391–400 of 618 posts
Oh great let’s have even more noise pollution because pedestrians won’t get out of the way of cyclists who are trying to beat their personal best time on their commute to work.
Oh great let’s have even more noise pollution because pedestrians won’t get out of the way of cyclists who are trying to beat their personal best time on their commute to work.
In the scenario presented (London, mostly not segregated bike paths), the solution is for the cyclist to ride in a way they're not endangering pedestrians. There's even a fairly recent UK law ( https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-highway-code-8-change... ) that more or less says in a collision, the "stronger" road user is at fault unless proven otherwise. That applies to car v. cyclist as much as cyclist v. pedest…
Political cyclists hate this because they think anybody who complains is just a car driver concern trolling, but having been hit by a cyclist I can attest to it being a real problem. Sure I wasn't in real risk of dying, but I was bruised and scraped up for a week after that. I've done my fair share of road cycling in my years, I don't do it now but I still cycle on trails. The way some cyclists push back on any criti…
A loud voice travels very well through car windows at short distances, even for big soundproof vehicles.
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>My opinion as a cyclist is that I should basically only be using my bell on pedestrians when the pedestrians are wandering onto the bike lane. If im cycling through a shared space, I find it extremely rude to ring the bell, because it feels like I'm telling people to get out of my way, but they have just as much right to a shared path as I do. The culture around this varies a lot. I'm in Melbourne, Australia. Virtua…
I've always wanted two horns in my car: one that toots with a smile and a tip of the hat, and one that heralds your pending demise. It sounds like Australia cycle bell culture does that with short vs. long bell ding-a-lings. Which is kind of how it has worked with cars, except I find that more and more cars have a style of horn that's hard to control with the necessary precision. Maybe this is Canadian culture but I…
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I don't know… If I'm sitting at home or at a cafe working, I want my headphones to block all bicycle bells and ambulances on the street. Those in traffic could perhaps just turn their ANC off?
... and fire alarms? carbon monoxide detectors?
And of course there will always be fringe cases. What if I go to sleep with regular foam earplugs, what if I take a sleeping pill etc. Or what if the warning sound can't be engineered to fit a ANC friendly frequency, like somebody screaming, a car tire screech behind me and so on.
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Sure is helpful, because it goes like this: pedestrians first -> then cyclists -> then motorists. You may notice that in this worldview (one which I find very hard to argue against) cyclists should give priority to pedestrians, no questions asked. I don't care about fancy bells or whatever, no-one takes those into consideration even when we (us, pedestrians, that is) can hear them because, and I repeat, cyclists are…
You may not care about fancy bells but you will care about loud honking close to your ears in my very recent experience from the streets of Shanghai. You don't have absolute priority just because you are a pedestrian. > Why can't the cyclists slow down when they see that there's a human obstacle in front of them? Because if the space is limited and they actually want to get somewhere, they just don't have time for th…
They for sure have time for that. When I drive my car can't use that as an excuse.
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> If im cycling through a shared space, I find it extremely rude to ring the bell, because it feels like I'm telling people to get out of my way, but they have just as much right to a shared path as I do. It’s certainly rude to ring the bell in a aggressive manner, but many bells are capable of producing much softer, more polite sounds. In super busy old European capitals I find that people increasingly just ride aro…
I still think that ringing bells at people is a little rude, regardless of the tone. Like imagine if you were at the grocery store, blocking the isle and someone lightly chimed a bell at you instead of just saying "excuse me". IMO if I'm in a dense pedestrian zone and I can't go around people and I can't communicate by voice, it means I'm going too fast.