181–189 of 189 posts
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> Bicyclists suffer political disability under [typical US] traffic laws. Yes, but, > Bicyclists are not afforded a full traffic lane when traveling. Bicyclists are prohibited from the highest quality roads. Bicyclists are required to ride on the shoulder. This isn't true anywhere I've lived in the US.
Really? Bikes are allowed to ride on freeways where you live, actually out in traffic?
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Fellow motorcyclist here. visibility. in my case I will ride with the high beams on during the day, if I am directly behind another car in stop and go I will turn them off. I also run small projector/fog lamps down low to form a light triangle which I believe further increases my being noticed. Yet as you imply, I don't trust that I am ever seen. it isn't just short term memory but people just aren't paying attention…
I will ride with the high beams on during the day Please quit doing that. It makes it extremely difficult to judge your distance. You think you're doing it to avoid having me pull out, and ironically I'm more likely to pull out because I haven't the faintest idea how far away that blazing ball of light is. Seriously, do people that do things like this never look to see what it looks like from the other side? Or is it…
The amount of bus drivers and taxi drivers that chatted to me at the traffic lights and told me that the set up helped them judge my distance was great. I really think it helps people figure where you are and how your bike is moving. Plus if any one of my lights was hidden for a moment, there were 3 more to see. And at worst if one battery went I have more to get me home safely. I ride with lights on at all time.
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While I strongly agree with the spirit of this, I feel there are enough exceptions to this principle for it to be more pragmatically put. For example: Take a two lane road with no median barrier. Whether cycling, motorcycling or driving I have no choice but to trust that road users coming towards me stay on their opposite side of the road. I have to hope that they are not subject to a moment's distraction, or mechani…
That's an interesting example, as if I trusted oncoming cars to stay on their side of the road I'd be dead many times over. It's very common for cars to pull a few feet over the center line to go around an obstacle (such as a bike going their direction...) without adequately checking if the space they're pulling into is unoccupied. This is one of the reasons you want to stay toward the center of your lane rather than…
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I think that personal responsibility goes both ways. I love cycling. I used to drive my daughter to school every day. Whatever vehicle I am operating (or even if I am walking), I should be paying attention as much as I can. Yes, the stakes are much higher for pedestrians and cyclists. Yes, it is much easier to zone out when driving. Adding in texting while driving, and we get more of those short-term memory effects.…
Agreed that everyone wants to do the right thing, I see car drivers doing it everyday on the streets of San Francisco. I also see idiots texting and speeding. But I digress. Even the ones who are trying to drive cautiously fundamentally accelerate much faster and move faster and have 3000 lbs on me. We need highly separated infrastructure in cities or an extremely low speed limit (15mph) in cities on non car only roa…
When we look at that, we look at the whole. Safety is only one concern out of many. Fostering a sense of personal responsibility is another. There are others: artistic beauty and grace; personal initiative and prevailing over challenges; kindness and universal kinship towards all of mankind. Just to name a few.
An excessive focus on safety will prevent people from developing that sense of personal responsibility.
So this isn’t something to “solve” like that. We have not even figured out just what it is we want to do as a society. We have not even been able to recognize as a society that people have a diversity of views, and that individuals are at different stages of maturity and growth.
Even so: I generally agree that dedicated infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists, and public transportation is way better than this excessive focus on cars and SUVs. Investing into is costly, but we have to look at it as investing towards our children and grandchildren’s futures.
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Why do you claim that most bicyclists espouse some extremely specific philosophical viewpoint? Have you surveyed a representative sample of cyclists or something? It's just extremely weird to me to make such a sweeping claim about a large group you don't count yourself in.
Right here on HN. In any of the dozens of pro-bicycle articles which appear every month. For example, discussing almost hitting a bicyclist on a 70mph road at night with the cyclist wearing dark colors with no reflectors or tail light: >This is absolutely your fault. You're driving too fast for the conditions. You're the one who can't see what's ahead; you're the one who has to drive slower. And > It is not their res…
Extrapolating from anecdotes to sweeping generalizations isn't intellectually sound.
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As a cyclist, I believe that the driver should be held to the higher standard, but also that I can never trust them to live up to their responsibility, so I gotta be ready to stop and/or dodge any reckless maneuver they make. We tend to conflate the moral judgement of responsibility/fault with the actual reality of responsibility. If you're driving a deadly vehicle, the moral burden is on you not to kill me, but I st…
> held to the higher standard This I disagree with. For better or worse, we are typically the ones who are riding on roads designed and built for them. We need to be held to the same standards, if not higher standards as motorcyclists and bicyclists, as we're intentionally playing in their turf, without their safety equipment. If a bicyclist is careless, they are both stupid and negligent. If a car driver is careless…
There's your problem right in the open. (Interestingly, the first modern roads were built for bicyclists.)
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> You also can't brake to avoid a car that goes into the side of you. I wear a biker tailbone protector and a back protector + an helmet when I go snowboarding and I'm an amateur snowboarder at best that rarely goes in the park and rides at mediocre speed. Why I usually don't see cyclists wear some of them protections?
1. Helmets are pretty common for road cyclist in places where the roads aren't super safe. Tailbone & back protection aren't super useful do to the kinds of accidents you get. 2. A big difference is downhill versus (mostly) flat. I only wear my helmet about 10-20% of the time when I'm ski touring. Downhill bikers wear all sorts of padding & protectors.
They are useful for the same kind of accidents that happen to motrocyclists: being hit by something or hitting something.
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> Why don't drivers? They do in fact. This is the list of the mandatory safety measures in Europe for motor vehicles, it's 24 pages long https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32... > Driving is the biggest killer of young people It is not driving, it's road traffic injuries, which includes biking. Anyways it's worse in US than Europe and it's much worse for male than for female. One could conclude…
>It is not driving, it's road traffic injuries, which includes biking. It's not from being hit by cyclists. >This is the list of the mandatory safety measures in Europe for motor vehicles, it's 24 pages long Quite a lot of it isn't, read articles 6 and 7 and the lists of implementation dates. >Why are cyclist so afraid of protecting themselves? After having people maliciously aim their car at you for being in front o…
It is included indeed.
Being hit by cyclists is very common in places where bike density is high.
For example: https://nypost.com/2019/08/31/nyc-bicyclists-are-killing-ped...
> After having people maliciously aim their car at you for being in front of them, it's quite patronising to hav
On my motorbike I wear helmet and protections anyway, before having people maliciously aim at me (because you know, accidents can happen even without malice...).
Why are you so afraid to protect yourself?
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> Why don't drivers? They do in fact. This is the list of the mandatory safety measures in Europe for motor vehicles, it's 24 pages long https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32... > Driving is the biggest killer of young people It is not driving, it's road traffic injuries, which includes biking. Anyways it's worse in US than Europe and it's much worse for male than for female. One could conclude…
> > Supposedly the health benefits of cycling outweigh the dangers of the road > They don't. Single sided bicycle accidents are pretty common.
Putting yourself at risk because there are supposed health benefit is stupid.
It's like being anti vax because you read somewhere that one time someone had a fever after a vaccine.
You can have health benefits AND protect yourself from dangers, one does not exclude the other (I would argue that protecting yourself from dangers will benefit your health more than cycling).