Are they also publicly shaming bikers who blatantly break traffic laws?
EDIT: I say this as both a cyclist and a driver. I can't believe how often I see cyclists do dangerous things. But for sure, I see a lot of drivers do mean, dangerous and stupid things, too. I just get tired of cyclists thinking that traffic laws don't apply to us.
That's a separate problem, and statements like this give drivers permission to run roughshod over what limited infrastructure and protections are currently available for people on bicycles.
> the responsibility that really matters is the responsibility not to cause harm to others. Anyone choosing a pedal cycle instead of a car has already acquitted themselves of a whole load of that responsibility, by choosing a vehicle far less capable of causing harm.
How about the person pedaling a bike in a town without a bike lane, at night, with a kid in a trailer in the back with a barely visible flag sticking up. He could have been the best bike rider in the world, yet I have no doubt he was doing a very unsafe thing.
Let's take the kid out of the equation. I don't quite follow the logic "well they are doing a less safe thing, so they should be able to do it and get the right of way because of it". Even taking the idea that they are an adult and if they want do put themselves in harm's way and should be allowed to, is silly, because it is rarely just one person isolated from everything. If they get into an accident it is not just them, but their family who will be impacted, emergency services, doctors' time.
A flag at night makes little difference if it's barely visible or not. I think you meant to say "without mandated lights and reflectors".
I believe mikepurvis's comment was that a lot of responsibility disappears, not all responsibility.
It is the driver's responsibility to not drive faster than can be seen. There can be cyclists, certainly, or someone with a seizure or heart attack who ended up on the ground, or pets, livestock, or wild animals. People do hit deer in the middle of the night, when the deer freezes up and the cars are going too fast to break in time. To reflect my Florida upbringing, people do accidentally drive into sinkholes which appeared in the middle of the street, again because they were driving too fast to break in time.
They drive fast because their experience mislead them. They think that years of driving at night at a given speed, without problem, means it's safe to do so. Think of how some drunk drivers will keep doing so, on the belief that they can hold their liquor enough to handle a car. Until the day they cannot.
A driver who hits a cyclist - even one without lights - was going too fast to control the car safely.
This of course has limits. But the car can cause much more damage, so the operator of a car should have higher responsibility than that of a bicycle.
So no, it's not that cyclists are doing a less safe thing, it's that motorists are doing a less safe thing.
Cyclists have to operate under a different ruleset than drivers for a variety of reasons. Most of the time it involves breaking away from traffic packs for safety or keeping away from dense, scary situations. That said, there are many events in which rule-breaking cyclists are just being assholes.
But let's back up for a second and look at this dynamic differently. An automobile is a metal cage moving over 3 times the speed of a cyclist with a completely safe and insulated cabin. If a driver behaves dangerously near a cyclist, the cyclist dies. If a cyclist misbehaves near a driver, the driver is very far from harm.
Yes, but they don't get to break them selectively based solely on who would come to greater harm, like the parent commenter suggested. There are common rules of the road that apply to everyone.
For example, it's not okay for a car to rear end a truck or for a pedestrian to jaywalk.
>But let's back up for a second and look at this dynamic differently.
Then, let's think for a second and realize that a driver is not an evil demon who will just laugh when a bicycle gets in the way and, while trying to avoid killing a cyclist, may as well get into danger himself/endanger other people.
Ffs, people create pileups trying to avoid dogs jumping in the traffic, you believe nobody will blink an eye when a cyclist does the same?
Not only is the driver not an evil demon, but s/he doesn't drive 100% of the time. S/he might well ride, run, or walk as well. How many cyclists who complain about drivers speeding also speed themselves as soon as they put the bike on the rack and start driving? I'd also find cyclists' eternal sense of grievance more palatable if I didn't constantly see them turn right around and treat runners or other pedestrians exactly the same way they abhor being treated themselves (e.g. close passing). Sure, cyclist collisions don't usually result in deaths - although a pregnant pedestrian was killed when run down from behind on an explicitly multi-use trail near me - but it still erodes that moral standing. It's easy to argue for the highest standards of caution and diligence when it benefits you. The true test of sincerity comes when it doesn't.
Are the children going to feel a lot better if father is dead because he decided to cross the red light or or someone else did instead. They might, but they still won't have a father. So I'll go for less egregious, but I am not sure about the "far" part.
Is ambulance ride going to cost less because the person did it to the themselves or it was someone else' fault? I don't think it will.
Would you say that people shouldn't wear seatbelts, after all, they are just hurting themselves mostly? How is this different?
People shouldn't be required to wear seatbelts. Of course if they don't they also shouldn't expect the public to pay their medical bills via NHS, Obamacare, or what have you.
in my area it seems that bikers have completely lost their minds.
it's not uncommon for them to run red lights, cut across multiple lanes without checking for cars behind them, and all sorts of other batty bullshit.
the point that i believe is often lost in these debates is that bikers and drivers _cannot_ share the same road. you can paint as many pretty lines as you want, but as long as bikes and cars have to share the same pavement, there will be no resolution
It works well in Denmark and Netherlands and several other European countries. Even London is slowly learning. Maybe Americans are just exceptionally stubborn.
Before I get all the hate I have to say of course cyclists should obey the laws. As a cyclist I can tell you it doesn't matter either way to many certifiably deranged motorists.
Caveat aside, I'm constantly amazed that this argument gets brought up over and over again.
Traffic laws exist to ensure public safety. So let's cut the bike/car bullshit about the laws being equal for both.
Let's take a simple offense like running a stop sign at 15 km/hr and suppose that a pedestrian gets hit. What's the difference between a car doing this and a bicycle? Both the bike and the car are going 4 m/s. But there's a huge difference between getting hit by a car that's 1500 kg plus passengers versus an 80 kg person plus a 9 kg bike. Simple thought experiment, you've just been hit by something. What outcome would be more favorable? Would you rather have a Honda Civic on your spleen or some asshat bike courier named Jack? Two tonnes versus nine kilograms?
The crime may be the same, but the outcome is far different. I've seen a van run a red light and the cyclist traveling orthogonally ride right into the side of it going 45 km/hour. Not pretty.
I'd rather not be hit by either of them, period. Cars should not be running stop signs or lights, but neither should bicyclists, period. Full stop. Also, having a bike run the stop sign and fly into an intersection out of nowhere can easily cause cars to swerve, causing accidents, or even strike the bicyclist.
It's not difficult to drive, ride, or walk safely. Just do it and stop whining.
Thank you white man with your white man argument. The 'stop whining' argument is such an over-privileged tactic that adds nothing to the discussion. It's very similar to #alllivesmatter.
Anyway, to try to add something more, I have an anecdote: Two weeks ago, a car ran the red light and a speeding white SUV had to swerve out of the way to avoid it. The SUV lost control and smashed into the lightpole that was directly in front of me. I held up my backpack as a shield against the woman and baby in the stroller next to me walking in the opposite direction while bits of the car flew into the air. Luckily the pole held up. I had to make a guess about what was going to hit me. Debris or the car. My brain did that emergency lizard brain thinking that happens in situations like that. I found it really interesting for my brain to puzzle out what was going on in my head. Turned out that the debris was the only 'preventable' injury possible. I couldn't have gotten out of the way. I couldn't have gotten the lady and her baby out of the way. But I could conceivably stop debris from hitting us full on by shielding. If that was a cyclist... the most I'd have to worry about is a couple months of a really sore back.
The first paragraph of this response is a dispicible belittlement of the rampant racism in the United States. Stop whining wasn't an argument, and having cyclists behave safely and follow road rules is absolutely nothing like being an apologist for racists that don't want to admit they're racists and just want the status quo.
I believe that we all share this earth and we should all act safely and responsibly. Yes, cars kill far more easily than bikes, but bikes can seriously injure or kill as well. Cars swerving out of the way of bikes also kill, which could have easily been the result of your encounter, had the SUV been swerving to avoid a bike.
You shouldn't be forced off the road. Pedestrians shouldn't step blindly into the road. Cars shouldn't drive erratically in populated areas. Bike can seriously injur or kill people, so just act responsibly.
The analogy is apt. #alllivesmatter belittles the concerns of black people and the disproportionate danger they face interacting with police. Likewise, cyclists are disproportionately at risk of serious harm while on the road. Not that complicated. Black people are 'whining' because they have legitimate concerns for their safety. Cyclists do as well. And the laws are written in such a way that blacks/cyclists deaths can be easily swept under the rug.
Stop whining is not helpful advice. It means shut up.
Wow. Late night rant, perhaps I should have run as the Republican candidate for POTUS.
They are not the same in any kind of way. If you think that people getting murdered because of the color of their skin by agents acting under color of authority is equivalent to saying that cyclists shouldn't be shamed for acting unsafely and possibly causing accidents, injuries, or death because bikes are not cars, all I can think is that I feel as sorry for you as I do for the #alllivesmatter people.
In this instance, stop whining is not advice, it's in response to people thinking that for their own narcissistic reasons, it's okay to jeapordize the safety of others. That includes the cars that park in bike lanes as well as the bicyclists who blow through stop signs.
Wow. Check the title. This was a discussion about public shaming cars in bike lanes. You've turned it around into, "everybody should just stop whining and obey the law" and publicly shaming cyclists. The people endangered in this situation do not normally have the same considerations given to the more powerful group. You call them narcissists for trying to make their lives safer. You've adopted the very same tactics as #alllivesmatter. Take a good hard look.
Are cops killing black people morally equivalent to motorist road rage and lack of consideration? Of course not.
I think that's a pretty awful argument. Obviously different traffic violations in different vehicles carry different safety risks. But I would say that there are broad classes of traffic violations that are deserving of roughly equal social stigma, and I think running a stop sign in a populated area is one of them. A bicycle is absolutely capable of seriously injuring or killing a pedestrian, or causing a larger accident among other vehicles and automobiles. Yes, all else being equal, a car will do more damage than a bike, but it's not enough of a difference for me to react with noticeably different levels of disdain. Surely you don't tie your level of disdain linearly to the mass of the vehicle. Is an SUV running a stop sign twice as bad as a compact car running a stop sign?
> Is an SUV running a stop sign twice as bad as a compact car running a stop sign?
That's such a willfully stupid response. Compare these:
Bike:Compact:SUV to pelletgun:handgun:rifle
Morever, did you read the first thing that I said? "Before I get all the hate I have to say of course cyclists should obey the laws." Thank you for adding NOTHING to the conversation except for demonstrating the whacked out stupidity that is the core problem here.
Your kind argues that we have to obey the same laws as motorists while forcing us into the gutter. "Separate but equal?"
Like I said, a bicycle is very capable of severely injuring or killing a pedestrian, which is why I group it together with automobiles. I'm not familiar with how powerful pellet guns are, so I don't know how that analogy applies. I suspect they are at least capable of causing severe eye injury, and I would encourage the exact same precautionary behavior with pellet guns as with handguns and rifles (trigger discipline, don't point at people, etc.).
I guess I'm a little confused by what point you're trying to make. If your preface was intended to invalidate everything you wrote after it, then it's my mistake for trying to do the same.
A pellet could injure someone and damage an eye. What if a bullet hit the same spot? Those are very different outcomes. Conceivably a pellet could kill someone if was a David vs Goliath one in a million shot. Reckless endangerment takes into account the threat level created by the offender. Why not traffic laws? The threat level sort of tops out when you're a squishy human getting hit by a vehicle. Compact vs SUV don't matter much unless you want to get all Rorschach about the splatter pattern. Dead is dead.
Also, it appears that you group compact cars and SUVs together. So do I, and for the same reason, I also put bicycles into the same group. We both agree that vehicles with very different masses can be grouped together, but we apparently disagree about where to draw the line. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it could be based on our experiences. I haven't biked or driven routinely for many years, and never on streets with enough traffic to encounter many incidents or significant risks. I certainly don't agree with or even understand your comment about being forced into the gutter, but it sounds like a misrepresentation of my views.
I agree with you that bikes can be dangerous. I also agree that bikes should obey traffic rules.
That said, I've spent much of my life in cities crowded with bikes and pedestrians and the difference between a bike and a car, pretty much any kind of car, is huge.
There's the weight difference, but also the completely different posture, ability to see around you, ability to stop or even just drop your bike and jump off. Bikes are much easier to steer, as well as smaller in 'surface area' that can hit another person.
I've gone on daily commutes where I'd ride at relatively high speeds right through the tourist-infested center of Amsterdam, and while I'd not do that anymore (wiser and older), accidents were incredibly rare, despite the fact that most tourists don't understand the concept of a 'bike lane'.
In my opinion the average city biker is much more like a pedestrian than like a car driver. Obviously that doesn't mean bikers shouldn't respect the road, but putting bikers in the same category as drivers seems a bit silly to me.
(that said, high-speed cyclists are quite a bit more dangerous. but around here they usually avoid heavy-traffic areas. could be different for the US maybe)
> In my opinion the average city biker is much more like a pedestrian than like a car driver.
In my opinion the key attribute isn't the size, weight, or speed, but rather simply the path being used. To me, the key distinction of pedestrians is that they have their own "road," with very different rules and specific rules to handle encounters with the other type of road. Bicycles, on the other hand, use the same road as automobiles (and usually the same lanes), with only slightly different rules than automobiles.
The amount of times I see a cyclist blast through a stop sign at full speed is about the same as I see a car blatantly run a red light -- maybe once a month. The vast majority of cyclists rolling through stop signs seem to roll through them at about the same pace as cars do.
Cities are funny places. Off topic mildly but still vehicles using bike lanes...
I often wonder about armored delivery vehicles - ATM/cash movement firms like Brinks. Do they have some sort of deal with cities to not receive tickets for blocking lanes, standing in bus lanes, bike lanes, not paying for parking, etc... or do they actually get tickets, paying them as they come in? Or are they some sort of specialized vehicle?
That is an interesting point. Someone probably figured it out they could buy what looks like an armored verhicle. Setup an LLC with some security sounding name. Then probably park it around the city whenever they want. Not sure if it would be worth the trouble with all the cost in fuel, but who knows.
Heard about someone before buying a Crown Vic and getting a taxi package (or whatever the search comes with) and driving that around. They weren't impersonating an officer, but cars would regularly slow down around or get out of his way when he was behind them.
In France there are designated spots right in front of the ATM for the fund transfert trucks. It's forbidden for normal cars to park there. I'm not sure about the move, since some fund transfert trucks are unmarked (I don't know the criterion they use to choose between using an armored truck and discreet truck).
As far as I'm aware, the only special treatment the delivery companies get is an expedited system for the bulk payment of the fines their drivers collect.
This is a step in the right direction. A more positively impactful step would be to stigmatize the ownership and operation of a motor vehicle. No one actually _needs_ a car in NYC; those who _want_ a car must be treated the same as smokers: pushed to the fringes by making their behavior socially unacceptable.
What's really needed is to segregate cars from pedestrians. Tunnels for self driving electric cars, cars otherwise banned. Part of why Venice is so beautiful.
Yes I know, tunnels are expensive. Surely there's a way to bring technological deflation to tunneling. For starters, self driving electric cars would emit no noxious gasses and could have narrower tunnels with higher capacity.
Just for city centers, make up for all that wasted automotive space (parking, roads) with higher density and more life.
But then you need transfers if the destination is out in the burbs, and that's terrible for door to door transit times.
Underground uber with no stoplights and no pedestrians clogging the intersections, with nice onramps to regular highways and your door to door times will be dramatically lower.
Surely there's a way to bring technological deflation to tunneling.
Tunnels are complex beasts. Existing utilities need to be located snd rerouted. You need drainage. You may need soil stabilization. You need ventilation - yes if the tunnel was restricted to electrical vehicles there won't be ICE emissions but you do have to guard against settling of harmful gases, not to mention fire. You need emergency egress. And tunnel sizing isn't just determined by passenger vehicles, you need to allow for maintenance vehicles (like paving machines) and emergency vehicles.
Cars wouldn't be so much of a problem if there were fewer of them. A mostly-pedestrianized street with a car going down it at low speed every 5 minutes isn't much of an issue. There was a time in many major US cities where cars coexisted with pedestrians and other vehicles, because there were simply fewer cars. But there seems to be a certain tipping point where you get enough cars, and they push everything else off of the roads (either de facto or de jure), and what you have left is an automobile-dominated wasteland.
The straightforward solution in places like Manhattan with limited entrances and exits is simply to limit the number of cars at the bridges and tunnels and toll the hell out of them. If it cost $150 or $200 to drive into Manhattan (rough guess at the market-clearing price for "car permits" if you wanted to return to a pre-1960s level), I suspect there wouldn't be nearly as many cars on the road, and you wouldn't have very many pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities.
The political will to do this, of course, is the problem.
Segregation can happen also by using kerbs. That can't happens with the road layout inthe picture. The cars should park on the other side, but the costs go way up: narrow the road and segregate cyclists from pedestrians. The bike road should be on the same level as the road, not of the sidewalk.
Btw, there are almost no bicycles in Venice, Italy. Roads too narrow, sometimes only one or two slim people wide, and too many pedestrians, almost all of them tourists.
Edit: and the zillion of bridges with steps. Venice is hostile to any kind of wheels.
There are a few twitter accounts I follow who post some egregious infractions throughout SF. There have been some wins [1], but unfortunately I see the same types of violations by commercial vehicles posted over and over again and I think those drivers just don't care (and as far as I can tell they face little to no enforcement).
And for those on the high horse about cyclists breaking laws, just remember that nearly 100% of drivers break the law every time they drive --- speeding. Drivers think that going 30mph in a 25mph zone or 40mph in a 35mph zone isn't a big deal, but those small differences in speed mean a lot to people outside of vehicles if they get hit [2].
Also I haven't seen any data that shows that the most common cyclist infraction that everybody complains about, yielding at stop signs, actually is more dangerous. Yet it is very easy to show that speeding by vehicles is incredibly dangerous and costs many lives every year.
"Speed limits are decided under the assumption that people will exceed them under normal driving conditions."
If true, this seems silly. So I'd love to know if you have specific information about the decision process, or whether this is just an assertion/feeling.
Everyone I've met who drives under the speed limit is a bad driver who doesn't understand traffic dynamics enough to understand when going faster is more expedient and matches traffic patterns. By going too slow, you actually cause a hazard by forcing people to pass you.
Yeah, in the US, it's pretty much acceptable to go 5 or 10 mph over the limit on any non-residential road. Cops generally don't ticket unless you are going 10+ mph over.
That's fascinating. In Holland we use a similar rule of thumb, but in Km/h, which is significantly less of a speed increase. Fascinating how the choice of unit of measurement affects behavior like this.
Going 8-20 Km/h too fast (the US equivalent) would definitely not be okay here. It happens, but if the police notices you're likely to get a ticket.
My US driver's ed specifically instructed (unofficially) that, if the posted limit is over 40mph, feel free to go as much as 10mph over if it matches traffic conditions.
Yeah, even after nearly two decades of driving and being aware that drivers in the US routinely exceed the speed limit I'm still a bit surprised by it.
Maybe it's because Australians get ticketed more for it, or are more likely to get ticketed for it. Back when I was living in one of the capitals (Adelaide) I recall there being quite a few fixed location speed cameras, red light cameras, and combined speed and red light cameras, plus regular mobile cameras on the arterial routes and often on the secondary routes.
Back when I used to expose myself to free-to-air TV I also remember there being regular advertising campaigns about how driving even 5k/hr faster increases stopping distance significantly. The required stopping distance on dry road at 40k/hr is 26 meters[1] and at 50k/hr is 35 meters.
Maybe we care about each other just a tad more. I don't know.
As a regular visitor to the US I follow the posted limits precisely. I have no intention of testing the varying law enforcement tolerances or discovering the possible complications for my immigration welcome the unpleasant way. As for the people leaning on the horn behind me, I've no sympathy at all: as far as I'm concerned, they're your rules, I'm just respecting them. As I do in every other country.
When I lived in Palo Alto, every single day I saw delivery vehicles parked in the middle of a lane in a 2-lane street. The police never seemed to do anything about it. I think we should encourage a culture of vigilante traffic enforcement. If someone leaves a car parked in the middle of the road because they were too lazy to park elsewhere nearby, they deserve to get their vehicle dinged up a little bit. Hopefully that might actually dissuade them from parking in the middle of the road.
79 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadEDIT: I say this as both a cyclist and a driver. I can't believe how often I see cyclists do dangerous things. But for sure, I see a lot of drivers do mean, dangerous and stupid things, too. I just get tired of cyclists thinking that traffic laws don't apply to us.
Yes, I'm bitter.
Please stop. http://beyondthekerb.org.uk/2016/09/23/the-lions-share/
How about the person pedaling a bike in a town without a bike lane, at night, with a kid in a trailer in the back with a barely visible flag sticking up. He could have been the best bike rider in the world, yet I have no doubt he was doing a very unsafe thing.
Let's take the kid out of the equation. I don't quite follow the logic "well they are doing a less safe thing, so they should be able to do it and get the right of way because of it". Even taking the idea that they are an adult and if they want do put themselves in harm's way and should be allowed to, is silly, because it is rarely just one person isolated from everything. If they get into an accident it is not just them, but their family who will be impacted, emergency services, doctors' time.
I believe mikepurvis's comment was that a lot of responsibility disappears, not all responsibility.
It is the driver's responsibility to not drive faster than can be seen. There can be cyclists, certainly, or someone with a seizure or heart attack who ended up on the ground, or pets, livestock, or wild animals. People do hit deer in the middle of the night, when the deer freezes up and the cars are going too fast to break in time. To reflect my Florida upbringing, people do accidentally drive into sinkholes which appeared in the middle of the street, again because they were driving too fast to break in time.
They drive fast because their experience mislead them. They think that years of driving at night at a given speed, without problem, means it's safe to do so. Think of how some drunk drivers will keep doing so, on the belief that they can hold their liquor enough to handle a car. Until the day they cannot.
A driver who hits a cyclist - even one without lights - was going too fast to control the car safely.
This of course has limits. But the car can cause much more damage, so the operator of a car should have higher responsibility than that of a bicycle.
So no, it's not that cyclists are doing a less safe thing, it's that motorists are doing a less safe thing.
But let's back up for a second and look at this dynamic differently. An automobile is a metal cage moving over 3 times the speed of a cyclist with a completely safe and insulated cabin. If a driver behaves dangerously near a cyclist, the cyclist dies. If a cyclist misbehaves near a driver, the driver is very far from harm.
For example, it's not okay for a car to rear end a truck or for a pedestrian to jaywalk.
Then, let's think for a second and realize that a driver is not an evil demon who will just laugh when a bicycle gets in the way and, while trying to avoid killing a cyclist, may as well get into danger himself/endanger other people.
Ffs, people create pileups trying to avoid dogs jumping in the traffic, you believe nobody will blink an eye when a cyclist does the same?
But the cyclist is not. Why is it ok for the cyclist to behave unsafe, end up in in the hospital, crippled for life, or dead?
Is ambulance ride going to cost less because the person did it to the themselves or it was someone else' fault? I don't think it will.
Would you say that people shouldn't wear seatbelts, after all, they are just hurting themselves mostly? How is this different?
The impact of dangerous cycling is orders of magnitude lower and unlike dangerous driving does not significantly endanger others.
And think about the children!
it's not uncommon for them to run red lights, cut across multiple lanes without checking for cars behind them, and all sorts of other batty bullshit.
the point that i believe is often lost in these debates is that bikers and drivers _cannot_ share the same road. you can paint as many pretty lines as you want, but as long as bikes and cars have to share the same pavement, there will be no resolution
Caveat aside, I'm constantly amazed that this argument gets brought up over and over again.
Traffic laws exist to ensure public safety. So let's cut the bike/car bullshit about the laws being equal for both.
Let's take a simple offense like running a stop sign at 15 km/hr and suppose that a pedestrian gets hit. What's the difference between a car doing this and a bicycle? Both the bike and the car are going 4 m/s. But there's a huge difference between getting hit by a car that's 1500 kg plus passengers versus an 80 kg person plus a 9 kg bike. Simple thought experiment, you've just been hit by something. What outcome would be more favorable? Would you rather have a Honda Civic on your spleen or some asshat bike courier named Jack? Two tonnes versus nine kilograms?
The crime may be the same, but the outcome is far different. I've seen a van run a red light and the cyclist traveling orthogonally ride right into the side of it going 45 km/hour. Not pretty.
It's not difficult to drive, ride, or walk safely. Just do it and stop whining.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop
Anyway, to try to add something more, I have an anecdote: Two weeks ago, a car ran the red light and a speeding white SUV had to swerve out of the way to avoid it. The SUV lost control and smashed into the lightpole that was directly in front of me. I held up my backpack as a shield against the woman and baby in the stroller next to me walking in the opposite direction while bits of the car flew into the air. Luckily the pole held up. I had to make a guess about what was going to hit me. Debris or the car. My brain did that emergency lizard brain thinking that happens in situations like that. I found it really interesting for my brain to puzzle out what was going on in my head. Turned out that the debris was the only 'preventable' injury possible. I couldn't have gotten out of the way. I couldn't have gotten the lady and her baby out of the way. But I could conceivably stop debris from hitting us full on by shielding. If that was a cyclist... the most I'd have to worry about is a couple months of a really sore back.
I believe that we all share this earth and we should all act safely and responsibly. Yes, cars kill far more easily than bikes, but bikes can seriously injure or kill as well. Cars swerving out of the way of bikes also kill, which could have easily been the result of your encounter, had the SUV been swerving to avoid a bike.
You shouldn't be forced off the road. Pedestrians shouldn't step blindly into the road. Cars shouldn't drive erratically in populated areas. Bike can seriously injur or kill people, so just act responsibly.
Stop whining is not helpful advice. It means shut up.
Wow. Late night rant, perhaps I should have run as the Republican candidate for POTUS.
In this instance, stop whining is not advice, it's in response to people thinking that for their own narcissistic reasons, it's okay to jeapordize the safety of others. That includes the cars that park in bike lanes as well as the bicyclists who blow through stop signs.
Are cops killing black people morally equivalent to motorist road rage and lack of consideration? Of course not.
That's such a willfully stupid response. Compare these:
Bike:Compact:SUV to pelletgun:handgun:rifle
Morever, did you read the first thing that I said? "Before I get all the hate I have to say of course cyclists should obey the laws." Thank you for adding NOTHING to the conversation except for demonstrating the whacked out stupidity that is the core problem here.
Your kind argues that we have to obey the same laws as motorists while forcing us into the gutter. "Separate but equal?"
Bike:Compact:SUV to pelletgun:handgun:rifle
Like I said, a bicycle is very capable of severely injuring or killing a pedestrian, which is why I group it together with automobiles. I'm not familiar with how powerful pellet guns are, so I don't know how that analogy applies. I suspect they are at least capable of causing severe eye injury, and I would encourage the exact same precautionary behavior with pellet guns as with handguns and rifles (trigger discipline, don't point at people, etc.).
I guess I'm a little confused by what point you're trying to make. If your preface was intended to invalidate everything you wrote after it, then it's my mistake for trying to do the same.
A pellet could injure someone and damage an eye. What if a bullet hit the same spot? Those are very different outcomes. Conceivably a pellet could kill someone if was a David vs Goliath one in a million shot. Reckless endangerment takes into account the threat level created by the offender. Why not traffic laws? The threat level sort of tops out when you're a squishy human getting hit by a vehicle. Compact vs SUV don't matter much unless you want to get all Rorschach about the splatter pattern. Dead is dead.
That said, I've spent much of my life in cities crowded with bikes and pedestrians and the difference between a bike and a car, pretty much any kind of car, is huge.
There's the weight difference, but also the completely different posture, ability to see around you, ability to stop or even just drop your bike and jump off. Bikes are much easier to steer, as well as smaller in 'surface area' that can hit another person.
I've gone on daily commutes where I'd ride at relatively high speeds right through the tourist-infested center of Amsterdam, and while I'd not do that anymore (wiser and older), accidents were incredibly rare, despite the fact that most tourists don't understand the concept of a 'bike lane'.
In my opinion the average city biker is much more like a pedestrian than like a car driver. Obviously that doesn't mean bikers shouldn't respect the road, but putting bikers in the same category as drivers seems a bit silly to me.
(that said, high-speed cyclists are quite a bit more dangerous. but around here they usually avoid heavy-traffic areas. could be different for the US maybe)
In my opinion the key attribute isn't the size, weight, or speed, but rather simply the path being used. To me, the key distinction of pedestrians is that they have their own "road," with very different rules and specific rules to handle encounters with the other type of road. Bicycles, on the other hand, use the same road as automobiles (and usually the same lanes), with only slightly different rules than automobiles.
I often wonder about armored delivery vehicles - ATM/cash movement firms like Brinks. Do they have some sort of deal with cities to not receive tickets for blocking lanes, standing in bus lanes, bike lanes, not paying for parking, etc... or do they actually get tickets, paying them as they come in? Or are they some sort of specialized vehicle?
Heard about someone before buying a Crown Vic and getting a taxi package (or whatever the search comes with) and driving that around. They weren't impersonating an officer, but cars would regularly slow down around or get out of his way when he was behind them.
Yes I know, tunnels are expensive. Surely there's a way to bring technological deflation to tunneling. For starters, self driving electric cars would emit no noxious gasses and could have narrower tunnels with higher capacity.
Just for city centers, make up for all that wasted automotive space (parking, roads) with higher density and more life.
Underground uber with no stoplights and no pedestrians clogging the intersections, with nice onramps to regular highways and your door to door times will be dramatically lower.
Tunnels are complex beasts. Existing utilities need to be located snd rerouted. You need drainage. You may need soil stabilization. You need ventilation - yes if the tunnel was restricted to electrical vehicles there won't be ICE emissions but you do have to guard against settling of harmful gases, not to mention fire. You need emergency egress. And tunnel sizing isn't just determined by passenger vehicles, you need to allow for maintenance vehicles (like paving machines) and emergency vehicles.
The straightforward solution in places like Manhattan with limited entrances and exits is simply to limit the number of cars at the bridges and tunnels and toll the hell out of them. If it cost $150 or $200 to drive into Manhattan (rough guess at the market-clearing price for "car permits" if you wanted to return to a pre-1960s level), I suspect there wouldn't be nearly as many cars on the road, and you wouldn't have very many pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities.
The political will to do this, of course, is the problem.
Btw, there are almost no bicycles in Venice, Italy. Roads too narrow, sometimes only one or two slim people wide, and too many pedestrians, almost all of them tourists.
Edit: and the zillion of bridges with steps. Venice is hostile to any kind of wheels.
And for those on the high horse about cyclists breaking laws, just remember that nearly 100% of drivers break the law every time they drive --- speeding. Drivers think that going 30mph in a 25mph zone or 40mph in a 35mph zone isn't a big deal, but those small differences in speed mean a lot to people outside of vehicles if they get hit [2].
Also I haven't seen any data that shows that the most common cyclist infraction that everybody complains about, yielding at stop signs, actually is more dangerous. Yet it is very easy to show that speeding by vehicles is incredibly dangerous and costs many lives every year.
1: http://www.sfexaminer.com/uber-drivers-sf-receive-cyclist-sa...
2: http://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_f...
In other words, speed limits are usually intentionally too slow. It would be insane to follow them in many situations.
If true, this seems silly. So I'd love to know if you have specific information about the decision process, or whether this is just an assertion/feeling.
Everyone I've met who drives under the speed limit is a bad driver who doesn't understand traffic dynamics enough to understand when going faster is more expedient and matches traffic patterns. By going too slow, you actually cause a hazard by forcing people to pass you.
By going too fast you'd kill somebody especially in dense European cities.
In Australia people do stick to limits, more or less. At least, speeders are judged by other drivers fairly harshly.
Going 8-20 Km/h too fast (the US equivalent) would definitely not be okay here. It happens, but if the police notices you're likely to get a ticket.
Maybe it's because Australians get ticketed more for it, or are more likely to get ticketed for it. Back when I was living in one of the capitals (Adelaide) I recall there being quite a few fixed location speed cameras, red light cameras, and combined speed and red light cameras, plus regular mobile cameras on the arterial routes and often on the secondary routes.
Back when I used to expose myself to free-to-air TV I also remember there being regular advertising campaigns about how driving even 5k/hr faster increases stopping distance significantly. The required stopping distance on dry road at 40k/hr is 26 meters[1] and at 50k/hr is 35 meters.
Maybe we care about each other just a tad more. I don't know.
1. http://www.tmr.qld.gov.au/Safety/Driver-guide/Speeding/Stopp...