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.
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 suppose sweeping generalizations like that are a matter of who is in your out-group and who is in your in-group.
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
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 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.
This was confusing because I thought you were talking about cars.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.