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It's Never a Bicycle Accident

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Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#71

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

adrianN wrote: post #2

Victimblaming is par for the course whenever a cyclist gets injured. It's really infuriating. I don't think that blaming the driver is good either, as the article says, most of the time it's a failure of the infrastructure that even made the situation possible. Very few drivers try to actively kill cyclists.

I dislike cyclists too, but this one is entirely on the drivers. Looking what vehicles are ahead of you and not running into them is not a difficult task. I think VR simulators with eye tracking could be used in the future to screen drivers who lack the required spatial abilities and keep them off the road.

There is one class of accidents where I think there is some culpability both on the part of the cyclists and infrastructure makers, though. Where the dedicated bike paths and roads intersect, there is often not enough visibility due to signs, hedges, pylons, etc. to spot some of the faster Lycra types in time. I suppose the well-meaning infrastructure makers assumed everyone is a casual cyclist going slow enough to be spotted in time.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#72

Post by patrickdavey »

Willy May, He died maintaining his right of way, He was right, dead right, as he sped along, But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong.

Never argue with a bus, and never trust a driver that hasn't looked you in the eye, and even then be wary.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#73

Post by Moru »

clairity wrote: post #50
jacquesm wrote: post #26

Just the other day here a guy in an SUV passed through a cloud of cyclists pedal to the metal during the morning rush hour when a lot of local kids cycle to school either with their parents or alone. I confronted him a little bit further on (when he had to slow down again, which is one reason why such hurrying makes no sense, it's just too busy). His motivation: none of the kids put out their hand. So that carries a…

> “...I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.” that’s too punitive, but i’d be quite happy with a quickly escalating, income-/wealth-adjusted fine. so like 0.01% of yearly income on first offense, 0.1% on second offense, 1% on third offense, or something like that, on a rolling 12-month basis, where you can voluntarily give up you license for 3 months to reset the scale of y…

Too punitive? So death sentence is OK for a kid that forgets to put out the arm once? I don't really understand this mentality.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#74

Post by gorgoiler »

clairity wrote: post #50
jacquesm wrote: post #26

Just the other day here a guy in an SUV passed through a cloud of cyclists pedal to the metal during the morning rush hour when a lot of local kids cycle to school either with their parents or alone. I confronted him a little bit further on (when he had to slow down again, which is one reason why such hurrying makes no sense, it's just too busy). His motivation: none of the kids put out their hand. So that carries a…

> “...I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.” that’s too punitive, but i’d be quite happy with a quickly escalating, income-/wealth-adjusted fine. so like 0.01% of yearly income on first offense, 0.1% on second offense, 1% on third offense, or something like that, on a rolling 12-month basis, where you can voluntarily give up you license for 3 months to reset the scale of y…

In societies with professional money managing services, how do you fine someone who has no personal income, no wealth, and is in millions of dollars in debt*?

*...to an offshore shell company over which they have 100% control.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#75

Post by matsemann »

wozniacki wrote: post #58
ehnto wrote: post #5

I always tell people I am not a cyclist, I am a bloke who rides a bike. The vilification of a group is how you make harming them palatable to people, and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". I am far sooner a friend, a son, a partner and someone you know, than a cyclist. I don't even qear lycra, and I spend my whole ride trying to be courteous so at least extend me the same courtesy. Also, get off y…

and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". Are you saying that not even a smidgen of truth belies such rhetoric? Cyclists roll through signals, intersections & stop signs as if they were mere suggestions and nothing more. I know how entrenched each sides are in this argument - drivers and cyclists. Neither will give an inch. The best way to get cyclists some kind of safety is to INSIST on a full bore…

Yeah no that's just BS. Why is it always okay to judge all cyclists by the worst offenders, but drivers are only judged by their own personal actions? If that's the way the argument should go, the group of drivers are far, far, far worse than cyclists. How many are killed by a cyclist each year, compared to a driver? So yeah, arguing about the merits of the "groups" is just plain useless.

The taxes for a car aren't even close to offsetting their costs on society (infrastructure, external factors like pollution etc). I already pay for the infrastructure through taxes. And most cyclists (including me) also operate cars. So that's not really an argument. Making cycling cheaper is a also net win (health, environment,+++), so making cycling more expensive is a stupid idea. Actually, saying "cyclists should pay your fair share" would mean that cycling would end up cheaper than now, and cars even more expensive. So I'm all for it.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#76

Post by [deleted] »

albertgoeswoof wrote: post #10

One of the linked accidents in the article looks terrible, a man is cycling along the road, a bus overtakes him and clips his handlebars, knocking him to the ground and then running over his torso with the rear wheels of the bus. What a lot of people don’t realise is that you can’t overtake bicycles in a single lane. If there’s no cycle path/markings a bicycle takes up the full lane for exactly this reason. Bicycles…

[deleted]

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#77

Post by jamil7 »

wozniacki wrote: post #58
ehnto wrote: post #5

I always tell people I am not a cyclist, I am a bloke who rides a bike. The vilification of a group is how you make harming them palatable to people, and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". I am far sooner a friend, a son, a partner and someone you know, than a cyclist. I don't even qear lycra, and I spend my whole ride trying to be courteous so at least extend me the same courtesy. Also, get off y…

and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". Are you saying that not even a smidgen of truth belies such rhetoric? Cyclists roll through signals, intersections & stop signs as if they were mere suggestions and nothing more. I know how entrenched each sides are in this argument - drivers and cyclists. Neither will give an inch. The best way to get cyclists some kind of safety is to INSIST on a full bore…

I can already be fined as a cyclist for running a red light or riding on the pavement. I already pay tax that funds city infrastructure for roads, bike lanes and shared spaces. Why do I need a new, convoluted administrative burden introduced that does basically nothing other than encourage less people to ride a bike?

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#78

Post by diebeforei485 »

If there is no dedicated bike lane (or if it is blocked by a taxi or FedEx truck), I usually take the entire car lane.

Cars tend to pass way too close, and taking the lane (which is completely legal where I live) means I have some space to move a little bit away from a car while it's passing too close.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#79

Post by clairity »

gorgoiler wrote: post #74
clairity wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “...I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.” that’s too punitive, but i’d be quite happy with a quickly escalating, income-/wealth-adjusted fine. so like 0.01% of yearly income on first offense, 0.1% on second offense, 1% on third offense, or something like that, on a rolling 12-month basis, where you can voluntarily give up you license for 3 months to reset the scale of y…

In societies with professional money managing services, how do you fine someone who has no personal income, no wealth, and is in millions of dollars in debt*? *...to an offshore shell company over which they have 100% control.

you make that the state revenue service’s problem, since they already face that issue anyway. any income stream, including passive income and unrealized gains, is fair game.

Re: It's Never a Bicycle Accident

#80

Post by Dzugaru »

brnt wrote: post #16
WalterBright wrote: post #6

Never? Some accidents involving bicycles and cars are the bicycle's fault, some are the car's fault. Some are both, some are neither's.

Dutch law has a nice solution: liability correlates with weight. The more weight you put on the street, the more explaining you have to do, because you chose to potentially cause more damage. In a collision, the weightiest vehicle therefore is by default liable, unless they can prove otherwise. This means that in bicycle-car accidents, drivers almost always pay, and in bicycles pedestrian accident the cyclist.

> you chose to potentially cause more damage

Seriously? I surrounded myself with a metric ton of rigid metal and bazillion safety systems (and pay ridiculous sums for that, mind you) to protect myself and my family in a deadly environment. Cyclist chose to go there practically naked.

And before you say it's not a "deadly environment", it's "deadly people" - that's mostly false. Any human has limits to reaction time, can't see everything and so on, fixing that substantially is really hard if not impossible (self-driving cars, maybe).

Yes, as a driver I basically chose to sign a blood contract to kill people with low probability cause I'm not a perfect machine. But did I have much choice? Driving my mom to a hospital on a bike is impossible. Are you sure you didn't sign other such contracts in you life for yourself and your family? Are you sure your quality of life you chose does not condemn other people to poverty and death?

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