Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

fastcoexist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 274 posts

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#121

Post by oarsinsync »

m0nty wrote: post #117
pyb wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but the funny thing about London is that cyclists tend to be more of a menace than cars. There is a noticeable minority who just don't want to stop for pedestrians.

> cyclists tend to be more of a menace than cars That must be why bikes injure 60,000 people per annum in the UK, and kill ~2,000. Then there's the ~40,000 deaths from pollution. Oh wait, that's the cars. Maybe you need to rethink what you mean by "menace"? Annoying and inconvenient (even threatening) is not the same as deadly.

> That must be why bikes injure 60,000 people per annum in the UK, and kill ~2,000. Then there's the ~40,000 deaths from pollution. Oh wait, that's the cars.

40k deaths from impact from car, or 40k deaths from pollution? The two are not the same. Cars produce a lot of pollution. So do offices. So do busses. So does the underground tube network. Impact from car I'm sure is cause for a lot of injuries and deaths, use the real numbers to make your point if you want it to be taken more seriously.

Here's an anecdote, since this already isn't an argument based on numbers and facts. I've never been hit by a car in London. In the space of a year, I've been hit by two cyclists and lost my takeaway dinner on account of a third.

Cyclists need to learn red lights apply to them to. Skipping through red lights, or worse, jumping onto the pavements at red lights to be able to bypass 'legally', all the while ringing their bells, is incredibly antisocial and does nothing to help build any sympathy to the many cyclists who get hurt and/or killed by drivers every week.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#122

Post by [deleted] »

snovv_crash wrote: post #82
brokenmachine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have no problem with those fines but they should be enforcing the 1m rule as well. Why wouldn't you wear a helmet as a cyclist anyway? It sucks that NSWPolice are more interested in fining cyclists and are ignoring people actually putting other people's lives in danger. When I drive and I see people riding with no helmet, I can't help but think to myself, "well you obviously don't care about your own safet…

>Why wouldn't you wear a helmet as a cyclist anyway? Because a dinky bicycle helmet won't change anything if you are hit by a car. Even a motorcycle helmet won't help. The only time a helmet helps is in low speed accidents.

[deleted]

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#123

Post by oarsinsync »

andrewem wrote: post #40

I don't have time now to write a comment laying out a comprehensive rebuttal of all the foolishness that some people have suggested here (bicyclists need to be licensed! bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers! we shouldn't have bicyclists on many roads because cars go too fast!). Instead, I'll say that just as people walking need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadw…

> I don't have time now to write a comment laying out a comprehensive rebuttal of all the foolishness that some people have suggested here ... bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers

In the UK, all vehicles on the road are required to abide by the highway code. Yep, that means bicycles have to follow the same rules as drivers.

In the 1990s, schools in the UK ran cycling courses to ensure that children as young as 9 were already learning the highway code, and would be able to cycle on the roads safely. The London police to this day continue to run cycling courses to provide the same level of training.

I can't speak to the rest, nor in other countries, but in the UK, it is absolutely not foolish, but actually required by law, for cyclists to follow the same rules as drivers.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#124

Post by m0nty »

snovv_crash wrote: post #82
brokenmachine wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have no problem with those fines but they should be enforcing the 1m rule as well. Why wouldn't you wear a helmet as a cyclist anyway? It sucks that NSWPolice are more interested in fining cyclists and are ignoring people actually putting other people's lives in danger. When I drive and I see people riding with no helmet, I can't help but think to myself, "well you obviously don't care about your own safet…

>Why wouldn't you wear a helmet as a cyclist anyway? Because a dinky bicycle helmet won't change anything if you are hit by a car. Even a motorcycle helmet won't help. The only time a helmet helps is in low speed accidents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07o-TASvIxY

Anyone just blindly downvoting snovv_crash should check out the video above and any number of other resources, such as this one:

http://www.cyclinguk.org/campaigning/views-and-briefings/cyc...

There are strong feelings on both sides, but many cyclists feel helmets are a distraction from the real issues which make cyclists unsafe: poor road design and unsafe driving. Cycling itself is (counter-intuitively) a very safe activity which looks dangerous; everyone assumes driving and walking are safe but often they are not. Yet nobody seriously proposes helmets for pedestrians or drivers, just cyclists.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#125

Post by igf »

ubernostrum wrote: post #113
dasil003 wrote: post #84

I've spent most of my life with cycling as my primary mode of transportation, living in Minneapolis, Santa Fe, London and SF/Oakland. I ride fast and generally try to go with the flow to avoid inconveniencing drivers while also being considerate to pedestrians. I think this traffic cone thing is pretty cool, but I have a larger observation to make: Here's the thing about SF: everyone is way too fucking agro. Drivers…

Want some fun? Try being someone who commutes in the Bay area via a combination of walking and public transit. Cars give me very little trouble. Bicycles, though.. at least a couple times a week I nearly get killed by one. At crosswalks, typically I'm in a crowd of people and drivers know better than to try to make a turn through the crowd. Cyclists, though, will blow through, even just flat running a red light, and…

Bicycles are a tool for turning ordinary people into selfish jerks, jealously guarding their precious forward momentum. A pedestrian doesn't mind if they have to stop for a moment, it's no big deal. A driver doesn't mind stopping for a moment either, it's easy to get back up to speed again. But for a cyclist, having to stop is a minor disaster requiring a massive effort to get back up to speed, so they start behaving like desperate people, and desperate people have little regard for the rules or for the wellbeing of others.

Combine that with the feeling of moral superiority which inflicts those of an environmentalist bent when they're doing something which they consider virtuous, and you've got a recipe for major jerkhood.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#126

Post by jrockway »

dasil003 wrote: post #84

I've spent most of my life with cycling as my primary mode of transportation, living in Minneapolis, Santa Fe, London and SF/Oakland. I ride fast and generally try to go with the flow to avoid inconveniencing drivers while also being considerate to pedestrians. I think this traffic cone thing is pretty cool, but I have a larger observation to make: Here's the thing about SF: everyone is way too fucking agro. Drivers…

The thing we need in the United States are traffic tickets. A lot of people get tickets on freeways (where there is a dedicated highway patrol that exists only to write speeding tickets), but nobody gets ticketed on surface streets, no matter how badly they drive. I see garbage trucks barrelling through red lights at 45mph. I see taxis driving the wrong way down one-way streets. I see black cars driving 60mph down narrow residential streets. This has to be stopped, or people will keep dying in traffic.

The city-wide speed limit in NYC is 25mph, unless marked down to 20mph in special areas. This law needs to be enforced aggressively. Drivers don't need a big fine; I bet people will adjust their behavior from just a stern talking-to and a $20 ticket or something.

As it stands right now, people are needlessly dying for no reason. Driving in the city, all your time is sucked up by sitting at traffic lights. It doesn't matter how fast you get to the next traffic light, because if you're speeding, it's going to be red.

(There was an interesting pilot program to give $50 tickets to people exceeding the speed limit by 30mph in school zones. Tons of opposition. This makes me think what we really need to do is just start closing roads to private vehicles. People think they're entitled to run over children at 50mph, just because they fucking feel like it. Where did we go so wrong!?)

Looking out my window on a small residential street in Brooklyn, I'm always amazed at the traffic snarl. It's basically a dead-end street. And yet someone is always double-parked, preventing fire trucks from going through. One time a fire truck got boxed in by someone double-parked, and an MTA service vehicle that double-parked behind it. Eventually the MTA vehicle got towed away, and the fire truck slowly backed out. Hope it wasn't an important building that was burning down.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#127

Post by igf »

andrewem wrote: post #40

I don't have time now to write a comment laying out a comprehensive rebuttal of all the foolishness that some people have suggested here (bicyclists need to be licensed! bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers! we shouldn't have bicyclists on many roads because cars go too fast!). Instead, I'll say that just as people walking need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadw…

> Instead, I'll say that just as people walking need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadways - these are called sidewalks - so too people on bicycles need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadways

Where do we stop? Should we have skateboard lanes as well? Unicycle lanes? Lanes for people who wish to taxi down the road in a Learjet?

We can't accommodate every form of transportation with its own infrastructure.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#128

Post by m0nty »

oarsinsync wrote: post #121
m0nty wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cyclists tend to be more of a menace than cars That must be why bikes injure 60,000 people per annum in the UK, and kill ~2,000. Then there's the ~40,000 deaths from pollution. Oh wait, that's the cars. Maybe you need to rethink what you mean by "menace"? Annoying and inconvenient (even threatening) is not the same as deadly.

> That must be why bikes injure 60,000 people per annum in the UK, and kill ~2,000. Then there's the ~40,000 deaths from pollution. Oh wait, that's the cars. 40k deaths from impact from car, or 40k deaths from pollution? The two are not the same. Cars produce a lot of pollution. So do offices. So do busses. So does the underground tube network. Impact from car I'm sure is cause for a lot of injuries and deaths, use t…

> Cyclists need to learn red lights apply to them to.

As do motorists. Cars go through red lights all the time but we don't seem to notice, for some reason. If you'd been hit by cars this year, you would have suffered far more serious injuries and possibly death. That hardly ever happens with bikes.

My figures for KSI are possibly a little out of date, there are actually 180,000 of them each year in the UK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great...

> 40k deaths from impact from car, or 40k deaths from pollution?

I think it's clear I was talking about pollution there.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/02February/Pages/Air-pollution-k...

> 'There had previously been a focus on pollution from solid fuel burning, such as coal – which, as a result, fell dramatically. However, this has been replaced by concerns about exposure to pollutants from transport sources, especially cars. Even the "cleanest" of engines can produce nitrogen oxides, ozone and particulates – small specks of matter, such as soot. All three may have a potentially harmful effect on health.'

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#129

Post by gambiting »

andrewem wrote: post #40

I don't have time now to write a comment laying out a comprehensive rebuttal of all the foolishness that some people have suggested here (bicyclists need to be licensed! bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers! we shouldn't have bicyclists on many roads because cars go too fast!). Instead, I'll say that just as people walking need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadw…

>> bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers

I mean....where the hell do you live where they do not? Everything about giving priority, obeying traffic lights, one-way streets, should absolutely apply to bicycles, how can it possibly not?

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#130

Post by Anasufovic »

oarsinsync wrote: post #123
andrewem wrote: post #40

I don't have time now to write a comment laying out a comprehensive rebuttal of all the foolishness that some people have suggested here (bicyclists need to be licensed! bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers! we shouldn't have bicyclists on many roads because cars go too fast!). Instead, I'll say that just as people walking need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadw…

> I don't have time now to write a comment laying out a comprehensive rebuttal of all the foolishness that some people have suggested here ... bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers In the UK, all vehicles on the road are required to abide by the highway code. Yep, that means bicycles have to follow the same rules as drivers. In the 1990s, schools in the UK ran cycling courses to ensure th…

In California, bicycles also must follow the same rules as other vehicles. It is unlikely that is the issue in San Francisco, it is more of a lack of respect for bike lanes and seeing it as an inconvenience. Our culture here is so car oriented that it is showing its ugly side from every angle.
Post reply on HN