451–460 of 852 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cycling drunk is technically illegal, but often unenforced in the Netherlands. You should see the thousands of obviously 'drunk' people leaving festivals on bikes, under the eyes of the police.
Fun fact: you can lose your car driving license if you are drunk when cycling. But you can't lose it if you don't have one!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cycling drunk is technically illegal, but often unenforced in the Netherlands. You should see the thousands of obviously 'drunk' people leaving festivals on bikes, under the eyes of the police.
Fun fact: you can lose your car driving license if you are drunk when cycling. But you can't lose it if you don't have one!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my local EV forum there are a lot of people who join just to come and say: EV's are wrong because: "it doesn't stimulate my hearing, just no feeling without the engine growl", "charging something something", "what about road trips", yadayada. I guess people who don't want to change their habits feel threatened somehow? Because deep inside they understand that the change is correct? I don't know, this is all super…
> charging something something But charging is (well, would be, I don't have EV) annoying. I usually fill the gas tank once a month or two and it takes 15 minutes including the trip to gas station. The ~500km distance I get from full tank is enough to cover my car use for a long time. So yeah, having to charge more often, having to find a place to charge at, all of that sounds quite inconvenient and I do not want it.…
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
Let's be honest, the real reason is that cyclists are frustrating to drivers merely by being cyclists. They're slow so they force the driver to either try to overtake or slow down everyone behind them and most people when driving will feel a pressure not to slow down the journeys of others behind them. So long as cyclists and drivers share the same roads it will always exist, some drivers will just be better about it…
We've had 100 years to examine the effects of driving on people's brains and it's...deranging, clearly.
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…
> And the frustrating thing is that the drivers who impatiently pass dangerously are putting people at risk for the sake of ~10-30 seconds (or less). As a bicyclist and driver I do think it can be difficult to pass a bicyclist that's travelling at a considerable pace. At 10 MPH I can easily and safely get by a bicyclist but if they're travelling 15-20 MPH it can be more difficult (assuming a speed limit of 30 MPH) an…
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 law should enforce passing distance on both cars and bikes. E.g. no more should a bike be allowed to pass a car unless there is one meter of clearance then a car should be allowed to pass a bike without one meter of clearance. Enforcing such a law would remove the vast majority of dangerous interactions between cars and bikes.
(Incidentally, I do ensure there is clearance when I pass and I avoid passing on the right. But that has more to do with being predictable and valuing my life than the law.)
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
Let's be honest, the real reason is that cyclists are frustrating to drivers merely by being cyclists. They're slow so they force the driver to either try to overtake or slow down everyone behind them and most people when driving will feel a pressure not to slow down the journeys of others behind them. So long as cyclists and drivers share the same roads it will always exist, some drivers will just be better about it…
And the speed of traffic is not determined by the speed of the cars, which most drivers seem to believe for some reason. In a city, the speed of traffic is entirely determined by the stop signals. There is a fixed time it will take you to get from A to B if you abide by the rules and don't run through every stop light. That fixed time depends somewhat on how many other cars are on the road, since you might wait for several signal changes at each light but the light changes have often been designed for throughput.
So even though you think you can go faster than the cyclist, you likely can't, at least averaged over your journey. They are probably actually going faster than you on average. Sure, you can drive faster for that short stretch before the next light, but what's the point? You are just burning more gas and if you pull some "skillful" weaving maneuvres around the cyclist, then you are endangering lives too.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drunk cyclists can. Back in my wild years, on some occasions walking to the bike was the difficult part. Bikes are much better at self-stabilizing than legs. The main danger (outside of going too fast, if you happen to have the training) is losing track of traffic. This isn't much of a problem on deserted night-time streets, but can easily be overwhelming during the day. Don't ever consider the bike when planning for…
I'm not drunk if I can track stand.
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
- There is a decent number of bicycle lanes in Trondheim. Some people complain about obstacles you have to deal with, but in general it is easier to navigate the city on a bicycle than in a car or on a motorcycle. Bicyclists have a lot less to complain about than car or motorcycle drivers if we're going to be fair.
- Most drivers tend to treat me with respect when I'm on a bicycle. I can't even remember the last time I got into conflict with a car. I live at the end of an uphill section with sharp turns, which means I'll be testing car drivers' patience every single day. And yet they tend to drive patiently behind me until they can see that it is clear (or I wave them past if I can see far enough around the next corner).
- I try to minimize interaction with pedestrians and cars when picking routes. I've ridden a bike in 3 cities and found that you can almost always find low conflict routes at acceptable cost in terms of time/distance. It puzzles me that a lot of my peers lack the ability or willingness to put some thought and consideration into their riding.
(My default route to work separates me from cars 80% or so of the route, has perhaps 4-5 choke points where I have to cooperate with pedestrians and takes 22-23 minutes. I mostly choose roads parallel to roads with higher traffic. A more direct route saves me perhaps 2-3 minutes, but in my estimation, isn't worth the extra exposure to cars and pedestrians).
- Pedestrians wandering into bike lanes tend to represent a bigger danger than cars. Many pedestrians are much less alert than drivers and less predictable. Especially those with their nose in their smart phones.
- A big challenge in cities seems to be buses. I don't think this is out of ill will, but because they have a job that is orders of magnitude harder than driving a regular car. A bit of respect for their job goes a long way towards reducing conflict. Avoiding areas where buses need to navigate stressful traffic is usually the best approach.
- In Norway most bicycle riders tend to behave OK. But there is a small minority that is aggressively entitled. These people are essentially assholes, but feel they have a right to be assholes because they ride bicycles and everyone else is always at fault. They are big on their rights. Usually male, a bit equipment-obsessed and usually between 35 and 50. I think of these as the "one percenters of bicycles".
At least here in Norway, it is mostly down to attitude and willingness to cooperate regardless of mode of transportation. There are asshole drivers, but I get the impression that they are more of a problem in Oslo than in Trondheim where I live. Attitudes may be far more aggressive in the US and far less in the Netherlands or Denmark.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another reason is that being really respectful around cyclists is an important part of driving lessons in The Netherlands. And I think you can fail your driving test if you pass a bike too close, open your door without looking if a cyclists is coming from behind, or passing over a bike lane at an intersection without looking. I am from The Netherlands and I only realized since moving to Canada that my home country is…
>I find it interesting that no one in The Netherlands wears a helmet when cycling and yet serious cycling injuries don’t seem to be a common thing Neurosurgeons in the Netherlands disagree with this, and are begging locals to wear helmets. https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2021/10/neurologists-launch-ca... I don't know how rates of injuries compare between countries, but that is irrelevant.