One time a Pizza Hut driver almost killed me. I called his boss, they didn't care.
One time an UBER DRIVER almost hit me and then proceeded to chase me because I yelled and flipped him off. I sent a photo of the license place to Uber and the local PD, nothing. Not even an acknowledgement.
The fact is that people don't care. You go on HN or Reddit and people will complain and actively encourage hitting riders. It is always the rider's fault, even if the driver broke the law. And I'm tired of it. I don't care if the rider was in the wrong, you're a lot more squishy on a bike than in a plastic housing with a motor. There's this weird dichotomy of not caring about the life or safety of someone.
Always seemed like a reasonable policy to me. The people operating heavier vehicles have a higher inherent responsibility to operate them safely.
I found it very enlightening to learn that even in the Netherlands, there used to be car culture similar to here, and it took the death of some children, and a grassroots campaign, before meaningful change began to occur.
There are many lessons to learn from the Netherlands with regard to bicycle infrastructure, and for our sake I certainly hope it doesn't involve the death of children.
It doesn't have to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Copenhagen
Like the Netherlands, the city of Copenhagen has a highly evolved bicycle infrastructure, but the catalyst for change was the dual oil crises in the 1970s which led to car-free Sundays and other oil preservation measures. People disovered that they actually appreciated the lack of cars and many started using bicycles as an alternative. This resulted in a grassroots movement campaigning for bicycle infrastructure in the city. The municipality caught on and today almost two thirds commute by bicycle.
Reaction from police and Uber to a photo with the plate and the car making contact with my bike? "meh"
Because most of us grow up that way, later in life, when we drive a car, we have the proper respect for bicycle riders. We drive slower when we overtake them, we looks in our mirrors before taking a turn.
good infrastructure helps too, but from having lived in the US and Europe, I think it's largely a cultural thing.
I wish there were more places with bike lanes like Amsterdam and Copenhagen
The bike lanes came later... (and yes they are a god send)
Most of what the cyclists comment here would result in car drivers getting a huuuge insurance increase.
This is insane. Cyclists run stop signs, red lights, etc. all the time. Pedestrians run out in to traffic from behind parked cars. If they get hit when they do that it's their own fault.
What everyone needs to understand in every mixed traffic environment is that sharing the road goes both ways. Drivers have a responsibility to look out for cyclists, but cyclists have a responsibility to make themselves able to be seen. Everyone has a responsibility act in a way that allows their actions to be predicted by other users of the road, you never want to be surprising people.
If your actions cause someone to have to hit their brakes or make evasive maneuvers and you had a reasonable choice to not do those things, you're the one in the wrong even if you're legally right.
Furthermore, a lot more cyclists fit in a city than cars, and they are more likely local population who also take care of local Co2 reduction. Although tourists are welcome to cycle as well.
The insurance arbitration can be weird though: if you are getting out of a parking spot, with all the indicators and cautious maneuvers, and get hit, you are at fault. Bike, car, bus ...
IOW, you’re right. Law is funny that way.
s/Holland/Netherlands
And/or: Holland are two provinces of The Netherlands.
The distinction between Holland / Netherlands is not interesting unless you are from down here. It is similar to the distinction between hackers & crackers. Yes it is different, no.. most people don't care (and shouldn't care IMO).
Instead they added a stop sign to the main road and now more people run that particular stop sign.
This is so weird to me. It’s the complete opposite in the Netherlands. Because you are in a car, and you are best protected, you’re basically always in the wrong if you hit a cyclist or pedestrian, regardless of what they were doing (at least that’s what I was taught).
The reason why I have little sympathy for these types of stories is that I witness cyclists being assholes every day I drive. Stuff like running lights and stop signs, changing lanes with no signals, riding on sidewalks and crosswalks, riding in lanes with moving cars, etc etc.
I understand that in the US bike environments are really unsafe, but I don’t think that routine not obeying traffic laws or conventions is the way to go.
In one sentence you managed to point directly to the dichotomy cyclists face. Car drivers: “get out of the road it’s for cars!”, pedestrians: “get off the sidewalk it’s for pedestrians!”
In many places there just isn’t safe areas for cyclists that doesn’t end up putting them in conflict with other users of streets.
One thing that’s hard on a bicycle is to keep your cool after a collision or near miss. You end up with so much adrenaline pumping that anger often comes.
Like others on this thread have mentioned though, getting angry at people in cars is not helpful, best case they feel bad, worst case they become angry and now have a multi-ton weapon on their side.
Cyclists are unambiguously wrong if they cycle on the pavement. Just as cars drivers are unquestionably wrong when they are in a cycle lane. This is cycle riders doing to pedestrians exactly that they don’t want drivers to do, and this is dangerous for people who are in a more vulnerable position than they are. I have zero sympathy for riders on the pavement, I’ve had too many collisions or near misses, including with small children.
My complaint is about cyclists entering a lane with a car which is super dangerous. Just as it would be for a car to enter a lane held by a cyclist.
It sounds as if you think, if there is no dedicated bike lane, that bicyclists shouldn't exist.
In many places, legally, vehicles have no more right to the road than bicycles. The "road" is a shared lane for bicyclists and vehicles.
That it is dangerous is the responsibility of all to mitigate, but the multi-ton steel box has the obligation to yield.
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/90000/velka/sh...
Just like you couldn’t have two cars side by side in a lane, you can’t have a bike and a car in the same lane.
We have mixed traffic with bikes and cars on the same road, but they’re supposed to be sequential, not side by side.
Here’s an example of what I mean.
I’m on a single lane suburban road with a line of 20 cars all going 10mph. A bike rides alongside me going 20 mph in the same lane, passing me and other cars. The bike is 1-2 feet away from the side of my car.
Do you think it’s appropriate that a bike passes a car in its own lane? Do you think the law should be changed to allow this?
The fact that people driving 2 ton steel killing machines complain about cyclists being “assholes” when it’s overwhelmingly their killing machines that, you know, kill cyclists, pedestrians, and other people in killing machines, is a remarkable display of entitlement.
This is entirely situational. There are cases where it is OK and there are cases when it isn't.
There was an Uber blocking traffic on my street today and I went past them. It would be ridiculous to have to just sit behind the car until their passenger showed up, and I'm sure as hell nit gonna ride my bike into oncoming traffic
>Do you think the law should be changed to allow this?
It doesn't need to be changed. The law in my state already allows this under many circumstances
More frequently than cars? There are over 5 million car crashes in the US every year. 30,000+ people killed.
I've lived in a place with dedicated bike infrastructure. It was amazing. We should be pushing for that.
And why are cyclists so antagonistic? Not a good look if one wants their group to be taken seriously.
And if you don't want to take a diverse group of people seriously because of some slight you have with a minority of them, you're not really interested in taking them seriously in the first place, and are just looking for excuses. Classic tactic used to neglect lots of groups one's not in. "If the millions of BLM supporters want to be taken seriously, they shouldn't have a few people among them rioting!" is another example.
Before roads were for cars they were for horse+buggies, or chariots, or other transport. Cyclists are not first-class citizens on roads and they never will be. And frankly I don't want to get stuck behind one on a road with a dramatically higher speed limit than what you can pedal at. That shit is just rude.
The amount of entitlement that seems to come from the cycling community makes it really hard for others to empathize with your situation. You can make a bad faith argument comparing yourselves to BLMers if you want, but I can see right through it.
Appreciate your sitaution as a minority among minorities and plan your moves appropriately. But thinking that cyclists should get higher priority over multi-ton cars and such you are mistaken.
> People fearing for their lives are allowed to be agitated.
Don't forget that by cycling you are choosing to bring a knife to a gunfight.
In big cities that's never a problem. Cars are stuck behind other cars.
> You can make a bad faith argument comparing
I didn't compare myself to that, only an example. If anything that's a straw man and bad faith on you..
> Don't forget that by cycling you are choosing to bring a knife to a gunfight.
It's not a fight. But you and other drivers looking at it like that is very telling, heh.
I can never understand how anyone can make this argument without seeing how it applies even harder to why bicycles shouldn't be on the road with cars going 45+ MPH (~70+ km/h).
Bicycles are closer to pedestrians than cars outside of the slowest city roads.
Also I live in New Orleans where having a few feet of very broken, ragged sidewalk due to a tree's roots bursting up through them as the pavement slowly sinks is a very common sight. Trust me you do not wanna bicycle on that shit.
Just this weekend in my neighborhood, and elderly woman was murdered by a driver hooking a left turn while she was in a crosswalk. Same neighborhood, a homeowner had a driver crash into her home for the second time in three months!
Driving culture in the US is undisciplined and low-skilled. The requirements for earning a license are far too low in every state.
My city seems dedicated to making the roads as deadly as possible. Rather than having bicycles go down a parallel road, they gave them a bike lane on the main road. Thing is, there is no real benefit to bicyclists to be on that road versus a parallel road. I wouldn't bike on that road for pay. The city also added speed bumps. So idiot drivers drive into the bike lane to go around the bumps. The same city has changed left + straight lanes to be left only and right only lanes to be right + straight. This has the effect of "no turn on red" which should reduce danger to pedestrians... but the lanes don't always line up, sometimes there are near collisions because people think they are in the straight lane or because people turning an unprotected left in the opposing traffic think they are in a turn lane (and indicators are optional).
I could rant on for pages.
I don't know the solution. I now drive first for my own safety, second to limit my own liability, and third for the safety of others. I equate that with giving up. But on one side are idiots that think the road should be built just for them and on the other side are well-meaning idiots that remove the double yellow lines because drivers slow down. One thing I do know is that pedestrians, bicyclists, and drivers should be kept physically separate wherever possible.
Also, generally speaking, Americans do not like things that add perceived barriers to their personal freedom and independence, so any proposal to make it more difficult to get a license would probably be unpopular.
Then consider injuries caused by breaking the law on the road. Bikes breaking the law cause few, speeding cars cause many.
Dismissing the regular lawbreaking of cars doesn’t seem rational. Just because you don’t like the way bikes break the law doesn’t mean bikes breaking the law has a negative impact.
Cursory search turns this up:
> Speeding was a factor in 26% of all traffic fatalities in 2018, killing 9,378, or an average of over 25 people per day.
Source: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-safe...
> riding in lanes with moving cars
where are they supposed to ride?
What I meant is a bike shouldn’t ride alongside a moving car in a lane but should be ahead or behind, like any vehicle.
So for me the sharrows do make a difference, since they make it feel safe to use more of the road, which makes me do it.
This again comes back to the fact that cyclists are neither pedestrians nor motorized vehicles. It isn't a surprise that they want to be treated like cyclists and not be in that binary classification. It is only hypocrisy if you use the wrong classifications. If you're really trying to understand bike safety try riding in their shoes for a month or two. You'll start to get it real fast.
Regularly watching cyclists flaunt the rules that the car driver would be cited for breaking, and never seeing a single cyclist cited for the law breaking, leaves a foul taste for cyclists in the mouths of many motorists. They don't get to run stops or red lights with impunity and without punishment.
So as long as the law says cyclists must obey the same rules car drivers are also supposed to obey, the subset of cyclists that break those rules on a regular basis do not help, in the least, the arguments to try to convince car drivers to be more respectful of cyclists.
The start should be the cyclists obeying the same rules as the cars (which would help with not pissing off numerous car drivers daily) while working the politician angle to change the rules for cyclists to something safer for cyclists (and at which point the car drivers will no longer have a way to rationalize their hatred of the cyclists as just "law breakers").
The problem is that as your parent commenter pointed out obeying these laws also pisses off drivers. Drivers get pissed off when cyclists take the full lane, and they get pissed off when cyclists come to a full stop in front of them at a stop sign. I don't run red lights and stop signs on my bike and it annoys me when people do, but I feel like the many violations drivers commit every day are just normalized because there are so many more drivers than cyclists.
We should also consider that many people have different definitions for "running a stop sign" and it isn't equally applied to cars and bikes. A roll at a stop sign is ignored for a car but "running" for a bike. I don't blow through (that's irresponsible), but I do roll, per the given reasons above (funny enough I never roll when driving).
Yes and no. I am sorry when cyclists flaunt the rules — it does happen — but there are also those of us that strictly obey the law. (It helps keep me alive.) But I see cars break many of the same rules, quite often. For example, seeing a car run a red isn't even a rare thing. (A rare one is seeing a car driving the wrong way.) Between the two groups, I don't think I see one break the rules more often than the other. (I certainly see more violations from motorists… but I also see more motorists.)
> never seeing a single cyclist cited for the law breaking,
I've seen this, multiple times. Oddly, only while biking. Probably about as (in)frequently as I see motorists get cited.
> So as long as the law says cyclists must obey the same rules car drivers are also supposed to obey, the subset of cyclists that break those rules on a regular basis do not help, in the least, the arguments to try to convince car drivers to be more respectful of cyclists.
That there are those out there that don't obey the law should not matter to validly argue that the world would be better — that is, fewer cyclists would die — if both motorists and cyclists alike would obey the law.
If you’ve ever biked in a city, you would know that the people who get pissed more than anyone else by bikers following red light rules are the cars behind them that cannot accelerate when the light turns green, because the biker in front of them is slow to get going.
Invariably, they will simply get pissed and try and pass the bike dangerously, if not honk or hit them out of the way.
Every cyclist I know has at least one story of being pulled over by a cop for perfectly safe, oftentimes strictly legal riding.
On the other hand, you'd be hard-pressed to find a motorist that ever faced consequences for murdering a cyclist.
1) The hits by cars result in the deaths of tens of thousands of pedestrians per year in the US compared to single digits, if any, by bicycles.
2) Dead people don’t write HN comments.
[0] https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/strict-liabili...
[1] https://thecityfix.com/blog/how-oslo-achieved-zero-pedestria...
Not strictly, the driver (bestuurder) of a vehicle (anything requiring a drivers license, also mopeds) is considered a more capable participant in traffic. Pedestrians and cyclists are at the bottom of that food chain. If you hit something in the "lower classification" you have to prove you are innocent and the burden is on you completely. If the cyclist was using his phone, collect witnesses after you help the victim as you are in no way liable if you made every effort to stop and look. (e.g. in a low speed collision, assuming the cyclist made a mistake). High speed collisions are usually completely attributed to the driver as they should be aware of cyclists all the time. e.g. Not slowing down at a crossing (even one with traffic signs) is reason to forgo any rights if you hit a cyclist as you should be aware of any participant in traffic which is less capable (in the protection sense) as you are. Even if the cyclist drives though a red light as you should anticipate mistakes. You are usually liable for the 50% but it is not a given. Always go to court if you consider the cyclist made a mistake.
e: please not that in normal cases the damage is a percentage fault division to both parties, in case a pedestrian or cyclist is involved the minimum will rise to 50% for the other party to cover in case "overmacht" (force de majeure) cannot be proven which is where the "always 50%" comes from. There are however numerous cases in which this has been proven and can be used in a court of law. It will however almost never be 0% for the driver of a vehicle.
Thankfully a “prove your innocence” approach would be unconstitutional in the US.
Not in civil liability suits, which is what these rules seem to describe, only in criminal cases.
Does the police actually police the cyclists, or do they just controll the cars, and let the others (pedestrians, cyclists, skaters, rollerbladers,...) deal with themselves by themselves?
Police does sometimes pick off cyclists who are on their phone and whatnot, but outside of that, it is a very self-regulating system. It's also fuelled by the society, teaching your kids how to behave as a cyclist is a very visible part of upbringing.
I remember from my brief stint in law school that our professor told us, that there is a good case to be made for changing the law from reverse burden of proof to objective liability, ie. motorist' should always be liable, no ifs, ands, or buts. The reason, he explained, is in the cases where two motorists are in an accident, a lot of resources are wasted in determining liability. Since what always happens is that one insurance company must pay and another one doesn't, and since each insurance company will on average win as many cases as they lose, it would save a lot of money and time to just declare that each driver is 50% liable and be done with it. I also seem to remember that this is how it works in New Zealand, but I could be misremembering.
(1) Create real penalties for drivers that hit cyclists (2) get insurance agencies and drivers themselves to want safety infra so that they are no longer exposed to the risk of hitting cyclists (3) safety infra is built
What we have in the states now where more and more people are biking, and people are begging for infrastructure, but there are no changes isn't working.
https://www.dutchreach.org/car-child-murder-protests-safer-n...
https://cobblescycling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/4-gave...
So, I personally believe that building brick roads with bike lanes in dense areas is a great solution. With brick, cars naturally slow and people naturally shop more.
Look at Boulder Colorado which has an extensive network where many of the paths hug the creek running through the city.
The easiest place to start in most cities is to just build paths along rivers and streams that go beneath or above roads.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houten
Come visit!
>The design principle of separating cycling and walking from car traffic has been pushed to the limit. Houten is unique in this. Cycling comfort and safety are extremely high (optimal), even by Dutch standards. A large network of bike paths makes it convenient to cycle to various destinations and within the town the bike is the most popular means of transport. > The city of Houten is known as, nationally and internationally, and in growing interest from home and abroad, as the worlds best practical example for bicycle friendliness. A growing number of groups with politicians, developers, designers and students visit cycling city Houten for study purposes and inspiration.
This sort of thing is a big part of why places like Houten (and Odense - basically second or third tier cities with good infra but lower cost of living than capitals) are on our short list.
"More severe" includes "any at all."
https://www.bikecitizens.net/presumed-liability-shrinks-cycl...
If some schmuck with California's minimum $15,000 per person injury insurance disables you, what would you do? Sue them for their additional median $97,300 net worth? Which might be less than $10,000 liquidated? That is you'd expect to get, somewhere between $25,000 and $112,300, for your lifetime injury. Perfect enforcement with 100% liability legal system would get you $25,000-$112,300 in my estimate, for the rest of your life. If you're permanently disabled, it's peanuts.
It's a shitty outcome. The problem is in part, clearly, that people are really poor.
And then suppose it's a totally recoverable injury. Out of $112,300 you recover $25,000, realistically, and the driver is bankrupted. You could put a whole family on the street. It's not Europe, they will go on the street! Is that justice? They're all completely broke dude. They have nothing besides their car.
People are living paycheck to paycheck, and you're comparing European countries where neither disability nor bankruptcy condemns you to a life of poverty. 20% of Americans claim some disability. 20% of Americans have zero or negative net worth, which is 4x the EU + UK's 5%. You have a 1 in 5 chance of getting hit by someone in their car, and recovering a maximum of $15,000, or $0 if they're uninsured.
The simplest answer is that only people who are rich enough to pay the remedies of death by vehicle accidents should drive. That can be as simple as either requiring self-insurance (i.e., you must have a net worth more comparable to death settlements, or $500k-1m), or at least an insurance that covers that kind of injury (which poor would not be able to afford). I don't think that sounds like justice either, think how disruptive it would be if you had to be that rich to drive? It would certainly impact rich people too, because they'd be underwriting their nannies, cooks and, checking my notes, teachers, firemen, nurses, etc. to get to work.
It's pretty crazy too, the degree of wrong in the comments to this. At least bring some facts to this discussion. People are just trying to survive, of course they are going to go with the cheapest possible lowest coverage insurance. On top of that, "about 15% of California drivers have no insurance, according to the Insurance Research Council." (1) Like what do you think those people with negative net worth (20% of Americans) are doing? Buying $2,000/yr auto insurance policies? It boggles the mind.
(1) https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/state/californi...
That is highly dependent on the urban area. I would bet that there are lots of poor folks that use cars in places like LA or Houston or Miami.
The minimums might get thrown around a lot to convince you to help sell you under-insured insurance coverage.
But you always do need to worry about completely uninsured motorists.
Depending on your province, it’s gotten a lot harder to claim much for soft injuries or even income replacement if you’re injured in an MVA.
This is the duuuummmbest shit I have ever heard, and reeks of someone who has no idea just how large the United States is. I'm sure this works great in a tiny nation where everything you want to access is within a click or two, but there are parts of the United States where people literally have to drive an hour or more (at 60-70 mph) to get to a grocery store.
I have a friend who retired to Wolf Point, Montana. The nearest Walmart is five hours away. The only thing there is an Albertson's, which is frequently sold out of items.
My favorite thing to do with my European colleagues and friends is drive them around Texas when they arrive. Many of them quickly pick up on an expression that is common across almost all of America - "Oh, its just right down the road."
"Right down the road" in America means "its anywhere from 5-30 miles away". It doesn't mean, "its 600 meters down the street". And they all pick up on it.
Do you know what the problem with "simple" answers are? They're childish. There are no simple answers in life. Everything exists in a state of extraordinary complexity and requires significant consideration. Don't believe that? Look at how we've handled the maintenance of the National Park Service in America. One environmental disaster after another.
I'm so sick of this "but cyclists are mean too!" whataboutism in every thread of this nature.
Had a cyclist illegally cross horizontal to a lane on a 40mph road, almost resulted in a 3 car collision - luckily all three drivers (including me and the car behind me) were paying attention.
A cyclist absolutely can cause deaths by not obeying the laws of the road.
That said, when I am driving, I have absolutely no issue with people on bicycles who ride predictably and follow the rules. It's those who don't that anger me. Specifically, I'm talking about things like riding through a crosswalk, riding the wrong way, and not signaling lane changes. There's a reason you're supposed to walk your bike through a crosswalk, and not signaling when you're a ~200 lb driver + rider combo facing down vehicles weighing more than 10x and capable of going much, much faster than you is just dumb.
That doesn't mean drivers aren't dumb, too. On top of the usual traffic BS we all deal with while driving, I also see a lot of instances of drivers not taking over a bike lane when turning. Usually, in this case, this just seems to lead to a lot of "go! no, you go! no you go!" business, but it's 100% a recipe for a crash.
Well obviously if your standard of who is at fault is "the driver is always at fault", obviously 100% of collisions are going to be the fault of the driver.
With that caveat, on access-controlled highways (motorways), you’re not allowed to walk, so any pedestrian would be in the wrong for being there. That said, even there a driver would be at fault for colliding with a human (policeman, fireman, people after a car accident, and other people who might have a very good reason to be there) regardless of what that human was doing. It’s not that different from crashing into a stopped car or any other kind of obstacle. Similarly, a driver is at fault for hitting an animal.
In non-access controlled highways, the driver would be at fault if their car collided with anything, be it another car, a human, or an animal. How legal it is for a pedestrian to cross in this case depends on local laws.
So in any case, yes, the driver is responsible, although that responsibility could be shared in some cases. If the accident results from deliberate action on the part of the pedestrian, there probably would not be any consequences for the driver in any lawsuit (unless the driver was also reckless or drunk), but for insurance purposes it does not matter.
This is not the case with bicycles - they drive with the traffic, as a part of traffic. So I don't think this rule is very applicable to real world.
That’s what I am trying to say: with kids, even if they are nowhere in your path, you want to slow down anyway, because who knows.
This rule does applies less to adult bicyclists. For example, if there is a separate, dedicated bike lane and there is an adult bicyclist there, I will pass him. Not so with kids.
See the difference?
For whatever it's worth, I would agree. I am confident that most cyclist/car accidents will be the car driver's fault. Would you even be surprised, if this turns out to be genuinely the case? I wouldn't! Do you even drive a car? I do! Car drivers are shits - or at least behave exactly like them - one for the philosphers, perhaps - and I cannot fathom how anybody that drives a car could think otherwise. Have you not noticed how these people behave? (Sure, lie to us all you like - but don't lie to yourself!) Car drivers would run your kids down, and you know it, if it would save them 5 seconds - then in court they'd cry about how things are so difficult for them now they're facing prison. Because they know they'd probably get away with it.
Out of the tiny number of times an accident is the cyclist's fault, the vast majority could be avoided if the driver was paying an appropriate amount of attention - and the 6-year-old rule of thumb is a good one, I think, when it comes to gauging how much attention is appropriate - given they're driving a 1500+ kg 200+ bhp murder machine, a major design goal of which is ensuring its occupants come out unscathed from any collision.
I am confident the remainder could be dealt with on a case by case basis.
So, to your "I'm confident that..." I also say: citation needed.
No, they are claiming that they have a belief (implicitly, often, a justified belief) that X has a high probability of being true, unlike stating merely “X” which denotatively is a claim that X is true without qualification.
Seattle streets in a nutshell. As a frequent pedestrian I've lost count of the number of times a car has stopped in the middle of an intersection and frantically tried to wave me across a street. Some people are just bonkers. If you're already inside an intersection, don't yield to a pedestrian who's standing still on the sidewalk! Are people trying to get t-boned? Worse, in those situations I feel morally compelled to run across the street just so the driver will remove themselves from the dangerous situation they put themselves in for my sake. Absolutely infuriating.
Drivers blowing through crosswalks (especially unmarked crosswalks) are far more common, to the point that it's unsafe to make a mandatory stop on a two lane per side road, because that risks killing the pedestrian when a driver in the second (left) lane illegally zooms past the stopped car and hits the nearly invisible pedestrian.
Just hire the same lawyers that the tobacco industry was paying.
I should send someone a memo
Having said this, (as a daily commute cyclist pre covid) the issue is lack of delegated infrastructure- and I think that applies not just for mixed human drivers and human cyclists but (as much as it disappoints) we will likely need separate roads for self driving cars and human (cars / bikes / pedestrians).
Self driving seems a really hard problem now we are past the "california highway" level. To be safe at night or in rain or in Italian backstreets or Mumbai rush hour seems behind reach.
So we can use infrastructure to reduce the need for better AI. But that gets expensive. We can probably avoid building a second road network - but we need compromises.
Separated bike lanes will help this - those great wide Dutch streets with pedestrian bike car and the tram lanes come to mind - main roads where the central lanes are for automated use only.
The cost will be enormous (and blows most business models out the water) but we may win elsewhere - reclaiming some of the streets back as living areas, migrating deliveries off trucks and into smaller slower delivery vehicles designed to trundle down thinner streets.
Either way i look forward to a future of slower vehicles a d bike paths
I've asked a good number of both bikers and drivers in my area and they don't know that the laws exist:
A driver must move over to the next lane if it is open and a biker is in the bike lane or the lane the driver is in.
A driver must not pass closer than 3 feet from a biker
A biker may take an entire lane and ride two wide
I think if drivers knew that the above rules, and it became a norm to take the entire lane when 3 feet was impossible based on the size of the lane, then biking would be safer.
To not leave this as a "this is bad" without proposing how to fix it... the education could be incorporated into gaining your drivers license, city sponsored advertisements, or having police actively spend a period of time enforcing the above laws (warnings would be fine, more for education than penalty)... or all 3.
In my (non-cycling-related) experience, this is never true. That is, litigation gets you little, if anything. If there is no public, political way forward (inside or outside the political establishment), then you're stuck, and had better work on that.
Ideas:
* Promote use of public mass-transit instead of private cars (e.g. via infrastructure and mass transit investiment)
* De-motivate use of private cars (e.g. through taxation on car purchases and/or on gasoline, stricter pollution regulation, more expensive parking)
* Change the law so that in all cyclist-car-driver accidents, the car driver is at fault unless he proves otherwise.
This all requires a lot of public pressure, which in turn requires public opinion work through local advocacy.
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Alternatively, some people could go the vigilante way. I'm not advocating this, but in theory, acquaintance of the cyclist victim of an attack by a car driver can retaliate either immediately or ex-post-facto, not within the bounds of the law. That could mean something like a scratching a rebuke on the car's paint, or pasting a piece of material with a written message to the front window in a way which doesn't come off easily, or blocking the car from leaving its parking spot with some kind of inconvenience, together with a rebuke that is easy to remove (e.g. page of paper under windshield); etc.
This route does not require mass active support across a country or legislative district; it only requires passive local support for cycling and disdain for car drivers hitting cyclists - enough to create multiple potential suspects while making it very difficult for law enforcement to pin the actions on any one of them. i.e. if people in the same neighborhood don't rat them out.
It should be mandatory to learn to use the road on bicycle before even applying for a car licence. The biggest problem I see is that people simply don't know what it's like to use the road outside of a car. Neither on foot nor on a bike. Dashboard perspective is a real thing. It makes you see other people as obstacles rather than people who are just trying to go to work or return to their family, like you.
Requiring bicycle training would dramatically increase the number of cyclists on the road, essentially taking it back from the tyranny of motorcars. It would also ensure that those who do decide to learn to drive have the experience necessary to be a good road user. Additionally, if they do end up causing an accident the licence can be revoked and they can get back on the bike.
[1]: https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/edoeb/fr/home/protection-des-donn...
That said, around where I live, car / cyclist collisions are still pretty frequent; I live in an area with a lot of roundabouts where cyclists have right-of-way, but because of angles, darkness, rain etc, visibility of cyclists is often very low.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-t...
Some examples:
1) I suspect the "new car smell" that car buyers believe affects their judgment is purposely chosen glue (I think it's a glue) that dissipates into a gas that literally, psychiatrically impairs buyer's judgment. It's real. [edit: it's still relatively mild].
2) Stealing a person's main means of transport should be punished independently of how expensive that mode of transport is. So, the penalty for stealing a car should be based on the price of a car and the fact it was the main means of transport for that person. Same goes for bicycles, it could have been a $100 bike, but it's the main means of transport and that person is equally stranded as the driver without it. For this reason, being a bike thief stealing 10 bicycles could mean a decade in jail, if laws were different. Who would steal bikes then?
3) Enforce both car driving violations and bike driving violations, but based on lethality of the vehicle. Right now both driving a car drunk and riding a bike drunk are a DUI, which is ridiculous.
4) Legislation that privileges driving over biking harms children, because they can ride a bike starting age 8 or so, but can't drive until 16.
5) Driving is an extremely lethal activity, but AFAIK biking deaths are mostly attributable to automobiles. If you try to run someone over with a car you can be charged with (I forget the wording but more or less) "using a deadly weapon". Because that's what it is. A killing machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxopfjXkArM
https://gizmodo.com/90-years-ago-the-los-angeles-subway-was-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...
Apparently LA's loss of underground subway was tied to its loss of overland subway, as well. They seem to have been the same system?
Note that "jaydriving" is not a crime.
Of course, just like everything about driving in China, the rules mean very little. It's pretty hard to enforce your rights if you're dead.
My ten-years-old experience driving there was interesting. At any given time you could expect the cars around you to do the stupidest of all possible things, completely ignoring the rules. But they'd do it slowly, and expect others to adapt...which they did.
There's an additional constraint of acting negligently. If you're going 45 on a road where the speed limit is fifty and someone sprints out in front of your car, you won't be convicted of vehicular manslaughter (assuming obviously that you didn't have time to react).
Somehow I'm reading "within a few feet" as "six inches". IME bicycles are much narrower than automobiles. If it's safe to pass an automobile, it's safe to pass a cyclist while leaving at least eight feet.
If it's not safe to pass, don't pass.
This seems beside the point? Above you seemed to imply it is inherently challenging to pass a cyclist. That is only the case if one attempts to pass in inappropriate situations. Cyclists have at least as much right to the road as motorists have.
We talk so much in America about gun control, why not also car control?
Hypothesis: Dutch drivers are more careful around cyclists primarily because everyone rides a bicycle themselves. Knowing what it's like riding a bicycle in heavy traffic makes you a more careful driver.
Do you want ANTI-bike laws that ban bikes from everywhere not permitted? To someone rich, the "solution" to having to deal with bike liability is to ban bikes.
The only solution is separate bicycle and car infrastructure. Period.
Yes, it sucks that San Francisco has backed off separate infrastructure due to budget. However, the solution is to go lobby SF and to make pro-bike infrastructure a single vote issue to make them put it back.
One thing I do not understand: why hasn't some rich millionaire/billionaire taken some second/third tier city and funded bike infrastructure into it? It seems like it would be a lot easier to get bikers to move to a city that has infrastructure rather than trying to jam infrastructure into city that is basically land-locked/water-locked.
And let's hit cyclists with the same penalties as drivers for the same violations.
I see cyclists blowing stop signs and ignoring traffic lights regularly.
The reason why I sometimes treat traffic lights as stop signs is because I'm worried the driver coming up to the red light might be distracted by their phone and run right into me. This has happened to two of my friends.
So my seemingly disregard of the traffic laws is often to put more space between me and heavier vehicles.
However if car and I end up at a four-way stop at the same time, I'll let the car go first because I don't trust that driver saw me.
With driving a two-ton vehicle should come more responsibility and attention, but Americans view driving as a God given right.
This is something motorcyclists need to be hyper-aware of too. Same idea approaching yellow lights. Here’s a scenario that happens all the time: you’re coming up on a yellow. There’s a car in the intersection ahead waiting to make a left into your path. The car behind you isn’t slowing down, he either isn’t paying attention or wants to run the yellow. What do you do to stay alive?
The right answer is to act earlier to avoid that situation in the first place, but there will be times when you find yourself in a bad spot.
It is a yellow light, go through if it isn't safe to stop. I really don't understand the problem here.
It can seem like a non-issue, but it really isn’t. Drivers’ eyes are trained by experience to recognize other cars. From a driver’s point of view, an approaching bike (motor or otherwise) is a narrow vertical line that has very little apparent motion. Even if they see you, it’s really hard for an oncoming driver to gauge your speed.
There are things you can do to make yourself more visible, like swerve a little in your lane. This gives you some lateral motion that makes you pop out of the background.
The point is that on two wheels you face situations that four wheel drivers don’t think about or understand because they take their visibility for granted.
Most drivers break the law every day in ways that are much more dangerous than a cyclist running a stop sign.
Let's consider speeding, one of the most dangerous and commonplace of traffic violations. Drivers are rarely penalized for it, despite its potential lethality.
On the other hand, it is relatively easy for a cyclist to clear an intersection due to a bicycle's slower speed and better field-of-vision.
Perhaps it's best to leave this issue to cyclists; most cyclists are drivers, but very few drivers are cyclists. And it shows.
Is it even within three orders of magnitude?
[1]: https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a31136893/pedestrian-death...
In the limited experience that I have as a frequent pedestrian visitor with dedicated cycling lanes in NYC, they feel dangerous to pedestrians. Many cyclists don’t want to stop or yield to pedestrians, and left turn markings on avenues are still evolving and confuse a lot of drivers.
Cycling is well established, but the rules around road use are insane. That won’t get fixed unless someone is getting a big bill.
“Big bills” do nothing to stop drivers from breaking the laws, but go on thinking that it will change cyclists.
Since most cyclists in the US also have car insurance, our rates could be based on computing the risk of each mode of transportation. Cyclists would pay less for insurance. Make my day.
This is why both drivers and cyclists really should be recording things. It doesn’t prevent injuries, if it can make a huge difference afterwards.
It's kinda ironic that that's used as an example of bad cycling, and also exactly where most bike lanes are put: in the door zone of parked cars.
The only way to fight stereotypes like this is with hard evidence.
But sure it’s “perfectly safe” and even occasionally legal. Frankly the number of people defending this practice is a significant sign it’s a real problem.
And filtering to get in front in the intersection is safer for a cyclist, as one is then better seen. So no reason not to filter through stopped traffic, really. If it's a safety issue, the solution is probably to remove those making it dangerous (cars) from the streets.
The solution is to simply avoid trying to share a lane while sitting in people’s blind spots. Someone can easily get between two rows of cars turning left without realizing it and get knocked over even when the cars are doing everything correctly.
The same is true of sharing lanes even on city streets, lanes simply are not wide enough to safely share as the motorcycle or cyclist has vastly reduced visibility and may miss construction lane markings etc that unexpectedly move traffic.
Ironically the point of this article is how this is always permitted and the sole reason sharrows exist is to point it out. Judging by your comment it isn't widely understood.
Preliminary results from a study in the United Kingdom, conducted by the University of Nottingham for the Department for Transport, show that filtering is responsible for around 5% of motorcycle Killed or Seriously Injured (KSI) accidents. (Bicycle statistics are harder to locate.)
If a cyclist can't lane-split, then what are they supposed to do up a hill? If they take the entire lane drivers get annoyed, if they don't take the entire lane (and follow the common guideline of riding as close to the edge as safe and practical) then you claim they are doing the wrong thing too?
Filtering is riding on the line between lanes.
In another case, a cyclist blew by my at full speed down a steep hill on the sidewalk, again coming stupidly close to an accident (for both of us) for no reason.
As a driver, I constantly see cyclists on the wrong side of the street, back and forth between the sidewalk and not, and not obeying stop signs or stop lights (let alone other rules). I’ve never even heard of one being ticketed.
I’m all for new bike lanes that are separated from traffic. But honestly before a city encourages more bike riders I really think they need to dramatically step up enforcement of traffic laws against them. If running a red light or stop sign is a $200 ticket in a car, it should be a $200 ticket on a bike. Otherwise it is just unsafe for everyone involved.
Curiously; in France many red-lights are excepted for bicycles. There's often a special, permanent "orange" signal that applies to bikes, thus they are explicitly encouraged to run the red light. If I understand well, this was in agreement with drivers, who were annoyed to wait for all the bikes to start slowly after the light turns green.
I think that if you ever try to use a bicycle in transit (I mean, seriously over a few days, not for 5 minutes), you will see that it is essentially impossible to do correctly. Sometimes you have to turn left across many lanes of fast cars, what are you supposed to do? Inevitably you take the least dangerous path.
> Sometimes you have to turn left across many lanes of fast cars, what are you supposed to do?
one of the great things about biking is that you get to pick and choose between car rules and pedestrian rules depending on which set fits the situation best. whenever I am uncomfortable making a left turn, I pull off to the right and cross the intersection like a pedestrian.
Oh, I hate that! Bikes are transit, and are not supposed to leave the transit in the middle of their way, especially not for negotiating an intersection. Bailing out of the bike and going on foot with the pedestrians does not count as "doing the correct thing", just that using the bike is impossible. Besides, it is annoying for the pedestrians.
Hard to justify when safety is the main argument. Yeah, $200 fine for cyclists would be a good deterrent, but maybe then it should be a $1000 or $2000 fine for a car doing the same thing [0].
If you want to argue that cyclists should face the same penalties as drivers, you have to make an argument prioritizing safety, but something like "respect for the law".
[0] Or - $200 plus points on your license. That's the way it works in many jurisdictions: the motorist rightly faces a bigger penalty even though the top-line dollar amount is the same.
Bike infrastructure in a lot of European cities demonstrates that it can work. American drivers are much more polite than European ones yet kill more cyclists per capita.
I don't know about American drivers, but you certainly shouldn't say e.g. Swedish and French drivers are equally impolite.
Why? They are different crimes. Cars are faster and heavier, thus will injure someone much more when misused.
I'm receptive to this, but I doubt it would ever be implemented.
If one is driving, and a bicycle runs the red light and jumps in front of them, they’ll hard brake (at least most of the people). This means they have a very high chance of being rear-ended by the next car, and if the driver is not very experienced, then can lost control and hit other lane / objects and people at the side of the road.
As a similar example, we don’t allow untrained and unprotected people into construction sites with heavy machinery. Saying “hey, let me walk under this pile driver, it is my life on the line!” isn”t going to cut it in the US.
Now, if you prefer the penalty to differ due to the potential for injury, you need to get the politicians to change the laws so they are not the same crime, or so that the penalty scales due to some formula in the law related to the potential for injury.
2. Drivers commit as many, if not more traffic violations than cyclists—and the consequences are much greater.
3. Your opinion would almost certainly change if you had to commute by bicycle.
Bicyclists (I am one) apparently want to have their cake and eat it too: driving all over the place (sidewalk, street, wrong way, etc) while at the same time wanting drivers to always be at fault for collisions.
As a driver, I think all roads should be closed for anyone else but cyclists. I'm a driver, you can't argue with my point, as I represent all drivers. "As an X person" is really good for discourse..
I also notice them from drivers all the time, as well. Is it stupid when a cyclist runs a stop sign? Yes. The same as a car doing it. And people are notorious for not stopping well if they are going to take a right. Such that we design for the behavior with round abouts. Car or bike.
Meanwhile, both times I've been hit, the car turned right not checking that there was a biker in the bike lane right next to them.
The GC seems to be a comment replying to a lot of sentiment in this thread which is basically "the driver is always at fault". Given what I'm sure we've all seen from cyclists (and the things I've done as a cyclist), I can confirm that this is definitely not the case.
I used to cross a bridge to get to work. There was a shared pedestrian/cycle pathway, about 6 feet wide, with cycles yielding to pedestrians. I remember walking across that one time with my family, including my daughter who was about 3. This one jerk rang no bell and blew past my entire family, about a foot away, at 20+ MPH. I didn't even hear him coming from behind.
3 year olds are prone to random movements. If she had moved by a foot or two at exactly the wrong time, it would have been a very bad situation.
On the plus side, the cyclist behind the asshole (who properly rang his bell and passed us) stopped at the end of the bridge to apologize for the first guy.