I wonder where this begins. Is it learned at home (from a parent driver who complains about bikers a lot)? Is there a popular TV show where they keep making fun of bikers? Do people have one bad experience with a biker and just apply that to all bikers?
My driver's ed instructor had a saying that cyclists should be shot! It was a comedy line, yeah, but he kept repeating it...
>>Do people have one bad experience with a biker and just apply that to all bikers?
As someone from the US, this phrasing confused me. "Bikers" has a much more common meaning here. If someone says they're going to a biker bar, they will not be putting on a spandex riding suit and peddling.
That said, I feel that both cyclists and bikers suffer from similar problems. I've always assumed that because of the high visibility of their difference relative to cars, people notice their illegal road behavior more. Cyclists blowing through red lights, motorcycles weaving between lanes, all of this is extremely visible to other motorists. The behavior then gets tied to the vehicle, rather than individual riders, and then people start to feel that these riders are always problematic.
As someone from the US, this phrasing confused me. "Bikers" has a much more common meaning here.
I'm from the US and I disagree. Maybe in your community that's the more common meaning, but you can't extrapolate that to the entire country. Context clues should make it obvious what I mean anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnxEZJCey4
So you think we dehumanize people we judge to be criminals? That would be unfortunate, if true. Sure, it might be reasonable to dehumanize the perpetrators of some heinous acts (serial murder being just one example), but weaving between lanes (which isn't even illegal everywhere to my knowledge) falls way short of that.
> So you think we dehumanize people we judge to be criminals?
Yes. I mean, that's pretty much what the article posted here is about.
And this extends to other things that also fall far short of heinous acts: people in the US jailed for minor drug offenses are similarly dehumanized by many people in the "war on drugs" crowd.
I don't know about you, but when I'm driving I always feel that either everyone else on the road should be shot, or that I should shoot myself, or both. And I'm pretty sure nearly everyone else feels the same. So if your teacher didn't say anything to a similar effect about drivers, that's because it has long been a given. In the vast majority of cities and towns, driving, cycling or even walking is just a constant pain.
You think we think we're the only human on the road. Like (the royal) we has some divine right to the road, and these other peons aren't sophisticated enough to share it with us.
I don't personally feel this way, but I could buy this level of narcissism as an explanation (if you truly feel suicidal when driving, please seek help or take a bus).
I would like to start by saying I’m not against bicycles sharing the roads in anyway; I’m just attempting to explain the rationale for this kind of thinking in many people I know personally (in South Florida this is a hot button issue).
Most roads are built primarily for motor vehicles, so when you are driving a car, you are driving on a road that you paid for specifically to drive your car on, and somebody else is leisurely (except for in certain big cities, most bicycling miles are done for leisure or sport) enjoying the same road for free, on a bicycle, putting themselves at risk and putting some of the burden of their risk on you (if they veer into your lane and you hit them, good luck trying to get out of that).
A grossly exaggerated analogy would be seeing people come to your apartment complex and using the garbage chute as a slide for their kids to play on. If the kids are playing in the chute and you put garbage down it and injure one of them, you’re on the hook. Imagine how this would make you feel, every time you see parents bringing their kids to play in the chute.
It's some of both. We have fuel taxes which pay for roads, but it's not nearly enough (because the taxes are too low) so a lot of the funds come from general taxes, which everyone pays. So the drivers are paying more for the roads, but the cyclists are also paying for those roads with their income taxes, sales taxes, etc.
> So the drivers are paying more for the roads, but the cyclists are also paying for those roads with their income taxes, sales taxes, etc.
And cars also put the vast majority of the wear and tear on the roads. So while they might pay more overall, they don't pay their fair share compared to bike riders who fund the roads from their taxes. Bike riders (and people who don't use roads) end up subsidizing roads for people who drive cars.
Yes, that's somewhat correct. I think it's more correct, however, to say that trucks (commercial ones) account for the vast majority of wear and tear. I've read that the wear and tear scales with exponentially with the weight of the vehicle, and trucks can weigh up to 80,000 pounds, far more than your typical car that weighs 3000 or so.
Of course, on residential roads, they don't usually have many large trucks. Also, in areas with snow, it seems that snowplows actually cause most of the potholes.
I live in Colorado (Larimer County) and there is a county and city level road use tax when you register your car and it aint cheap my registration was $450.
Interesting, I didn't know that. What's the legal status of a cyclist on the road then? Are they normal participants in traffic?
I generally find the tone of the discussion about cyclists here surprising. I'm from Germany, and while there is animosity between cyclists and car drivers, both are equally accepted on all roads (except the autobahn, of course). There's a movement in big cities towards more and more specific lanes for cyclists. I don't own a bicycle myself, but with regards to a car's emissions and the omnipresent wasteful parking slots, I'm all for strengthening the status of cyclists on roads.
Fort Collins where I am is the third most "bike friendly" city in the US, there are amble bike lanes and a strong bike culture but its amazing how many of them think the rules of the road don't apply to them, running stop signs, lane changes without hand signals, using the road lane rather than the bike lane. I get very nervous driving around town because you never know if the persons going to follow the rules and stop or just run the stop sign and slam into the side of your car. I'm all for bikes but they need to follow the same rules as the cars if they want to share the space.
There are fuel taxes which mean that cars pay a disproportionate amount for road maintenance. But cars also put 99.99% of all the wear and tear on roads.
Fuel taxes (which never pay for all of a road - general taxes pay for them as well) don't even cover the disproportionate wear and tear for necessary maintenance from vehicles. So in reality bike riders and people who don't ever use roads subsidize the roads for car drivers. It's NOT car drivers paying for all of it, they don't even pay their fair share based on the ongoing maintenance burden they impose on the roads.
It’s funny that the parent poster mentions this - it’s likely that either the cyclist has a car, payed in the same manner as the driver and is in the moment using the road for “leisure or sport” - or the cyclist really needs to use the road and bike for transportation.
There really is no acceptable, rational reason for animosity towards cyclists. I think it comes down to the same gut instincts as racism, sexism and xenophobia - when there’s a problem people look for whatever thing seems most different in their current surroundings and blame that thing for the problem. It’s just a lack of thinking.
>There really is no acceptable, rational reason for animosity towards cyclists.
No rational reason for drivers in a road predominantly used from big vehicles to not like smaller, hard to see, vehicles with greater flexibility and much more fragile going around them?
The added care you need to have as a car driver, and danger they impose of accident, is not enough?
Especially since most of the time (e.g. in highways, interstates, etc) you get to have the road to just cars and don't have all this?
Basically, it comes down to drivers being selfish assholes. It's not like they're all doing something important with those roads: many of them are driving around for leisure, to see their friends, to go out to eat, to just "take a drive", etc. They have no more right to the road than the cyclists.
The problem is that the drivers don't want to make their politicians build proper cycle-ways for bicyclists to safely travel in. If there were proper bike routes, then you wouldn't see cyclists on the roads slowing people down.
It's largely the same with your garbage chute example. If the complex (or the municipality) can't be bothered to build any decent places for kids to play, like playgrounds, then don't be surprised when they repurpose other things for that. Decent towns and cities always have playgrounds for kids to entertain themselves.
>if they veer into your lane and you hit them, good luck trying to get out of that
I don't doubt that your description of driver psychology is largely correct, but this statement in particular is pretty far from reality. In practice, it's astonishingly easy for drivers to get away with injuring or killing both cyclists and pedestrians, even when they are clearly at fault.
It's also astonishingly easy for cyclists to flaunt road rules against the rest of us who sre aghast at accidentally killing another human being, regardless of their violations of the rules of the road.
I do realise you are just putting a view which you might not share, but still:
The problem with the idea that car drivers pay for the roads out of vehicle tax is flawed, since very often (not sure about the US, but this is true in the UK) the costs of roads are (a) much higher than annual "road tax" receipts, and (b) often met from local taxation or national taxes. So, you get to pay for them even if you are not a primary user.
In addition, when you factor in the health disbenefits (road casualties and air pollution) then motorists don't come anywhere near paying for the damaging effects they create.
I both drive and cycle, btw. You are right that (in many countries) roads are designed primarily for motor vehicles, but that doesn't mean other vehicles can't use them. Carlton Reid's book "Roads Were Not Built for Cars" (http://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/) has US and UK perspectives on this. It discusses cycling's origins and I find it interesting that in the 1800s cyclists were often seen as reckless and inconsiderate, and I wonder if this contributes to some kind of "folk memory" to this day, i.e. ideas being passed from one generation to the next without much in the way of critical analysis.
In any case, mistreating someone based on their mode of transport makes about as much sense as doing so for any other arbitrary reason. I really can't understand it on an emotional level.
Anyway, thanks for the insight: it is taken in the spirit it was offered.
> The problem with the idea that car drivers pay for the roads out of vehicle tax is flawed, since very often (not sure about the US, but this is true in the UK)...
This is true in the US as well; the cost of road maintenance in most states is not even remotely covered by the payment of vehicle, licensing, and fuel taxes and fees.
So you think South Floridians see bikers as inhuman because they maybe haven't paid a specific tax? Or because they feel entitled to a stretch of road and everyone not using in their prescribed way is inhuman? Or they think the biker is inhuman because they have so little faith in their legal system that they will be wrongfully accused of a crime?
Listen to shock jocks on the radio. Jokes about dooring or running over cyclists are pretty common.
There used to be a radio show in Massachusetts [0] I listened to a bunch as a teenager. They had a weekly segment for a while where drivers would call in and tell stories about how they attacked cyclists and then laugh about it. I think it was mostly just drivers expressing their violent fantasies, but one or two of the stories may have been real. It definitely dehumanized cyclists and encouraged violence against them. Later the same radio show, during the build up to the Iraq war, had an episode in which they said anti-war protesters should have their tongued ripped out at the root. Violence against groups they didn't like was a pretty common theme on their show and other radio shows.
Incidentally they were banned from Massachusetts not for advocating violence or dehumanizing the enemy of the day but for faking the Governor's death as an April fools day.
I don't doubt that you only remember the assholes. I do doubt that you've never seen a non-asshole biker though. Still, do you dehumanize all the people who you think are assholes?
It used to be (circa late 1800s) that the word 'typewriter' referred to three things: 1) the machine itself 2) the operator of such a machine could be referred to as 'a typewriter' 3) the combination of the two, that is, the machine and the person driving the machine are a singular unit (which is also speculated to be one of the reasons for a major upsurge is 'ghost-possessed typewriter fiction' at the same time [the girl operating the machine might become more than mere instrumentation]. What this is getting at is (in contemporary america) I'll argue that it is the combination of the homosapien + an automobile that is defined as human. (Just look at how we derogatorily consider those who have to take mass transit because they do not possess [or are possessed by] an automobile, therefore cannot fully actualize themselves as human beings.)
And the comments here are no better than the usual, with the classic anti cycling tropes on full display:
- Don't pay (road tax)
- Illegitimate road user
- Riding abreast (in my jurisdiction this is legal and in many places it is and in fact encouraged as it makes a group of cyclists easier to pass)
- Stop signs/red lights/don't obey traffic rules (as if cyclists are the only group for which any of this is true)
The red light thing is always funny. Driver's just don't notice other driver's run red lights either because they're far away from the intersection, their view is obstructed by other cars, or they're just doing other things during a red light. I'd say, from my bike, I see a red light run once every 2 days and I only go through about 5 lights on the way to work.
Hell, I'd say humanization is outside the norm. I don't have enough brainpower to really imagine the feelings and needs of the thousands of people I come into close proximity with every day. I just follow rules of the road like everyone else (except, apparently, cyclists).
I'm not afraid of cyclists as a pedestrian nearly as much as I'm afraid of drivers when I'm a cyclist.
Conversely, whenever I'm on a bike, if pedestrians are present, I always slow down to walking speed, make sure they are aware of my presence and pass them safely and slowly.
I think the issue with that different treatment is that, aside from the inconsistent availability of dedicated (and hopefully buffered) bike lanes, there aren't spaces "made for" bicycles. I hear arguments along the lines of "roads are made for cars", and I think people would nearly equally argue that "sidewalks are made for pedestrians", so cyclists can't really win: they're the unwelcome interloper wherever they are, and need to yield and watch out for the "intended" users of the space.
I don't drive or cycle (on a regular basis), and I haven't been particularly exposed to generic rage towards cyclists. I don't think I see cyclists as any less human than cars and their drivers, or bikers for that matter. Yet of all the aforementioned groups, the only ones I've learned to be especially cautious of (and to which I linked negative preconceptions) are cyclists.
This was never a problem for me when living in the Netherlands, where there is good infrastructure and rules. (At least after getting past the phase where you simply need to adapt to the ridiculous number of bikes when compared to other countries).
After moving to Dublin, it doesn't matter if you're on the sidewalk, pedestrian-only bridges, or crossing a pedestrian crossing when the light is green, you always have to watch out for bikes because you never know when one is heading right into you, regardless of how many traffic rules they need to be breaking to do so. From my own anecdotal evidence I've learned to expect worse/reckless behavior from cyclists compared to any other road user.
I'm sure they aren't worse people that anyone else and this is probably aggravated by the severely lacking infrastructure over here, but I seriously doubt "dehumanization" is the root cause of the problem here (even if it may contribute to a vicious cycle). From a driver's perspective, better infrastructure would probably also make them stress less over accidentally causing serious harm to a cyclist over something that would otherwise be their fault.
That said, I don't have stats or studies to back any of this up and this is all assumed from my own observations.
Not 100% on topic, but one of the pet peeves I have noticed with cyclists is quite a few of them do not obey the rules of the road. As vehicles, they have to stop at stop signs and lights, but feel like quite an appreciable percentage do not. I'm not saying drivers are entirely faultless, but feels like its to a lesser extent and not as flagrantly.
Whenever I find myself in a conversation with a driver complaining about cyclists blowing through stop signs, I ask if they always follow the speed limit. Often I get a rant about how the speed limits are almost always too low.
As far as I can tell roughly the same percentage of cyclists break the law as drivers. Unfortunately most people take a selective view of this, ignoring what drivers do.
(I'm a cyclist who always stops at stop signs. In fact, I have helmet cam video of myself going through a cyclist stop sign enforcement operation without any issue from the police.)
> As vehicles, they have to stop at stop signs and lights, but feel like quite an appreciable percentage do not.
I guess that this is a problem of how energy conservation works. When a cyclists stops they lose all their gained energy, like any other vehicle. But then, the cyclist needs to put a lot of effort to get again to their original speed. If that stop is in front of a slop the cyclist only option is to get off the bike and walk.
So, maybe it is more a fault on the design of the roads than on the cyclists.
Assuming stopping at a stop sign materially increases safety (which may or may not be arguable; not tackling that here), then whether or not it's harder to get going again after stopping is entirely irrelevant.
1. I've yet to see a single driver who actually obeys the rules of the road. Every stop sign, every yield sign, every posted speed limit.
2. If you had to pedal like a mad-man to get your car going, every time you stopped at a stop sign, while it swayed 20-degrees side-to-side, you'd probably be making a lot more California stops, too.
My main problem with cyclists as both a pedestrian and in a vehicle comes from them seemingly arbitrarily deciding when they're a vehicle and when they're a pedestrian.
They'll blow through stop signs and red lights, then yell at you for being in their way, they'll illegally turn in front of your vehicle, then yell at you for not giving them the right of way, they swerve through traffic changing lanes without signaling then again, will get angry with you when you have to slam on your brakes to avoid killing them, they'll go back and forth between the sidewalk and street without paying attention to pedestrians or cars and yelling at anyone that gets in their way.
My experience has been, they wish to be treated like pedestrians, as in, have the right of way whenever they want, whether it's with a vehicle or an actual pedestrian, until they decide they're actually a vehicle.
For me, when i'm on a bike, i'm a vehicle. I obey traffic laws, yield to cars much of the time, because they will crush me and give pedestrians the right of way at intersections. Cyclists that don't do these things piss me off.
ETA: This may have come across like I was targetting all cyclists. I meant, the ones that do things like this are the ones I have a problem with. There's plenty of cyclists I see more often that don't do things like this. I have no problem with them I don't judge them as a group. I dislike in general when people do dangerous things on the road. Whatever vehicles they're in or not in. These just so happen to be the shitty things i've experienced cyclists doing that bug me.
there are cases when you should treat a cyclist like a pedestrian and others where you should treat them like a car.
i don't think any driving teachers are doing a good job at teaching this, but as soon as you get on a bike you realize how silly it is to make a full stop at a stop sign, both from a safety point of view as well as a physics point of view.
> Nope. You follow traffic laws. If you're in the lane at a stop sign, you stop. If you're on the sidewalk, you can behave as a pedestrian.
My experience is that drivers tend to have a much worse understanding of the law as it relates to cycling than I as a cyclist do.
I've been told by drivers to ride on the sidewalk where riding on the sidewalk was illegal. (Regardless, riding on the sidewalk is bad practice because it's actually more dangerous than riding on the road and not nice for pedestrians.)
I've been told by drivers to get in the bike lane when I was in the sharrow lane on an official city bike route. They want me to ride in parking, which is actually illegal as far as I know, though not enforced. Sorry, I won't be swerving in and out of traffic so that you can get to the stop light 10 seconds ahead of me and then still have to wait 30 more seconds for the light to change. Add on top of that the debris in a "lane" that's not intended for travel and thus not often cleaned; I won't get a flat tire to save you a couple seconds.
Some drivers seem to get annoyed that cyclists "run red lights" at a few intersections near where I live, when there are signs that say "cyclists may use pedestrian signal" and I have never seen a cyclist go through red there without the pedestrian signal.
For "infractions" like these I've had drivers do close "punishment passes".
Now, there are bozo cyclists out there, but as someone who is particularly knowledgeable about the law as it applies to cyclists like me, I know that drivers frequently believe cyclists are breaking the law when they are not.
Thinking about it, it might actually have been legal to ride on the sidewalk at the time I had in mind when writing above. But still, riding on the sidewalk is bad practice.
Traffic laws and infrastructure have never really be designed to consider the fact that cyclists exist though, so it's not surprising that cyclists don't follow the law to the letter.
As a cyclist, I get to decide if I'm a pedestrian or a vehicle. I can pop on/off my bike at will. I can ride on the road, then ride up a ramp onto the sidewalk for 4 blocks, then back onto the road. Different rules and expectations hold depending on where I am, but I don't understand this criticism. At least where I live (Seattle), riding on the sidewalk is perfectly legal.
I don't always signal, because bicycles have this major flaw that your breaking/steering tools work best when you have both hands on the handlebars. So if something hinky is happening ahead, I may need my hands to slow down instead of signalling.
I try not to yell angrily when people do dangerous things around me but I do often need to yell loudly, maybe repeatedly, in order to stop a car that doesn't understand that my bike is front of them, and they can't proceed without killing me. But you should understand that the stakes are much higher for me a cyclist than for the driver of a car. They might hit me and that would suck for them. I might die or need months of physical therapy. So be patient with cyclists who appear to have unleashed random anger at you (you-the-driver), they are under more stress from the interaction.
Also, the lawless cyclist trope, while often true, is often a case of the lawlessness you are unfamiliar with. I bike-commute most days, and EVERY SINGLE DAY I see cars: speed, run red lights, yield-instead-of-stop at stop signs, turn without signalling, wander into the bike lane, park or stop in the bike lane, drive without lights (at night), or with one light out. Also, it may not be illegal (but sometimes is!), but when I'm in a 'sharrow' lane, I will often get aggressively passed by people who can't be bothered to look 200 ft ahead to the red light, or who pass over a double-yellow in order to get ahead of me, then turn left/right 5 seconds later. But because we're all used to those kinds of infractions (and because they are partially 'our' infractions as drivers) we don't notice them. Because there are so few cyclists, and they aren't 'our' infractions, it's easier to notice their driving transgressions.
Anyway, super long rant. Not claiming all cyclists are angels, but as someone who is literally making it easier for the cars on the road BY NOT DRIVING TO WORK, I wish I got a little respect instead of the barely tolerated contempt I get a lot of. yada yada yada, plenty of good drivers out there as well.
> As a cyclist, I get to decide if I'm a pedestrian or a vehicle. I can pop on/off my bike at will
Keywords there being, on or off the bike. Off the bike, walking beside it sure, you're a pedestrian, on your bike, riding a vehicle.
>I don't always signal, because bicycles have this major flaw that your breaking/steering tools work best when you have both hands on the handlebars.
I don't always signal because cars have this flaw where you need your hands on the steering wheel and you have to take it off to flick the signal switch.
There are lights you can get to signal on bikes, if you're not comfortable signalling using your hands, maybe invest in one of those. It's just dangerous to turn in traffic without signalling. That shit causes accidents. I don't know the laws there, but here if a cyclist causes an accident because they turned without signalling, they're considered responsible the same as a car would be. Cops will also ticket you.
>Also, the lawless cyclist trope, while often true, is often a case of the lawlessness you are unfamiliar with.
I dunno about the trope, I was speaking from personal experience.
Honestly, I get pissed at drivers and pedestrians that do dangerous shit by breaking traffic rules.
>as someone who is literally making it easier for the cars on the road BY NOT DRIVING TO WORK, I wish I got a little respect instead of the barely tolerated contempt I get a lot of.
You're not a superhero by riding a bike. You're not making it easier, you're adding one type of obstacle for everyone to look out for. One that's small, fast and fragile and behaves unpredictably. Maybe instead of demanding respect from everyone, use situational awareness and understand people are probably pissed at you, because they're worried about killing you. Acting like you can just ride anywhere, anytime with impunity makes the act of not killing you more difficult.
> I don't always signal because cars have this flaw where you need your hands on the steering wheel and you have to take it off to flick the signal switch.
I don't think I've ever taken my hand off the wheel just to use the turn signal. Is this just a product of hand size, or does your car have an unusual setup?
[edit] To clarify: I flick the turn signal lever with the my ring & middle fingers while keeping my palm against the wheel.
> I don't always signal because cars have this flaw where you need your hands on the steering wheel and you have to take it off to flick the signal switch.
I think you know this is not true. You don't take your hand off the wheel to flip the signal switch and if you do it's certainly not the safe effect as taking your hand off the handle bar of a bike.
Not to mention that flicking the signal switch on a car takes a small fraction of a second, while removing your hands from the handlebar of a bike to signal is usually done for several seconds, not to mention at a particularly dangerous juncture: when entering an intersection and about to make a turn.
>
grawprog 49 minutes ago | parent | on: Dehumanization of cyclists predicts self-reported ...
>> As a cyclist, I get to decide if I'm a pedestrian or a vehicle. I can pop on/off my bike at will
> Keywords there being, on or off the bike. Off the bike, walking beside it sure, you're a pedestrian, on your bike, riding a vehicle.
Sorry, that's just a wordo. I can pop on/off the road/sidewalk _on my bike_. I assume context would have made that clear. It's legal to ride on the road AND the sidewalk in my city.
> You're not a superhero by riding a bike. You're not making it easier, you're adding one type of obstacle for everyone to look out for. One that's small, fast and fragile and behaves unpredictably. Maybe instead of demanding respect from everyone, use situational awareness and understand people are probably pissed at you, because they're worried about killing you. Acting like you can just ride anywhere, anytime with impunity makes the act of not killing you more difficult.
This is the most ungenerous read of my comment I can imagine. In any case, I can see that you want to be angry and right. Good day.
I'm not angry. I just feel people demanding respect after proclaiming how their arduous sacrifice is bettering the lives of everyone everyday don't quite understand the meaning of the word.
I never expected people to get so worked up about my comment. It was more of a 'oh yeah, here's some of my shitty traffic experiences involving cyclists' if there's some commonality to what others have said, maybe these are actual issues. It was really just supposed to be some musing about these things.
Honestly I spend more time worrying about people in cars. The only times i've come close to death on a road were from idiot drivers. Bikes have frustrated me but they've never almost killed me and thankfully, i've never been involved in any situations where i've almost killed a cyclist and I really never want to be.
If you are a regular bicycle commuter, rather than demand respect from everyone after ranting about how the rules of the road don't apply to you, maybe take these issues into account as you travel and understand sharing the road doesn't just mean people need to be aware of you and get out of your way, it also means you need to be aware and take actions to avoid others, even if others are breaking traffic rules. Again this applies to anyone using a road. This is for your own safety and everyone's.
You claim not to be angry, but you are engaging in a very bad-faith version of a discussion. You generate straw-men in each discussion and read everything in the worst possible way. There is literally no point in me continuing to discuss the substantive issues here because you will insist on reading everything I write without nuance, and it is boring and cumbersome to write in a way that forestalls your attacks.
I am only even making this reply on the off chance that you honestly believe that you've tried to have a level headed conversation. If that's true, I write this only to tell you that the way you've engaged does not meet that goal. Have a good day.
Jesus forking crust, learn some dog man physics, for fork's sake.
If I have one hand on the handles and the other off, do you know what happens when I brake? The handles, and hence the wheels turn, because that's how momentum works in that scenario.
How are you so mentally incompetent that you can't see that your nonsense word salad analogy is that broken?
Haha, the concept that any road user follows the rules even 30% of the time is an illusion. People act like this in SF all the time.
"I never run the stop signs. I always follow the road rules. Drivers stop at stop signs, why can't cyclists?".
Haha, total bullshit. Until Stanley Roberts did that piece where he showed that people routinely run stop signs, everyone did this high horse motorist crap.
Turns out everyone lies to themselves. Switching lanes in intersections, not yielding to peds, not stopping at Stop signs.
But fortunately we all judge ourselves by intentions and others by their actions.
When someone's in a car and they see someone else in a car blow through a red light, they say something along the lines of 'that person's an idiot'. When they someone on a bike do it, they say 'cyclists are idiots'.
If I count how many laws people in cars break when I drive home tonight - speeding, illegal parking, etc. - I'll run out of fingers and toes.
Ultimately the worst thing someone on a bike can do to me in a car is cause me a delay. The worst thing I can do to them is kill them. So I give them the benefit of the doubt.
One study involving 100 cyclists in one city is not conclusive at all. Also, the cyclists knew they were being tracked and monitored so they probably were more adherent to traffic laws during this study.
Anecdotally, I have seen a lot higher percentage of cyclists breaking traffic laws than drivers, and it seems a lot of people have observed that in their own day to day life also.
Accidents happen, just because you find yourself in a situation that requires you to swerve does not mean you were driving unsafe. Why does swerving imply the driver is unsafe? Surely you can imagine a safe driver having to swerve in some situations, right?
I did not say the swerve was safe, I said that a even safe driver (driver who drives defensively) driver might have to swerve. Any unplanned reactionary movement of the steering is of course not safe. Seems like you misread what I typed, or maybe you're a natural gaslighter?
When I drive, I treat cyclists like pedestrians, and I don't care what rules they violate, they cannot hurt me. Ever. Whereas if I make a mistake, they're maimed or dead. That disproportionality is what flaws every "both sides are bad" type argument.
I bike about as many miles as I drive, and there are about the same percentage of bad actor cyclists as automobile drivers. But only a car driver has any chance of killing a cyclist, not the other way around.
Once I was riding bike just like a car, and a car driver tried to run me off the road on purpose. I pulled up beside him at a stop light, baby in a car seat behind him, and said driving like that will get someone killed. His screaming reply "fucking good, you should all fucking die, fucking get off the fucking road, the fucking road is for cars, you should be only on the fucking bike lane". And threw in a few more fucks. This was in Denver, on a 30mph two lane street.
Meanwhile my lizard brain is thinking, I'd like to take off my helmet and bash this guys face in, over and over and over again. I'm day dreaming of committing a violent assault, because it's clear to me his action of putting me in mortal danger was intentional, and that is a betrayal of civility, and a major loss of trust. For a little bit I really thought he wanted me dead and he had the power to do it. And the statistics show decent chance he'd have gotten away with vehicular homicide.
And he's teaching all of this psychosis to the kid in the backseat.
There is the concept in aviation that higher category aircraft must yield right of way to lower category aircraft. e.g. an airplane must yield right of way to a glider. That should apply between heavy vehicles like cars, and light vehicles like bicycles. And bicycles should yield to pedestrians. The problem is man state laws either don't recognize bicycles as vehicles, and those that do equate them and it's just not tenable quite a lot of the time. It's far less safe for a cyclist to come to a complete stop at a stop sign and dismount, than for them to do a hesitation waltz.
So when you talk about what pisses you off when your life isn't even in danger? That's psychotic to me. It's so completely control freak irrational that you get angry over people who don't follow rules intended for automobiles? It's just nonsense.
So when you talk about what pisses you off when your life isn't even in danger? That's psychotic to me. It's so completely control freak irrational that you get angry over people who don't follow rules intended for automobiles? It's just nonsense.
I have a few responses to this and your broader point. First of all, and to be more blunt and less charitable, I don’t choose to put my life at the massively increased risk of injury and death of riding a bike vs. a car. Saying that we should be most concerned with those who are in the most danger ignores their conscious choice in making a dangerous choice in the first place. Now on its own this would be a ludicrously callous point, but it leads to my next one...
Cyclists on busy roads put not only their own lives at risk, but the lives and wellbeing of others as well. As a pedestrian cyclists and scooterpricks blasting past are the danger, and as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous. The tendency of cyclists I’ve encountered to blow red lights and stop signs presents the danger of a car accident as one vehicle swerves or slams on brakes to avoid them.
Finally I don’t want to hurt or kill someone and if I did I’d be devastated. The fact that plowing into a cyclists while in a car is likely to leave me relatively unscathed physically doesn’t imply a lack of harm. Careless and selfish behavior predicated on a kind of nonexistent moral high-ground is the core of why it is so popular to utterly despise cyclists. We’ve all had to deal with the attitude of superiority and belief that cyclists are somehow saving us from ourselves. Of course people have a bad reaction to moralizing, proselytizing people who think the rules of the road don’t apply to them.
Choosing to ride a 10lb metal frame with just a helmet in motor vehicle traffic is manifestly unsafe, it was unsafe when you decided to do it and unsafe now. Shrugging and telling everyone else to take the responsibility for your safety onboard because you wouldn’t is obnoxious. It is especially difficult to accept when one has the perspective that despite the hype from a minority, cycling is not going to save us from ourselves.
> Saying that we should be most concerned with those who are in the most danger ignores their conscious choice in making a dangerous choice in the first place
There's nothing inherently dangerous about choosing to ride a bicycle. It becomes dangerous to ride a bicycle when operators of ~4000lb machines choose to not operate them safely around others.
> as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous
I'm fairly certain a driver also put the lives of everyone on the road at a higher priority than their own convenience. They aren't forced to "veer".
There's nothing inherently dangerous about choosing to ride a bicycle. It becomes dangerous to ride a bicycle when operators of ~4000lb machines choose to not operate them safely around others.
Nonsense. The injury rate on bikes dwarfs cars even putting aside collisions with motor vehicles.
Per billion vehicle miles, 1,011 pedal cyclists are killed or seriously injured, in comparison to 26 car drivers6.
That’s per mile traveled, and it’s two orders of magnitude more dangerous by bike.
Almost two thirds of cyclists killed or seriously injured were involved in collisions at, or near, a road junction, with T-junctions being the most commonly involved. Roundabouts are particularly dangerous junctions for cyclists. Not surprisingly, the severity of injuries suffered by cyclists increases with the speed limit, meaning that riders are more likely to suffer serious or fatal injuries on higher speed roads. Almost half of cyclist deaths occur on rural roads.
It’s also a given that all of the billions driving vehicles will not all be safe all of the time, it’s part of life. Some people are drunk, tired, old, or careless... there is no changing this. It’s something to strive to improve, but positive a magical perfect world which allows for cycling to be less risky than driving is fantastical at best, dishonest at worst.
I'm fairly certain a driver also put the lives of everyone on the road at a higher priority than their own convenience. They aren't forced to "veer".
Most people don’t drive for convenience, but necessity.
Whoops, I shouldn't have been hyperbolic. I meant that the danger of a busy road comes from the cars, not that a bike becomes inherently more dangerous on a busy road. The fact that 84% of serious and fatal cyclist accidents also involve another vehicle is pretty strong evidence of the danger of cars, IMO.
> Most people don’t drive for convenience, but necessity.
The statement I responded to ("as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous") asserts that a driver has no choice but to endanger themselves and others by entering the lane of oncoming traffic. My point is that a driver can also choose to slow down and pass the cyclist when the way is clear, but for their own convenience they choose to endanger their own life as well as other road users.
Using an automobile is as much an irresponsible choice as using a cycle, and treating automobiles as an unchangeable environmental condition is ridiculous. Just because a majority of people do something doesn't make it right or good. Even then, only considering wealthy populations in isolation can drivers be a majority.
As a cyclist, I face a street crossing that's dangerous if I behave as a vehicle. So I ride a block out of my way, dismount, and use a protected pedestrian crossing, as a pedestrian pushing a bicycle. On the other side, I re-mount and I'm a vehicle again.
I avoid the same crossing when I'm on foot, even though it has a sign that says, "state law: stop for pedestrians in crosswalk." I have never seen a vehicle stop for a pedestrian in that crosswalk, even police. People who cross there either spend a long time waiting for a lull in traffic, or they dash frantically across hoping not to be hit by drivers who think the pedestrians are irresponsible for crossing there.
> I avoid the same crossing when I'm on foot, even though it has a sign that says, "state law: stop for pedestrians in crosswalk." I have never seen a vehicle stop for a pedestrian in that crosswalk, even police.
I take the existence of such signs as strong evidence that the intersection is dangerous. They seem to be added to cover the asses of the city/state/etc., not because they are effective.
What's worse is, this is a crosswalk that people from the residential neighborhood on the far side of the street use if they want to walk their children to either of two preschools on the near side. They have to dodge oncoming traffic while carrying their toddlers across. That or drive, which, due to the configuration of the streets and the roundabout route they have to take, isn't any faster than walking.
It almost sounds like you're dealing with more than one person.
There are plenty of moronic cyclists. I've come across several riding in the middle of the wrong side of the road around a blind corner! But putting them all in a group, judged by its worst members, is simply a step on a path to dehumanizing them.
In general, drivers suck too. Try walking next to a road with puddles and witness the sheer number that think it's appropriate to continue at their entitled speed and spray road water all over you. That's basic assault with damages, but for driving it's just business as usual.
Ultimately, people in general are just fucking morons that don't pay attention or predict how their actions will affect others. But if you latch onto that as justification for your own antiempathetic behavior, you're just contributing to the problem.
> They'll blow through stop signs and red lights, then yell at you for being in their way, they'll illegally turn in front of your vehicle, then yell at you for not giving them the right of way, they swerve through traffic changing lanes without signaling then again
This was confusing because I thought you were talking about cars.
I drive and cycle, and somehow I just do not find cyclists irritating. When are they ever inconveniencing me? It simply does not happen.
How can a cyclist possibly ruin my commute, no matter how he rides? It is inconceivable to me that your delay at intersections is a reasonable complaint to make.
I have to conclude I hate cyclists. This isn't something that just happened, but rather has been due to a long history of bad experiences with cyclists.
My earliest contempt for cyclists began in elementary school, where cyclist kids would just jump on their bikes and ride home while I had to slog through a long bus drive. Cyclist kids felt they were just better than others.
Then in college, cyclists going to and from class on their bicycles were annoying as hell. How many times I would just be walking minding my own business and a dude on a bike out of nowhere weaves through a crowd and just cuts across me nearly hitting me, and at an unsafe speed. I'm sure when you're riding a bike you have no idea how fast you're going, but as a pedestrian it's easy to see how close these individuals were to disaster. What if I had suddenly stepped in a different direction into the path of the bike?
As a careerist adult, cities are no better. I distinctly recall one time in New York City where I was about to cross an intersection when suddenly I heard someone shout, a cyclist was heading straight for me downhill and I jolted myself backward narrowly missing the bastard. He could have easily struck me down.
And then of course on the roadways there is always an anxiety when I see a cyclist. I have to make sure I move aside at least three feet and slow down considerably because I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison. I don't have a problem if you want to risk your life but you should have to accept the responsibility of your actions all on your own at that point.
> I have to make sure I move aside at least three feet and slow down considerably because I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison
That's why you slow down and give them space? Because you don't want to go to prison? Not because you don't want to hurt them?
This is just the transport equivalent of racism. I'm sure you've had plenty of run-ins with cars too but you forget them all because they don't confirm your biases and you drive a car so car drivers can't be careless right?
In my own experience I think a lot of this comes from both cyclists and cars not understanding the rules on how to interact with each other. For example, I see a lot of cyclists riding too far out in to the road, riding two abreast when there is not really a shoulder, not signaling properly or rolling through stop signs. And on the other side I see a lot of cars passing cars while cyclists are present or turning in front of cyclists.
I am an avid cyclist, and I think I probably get angrier than the average person when I see a cyclist breaking the rules cause I am thinking to myself "you are making the rest of us look bad."
Additionally, it is often safer to assert space on the road as a cyclist in order minimize the probability of being clipped by a car passing too closely.
In Colorado, most of the laws are written in a way that basically says you may ride that way as long as it doesn't impede the flow of traffic [1]. And if you are being overtaken by a car you are supposed to move as far to the shoulder as possible.
As a driver, a cyclist, and a pedestrian I thought about it a lot. I think it boils down to an interdependent combination of culture, infrastructure, and rules of the road and their enforcement.
First, it really helps if cycling infrastructure is separated from car and pedestrian infrastructure as much as possible. The more separation, the better. In Ottawa, for example, there are several dedicated cross-city bike trails, but not too many in Toronto, they are far and wide between, and it shows. It is not always possible and in that case I would give bicyclists preferential treatment on dedicated side streets.
The bike trails should be immediately visible to anyone, e.g. painted green for the full length. This makes it immediately visible for everyone: turning cars, passengers exiting the vehicle, pedestrians who decided to jaywalk and scanned the space for cars, but not bikes.
The road rules should be clear, strict and unambiguous for bikes. I understand that stopping at the STOP sign is inconvenient on a bike (losing momentum and balance, braking and pedaling up is hard), but cyclists should ignore stop sign if and only if there is no one else on the intersection. If there are cars, pedestrians, or other bikes crossing it, cyclists _must_ resort to the stop rule. I do not know how many times I have seen cyclists thinking this does not apply to them.
In a past life I did somewhat serious cycling in rural Georgia as training for triathlons. So everything I'm about to say is with the caveat that it's my personal experience in one small slice of America.
Myself, and everybody I rode with, had stories of objects being thrown out of windows from passing cars in an attempt to hit you. Mainstay was was bottles but a friend did have a phonebook thrown at them. We laughed about that one...who has a phonebook these days and who keeps it in their car?
Had cars stop and try to start fights as well.
Consistently though, both while on the bike and in my social interactions with others, there is a close association between cyclists and liberals. The cycling was a visible qualifier but the anger, and not surprisingly, dehumanization, was driven more by their political and social leanings than any truly inherent dislike of cyclists.
The unfortunate truth is that bicycles do no belong on the road with cars. The car/SUV weights 2000-5000 pounds and can go much faster than a bike. It is also heavily "armored", in that most car collisions do not result in serious injury to the occupants.
The bicycle has much lower weight, and lower speed. In addition, the majority of bicycle collisions are going to result in at least some minor injury.
The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a significant number of biker deaths.
> The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a significant number of biker deaths.
There's actually quite a bit of opposition to separate infrastructure from cyclists. While the risk of being hit from behind is reduced on separate infrastructure, there has to be intersections at some point, and that's where the danger amplifies.
In Austin, I almost never ride on the Guadalupe St. cycletrack because about one third of the time that I do, a driver turns across it without looking at an intersection. There are signs saying to look, but that doesn't seem to stop the problems.
Infrastructure can help, but it needs to be designed well, and what I see typically in the US is not designed well.
Aggressive behavior against cyclists is unfortunately fairly common, but as a daily transportation cyclist I worry more about well-intentioned bad drivers. For example, these are the drivers who turn across the bike lane without checking for on-coming cyclists. It's not that these drivers don't consider cyclists as fully human. They're just bad drivers and probably have similar problems with other drivers. Cyclists are just more vulnerable to them.
I was hauling ass down a one-way, two-lane street in the bike lane (shoulder). A woman in a sedan pulled in from a side street on the left, crossed into the right lane, then swerved across my lane to make a right turn into a shopping plaza.
I had no vector for escape, it was too sudden. I believed I would go through her right rear window and wind up in the car. Instead, the bicycle and I slammed laterally against her car and flew forward at her angle, my sternum striking her passenger-side mirror. As it happened, I thought it would kill me, but the mirror just exploded into a hundred pieces.
I landed on the ground with my bike next to her now-stopped vehicle, solar plexus aching but otherwise almost unharmed.
She was very apologetic. She said she had many friends who were cyclists, and she was aghast at the idea of hurting any of them. She told me if I was unhurt, and agreed not to request the police, she would happily absorb the damage to her vehicle (it was really badly damaged by my bike scraping over 4 feet of her paint).
After I caught my breath and realized I was unharmed, I told her it was a fair cop and we were good. But I will definitely never forget the terror I felt as I slammed into her.
I've had many close calls like that, but fortunately have avoided collision. Drivers saying that they are "really pro-cycling" or whatnot means little to me now. If they were, you'd see it in their actions. That's not to say that mistakes don't happen, but "mistakes" happen so frequently to cyclists that it's hard to conclude anything other than that most drivers don't understand how to drive safely with cyclists on the road. Good intentions are not enough to be "pro-cycling" in my view.
For what it's worth, I would have called the police and requested an ambulance and I recommend the same for every bike crash, no matter how minor. (And I would have made it clear that the driver would be paying for all medical costs.) It helps make the police's statistics accurate, and adrenaline may prevent you from seeing how hurt you really are. Best to play it safe. I'd like to underline the importance of keeping the statistics accurate. I've talked to a city traffic engineer about how one intersection was dangerous and they said they weren't going to do anything about it because they received no reports of crashes there. I'm confident that they occur, but they're not reported to the city. Don't let being "nice" prevent safety improvements.
They're delaying me seconds at intersections, they're forcing me to spend more time checking that I don't door them, they leave their bikeshares on my sidewalks, and some ((I assume)) are good people.
And cyclists call people in cars "cagers", and presume they're all out to kill the cyclist. The only difference in the dehumanization is that people in cars can more easily kill people not in cars.
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[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadMy driver's ed instructor had a saying that cyclists should be shot! It was a comedy line, yeah, but he kept repeating it...
As someone from the US, this phrasing confused me. "Bikers" has a much more common meaning here. If someone says they're going to a biker bar, they will not be putting on a spandex riding suit and peddling.
That said, I feel that both cyclists and bikers suffer from similar problems. I've always assumed that because of the high visibility of their difference relative to cars, people notice their illegal road behavior more. Cyclists blowing through red lights, motorcycles weaving between lanes, all of this is extremely visible to other motorists. The behavior then gets tied to the vehicle, rather than individual riders, and then people start to feel that these riders are always problematic.
I'm from the US and I disagree. Maybe in your community that's the more common meaning, but you can't extrapolate that to the entire country. Context clues should make it obvious what I mean anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnxEZJCey4
So you think we dehumanize people we judge to be criminals? That would be unfortunate, if true. Sure, it might be reasonable to dehumanize the perpetrators of some heinous acts (serial murder being just one example), but weaving between lanes (which isn't even illegal everywhere to my knowledge) falls way short of that.
Yes. I mean, that's pretty much what the article posted here is about.
And this extends to other things that also fall far short of heinous acts: people in the US jailed for minor drug offenses are similarly dehumanized by many people in the "war on drugs" crowd.
I don't personally feel this way, but I could buy this level of narcissism as an explanation (if you truly feel suicidal when driving, please seek help or take a bus).
Most roads are built primarily for motor vehicles, so when you are driving a car, you are driving on a road that you paid for specifically to drive your car on, and somebody else is leisurely (except for in certain big cities, most bicycling miles are done for leisure or sport) enjoying the same road for free, on a bicycle, putting themselves at risk and putting some of the burden of their risk on you (if they veer into your lane and you hit them, good luck trying to get out of that).
A grossly exaggerated analogy would be seeing people come to your apartment complex and using the garbage chute as a slide for their kids to play on. If the kids are playing in the chute and you put garbage down it and injure one of them, you’re on the hook. Imagine how this would make you feel, every time you see parents bringing their kids to play in the chute.
And cars also put the vast majority of the wear and tear on the roads. So while they might pay more overall, they don't pay their fair share compared to bike riders who fund the roads from their taxes. Bike riders (and people who don't use roads) end up subsidizing roads for people who drive cars.
Of course, on residential roads, they don't usually have many large trucks. Also, in areas with snow, it seems that snowplows actually cause most of the potholes.
I generally find the tone of the discussion about cyclists here surprising. I'm from Germany, and while there is animosity between cyclists and car drivers, both are equally accepted on all roads (except the autobahn, of course). There's a movement in big cities towards more and more specific lanes for cyclists. I don't own a bicycle myself, but with regards to a car's emissions and the omnipresent wasteful parking slots, I'm all for strengthening the status of cyclists on roads.
Fuel taxes (which never pay for all of a road - general taxes pay for them as well) don't even cover the disproportionate wear and tear for necessary maintenance from vehicles. So in reality bike riders and people who don't ever use roads subsidize the roads for car drivers. It's NOT car drivers paying for all of it, they don't even pay their fair share based on the ongoing maintenance burden they impose on the roads.
There really is no acceptable, rational reason for animosity towards cyclists. I think it comes down to the same gut instincts as racism, sexism and xenophobia - when there’s a problem people look for whatever thing seems most different in their current surroundings and blame that thing for the problem. It’s just a lack of thinking.
No rational reason for drivers in a road predominantly used from big vehicles to not like smaller, hard to see, vehicles with greater flexibility and much more fragile going around them?
The added care you need to have as a car driver, and danger they impose of accident, is not enough?
Especially since most of the time (e.g. in highways, interstates, etc) you get to have the road to just cars and don't have all this?
In many other countries those are even worse, including added state taxes on fuel, and so on.
The problem is that the drivers don't want to make their politicians build proper cycle-ways for bicyclists to safely travel in. If there were proper bike routes, then you wouldn't see cyclists on the roads slowing people down.
It's largely the same with your garbage chute example. If the complex (or the municipality) can't be bothered to build any decent places for kids to play, like playgrounds, then don't be surprised when they repurpose other things for that. Decent towns and cities always have playgrounds for kids to entertain themselves.
I don't doubt that your description of driver psychology is largely correct, but this statement in particular is pretty far from reality. In practice, it's astonishingly easy for drivers to get away with injuring or killing both cyclists and pedestrians, even when they are clearly at fault.
The problem with the idea that car drivers pay for the roads out of vehicle tax is flawed, since very often (not sure about the US, but this is true in the UK) the costs of roads are (a) much higher than annual "road tax" receipts, and (b) often met from local taxation or national taxes. So, you get to pay for them even if you are not a primary user.
In addition, when you factor in the health disbenefits (road casualties and air pollution) then motorists don't come anywhere near paying for the damaging effects they create.
I both drive and cycle, btw. You are right that (in many countries) roads are designed primarily for motor vehicles, but that doesn't mean other vehicles can't use them. Carlton Reid's book "Roads Were Not Built for Cars" (http://roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/) has US and UK perspectives on this. It discusses cycling's origins and I find it interesting that in the 1800s cyclists were often seen as reckless and inconsiderate, and I wonder if this contributes to some kind of "folk memory" to this day, i.e. ideas being passed from one generation to the next without much in the way of critical analysis.
In any case, mistreating someone based on their mode of transport makes about as much sense as doing so for any other arbitrary reason. I really can't understand it on an emotional level.
Anyway, thanks for the insight: it is taken in the spirit it was offered.
This is true in the US as well; the cost of road maintenance in most states is not even remotely covered by the payment of vehicle, licensing, and fuel taxes and fees.
These are a stretch.
Pay for what you use. Even pricing.
I pay $200k in taxes. If I don't get to use these roads, they don't get to use my money on schools.
There used to be a radio show in Massachusetts [0] I listened to a bunch as a teenager. They had a weekly segment for a while where drivers would call in and tell stories about how they attacked cyclists and then laugh about it. I think it was mostly just drivers expressing their violent fantasies, but one or two of the stories may have been real. It definitely dehumanized cyclists and encouraged violence against them. Later the same radio show, during the build up to the Iraq war, had an episode in which they said anti-war protesters should have their tongued ripped out at the root. Violence against groups they didn't like was a pretty common theme on their show and other radio shows.
Incidentally they were banned from Massachusetts not for advocating violence or dehumanizing the enemy of the day but for faking the Governor's death as an April fools day.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opie_and_Anthony#1995%E2%80%93...
I've never seen a biker who didn't ride like an asshole in the city...
And I'm a pedestrian...
Yeah, it's fun.
Sounds like it's working from the assumption that cyclists are legitimate road users. Problematic assumption.
Conversely, whenever I'm on a bike, if pedestrians are present, I always slow down to walking speed, make sure they are aware of my presence and pass them safely and slowly.
I am awarded no such courtesy from drivers.
No amount of courtesy and rule-following can compensate for a complete lack of biking infrastructure on like 95% of all commutes.
This was never a problem for me when living in the Netherlands, where there is good infrastructure and rules. (At least after getting past the phase where you simply need to adapt to the ridiculous number of bikes when compared to other countries).
After moving to Dublin, it doesn't matter if you're on the sidewalk, pedestrian-only bridges, or crossing a pedestrian crossing when the light is green, you always have to watch out for bikes because you never know when one is heading right into you, regardless of how many traffic rules they need to be breaking to do so. From my own anecdotal evidence I've learned to expect worse/reckless behavior from cyclists compared to any other road user.
I'm sure they aren't worse people that anyone else and this is probably aggravated by the severely lacking infrastructure over here, but I seriously doubt "dehumanization" is the root cause of the problem here (even if it may contribute to a vicious cycle). From a driver's perspective, better infrastructure would probably also make them stress less over accidentally causing serious harm to a cyclist over something that would otherwise be their fault.
That said, I don't have stats or studies to back any of this up and this is all assumed from my own observations.
I'd wager a higher percentage of cyclists stop at all stop signs than motorists who strictly obey the speed limit.
As far as I can tell roughly the same percentage of cyclists break the law as drivers. Unfortunately most people take a selective view of this, ignoring what drivers do.
(I'm a cyclist who always stops at stop signs. In fact, I have helmet cam video of myself going through a cyclist stop sign enforcement operation without any issue from the police.)
It seems to me that for rule-following of motorists there is a correlation with rule quality as well (compare different countries).
This is not an excuse but an attempt for explanation.
I guess that this is a problem of how energy conservation works. When a cyclists stops they lose all their gained energy, like any other vehicle. But then, the cyclist needs to put a lot of effort to get again to their original speed. If that stop is in front of a slop the cyclist only option is to get off the bike and walk.
So, maybe it is more a fault on the design of the roads than on the cyclists.
2. If you had to pedal like a mad-man to get your car going, every time you stopped at a stop sign, while it swayed 20-degrees side-to-side, you'd probably be making a lot more California stops, too.
I wonder how many other places claim this "stop": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop
They'll blow through stop signs and red lights, then yell at you for being in their way, they'll illegally turn in front of your vehicle, then yell at you for not giving them the right of way, they swerve through traffic changing lanes without signaling then again, will get angry with you when you have to slam on your brakes to avoid killing them, they'll go back and forth between the sidewalk and street without paying attention to pedestrians or cars and yelling at anyone that gets in their way.
My experience has been, they wish to be treated like pedestrians, as in, have the right of way whenever they want, whether it's with a vehicle or an actual pedestrian, until they decide they're actually a vehicle.
For me, when i'm on a bike, i'm a vehicle. I obey traffic laws, yield to cars much of the time, because they will crush me and give pedestrians the right of way at intersections. Cyclists that don't do these things piss me off.
ETA: This may have come across like I was targetting all cyclists. I meant, the ones that do things like this are the ones I have a problem with. There's plenty of cyclists I see more often that don't do things like this. I have no problem with them I don't judge them as a group. I dislike in general when people do dangerous things on the road. Whatever vehicles they're in or not in. These just so happen to be the shitty things i've experienced cyclists doing that bug me.
i don't think any driving teachers are doing a good job at teaching this, but as soon as you get on a bike you realize how silly it is to make a full stop at a stop sign, both from a safety point of view as well as a physics point of view.
Stop can mean different things in different places, so rolling through might be fine in some places.
My experience is that drivers tend to have a much worse understanding of the law as it relates to cycling than I as a cyclist do.
I've been told by drivers to ride on the sidewalk where riding on the sidewalk was illegal. (Regardless, riding on the sidewalk is bad practice because it's actually more dangerous than riding on the road and not nice for pedestrians.)
I've been told by drivers to get in the bike lane when I was in the sharrow lane on an official city bike route. They want me to ride in parking, which is actually illegal as far as I know, though not enforced. Sorry, I won't be swerving in and out of traffic so that you can get to the stop light 10 seconds ahead of me and then still have to wait 30 more seconds for the light to change. Add on top of that the debris in a "lane" that's not intended for travel and thus not often cleaned; I won't get a flat tire to save you a couple seconds.
Some drivers seem to get annoyed that cyclists "run red lights" at a few intersections near where I live, when there are signs that say "cyclists may use pedestrian signal" and I have never seen a cyclist go through red there without the pedestrian signal.
For "infractions" like these I've had drivers do close "punishment passes".
Now, there are bozo cyclists out there, but as someone who is particularly knowledgeable about the law as it applies to cyclists like me, I know that drivers frequently believe cyclists are breaking the law when they are not.
Nothing.
I don't always signal, because bicycles have this major flaw that your breaking/steering tools work best when you have both hands on the handlebars. So if something hinky is happening ahead, I may need my hands to slow down instead of signalling.
I try not to yell angrily when people do dangerous things around me but I do often need to yell loudly, maybe repeatedly, in order to stop a car that doesn't understand that my bike is front of them, and they can't proceed without killing me. But you should understand that the stakes are much higher for me a cyclist than for the driver of a car. They might hit me and that would suck for them. I might die or need months of physical therapy. So be patient with cyclists who appear to have unleashed random anger at you (you-the-driver), they are under more stress from the interaction.
Also, the lawless cyclist trope, while often true, is often a case of the lawlessness you are unfamiliar with. I bike-commute most days, and EVERY SINGLE DAY I see cars: speed, run red lights, yield-instead-of-stop at stop signs, turn without signalling, wander into the bike lane, park or stop in the bike lane, drive without lights (at night), or with one light out. Also, it may not be illegal (but sometimes is!), but when I'm in a 'sharrow' lane, I will often get aggressively passed by people who can't be bothered to look 200 ft ahead to the red light, or who pass over a double-yellow in order to get ahead of me, then turn left/right 5 seconds later. But because we're all used to those kinds of infractions (and because they are partially 'our' infractions as drivers) we don't notice them. Because there are so few cyclists, and they aren't 'our' infractions, it's easier to notice their driving transgressions.
Anyway, super long rant. Not claiming all cyclists are angels, but as someone who is literally making it easier for the cars on the road BY NOT DRIVING TO WORK, I wish I got a little respect instead of the barely tolerated contempt I get a lot of. yada yada yada, plenty of good drivers out there as well.
Keywords there being, on or off the bike. Off the bike, walking beside it sure, you're a pedestrian, on your bike, riding a vehicle.
>I don't always signal, because bicycles have this major flaw that your breaking/steering tools work best when you have both hands on the handlebars.
I don't always signal because cars have this flaw where you need your hands on the steering wheel and you have to take it off to flick the signal switch.
There are lights you can get to signal on bikes, if you're not comfortable signalling using your hands, maybe invest in one of those. It's just dangerous to turn in traffic without signalling. That shit causes accidents. I don't know the laws there, but here if a cyclist causes an accident because they turned without signalling, they're considered responsible the same as a car would be. Cops will also ticket you.
>Also, the lawless cyclist trope, while often true, is often a case of the lawlessness you are unfamiliar with.
I dunno about the trope, I was speaking from personal experience.
Honestly, I get pissed at drivers and pedestrians that do dangerous shit by breaking traffic rules.
>as someone who is literally making it easier for the cars on the road BY NOT DRIVING TO WORK, I wish I got a little respect instead of the barely tolerated contempt I get a lot of.
You're not a superhero by riding a bike. You're not making it easier, you're adding one type of obstacle for everyone to look out for. One that's small, fast and fragile and behaves unpredictably. Maybe instead of demanding respect from everyone, use situational awareness and understand people are probably pissed at you, because they're worried about killing you. Acting like you can just ride anywhere, anytime with impunity makes the act of not killing you more difficult.
I don't think I've ever taken my hand off the wheel just to use the turn signal. Is this just a product of hand size, or does your car have an unusual setup?
[edit] To clarify: I flick the turn signal lever with the my ring & middle fingers while keeping my palm against the wheel.
I think you know this is not true. You don't take your hand off the wheel to flip the signal switch and if you do it's certainly not the safe effect as taking your hand off the handle bar of a bike.
>> As a cyclist, I get to decide if I'm a pedestrian or a vehicle. I can pop on/off my bike at will
> Keywords there being, on or off the bike. Off the bike, walking beside it sure, you're a pedestrian, on your bike, riding a vehicle.
Sorry, that's just a wordo. I can pop on/off the road/sidewalk _on my bike_. I assume context would have made that clear. It's legal to ride on the road AND the sidewalk in my city.
> You're not a superhero by riding a bike. You're not making it easier, you're adding one type of obstacle for everyone to look out for. One that's small, fast and fragile and behaves unpredictably. Maybe instead of demanding respect from everyone, use situational awareness and understand people are probably pissed at you, because they're worried about killing you. Acting like you can just ride anywhere, anytime with impunity makes the act of not killing you more difficult.
This is the most ungenerous read of my comment I can imagine. In any case, I can see that you want to be angry and right. Good day.
I never expected people to get so worked up about my comment. It was more of a 'oh yeah, here's some of my shitty traffic experiences involving cyclists' if there's some commonality to what others have said, maybe these are actual issues. It was really just supposed to be some musing about these things.
Honestly I spend more time worrying about people in cars. The only times i've come close to death on a road were from idiot drivers. Bikes have frustrated me but they've never almost killed me and thankfully, i've never been involved in any situations where i've almost killed a cyclist and I really never want to be.
If you are a regular bicycle commuter, rather than demand respect from everyone after ranting about how the rules of the road don't apply to you, maybe take these issues into account as you travel and understand sharing the road doesn't just mean people need to be aware of you and get out of your way, it also means you need to be aware and take actions to avoid others, even if others are breaking traffic rules. Again this applies to anyone using a road. This is for your own safety and everyone's.
I am only even making this reply on the off chance that you honestly believe that you've tried to have a level headed conversation. If that's true, I write this only to tell you that the way you've engaged does not meet that goal. Have a good day.
If I have one hand on the handles and the other off, do you know what happens when I brake? The handles, and hence the wheels turn, because that's how momentum works in that scenario.
How are you so mentally incompetent that you can't see that your nonsense word salad analogy is that broken?
If you can’t follow the law, don’t ride a bicycle!
"I never run the stop signs. I always follow the road rules. Drivers stop at stop signs, why can't cyclists?".
Haha, total bullshit. Until Stanley Roberts did that piece where he showed that people routinely run stop signs, everyone did this high horse motorist crap.
Turns out everyone lies to themselves. Switching lanes in intersections, not yielding to peds, not stopping at Stop signs.
But fortunately we all judge ourselves by intentions and others by their actions.
If I count how many laws people in cars break when I drive home tonight - speeding, illegal parking, etc. - I'll run out of fingers and toes.
Ultimately the worst thing someone on a bike can do to me in a car is cause me a delay. The worst thing I can do to them is kill them. So I give them the benefit of the doubt.
I suppose sweeping generalizations like that are a matter of who is in your out-group and who is in your in-group.
Anecdotally, I have seen a lot higher percentage of cyclists breaking traffic laws than drivers, and it seems a lot of people have observed that in their own day to day life also.
I bike about as many miles as I drive, and there are about the same percentage of bad actor cyclists as automobile drivers. But only a car driver has any chance of killing a cyclist, not the other way around.
Once I was riding bike just like a car, and a car driver tried to run me off the road on purpose. I pulled up beside him at a stop light, baby in a car seat behind him, and said driving like that will get someone killed. His screaming reply "fucking good, you should all fucking die, fucking get off the fucking road, the fucking road is for cars, you should be only on the fucking bike lane". And threw in a few more fucks. This was in Denver, on a 30mph two lane street.
Meanwhile my lizard brain is thinking, I'd like to take off my helmet and bash this guys face in, over and over and over again. I'm day dreaming of committing a violent assault, because it's clear to me his action of putting me in mortal danger was intentional, and that is a betrayal of civility, and a major loss of trust. For a little bit I really thought he wanted me dead and he had the power to do it. And the statistics show decent chance he'd have gotten away with vehicular homicide.
And he's teaching all of this psychosis to the kid in the backseat.
There is the concept in aviation that higher category aircraft must yield right of way to lower category aircraft. e.g. an airplane must yield right of way to a glider. That should apply between heavy vehicles like cars, and light vehicles like bicycles. And bicycles should yield to pedestrians. The problem is man state laws either don't recognize bicycles as vehicles, and those that do equate them and it's just not tenable quite a lot of the time. It's far less safe for a cyclist to come to a complete stop at a stop sign and dismount, than for them to do a hesitation waltz.
So when you talk about what pisses you off when your life isn't even in danger? That's psychotic to me. It's so completely control freak irrational that you get angry over people who don't follow rules intended for automobiles? It's just nonsense.
I have a few responses to this and your broader point. First of all, and to be more blunt and less charitable, I don’t choose to put my life at the massively increased risk of injury and death of riding a bike vs. a car. Saying that we should be most concerned with those who are in the most danger ignores their conscious choice in making a dangerous choice in the first place. Now on its own this would be a ludicrously callous point, but it leads to my next one...
Cyclists on busy roads put not only their own lives at risk, but the lives and wellbeing of others as well. As a pedestrian cyclists and scooterpricks blasting past are the danger, and as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous. The tendency of cyclists I’ve encountered to blow red lights and stop signs presents the danger of a car accident as one vehicle swerves or slams on brakes to avoid them.
Finally I don’t want to hurt or kill someone and if I did I’d be devastated. The fact that plowing into a cyclists while in a car is likely to leave me relatively unscathed physically doesn’t imply a lack of harm. Careless and selfish behavior predicated on a kind of nonexistent moral high-ground is the core of why it is so popular to utterly despise cyclists. We’ve all had to deal with the attitude of superiority and belief that cyclists are somehow saving us from ourselves. Of course people have a bad reaction to moralizing, proselytizing people who think the rules of the road don’t apply to them.
Choosing to ride a 10lb metal frame with just a helmet in motor vehicle traffic is manifestly unsafe, it was unsafe when you decided to do it and unsafe now. Shrugging and telling everyone else to take the responsibility for your safety onboard because you wouldn’t is obnoxious. It is especially difficult to accept when one has the perspective that despite the hype from a minority, cycling is not going to save us from ourselves.
There's nothing inherently dangerous about choosing to ride a bicycle. It becomes dangerous to ride a bicycle when operators of ~4000lb machines choose to not operate them safely around others.
> as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous
I'm fairly certain a driver also put the lives of everyone on the road at a higher priority than their own convenience. They aren't forced to "veer".
Nonsense. The injury rate on bikes dwarfs cars even putting aside collisions with motor vehicles.
https://www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/advice-services/road-saf...
Per billion vehicle miles, 1,011 pedal cyclists are killed or seriously injured, in comparison to 26 car drivers6.
That’s per mile traveled, and it’s two orders of magnitude more dangerous by bike.
Almost two thirds of cyclists killed or seriously injured were involved in collisions at, or near, a road junction, with T-junctions being the most commonly involved. Roundabouts are particularly dangerous junctions for cyclists. Not surprisingly, the severity of injuries suffered by cyclists increases with the speed limit, meaning that riders are more likely to suffer serious or fatal injuries on higher speed roads. Almost half of cyclist deaths occur on rural roads.
It’s also a given that all of the billions driving vehicles will not all be safe all of the time, it’s part of life. Some people are drunk, tired, old, or careless... there is no changing this. It’s something to strive to improve, but positive a magical perfect world which allows for cycling to be less risky than driving is fantastical at best, dishonest at worst.
I'm fairly certain a driver also put the lives of everyone on the road at a higher priority than their own convenience. They aren't forced to "veer".
Most people don’t drive for convenience, but necessity.
Whoops, I shouldn't have been hyperbolic. I meant that the danger of a busy road comes from the cars, not that a bike becomes inherently more dangerous on a busy road. The fact that 84% of serious and fatal cyclist accidents also involve another vehicle is pretty strong evidence of the danger of cars, IMO.
> Most people don’t drive for convenience, but necessity.
The statement I responded to ("as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous") asserts that a driver has no choice but to endanger themselves and others by entering the lane of oncoming traffic. My point is that a driver can also choose to slow down and pass the cyclist when the way is clear, but for their own convenience they choose to endanger their own life as well as other road users.
I avoid the same crossing when I'm on foot, even though it has a sign that says, "state law: stop for pedestrians in crosswalk." I have never seen a vehicle stop for a pedestrian in that crosswalk, even police. People who cross there either spend a long time waiting for a lull in traffic, or they dash frantically across hoping not to be hit by drivers who think the pedestrians are irresponsible for crossing there.
I take the existence of such signs as strong evidence that the intersection is dangerous. They seem to be added to cover the asses of the city/state/etc., not because they are effective.
There are plenty of moronic cyclists. I've come across several riding in the middle of the wrong side of the road around a blind corner! But putting them all in a group, judged by its worst members, is simply a step on a path to dehumanizing them.
In general, drivers suck too. Try walking next to a road with puddles and witness the sheer number that think it's appropriate to continue at their entitled speed and spray road water all over you. That's basic assault with damages, but for driving it's just business as usual.
Ultimately, people in general are just fucking morons that don't pay attention or predict how their actions will affect others. But if you latch onto that as justification for your own antiempathetic behavior, you're just contributing to the problem.
This was confusing because I thought you were talking about cars.
How can a cyclist possibly ruin my commute, no matter how he rides? It is inconceivable to me that your delay at intersections is a reasonable complaint to make.
My earliest contempt for cyclists began in elementary school, where cyclist kids would just jump on their bikes and ride home while I had to slog through a long bus drive. Cyclist kids felt they were just better than others.
Then in college, cyclists going to and from class on their bicycles were annoying as hell. How many times I would just be walking minding my own business and a dude on a bike out of nowhere weaves through a crowd and just cuts across me nearly hitting me, and at an unsafe speed. I'm sure when you're riding a bike you have no idea how fast you're going, but as a pedestrian it's easy to see how close these individuals were to disaster. What if I had suddenly stepped in a different direction into the path of the bike?
As a careerist adult, cities are no better. I distinctly recall one time in New York City where I was about to cross an intersection when suddenly I heard someone shout, a cyclist was heading straight for me downhill and I jolted myself backward narrowly missing the bastard. He could have easily struck me down.
And then of course on the roadways there is always an anxiety when I see a cyclist. I have to make sure I move aside at least three feet and slow down considerably because I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison. I don't have a problem if you want to risk your life but you should have to accept the responsibility of your actions all on your own at that point.
lol cyclists are dying left and right and barely anyone is going to prison. the privileged class (drivers in this case) will always protect their own.
That's why you slow down and give them space? Because you don't want to go to prison? Not because you don't want to hurt them?
I am an avid cyclist, and I think I probably get angrier than the average person when I see a cyclist breaking the rules cause I am thinking to myself "you are making the rest of us look bad."
[1] https://www.codot.gov/programs/bikeped/information-for-bicyc...
First, it really helps if cycling infrastructure is separated from car and pedestrian infrastructure as much as possible. The more separation, the better. In Ottawa, for example, there are several dedicated cross-city bike trails, but not too many in Toronto, they are far and wide between, and it shows. It is not always possible and in that case I would give bicyclists preferential treatment on dedicated side streets.
The bike trails should be immediately visible to anyone, e.g. painted green for the full length. This makes it immediately visible for everyone: turning cars, passengers exiting the vehicle, pedestrians who decided to jaywalk and scanned the space for cars, but not bikes.
The road rules should be clear, strict and unambiguous for bikes. I understand that stopping at the STOP sign is inconvenient on a bike (losing momentum and balance, braking and pedaling up is hard), but cyclists should ignore stop sign if and only if there is no one else on the intersection. If there are cars, pedestrians, or other bikes crossing it, cyclists _must_ resort to the stop rule. I do not know how many times I have seen cyclists thinking this does not apply to them.
Myself, and everybody I rode with, had stories of objects being thrown out of windows from passing cars in an attempt to hit you. Mainstay was was bottles but a friend did have a phonebook thrown at them. We laughed about that one...who has a phonebook these days and who keeps it in their car?
Had cars stop and try to start fights as well.
Consistently though, both while on the bike and in my social interactions with others, there is a close association between cyclists and liberals. The cycling was a visible qualifier but the anger, and not surprisingly, dehumanization, was driven more by their political and social leanings than any truly inherent dislike of cyclists.
The bicycle has much lower weight, and lower speed. In addition, the majority of bicycle collisions are going to result in at least some minor injury.
The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a significant number of biker deaths.
There's actually quite a bit of opposition to separate infrastructure from cyclists. While the risk of being hit from behind is reduced on separate infrastructure, there has to be intersections at some point, and that's where the danger amplifies.
In Austin, I almost never ride on the Guadalupe St. cycletrack because about one third of the time that I do, a driver turns across it without looking at an intersection. There are signs saying to look, but that doesn't seem to stop the problems.
Infrastructure can help, but it needs to be designed well, and what I see typically in the US is not designed well.
I was hauling ass down a one-way, two-lane street in the bike lane (shoulder). A woman in a sedan pulled in from a side street on the left, crossed into the right lane, then swerved across my lane to make a right turn into a shopping plaza.
I had no vector for escape, it was too sudden. I believed I would go through her right rear window and wind up in the car. Instead, the bicycle and I slammed laterally against her car and flew forward at her angle, my sternum striking her passenger-side mirror. As it happened, I thought it would kill me, but the mirror just exploded into a hundred pieces.
I landed on the ground with my bike next to her now-stopped vehicle, solar plexus aching but otherwise almost unharmed.
She was very apologetic. She said she had many friends who were cyclists, and she was aghast at the idea of hurting any of them. She told me if I was unhurt, and agreed not to request the police, she would happily absorb the damage to her vehicle (it was really badly damaged by my bike scraping over 4 feet of her paint).
After I caught my breath and realized I was unharmed, I told her it was a fair cop and we were good. But I will definitely never forget the terror I felt as I slammed into her.
I've had many close calls like that, but fortunately have avoided collision. Drivers saying that they are "really pro-cycling" or whatnot means little to me now. If they were, you'd see it in their actions. That's not to say that mistakes don't happen, but "mistakes" happen so frequently to cyclists that it's hard to conclude anything other than that most drivers don't understand how to drive safely with cyclists on the road. Good intentions are not enough to be "pro-cycling" in my view.
For what it's worth, I would have called the police and requested an ambulance and I recommend the same for every bike crash, no matter how minor. (And I would have made it clear that the driver would be paying for all medical costs.) It helps make the police's statistics accurate, and adrenaline may prevent you from seeing how hurt you really are. Best to play it safe. I'd like to underline the importance of keeping the statistics accurate. I've talked to a city traffic engineer about how one intersection was dangerous and they said they weren't going to do anything about it because they received no reports of crashes there. I'm confident that they occur, but they're not reported to the city. Don't let being "nice" prevent safety improvements.
They're delaying me seconds at intersections, they're forcing me to spend more time checking that I don't door them, they leave their bikeshares on my sidewalks, and some ((I assume)) are good people.