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Things people blamed on bicycles

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Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#551

Post by peoplefromibiza »

agos wrote: post #288
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

if you mention bikes in Milan becoming "a problem" because they are parked like that maybe we should also talk about the absolute chaos of cars parked everywhere (on bike lanes, in the middle of the road, on sidewalks), otherwise one might think that in Milan bikes are the worst offenders regarding parking. > As a pedestrian bikes are much more disruptive than cars for me yes, for you. for the collectivity, the cost…

> we should also talk about the absolute chaos of cars parked everywhere

two wrongs don't make a right.

but I've never seen a car chained to the subway gate

> yes, for you. for the collectivity, the cost of cars killing people a

spare me the "pistolotto"

I use public transport and my feet, bikes are not saving anyone and frankly having to hear people defending the right of bikers to break the law is ridiculous.

At least cars don't disrupt my mother in laws's whose almost blind walks.

Why bikers never walk their bikes on pedestrians only paths, like they are supposed to?

there are no cars there.

No wonder bikers are considered by the book selfish people

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/black-belt-brain/201...

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#552

Post by lotsofpulp »

dmix wrote: post #513
pembrook wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The popularity of the bicycle predates the rise of the automobile by a few decades. None of the article snippets in the linked thread even mention the existence of automobiles. But don’t worry, I’m certain these same type of articles were written about automobiles as well during their rise in the early 1900s.

People can't help but make this whole thread about cars vs bikes. It's a shame because there's a way more interesting story here about the humans instinct to blame "insert current thing" for everything.

I do not see how it can be anything other than cars vs bikes, or really, personal cars vs walking/bicycling/public transit.

The space and design parameters optimizing for personal cars, especially at US vehicle sizes, is contradictory to design parameters for other modes of transport.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#553

Post by teaearlgraycold »

whatever1 wrote: post #550

Bicycles convert their owners to horrible people. And I speak from personal experience, when I ride my bike I always become super angry at others. Cars that might cut me off (ok that is mostly fair), but I also get angry with pedestrians, traffic lights, uphills, bad paving etc. I think know why, because any of the above require me to pedal even harder, when I am already tired. Maybe e-bikes are a better option for m…

The harder I pedal the better I feel. I intentionally bike uphill for hours sometimes.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#554

Post by dqv »

bnralt wrote: post #416
desas wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're falling into the exact same trope that the person you're replying to is admonishing. Motorists running red lights, speeding up for amber lights, exceeding the speed limits, tailgating, dangerously overtaking and so on, is all so common as to be unnoteworthy. This doesn't justify cyclists running reds, but it should put it into perspective.

You almost never see a bunch of drivers arguing that it's OK to run red lights. It's quite common with cyclists; you can even look at the comments here and see several arguing that it's not a problem for cyclists to run red lights. Whether or not they're correct, it at least indicates that the behavior is much more common among cyclists.

>You almost never see a bunch of drivers arguing that it's OK to run red lights.

That’s because it’s assumed that it’s OK to run yellow lights. The meme goes “yellow - step on it!” And in this way cars do run red lights, it’s just that they get through much faster. They know they’re supposed to slow down for the yellow. They have enough stopping distance when it turns yellow. And they still drive fast to skip the red light. I observe this behavior all the time driving my car. I slow and stop for yellow, but the other lane speeds through.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#555

Post by franky47 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #475
pessimizer wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drivers go out of their way to pass me on a motorscooter , I guess because I remind them of a bicycle. My scooter accelerates from 0-60 before you can say "zero to sixty" and tops out at 80mph. Sometimes they're driving so dangerously that I slow down to let them pass both because they might hurt someone, and because I don't want somebody so crazy behind me. I find it bizarre how much some drivers feel like they're i…

I was on an ebike doing 32km/h in a 30 zone and cars keep overtaking me The entitlement of car drivers in unbelievable, they feel like they own the ourdoor space, park on sidewalk, and the only reason we havent paved every forest and ocean is their mercy

I keep wondering if this can be directly related to car advertising.

Most car ads always show the car as alone on the road or street, as a symbol of ultimate freedom ("own the road" often comes back as a catchphrase). Yet this can't be further from the actual reality of driving.

Maybe the cognitive dissonance is what drives (pun intended) driver entitlement and anger when challenged.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#556

Post by ricardobeat »

bluGill wrote: post #431
wkjagt wrote: post #304

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.

Cycling already has the lowest percentage of road traffic fatalities compared to other modes. The highest is pedestrians - should pedestrians wear helmets?

A helmet requirement is wholly incompatible with the role of cycling in NL. You hop on a bike anywhere, regardless of what you're wearing. It's a casual transportation mode, just like walking, not a sport activity. This proposal can only make sense for people who don't live in this reality.

In addition, as mentioned by another commenter, when the dutch traffic rules were written decades ago, it was found that helmet usage correlated to increased accident rates - people take more risks when they feel safer, and that in turn makes pedestrians less safe.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#557

Post by chaostheory »

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 trend shown by the tweets happened before automobiles became affordable. I feel that you’re missing the point. These tweets are to demonstrate that the masses in general will demonize anything new and unfamiliar. It’s not really about bikes.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#558

Post by bluecalm »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #535
bluecalm wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet when you look at statistics it's almost solely drivers killing pedestrians even though the car infrastructure is 100x better and cars aren't forced to go on sidewalks. No one likes cycling on a sidewalk. People do it because either a bike path ended in a random place and they ended up on a sidewalk or they feel it's very dangerous to be on the road.

You're citing a stat that has nothing to do with my comment. You've picked deadly outcomes, which obviously favours bikes. As a pedesrian, the risk of being hit by a bike riding on the pavement is higher than by a car driving on the road. As a pedestrian I can tell you that I have been hit by bikes several times but luckily never by a car. That makes bikes more dangerous to me than cars are. Cyclists are not forced o…

Statistics about injuries are even worse for cars. It's a fact that cars, despite the infrastructure being designed for them, endanger pedestrians more than cyclists.

We all agree about common sense. It's just your perception of what represents danger doesn't align with reality. It's important to understand where the danger comes from (for both cyclists and pedestrians) so you can support measures that actually makes everyone safer instead of just some people feeling better.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#559

Post by cogman10 »

nuclearwast wrote: post #536
mauvehaus wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience it's mostly a matter of not having the most desirable bike or the shittiest lock. Put a $100 u-lock on a $300 bike, and you can almost be assured that you'll have neither. Put a nice enough lock on yours, and you can be pretty sure you won't have the most easily stolen bike either. At least in the US, road bikes are pretty much immune to being stolen because they're seen as terminally uncool by the l…

This is something I never understood. Why so many bike theft? a regular new one is 3-4 hundred$ and cannot be sold that easily (Say vs electronic goods). Why theft is so popular? I mean thief can steal one for their own purpose, but then what? He steal another one every weeks? I dont get it.

Steal the bike, sell it on craigslist/facebook marketplace/etc for $100, profit.

It can often take less that 5/10 minutes to steal a bike which is a pretty good RoR.

How could we stop it? Probably the best way would be stronger regulations on community marketplaces/pawn shops/ebay/etc. ATM, they don't GAF about selling stolen goods.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#560

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

hackernewds wrote: post #192
pembrook wrote: post #178

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 ne…

Precisely. See this same trend with online shopping, social media, and app-based food delivery. If they sucked, they wouldn't be so ubiquitous. But they are.

VC subsidization has at least something to do with the ubiquitousness.
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