To you point about car dependence, not using one is humiliating, at least for me. I live about .25 miles from my office. I walk daily to and from (twice). I feel, and have seen, people look at me like I'm poor. It is a foreign concept to many that walking or biking might be better (especially in Florida where on those rare 30 degrees nights, me, a Hoosier, is right at home, but right now it's a balmy 68).
Each of us were stopped at least once by police for being suspicious...near as I can tell (we were all >middle class white people) all that was suspicious was us walking on sidewalks. Outside of the biggest cities America is actively antagonistic towards walkers. My sincere belief is because of the assumption that they are poor and should be judged.
Or look at where the stoplights are. In Germany, they're set back such that it's impossible for a driver to go into the crosswalk and still see the light. This naturally encourages drivers to respect the crosswalk. Not so in the US, unfortunately.
I could go on and on, but really almost all American streets are hostile to anything that's not a car.
The typical American street has a sidewalk set back from the street and light traffic (so the controls at the intersections barely matter).
1. At least here in Munich, most of them here have enough space for one lane of parked cars, and one comfortable lane of traffic; if cars happen to approach each other on such a street, one has to pull out somewhere, or sometimes they can barely squeeze by each other. Contrast that with the US, where room enough for two lanes of parked cars and for two lanes of traffic (albeit without any markings) are the standard.
2. Setbacks here, both for businesses and homes, are much smaller than in the US.
3. There are many "cut-throughs" and little paths that are only permeable to pedestrians and cyclists, not cars.
The practical impact of the above is that streets here feel more human scale, cars travel more slowly, and walking and biking are more convenient. I let my six-year old son bike on the road on local streets here to get to the bakery or train station, something I'd never do in the bay area, where I'm originally from.
The streets in town here are ~20-25 feet wide and mostly don't have much traffic. 3 or 4 extra steps to cross an empty street isn't a big problem.
Germany isn't even top-tier for active transportation; that title goes to the Netherlands. And even in the Netherlands, more money goes to cars than biking or walking, usually.
You can tell yourself all you want that walking is treated okay in the states, but budgets tell the real story of where priorities lie.
Coming from North Europe, where it's fairly natural to walk distances of a few hundred meters to do an errand, I and colleagues used to walk from a hotel in Rohnert Park to a Wal-mart on the other side of highway 101, whenever visiting the place and needing to do some shopping.
And each time there were people driving by who would stop at us and ask: "Do you guys need help, did your car break down?"
Very friendly people, apparently they thought we had a problem.
I mean conscious lack of interest at a design level in engaging those populations. The situation you describe, to me, is a manifestation of that cultural antagonism. That situation exists because society is squeezing out people who walk.
The only area in Scandinavia where I met actual antagonism for walking was a neighbourhood in Århus; I lead a group of 12-year-old football players in a neat dual line through it by foot, and some "youth" started to throw little rocks at the boys. I guess they wanted to signal that it's their territory.
even though it was like 1.5 miles...
It should be the other way round "People drive to stuff, even though it's only 1.5 miles".
In part because the rules are designed for cars, I’ve always observed cyclists, including myself, breaking common sense rules at much higher rates than cars. Blowing red lights, riding on sidewalks, failure to signal, riding, etc.
In practice you actually see this with bike riders regularly ignoring red lights ect.
You can find a lot about these studies via Google, e.g.: https://www.google.com/search?q=comparison+of+cyclists+and+d...
By the way, I follow the law to the letter. Doesn't get me any more respect on the road, unfortunately.
Minor speeding (~15%) is not a significant hazard. Going through a red light is about as dangerous as doing ~50-100MPH over the speed limit which is very rare.
Other things like riding on lane markers between cars is blatantly ignoring the rules of the road and vastly increase the risk of death. Again about as risky as a car slowly driving on the sidewalk, which you just don't see.
Bike riders on sidewalks are again extremely dangerous and often lead to fatalities, but it's also very common.
PS: I worked with bike messengers who may be unusually bad about this stuff.
To address another point, even the "minor" speeding you mention is a significant hazard. 15% over the speed limit is 32% more kinetic energy. Combine that with the fact that speeding really does not save much time in most situations, I think it's a clear loser in a cost-benefit analysis. Perhaps on an empty highway it's okay. But a driver's time to destination in most cases is more limited by stop lights and traffic, and believe me, I know. As a cyclist who doesn't go faster than 25 mph it's really irritating to have a driver pass me dangerously, only to sit behind them at the next light for 2 minutes, or for me to pass them because they are waiting to turn. I have no detailed statistics for this, but it happens so frequently that I don't think speeding is likely to save much time. It mostly provides psychological relief for impatient drivers. (Your opinion, of course, may differ.)
> Other things like riding on lane markers between cars is blatantly ignoring the rules of the road and vastly increase the risk of death.
I don't "lane split" or "filter" as it's called, but it's worth noting that this is frequently legal (perhaps not in your jurisdiction) and it has its proponents, many of which tout it's apparent safety benefits. I don't think the data is clear about whether it's safe or dangerous on net. I personally don't think it offers any advantages, so it's not worth the potential risk. Also, many drivers encourage cyclists to do that to get out of their way. You should see how infuriated some drivers get when I take the lane at an intersection rather than filter through to the front. I've talked to cyclists who run red lights, and I frequently have heard that they just want to get away from angry drivers, and running the light allows them to do that. (I don't think this is the right approach.) The same applies to sidewalk riding, which is fairly clearly more dangerous, yet riding legally is often discouraged by drivers, sometimes violently.
As to speeding, we have actual data on this stuff. So it's easy to demonstrate the risks are very low directly from accident rates vs # of speeders. The risk of early death vs time saved actually favors doing 5MPH over the speed limit on highways.
As to personal experience I only have ~45,000 cyclists which may be high or low. But it feels like a very large number.
PS: People try any justify their behavior, but statistically bike riders regularly risk death.
The story about the dangerous jaywalker and bicyclists is a big falsehood if you look at the data. As I said; cyclists have the same behaviour than others have in traffic. The truth is that cyclists live longer, even with all the risky behaviour you think cylists are prone to.
The thing that is risky is spending ones life in a car, on so many levels. You refrase things so it seems like cyclists are to blame for being killed by cars when we know that is actually not the case. Just because the party line today is that jaywalkers and cyclists are worse than others doesn't mean there is any actualy evidence for it.
Even with a lot of bike infrastructure, and a biking culture Denmark sees 17% of traffic related deaths by cyclists which is vastly more than their share of miles traveled.
Their are augments around health benefits. But, these fail to show up in the data as Denmark has ranks #17 in Europe significantly behind even United Kingdom with it's well known obesity problem. https://www.reinisfischer.com/life-expectancy-european-union...
PS: You need or look at all related risks combined not just select a few. One risk rarely considered, is heavy exercise in traffic is very bad for the lungs.
While I agree air pollution is worth considering, "very bad" sounds like hyperbole to me. Definitely not anywhere near smoking. The solutions also are rather simple: change your route to avoid heavy traffic and/or wear an air filter. I've done both before and recommend the latter more, as it seems more effective, does not make breathing harder, and has other safety benefits as well. Also consider the length of one's commute.
It's also worth noting that air pollution can easily be worse when driving. In fact, while I can not find the link now, I recall one non-scientific article with some experiments run by academics suggested that net exposure to air pollution was higher when driving in some cases.
Exercise increases the amount of lung exposure to particulate matter per unit time.
You are right that traffic pollution is very bad for the lungs, it's actually the cause of 30%-60% of all deaths related to lung diseases, but this is true for everyone not just cyclists. It's the same number of deaths as for sucides but with an inverse demographics graph of course, at least in Sweden. Those numbers are staggering and the solution to that is not to stop bicyclists navigating normal commute traffic.
I would like to say that I do look at the combined risks: There are atleast two longitudinal studies on Dutch and Danish bicyclists that show that using bicycling as an active mode of transport means longer life, basically it's an integration test were you get X% increase in a population by just commuting daily.
Here is some commedy that is obvisouly just Norwegians and Swedes being jealous, but it gives you some view on how we think of Danes, and what might affect their lives a bit more than bicycling, as with your link they are very interesting but irrelevant since they do not affect the same population groups.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJBtV_S8c1c
Exercise increases the amount of lung exposure to particulate matter per unit time. Biking is also a slower mode of transit which increases risks, further cars have built in air filters which further reduce risks.
So it's really not equivalent. On the upside, bike paths need not be next to traffic and in those cases may reduce exposure.
The solution is not to scare people with baseless arguments.
> You only see cases where they lose that bet, but it's just a numbers game.
I don't follow. Seeing both is pretty easy; they drive away. What I question is that the 2 minutes that one saves at most (likely closer to 15 seconds or so on average) is worth the extra risk to other road users. The asymmetry is the problem. You say cyclists regularly risk death, and sure, they do, though the risk is probably lower than you suspect, and drivers risk death too. A large fraction of cyclist deaths occur late at night with a drunk cyclist; remove those factors and your risk is a lot lower. For someone like me who goes out of my way to ride safely, my main (perhaps only) risk on the road is bad drivers, who are by large tolerated or encouraged by western society.
> As to speeding, we have actual data on this stuff. So it's easy to demonstrate the risks are very low directly from accident rates vs # of speeders.
The NTSB says speeding contributes to about 10,000 fatalities per year in the US:
https://www.ntsb.gov/news/events/Pages/2017-DCA15SS002.aspx
Doesn't sound low to me. Maybe it seems low when you compare against how frequently people speed, but that's a red herring as far as I'm concerned. It's unlikely you'll die while smoking any particular cigarette, but clearly the net effects of smoking at significant. I focus on the net effects. I don't think the time the speeders save justifies the life lost, even neglecting those disabled, etc. As I said, I think speeding provides mostly psychological benefit.
> As to personal data I only have ~45,000 cyclists which may be high or low. But it feels like a very large number.
You have seen about 45,000 individual cyclists on the road? I find that hard to believe. That's comparable to the total number of transportation cyclists in Austin. For comparison, I suspect I've seen at least several thousand individual cyclists on the road. If I see only two new cyclists on the road per day I'll see about 7000 after 10 years. Seems reasonable to me.
In single accident deaths at night with only a cyclist this is actually the most common case (70%-90%). In deadly accidents between car and bicycle it's not very common for the cyclist to be drunk about the same as always.
This is like complaining that people treat guns and knives with different levels of seriousness. Of course they do; both are potentially deadly, but one far more so than the other.
If they behave dangerously and put themselves at risk of being hit, even if they are the one taking the risk, the car driver will always be at fault, no matter what. And yes, like some others have echoed in comments here, many bike riders do not stop at red lights. I see that every - single - day, multiple times.
Secondly, cyclist scofflaw-ness is mostly a result of a transportation system that's hostile to them. The Dutch aren't nicer cyclists because they're born that way, superior to Americans; they're nicer cyclists because the system there largely respects people on bikes, and so the system receives respect in return.
Go to any city with widespread segregated bike lanes and bike lights, and you'll likely find a culture where cyclists are no more likely to break the law than pedestrians or motorists.
Third, motorists are hardly exempt from constant law-breaking. How often do people not signal, or roll through stop signs, or enter the intersection right after the light turns red, or park in a bike lane, or 'block the box', or tailgate, or break the speed limit? I've lived in enough places in the US to know that the answer is "constantly". And all that with a vehicle that's vastly more dangerous than any bike or jogger.
I mean, my god, one of the most common and stereotypical complaints in America about where anyone lives is "ugh, drivers in [state] are the WORST".
If you cross the street on a straight-away with good visibility, you can gauge the speed of the traffic, determine a safe window, and cross easily, without disruption.
A few years ago i started telling people "I don't have any ID" and, remarkably, they all found ways to do business with me.
As it happens I do have a driver's license but I leave it in the car. 99% of the time I am walking around with no ID at all, and my life works fine. You can fly without ID.
I do carry a passport when flying internationally.
According to WaPo, 70% of Americans are overweight or obese, so I don't think that, statistically, many people are really in a place to look down on you for walking.
We may get to that point, but for right now I work remotely (platform engineering) and just grin and bear the rest.
I crank up the text size so large my neighbors can read it, but not so big that it exceeds my visual field.
I use a screen reader to read docs. I’m super excited about the new AI powered narrators because listening to ANY of the older style readers for 30 seconds or more causes permanent rage conditions.
I tried Braille, but it’s like trying to be instantly productive using vim, in Chinese, while on the space shuttle during launch. I might return to it sometime because narrated code is horrible to listen to.
“Humiliation: Making someone feel ashamed or foolish”.
When everyone uses it, then the share of regular people who just want to go somewhere instead of harassing others gets up. But if only marginal people take public transit, then of course you'll mostly encounter marginal people there. The problem is how to start making everyone take it again.
Here, children are driven to school by their parents. When school ends, the parents are there waiting in their cars. Kids mostly don't even play outside anymore.
Those of you thinking public transport is fine are likely at least a little bit physically imposing and/or you are in relatively fancy locations.
Conversely, are there large cities in other countries that are similar to the US, where this does not happen? I'm going to suspect the Middle East, due to ubiquitous air-conditioning.
When I moved to London for university, there were 5-6 year olds on buses and trains, accompanied by an older sibling. And they were the rich children attending the private school I lived close to, normal children that age would live close enough to walk to their local school.
Yes, GP appears to be ill-informed about how kids get to school in large parts of the US. In NYC, students take public transit (and are provided passes, if necessary) from approx 13 years old. The same concept applies in most cities I know of on the East Coast (I can't speak for further west, though it appears Chicago has a similar system).
Obviously if people took the time to look at the crime statistics, the chances of being a victim of a crime is less than half of what it was when I walked a mile to elementary school every day.
For more normal crimes, the lifetime chance of being a crime victim is serious. For stranger-on-stranger violent crime, there is a total lifetime probability of about 5.3%.
You might think "oh that is just 5.3% so no big deal", but the chance of dying in a fire is only 0.09% and we still bother with smoke detectors.
Violent crime is a life-altering event. Given the potential for horrific consequences, it is reasonable to be concerned about the possibility. Transportation choices change that risk.
Do parents get out of their work in the middle of the afternoon to drive their kids from school to home? Do they go back to work for the last couple hours after that? Or do kids have 8-hour schooldays?
Some people have fully flexible time. Some people have a part-time job or two, so they simply don't agree to work shifts during the times they need to drive the kids around. Some people don't work, often because a single income is supporting a two-parent household.
It might have been better if the addition of woman to the workplace included an equal shift of men to a househusband role.
PS I like your username.
And I did stayed some time while the kids were small and disliked that a lot. You get used to depression as a normal state, basically.
Weird, here in New York I see kids riding the subway to school every day. I must be imagining them.
That is how your comment sounds to people who use public transport. It sounds ridiculous.
My father got mugged at knifepoint on one. That is 100% not acceptable. It is a major reason why normal non-poor people encase themselves in cars.
My father wasn't even blind. He was just slightly old, maybe 50 years old. At that age, he could no longer sprint away.
The comment might sound ridiculous to the people who voluntarily use public transport, but your sampling bias is gigantic in that case.
Here in Germany, crime rates have been declining pretty consistently [1], with homicides and robberies down from "low" to "very low". The thought of getting mugged on the street or on public transit is just absurd to me. I don't know anyone whom it happened to. It's something that happens on CSI, not in real life.
[1] Except for internet-related fraud and Crystal Method abuse (since these are still pretty new), and stuff like unlawful border crossing (because of the refugee situation).
> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
You've just engaged in an ideological rant about muslim rapists in a thread about people being too old to drive.
You linked to the Gatestone institute, twice. Started by a known anti-muslim zionist and the reporting has been repeatedly accused of deliberate inaccuracies.
You also linked to WND twice. A publication known for perpetuating shaky conspiracy theories and white supremacism.
You chose two extremely right-wing (and unreliable) sources twice each. Not one countering article did you submit as a comparison.
We can all see exactly where you stand here.
You mean they aren’t safe where you live?
Blimey. I’ve been attacked once, in total, and that was as a teen and an adult intervened within seconds.
I used to walk to school if I missed the bus (or if I wanted to miss mandatory religious activities), and that took me an hour. Sometimes I’d walk home afterwards, because the school had a then-novel internet connection. I’ve walked a few hundred kilometres around Berlin in the last few months, and explored several other European cities by walking around on foot for hours each day. If you go to Venice, your only options are foot or boat, and the boats don’t go everywhere.
You may care to consider that people get held up in cars, even in their own homes.
If you're really concerned about mugging in public areas, there are basic safety steps that everyone can (should) take. Stick to well lit areas; don't wear headphones; don't use your phone; avoid any situation that doesn't feel right. If possible plan your route. In other words, have your wits about you.
Also, re the non-poor encasing themselves in cars. Crime increases when people perceive an increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots. Does this mean the rich should use footpaths to reduce mugging? Probably not. But it might mean that public transport should get major investment so it's not seen as a shitty option only for the poor. If that's really how it's seen, everyone who has no option but to walk must feel constantly pissed off.
But during commuter hours, there isn't usually space for crime. And a real comparison of injuries per passenger mile would be instructive - cars aren't exactly safe either.
I do think we should avoid painting public transport as a utopia when it also can have access issues. We should just recognise it as an equal option that can be more comfortable and faster than sitting in a traffic jam and cheaper than paying the real cost of parking (which is often subsidised or hidden in the US)
It looks like you've decided the risk is worthwhile. I hope your luck holds. I think I'd be completely terrified. I found big cities scary even when I was a strong/fast 20-year-old male.
I do suppose you might have to share space with poor people instead of ignoring them.
America’s sprawl and dependence on cars is incredible. It wasn’t until I spent time in London, Oxford, and Paris that I could recognize how much everything here is built around the idea of owning a car.
So now my wife has to give rides to our four kids, AND me, and there’s literally nothing I can do about it except petition for better transit, and pray self-driving cars get here faster.
Being dependent on rides feels like being 15 again. It’s humiliating being picked up from a job interview in a parking lot with 200+ cars.