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

After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 317 posts

Re: After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

#41

Post by mschuster91 »

smt88 wrote: post #11
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #4

Why do deaths have to be the trigger to prioritize safety? Examples: Boeing, this article, and a recent HN post [0], etc. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21374525

Because you don't win points for prevention of hypothetical harm. See: vaccine "debate". Pro-vaccine policies saved millions of people who are alive right now, but you can't run on a pro-vaccine platform until people start dying again.

You can run a pro-vax platform - if the populace is not too dumb and uneducated. Anyone with a slice of a brain understands that anti-vaxx is a deadly game.

The problem is that (not only in the US!) education funding has gone way downhill and the "free speech!!!" absolutist crowd does not realize that truly free speech depends on an audience intelligent enough to separate facts from quackery (such as homeopathy, antivaxx and bleach enemas) or fascism - in a totally free-speech society with a dumb populace the profiteers will exploit whatever they can.

And yes, I am of the opinion that antivaxxers and other quackers should be jailed, for they are a danger to public health.

Re: After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

#42

Post by 8ytecoder »

schrodinger wrote: post #27
viburnum wrote: post #16

Even when America traffic engineers mean well, they screw up bike infrastructure terribly. They get all the details wrong. Generally their designs are too complicated, too cheap, and rely on paint instead of common sense about how bikes actually work. However, good design is possible. There’s even a book that explains how to do it well, in case anyone actually cares: https://peopleforbikes.org/blog/the-worlds-best-bi…

One thing I like about the newer NYC bike lanes is they put them inside of parked cars. It means you’re generally protected from traffic by a row of parked cars. And there’s a large enough buffer that you don’t have to worry about getting hit by an open door.

In Oakland, California and some parts of SF, these lanes are being used as pickup drop and cruising lanes

Re: After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

#45

Post by crazygringo »

kansface wrote: post #26
pwthornton wrote: post #5

This is big time for America. If our biggest city can’t show leadership on pedestrian and bicyclist safety, we can’t expect any other city to as well. New York is really lagging behind where it should be. Despite being by far the biggest American city, it is overrun with cars. Protected bike lanes, street improvements to make crossing the street safer, and dedicated bus lanes will improve the city for all New Yorkers…

How popular is biking in New York - eg, do people bike in the winter?

A lot of biking isn't for your commute but rather a quick way to run an errand 5 avenues over using Citibike -- it's a 6 min ride instead of a 20 min walk.

For that, super common to bike even in the winter. After all, you're already bundled up and will probably stay warmer just because you'll be outside for less time.

Re: After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

#46

Post by OutsmartDan »

kansface wrote: post #26
pwthornton wrote: post #5

This is big time for America. If our biggest city can’t show leadership on pedestrian and bicyclist safety, we can’t expect any other city to as well. New York is really lagging behind where it should be. Despite being by far the biggest American city, it is overrun with cars. Protected bike lanes, street improvements to make crossing the street safer, and dedicated bus lanes will improve the city for all New Yorkers…

How popular is biking in New York - eg, do people bike in the winter?

If it's not snowing or raining, I'll bike in the winters. It's not too bad if you have the right gear to stay warm.

Re: After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

#47

Post by aqme28 »

I doubt it.

> To gain Mr. de Blasio’s support, Mr. Johnson’s office agreed to push back the start date for the first streets plan, from this month to December 2021, around the time the next mayor takes office. Until then, the city will keep its current commitment to build 30 miles of protected bike lanes each year.

Re: After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

#48

Post by francisofascii »

kansface wrote: post #26
pwthornton wrote: post #5

This is big time for America. If our biggest city can’t show leadership on pedestrian and bicyclist safety, we can’t expect any other city to as well. New York is really lagging behind where it should be. Despite being by far the biggest American city, it is overrun with cars. Protected bike lanes, street improvements to make crossing the street safer, and dedicated bus lanes will improve the city for all New Yorkers…

How popular is biking in New York - eg, do people bike in the winter?

It is a factor of how safe it is. Weather is not the limiting factor.

Re: After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

#49

Post by bdamm »

bluGill wrote: post #28
eatbitseveryday wrote: post #4

Why do deaths have to be the trigger to prioritize safety? Examples: Boeing, this article, and a recent HN post [0], etc. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21374525

They don't. If I make a change that prevents a death you will never know about it. If I make that change in response to a death you will hear about it, thus biasing you into thinking I don't care until there are no deaths. In reality though sometimes you need an actual situation to happen before you can imagine that failure most. Trying to guess how your widget could kill something before their are any deaths is hard…

Quite right. Also, trying to prevent harm through prediction is vastly more expensive than trying a product out in the market, and gets more expensive the more harm you try to prevent. It also causes product development paralysis, as deeper predictive scenario analysis results in longer design times and design lock-down ahead of product release, reducing agility.

While we might want all products and designs to be safe, in reality, we can only economically do so much before the cost of predictably assuring safety becomes exponential. See NASA.

Re: After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes

#50

Post by crazygringo »

unlinked_dll wrote: post #23
pwthornton wrote: post #5

This is big time for America. If our biggest city can’t show leadership on pedestrian and bicyclist safety, we can’t expect any other city to as well. New York is really lagging behind where it should be. Despite being by far the biggest American city, it is overrun with cars. Protected bike lanes, street improvements to make crossing the street safer, and dedicated bus lanes will improve the city for all New Yorkers…

not to go all "blame the victim" here, but one thing I noticed culturally in NYC is that traffic lights are a suggestion to pedestrians. If there isn't a car directly in front of them, they'll cross the street. Compare to LA, where people tend to wait for the signal to cross pretty consistently. That said, LA still has horrible pedestrian death statistics so who knows how much that matters.

Well NYC is a city for pedestrians primarily, and for drivers only secondarily. Vastly more people walk through a midtown Manhattan intersection than drive. So yes -- unless a car is immediately coming, you and everyone else will cross the street regardless of the signal. Cars are the minority in what is primarily a pedestrian zone, numerically.

LA is generally the opposite -- it's a city for drivers, not for pedestrians. So the norms are different.

Post reply on HN