I don't care what the law says or what anybody thinks; if there is an empty sidewalk I'm going to bike on it rather than put myself at risk on the road.
US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
191–200 of 262 posts
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#192heh a couple summer's ago in Dallas i got hit by a police officer while crossing the street. Ironically, while he was on his cell phone. I had to do the whole ninja-roll thing over the hood and on to the pavement. Came out of it with only a sore wrist and a funny story for the conference call i was late to. a buddy of mine grabbed a guy and pulled him out of the way of a city bus. The guy had the light to cross and t…
I moved from Dallas to Minneapolis and was certain I would feel safer walking and biking because of it's reputation as a bike friendly city. In Dallas, it seemed somewhat understandable to me for drivers not to except to see pedestrians and bikers because there just aren't that many of them - the city is so spread out. But the drivers in Minneapolis are straight up entitled, aggressive, and dangerous in high foot tra…
> But the drivers in Minneapolis are straight up entitled, aggressive, and dangerous in high foot traffic areas.
I’ve had a similar experience since moving to Pittsburgh, I see drivers lose it and freak out at pedestrians in high foot traffic areas. Midwest drivers need to chill!
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#193The safest infrastructure are ones that split pedestrian / bicyclist / motor traffic as much as possible, for obvious reasons. But that infrastructure has fallen out of favor as of late. "Complete streets" are the new fashion trend, and are significantly more dangerous, by combining these forms of traffic altogether and just sort of hoping it all works out. But, "complete" streets are super cheap, and give the illusi…
No, cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles: http://www.johnforester.com/
Forester is widely discredited.
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#194The best tell of the US bike infrastructure being a joke is that local governments have the audacity to put some paint on a 45MPH road, and call it a bike lane. No separation, no barrier, just cars whizzing by at 45+, next to a cyclist going 15. And the bike lanes sometimes suddenly disappear, making bikers dismount or merge into fast traffic. No, thanks. I'll take the sidewalk that's empty 90% of the time.
Even in rare places where signs say "bikes may use full lane", I've been near ran over by cars angrily speeding past me.
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Having recently moved to Florida from Sweden, I was shocked at how biker/pedestrian hostile it is here. Sorry if this sounds rude, but this was a surprise to you? I thought everyone in Europe realized how bicycle/pedestrial-hostile US cities are. Did you not come here first to check things out before committing to a cross-Atlantic move? And seriously, Sweden is one of the top countries on the quality-of-life indices…
>Sorry if this sounds rude It does, a little bit, but that's ok. No, it wasn't a surprise that it wasn't as bike friendly as Sweden. My comment was I was shocked at how extremely hostile Florida in particular was. I hadn't been to Florida prior to moving here. I committed to move away from Sweden because my wife couldn't stand it any more, the social aspects of Sweden are not all that peachy. It's really hard to brea…
Ex-Floridian here. I spent my formative years there. No amount of research could have prepared you for our hostility towards bikers. In my youth we'd actively try to mess with (shout at, drive obnoxiously close to, etc..) bicyclers for having the arrogance to (a) exist, and (b) use our roads.
If we saw a biker out and about, it was pretty much guaranteed that they'd get a finger as I rocketed by in my car. This was just a thing that everyone did. I don't know why we were so self-righteous and angry about road usage.
As what is surely punishment for my past sins, I now commute via bicycle every day now. Even in a 'bike friendly' city like Seattle, I still get cars that play the "I'm gunna clip you!" scare game that I used to do to others as a teenager. Young me was a huge moron.
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#196I noticed they mentioned the speed reduction "Boston, for example, has reduced the city speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25 mph." Cambridge across the river followed suit soon afterward, but having lived there for decades I can't say I've noticed one iota of difference in the speed cars travel. 25 mph is still ridiculously fast in most of the tight neighborhood streets. Really the speed limit should be reduced e…
accompanied by much stricter enforcement This is the crux of the matter. If people really thought they'd get a speeding ticket, perhaps they wouldn't speed. I live in a big city similar to Boston and I've never seen someone pulled over for speeding though. After all, what are the odds that: 1. A car speeds 2. In front of a cop 3. The cop can safely pursue the speeding vehicle in city traffic
Roads need to be redesigned so that going fast feels dangerous. Until then, there's no way to enforce it enough to actually change driver behavior. The US loves its wide roads that you can feel comfortable doing 80 on... until it starts to build narrow little shared streets people won't slow down.
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#197I noticed they mentioned the speed reduction "Boston, for example, has reduced the city speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 25 mph." Cambridge across the river followed suit soon afterward, but having lived there for decades I can't say I've noticed one iota of difference in the speed cars travel. 25 mph is still ridiculously fast in most of the tight neighborhood streets. Really the speed limit should be reduced e…
Once thing I've noticed is that for the large majority of US drivers, the speed limit is a very weak signal for how fast they should drive. I think the strongest signals are the driver's perceived safeness and the "flow of traffic", although the 2nd might actually just be a corollary of the 1st. If it "feels safe" to be driving 35mph, then most drivers are going to drive 35mph regardless of the speed limit.
Yeah, it's this exactly. We basically need to make our roads feel more dangerous to go fast on.
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#198There's a great, if a bit cheesy video from FortNine [1] on why motorcyclists can be basically invisible to even cautious drivers due to the way our brain processes information, and I think the same thing would apply for bicyclists. When I'm on my bike (of either type) I assume nobody sees me and act accordingly.
For cyclists and pedestrians to really be safe we need to design our road infrastructure to counteract those issues from the start. I visited Copenhagen a few years ago and biked everywhere, and it was a real eye opener how safe and easy it was compared with my home in Chicago.
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
St Pete is bike/pedestrian friendly relative to other parts of Florida, and I think it's getting better. I actually think that is one reason why the area has been growing so much over the past decade. There is actually a bike trail [1], which was made by paving over an old railway track. I used to take that trail to bike to downtown, and it was extremely safe. In contrast, I now live in a newer FL city on the Space C…
What kills me isn't just the stuff that people are complaining about in the U.S. regarding existing conditions... It's that new development isn't, and I hate to use this word, progressive. Don't people WANT to be able to walk around, sit outside and so on, get to work quickly, etc. How can the answer to that be no? The obesity epidemic is extremely tied to this misguided way of continuing to build cities.
It's a reinforcing feedback loop: new cities are developed to accommodate cars -> more people own/drive cars because of the city's design -> repeat.
It's a type of trap that leads to these undesired effects. I do not see much changing until self-driving cars change the dynamics of how US society thinks about cars and transportation.
Re: US Cities Are Becoming More Dangerous for Cyclists and Pedestrians
#200Why the article doesn't mention of distracted and inattentive pedestrians? It might be possible that the sudden increase in deaths is due to the rise of handheld distractions. Also the same could be true of drivers and cyclist using their handheld.
Pedestrians dont weigh 4000 pounds and move at 40 miles/hour, for starters