people make a lot of excuses when confronted with something that they do not want to do
I am a cyclist who would want to do it a LOT more. And the main reason is two-fold.
One: cycling in London is scary, dangerous and extremely stressful. The cycling lanes, where they exist, are poorly maintained, tend to hop between the sides of the road at a rapid pace, and far too often cross with bus stops. On a bike you are forced to mix with car traffic more than if you simply _walked_ on the side of the road!
Two: I live at the bottom of a valley. Going anywhere starts by cycling a minimum of 2.5km uphill. Going anywhere interesting requires to take on a 5-7km uphill drive. Combined with the dangerous environment, being exhausted all the time adds to the risk. (FYI: on flat terrain I can do 25km on one go with little effort.)
Back in Finland I used to cycle ~170km a week during summers. In London, not a chance.
In London it is worth trying to optimize where you live so you can get by bicycle where you need to go. Some parts are terribly connected for cyclists others much better. You can use citymapper to find and check for cycling routes (do not use Google to find cycling routes). I found that North (Islington) and East are better for cycling than South or West.
Entitled much? Try having a family, and getting a place with a garden. Around Islington decent places like that go for around £2M. With the most lenient lenders you can get a mortgage for 5.5x your annual income, so in order to afford one, I would have to make about £365k a year.
Which would likely put me in the 99.99th percentile in terms of income.
I always think London is only good for students or rich people. Since I am neither, I moved away.
Islington is massive with expensive and cheaper areas, but all of it is fairly cycleble. But if you want to go further away, I did cycle from Lea bridge road close to Walhamstrow every day for years to around Euston. That's North East and used to be cheap the live back then. I tried Tottenham, too. That's harder to cycle to and from.
An electric bicycle will make a huge difference in getting you out of the valley. But unfortunately you can't do anything about the atrocious non-design of London streets and the endless traffic gumming them up.
If drivers overtook cyclists for the cyclists' safety you'd expect them to tailgate cyclists much less often. Literally nobody keeps the necessary distance to the car/cyclists in front of them in city traffic. That's why rear-end collisions are so frequent. Between two cars at city speeds that not really dangerous. When a cyclists falls in front of a car it's fatal.
> you'd expect them to tailgate cyclists much less often.
that's absurd.
ever seen a traffic light from a car?
> Literally nobody keeps the necessary distance to the car/cyclists in front of them in city
you mean literally no cyclist keeps the distance between them and the car in front of them, tailgate them at traffic lights, and then keep everybody else stuck because they are slow to move?
they are forbidden by the law to pass other vehicles in my country and keep the right lane, they never do it.
have you ever seen a bike wait behind a slower car or in line at a traffic light?
cameras could fine cars not behaving, but bikes?
> When a cyclists falls in front of a car it's fatal.
then why they do it all the time?
because I literally saved tens of them in the past 30 years.
if you mention bikes in Milan becoming "a problem" because they are parked like that maybe we should also talk about the absolute chaos of cars parked everywhere (on bike lanes, in the middle of the road, on sidewalks), otherwise one might think that in Milan bikes are the worst offenders regarding parking.
> As a pedestrian bikes are much more disruptive than cars for me
yes, for you. for the collectivity, the cost of cars killing people all the time outweighs the discomfort of seeing mopeds parked, you'll understand
> we should also talk about the absolute chaos of cars parked everywhere
two wrongs don't make a right.
but I've never seen a car chained to the subway gate
> yes, for you. for the collectivity, the cost of cars killing people a
spare me the "pistolotto"
I use public transport and my feet, bikes are not saving anyone and frankly having to hear people defending the right of bikers to break the law is ridiculous.
At least cars don't disrupt my mother in laws's whose almost blind walks.
Why bikers never walk their bikes on pedestrians only paths, like they are supposed to?
there are no cars there.
No wonder bikers are considered by the book selfish people
>many cyclist don't understand this because they are bad drivers
So charitable of you to assume that they are only bad at driving.
I find that people who don't "get" mixed traffic create uncertainty and danger for everyone else around them whether they are on two wheels, four wheels or two feet. And then many of them have the gall to assume it's everyone else who's doing it wrong.
I would agree with all of those points, except for one. I do not think it is less dangerous to pedestrians. I remember when I used to live in the Netherlands, it was uncomfortable being a pedestrian because there were so many cyclists. They are still going fast enough that if they crash into you, you can expect a concussion or even worse. And they do not respect the traffic laws in the same way that cars do. And because of the numbers of them it is hard to keep track of them.
I do not think it is less dangerous to pedestrians. I remember when I used to live in the Netherlands, it was uncomfortable being a pedestrian because there were so many cyclists.
Actual statistics about encounters clearly do show it is less dangerous, and expecting a concussion to be a false interpretion of actual risks. I do get your problem though: you're not used to it. You need eyes everywhere which essentially takes training.
Bah, in my experience bicycle users behave really badly on average. Certainly no better than car drivers.
For example they will be ready to crash on a pedestrian who is walking on a bike lane for good reason (most common ones are: an excavator made a trench on the sidewalk, the snow clearing machine took all the snow from the road and made a mountain on the sidewalk).
However when there is no bike lane available, they will have no problem in going on the sidewalk at 50km/h with their electric motor. Despite this being clearly forbidden.
And getting hit by an electric bike going 50 is no joke. You don't just get a bruise and move on with your day.
I never said anything about behavior, only about accidents and the results thereof. I'd really really rather get hit by a cyclist at any speed than a much heavier vehicle, that's just basic physics. And your examples are just that: examples (possibly exaggerated or factually incorrect ones, re: the 50km/h on sidewalk - it's really hard for humans to correctly judge speed). Anyway: examples which I also see from time to time, but I'm well aware of things like confirmation bias so without any actual hard numbers nor specifying more variables, it's quite hard to say 'x does y on average'.
That being said, I do have the impression in the local town (but definitely not everywhere) the behavior of cyclists in general became worse in the last decades. I'd really wish I had a way to make sure, but I just don't remember seeing multiple highest category rule violations every single day.
Take a look when outside and see if you ever see strollers or children with training wheels on bike lanes. Then ask, why don't you hear about the many deaths that should occur when those 50km/h bikes are crashing into those helpless children.
The average speed of a bike, as measured in Netherlands, is around 15km/h. When there is snow the speed is generally even lower. It is also fairly common where I live to see parents use strollers on snowy days since the bike roads tend to be clear of snow before sidewalk. No one, neither police or other pedestrians, acts as if those parents are putting their children at mortal danger. Statistics also support this.
A motorized two wheeler that can travel 50 km/h is not a bicycle, it is a moped. If its electrical then its an electric moped. Mopeds are not allowed where I live to use bike lanes unless they travel at the maximum speed of bikes. Mopeds also require a moped driving license and a license plate, and police can and has apprehended people who break the traffic law in this way.
Parents don't let kids go on bike lanes until they are somewhat proficient. Certainly nobody with training wheels is going on trafficked bike lanes. Because most parents realize that would be reckless.
> Mopeds are not allowed where I live to use bike lane
Welcome to Sweden I guess… I think they are not allowed but they don't care. Electric or benzin engine alike.
Parents let their kids be on the bike lane all the time. Just today on a small trip through the city, here in Sweden, with the weather being excellent, I saw around 10 kids around the age of 8 swirling on the bike lane. Naturally the parents biked next to them.
I would slightly agree that parents that train their kids on training wheels should maybe select a better place than a trafficked bike lane, but I for one is not going to stop them and tell them how to raise their kids. I would definitively not call the police and social service. I would be much more concern seeing the same behavior on the road, and if they were on the highway I would consider it.
> I think they are not allowed but they don't care. Electric or benzin engine alike.
Mopedists are what they are, or rather young adults without a driving license will behave like they always have. Motorized teens. Of course some of them will break the law. Modified electric bikes are however fairly rare since moped strength engines are generally more expensive, and if you are paying that much already then the moped license is fairly cheap to get. Modified mopeds however that goes faster than 45 km/h are very common, especially the four-wheel ones. The legal age to get a driving license is 18 so there is also a incentive to break the law for those that are around 15-18.
Electric cycles reaching 45km/h are regulated in most of EU, no? On the most powerful ones it takes not too much effort to push to 50 (from experience). That being said, where I commute I practically never encounter anyone doing that (they just do the maximum they can do with assistence, like 42-45 depending on brand and model, or less to save battery/effort) except downhill, where you can reach 50 with a normal cycle as well.
Eu regulates this by classification. A two-wheel vehicle with an electric motor that can assist up to 25 km/h is classified as an electric bike. If the two-wheel vehicle can reach up to 45 km/h, or if it don't require the rider to peddle, then its an electric moped. If it exceeds 45 km/h then its an electric motorcycle.
The classification in turn determines which laws the seller and driver is under. A bicycle doesn't require a driving license or license plate. Mopeds and motorcycles require a license plate (registered) and have corresponding driving licenses. There might also be different taxes involved.
There is a similar classification with four wheel vehicles. There is electric four wheel mopeds, tractors and cars, each defined by the maximum speed. You can even convert a car into a moped or tractor by changing the gear box to limit how fast they can go.
It's easy to remove the safety mechanism.
Still, I don't see people going 40+ where I live although maybe that happens in other countries. My experience is that in a city at 30km/h you are passing everyone and with significant speed difference as well.
Then your problem isn’t with cyclists, your problem is with jackasses running illegally tuned motorcycles (because that’s what a two-wheeled vehicle that can accelerate beyond 45 km/h is) on bike lanes.
100% this. And Dutch cyclists are usually nicer ones. Where I live (Geneva, Switzerland), cyclists are very aggressive towards... well everybody.
As a pedestrian, I had few super close calls (5cm max) where a crowd of us pedestrians were going through the road on green light and cyclist zoomed at 30-40kph through cars on red light and our crowd, not even attempting to break. At that speed, crash can be fatal/disabling for both. Its not just theoretical - when my wife worked as doctor on biggest urgence here, they had a case where 40 year old guy was hit in same way by cyclist on pedestrian crossing, green light. He went into coma and died in 2 days. Red light is just invisible to most, unlike rest of traffic. As pedestrian I consider cars and motorbikes/scooters OK, but cyclists I avoid / look out for very carefully, especially when with kids.
They really act like everything belongs to them and they are above any constraints, be it red light, no-bike-parks for kids etc. You can't simply cross road because you as pedestrian have green light - you need to have green light and check that no cyclist is going through the town like its some post-apocalyptic wasteland with no humans around.
They are aggressive to the car drivers too - I had cases where drink cyclists were trying to damage my car by kicking into it (I was stopped on red light so no threat to anybody, no idea why). Damage to well parked car, also by cyclists. No love there despite obvious ecological benefits.
Well you obviously made someone unhappy so there is a chance you are not as perceptive as you think. Statistics says that cyclists are like most other road users. The chance that the cyclists around you are different is a lot less likely than you cherry picking situations.
With that said, people do stupid things there are always outliers.
I don't think you actually read what I described since you are completely oblivious to all facts stated by me and not even reacting on any of them, just dismissing everything as my fault. Looks to me exactly as cyclist mindset I write about - its not about me, rules are not for me and so on.
How did I make any cyclist unhappy by just standing still with my car on red light in a row of other cars?
How did I insult cyclists by daring to cross on green light as pedestrian?
I don't talk about outliers, I talk about daily experience for past 10 years I live here. Consistently the same. As with cars, you don't notice normal drivers/riders, but a-holes you notice well. And a-holes on bikes I do notice practically every single day, unlike any other traffic on the roads which respects basic traffic rules.
As I said you might just be extremely unlucky. If not maybe take a step back and analyze why your world view is different from research on how mode of transport is no indicator of behviour.
Crazy stuff happens in traffic for sure, but when someone is angry with you it is mostly because you have done something. The cases of random deliberate violence are so rare that they should not happen to you.
If you want to live a life were you assume the worst about a completly heterogeneous group of people consisting of people from all walks of life and state of mind, that represents "people", you are free to make that choice but do not blme cyclists for that. This is my point: you might feel innocent all the time, but what you do is also interpreted by others they might feel the same thing.
Again I do not really talk about you or your specific experience but in general, and what should be true for longer period of times. What you feel and experience is up to you, can't change that.
> A Transport for London study investigated the “hypothesis that the majority of cyclists ride through red lights” and discovered that 84% of cyclists stopped on reds.
In my observation, the crimes of motorists and cyclists are crimes of convenience and opportunity.
Motorists exceed the speed limit, roll through stop signs, sometimes blow through red lights (every light cycle at one intersection on my daily commute), and drive while distracted (I see the cell phones from my bike).
Cyclists blow through stop signs, sometimes blow red lights, and often take shortcuts that are technically illegal.
It’s surprising how low that is. As a point of comparison, in 2008, 809 Americans died tangled in their bedsheets (which correlates to total revenue generated by skiing facilities: https://tylervigen.com/view_correlation?id=1864)
Right, more cyclists die in general every year (1,000+), but there doesn't seem to be any data on the percentage of those deaths that may be caused by cyclists running red lights.
One safe assumption is that the number of drivers killed by bikers running red lights is near 0.
It's not particularly safe for cyclists to stop on reds, and not particularly unsafe for them to cross during a red light with no cross traffic. This is part of the reason that "Idaho Stop" laws are gaining traction.
That is only true in a small amount of areas, like the city center of Amsterdam. Bike lanes are separated from pedestrians, so the only issue would be crossing the street.
I live (and bike) here too. I think what you mean to say is that it can feel kind of hectic and dangerous to step out of a bus onto the bike lane.
I can promise you that every biker care. If nothing else, then at least for their own safety. And in the 35 years I've been biking around here, I've never seen a collision between someone stepping out of a bus and a bike coming from behind.
You know that there is a difference between the stops right? If there is pavement on the side of the bikelane going out to the road, its on the bus passengers to stop and let the cyclist pass. So many pedestrians don't know this and think they can just throw themselves out on the bike lane.
> And the frustrating thing is that the drivers who impatiently pass dangerously are putting people at risk for the sake of ~10-30 seconds (or less).
As a bicyclist and driver I do think it can be difficult to pass a bicyclist that's travelling at a considerable pace. At 10 MPH I can easily and safely get by a bicyclist but if they're travelling 15-20 MPH it can be more difficult (assuming a speed limit of 30 MPH) and almost require a higher rate of speed than is comfortable for both parties.
The solution is better roads and bike pathways and less mixture of automobiles and bicycles.
I used to feel that way too, but then I started paying closer attention to travel times, which were the same no matter whether that happened. Unless you’re on a rural road with no traffic or signals, a cyclist going 15mph is probably not costing you a second of door to door travel time rather than decreasing the time you spend stopping for signals or waiting for the car ahead of you to start moving.
I understand that I'm not gaining a huge amount of time as a motorist, but if I follow behind I end up "stalking" the bicyclist which can make them uncomfortable.
As a cyclist, I'm not bothered by someone following me at a safe distance. And if you follow me for 1km or so, I'll pull over and let you pass if it is safe.
I live in a small town about 30km from Gothenburg, Sweden. I typically have no problem with cyclists except that there's quite a lot of them where I live staying in the middle of the road next to the broad bicycle lane and randomly darting from one side to another with no warning. I don't want to pass because they might randomly turn without looking and get run over. They're typically going at 15km/h where it's 50-60km/h. And it's not ~10-30 seconds, they stay there, in parallel with the bike lane, for several kilometres.
The main problem seems to be that people (drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, ...) all think they own the road and show very little respect to those around them. Especially those travelling by another type of vehicle. It makes for frustrating and dangerous situations.
If they're not using the bike lane, that's almost certainly because it's unsafe in some way that you're totally overlooking. No cyclist wants to be on the same road as cars.
I have used it myself and it's fine. Better than most roads I used to bike along when I lived in Belgium. Most people do use the bike lane. There is just this one subset, usually in full racing gear, who ride slowly in the middle of the road.
What you call a bike lane I can almost guarantee is made for pedestrians, full of holes, curbs, corners, and also often make you yield to crossing roads which you avoid on the main road.
Few voluntarily bike with cars, especially not those only doing 15 km/h.
See, that I would have understood, but no. It's separate from the one for pedestrians, in very good state, and most cyclists do use it. But there's this strange subset of cyclists who use racing bikes, dress up in full bodysuit, and then ride at a crawl in the middle of the road with other bikes whooshing past on the bike lane.
My favourite is when I get upset about someones driving and they react by honking or doing rude gestures.
Ah, the joys of almost getting killed by someone who is so rude that they don't even realise they were about to kill me.
I am blessed to live in a medium sized Danish city, so it only happens about weekly that I have to face the reality of death by demigod encased in steel plate.
> Cycling is cheap, often faster than driving (in my city), healthy, less noisy, creates vastly less pollution, less dangerous to pedastrians
Can we talk about people on e-bikes with phat tires? There’s a certain profile of riders that think they are just as meek and harmless as a normal rider, but their presence and riding style is usually aggressive.
Don’t forget the angsty 40- and 50-year-olds who uncapped their limiters and installed 1000 W motors for their “sleeper” builds.
They aren't cyclists -- they are motorists using illegal uninsured vehicles.
[In the UK, electrically assisted pedal cycles must cut out after 15.5 mph; the max motor output is 250 W; and the motor must solely be activated by the action of turning the pedals; vehicles that don't comply with these rules are illegal]
This kinda feels like a no true Scotsman, if it walks quacks and flies like a duck it doesn't matter.
Edit: I say this a cyclist myself. I see other people on bikes do some dumb shit, we can't say they aren't real cyclists because they do something that makes us look bad.
I am a cycling idealist and I struggle with outcasting a group.
However, e-bikes can give unconditioned people “superhuman” strength and endurance. Physical training tends to give individuals intuitive limits for personal safety, but using a modified e-bike short-circuits this intuition.
I am thinking that limits on stuff like diameter of frame tubing or tire width (which would not stand up to riding at speeds outside of normal “human” parameters) can help.
They can't help. My friend sells second hand bicycles recovered from the police. A couple of weeks ago they gave him an e-bike. This thing had been modified with a twist throttle, 1 kW motor and a maximum speed of 62 MPH.
He took it up to 40 MPH (on his own private land) before chickening out. The chain would simply not stay on the cassette at that speed. He reckons that if you did drive it to the limit, you'd go through a brand new set of disc brakes and calipers in a week, if you didn't manage to boil half the hydraulic fluid off in the mean time!
But to a non expert this thing looks exactly like a regular bicycle--because it is (or was, before it was illegally modified to be a motorbike).
E-bikes are sometimes tough to reason about because they’re both bicycle and motorized vehicle. This breaks the duck analogy though: they only look like a duck, but they do not quack or walk or fly like one.
I like e-bikes, they are getting more people to ride bicycles, and I’m especially seeing a surge in older people getting out and riding far. This is a good thing for all cyclists. But parent is correct: e-bikes are motorized vehicles. There are bicycle trails where I live where motorized vehicles are not allowed, and that includes e-bikes, and it is enforced.
Other replies have made the point that they look like, but don't quack like ducks. I just wanted to point out that I was speaking from a legal perspective: specifically, "[those] who uncapped their limiters and installed 1000 W motors for their “sleeper” builds" are motorists, and they are prosecuted as such when caught (which is not often, because cuts to police, CPS, courts and legal aid have effectively decriminalized most crimes in the UK).
You have identified that they give cyclists a bad reputation, and we all suffer due to it. :(
It doesn't fly like a duck, that's the point. It flies like a cyberduck with a rocket pack.
Cyclists who behave badly are cyclists. People riding vehicles with motors that let them go that fast simply aren't cyclists. We don't call ICE motorcycle riders "cyclists" in that sense either.
On my daily commute, I've now had a chance to observe the same e-cyclists several times through the summer months. I tend to notice and recognize bikes and cyclists because I'm interested in cycling. I think a lot of the behavior that folks are noticing, such as "it seems like e-bikes don't have brakes" is due to inexperience and residual car driving habits such as accelerating out of congestion.
>Unfortunately, a typical journey involves passing more than 20 cars, which means experiencing at least 1 very close pass
Unfortunately I see it the other way. Asa rule I give cyclists plenty of space when overtaking, even happily sitting behind a slow cyclist on a 60Mph road for 30 seconds to a minute in order to find a safe passing spot.
However the same courtesy is not paid the other way. When in multi lane traffic jams (or even slow traffic on a single lane road) cyclists will fly down the tiny gaps between the cars, often only just wide enough for their handlebars to fit through.
If vehicles at speed need to give such room for an overtake, why doesnt it work the other way around? There are plenty of videos on youtube of bikes going very fast between stationary cars, only to hit a wing mirror and crash.
First, let me just state up front: I agree with you that some people on bikes should show more care when passing cars closely. Dangerously close is dangerously close no matter who initiates it.
Second, while room should be given by both parties, the consequences for failure are far different between the two scenarios. In the scenario where the car driver is passing dangerously close, you have a multi-thousand pound vehicle potentially hitting an unprotected body. Even if the initial impact doesn't cause great harm to the person, there's a lot of potential for knocking the bike and person over and then causing them to get run over by the initial vehicle's wheels or into the path of a second vehicle nearby. Who loses most in this situation? The person riding the bike.
In the scenario where the person on the bike passes too closely and hits the stationary car, there's just a lot less energy and moving mass involved. The potential for serious injury is greatly reduced. And perhaps most importantly, the party suffering the greatest potential for serious injury is the one that caused the situation.
I don't mean to dismiss the potential for damage to the car (mirrors knocked off, scratches, etc) as that's a real thing which should be avoided. But there's also a VERY big difference between property damage and bodily damage.
The law should enforce passing distance on both cars and bikes. E.g. no more should a bike be allowed to pass a car unless there is one meter of clearance then a car should be allowed to pass a bike without one meter of clearance.
Enforcing such a law would remove the vast majority of dangerous interactions between cars and bikes.
The reason why I am opposed to such laws, as a cyclist, is the intent is to harass cyclists. My area has a law that forbids vehicles from passing within one meter of cyclists. The police won't do anything if a motorist actually strikes a cyclist unless there is injury. Yet motorists want the same standard actually applied to cyclist. Notice the asymmetry?
(Incidentally, I do ensure there is clearance when I pass and I avoid passing on the right. But that has more to do with being predictable and valuing my life than the law.)
Where I'm at, cars are only allowed to pass a bike if they can leave 1,5m of clearance. There is no minimum for the reverse situation
Of course, even the police gets angry at the cyclists for not getting out of the way instead
Filters are only useful if the air moves through them:
> Our study also found that there are simple changes that could reduce exposure to emissions for professional drivers, such as keeping windows closed when driving, or changing routes to avoid tunnels. Having an air-tight vehicle cabin can also play an important part in reducing driver exposure. Technological fixes such as specialised in-vehicle cabin pollution filters may also be a short-term solution to reduce exposure for professional drivers.
> Cycling is cheap, often faster than driving (in my city), healthy, less noisy, creates vastly less pollution, less dangerous to pedastrians...
As a pedestrian in Manhattan I am in much more danger from cyclists that from cars, trucks and buses. Literally every single day I will see a dozen cyclists run red lights, go the wrong way down one way streets and ride on crowded sidewalks. While bicycles are much lighter and don't move as fast as cars, they pose a greater danger to me than cars because a very large number of cyclists in Manhattan simply do not subscribe to any rules of the road.
- I care about injuries other than just fatalities
- Non-fatal injuries due to being hit by cyclists are underreported
- Those statistics are for all of NYC - the pedestrian experience in much of the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens, and all of Staten Island is similar to the pedestrian experience in suburbs - and I'd agree there my danger is greater from cars.
- Those statistics pre-date the dramatic rise of e-bikes on the streets of Manhattan
There are research on how many accidents are reported and at least in Sweden most accidents that require hospital visits are reported correctly. (and they mimick what is said in other countries).
Streets with bicycle paths are a safer for pedestrians, I think there is research from NYC/Brooklyn comparing streets before and after bike paths.
The trend shown by the tweets happened before automobiles became affordable. I feel that you’re missing the point. These tweets are to demonstrate that the masses in general will demonize anything new and unfamiliar. It’s not really about bikes.
I live in the American suburban/rural spillover, riding a bike is a fever dream, I wish I could but then again it's a tradeoff of not living in any big city of my state (I live in Alabama so I obviously don't have good choices)
Oddly enough, my main concern riding in rural Kentucky is loose dogs. The roads are not very suitable to driving at highway speeds and most of my route to the nearest grocery store is sparsely traveled.
I'd say your number is about right. Not just for bikes, but cars too. 5% of drivers follow me way too close, speed between lanes for no apparent benefit or emergency, pass far to close, don't signal, don't give time for people to adjust. 5% seems very low, but when there are hundreds or thousands of cars you see in a day, it's a lot of bad drivers.
And, I usually have a lot of steel and airbags around me to protect me.
It's the #1 reason I don't ride bikes on the road in the US. If I lived elsewhere I might change that.
try braking suddenly on a bike when a pedestrian walks in your way. and either you will get thrown forward or you will not break in time. I would argue that bikes make it more hazardous to the user to suddenly brake.
I hate cycling (bicycling). Hate every aspect of it. There are ways for me to get healthy but I always prefer driving over cycling.
The benefits are tremendous and not even close:
- Faster for most of America, unless you're in places such as Manhattan.
- Can use normal clothes, no need to specially dress up for it
- Can enjoy beverages, music and audiobooks, you can do that on a bicycle but not as safe
- Better quality of air to breathe
- Not going to get stolen
- Not going to get robbed
- Much much safer, modern automobiles are riduculously safe
- Better for the knees
- No need to worry about weather. Flip of a switch and it is awesome, instant heat or cold
- Luxury vehicles are incredibly comfortable
- Cost of cars + insurance + fuel is not a problem for me
- I really don't care about energy consumption, I am not going to give up modern QoL for some ostensible collectivist goal like cycling or eating bugs. We have unlimited source of energy (Sun), we're going to be fine in the future
- Much more fun (subjective). I love driving, especially manual transmision cars and performance cars with great suspension
You totally ignore the car tax on society. Just look at how much space car lanes and parking spaces take. The simple ability to take a walk around the city does so much for actually living in the city, instead of everyone transporting themselves in cars that are bigger than WW2 tanks.
Sure, Manhattan and extreme dense city centers where Parking is limited and most people don't drive to it. Most of USA would be impossible to get to without cars. Don't call that car tax on "society". Society is much more than urban centers which have bigger problems than cars, i.e. Crime that discourage walking.
I've lived in a third world nation full of weavering motorcyles and two wheelers. It was a hell hole.
I am in my 40's and am yet to encounter ONE cyclist that drives on the road and obeys traffic laws like cars.
- Red light, move to the other side and cross on the side-walk and back on the road
- Stop sign - funny...
- Yield sign - funny...
- Get a ticket from officer - funny...
I bike a lot and when I bike I always yell at drivers etc but I also ride the bike like a cowboy as well, most rules do not apply.
I think if cyclists generally obeyed traffic laws when they are riding on the roads things be different in terms of how drivers are treating them... How much different is another story but I think significantly!
Friendly heads up but you may want to check your bias here -- it's been studied and cyclists don't break the law anymore than cars do [1]. In fact, motorists break the law more frequently and they do it's to save time whereas cyclists most frequently do it for personal safety or the type of thing that's unlikely to cause harm to others. [2]
Perhaps you don't see it anymore because it's so common but cars break rules all the time -- rolling stop, speeding, illegal u-turns, running reds, etc.
You have definitely seen cyclists following the rules, you just don't notice them.
The "rules of the road" were made for cars, not bikes. Bikes are inherently different and should have different rules. Cars and bikes should not be riding side by side in cities.
There's a big difference in responsibility. A driver will kill somebody else when they're distracted, a cyclist will get killed themselves. That's why I find it so spiritually ugly when drivers blame pedestrians or cyclists for getting killed or injured after getting run over, it's kicking down. The bigger the car, the bigger the responsibility. We need to act and judge accordingly.
As a blind pedastian, I disagree violently. I typically hurt myself once a week because a careless cyclist put their bicycle in an inappropriate place. In front of a shop, because they are just going in for a minute, for example. Cyclists do the most harm to blind individuals in a city. Cars cant even come close.
Largely because bikes and pedestrians are forced to mix in most areas in the US.
Provide reasonable bicycle infrastructure and the problem starts to resolve itself.
A few local examples... the main road outside my subdivision has a bike lane, but it ends a few blocks before the school, starts again, then stops a few blocks before the shopping center. So, bikes have to move to the sidewalk and interact with pedestrians, dog walkers, children (or enter a traffic lane). Terrible design.
That shopping center has a single bike rack at one end. To get from that rack to the coffee shop on the other side requires a long walk through the shopping center OR walking across a large parking lot. So, people just leave their bikes leaning against the wall outside the coffee shop. Terrible design.
That's an angle I hadn't considered, thank you for bringing it up.
I bike around the city quite a lot, and usually I will have bike parking available, but when I don't, I find the nearest signpost or street lamp and lock it there. I try to be mindful of pedestrians by orienting the bike parallel to the walkway, but I have'nt probably given that enough thought.
Would you mind explaining the physics of how you interact with these or my misparked bicycles, and how they are causing you to hurt yourself ? Is it just that they are parked in your way, or is there something that makes bikes different from other obstacles you have to navigate ?
The biggest difference from otther obstacles is that bikes can fall over, and typically do so while landing on your foot or Achilles Tendon. It can also hurt mightily if you happen to ramm a handlebar into your stomache.
As cyclist myself, of course I’m in danger of hurting myself. Two weeks ago I had a bike accident where I hurt my dominant hand, and I’ve been unable to even hold a glass of water since, because someone parked their bicycle in the middle of the cycle lane in a situation with bad visibility.
I know the issue exists, and I can empathize with your situation. But I’ve also lived in cities with better bike infrastructure and more bike parking spaces, and in those places there were no issues with bikes parked in random places.
> But I’ve also lived in cities with better bike infrastructure and more bike parking spaces, and in those places there were no issues with bikes parked in random places.
This may be true, but it can't be a case of letting shit roll downhill i.e. I'll think about the blind when I park my bike only after sufficient bicycle parking is designated in every part of every city in the world.
The irony is that vegans seem to care about the wellbeing of animals, but seem to forget to care about their fellow humans. Thats all. I can see how you feel this is a cheap shot. However, you are not the one who has been hurt by a fellow humans careless behaviour, so I feel like I have a little bit of an angle to this. People evangelizing run the risk of their other actions also being put on the scale...
I once saw a blind man step out of a bus shelter onto a pavement. A cyclist who was riding on the pavement immediately hit them and knocked them to the floor. The cyclist did not stop, they just shouted 'Sorry' and carried on cycling up the pavement. If cyclists wish to have a good reputation amongst the general public then as a group they need to realise there are some really bad apples spoiling the bunch, and work with everyone else to call them out. I have never ever seen a cyclist call out another cyclist for poor etiquette, and I wish it happened more.
As a white guy I speak out against racism and misogyny, but doing that is not easy and I can not take responsibility for the actions of others. You have to choose your fights, I choose them selectively, and conflicts in traffic is one of the worst kinds.
Take your example, often pedestrians miss that there is actually an bikepath on the pavement. If you have impaired vision it is even worse. There are many more mistakes that are perfectly valid excuses for just saying "Sorry". Even though only a few people in traffic are ass hats, one is often very sure that is what you are witnessing.
Cyclists are like most people we make mistakes, but we are the sme as you statistically speaking.
"Less dangerous to pedestrians"... that really depends. Here many cyclists like to cycle on pavements, making bikes more dangerous to pedestrians than cars!
And yet when you look at statistics it's almost solely drivers killing pedestrians even though the car infrastructure is 100x better and cars aren't forced to go on sidewalks.
No one likes cycling on a sidewalk. People do it because either a bike path ended in a random place and they ended up on a sidewalk or they feel it's very dangerous to be on the road.
You're citing a stat that has nothing to do with my comment. You've picked deadly outcomes, which obviously favours bikes.
As a pedesrian, the risk of being hit by a bike riding on the pavement is higher than by a car driving on the road. As a pedestrian I can tell you that I have been hit by bikes several times but luckily never by a car.
That makes bikes more dangerous to me than cars are.
Cyclists are not forced on pavements, by the way. They make a conscious decision (even if that breaks the law). Sometimes they are allowed to ride on the pavement but unfortunately many are not considerate of pedestrians.
Ideally pedestrians and cyclists should be physically separated. When not possible cyclists should be very careful and considerate. Just common sense, really.
Statistics about injuries are even worse for cars. It's a fact that cars, despite the infrastructure being designed for them, endanger pedestrians more than cyclists.
We all agree about common sense. It's just your perception of what represents danger doesn't align with reality. It's important to understand where the danger comes from (for both cyclists and pedestrians) so you can support measures that actually makes everyone safer instead of just some people feeling better.
I don't understand why some cyclists are so defensive as soon as someone says anything perceived as against then. Cycling is good but comes with responsibilities.
Cyclists on pavements are a danger to pedestrians and too many cyclists do not behave in a safe and considerate way to pedestrians, not least when they ride on pavements illegally (all statements of fact here). Cars are on the road.
You are supposed to cycle on the pavement in many cities. I do not know if there are more accidents there, but they certainly are not bicycle friendly cities. Most cyclists do not use pavements but at least I understand why. There are many people cycling on the pavements outside my house, yet no accidents reported in the officual database. For the most part it is safe to cycle on pavements for everyone.
These threads are loaded with comments from people talking about all the times they almost got hit by a cyclist. Almost doesn't count, you just have poor judgement is all.
Whether they like it or not, shouldn't they ride safely and be considerate of pedestrians?
Anyway responsible cyclist ought to answer an emphatic 'yes', so I don't understand why stating it is a problem...
PS: and of course depending on the jurisdiction, including the UK where I am, cycling on the pavement is illegal unless there is an explicit notice to the contrary, in which case I would expect cyclists on pavements to really, really try to be invisible.
I often discuss on the french subreddit, and it's crazy how hard some people fight back giving up their cars. The recurring excuse is a long commute and bad availability of public transit.
Most people don't have a long commute, since public transit covers most french citizens, but weirdly there is a very vocal minority who live in the middle of nowhere.
I keep explaining to them that they can keep driving since they're a minority so it's not such a big problem, but that they should also consider moving near train stations.
There really is a "car culture" going on, which is very difficult to debate with. Sometimes I suspect if it's just the car lobby paying astroturfers to fight this.
Im french. Cars are replaceable, and actually a burden, in big cities but its insane to think that people in the smaller cities can switch.
My parents love biking but theres no f**ing way they can do their life on the littoral without a car. When all your friends and the closer market is 10/15km away from each other.
Also the advice to go live close to a train station is literally nuts. You want everyone in a departement. to live <2km to a train station ? Welcome to hong kong.
In my local EV forum there are a lot of people who join just to come and say: EV's are wrong because: "it doesn't stimulate my hearing, just no feeling without the engine growl", "charging something something", "what about road trips", yadayada.
I guess people who don't want to change their habits feel threatened somehow? Because deep inside they understand that the change is correct? I don't know, this is all super weird.
But charging is (well, would be, I don't have EV) annoying. I usually fill the gas tank once a month or two and it takes 15 minutes including the trip to gas station. The ~500km distance I get from full tank is enough to cover my car use for a long time.
So yeah, having to charge more often, having to find a place to charge at, all of that sounds quite inconvenient and I do not want it.
Related question since you seem knowledgeable about EVs: What is "passive drain" on an average EV? Do I still have "full tank" after not touching the car for two or three weeks?
People who have a charger at home (even a slow one) seem to usually have the opposite experience: they plug the car in when they arrive home, without having to worry about trips to the gas station. The charging problem is mostly about street-side parking where that doesn't work.
Here in Germany new buildings are now required to provide parking for their occupants, and anecdotally the ability to install a charger is now a big selling point for buyers and renters alike (some form of FOMO: better have that ability in case you want an electric car in the future).
Of course it will take decades until even half the population lives in buildings built after ~2020, but parking spots with chargers will become common over time.
Not the person you replied to but I also drive an EV since 2021. I have a Tesla Model 3 (LR) and after leaving it for three weeks it only lost around 3% battery. Also, I have a similar distance I drive monthly and I only charge it once.
This I think is the crux here. You don't have experience so you think how it would be different .. and different is .. bad?
I have an EV and my experience is:
- when I get home and I have a feeling that next drive might be long and need charge, I plug it in. Next day it's charged.
- if there is a drive long enough to need charging (for me happens very seldom) I go and get a coffee at a fast charger
- petrol car fill up was about 130EUR, the electric to do the same distance between 2 and 40 EUR depending price of electricity and whether I do fast charge.
> when I get home and I have a feeling that next drive might be long and need charge, I plug it in
Sure, let me hang down the cable with electricity from the 3rd floor window of the apartment building I live in, that will work great. (Can I even charge the car from regular socket? I would hope yes, albeit slowly I assume.)
> You don't have experience so you think how it would be different .. and different is .. bad?
For me the car is a handy tool, so don't care much about "feel of the motor" or whatever. But the tool should be practical. So in this case, when I compare 5m to fill the tank and pay to 25m (Level 3, here [0]) to charge the EV, the gas variant comes out as superior. And the car itself is cheaper. And has bigger range (well, not that that one matters too much to me. Anything over 400km would be enough for me).
So I just don't see why I should prefer EV (disclaimer: I'm not sold on the whole "it's greener" thing, for multitude of reasons).
> petrol car fill up was about 130EUR, the electric to do the same distance between 2 and 40 EUR depending price of electricity and whether I do fast charge.
At current gas prices, full tank is ~43 EUR for me (using conversion rate from google). At my income (low by US standard, reasonable by the local ones), that is low enough I mostly don't care about it since it's once every month or two.
Out of curiosity, might I ask what car did you drive before? 130 EUR for full tank sounds... like a lot. So I'm wondering if it was due to car being huge or due to gas price.
The vocal minority you talk about represents millions of people. And they cannot really move near train stations, they can be very far away or in much more expensive areas.
23% of the French population is more than 6km from a train station [1], which is considered close enough to bike. That's 15.6 million people. Assuming those are families of 2.2 people on average, they would need 7 million cars. That’s 18% of the current 38 million cars in France.
We could have five times fewer cars, and half of the country’s carbon footprint if the 31 million car owners who don’t need them gave theirs up. But somehow, the 7 million necessary cars are used as a loincloth to shelter the rest from poisoning everyone else
That’s 30 min of light exercise, five times a week — less if you are using electric assist. It’s the minimum requirement to not be considered sedentary, which would triple your health risks.
If you think that’s too much and you don’t have a serious physical handicap, you are about likely to have one.
I used to live in a hilly, rainy part of Germany. I cycled that exact distance every day. It's not an issue. If you've got children, get a cargo bike with child seats or a bicycle trailer with child seats. Works fine, many parents did that.
You need very convincing arguments to convince people to downgrade their quality of life that much. Biking on the rain uphill with a bike trailer is not fun compared to driving a car.
I would love that this argument about the quality of life to be also heard when talking about people who have to suffer the consequence of cars: violence, children's deaths, pollution, noise, aggressive tone, inhospitable cities, enormous parking lots that are hellish all Summer and don’t let water seed though. For the last years, deadly heat waves, and floods.
Selfishness isn’t an argument when making collective decisions.
If you've got dedicated bicycle lanes, then “it costs 10x less and you save 2x the time because you're not stuck in traffic” quickly becomes a winning proposition.
I don’t live in France anymore (too many taxis were trying to kill me, and the Police said they were powerless to help after ending up at the hospital multiple times), but my family still does.
Nine nephews and nieces, tenth on the way. The house is on a sharp hill (12% gradient) and the nearest train station is… 93 km away.
Well, don't know about the situation in France, but Belgium is likely worse when it comes to this, imo the main reason being the completely insane amount of subsidies for company cars. Also leading to more SUV type of cars (company pays anyway, also for fuel, so why nog get that). There's no way there's no lobbying going on there, Belgium is probably a small goldmine for car manufacturers. Maybe I'm biased, but looking at this from a distance all I can see is state-subsidized traffic jams, pollution and accidents.
> I keep explaining to them that they can keep driving since they're a minority so it's not such a big problem, but that they should also consider moving near train stations.
We had train stations before we had cars. This tends to suggest that train stations are worse than cars.
Following your train of thought everything new is inherently better in every aspects, which is far from true when you start digging
Cars became so widespread that we underestimate the innumerable problems they cause, it's like telling an heroin addict he was happier before he started being an addict...
My family and I just spent a week in Amsterdam and a day in Utrecht. The author of this article was very kind and spent a whole day showing us around her town (Houten, a 9 minute train ride from Utrecht).
Yes, when you once lived in a city in The Netherlands you never want to go back into any other country, where are cars are used as main transportation inside cities.
Everybody cycles here and it feels very safe to do it, however the infrastructure is the most important part. Cars are second class citizens most of the time and people driving them know this.
> Cars are second class citizens most of the time and people driving them know this.
As someone who's never been able to afford living in a Dutch city, but has worked there, this is very true. Driving through Amsterdam is like driving through a mine field. Cyclists seemingly pop up out of nowhere and always take the right of way. This has become such a custom in the Netherlands that (at least in Amsterdam) cyclists even have the right of way even when running a red light. Courts have decided in favor of cyclists who were hit by cars while running red lights, because when driving in Amsterdam, you need to expect this to happen as a driver.
I'm not opposed to this at all, since cyclists are much more vulnerable than drivers. However, I've noticed that this is becoming much more dangerous with electric bicycles taking over. You used to be able to estimate quite well whether you can cross in front of a cyclists by the type of bike and the person on it... But not anymore. A 72 year old who used to cycle maybe 15 km/h is now casually doing 25 km/h and not slowing down for crossings. This is also visible in the statistics, with the number of cyclists involved in fatal accidents rising.
It's true, there are electric bikes that are fast. However I never feel unsafe because of them. For me the bigger annoyance are the scooters which are also allowed on the bicycle lane (in my City, afaik not Amsterdam). Those are mostly faster than the allowed 27mk/h and ride very aggressive.
I love the Netherlands as much as many, great place with a lot of clear advantages over the majority of cities, but the geography is quite boring and the population density is definitely not for everyone. Different strokes for different folks
I got my EU passport last year and my wife should have hers in a few months. We're thinking next summer is a good time to move. Our kids will still be young enough to pick up the language easily enough I think (3 and 5).
Shame it's going to get miserable summers thanks to climate change...
Edit: I agree re: not wanting to go back to any other country, except that we're also looking at somewhere like Odense (Denmark).
Hate for bicycles hasn’t changed. People think a bike travel is recreational, and thus less important than a car travel.
Someone goes out of their way to affirm that, by having to overtake bikes or not let them overtake their cars. A couple of times I met cars busting their brakes trying to keep up with me with a disc road bike on long technical descents
In the UK as a cyclist I still get so much hate on the road. I'm just trying to get to work like everyone else, but people still drive their cars up right behind me, squeeze past when there's not enough space, beep their horns and shout out the window.
And then the justification is always "well I saw a cyclist run a red light once, therefore all cyclists are shit"
Motorists often forget that a lot of motorists jump red lights too, and then there's the habitual speeding that seems expected of drivers, rather than being recognised as dangerous behaviour. With red light jumping, there's also a very different pattern of behaviour as motorists will speed up to get through a light that's just turned red, whereas cyclists tend to either slow down or continue at the same pace when RLJing.
There's also a difference in where the risk is, as cyclists are mainly endangering themselves (also pedestrians, but crashing into a pedestrian is likely to hurt the cyclist), whereas motorists are mainly endangering others.
The best way of dealing with close-passing motorists is to run cameras (front and back) and let the police deal with the driver, but it depends on what area you're in as to whether the force will deal with it appropriately. Avon & Somerset is a good one in my experience.
In the UK, it's illegal for a motorist to cross a solid white center line on their side of the road to overtake a cyclist unless the cyclist is traveling 10mph or slower. I estimate less than 1% of motorists obey this law.
Here in NSW Australia it is almost the exact opposite now. You are permitted to cross the centre lane to overtake a bicycle (if it is safe) and need to keep a 1 to 1.5 metre gap to the bike. https://www.nsw.gov.au/driving-boating-and-transport/roads-s....
Of course. The line is solid and can't be crossed to overtake slower vehicles. Not just bikes.
I think that's a really interesting law since it actually makes an exception for slow bicycles. Looks like they're such a nuisance that cars are actually allowed to overtake them despite the solid line.
Just in on my drive to work, as I approached an intersection, the light went from yellow to red. I had time to slow down and stop. I was at a complete stop for a full moment when a van in the neighboring lane comes from behind me and just full on runs the light.
Well cyclist running red lights is extremely common here in Zürich Switzerland especially during morning rush hour.
I have seen some crazy altercations between not cars and cyclist but public transport like trams and cyclist.
Once a cyclist managed to pull up to the front of a double bendy trollybus[1] I was in just to cut across the front of the bus forcing the driver to hard break. In another incident recently which ended up in the paper, a bus had to break so hard because of a cyclist that several people got injured.
What is the point of the traffic signals? A big part of it is safety.
I promise you, no matter what cyclists are doing at red lights, cars are orders of magnitude more dangerous than cyclists.
Cyclists should obey the law, but people focusing on cyclist skipping red lights are missing the point: cars kill people, cyclists don't.
Moreover, if a cyclist causes an accident, they will almost certainly be seriously injured even if they hurt others too. Meanwhile, car drivers can expect to walk away from any low speed accident, even if they just plowed through a crowd of pedestrians.
No red lights are not a safety measure, they make car traffic go faster. Most intersections have better throughput without redlight for smaller vehicles at slow speed. As long as the speed of cars is lowered to something safe they are also a lot safer.
But that's the point! If the road was bicycles only, the traffic planning would be entirely different, most likely either no traffic light at all, or a small roundabout.
Traffic signals only exist to accelerate car traffic. They slow down everyone else.
The most dangerous thing you can do as bicyclist is stopping, because the first ~10 meters after you’ve just started cycling again your balance won’t be perfect yet. And it happens that these few meters are almost always right in an intersection, in a conflict zone with cars.
As a cyclist who never runs red lights and always tries to communicate clearly where I am going next, there are many cyclists who don't know how to behave in traffic. Yet for every cyclist that behaves like that I will wittness a motorist who is equally wreckless. The only difference being, when the cyclist hits me, I might be hurt, when the motorist hits me I might be dead.
Additional thought here: If you take part in traffic you are taking part in some weirdly formalized form of communications. It is all about "speaking" in a way so others can understand what you like to do. And in traffic you speak by what you do, how you do it and by giving signs.
If you e.g. see pedestrians, brake and continue to roll slowly towards them in your car, you might think: "This is perfectly fine, I saw them!".
But the question is: Did they see that you saw them? If not, then your slowly rolling car communicates; "Yo, I am gonna kill you!" to these pedestrians. This means in that situation the act of stopping is the clearest communication that you saw them.
Using blinkers, hand signs in the way they are intended (to communicate intent) makes also sense. On the highway check your damn mirrors before blinking unless your intent is to ram that car that could be there.
This guy doesn't run reds, I don't either. Apparently that's irrelevant because some cyclists do (and here's a bunch of anecdotes) so it's not a problem to harrass cyclists.
I see cars driving 50km/h in a 30km/h area multiple times a day.
Everyone breaks the traffic laws, it's just that for cars it's about speed (speed limits, illegal overtaking etc) while for cyclists it's about momentum (running red lights, stop signs etc). Both are dangerous behaviors that put others at risk
Citation needed for cyclists running stop signs being dangerous. There have been numerous studies showing that at least for stop signs, it's actually safer/neutral. Anecdotally, treating stop signs as yields for biking encourages me to ride on more neighborhood streets with stop signs instead of full on signals; additionally, while stopping has negligible benefit in terms of yielding to cross traffic, doing a full stop each time means it will take much longer for me to cross the intersection which is the most dangerous part of the road.
I see idiots at least twice a day. Does that mean it’s cool for me to treat you like an idiot? If no, then I think you may have skipped over the point of this sub thread.
I live in suburbs between San Jose and San Francisco, and haven't driven in a while but on a typical car trip I see someone run almost every other light at busy intersections, seeing a motor vehicle come to a full stop at a stop sign is rarity as well unless there is a law enforcement vehicle watching. I have learned to wait after a light turns green for me defensively to make sure someone else has not decided to gun it and run the light.
It can be very hard to understand how to move safely on a bicycle if the infrastructure is just built for motorists. The choices of different groups are motivated by different priorities. You have to understand.
Red lights are there to make car travel faster, there is ample evidence that running redlights on bicycles can be safer. But as I said it is not always clear how to act that will make stupid mistakes more frequent.
This is a subject that is hard to discuss even in the Netherlands, were they frequently remove red lights for cyclists but still fine them until it's gone.
You're falling into the exact same trope that the person you're replying to is admonishing.
Motorists running red lights, speeding up for amber lights, exceeding the speed limits, tailgating, dangerously overtaking and so on, is all so common as to be unnoteworthy. This doesn't justify cyclists running reds, but it should put it into perspective.
You almost never see a bunch of drivers arguing that it's OK to run red lights. It's quite common with cyclists; you can even look at the comments here and see several arguing that it's not a problem for cyclists to run red lights. Whether or not they're correct, it at least indicates that the behavior is much more common among cyclists.
I often see drivers arguing that not only is it ok to speed, but that drivers who obey the speed limit are actually doing something wrong!
I don't think I've ever heard of a cyclist getting mad at another cyclist for stopping at a red light. The propensity to violate traffic laws seems to be higher among drivers than cyclists.
>You almost never see a bunch of drivers arguing that it's OK to run red lights.
That’s because it’s assumed that it’s OK to run yellow lights. The meme goes “yellow - step on it!” And in this way cars do run red lights, it’s just that they get through much faster. They know they’re supposed to slow down for the yellow. They have enough stopping distance when it turns yellow. And they still drive fast to skip the red light. I observe this behavior all the time driving my car. I slow and stop for yellow, but the other lane speeds through.
I was thinking what proportion of red-light-running (by cyclists) is because they don't want to lose momentum, and whether that will be improved with e-bikes.
Swiss here aswell and regular cyclist. We have seen and will see more and more space been taken by bicycles: Look at what paris did during covid: narrowed streets everwhere to make a separate bike path. Now they can’t keep up with people riding bikes and it is already chaos breaking out.
It isn’t such a drastic shift we are experiencing in Switzerland but we need to adjust the roads once created purely for cars and buses. This will automatically reduce friction.
The worse are the one who ride drunk. There are a lot of people who consider that if you are drunk, driving a car is not ok (it is not), but riding a bike is ok (it is not).
The risk of severe injury to a third party by my choosing to cycle drunk is much lower though. Maybe I hit a pedestrian and they are knocked over - it's possible but very unlikely that they receive life changing injuries. If you hit a pedestrian while driving a car they probably die.
Sure it's risky for me to ride drunk - but the risk is mostly on me. I've also had far more near misses sober in peak hour than drunk at 2am. The biggest risk at 2am is a drunk driver wilfully or accidentally runs a red light and t-bones me.
Biking at night is generally very relaxing, as long as you have bright lights and keep an eye out for drunks it’s generally better than biking during the day IMO
I don't think that's really a bike specific thing. Those same drivers would likely get just as angry at a car or other motor vehicle driving below the speed limit on the same road. Maybe even angrier since they can't pass as easily.
If you commute daily (5 times a week) then you will see at least one terrible / dangerous driver in that time period.
Some weeks it can be really bad, several a day, some weeks it will be almost silent (but always at least one nutter).
The weather makes a big difference, for some reason drivers drive a lot worse in the rain and really hot weather, usually speeding / running reds and not checking mirrors more often than in overcast / typical UK weather.
This was true for me, but now days it almost never happen. What changed was that my route got a serious upgrade, with lower speed intersections, better yield signs for everyone. All it took was a well thought out plan for all the streets with bicycle traffic.
But yeah when I am not on my daily commute you still get that kind of behaviour.
I bike with a camera. I capture cars doing illegal and dangerous stuff multiple times a day when I bike, and post it online or/and report them. So your suggestions are way off. Just in may&june I totaled over 160 reports.
I originally was making a list of every driver that came close to killing me, noting down their license plate and making a police report.
After a single day with over a dozen, I've stopped counting. Now I only note down the drivers that, when turning a corner or passing me, threw me off the bicycle and/or drove over the bicycle, damaging parts of it.
The list currently contains 2 events this month alone.
There's a huge variation. Some rides, I've had two or three incidents that the police have actioned after I submitted the cam footage, and other times, I can go a couple of months without a bad incident.
Not a justification but here in CA I see cyclists cross red lights much too often. So it's not once it's way too many times. They probably think they're special somehow
I think the prevalence of this behaviour can be explained by the fact that in car centric infrastructure only people willing to take a fairly significant risk will be cycling in the first place. As a result you've selected for people willing to engage in risky behaviour towards themselves resulting in a fair few of them running red lights recklessly.
Couple this with the fact that the infrastructure was clearly not built with their safety in mind and it's no real surprise that many cyclists choose not to use it in the same way as cars.
Personally I think there's a good argument to be made for why, in many cases, it would be ok for a cyclist to carefully make their way through a junction at a red light. Although the real answer would be to build infrastructure that removes the incentive to behave that way.
I don't run red lights but I do cross on pedestrian signals from the road in such a way that probably makes drivers some angry.
The fact is it's much safer for me to clear the intersection ahead of drivers rather than have them try to pass me at the intersection. If there are two lanes of cars banked up behind me impatient people will try and pass without changing to the far lane; getting too close to me in the process.
Some signals in my city have bike boxes and secondary lights for bikes which change a few seconds before the car signals to give riders a head start - this accomplishes the same thing and feels much safer.
I one time did this in front of a police car (without thinking...), and the officers immediately pulled me over. It was evident that it wasn't for safety, it was that they felt disrespected.
Don’t assume they’re not special, by law. In some states, bicycles are allowed to proceed through red lights after stopping, while cars are not. (Perhaps similar to how motorcycles in CA are allowed to split lanes while cars are not.)
I don’t really see how else to take your comment but as justification, though FWIW, studies show cars break more traffic laws way more times than bikes.
Do the traffic lights actually detect bikes? Sometimes the sensors can only detect heavy objects like cars, so on a bike you can just be stuck waiting there an arbitrary amount of time if you want to obey the law.
> I see cyclists cross red lights much too often. So it's not once it's way too many times.
Anecdatum: I can stand at the junction on the main road about 200m from here and, in peak time, see 5-10 cars (on each change) either deliberately jump the amber/red on one side or enter the junction in an unsafe manner on the other. Which means upwards of 100-200 cars per hour. For cyclists, it'll rarely be one per change; maybe 10 an hour.
Let's be honest, the real reason is that cyclists are frustrating to drivers merely by being cyclists. They're slow so they force the driver to either try to overtake or slow down everyone behind them and most people when driving will feel a pressure not to slow down the journeys of others behind them.
So long as cyclists and drivers share the same roads it will always exist, some drivers will just be better about it than others.
It also annoys me when somebody is moving too slow in the aisle at the grocery store, but I've literally never once seen someone flip out and yell at or physically push past someone for moving too slow in that context.
We've had 100 years to examine the effects of driving on people's brains and it's...deranging, clearly.
The funny thing though is that, in most urban settings, this is completely untrue. Cyclists actually speed things up by creating less traffic. Every cyclist on the road means less cars on the road.
And the speed of traffic is not determined by the speed of the cars, which most drivers seem to believe for some reason. In a city, the speed of traffic is entirely determined by the stop signals. There is a fixed time it will take you to get from A to B if you abide by the rules and don't run through every stop light. That fixed time depends somewhat on how many other cars are on the road, since you might wait for several signal changes at each light but the light changes have often been designed for throughput.
So even though you think you can go faster than the cyclist, you likely can't, at least averaged over your journey. They are probably actually going faster than you on average. Sure, you can drive faster for that short stretch before the next light, but what's the point? You are just burning more gas and if you pull some "skillful" weaving maneuvres around the cyclist, then you are endangering lives too.
> The funny thing though is that, in most urban settings, this is completely untrue. Cyclists actually speed things up by creating less traffic.
Citation please.
> Every cyclist on the road means less cars on the road.
While that part is certainly more true than not, the implications of fewer cars but several bottlenecks added to the traffic system is far from certain and likely relies on so many other factors than just the number of bikes on the road.
This kind of information is easy to google and also easy to prove to yourself by just making an honest attempt to get places by bicycle. But here is one example of a study:
I am not a traffic engineer but I think if you know a few simple numbers like average travel distance, average car size, bike size, etc. you can see how it will be difficult to design any system where cars will beat bicycles. The only conceivable way for this to work is to space everything 20 miles apart with 8 lane highways connecting them and even then you still have last mile problems in such a system that necessarily slows things down. Even the freeways themselves can be bumper to bumper at rush hour, just look at the Katy Freeway in Houston.
Basically, there are already bottlenecks in car traffic systems and there is no way to avoid them because of induced demand. Adding cycling infrastructure will not hurt drivers but would help get more people on bikes.
Not a citation but most intersections are literal chokepoints for traffic. The throughput of those decide the speed of traffic. You can lookup "Cities in Motion fix traffic" on Youtube if ypu want proof. So when you except that throughput is speed, you understand why every car comercial is shot at 3am traffic.
A lot of people, those around me included, seem to not grasp that for safe overtake of a bicycle you still require a second lane (at least partially) besides your own.
But in traffic and the laws lane usage is binary. There is no such thing as half lanes, you cannot use the second lane "a little". You either need it, or you don't.
So overtaking a bicycle, a motorbike, a pedestrian on the road or a tractor, etc. it is all the same.
What I'm trying to say is, where I live people forget that all the time, and then they think they can "squeeze by", endangering cyclists, motorcyclists and most of all the opposing traffic. I see this multiple times a week in the summer.
The problem is that drivers don't seem to understand that they need to leave enough room so that they don't just drive over the cyclist if they lose control due to a pothole or similar
Are you implying I don't know that? I'm always at least partially in the second lane when I pass them. IIRC the recommendation is a metre and a half of space which is what I go for.
It's literally the guidance that every police force in the UK work to, you need to leave a space of 1.5 metres between your car and the cyclist when overtaking at 30mph. It might be that our road lanes are narrower than yours of course.
Also, cyclists have to keep roughly the same distance from parked cars (“reasonable distance”, OLG Düsseldorf ruled 2018 that this means 1.5 meters from parked cars or 80 cm from a curb if there are no cars).
With those two rules combined, in most city streets bicyclists require a full lane.
A safety rule every cyclist understands after a close call or two. Don't ride too close to the curb and especially not if there are cars parked. Very nice you have that codified in law.
Which is the most dangerous place to be of all. Cyclists must avoid this zone except for near-zero speeds.
I usually tell new cyclists to assume that you are never seen unless you are right in front of a car. Assume all cars have no mirrors, side windows and all doors can be opened at any time. In a car, the mentality is usually "if I have the right of way I'll do it", on a bike it's a death wish.
1. Most of the time I encounter cyclists is on country roads, which is 90% of my driving.
2. In the city they're even less of an issue, because the speed limit is 50 km/h and they're doing what, 20-40km/h? It's not that big a deal especially if you factor in intersections, roundabouts, etc.
3. They're still narrower than farm tractors. Or herds of cattle. It's just not that big a deal.
That's my impression to. Bikers apparently think that those funny white stripes on the roads and bike roads are some kind of decoration, not passage for pedestrian. Many bikers think that they have priority there...
IME every mode of transport has people who consider themselves to be more important than any rules that govern them. Pedestrians walking on cycleways and getting angry at getting belled at. Cyclists ignoring red lights or cycling on sidewalks. Motorists driving/parking on sidewalks and cycleways or not yielding to pedestrians when exiting a roundabout. Basically anything that inconveniences certain people seems to be grounds to inconvenience others or at least not care about them. This doesn't seem to be restricted to certain modes of transport, although the faster the mode can be, the more dangerous the clashes become. I guess it's then more about the mindset of people than their way of getting around.
That being said, when I was in driving school way later than most people who got their driver's license, I suddenly noticed a few things as a cyclist: People in cars don't see anything from inside in comparison. So some things cyclists do end up endangering them needlessly because they may lack awareness about the problems drivers may have reacting to that behavior. This probably cuts both ways and we'd all be safer if there are more cyclists on the streets so drivers get accustomed to looking out for them and there are perhaps fewer instances where anyone, cyclist or driver, would be compelled to resort to something dangerous just out of inconvenience. But at least for me I basically changed my cycling behavior to act like a car. And when in a car I at least know how cyclists feel in certain situations and can avoid them. Leaving space, not overtaking where you can't, anticipating somewhat erratic behavior (cyclists can't always give hand signals when turning, for example). And honestly, it's not a big deal or an inconvenience. But then again, it's also how to behave on the road in general according to the laws (first paragraph of the German highway code is literally to exhibit caution looking out for each other, and that goes for everyone in theory).
Well... I'm both a pedestrian and biker (and I generally use a car when outside my city) and honestly, I find it normal for pedestrians to give priority to bikes.
It's just a lot more energy expensive to stop and start again for a bike, while it is essentially free for a pedestrian.
As a pedestrian I always try to avoid making bikes stop unnecessarily, and most people seem to do the same here, even if pedestrians technically have priority. Most people here are also bikers at times, so I suppose they understand this better than pedestrians in places where bikes are seen as something special/annoying/for other people.
Well if energy output is your reasoning: then it's orders of magnitude more energy for a car to come to a full stop and re-accelerate than it is for a pedestrian to let it pass.
Should cars then have priority over people in a crosswalk?
I hesitated talking about this in my post, but I should have.
There are two different reasons to consider for pedestrians having priority over cars, unlike over bikes.
First, as the sibling comment says, there is no energy personally spent by the driver to stop and start their car. It's effortless, while in the case of a bike, the energy is the biker's own.
The other reason is that it is generally more difficult to cross a stream of cars that don't stop compared to crossing a stream of bikes that don't stop. Cars drive faster and cannot really deviate from their path (more than a few tens of centimeters) while bikes drive slower and can more easily move while staying in their lane to make way for a pedestrian without stopping.
Of course, reading comments here (and generally, comments on American websites) you would think that bikers in general are found in the form of a swarm of dangerous, malevolent savages that are totally unpredictable at best. Maybe that's the case in the US (that was definitely not the case in Québec when I was living there but that's my only point of reference in North America) but it was not the case in any of the cities of Europe and Asia where I've lived.
Bikers are just more averse to stopping because they are more physically affected by it than users of other forms of transportation, and not because they are a despicable subspecies of humans with a particular propensity towards bothering others.
> there is no energy personally spent by the driver to stop and start their car
Funny, in a way. An old ... acquaintance used a corollary of this back in the 90's. Because he drove a truck, stopping it and then getting it moving again took considerable amount of energy. Much more than what a pedestrian would require.
As such, he considered himself having the drive of way over pedestrians and the heavier the vehicle he was driving, the better the reason he had to run the lights. And if necessary, over pedestrians.
Why is energy expenditure the metric we're using to judge who should stop? In my opinion the metric should be this: whoever has the highest capability to cause injury to another person should be the one who has to be more careful and considerate. Injury is more consequential and potentially life-altering than energy expenditure. From this perspective, motor vehicles should give way to bikes, bikes to pedestrians.
Not for the driver. This isn't an environmental argument. This is an argument that a pedestrian just has to stand for a moment, a driver just has to slightly move their feet, and a bicyclist has to do a bunch of physically strenuous shit to stop.
Here is the issue. As you can see from my previous comment I agree with you, that cyclists are a danger from a pedestrians perspective.
The problem from a cyclist's point of view is that having to stop every block to let pedestrians cross, would really really really suck on a bicycle; just losing all momentum and having to start from a stop. It would also probably be bad for the knees after a while.
It also really sucks to have to constantly stop in a car for all of those annoying traffic lights, stop signs, and of course crosswalks. It would be much much much easier and faster to just continue driving without stopping to my destination. It would also probably be bad for the environment with all of that extra idle time waiting and acceleration.
The argument sounds ridiculous when framed from a drivers point of view. And it's the same from the cyclists. Either you want traffic laws to be obeyed or you don't. Offering up that "really sucks" isn't a valid reason to ignore the laws.
> Either you want traffic laws to be obeyed or you don't.
In fact, no, it isn't binary. Driving laws are written in blood. When a driver speeds or runs a red light they massively increase the chance of severe injury, death, or catastrophic property damage, for both themselves and everybody around them.
This is just simply not the case for all other modes of travel. So, no, I don't want the laws to be either "enforced or not." I care way more about enforcing laws on the drivers of multi-ton machines traveling at high rates of speed than I do the guy on a bicycle or the pedestrian.
This frustrates drivers, who demand that everybody be treated the same. But it's absurd to treat all modes of travel the same, which is why a ground crew isn't required for you to back out of your driveway, even though it is for commercial jets.
When driving, cyclists are dangerous for themselves and for others.
When walking, cyclists have absolutely no regard for my physical safety. When I lived in a city with a lot of cyclists I ended up developing some kind of fear that made me look around all the time because of how many cyclists had almost killed me when I was peacefully walking along the pavement.
In Germany I see this as basically an infrastructure problem. Most of the bike lanes are just a painted red strip on the sidewalk. This is dangerous because it puts cyclists so close to pedestrians--who often move unpredictably into the bike lane--and it's easy as a pedestrian to accidentally wander into the bike lane. Especially at night when the red is hard to see (they should have chosen a brighter color like neon green) or near bus stops when pedestrians getting off the bus are almost forced to immediately cross the bike lane.
This is not to mention on some streets the bike lane just randomly ends and you find yourself on a sidewalk with no separate lane and you have to choose whether to stay on the sidewalk and risk hitting a pedestrian, or dangerously swerve into the street and risk getting hit by a car.
If they just built proper separated bike lanes protected from car traffic, and clearly separated from pedestrians this simply wouldn't be an issue at all. Copenhagen has it right where the bike lanes are painted bright blue and are on a physically raised level from both the street and sidewalk, in addition to prioritizing bikes and pedestrians at many intersections without stoplights. It's a joy to cycle around Copenhagen because of this.
Absolutely, bike lanes in Germany are an afterthought _at best_. I see bike lanes here springing into existence randomly with no way to get on (you're on the street with the cars, and suddenly you see a bike lane on the other side) and, similarly, ending with no reasonable way to continue (just hop off the sidewalk here please!). In my neigborhood, "red" means bike lane 50% of the time and sidewalk the other 50%. There is literally a sidewalk close by where the lane colors switch half way through. They're also often poorly paved with big bumps to get on and off at intersections.
Being born and raised in the Netherlands, this was a bit of a nasty surprise when I moved here. I really think you can cut down car use significantly by improving the infrastructure. The distances and landscape lend themselves well to biking, but the roads do not.
I've always found it ironic that there's a certain breed of cyclist who regards car drivers the way pedestrians regard cyclists, while regarding pedestrians the way car drivers regard cyclists, and while simultaneously perpetrating every insult that any of the above imposes on any other.
(Obviously there are many courteous cyclists too, just as there are many courteous drivers and pedestrians, I'm just talking about this particular group.)
Rather than trying to divide people into categories based on how they happen to be travelling (many cyclists are also drivers and pedestrians at times), I find it better to appreciate that a percentage of the population act like assholes (5%?). The thing is that assholes in motor vehicles are likely to injure/kill someone, whereas assholes on bikes are as likely to injure themselves as others and assholes on foot are very unlikely to injure others (excepting the ones that step out into a road/cycle path without looking). So, what we need to do is attempt to get as many assholes out of their cars and onto bikes (or foot) for as many journeys as possible. I welcome seeing an asshole on a bike as it means they're not currently an asshole in 2 tonnes of speeding death machine.
… unless you’re longboarding around 20 mph and just about to go through a green light when a dozen bikes come flying through at 20-25 mph 5 seconds after their light turned red.
That’s what happened to me. Only reason I didn’t get trampled was because I had a funny feeling and decided to slow down as I approached the intersection (buildings obscured my view of possible traffic).
They had zero sense of self preservation, let alone any regard for anyone else.
I believe that longboarding on a public road at 20mph would be illegal where I live. It certainly sounds pretty dangerous. What's the stopping distance at that speed on a longboard?
Yeah, I never try to time lights like that anymore, I’ve seen so many cars blow red lights. I always proceed slowly and look both ways for one coming at a fresh green, whether on bike or in car.
I’ve had a similar experience walking, I was in the middle of a crosswalk on a four lane road by the time a dozen teenagers blew through their red light, popping wheelies on gold plated BMXs, cars screeching in the middle of the intersection to avoid hitting them. I almost yelled at the first one that went by me thinking they were the only one, but was very glad I didn’t when all the others passed around me. One of the wildest things I’ve seen in a city.
Not OP, but this your "reality" is wrong. For example, three days ago in Warsaw, a cyclist ran over a child (ER took the child to hospital) on a busy promenade on the bank of the river. The cycleway is temporarily moved there because of the roadwork and the space is designated as shared between cycle and foot traffic.
For several days pedestarians complained that cyclists drive like crazy and it's "when" not "if" some cyclist will hit someone. That unfortunately proved to be accurate.
Meanwhile there's over 2000 deadly car accidents a year in Poland, 20% of which are pedestrians[1], meaning there's more than one pedestrian killed by a car every day.
Yes, collisions between vehicles and pedestrians happen where the two interact, and the places where they do can be different for different classes of vehicles. What's your point?
> a cyclist ran over a child (ER took the child to hospital) on a busy promenade on the bank of the river.
Promenades happen to be dedicated to pedestrians. So pedestrian was hit in a place, where he was supposed to be safe.
And then...
> Meanwhile there's over 2000 deadly car accidents a year in Poland, 20% of which are pedestrians[1], meaning there's more than one pedestrian killed by a car every day.
These accidents probably didn't happen on promenades, pavements, sidewalks, footpaths or other places dedicated to pedestrians.
So back to my point: comparing apples with apples. This comparison wasn't it.
There's a rule that says that if you have (and have a right to at all) ride or drive anything on wheels in an area designated primarily for pedestrian use, you have to move at pedestrian speed. It doesn't matter if you are on a bicycle or an electric scooter, or on a garbage truck, 5 km/h it is.
And yet people seem to promptly forget about it as soon as they get onto their killing machines. Must be something in the wheels or saddles causing them a selective amnesia.
Electric scooters on crosswalks are surely a plague. Teens on them tend to ride out of the bushes at their maximum speed and cross roads without ever slowing down, making it quite hard for drivers to anticipate. Yes, you have right of way, dolt, but so has a car that just turned right, after making sure it's clear to go. There is no way to tell that a crazy kid is going to jump out in the next 300ms.
Imagine if during road work they created a "temporarily shared space" between car and foot traffic.
This is still a systemic issue due to poor urban design/planning. The kid was injured because the city didn't properly separate two different modes of transit. Even if it was "temporary"
We could live in a world where treat bike lanes with the respect we treat car lanes and give them proper detours and this wouldn't be an issue.
I love cycling and bicycles, but I have to say you have a point in your second statement. Back in the days when I used to live in Helsinki, streets became much more dangerous after cycling became popular and city built dedicated cycling lanes. Suddenly all the hipsters with their 5000 USD handmake Swiss custom bikes are out there to kill the pedestrians.
Outside of some developing countries I've never felt threatened by cars, but I've been just less than a second away from death or permanent disability because of bicycles in Helsinki, Berlin, Tel Aviv etc.
It sounds so hard to believe that streets became “much more dangerous” with “cyclists out there to kill pedestrians” that I looked for sources on the matter.
First result [0] says there were zero pedestrian or cyclist fatalities in 2019, with ping-term trend being increasing safety.
Another result [1] on how it was achieved: “cut speed limits, changed street design, removed space for cars and generally made life harder for motorists”.
> Outside of some developing countries I've never felt threatened by cars, but I've been just less than a second away from death or permanent disability because of bicycles in Helsinki, Berlin, Tel Aviv etc.
What less than a second away means to you?
I think there is a bias based on perception. When people see a cyclists going in their direction they assume said cyclist will ran into them on purpose while a bicycle comes into a complete stop in just a handful of meters and can avoid objects easily. I am not condoning riding fast and recklessly in path shared to pedestrian and cyclists and I tend to lower my speed at barely more than running pace but a lot of that comes from perception.
One other example, I have been riding MTB for years in swiss Alps, in trails shared by hikers and mountain bike. If I am in a descent I tend to go quite fast when visibility is good and I can see what is at the exit of a corner. When there is no visibility I will reduce my speed dramatically to be able to stop for any hiker, cattle or whatever that could be in the way. The thing is braking hard on a mountain bike with aggressive tires on dirt/rocks is quite a noisy affair and involve a bit of sliding, which is fair and nice. Hikers on the other side of the corner would often end up being afraid by the sound and shouting insults at me like I was a criminal while I had preventively braked to a safe speed in order for anyone to be safe. Perception bias. In later years I started braking much earlier and in a longer distance has to do less noise, removing fun just so that people are less afraid. It didn't change a thing regarding their safety. Sad.
> Outside of some developing countries I've never felt threatened by cars, but I've been just less than a second away from death or permanent disability because of bicycles in Helsinki, Berlin, Tel Aviv etc.
One seriously distinct American thing is to claim deadly dangers in extraordinary safe situations and places.
Being hit by a cyclist is no laughing matter, especially if you are a child or elderly. That said, cyclist/pedestrian accidents account for relatively few deaths and injuries compared to other forms of transport.
> That said, cyclist/pedestrian accidents account for relatively few deaths and injuries compared to other forms of transport.
Yes. They are both less frequent and the consequences are less grave. Even among people who survive them, the injuries are less serious then injuries of car accidents.
Also, more specifically, Berlin and Helsinki are not unsafe with their use of bicycles. There is no army of permanently disabled people due to use of either in those cities. Whatever is the root of hate toward cyclists, the actual safety is not it. For that matter, people who use bikes for transport rarely use super expensive bikes. That part of the comment does not work either.
I don't care about bikes on the road (as long as they obey traffic regulations, which happens to be a problem, some people who bike just don't know the rules), however I am mad about bikers on the pavements and even more about electric scooters on pavements, which are a plague now and are even more dangerous than bikes.
The point, from a driver's perspective, is that driving is a social activity, so whoever does not behave well is not welcomed, drivers or cyclists.
I have no issue if cyclists are riding on reserved lanes, but I DO have an issue if 1) they are blocking other vehicles for 20+ seconds, 2) suddenly come onto road from sidewalk, 3) anything else that adds mental burden to other people
That said, I hope ALL roads have cyclist lanes so that I can enjoy more cycling.
As dageshi said, yes if there is significant traffic.
When cycling, under such circumstances, I usually stay between two parked cars until the traffic is better (that is usually after a switch of traffic light to red). But again I try to stay in reserved lanes, much safer.
So if you're stuck behind a tractor, do you also expect it to stop by the side of the road and let all traffic pass? I'm sure many farmers would disagree with you there and tell you they've got work to do. I've never seen any tractor do that in fact.
Same goes for bicycles, they've got places to be. It's a means of transportation just like a car. If there is no bike lane, that's though luck for the cyclist (as it's a lot less comfortable) and for the motorists behind them, and a good reason for cyclists and motorists alike to argue for more bike lanes. Why should they alone bear the cost of shitty infrastructure (in time lost stopping by the side of the road every time a car is stuck behind them for +20s)?
I'm from NL and I kind of hate the way too many drivers don't look for cyclists and how many old people on eBikes clog up all of the nice cycle routes here. Although the latter is more a problem of old people from the Randstad vacationing here (Gelderland).
Mine increased, actually. Cyclists have the least respect for traffic rules out of all participants. Like literally everyone else on the road has to bend to their will.
Car drivers who hate bikes are dumb. Why don't they understand that every bike trip means one car less in traffic, thus freeing up space for their car?
I drive a car, ride a motorcycle and ride a bicycle. For the most part I've ridden a bicycle to work for the past 5-6 years (and off and on in the 20 years before that). I live in Norway, so my experience is going to be different from the US or the Netherlands. Her are some observations as a bicycle rider in Trondheim, Norway.
- There is a decent number of bicycle lanes in Trondheim. Some people complain about obstacles you have to deal with, but in general it is easier to navigate the city on a bicycle than in a car or on a motorcycle. Bicyclists have a lot less to complain about than car or motorcycle drivers if we're going to be fair.
- Most drivers tend to treat me with respect when I'm on a bicycle. I can't even remember the last time I got into conflict with a car. I live at the end of an uphill section with sharp turns, which means I'll be testing car drivers' patience every single day. And yet they tend to drive patiently behind me until they can see that it is clear (or I wave them past if I can see far enough around the next corner).
- I try to minimize interaction with pedestrians and cars when picking routes. I've ridden a bike in 3 cities and found that you can almost always find low conflict routes at acceptable cost in terms of time/distance. It puzzles me that a lot of my peers lack the ability or willingness to put some thought and consideration into their riding.
(My default route to work separates me from cars 80% or so of the route, has perhaps 4-5 choke points where I have to cooperate with pedestrians and takes 22-23 minutes. I mostly choose roads parallel to roads with higher traffic. A more direct route saves me perhaps 2-3 minutes, but in my estimation, isn't worth the extra exposure to cars and pedestrians).
- Pedestrians wandering into bike lanes tend to represent a bigger danger than cars. Many pedestrians are much less alert than drivers and less predictable. Especially those with their nose in their smart phones.
- A big challenge in cities seems to be buses. I don't think this is out of ill will, but because they have a job that is orders of magnitude harder than driving a regular car. A bit of respect for their job goes a long way towards reducing conflict. Avoiding areas where buses need to navigate stressful traffic is usually the best approach.
- In Norway most bicycle riders tend to behave OK. But there is a small minority that is aggressively entitled. These people are essentially assholes, but feel they have a right to be assholes because they ride bicycles and everyone else is always at fault. They are big on their rights. Usually male, a bit equipment-obsessed and usually between 35 and 50. I think of these as the "one percenters of bicycles".
At least here in Norway, it is mostly down to attitude and willingness to cooperate regardless of mode of transportation. There are asshole drivers, but I get the impression that they are more of a problem in Oslo than in Trondheim where I live. Attitudes may be far more aggressive in the US and far less in the Netherlands or Denmark.
I think, especially in cities, you just have the problem of bicycles not fitting in either of the two historically present transport modes. They are too slow for the street and waaaaay to fast for the pedestrian side.
Bike lanes historically do not deliver as they increase traffic pattern complexity significantly for all three participants.
I have seen some very ambitious plans to make city Centers free of anything that can go faster than 25kph and I root for such plans but they are all very naive usually.
Still, happy to see the world move in such a direction. Until then I think we will have to live with the fact that there are some legitimate reasons to hate on the bicycle.
PS: before you all get worked up for what a bicycle hating subhuman I must be. I own a mountain bike, I happily use it in forests and mountainous regions and get huge amounts of recreational value out of it.
> I think, especially in cities, you just have the problem of bicycles not fitting in either of the two historically present transport modes. They are too slow for the street and waaaaay to fast for the pedestrian side
Replace that bicycles with cars and the argument still holds up. "historically" here is really an argumentum ad antiquitatem. Both cars and bicycles are fairly modern inventions which both appeared around the same time.
In fact, city streets were mostly dominated by pedestrians, horses and carriages up to the late 19th / early 20th century. Moreover, there was a backlash against early cars as well. The more interesting question is this: how did cars really ended up overtaking streets in cities and towns? Why did infrastructure / urban planning ended up favoring car use in the public space?
> I have seen some very ambitious plans to make city Centers free of anything that can go faster than 25kph and I root for such plans but they are all very naive usually
Why are they naive? I live in a historic city center. Streets used to be cramped with cars, it smelled horribly with exhaust gasses, soot covered historic buildings, parking space is extremely limited and small sidewalks were crowded forcing you to teeter into traffic.
Over the past decades, that all changed as car use was gradually disincentivized and in some areas downright banned. All I can say is that it has been a massive improvement. The city is far more appealing then it used to be... and these days I know few people contesting that it's "unfeasible" or "unpractical".
Would it work everywhere? No, not really. Let's be realistic. But let's not venture into the other extreme dismissing wholesale as a naive idea either.
I think the experience of the Netherlands shows that bicycles can happily be part of the transport mix if they are properly catered for; dedicated traffic lanes separated from car traffic. It's the half hearted measures that typically fail.
>not fitting in either of the two historically present transport modes.
Bicycles were invented first, cars came later. It's the cars that don't fit. They're too big and too dangerous.
Next time you go outside, take a look around you and count all the gizmos and contrivances that litter the streets, all of which are for cars or because of cars or to protect from cars. Traffic lights, painted crossings, bollards, metal protective barriers, pedestrian islands, bike lanes, parking spaces, speed cameras, on and on it goes.
We only need all this ugly junk because of cars. We've trained ourselves not to see it, like a hoarder who doesn't properly see his piles of clutter.
When it's just pedestrians, bikes, and maybe a tram or two, it's amazing how tidy and calm a street can be.
There's no legitimate reason to hate on any other mode of transportation. Unless you're on an interstate or other highway that specifically forbids certain vehicles or has a minimum speed, everyone else has the same right to use the road you do.
Generally yes, but, especially in California, people often forget that it's the slower vehicle's responsibility to yield to faster traffic, regardless of the type of slower vehicle.
EDIT: Yield here is a misnomer, what I mean to convey is that slower moving traffic by law is supposed to pass faster moving traffic if it's possible to do so safely, and this is a feat that I rarely see take place, be it with cyclists or drivers.
> it's the slower vehicle's responsibility to yield to faster traffic
WTF is wrong with you in America?
When a bike goes on the pavement it's the bike that has to yield. When a pedestrian or a bike goes on a road - it's the cars that have to yield (usually, there's exceptions).
I was referring to traffic on roads, not sidewalks. Slower vehichles on the road have to yield to faster vehichles in so far that they have to let them pass.
No they don't. Do you drive? Cause if so - you're a threat to other people...
When a pedestrian crosses a street - cars and bikes have to stop for example. When a bike and a car meet on an intersection of equal roads with no lights or signs - whoever is on the left has to yield, no matter what their speed is. When signs or lights show who has to yield - it also doesn't matter if you drive a car/bike or walk.
I can't think of a single instance where the law says you should yield just because you're slower.
And if law doesn't say who should yield - it's customary to let the slower/more vulnerable to go first.
Pedestrians are not vehichles. I am specifically referring to a situation where there's traffic going one way on a road and slower vehicles are impeding on traffic behind them - in this case it's the responsibility of the slower vehicle to let the faster traffic pass in a safe manner. Seems like I've worded myself poorly here given that people are clearly misunderstanding me.
Yes, at intersections, as a driver, I will let bicycles and pedestrians cross first if there's a stop sign or the traffic is moving slowly. However, when I'm driving my Prius on the highway and I don't feel like doing 15 MPH over the speed limit, I will move over and let the soccer mom pass. 30 minutes later when on a mountain road, I expect the soccer mom and the cycling enthusiasts to do the same.
> Yes, at intersections, as a driver, I will let bicycles and pedestrians cross first if there's a stop sign or the traffic is moving slowly.
There's no if, and you're not in a position to "let" them do anything. Doesn't matter how fast they go. If they have the right of way - they do. If they don't - they don't. Speed doesn't matter and it's not your decision.
> I am specifically referring to a situation where there's traffic going one way on a road and slower vehicles are impeding on traffic behind them
There's law about that, and you won't like it :) If a bike is driving on a road and you're behind it and forced to slow down because of that - you can overtake the bike only if you have at least 1 meter of safety margin. If the road is too narrow to do that or there's a continuous line or overtaking ban sign - you are required by law to slow down and drive behind the bike waiting for a safer place to overtake that bike.
There's no law forcing the bike to "let you overtake it" - the only relevant law AFAIK is that the bike has to drive near the right side (except for intersections where they turn left). But so do anybody else, including cars - it has nothing to do with speed.
> soccer mom
No idea what that is and how it matters.
> cycling enthusiasts
Do you call people "walking enthusiasts" and car drivers "car enthusiast"? This whole approach to cyclists as if they were somehow "less serious" road users than car drivers is toxic.
The soccer mom comment is a bit insensitive, but I meant to imply that the person operating their vehicle isn't paying attention to driving much.
As for the cycling enthusiast remark, if you're cycling on mountain roads for the purpose of recreation, I think it's fair to say that you'd be interested in cycling more than most other people. I might be very wrong. I don't have anything against cyclists, I am one myself. And yes, I will call people hill-walking enthusiasts if they enjoy hill walking. I will also call some people driving enthusiasts, if they enjoy the act of driving. These are distinct groups of people for whom these labels seem justified. Don't take this the wrong way but it might be you who's assigning some moral value to the use of these labels, my intention was to use them in a more matter-of-fact kind of a way.
> There's no law forcing the bike to "let you overtake it" - the only relevant law AFAIK is that the bike has to drive near the right side (except for intersections where they turn left). But so do anybody else, including cars - it has nothing to do with speed.
Yes there is. In the UK, as per the latest changes to the highway code, slower traffic should let faster traffic pass, when possible to do so in a safe manner. I was certain it was the same in California, but I cannot find any source claiming this just now - however, there are plenty of signs saying that slower traffic should use turnouts to let others pass.
> There's law about that, and you won't like it :) If a bike is driving on a road and you're behind it and forced to slow down because of that - you can overtake the bike only if you have at least 1 meter of safety margin. If the road is too narrow to do that or there's a continuous line or overtaking ban sign - you are required by law to slow down and drive behind the bike waiting for a safer place to overtake that bike.
I take no issue with such a law - if it's not safe to pass, then there's nothing one can do. I think it's pretty obvious that safety always comes first. However, given a situation where there's 5 or more cars behind me when I'm cycling, I'll be aware of this and I will stop whenever possible to let them pass if they are able to go faster than I am on my bike. This is not difficult to do, and I'd much prefer the 2 tonnes of metal that's powered by paleolithic compost and not rarely operated by someone looking at their phone were in front of me rather than behind me.
> Yes there is. In the UK, as per the latest changes to the highway code, slower traffic should let faster traffic pass, when possible to do so in a safe manner.
I haven't been able to find this change sorry, where did you see it? It's not mentioned in any of the update articles I've been able to find[0]. The pre-existing rule 169 is the closest match and only suggests that road users do not create long queues of traffic. This doesn't mean that slower road users are required to pull over for any faster vehicle, only that they should try to if a longer queue begins to form behind them.
Older articles[1] indicate that 169 doesn't apply to cyclists at all but I imagine this is an overgeneralisation of the rule that allows cyclists to take a lane position that prevents cars from overtaking when it is unsafe to do so.
Maybe I was reading too much into this and interpreting your post uncharitably. Sorry for that.
In any case - I don't think the law you refer to means what you think it means. For example if you're driving a farming equipment (or a bike) at the top comfortable speed - you don't have to speed up or stop on a nearest parking to "let people pass". You just continue driving as normal, close to the right side of the road. What's forbidden is slowing down on purpose to block the traffic, which is a whole different thing (usually done as a form of a political protest). At least that's how it works in Poland and I suspect in the rest of EU.
> 30 minutes later when on a mountain road, I expect the soccer mom and the cycling enthusiasts to do the same.
I have a feeling that you'll end up killing someone on one of these mountain roads with that attitude.
You wait behind them until you're on a clear stretch of straight road, and then overtake. If you don't have a clear stretch of road, you continue to wait behind them. Anything else, and you're putting either the cyclist in danger, or yourself and the oncoming traffic in danger.
What specifically about that statement implies that I have an attitude that tends towards being dangerous on the road?
I'm not saying that I'll be driving at inappropriate speeds or trying to tail-gate other cars or god-forbid cyclists on mountain roads. I prefer to keep my distance, especially around cyclists. All I'm saying is that it'd be nice if the slower traffic in front would actively let the faster traffic pass, using the turnouts or whatever they're called to stop and let others pass.
No. Traffic is supposed to flow. A vehicle that's moving too slowly is an obstacle on the road. There is such a thing as a minimum speed and cyclists violate that every single day.
> There is such a thing as a minimum speed and cyclists violate that every single day.
On every road where minimum speed is introduced bikes are banned anyway. At least in my country. It's just motorways and expressways. Every other road does not have minimum speed and bikes can go as slow as they wish. Anything else would be discriminatory towards less fit people.
Where do you live? Cause I'm walking A LOT (over 9 km per day on average for the last 2 years - yes I'm recording stats, I'm a nerd) and I bike a little (but much less - about 3 km per day in that period) and I've never had a guy on a bicycle threaten me when I'm walking or biking.
Pedestrians in the cities are on the pavements. You cannot really bike over 15 km/h on a pavement. And depending on the kind of the pavement 10 km/h might be more realistic. You'll shake and your wrists will hurt if you do more than that. And it's hard to maintain over 15 km/h for long if you're not very fit. I know I can't, and I'm more fit than the average cyclist. Going 15 km/h on a pavement you pose no threat to anybody.
Outside of the cities cyclists and pedestrians do meet on the roads - but pedestrians walk the other side of the road than cyclists. And the average cyclist in countryside is a grandma going back from church/cemetary/grocery shop. Really not a threat either.
The only cyclists that might theoretically put you in danger are the hardcore sport kind, but they are very rare and they just go on the streets with cars.
> you just have the problem of bicycles not fitting in either of the two historically present transport modes. They are too slow for the street and waaaaay to fast for the pedestrian side.
The biggest problems I've had have actually been in places where this isn't the case: slow-moving inner city traffic here you can just keep up with cars.
In some traffic situations this is certainly a problem, but I think it's just part of the overall problem.
Uh, what? Reaching 15km/h is not unheard of for running either, so why would that be waaaaay too fast on a bike in mainly pedestrian areas? Sure, the bike should slow down to lower speeds than their norm to ensure safety for all people involved in traffic, but isn't that no different from how cars shouldn't go 100km/h+ in city centers?
I see your point, but Amsterdam generally has separate lanes for cars, bikes and foot traffic.
The point I was making is that it is safe to use a bike in foot traffic areas if you slow down to match the expected speeds of your surrounding traffic; such as using a bike in the historical city center of e.g. Amersfoort or Utrecht, where there is usually a lot of foot traffic and little car traffic, and no separate bike lanes.
A colision at 100km/h, even 60 for sure, the pedestrian or cyclist has a near zero chance of surviving it. Especially if we talk of vehicles with more than 1000Kg of mass.
The cyclist has all the reason to be there as a driver would, none at all. Go driving on the sidewalk, at a speed presumably appropriate for "guests" (15 km/h? would that really be appropriate?) and look how welcome you are.
The existence of a sidewalk implies the existance of a road that is used for all traffic except foot traffic, such as bikes. Why are you forcing the situation onto the sidewalk?
I was talking about a pedestrian road, considering the 'historical' setting of the GP post.
I'm not. I'm trying to illustrate how wrong it is to expect cyclists to retreat to the sidewalk, sorry if that wasn't clear. Actually I have trouble tolerating cyclists retreating to the sidewalk (mostly because they give drivers the illusion that this could be the norm), outside of certain exceptions (small children and those accompanying them). Limited access roads tend to not have sidewalks anyways.
Do you really need it explained to you how a bike is more dangerous to pedestrians than a runner? A bike has way more inertia, is harder to stop than someone running, and is a tangle of metal that can seriously injure someone, and more difficult to safely maneuver around short of standing the side and stopping to let them pass. Takes half a second of thought to realize all this but you chose to play incredulous instead.
This is how people rationalize, but there is one problem with it. When it no longer convenient to see bikes as dangerous then people instantly stop doing it, as accident data actually show extremely few cases of bikes causing injury to pedestrians outside of intersections.
This is shown directly by city planners. When construction closes down bike lines or walkways, which ever remains get temporarily converted to be both bike and walkway. Since that doesn't carry any increase in risk, it is safe to do so.
Similar, parents with strollers often use bike lanes. During winter when the road conditions is at its worst you often see strollers on bike lines. No one acts as if this puts the baby at mortal danger. Statistics also support this since bikes crashing into a stroller is unheard of.
However lanes that share bikes and pedestrians make people feel unease. The low speed and short breaking distance of bikes allow them to avoid causing accidents, but it doesn't remove the fear completely. Thus Swedish city planners don't generally combine pedestrians and bikes unless there is a good reason, like construction.
Your point is backed up by the custom in Japan. Most cyclists stick to the sidewalk and there are of course some accidents, but it's nothing to be particularly concerned about and it works fine even with incredibly high cycling rates.
> Do you really need it explained to you how a bike is more dangerous to pedestrians than a runner?
No, I do understand that there is (some) more danger to a bike. But a bike also provides an elevated viewpoint to the cyclist, allowing for a better overview of the traffic situation, allowing the cyclist to better participate in traffic.
> more difficult to safely maneuver around short of standing the side and stopping to let them pass.
Most of the time roads are wider than the turning radius of a bike, especially at low speeds (approx 1.5m). Why would you need to stand aside to let someone pass if you have such wide roads?
It would help if most of the present-day bicycle owners wouldn't be solid middle-class people who, when asking for a banning of cars, don't really know, or don't want to know, how crucial owning a car is for a person who isn't that well-off.
This is a pretty poor argument to be honest. For a start you're misrepresenting the claim.
Cyclists are very aware of how car-centric the infrastructure of their country is and the vast majority of them are arguing for resident focused planning, along with cycling infrastructure that allows people who aren't well-off to do away with the expense that is owning a car.
You can't purposely design everything around owning a car and then use "poor people need to own a car" as an excuse against any kind of mass transit planning.
You’ve got it backwards: Most people who ride bikes do not fit this description. Working class riders represent the large majority of riders globally. They ride for transportation, not pleasure, and on whatever bike they can, in whatever state they can get it. Because you’re right: a car is actually not an achievable purchase for those in precarious financial situations. This is the case for most forms of alternative transportation. So funding support for those forms is really important, even if for some reason you want to not do that to spite… moderately well off people.
This is what normal people understand right now when someone mentions bicycles: "Portlandia bike clip" [1]. It's a 10+ year old clip but all the better for it, sitcoms like Portlandia were in the vanguard of a lot of class-suppression and gentrifying stuff that we now see as "good for everybody!", not just for the middle-classes from which we're a part of (and which those sitcoms were targeting, self-parody used to be part of our class-related shtick).
This view omits a lot of nuance. Few people are calling for an immediate, unconditional ban on cars, unaccompanied by other reforms. What's clear -- and well backed by research -- is that cars are the worst form of travel compared to the alternatives. The key, then, is to make those alternatives more realistic by accompanying a ban on cars with a serious increase in investment in better public transit and urban design.
This approach is far better for those who aren't "well-off". Cars are very expensive! If we can free people from that economic burden and reduce the environmental impact and improve the availability of alternate means of transit, then the call to eliminate cars is extremely well justified. An argument which, again, is backed up by a wealth of robust scientific research covering all aspects of the problem, including economic.
Hate to say it, but when I see how bikes are "integrated" into for example American traffic, I don't blame the drivers at all. WTF is a bike doing in the middle of the road? If there's no bike lanes, then the bikes go all the way to the right, there are almost no exceptions.
I've watches a few videos of people biking, on bike lanes, in New York, and those lanes are placed by a mad man. Sometimes they are even on the wrong side of the road.
Go to the Netherlands, go to Denmark, Copenhagen especially and see how to mix traffic types. It's not perfect, but it's light years ahead of what some other countries are attempting.
That's the main reason I was taught to take a full lane with my bike, and the main reason I do. (Apart from things I perceive as safety issues -- mainly dooring! -- I always try to make sure motorists can pass me when they want to.)
Look at the picture in the Wikipedia article, like NYC bikes lanes, that lane has been placed by an idiot. It's on the wrong side of the car.
Still, in places with no bike lanes, I sort of see your point, but who in their right mind opens a door straight into traffic. If it's a bike it's going to unpleasant for the rider, if it's a car, your car door comes off. I think it's less of a problem here in Denmark, partly do to placement of the bike lanes, but also because you don't park your car on the side of major roads and because drivers a more expecting of bikes perhaps. I mean dooring happens, but very rarely.
I'd say you're lucky to have better infrastructure that contributes to better safety. The bike lane placement in that Wikipedia example is dangerous because of the door zone, but it's not atypical for the United States.
> who in their right mind opens a door straight into traffic. If it's a bike it's going to unpleasant for the rider, if it's a car, your car door comes off [...] I mean dooring happens, but very rarely.
Here in the U.S., I believe it's the most common cause of cyclist injuries in some cities (!). Opening doors into traffic without looking is not that unusual, and there's a lot of discussion about how to change that habit.
Edit: the sibling comment points out that the habit of looking before opening doors may be different for drivers versus passengers. Anecdotally, I think some of the worst offenders are taxi and rideshare passengers (in the back seat).
> that lane has been placed by an idiot. It's on the wrong side of the car.
No, it's on the right (i.e. correct) side of the car - drivers are trained to look into the side mirror before opening the door, passengers not (and even if they were, they can't use the mirror on their side).
Passengers in Denmark are trained to look before opening the door (by parents, usually), and it's the drivers responsibility if the passenger isn't capable of that.
A taxi driver will often remind you at the end of the journey, if you're obviously foreign.
(And you have forgotten passengers in the back seats.)
There are now some protected bike lanes in which parked cars provide part of the protection (!), but you need a lot of space in order to construct one without having the passenger-side door zone overlapping the protected lane.
It's pretty nice as a cyclist, in the minority of cases where there was enough space to do it this way. I suspect it may have required eliminating an entire traffic lane in some places!
That's often a way to protect themselves, because car drivers don't know how to safely overtake a bike.
And imho bikes should be allowed to drive right in the middle so that a car can't possibly overtake. It could be tractor or another slow vehicle and people would find it annoying but deal with it.
I do the same when I cycle. And then, when there is an opportunity or I see that I'm starting to block multiple cars and the road is continuing for too long, I'll stop to allow them to take over.
In the same way, when there is someone walking on the dedicated bicycle lane that is next to the pedestrian walk, I'm not annoyed but slow down and carefully overtake them if possible or just cycle behind slowly until there is a safe opportunity.
On a busy road the only safe option is to make two crossings: stay on the right and cross and then cross again. It is very annoying.
Depending on the situation, you can indeed move to a lane that turns left. But it requires cooperation from drivers. So in places where drivers are either hostile to bikes or likely to overlook bikes, it is not a safe way to turn.
You don't. Sorry, bikes DO NOT make left turns in intersections. You go straight across, then cross from there. I've biked to school and work for 25 years, and in intersections, I never make a left turn. It takes 2 minutes extra at the most, small price to pay for not being under a truck.
Smaller roads, sure, if there's no traffic, you just look over your left shoulder and make the turn if it's all clear.
I took a bike safety class that was supposedly taught by professionals and supposedly based on local vehicle legislation (in California) and they taught us to make vehicular left turns, by positioning ourselves in the rightmost traffic lane which is allowed to turn left, and indicating our intentions to make a left turn with our hands. I've subsequently done this several hundred times in various kinds of traffic.
Did they make a mistake? Is this not consistent with what motorists are being taught to expect? Are motorists commonly not being taught what to expect, and getting confused about this?
All the replies here seem very strange for me as in the UK at least, the highway code says that we are entitled to be in the middle of the lane if we need to be, and actually turning right (read as left turn for US / EU people), we're supposed to be in the centre of the correct lane for that manoeuvre.
There are always some idiot drivers who think that bikes have no right to be on the road, and who'll pass dangerously close to you, sound their horn as they're passing a few inches away from you (and the distraction could easily make you swerve into them), complain if you take the middle of the lane, but open their doors in front of you if you stay on the edge, etc. On the whole though, drivers in the UK tend to be careful when cyclists are around, and I've never had any aggression from someone when I've been in the second or third lane to make a right turn.
As a cyclist, I also find it incredibly irritating when another cyclist runs a red light, not only because it reflects badly on the other cyclists, but also they'll probably be in my way a minute later, when I need to pull out further in the road to overtake them, as it's almost always the slowest cyclists who won't stop for a red light.
For California, I don't know. For western European: Oh my god YES!
By all mean signal which way you're going to turn, but in intersection, especially those with multiple lanes, you never make a left turn. Drivers will not expect you in the middle of the intersection.
> don't know. For western European: Oh my god YES!
You are over generalising. I don't know where you are but where I am in western europe cyclist absolutely cross intersections like a vehicle.
The trick is to take control of the lane. If you are sticking to the side cars won't see you. If you take up space in front of them they will see you and include you in their calculations.
And before you or someone else jumps here to spread some fud: No i am not advocating jumping in front of cars with zero warning. Or whatever silly idea you have based on what I just wrote. I see this done all the time, and I do it fairly regularly.
You have to be seen. You have to be predictable. You have to know where you are heading.
For Eastern European: bikers can turn left at intersections, they must signal with their arm, position themselves to the left of the lane just as cars do, and drivers have to expect them. It’s being taught in driving schools, for heaven’s sake.
But just as you don’t signal and start your left turn in your car at the last moment, so you don’t with a bike. Unfortunately, we have bikers who go to a left turn from the rightmost position, don’t signal or signal when it’s useless. The rule for drivers is to expect and anticipate stupid people and not kill them.
This is really not correct. I'd say in the most of Europe, you signal left, you take the entire lane and make your turn on the intersection. In many places there are even dedicated zones in front of left lanes (taking the entire width), so that it's obvious cyclists have the right to do so.
And the same thing on roundabouts, if you want to safely ride a roundabout you absolutely have to take the entire lane and not allow cars to overtake you. Otherwise cars exiting the roundabout will run over you.
I don't know what parts of western Europe you're talking about, but in Germany, cyclists absolutely make left turns all the time. Also, drivers are taught about this in driving school, so they will (or should at least) expect cyclists to be there.
For the record, I personally prefer crossing twice as well. But I'll disagree with "western Europe".
The GP is plainly wrong. ~Everyone in Switzerland does normal vehicular left turns, and the bicycle exam for schoolchildren includes making vehicular left turns correctly (i.e. signaling, waiting for cars that are in process of overtaking you, moving to the middle of the road, possibly stopping, turning when the way's free of vehicles that have right of way).
I don't think California drivers see enough cyclists do the same thing to have any kind of consistent expectation of what cyclists will do, or what they should do.
Worst case you'll have to wait one traffic light rotation. One of the directions is generally green when you get there, then you'll have to wait for the switch and you can continue. But that heavily depends on how the traffic is routed. Not Just Bikes is very opinionated, but gives some pretty nice examples of well executed crossings in the Netherlands
The way this works in the Netherlands is that there is a traffic light just for cyclists. Usually you just line up on the right of the road, and wait for the cyclists light (Usually all directions) turns green.
With bike lanes, you go straight until you reach the bike line of the crossing road, and then you wait for the (bike) lights on that road to turn green. You really need bike lanes.
> being on the far right on the road is where I'd feel safest.
No. When there are no bike lanes, the safest place to be is at least one bicycle width away from the far right of the road.
Some drivers will overtake you in tight situations no matter what. If you stand in the far right, you have no leeway and will get stuck between death and hitting the curbside. Take a safety buffer to retreat to when the occasional mad driver comes for your life.
Honk away, then. Whenever I make left turns on intersections, I pre-emptively check behind me if there's any traffic coming behind me, use hand signals to signal my intent to move left and then confidently take the lane I need, so long as there isn't any fast moving traffic coming my way. I would stop if it's impossible to cross lanes without impeding traffic.
Though a left turn on small roads (e.g. in the city centre) is fine.
In many other countries, bicycles turning left are expected to move to the middle of the leftmost lane and make the turn exactly as a car would. It's hardly surprising that those countries don't have so many people cycling as Denmark or the Netherlands.
You see, there is a system. Starting from the right: pedestrians, bikes and lastly cars. We never deviate from that system, that way everyone always know where everything is. Sometimes there's a bike lane, but that still goes between the pedestrians and the cars.
Also, if everything else fail, and this is what kids in Denmark is taught. If you're ever in doubt if the drivers have seen you, assume they haven't and stay away from the cars. You're on a bike, it's a great means of transportation and it's really safe (at least here), but if you're hit by a car, it's going to hurt you more than the car, so stay away from them.
I think it's weird that people in countries that have the most cyclist are also the people who least of all believe that bikes have some weird right of way or than bikes should just be in the middle of heavy traffic.
Conversely, it makes sense that a country with chronic bike infrastructure baked into the legal system would assume bikes use that infrastructure. If there is a safe, protected bike lane, I’m happy to use it.
In other countries, bike infrastructure is sparse, poorly designed, and frequently dangerous. Bicyclists must drive defensively to stay alive. Sometimes this means taking the full lane because staying to the side puts you in danger of dooring or makes you vulnerable to aggressive drivers who will squeeze by without adequate space.
If there is no bike lane, the only safe thing to do as a cyclist is to take the full lane, because there is not enough space for cars to safely overtake you. That won't stop some drivers from doing it anyway, so better block them and be safe.
I used to ride as far to the right as possible on roads without bike lanes, but then I got hit by a driver trying to squeeze past me without changing lanes.
HN (and twitter) wants to find people that hate cyclists so we can get angry at them, but I don't think that's what's really happening here. For example:
> "We may recall the sage observations made by a writer in one of the English medical journals two or three years ago, that the habit of smoking and the prevalence of appendicitis had both increased during the last two decades, and consequently it was reasonable to suppose that the former was the direct cause of the latter -- or the latter the cause of the former, we forget which."
Seems very clear that this article in particular is satire. Its actual underlying point is that a connection between smoking and health problems is as ridiculous as a connection between cycling and health problems.
It's impossible to tell for sure whether the other articles are serious or satire with a point or just shallow jokes, because they're quoted with so little context. But it's safer to assume they're not serious.
> HN (and twitter) wants to find people that hate cyclists so we can get angry at them
Have you like… ever been on a bike in a country where cycling isn't normalized? There's no need to look for these people, they'll find you
> Seems very clear that this article in particular is satire. Its actual underlying point is that a connection between smoking and health problems is as ridiculous as a connection between cycling and health problems.
It also seems very clear to me that most of the stuff the British tabloids make more sense when read as bad satire (because they tend to punch down, and punching down is bullying, not satire) than articles intended to be taken at face value, but they genuinely want the public to do the latter.
> Have you like… ever been on a bike in a country where cycling isn't normalized? There's no need to look for these people, they'll find you
Of course, and I never claimed otherwise. I'm just saying, these articles are not those people.
> ... stuff the British tabloids make more sense when read as bad satire ...
Sure but that's different from what's happening here. The article I quoted has a particular point to make and the use of cycling as an analogy is totally incidental.
[Edit: OK, looking back, maybe some of them are just trash tabloid stories. In that case they're just saying anything at all that stirs up emotions to sell papers (it really is like Twitter). Note that many/all of them are not "cycling is bad" but "we heard some people saying cycling is bad". My overall point, don't take them too seriously, is still valid.]
Almost every anti-cycle tweet that I read nowadays is from very obvious spam bots (days old, one single topic, haphazard spelling, and typing mistakes). I blocked a few real people who were calling for killing others, and there must be someone who wants the bots to operate, but it increasingly feels like either an aggressive minority or some corporate interest that I'm not grasping.
It's sad that people not rarely have to purchase one in order to have jobs,
but this shit is so expensive that keeps stealing significant % of their budget, especially that they gotta buy cheaper, used ones which break more often.
These examples universally predate cars and certainly "car factory owning lobbyists". It's more an example of how people will complain about any change.
Most of them seem to be more from the time when it would have been more likely to see bike factory owning lobbyists convincing everyone to make roads useable for everyone wanting to go faster than 10 km/h.
Things we can blame on the bicycle: the roads early cars drove on. (ps: other things we can blame on the bicycle: the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, the Wright Flyer)
Your rant has absolutely nothing to do with the topic, as bicycles became popular (and caused the discussed spate of articles blaming/crediting it for a variety of things) in the 1890s, before "car factory owning lobbyists" could cause the evils you attribute to them.
There are so much love for bicycles. I'll offer something from the other side that people who drive. What I really find it scary is that cyclists often take the road as they wish and then block dozens of vehicles, or do something else that might seem to be quite normal from their perspective, but nevertheless is dangerous from drivers' perspective (e.g. suddenly get into road from sidewalk, are you going to cross or not?)
Basically, if the road you are cycling on are not reserved for cyclists, I'd say you are putting yourself and other people in risk. My city has a lot of cycling lanes but unfortunately not every road has one.
Cyclists take the lane and "block vehicles" as a safety measure, not for some hatred of cars.
"...cyclists drive in the middle of the lane because it actually protects us against the most common motorist-caused crashes. Our top safety priority is to ensure vantage and visibility (to see and be seen). Bicycling in the middle of a lane is our #1 tool for defensive driving."
Laws vary widely of course, but for example, in my state, cyclists have a right to all roads except limited access highways.
They are meant to keep as far to the right as is safe, so for example, to execute a left turn you enter the middle of the lane and follow the same path a car would. Or another example, if there is a parked car blocking the right side of the street, the cyclist can take the center of the lane to go around the parked car.
The law definitely permits, but law doesn't override risks. I do believe bicycles should have separate lanes and my city already have a lot of them. Not enough in some older parts of the city though.
The road isn't reserved for cars either, despite what you might think when you see a cyclist "blocking dozens of vehicles" when he's just using the road.
A bicycle has the same right to the road that a car has. Just like you'd have to slow down for a tractor, you're supposed to slow down for bicycles as well.
Roads exist for all road users, not just for drivers.
I'm guessing (3). For one, I'm not sure that your observation is because you've gotten older and have become a more cautious driver, or if there is a quantifiable uptick in traffic violations. I also subjectively observed a behavior change right around the time COVID was declared a global pandemic and shelter in place orders were issued. At the time, I thought to myself that everyone was driving like they were in their own apocalypse movie.
A relaxation of police enforcement would likely result in driving behavior change, but it would be hard for us to quantify. Could be the result of increased immigration from countries with different driving attitudes. Could be changes to drivers ed. Could be a lot of things. Most likely it's our perception that has changed as we've gotten older.
I doubt it's cyclist who get in their cars and forget they can't run red lights though. I run reds on my bike because it's safer than waiting at an intersection (this is a demonstrable fact, before anyone replies how much they hate me and my kind or how unfair or yada yada). What I don't do is carry that behavior over when I'm driving a car. I'm in a completely different mode.
It's actually because of pedestrians jaywalking all the time. Horrible example for car ownership abiding citizens. As if it wasn't enough, they also make traffic a lot more dangerous by selfishly exposing themselves unvehicled.
For me, from the UK, jaywalking is a strange law, we’ve never had it and I don’t really know why it exists elsewhere. It makes streets more pedestrian friendly and encourages drivers to look out for them.
Moved from Auckland (with fairly weak, unenforced jaywalking laws) to London and I've found that jaywalking is essentially required here due to how slow most pedestrian lights tend to be. Perhaps in places with stronger jaywalking laws, lights are timed in such a way that you don't have to wait too long to cross legally?
There is no such thing as illegally crossing a road in the UK. Green light, red light, no light; it doesn't matter, they're just advisory. You have the perfect right to cross whenever and wherever you feel like it. If it causes an accident I believe you can be liable, but ultimately it's just common sense and your own self-preservation instinct that governs your behaviour, not the law. I believe the only exception is on a motorway.
Sometimes you just have to jump a red light on a bike. The sensor doesn't detect you, so it'll stay red forever until a car comes up behind you. I've even had this happen on dedicated bicycle traffic lights ...
>note: I'm seeing egregious traffic violations by cars every time I drive now which was not true say 10yrs ago. Don't know what changed
Perhaps the sensor is back a bit behind you?
I know several places where the sensors are 30-60 metres away: it allows cars to pass thru in chunky groups.
In France, crossing red lights by bike is allowed when there is a special sign. It’s extremely convenient but dangerous when you are used to it and rarely driving a car.
In my opinion if there's one traffic law to abide, it's that. Not signaling, speeding, etc are relatively harmless compared to running red lights. It's very rare to see anyone do that in here (Northern Europe) and I think the fines for that are also the largest among related fines.
The idea of this thread isn’t that bicycles are uniquely singled out for ridicule.
These article snippets all come from a time when the bicycle was just invented and usage was growing fast (eg like any new tech). In fact, I think they were taken from a defunct Twitter account called pessimists archive.
The point is that mass media will always court controversy and bemoan any new change in behavior regardless of what it is.
Those headlines look silly now, but they are the Industrial Revolution’s version of “AI/smartphones/social media/video games/ridesharing/etc are ruining everything” articles.