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Things people blamed on bicycles

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Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#171

Post by krisoft »

mrweasel wrote: post #90
schoen wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a bike safety class that was supposedly taught by professionals and supposedly based on local vehicle legislation (in California) and they taught us to make vehicular left turns, by positioning ourselves in the rightmost traffic lane which is allowed to turn left, and indicating our intentions to make a left turn with our hands. I've subsequently done this several hundred times in various kinds of traffic. Did…

> Did they make a mistake? For California, I don't know. For western European: Oh my god YES! By all mean signal which way you're going to turn, but in intersection, especially those with multiple lanes, you never make a left turn. Drivers will not expect you in the middle of the intersection.

> don't know. For western European: Oh my god YES!

You are over generalising. I don't know where you are but where I am in western europe cyclist absolutely cross intersections like a vehicle.

The trick is to take control of the lane. If you are sticking to the side cars won't see you. If you take up space in front of them they will see you and include you in their calculations.

And before you or someone else jumps here to spread some fud: No i am not advocating jumping in front of cars with zero warning. Or whatever silly idea you have based on what I just wrote. I see this done all the time, and I do it fairly regularly.

You have to be seen. You have to be predictable. You have to know where you are heading.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#172

Post by pastage »

jimmytidey wrote: post #165
sschueller wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 injure…

No red lights are not a safety measure, they make car traffic go faster. Most intersections have better throughput without redlight for smaller vehicles at slow speed. As long as the speed of cars is lowered to something safe they are also a lot safer.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#173

Post by grecy »

kevingadd wrote: post #168
atoav wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A lot of people have no idea of the destructive power of the three ton death machine they are in command of. For that reason I think it should be mandatory to volunteer in a crash recovery ward at a hospital for 100 hours before getting a drivers license.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#174

Post by Symbiote »

wodenokoto wrote: post #82
eptcyka wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How am I supposed to make a left turn at an intersection? Other than that, yes, being on the far right on the road is where I'd feel safest.

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.

Though a left turn on small roads (e.g. in the city centre) is fine.

In many other countries, bicycles turning left are expected to move to the middle of the leftmost lane and make the turn exactly as a car would. It's hardly surprising that those countries don't have so many people cycling as Denmark or the Netherlands.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#175

Post by machinawhite »

evandijk70 wrote: post #76
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"

How often does that kind of thing happen? Daily, weekly, monthly, yearly?

Every time you use a street together with cars. It'd be easier to ask when it does not happen because that's the exception here

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#176

Post by bertil »

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…

Almost every anti-cycle tweet that I read nowadays is from very obvious spam bots (days old, one single topic, haphazard spelling, and typing mistakes). I blocked a few real people who were calling for killing others, and there must be someone who wants the bots to operate, but it increasingly feels like either an aggressive minority or some corporate interest that I'm not grasping.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#177

Post by machinawhite »

desas wrote: post #141
aikinai wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is some seriously counterproductive absolutism, and I cycle everyday and don't own a car.

It's literally the guidance that every police force in the UK work to, you need to leave a space of 1.5 metres between your car and the cyclist when overtaking at 30mph. It might be that our road lanes are narrower than yours of course. See https://www.northants.police.uk/police-forces/northamptonshi...

Yeah I've had a police car leave a space of maybe 1.5cm between me and their VW transporter. They don't care either

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#178

Post by pembrook »

Think folks are missing the point here.

The idea of this thread isn’t that bicycles are uniquely singled out for ridicule.

These article snippets all come from a time when the bicycle was just invented and usage was growing fast (eg like any new tech). In fact, I think they were taken from a defunct Twitter account called pessimists archive.

The point is that mass media will always court controversy and bemoan any new change in behavior regardless of what it is.

Those headlines look silly now, but they are the Industrial Revolution’s version of “AI/smartphones/social media/video games/ridesharing/etc are ruining everything” articles.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#179

Post by tralarpa »

jimmytidey wrote: post #142
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…

The pattern: -- A car squeezes past you at high speed -- Less than 30 seconds later I pull in front of it as we both stop at a red light. In fact, a car coming too close and knocking you off your bike is not a common cause of injury. It certainly makes cycling unpleasant though. 40% of non-cyclists in London say the danger of cycling is a significant factor in their decision not to cycle.

> In fact, a car coming too close and knocking you off your bike is not a common cause of injury

Interesting question. I just googled for statistics and found some for German cities. In Berlin (2021), the majority (~50%) of accidents involving bicyclists in which the bicyclist was not at fault were caused by cars turning. But "insufficient distance" was still at 5%.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#180

Post by peoplefromibiza »

jimmytidey wrote: post #142
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…

The pattern: -- A car squeezes past you at high speed -- Less than 30 seconds later I pull in front of it as we both stop at a red light. In fact, a car coming too close and knocking you off your bike is not a common cause of injury. It certainly makes cycling unpleasant though. 40% of non-cyclists in London say the danger of cycling is a significant factor in their decision not to cycle.

> car squeezes past you at high speed

many cyclist don't understand this because they are bad drivers

the point of passing a bike on the road is to avoid the danger you as a driver pose for the bike in the case of an unexpected event.

like if the biker falls.

clearing up the way as fast as possible is safer for both.

Doesn't matter who's faster in the end, if that was the purpose, it would suffice for drivers to not respect traffic laws, like many bikers do, for the exact purpose of arriving to the destination sooner.

Of course you are faster if your parking technique involves blocking the road for pedestrian, especially hadicapped people, like this

https://blog.urbanfile.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2019-0...

or this

https://blog.urbanfile.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2019-0...

(real pictures in Milan one of the cities where bikes are more popular in Italy and they have become a problem for everyone else)

the point is also that bikers should be in charge of their own safety, if a road is very narrow they are voluntarily endangering themselves for no reason, no other road user should be responsible for your safety more than you!

that also apply to motorbikes, mopeds, scooters etc

which are harder to drive because they rely on the gyroscope effect and only.have two wheels, they do not stand in case of sudden stop, the user can only fall or be shoot forward with grave consequences.

so they should care for their life more than a driver that is protected by the car case.

I wish I could show you the suicidal moves tourists make in my city (Rome) while riding electric scooters, two people, while the regulation says only one person can ride them, in the middle of high speed roads, with no knowledge of how the traffic works in a city they do not know, like it's OK to be idiots trying to die (and possibly ruin the life of someone else who happens to cross their path on a motor vehicle)

Not saying people shouldn't use alternatives means of transport, I do.not drive often anymore, I walk

As a pedestrian bikes are much more disruptive than cars for me, even though I'd like to ban cars from every city center in Italy.

> 40% of non-cyclists in London say the danger of cycling is a significant factor in their decision not to cycle.

people make a lot of excuses when confronted with something that they do not want to do.

if they asked them why they do not exercise they would say that they have no time due to work or that the water of the pool is too cold, but the real reason is that they prefer the couch with Netflix.

we should never take those polls too seriously.

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