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A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

portsmouthctc.org.uk

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Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#161

Post by btrettel »

otoburb wrote: post #140
btrettel wrote: post #81

Transportation cyclist here. This is a great article, but it only indirectly touches upon one of the most effective tools a cyclist could have: an air horn. I have an Air Zound air horn and I feel much less safe riding without it. I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. And it has probably saved me from some major crashes when I lay down the horn on someon…

>> Some drivers unfortunately see horn use as hostility. I have dealt with a few road raging drivers who were very angry that I honked at them. You'll fit right at home biking in NYC since constant car honking is par for the course, although pedestrians will probably be pretty shocked when you let loose the Zound from the bike lane.

I also have a normal bike bell that works fine on pedestrians and other cyclists. I never use an air horn on a pedestrian unless there's no other way to get them out of the way in time.

The one time I horned a pedestrian that comes to mind was like that. This guy was walking distracted and he decided to come off the sidewalk and directly into the bike lane without looking perhaps 20-30 feet in front of me. I was traveling around 15 to 20 mph. I hit the brakes hard but immediately knew I would still hit him unless he jumped out of the way. That's where the air horn came in. He jumped out of the way. No harm to him aside from perhaps some temporary tinnitus. Horn use was unavoidable in my view.

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#162

Post by theluketaylor »

phaedrus wrote: post #118
exDM69 wrote: post #30

Not too long ago, I was very close to having a "constant bearing, decreasing range" (CBDR) accident that the article is talking about. I failed to slow down adequately to a T-junction and almost drove straight in front of a truck, despite having looked in that direction twice before entering the intersection. I'm pretty sure my vision was (partially) occluded by the corner pillar and/or a snow pile on the side of the…

I drive a Honda Element. The A-pillars are huge and cover a ridiculous percent of the field of view. "Constant bearing, decreasing range" ought to be printed on the side mirrors, or perhaps it should have been named the "Honda CBDR". (Note: I love the car, this is just one of it's few less-than-perfect attributes.) On certain left-curving roads it's possible to drive 10 - 15 seconds being unable to see anything direc…

My biggest fear of driving a modern car is pedestrians and cyclists hiding in the think A pillar when turning. I am also doing the bob and weave like a prize boxer to make sure things don't escape my vision. I'd much rather run into another car than a pedestrian since at least vehicle collisions are a fair fight.

I'm so much more comfortable when I drive my vintage car. The greenhouse is massive, so you can see everything without even turning your head. I also drive that car much more consciously since it requires real effort. The trade off is if I ever run into anything I'm under no illusions about the safety it provides (which is none)

I can't wait for A pillars that are screens so they become invisible.

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#163

Post by tqi »

btrettel wrote: post #127
tqi wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. Are you also stopping at the intersection?

Should I stop at intersections where I have right of way and a driver on the cross street might be turning right on red? (I can't tell precisely because far too many people don't signal.) Because that's the most frequent reason I'll give a few toots of the horn.

Definitely not if you have the right of way. I do the same thing when I'm driving and I see a car creeping forward to making a right turn as I approach the intersection.

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#164

Post by btrettel »

def_true_false wrote: post #141
btrettel wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you use an air horn in any context on me there is going to be trouble, I hope you're prepared for that. If you assault someone you should expect a proportional response. Fortunately, people like you seem to be fairly rare in my experience. After hundreds of horn uses (more than 500, easily), I might be able to count the number of times that people got noticeably angry at me for honking on one hand. I'm actually…

A simple "mechanical bike horn" (no idea if that's the right term, but Google image seems to find the right thing when searching for that) might be what you want for pedestrians. I've never seen an air horn that looked usable before, so thanks for that. Looks nice for cycling in traffic.

On the left side of my handlebars I have a normal bike bell, good for pedestrians and fellow cyclists. On the right I have the air horn, good for drivers who can't hear the bell and emergency situations. I'd recommend having both a normal bell and air horn.

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#165

Post by btrettel »

throwaway8689 wrote: post #143
btrettel wrote: post #81

Transportation cyclist here. This is a great article, but it only indirectly touches upon one of the most effective tools a cyclist could have: an air horn. I have an Air Zound air horn and I feel much less safe riding without it. I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. And it has probably saved me from some major crashes when I lay down the horn on someon…

Using your horn as feedback means you missed the moment. It's all the times you anticipated a problem and used it preemptively that are keeping you from getting a ride in my ambulance.

> Using your horn as feedback means you missed the moment.

Perhaps. I try my best, and think I avoid the vast majority of potential conflicts that come my way. But I can't avoid them all. I can prepare for the common problems, e.g., drivers turning into the bike lane without looking or doing a right turn on red that hits me or goes directly into my path. But those don't cover all possibilities, and I'm continually surprised by the diversity of bad driving that I've seen.

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#166

Post by phyzome »

polaritron wrote: post #102
btrettel wrote: post #81

Transportation cyclist here. This is a great article, but it only indirectly touches upon one of the most effective tools a cyclist could have: an air horn. I have an Air Zound air horn and I feel much less safe riding without it. I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. And it has probably saved me from some major crashes when I lay down the horn on someon…

A lot of people keep their motorcycles extra loud for this reason. It pisses people off, to hear an extremely loud motorcycle engine, but a subset of riders don't do it to be cool, but really to gain attention as a survival mechanism. An overlapping group do it for both reasons.

When people go blaring down my residential street at 10 PM at night I start to fantasize about stringing up a cargo net. I don't think that's working for them as a survival mechanism.

(Context: I bicycle in Boston, so I know what the roads are like, although I'm sure it's somewhat different for motorcycles.)

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#167

Post by btrettel »

spike021 wrote: post #139
btrettel wrote: post #81

Transportation cyclist here. This is a great article, but it only indirectly touches upon one of the most effective tools a cyclist could have: an air horn. I have an Air Zound air horn and I feel much less safe riding without it. I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. And it has probably saved me from some major crashes when I lay down the horn on someon…

>I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. And it has probably saved me from some major crashes when I lay down the horn on someone. When are you doing this? When you go through a green light? Or is this when there's a chance for cross-traffic, say going through a yellow or red light? The only reason I ask is because whenever I'm in SF, at least half the bic…

A green light is one possibility, as are people pulling out into the street without looking. See this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17910799

I never run red lights or stop signs, and don't appreciate being associated with bad cyclists any more than you would probably appreciate being associated with bad drivers.

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#168

Post by stronglikedan »

irrational wrote: post #99
btrettel wrote: post #81

Transportation cyclist here. This is a great article, but it only indirectly touches upon one of the most effective tools a cyclist could have: an air horn. I have an Air Zound air horn and I feel much less safe riding without it. I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. And it has probably saved me from some major crashes when I lay down the horn on someon…

"see horn use as hostility" Of course they do. When people in cars honk at other people in cars, the majority of time it is a sign of hostility. They've been conditioned to perceive the use of a horn as a sign of hostility.

It's only a sign of hostility if used as such. If I need to remind you to look up from your phone becuase a light has turned green, then a quick "doot" or "doot doot" isn't typically considered hostile. If someone does consider that hostile, then as the parent said, they're probably an angry person regardless, so it's still not the horn that's hostile.

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#169

Post by holografix »

polaritron wrote: post #102
btrettel wrote: post #81

Transportation cyclist here. This is a great article, but it only indirectly touches upon one of the most effective tools a cyclist could have: an air horn. I have an Air Zound air horn and I feel much less safe riding without it. I'll often give a few toots before approaching an intersection to increase the chance that I am seen. And it has probably saved me from some major crashes when I lay down the horn on someon…

A lot of people keep their motorcycles extra loud for this reason. It pisses people off, to hear an extremely loud motorcycle engine, but a subset of riders don't do it to be cool, but really to gain attention as a survival mechanism. An overlapping group do it for both reasons.

I can’t begin to describe the rage I feel when I’m walking down a street going about my business when some ape riding on what sounds like continuous dynamite explosions, violates my ear drums.

It’s one of the clearest signs of selfishly telling others “fuck you” that I know.

Re: A Fighter Pilot’s Guide to Surviving on the Roads

#170

Post by zwp »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #147
craftyguy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is shit. Duplicate stories are arbitrarily allowed to be submitted (exact same article/url), while sometimes it actually works and prevents duplicates. Oftentimes you see submissions for an interesting article languish in the 'new' section, but then a user re-submits the exact same thing ('duplicate detection' algo at work, lol) and it's on the front page in minutes. Whether that user is a 'power user', besties wi…

I think it would be more effort to write your vision of the submission process than what is probably there. The algos is presumably a straight up string compare with some url decoding, but any amount of idiotic GET key value pairs can screw that up. I find Occam's razor the best explanation for these kind of things - I suggest not taking it to heart too much.

> string compare with some url decoding

Perhaps page body edit-distance would work better?

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