471–480 of 713 posts
Every morning, I get up at 5AM, and walk 5K. 1/2 mile of it, is on the local high school running track. That’s because the neighborhood after the high school (where I would prefer to walk) is actively hostile to pedestrians. No sidewalks, no shoulders, lots of blind curves, and a ton of distracted drivers. It’s dangerous as hell. In fact, I often smell weed, when cars pass me. At 5:30 AM. That’s a great way to get st…
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Objectively we are still animals that need at least some movement. The environment described by the parent is hostile to our most basic needs.
I find I'd much rather drive to the mountains, or a lake, or at least a nice big park, and recreate there. Walking to a store in Amsterdam or Munich or Vancouver or Moscow was neither much fun nor a lot of exercise.
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> I have a pretty strong anti-cycling stance, because I watched my New York neighborhood that was a pedestrian paradise significantly degraded by bike lanes. A car driver, a cyclist and a pedestrian walk into a café and order ten cream cakes. When the waitress places them on their table the car driver grabs nine of them and scoffs them in his face, then he leans over to the pedestrian and whispers: “don’t let the cyc…
I've been all but shoved aside by cyclists on sidewalks. Don't try that crap with me.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/wimbledon-school-tea-...
Every morning, I get up at 5AM, and walk 5K. 1/2 mile of it, is on the local high school running track. That’s because the neighborhood after the high school (where I would prefer to walk) is actively hostile to pedestrians. No sidewalks, no shoulders, lots of blind curves, and a ton of distracted drivers. It’s dangerous as hell. In fact, I often smell weed, when cars pass me. At 5:30 AM. That’s a great way to get st…
Or folks coming off a night shift...
In any case, it doesn’t matter. They are DUI. Pot may be a bit better than alcohol, but I’ve seen some … interesting … decisions made by drivers on it.
No one would drive around sipping on a can of beer, but no one thinks twice about blazing 420 behind the wheel.
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I lived in a place for most of my life that refused to build freeways "because they didn't want to become like LA" meanwhile more people moved there, traffic got worse. Going "across town" about 15 miles was a burden. You hated to do it. I then moved to a town that had a few freeways and 15 miles away was considered close. The town I grew up in, finally built some cross town roads, and travel time improved. I think y…
I think the problem with the town you grew up in is that they didn't build any good modes of transportation and not that they didn't build freeways. Sure freeways can fix the problem of people getting from point A to point B, but they're probably one of the worse ways to go about it. Street cars, bus rapid transit, metros, etc., are all better across the board even for the people who do want to drive because it allow…
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Failing to yield to pedestrians where? e: Actually, not going to get into it but c'mon - cars kill pedestrians in a way that bikes rarely do and removing the cars from your NY neighborhood would have an obviously better impact on pedestrians compared to the bikes.
Cyclists in NYC are positive menace. They don’t need to be but they choose go the wrong way down one way streets, routinely ignore all traffic signals, ride on busy sidewalks and eschew bike lanes to weave in and out of heavy traffic. Well under 50% wear helmets. As a pedestrian in NYC I feel far more endangered by bikes than I do by automobiles. There is room for cyclists, but there has got to be some compliance wit…
Helmets don’t help - cycle helmet is rated to save you from a fall or from hitting a tree. It’s basically useless when hitting a vehicle, and that’s 95% of cyclist deaths. You’d have to wear a full motorcycle helmet.
> weave in and out of heavy traffic
I’ve seen that too. But I’ve never seen it happen in an area with segregated cycle way.
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They don’t immediately. One is not a consequence of the other. However, the first is an observation in support of the idea that in general many cyclists eschew rules including those that exist for their own safety.
I don’t think helmets make you any safer on a bike. At least now to a relevant degree. I remember reading that it actively makes you less safe because people wearing a helmet trust it to protect them, when in reality, basically any collision with a car will crush them.
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> Even a lot of the anti-cycling stance comes down to, “What am I, poor?” When you are using transportation infrastructure that’s designed with contempt for you, you know, and you don’t want to be there. I grew up in close contact with a large urban poor population and I think the view of bikes was the exact opposite of this. Biking in the city is considered the purview of affluent white people
I think it depends; biking because you need to and biking for fun look very different. IME of Phoenix you could have the cyclist doing training routes in their kit and the crackhead strapped with bags of their stuff pass by on the same street.
Burdens can be nonobvious.
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Pedestrians are not served at drive-through windows at least in part because they are more dangerous to the workers. A driver at a drive-through window can't open their door, the window is very close to the drive-through kiosk but the kiosk is usually much higher (in a sedan) making it hard to climb out through the car window...they've also got a license plate. During the pandemic most fast food places locked their l…
This kafkesque nightmare sounds like it came from soviet-union style central planning
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It's cultural. In India and other places in Asia, honking is just to say "hey, I'm here, did you see me?" and prevent an accident, but it happens so frequently that sitting in traffic is a cacaphony of honking at all times. In (my part of) the US, honking is to express displeasure at whatever it is the other driver did, and is infrequent. In other places, they might as well not install a horn, because it never gets u…
It's used much the same in NYC and some other than areas. A quick tap to say "hey I'm here and I'm doing something" like changing lanes or pulling out of traffic Aside: I really wish cars had two different horns. A nice little boop horn, to say "hey I'm here" or "lights green buddy" and then the big honking thing that says "you nearly hit me by rolling through that stop sign, pay better attention"