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Things people blamed on bicycles

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Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#161

Post by pacomerh »

ChrisRR wrote: post #52
vocram wrote: post #15

Hate for bicycles hasn’t changed. People think a bike travel is recreational, and thus less important than a car travel. Someone goes out of their way to affirm that, by having to overtake bikes or not let them overtake their cars. A couple of times I met cars busting their brakes trying to keep up with me with a disc road bike on long technical descents

In the UK as a cyclist I still get so much hate on the road. I'm just trying to get to work like everyone else, but people still drive their cars up right behind me, squeeze past when there's not enough space, beep their horns and shout out the window. And then the justification is always "well I saw a cyclist run a red light once, therefore all cyclists are shit"

Not a justification but here in CA I see cyclists cross red lights much too often. So it's not once it's way too many times. They probably think they're special somehow

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#162

Post by mrweasel »

eptcyka wrote: post #122
mrweasel wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Bicycles are supposed to be on the road The point is, that they aren't suppose to be in the middle of road.

Why?

Because that's where the cars go?

You see, there is a system. Starting from the right: pedestrians, bikes and lastly cars. We never deviate from that system, that way everyone always know where everything is. Sometimes there's a bike lane, but that still goes between the pedestrians and the cars.

Also, if everything else fail, and this is what kids in Denmark is taught. If you're ever in doubt if the drivers have seen you, assume they haven't and stay away from the cars. You're on a bike, it's a great means of transportation and it's really safe (at least here), but if you're hit by a car, it's going to hurt you more than the car, so stay away from them.

I think it's weird that people in countries that have the most cyclist are also the people who least of all believe that bikes have some weird right of way or than bikes should just be in the middle of heavy traffic.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#163

Post by vvillena »

eptcyka wrote: post #120
wodenokoto wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not supposed to take a left turn at an intersection on a bicycle! That’s insane. Do you expect pedestrians to do the same? You go straight and stop at the end of the intersection. Wait for lights to change and cross again. I would honk if someone took a left turn in front of my car on their bicycle in Copenhagen.

Honk away, then. Whenever I make left turns on intersections, I pre-emptively check behind me if there's any traffic coming behind me, use hand signals to signal my intent to move left and then confidently take the lane I need, so long as there isn't any fast moving traffic coming my way. I would stop if it's impossible to cross lanes without impeding traffic.

IIRC the "don't turn left on a bicycle" was popularized in Copenhaguen. The city has enough bike traffic that the standard approach stops working.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#165

Post by jimmytidey »

sschueller wrote: post #109
ChrisRR wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK as a cyclist I still get so much hate on the road. I'm just trying to get to work like everyone else, but people still drive their cars up right behind me, squeeze past when there's not enough space, beep their horns and shout out the window. And then the justification is always "well I saw a cyclist run a red light once, therefore all cyclists are shit"

Well cyclist running red lights is extremely common here in Zürich Switzerland especially during morning rush hour. I have seen some crazy altercations between not cars and cyclist but public transport like trams and cyclist. Once a cyclist managed to pull up to the front of a double bendy trollybus[1] I was in just to cut across the front of the bus forcing the driver to hard break. In another incident recently whic…

What is the point of the traffic signals? A big part of it is safety.

I promise you, no matter what cyclists are doing at red lights, cars are orders of magnitude more dangerous than cyclists.

Cyclists should obey the law, but people focusing on cyclist skipping red lights are missing the point: cars kill people, cyclists don't.

Moreover, if a cyclist causes an accident, they will almost certainly be seriously injured even if they hurt others too. Meanwhile, car drivers can expect to walk away from any low speed accident, even if they just plowed through a crowd of pedestrians.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#166

Post by quietbritishjim »

vanderZwan wrote: post #119
quietbritishjim wrote: post #25

HN (and twitter) wants to find people that hate cyclists so we can get angry at them, but I don't think that's what's really happening here. For example: > "We may recall the sage observations made by a writer in one of the English medical journals two or three years ago, that the habit of smoking and the prevalence of appendicitis had both increased during the last two decades, and consequently it was reasonable to…

> HN (and twitter) wants to find people that hate cyclists so we can get angry at them Have you like… ever been on a bike in a country where cycling isn't normalized? There's no need to look for these people, they'll find you > Seems very clear that this article in particular is satire. Its actual underlying point is that a connection between smoking and health problems is as ridiculous as a connection between cyclin…

> Have you like… ever been on a bike in a country where cycling isn't normalized? There's no need to look for these people, they'll find you

Of course, and I never claimed otherwise. I'm just saying, these articles are not those people.

> ... stuff the British tabloids make more sense when read as bad satire ...

Sure but that's different from what's happening here. The article I quoted has a particular point to make and the use of cycling as an analogy is totally incidental.

[Edit: OK, looking back, maybe some of them are just trash tabloid stories. In that case they're just saying anything at all that stirs up emotions to sell papers (it really is like Twitter). Note that many/all of them are not "cycling is bad" but "we heard some people saying cycling is bad". My overall point, don't take them too seriously, is still valid.]

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#167

Post by pastage »

sschueller wrote: post #109
ChrisRR wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK as a cyclist I still get so much hate on the road. I'm just trying to get to work like everyone else, but people still drive their cars up right behind me, squeeze past when there's not enough space, beep their horns and shout out the window. And then the justification is always "well I saw a cyclist run a red light once, therefore all cyclists are shit"

Well cyclist running red lights is extremely common here in Zürich Switzerland especially during morning rush hour. I have seen some crazy altercations between not cars and cyclist but public transport like trams and cyclist. Once a cyclist managed to pull up to the front of a double bendy trollybus[1] I was in just to cut across the front of the bus forcing the driver to hard break. In another incident recently whic…

It can be very hard to understand how to move safely on a bicycle if the infrastructure is just built for motorists. The choices of different groups are motivated by different priorities. You have to understand.

Red lights are there to make car travel faster, there is ample evidence that running redlights on bicycles can be safer. But as I said it is not always clear how to act that will make stupid mistakes more frequent.

This is a subject that is hard to discuss even in the Netherlands, were they frequently remove red lights for cyclists but still fine them until it's gone.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#168

Post by kevingadd »

atoav wrote: post #137
montebicyclelo wrote: post #114

Cycling is cheap, often faster than driving (in my city), healthy, less noisy, creates vastly less pollution, less dangerous to pedastrians... And I'd guess that about 95% of drivers that I come across are respectful of the danger they present - overtaking with enough space, and not at too high a speed (my city doesn't have great bike lanes). Unfortunately, a typical journey involves passing more than 20 cars, which…

This kind of driver is the same that would accelerate towards you as you (legally) cross a road only to stop at a red light 50m behind you – a red light was clearly visible from where they were when they saw you. For them driving is just about their own emotion. The moment they see someone "who deserves it" their emotion takes over and their brain switches off. People like that should have their driving license taken…

Just this morning I was walking down the street on a sidewalk and as I crossed in front of a driveway - having checked first - a car pulled out of the garage right up against my leg and stopped, and when I stepped away they started moving again to get close. The stuff people do in cars when they don't have right of way is absolutely deranged sometimes.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#169

Post by machinawhite »

pacomerh wrote: post #161
ChrisRR wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK as a cyclist I still get so much hate on the road. I'm just trying to get to work like everyone else, but people still drive their cars up right behind me, squeeze past when there's not enough space, beep their horns and shout out the window. And then the justification is always "well I saw a cyclist run a red light once, therefore all cyclists are shit"

Not a justification but here in CA I see cyclists cross red lights much too often. So it's not once it's way too many times. They probably think they're special somehow

[flagged]

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#170

Post by bertil »

turing_complete wrote: post #54

There is nothing new under the sun. Today we have "Things people blame on cars". I've read many Americans that argue that cars are somehow destructive to community live. Here in Europe, people in rural areas or small towns are entirely dependend on cars, even more, they love their cars (and rightfully so). Yet, they have healthy communities, live in large houses. Nature is near, history at hand (look, you have a nice…

Cars kill someone every three seconds.
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