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Things people blamed on bicycles

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Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#711

Post by ar_turnbull »

bdangubic wrote: post #685
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…

I am in my 40's and am yet to encounter ONE cyclist that drives on the road and obeys traffic laws like cars. - Red light, move to the other side and cross on the side-walk and back on the road - Stop sign - funny... - Yield sign - funny... - Get a ticket from officer - funny... I bike a lot and when I bike I always yell at drivers etc but I also ride the bike like a cowboy as well, most rules do not apply. I think i…

Friendly heads up but you may want to check your bias here -- it's been studied and cyclists don't break the law anymore than cars do [1]. In fact, motorists break the law more frequently and they do it's to save time whereas cyclists most frequently do it for personal safety or the type of thing that's unlikely to cause harm to others. [2]

Perhaps you don't see it anymore because it's so common but cars break rules all the time -- rolling stop, speeding, illegal u-turns, running reds, etc.

[1] https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/03/study-cyclists-dont-b...

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2020/09/18/motorist...

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#712

Post by happyopossum »

danenania wrote: post #634
merely-unlikely wrote: post #581

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately here in NYC the public won't bat an eye while your lock is cut off[1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGttmR2DTY8

I wouldn't want to confront a potentially aggressive person with a saw in hand either. I might call the police, but I'd assume that by the time they got there, the thief would be gone, and that's if the police even cared enough to send someone. I think this is mainly an enforcement issue. The police could easily track these people down if they were willing to put any energy into it.

> The police could easily track these people down if they were willing to put any energy into it.

That's a bit of a myopic view - in many of these cities, the DA will refuse to prosecute someone for thefts like this, so it does no good to arrest someone. Police in many cities are underfunded and understaffed, and if they're getting no support from the DA they have to prioritize.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#713

Post by nomel »

acomjean wrote: post #437
throw0101a wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just need a way to deal with bike theft. Vehicle registration works, but takes a bit of effort: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el1Xznv5ge4 Vancouver had a 42% drop in theft after joining this program: * https://project529.com/garage Created by X-box co-founder: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Allard

Someone broke into my building and stole a bunch of bikes from the bike room (people weren’t locking them up once inside). The few that were registered to park at the university (big silver stickers) were left alone. Often I don’t think the bike theives check if the bike is “good”. My cousins bike was just over $150 new and was stolen. He had a cheap lock because he thought who would steal this. I’ve been riding 10 y…

We had hundreds and hundreds of bikes at my previous job. It was amazing. You could just hop on and go anywhere. Nearly all disappeared. As it turns out, the scruffy looking guy I saw, riding one bike and steering another with his free hand, wasn't collecting and returning them in the whee hours of the morning.

The new bikes had GPS attached, but they limited the numbers, due the theft. Those slowly disappeared, too. Last I saw, there were just a few bikes at each bike rack, compared to maybe 50 at each.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#714

Post by sleepybrett »

lastofthemojito wrote: post #569
bluGill wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

As I understand it there are 2 Dutch words for cycling [0]: >Crucially, the Dutch distinguish between everyday cycling (fietsen) and competitive cycling (wielrennen). Fietsers (cyclists) are found everywhere. ... The term wielrennen, on the other hand, is reserved for the sweaty, colourful and seemingly endless cycle races on which the people of Benelux are so keen. In my experience, at least in my area of the US, mo…

In seattle I'm staring to see a lot more adult Fietsers than I'm historically used to seeing. E-Bikes have really opened up the audience for more casual cyclers (at least in the spring and summer months).

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#715

Post by chihuahua »

jedberg wrote: post #707
DubiousPusher wrote: post #695

This is why I cringe a bit at those bemoaning the horrible, awful, traumatic fate of journalism. Journalism is stupid. It always was stupid. It always will be stupid. That's not to say it has no value. But the reader has always been and always will be responsible to sift through the heaping mounds of dumb and find that value. I'm not exaggerating when I say, the New York Times, our paper of record has published some…

I used to read articles about areas where I knew a lot and say to myself, "man, every detail in this article is wrong!". Then I would read the other articles in the same paper assuming they got everything right about those subjects I knew nothing about!

This is known as Gell-Mann amnesia: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#716

Post by trgn »

bdangubic wrote: post #685
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…

I am in my 40's and am yet to encounter ONE cyclist that drives on the road and obeys traffic laws like cars. - Red light, move to the other side and cross on the side-walk and back on the road - Stop sign - funny... - Yield sign - funny... - Get a ticket from officer - funny... I bike a lot and when I bike I always yell at drivers etc but I also ride the bike like a cowboy as well, most rules do not apply. I think i…

There's a big difference in responsibility. A driver will kill somebody else when they're distracted, a cyclist will get killed themselves. That's why I find it so spiritually ugly when drivers blame pedestrians or cyclists for getting killed or injured after getting run over, it's kicking down. The bigger the car, the bigger the responsibility. We need to act and judge accordingly.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#717

Post by belorn »

LtWorf wrote: post #427
belorn wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a look when outside and see if you ever see strollers or children with training wheels on bike lanes. Then ask, why don't you hear about the many deaths that should occur when those 50km/h bikes are crashing into those helpless children. The average speed of a bike, as measured in Netherlands, is around 15km/h. When there is snow the speed is generally even lower. It is also fairly common where I live to see par…

Parents don't let kids go on bike lanes until they are somewhat proficient. Certainly nobody with training wheels is going on trafficked bike lanes. Because most parents realize that would be reckless. > Mopeds are not allowed where I live to use bike lane Welcome to Sweden I guess… I think they are not allowed but they don't care. Electric or benzin engine alike.

Parents let their kids be on the bike lane all the time. Just today on a small trip through the city, here in Sweden, with the weather being excellent, I saw around 10 kids around the age of 8 swirling on the bike lane. Naturally the parents biked next to them.

I would slightly agree that parents that train their kids on training wheels should maybe select a better place than a trafficked bike lane, but I for one is not going to stop them and tell them how to raise their kids. I would definitively not call the police and social service. I would be much more concern seeing the same behavior on the road, and if they were on the highway I would consider it.

> I think they are not allowed but they don't care. Electric or benzin engine alike.

Mopedists are what they are, or rather young adults without a driving license will behave like they always have. Motorized teens. Of course some of them will break the law. Modified electric bikes are however fairly rare since moped strength engines are generally more expensive, and if you are paying that much already then the moped license is fairly cheap to get. Modified mopeds however that goes faster than 45 km/h are very common, especially the four-wheel ones. The legal age to get a driving license is 18 so there is also a incentive to break the law for those that are around 15-18.

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#718

Post by admax88qqq »

sirmarksalot wrote: post #679
admax88qqq wrote: post #531

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The other theory is that helmet laws reduce casual cycling by adding an impediment to just hoping on and going. And that those short trips to the strore tend to be safer. Personally my wife can't find a helmet that fits, Asians have rounder heads and north American helmet manufacturers are oblivious. As a result we never cycle.

A couple of my (Asian American) friends swear by Kask helmets for this reason, though they're quite expensive.

Interesting, thanks for the suggestion! I'll check them out

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#719

Post by roberttod »

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…

This is how I read it too. It highlights an intersting pattern, but how should that influence how we see new technology? I would hope people don't think it means we should just dismiss potential problems as needless fear mongering.

There's pretty legit concerns with social media and the engagement economy. It's better to be concerned when these technologies are new, rather than when they have potentially adjusted peoples' lifestyle for the worse.

Also, this bicycle case is clearly absurd in hindsight - but I question whether it may have been kind of absurd back then too. Sure, there are some major publications in these examples, but are these just cherry picked examples or were people genuinely concerned? Does this actually represent a large chunk of media coverage at the time?

Re: Things people blamed on bicycles

#720

Post by Silverback_VII »

antihero wrote: post #652
bedatadriven wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are costs and benefits to requiring helmets. Requiring a helmet has apparently been shown to depress the use of bikes for every day activities. Going grocery shopping with a bike is less convenient if you have to juggle a helmet along with a liter of milk. Less biking means roughly more pollution, more obesity, bigger roads, more car accide ts. On the other side of this equation is the death and injury that hel…

I never used to wear a helmet, and I don’t think anyone should be forced to, but countless anecdotes about people being in comas and becoming permanently brain damaged due to no-fault accidents, combined with peer pressure from everyone I know, and finding one I don’t actively despise the look of, means that now I do. If I’m going grocery shopping I simply don’t take it off in the shop. I’ve incorporated it into my o…

>I’ve incorporated it into my own punk self-image

maximum conformity punk?

Helmets signal the choice for security over freedom which is simply not sexy. Moreover it signals your own inability to ride a bike and to recognise/avoid dangers rapidly. Just compare images of cyclists with and without helmet.

Helmets are for children only.

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