Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

921–930 of 969 posts

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#921

Post by nec4b »

alexanderchr wrote: post #800
nec4b wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hitting a pedestrian when riding a bike at 25 km/h has life threatening consequences for the pedestrian. Pedestrians do die when hit by bikers. Especially elderly which have worse awareness around them and are more fragile.

People here (northern Europe) don’t bike at 25 km/h while drunk, if at all (unless racing/exercising), so it’s not really an issue.

Then I hope you'll never get hit or worse, you hitting somebody else while intoxicated on a bicycle, even if you think is of no consequence.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#922

Post by nec4b »

bosie wrote: post #875
nec4b wrote: post #701

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure flying a plane with 300 people on board while being drunk is worse than driving a car drunk. But that doesn't mean it's now OK to drive under influence, because there is something even worse out there you could do while being drunk.

cool. that was not even my intent by asking the question. i was wondering how lethal it is being hit by a car at 25kmh.

It depends on how you get hit and how do you land. Cars builders have pedestrian safety in mind as they get NCAP ratings for it. If you are lucky, maybe not that much damage. On the other hand full frontal collision with a bus is probably not good for you as there is nowhere for you slide or bounce off to lose some of the energy. Bike is similar to bus as there is no way for you to 'gently' (no 'soft' metal to bend or curves to steer you off it) lose some of the energy.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#923

Post by gambiting »

hnlmorg wrote: post #919
gambiting wrote: post #913

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The what now? Please name a single country where you can't just enter and drive with an international driving permit straight away, I can't think of one off the top of my head. If you are going to live in a different country that's a whole different kettle of fish, but typically you can use your international permit for anywhere between 6 months - 3 years depending on the country. And the problem doesn't exist at all…

You’re solving the wrong problem. The problem we are discussing is the difficulty of learning to drive when you’re travelling. If you already have a driving license then this entire discussion is moot because you don’t need to learn to drive if you can already drive. Pretty obvious stuff I’d have thought but a few on here seem surprised by this fact. Go figure.

Wait, but you said this, didn't you?

"be hugely costly and still only result in a license that isn’t immediately transferable to other countries (eg you have to hold a license for x years before you can drive abroad and/or older than x years old)"

So I'm going to ask again, what kind of countries issue you with a licence that isn't immediately transferable to other countries? You can get an international driving permit literally the same day you pick up your regular licence, there is no time limitation on that - or if there is where you live, please educate me so I know better.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#924

Post by pjmlp »

hnlmorg wrote: post #905
pjmlp wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

European cities only don't require a car for those lucky enough to live in the city center of major capitals. The further away from city suburbs, one might get a lucky 1 bus per hour if at all.

Depends on the city but generally what you’ve described is completely untrue. Usually European cities try to pedestrianise their centre as much as they can and have all sorts of public transport schemes from Park and Ride to regular underground and overground rail services. I live miles out of from London and get the train in. Almost nobody I work with live in the city and none of them drive in. In fact you wouldnt w…

Yeah, I guess I need to throw away my passport.

It is no accident you only listed capital sized cities.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#925

Post by pjmlp »

hnlmorg wrote: post #914
pjmlp wrote: post #893

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two anecdotes, plenty of European cities aren't as fortunate, specially in southern countries. Many cities are only city in name, and in practice more towns aspiring to be cities, specially in southern and eastern Europe. Here is one anecdote, Portalegre might be a nice city, as Northen Alentejo capital in Portugal, yet those 20 km on average from the neighbouring villages aren't that nice to do on bycicle specially…

I’ve cited plenty more cities. And could cite more still. Besides, your statement was an absolute so the GP only needed one of example to disprove you yet gave you two.

Capital sized cities.

There are plenty of cities in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, Croatia,... where it doesn't hold.

You know, those that people from the cities you listed love to rent cars for their vacations, and enjoy what many locals can't afford.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#926

Post by lacker »

f_devd wrote: post #652
chroma wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important metric is fatalities per distance traveled, not absolute numbers. In the Netherlands, bicycles have 11 fatalities per billion kilometers traveled. Cars have 1.6.

I'm not sure that makes much sense as a safety metric, bicycles obviously travel less distance on average per instance used, so the 'rate of death' would not have the same scaling as distance traveled

Well, when I'm considering biking or driving my car, the destination is fixed. I can drive 2 miles to the store or I can bike 2 miles to the store. I'm not choosing between, should I take an average bicycle trip right now, or should I take an average car trip right now. So the danger per mile does seem like the relevant metric there.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#927

Post by dang »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #613
dang wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? I realize the other comment was provocative, but provocation is not an ok reason to break the rules—it just leads to a downward spiral. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Are they rules or guidelines? I know them and consider them when commenting, but they are phrased as requests and so I treat them as such.

I guess both? I use 'rules' and 'guidelines' more or less interchangeably in the HN context.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#928

Post by dang »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #551
dang wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines, such as with personal swipes and flamewar posts? You've done it a lot, we've asked you to stop, and you've continued to do it. Eventually we're going to have to ban you if you keep this up. I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the intended spirit of this site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

>You've done it a lot, we've asked you to stop, I know this is probably boilerplate but if it's not I'd be really interested in seeing where you've called me out previously because as far as I know you haven't.

Not boilerplate—I always check before posting that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34385832 (Jan 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20481527 (July 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19385483 (March 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18811881 (Jan 2019)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18586268 (Dec 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17820784 (Aug 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17738507 (Aug 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17562386 (July 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14161683 (April 2017)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13282989 (Dec 2016)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13218195 (Dec 2016)

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#929

Post by avianlyric »

_aavaa_ wrote: post #890
avianlyric wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, fine. But the argument above it that somehow these issues affect bikes, but not cars. Last I checked black-ice is just as much of a problem for cars.

That is not my argument at all. My point is that these issues have a bigger impact on the safety of the bike rider than on the car driver.

And what about everyone else? Going sliding on a bike isn’t great, but it’s unlikely your bikes gonna put it self through the front of a shop and kill someone.

Your car on the other hand, you lose control of that, and bystanders are in real trouble. Not to mention there’s plenty of incidents everyday of people loosing control of their car because they’re not driving to the condition (presumably because the big metal box makes them feel much safer than they should) and killing themselves and others.

Much less likely that a bike rider is going to ignore the prevailing conditions and injure themselves or others, and if they do, the impact is substantially lower. Adding more mass and speed to an out of control situation never improves the outcomes.

Re: Cyclists now outnumber motorists in City of London

#930

Post by f_devd »

lacker wrote: post #926
f_devd wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that makes much sense as a safety metric, bicycles obviously travel less distance on average per instance used, so the 'rate of death' would not have the same scaling as distance traveled

Well, when I'm considering biking or driving my car, the destination is fixed. I can drive 2 miles to the store or I can bike 2 miles to the store. I'm not choosing between, should I take an average bicycle trip right now, or should I take an average car trip right now. So the danger per mile does seem like the relevant metric there.

You are correct in your consideration, but above 15 kilometers bicycling is not an option while using a car is, so the cars have a hugely larger average drive distance which skews the metric making it effectively useless.
Post reply on HN