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Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

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Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#201

Post by pluma »

Frondo wrote: post #45
SomeHacker44 wrote: post #44

As a life-long New Yorker (Manhattan and more recently Brooklyn) I just don't understand why anyone would ever ride a bike in NYC, period. I even stopped rollerblading in NYC when some asshole driving backwards (presumably to get a parking spot) nearly killed me and did knock me silly. I have a motorcycle license I got one summer when I had free time. I learned that cars and pedestrians are your enemy, and that you w…

Heh, just today I was biking down a hill in a segregated lane. Green lights ahead of me, all the way to the waterfront. Some guy in the crosswalk, going against the signal (I have green lights for several blocks), left to right across the street. I'm half a block away but I'm going downhill and going pretty fast. I yell, "Watch out!" He keeps moving, so I start to veer to the left to go around him to the left. THEN h…

The correct course of action would have been to slow down and anticipate having to come to a full halt if necessary. The pedestrian was defying traffic laws and on the middle of the road -- you shouldn't expect them to behave predictably from there on.

In my country driving instruction emphasises the importance of anticipatory and cooperative driving. Anticipatory in this case means taking the high likelihood of further misbehaviour of the pedestrian into account, cooperative means reacting early so you don't further create risks by surprising traffic behind you if you need to come to a full stop later on.

This applies to bikes as well as anybody else on the road (including pedestrian). You should generally expect others to follow the rules but if there are indicators they won't (e.g. they're violating them or they're too young or appear confused/erratic) you should anticipate that they might create dangerous situations.

So, yes, the pedestrian was obviously and blatantly violating the rules but your description makes you sound equally reckless. If you were going so fast you couldn't slow down enough to mitigate the risk of a collision, you were going too damn fast. Going downhill doesn't mean you're allowed to go full speed, in fact it means quite the opposite.

EDIT: The most important takeaway is predictability. Traffic rules are 1/10ths about helping you and 9/10ths about helping other people. Bikes don't strictly need lights for visibility, for example, but riding with a light allows other people to actually see you in suboptimal conditions.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#202

Post by pif »

Twisell wrote: post #172
igf wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Jerks happen to use various ways of moving around. Some happen to use a bike, please don't use generalization. While momentum argument is real, my personal philosophy as a daily commuting biker in France is "I'm the more exposed to risk and the more hated road user, so don't get in the way of cars and don't ever dare touch pedestrians" That being said, yes I do pass red light when I have good clearance and I don't "e…

> I don't "emergency brake by courtesy"

It's not by courtesy, it's by driving code. And the fact that you don't judge your behaviour dangerous doesn't imply that it's not perceived as dangerous by people around you: as such, you are just egoistically imposing an annoyance to people contrary to their right. In other words, you're misbehaving.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#203

Post by gjm11 »

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…

> I've never been hit by a car in London. In the space of a year, I've been hit by two cyclists

The thing is, the people who were hit by cars instead of by cyclists are dead and therefore not posting about it on HN.

(Compare the story about WW2 bombers in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald .)

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#204

Post by pif »

pif wrote: post #131
ubernostrum wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You sure you are talking about the Bay? That's exactly what happens in Geneva.

To the guy who down-voted my comment, please care to explain?

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#205

Post by pif »

throwanem wrote: post #173
ubernostrum wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Baltimore is surprisingly much the same, with the delightful twist of cyclists who cheerfully (and ubiquitously) ride on the sidewalks, and who then try to act like you're the asshole when you explain politely to them that they need to get off the God damn sidewalk and into the God damn road. Don't even get me started on cyclists who use the light rail. They're worse than football fans, which is saying a lot; footbal…

Sir, your comment is a piece of art. The third paragraph, in particular, a masterwork.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#206

Post by m0nty »

manarth wrote: post #194
m0nty wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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://e…

> > Cyclists need to learn red lights apply to them to. > As do motorists. Cars go through red lights all the time I'd suggest an experiment: find a central location in a city, and sit down next to a traffic light. Ideally during a commuter period. Watch for an hour, recording the number of cyclists who jump a red light, and the number of motorised vehicles which jump a red light. Which would you expect to have the m…

> Which would you expect to have the most?

Cars, by a significant proportion - because there are far more of them than bikes. But what I would "expect" is neither here nor there. (You can find examples of both kinds of law-breaking if you look on youtube, for example.) The main point is: when bikes do this, it is obnoxious but far less dangerous than when motor vehicles do it. This is reflected in KSI statistics.

It has been pointed out that the way cyclists and motorists jump red lights is different: some motorists tend to be "amber gamblers" or last-second red-light jumpers, whereas some cyclists tend to go right through regardless of the light phase. This looks worse and leads to confirmation bias when discussing this subject. The thing where motorists jump red lights is so commonplace we simply edit it out of our daily experience. If you look, you will see all kinds of motor vehicles going through red lights at just about every opportunity.

Another point is that cars get fewer opportunities to run red lights when there is a car in front, since if the guy at the front stops, usually everyone behind him has to as well. Bikes can move along the line of traffic and go through the red light at just about every time. So a very small number of law-breakers on bikes gives the impression that everyone is doing it.

Another experiment for you: wait at an intersection and see how many cyclists obey the law all the time. One of them might be me, which is one reason I get annoyed at being tarred with the same brush as a minority of cyclists. We usually don't do this for motorists, and it's not the result of "experiment" but bias and prejudice.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#207

Post by phicoh »

DanBC wrote: post #183
URSpider94 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you agree that we should choose which forms of transit to accommodate based on their needs and their utility? Cycling is a well-established form of transit that many people participate in, and which can serve a large portion of the transit needs of a city in relatively little space and with zero carbon footprint. Getting more people out of cars (and off of buses) and onto bikes requires making them feel safe an…

> The Dutch have been doing this for 70 years or so The other thing the Dutch do is give priority to all bikes on shared roads where there aren't cycle lanes.

Not true. On shared roads, bikes and cars are equal. For a long time they were not, bikes had to yield to cars even when the bike was coming from the right. But that was fixed.

Bike paths create a whole host of new problems. On big streets with multiple lanes of cars traffic, bike paths are generally a good idea. On smaller streets, bike paths tend to be too narrow, and trucks turning right have a good chance of driving over a bike. And people designing intersections seem be often clueless about where to put cycle paths and traffic lights for bikes, creating a big mess.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#208

Post by pif »

PeterSmit wrote: post #164
Symbiote wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> to avoid inconveniencing drivers I used to cycle like that, in London. I moved to Copenhagen, and quickly had to change my behaviour. Drivers are firmly at the bottom of the heap here, and everyone knows it. It's inefficient and confusing to others to disrupt this.

And that is how it should be. Cars are great to go between cities fast, but inside cities they should behave like guests. Ironically, most drivers are guests to a city as well, coming from the suburbs. Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city, and should be honored as such. In most medium to big Dutch cities this is the case, although there is always…

> Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city

The more I think about it, the more I think this is a myth. Everybody say they are the most efficient, but with regards to which metric? The only important metric is door-to-door time.

If I can walk a short distance to the bus stop, have a ride and then walk another short distance to my workplace, then I'm lucky and I don't even consider driving to work.

But if I have to drive to the nearest bus/train station (actually, to the parking nearest the station), then ride to the city centre, then a bus to the suburbs, then a walk in the suburbs... sorry, the car will make much sense, even with the traffic jams.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#209

Post by NoGravitas »

pyb wrote: post #190
MagnumOpus wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cycle couriers/deliveroos are the cycle equivalent of the white van man and the black cabbie - they drive for a living and time is money, so they try to kill you if you so much stand in their way. Luckily even if they crash into you, they are as likely to kill themselves a you - something that cannot be said of white van men...

Ok, but it's really lycra clad commuters I've had bad experiences with... some of them are just oblivious I don't find black cabs threatening. It's the Ubers who are usually really dangerous. Not sure if it's because they're new to their jobs (a high turnover occupation?), or half asleep.

If they're in lycra, they're very unlikely to be a commuter. They'll be a sports cyclist, not a utility cyclist. Utility cyclists wear normal clothes.

Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

#210

Post by pif »

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #162
oarsinsync wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Real numbers on actual collisions (UK urban areas, 2012): Pedestrians killed by motorists: 253 Pedestrians killed by cyclists: 1 Pedestrians seriously injured by motorists: 4,426 Pedestrians seriously injured by cyclists: 78

These numbers won't change the feeling.

You know, you'll get soaked under rain, but a lighting can kill a person. Still, if you ask people what is more annoying between rain and lightings, what do expect as a result?

On the other hand, if a lot of drunk people cross the street with no caution, statistically many more will be hit by a car rather than by a bike (many more cars than bike, larger volume, reduced possibility of lateral movement), and an accident with a car is statistically more dangerous than with a bike due to the mass.

So, to sum up, number of people killed has hardly any correlation with annoyance. If I risk one accident per year with a car and ten with bikes, I'll be "against" bikers.

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