101–110 of 189 posts
A lot of comments point out situations with car drivers not being considerate of cyclists. Not to defend car drivers, but you could interchange car drivers with cyclists and cyclists with pedestrians and you would end up with people giving the same anecdotes. You see cyclists speeding through "walk only" areas just as you see cars ignoring bike lanes or giving space to cyclists in general. You'll see just as much peo…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For every well intended law there has to be someone who can conjure a ridiculous scenario out of thin air to prove that the whole concept is meaningless. But guess what: this is traffic, not programming. And intent matters.
It's not ridiculous. I've seen them do it with my own eyes (I was driving a bit back from the truck, I gave the pair a lot of extra space). I've heard other cyclists talking about how they regularly draft.
You are trying to make an argument that default liability is unjust and you are failing at that.
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Not sure why you're downvoted, I do similar exactly because otherwise cars pass me by a mere few centimetres. If I'm in the middle of the lane, they can't unless they're really set on pushing me off, and then at least I have a buffer of space to my right that I can verve into. If you stick to the side of the road, you make it the default decision for people (many of which I'm sure might not if they knew better) to pa…
Drivers hate cyclists because they're slow, dangerous, usually don't follow rules of the road (regarding stops, traffic lights, right of way, one-way streets) and they can die, or be badly injured, as soon as they get in contact with anything at all for a microsecond. Cycling in the city is scary because going with a bike in the traffic is straight-up insanity.
Hating someone and unnecessarily acting in ways that might cause their death because they are moving slowly due to being on a bike is, to put it mildly, psychotic.
Could some focus on the car side of the problem help solve this with less expenditure of political capital?
Requiring proper driver education for example doesn't require people to show empathy to these weird creatures they've never met - cyclists. I'm certainly not a US culture expert, but that might be one feasible baby step in certain US states.
Just the other day here a guy in an SUV passed through a cloud of cyclists pedal to the metal during the morning rush hour when a lot of local kids cycle to school either with their parents or alone. I confronted him a little bit further on (when he had to slow down again, which is one reason why such hurrying makes no sense, it's just too busy). His motivation: none of the kids put out their hand. So that carries a…
I don't think the hyperbole helps anyone ... You do not put your hand out because you want to ask for mercy of the executioner in the metal coffin, you put your hand out to indicate your intention. It's the same reason why cars have blinkers. If a car does not use the blinker, a resulting accident is a preventable mistake by the car driver. In the same vein, a cyclist not indicating a change of lane and/or direction…
So, when a cyclist 'does not put out their hand' you play it safe as a driver.
Just the other day here a guy in an SUV passed through a cloud of cyclists pedal to the metal during the morning rush hour when a lot of local kids cycle to school either with their parents or alone. I confronted him a little bit further on (when he had to slow down again, which is one reason why such hurrying makes no sense, it's just too busy). His motivation: none of the kids put out their hand. So that carries a…
> “...I would love it if reckless drivers would lose their license at the first offense.” that’s too punitive, but i’d be quite happy with a quickly escalating, income-/wealth-adjusted fine. so like 0.01% of yearly income on first offense, 0.1% on second offense, 1% on third offense, or something like that, on a rolling 12-month basis, where you can voluntarily give up you license for 3 months to reset the scale of y…
The victims will be just as dead. Cars are lethal.
One of the linked accidents in the article looks terrible, a man is cycling along the road, a bus overtakes him and clips his handlebars, knocking him to the ground and then running over his torso with the rear wheels of the bus. What a lot of people don’t realise is that you can’t overtake bicycles in a single lane. If there’s no cycle path/markings a bicycle takes up the full lane for exactly this reason. Bicycles…
The solution to this is fixing local legislation. As a car driver your risk is asymmetric: you will have a few scratches/dents on your car and the other side ends up in hospital (or worse). So, it's important to bias traffic rules to protecting more vulnerable participants like cyclists or pedestrians. Here are some examples of things that work in various countries: The Netherlands fixed this ages ago. You hit a cycl…
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and we have all heard the rhetoric surrounding "cyclists". Are you saying that not even a smidgen of truth belies such rhetoric? Cyclists roll through signals, intersections & stop signs as if they were mere suggestions and nothing more. I know how entrenched each sides are in this argument - drivers and cyclists. Neither will give an inch. The best way to get cyclists some kind of safety is to INSIST on a full bore…
Cyclists roll through signals, intersections & stop signs as if they were mere suggestions and nothing more. As do a lot of car drivers.
A lot of comments point out situations with car drivers not being considerate of cyclists. Not to defend car drivers, but you could interchange car drivers with cyclists and cyclists with pedestrians and you would end up with people giving the same anecdotes. You see cyclists speeding through "walk only" areas just as you see cars ignoring bike lanes or giving space to cyclists in general. You'll see just as much peo…
But what is your point? Your whole post is meaningless, it's just useless centrism with fluffy words about "both sides" in order to exonerate drivers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Drivers hate cyclists because they're slow, dangerous, usually don't follow rules of the road (regarding stops, traffic lights, right of way, one-way streets) and they can die, or be badly injured, as soon as they get in contact with anything at all for a microsecond. Cycling in the city is scary because going with a bike in the traffic is straight-up insanity.
As someone pointed out downthread, there are no "cyclists", just other people who, at that time, are on bikes. Hating someone and unnecessarily acting in ways that might cause their death because they are moving slowly due to being on a bike is, to put it mildly, psychotic.
That said, bikes are dangerous for everyone involved. If you encounter a bike you slow down all traffic (because you can't overtake safely, and that's difficult on busy roads), you have to keep distance and account to the fact that you could run over the biker AT ANY TIME because bikes are NOT reliable when roads are not 100% correctly maintained. They can stop at any time on the road for some reason without even a warning, and as soon as you touch them they're pretty much dead. That's enough to give any driver a 500% stress increase. And I'm sure for the biker is the same.
I know I sound like an asshole but if drivers hate cyclists, and pedestrians hate cyclists, and motorbikers hate cyclists, and public transport drivers hate cyclists, and truck drivers hate cyclists, and politicians hate cyclists... I'm not saying they're right, but for sure there is a recurring reason that's worth investigating.