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Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

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Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#121

Post by ianferrel »

_j5l3 wrote: post #110
preinheimer wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a pedestrian, you terrify and bully me. As a driver managing turns, you're traveling at a very different speed than the people I'm expecting on the sidewalk which makes turning safely much more difficult.

How does the speed of someone on the sidewalk affect a driver?

A driver turning off the street onto a side street or down a driveway needs to ensure that there will be no one in his driving path before starting the turn. If people are walking on the sidewalk, he needs to look 10 feet or so to either side. If they're riding bikes or skateboards or something that travels much faster than a walking person, he needs to look much further to either side.

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#122

Post by oinksoft »

aroch wrote: post #115
oinksoft wrote: post #64

The sad truth is that while bicycles should be respected as vehicles, they are given lip service at best in driver education and there is little attempt made at going after motorists who drive aggressively around them. As a result, you put yourself at great risk of life and limb when you ride on a road like this one: http://www.mapquest.com/?version=1.0&hk=6-LvU0mhA3 (Hillandale Rd, Durham, NC) I accomplish all of my…

By the same token, many bicyclists freely ignore traffic laws too. They don't properly stop at stop signs or intersections (on red or yellow) and they act like pedestrians when it suits them. >[Slam] their brakes without noticing my bike behind them You're a vehicle when you ride on the streets, it's your responsibility to maintain a safe distance from the person in front of you and to react to their brake lights. Th…

That's not true. If I'm a motorist, moving at speed, and I slam my brakes to grab that nifty parking spot, I am liable. Not the person who rear-ends me.

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#123

Post by betterunix »

jlgreco wrote: post #96
bluepen44 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"JonSkeptic"..not surprised by the sentiment of your comment. I think it is feasible..certainly not in all cities and maybe not in any established cities..but some small cities could implement such a solution. That or entirely new cities could be created with this design. Just require cars to be parked when entering city limits and traded for a golf cart or Segway or something of the sort. The boundaries could be exp…

Even if you start designing new small cities to accommodate no automobiles, you will not be able to eliminate automobiles outside those cities, nor will you be able to force everyone to live in them. You'd basically just be building a car-less retirement community and hope that young people opt into it.

Build light rail in existing cities, build parking lots for people who need to drive to a light rail station, and start charging a toll for people who drive in places where light rail could take them. Slowly but surely you can turn a city built around cars into a city built around public transit. This is possible in small and large cities and would reduce congestion, pollution, and the danger to pedestrians and cyclists.

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#124

Post by malandrew »

MartinCron wrote: post #112
vanderZwan wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from the Netherlands, where separate bike lanes are the norm. The thought of having to share the road with cars, especially in a place where people aren't used to bike traffic, terrifies me. Also, IIRC when a car hits pedestrian or bike, the car is always the "guilty" party because pedestrians or bikes are never a safety threat to cars (you can still be acquitted if it is clear that there's no way you could have…

The thought of having to share the road with cars, especially in a place where people aren't used to bike traffic, terrifies me It should terrify you. It's terrifying . I know dozens of people who regularly commute by bike in the ostensibly bike-friendly city of Seattle. Nearly all of them have been hit by a car at some point.

I'm in SF and I've been hit twice. Once in Berkeley and once in SF. The thing that bothers me the most is that the police are very non-chalant about the whole affair. They refused to fill out a police report unless someone was hurt. This means that both of my accidents didn't show up on the official statistics for number of bike accidents in the city.

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#125

Post by malandrew »

ejs wrote: post #93
enraged_camel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only ride my bike on dedicated bike lanes (by "dedicated" I mean those blocked from the main road) and bike paths. Everywhere else, I ride on the sidewalk. Fortunately, most sidewalks where I live are sparsely populated, and I make sure to slow down to walking speed or dismount completely when going through areas with lots of pedestrians. Someone told me I could get cited for riding my bike on a sidewalk. Fuck that…

People are often killed riding on sidewalks, I avoid riding on them because they are very dangerous wherever there is a driveway - cars move to the edge of the street without expecting a vehicle moving at 15mph+ on the sidewalk.

Citation. I mean I know it does happen, but I'm extremely skeptical of the use of the word "often" here.

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#126

Post by ajross »

Yver wrote: post #98
enraged_camel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only ride my bike on dedicated bike lanes (by "dedicated" I mean those blocked from the main road) and bike paths. Everywhere else, I ride on the sidewalk. Fortunately, most sidewalks where I live are sparsely populated, and I make sure to slow down to walking speed or dismount completely when going through areas with lots of pedestrians. Someone told me I could get cited for riding my bike on a sidewalk. Fuck that…

You could also injure a pedestrian. Do you realize that you can hurt an elderly person on the sidewalk with a bike as much as a car can hurt you on the road?

You can surely hurt a pedestrian while riding on the sidewalk (or through a crosswalk, for that matter). You surely can not hurt them "as much as" a car in the traffic lanes will hurt a cyclist in a much faster collision with a much heavier object. That assertion is just silly.

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#127

Post by pigs »

Damn, this is sad. I'll echo the other comments here that he was a nice guy. I was an undergrad at Duke circa 1999-2000 and knew him through the Duke LUG. I was a noob, and he always showed a fair amount of patience with my questions on the mailing list. Later on the LUG started meeting for beers on Friday afternoons and he was just as friendly in real life. He was one of those guys that seemed like a computing god for me so early in my career.

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#128

Post by aroch »

oinksoft wrote: post #118
baddox wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sad truth is that while bicycles should be respected as vehicles, I tend to agree, but I can see both sides. There is also very little (and, as far as I know, zero required) bicyclist education, and many bicyclists make little attempt to drive predictably and safely either out of boldness or ignorance. Similarly, while stricter rules and enforcement for automobile drivers is warranted, I think the same goes for…

I think that a cyclist flaunting traffic laws should always be liable for accidents, but the last thing we need if we want to encourage bicycling is nanny-state policing of proper signaling and such. Any city that has resources for this ought to take a hard look at the size of their police force. Your idea of banning cycle traffic on >25mph roads is misguided. Most cyclists have no trouble traveling at a speed greate…

>Most cyclists have no trouble traveling at a speed greater than 25mph, even uphill

I doubt that, maybe in burst/sprint but not sustained...Hell, the average top speeds in the Tour de France during the sprints is barely 25mph and those are top athletes.

>but the last thing we need if we want to encourage bicycling is nanny-state policing of proper signaling and such.

So we should enforce traffic laws on cars but not on bicycles? That's fairly myopic...

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#129

Post by _neil »

cobrausn wrote: post #69
notatoad wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily. In some regions cyclists are legally allowed to treat a stop sign as a yield sign.

This sounds like an incredibly bad idea. This pushes even more responsibility onto the person operating several thousand pounds of metal, assuming they will make the correct snap judgement when a bike they didn't see rides out in front of them. It seems to me the bike riders have a lot more to lose at that stop sign than any car driver who doesn't see the bike.

This is getting further off-topic, but I generally treat stop signs as a yield when I'm riding. I approach slowly and if there is a car stopped/nearing the intersection, I will absolutely yield to them as I would in a car. The only difference is that, if possible, I will try to avoid wasting energy by stopping entirely.

This is both for my own benefit and for those who may come after me. If I can maintain some of my kinetic energy, I can be out of the way much faster for the next person in line.

I sometimes treat red lights as stop signs for the same reason. If I continue through the light safely, the people behind me will be less annoyed (and therefore less aggressive) about waiting for me to accelerate. Not everything cyclists do is simply because fuck cars.

Re: Seth Vidal, creator of yum, killed in hit and run accident

#130

Post by malandrew »

oinksoft wrote: post #118
baddox wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The sad truth is that while bicycles should be respected as vehicles, I tend to agree, but I can see both sides. There is also very little (and, as far as I know, zero required) bicyclist education, and many bicyclists make little attempt to drive predictably and safely either out of boldness or ignorance. Similarly, while stricter rules and enforcement for automobile drivers is warranted, I think the same goes for…

I think that a cyclist flaunting traffic laws should always be liable for accidents, but the last thing we need if we want to encourage bicycling is nanny-state policing of proper signaling and such. Any city that has resources for this ought to take a hard look at the size of their police force. Your idea of banning cycle traffic on >25mph roads is misguided. Most cyclists have no trouble traveling at a speed greate…

It's pretty obvious when a bicyclist is at fault and they are often held responsible when they cause an accident. In the case of most city accidents, police routinely pull video from nearby buildings to establish fault.

In fact, just this morning a lady got hit and put in the ICU at the corner of King St and 3rd in San Francisco, right near the ballpark. Yolanda, the lady who manages the front desk, was reviewing the tapes with the police after the accident. That's the second serious accident involving a pedestrian or bicyclist at that intersection since the beginning of the year. TBH, the speed limit in SoMa needs to be dropped to 25 mph. People drive far too fast in this neighborhood for it to be safe for either bicyclists or pedestrians.

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