(well, I was once hit by a car, but I was on a bike so....)

And bike lanes are already segregated with at least paint so that's already a signal. People just need to get used to it, which is hard initially when all you know is cars and walking.

SF for example is full of solid white lines. The law says solid white lines are supposed to be treated the same as concrete barriers. No crossing period. Yet people cross them all the time with impunity. If they were actually curbs people would only rarely cross them accidentally

As a cyclist, it's easy and essential to stay on the right side. Accidentally not noticing the curb will result in a crash or near one.

Research shows sloped or even leveled kerbs don’t seem to lead to problems (https://journals.open.tudelft.nl/ejtir/article/view/3254)

It will not. In the NYC metro area (including Northern NJ), pedestrians are constantly in danger of being hit by both cyclists and people on powered bicycles (which are motorcycles for all practical purposes).

I have seen these people hit people and on one occasion one of them kicked a stroller. If anyone says anything, they face further harassment: In one instance, one rider lifted her bicycle and hit me and left.

Delivery drivers tend to be better than others on the sidewalk, but then you watch them go the wrong way at 30 MPH with the giant battery pack and you feel for the driver who might have a close encounter or worse.

Sidewalks are for pedestrians.

PS: I notice that this thread seems to be full of people who claim standing on the sidewalk watching cars whizz by is scary. It isn't. Cars don't routinely jump the curb, cars don't routinely drive on sidewalks, most drivers are quick to yield to pedestrians. On the other hand, even if you are crossing at the walk sign, there will be at least four bike riders trying to run the red light through a hundred pedestrians at 42nd & 8th.

Of course they are. If you cycle on them in the Netherlands, you'll get yelled at very fast. I don't think anyone anywhere claims that people should cycle on sidewalks. Still, in many bicycle-hostile areas, cyclists choose to do that over, you know, dying - but that doesn't take away from the fact that it's dangerous to cycle on sidewalks.

The failure here is on the part of city planners, not the cyclists. And enforcing traffic laws against an even moderately skilled cyclist is difficult: I remember easily outrunning the bike cops when I was younger because I was simply in much better shape than them and could handle a bike a lot better in an urban environment.

Yeah, no, when there is a perfectly fine one way road with enough space plus a speed limit of 25 mph, having to constantly be aware of people on bicycles come at you from behind or around corners at full speed is the fault of the person who chooses to do that.

The fact that this happens every day, multiple times is because 1) the targets (e.g., moms with a stroller) are powerless in a one-on-one confrontation with these bullies; 2) the police will never enforce existing laws.

In Denmark and the Netherlands, at least when I got to bike in those places, the police would routinely ticket bicyclists. I know, I got tickets and paid fines.

In countries with decent infrastructure you don’t need to look out for bicyclists “coming from behind”.

I also find it interesting that the guy protected by a ton of steel is afraid of 200 pounds of mostly flesh coming from behind on a one way road and is unable to imagine how that 180 pounds of flesh on 20 pounds of metal might feel about the ton of steel coming from behind them on that “perfectly fine” 25 mph one way road.

This is either an example of a perfect propagandist misdirection or the best illustration of the blind spot people on bicycles and powered-bicycles have when it comes to pedestrians.

I was referring to pedestrians having to constantly have 360 degrees situational awareness because of faster traveling bicycles presenting a danger to them, to their babies or toddlers etc. The person who's riding full speed on sidewalks is already signaling the fact that they are a bully. All a parent pushing a stroller or walking their toddler can do is to try to avoid being slammed into at full speed.

As for the person driving a car, the fact is bicyclists rarely consider the momentum of those vehicles when they decide to run a red light and ram through a bunch of pedestrians crossing the street and zip through cross-traffic in through daredevil fashion. 99/100 that works out not because the bicyclist is not a complete nitwit but because everyone else is constantly looking out for them.

Rather, pedestrians pretend to be ok with cars because they’re socialized to believe car lanes belong to cars so if they get run over to death by them (which they do all the time) they blame it on the pedestrian, whereas if they receive even the slightest scratch from a bike while stepping onto the bike lane, they blame it on the biker.

And that’s before considering the fact that bike lanes in MUC are right along the sidewalks, whereas car lanes have several buffers between them and the sidewalks.

There are no trillion dollar bike companies telling pedestrians that they are at fault for any accident and that they are responsible for not walking near bikes. There are no bike companies that invented a new crime out of whole cloth (jaywalking) that tells people that if they enter 80% of the public street space and get killed by a bike, they are legally responsible (jaywalking).

How many tickets do you think have been given for “jaywalking” on a bike lane.

The reality is your entire complaint confuses the actual solution for pedestrians, which is more bike lanes (bike lanes save pedestrian lives since they create a buffer between sidewalks and car lanes through the bike lane, and I don’t think there’s been a bike lane death of a pedestrian in the US in the last decade at least), with your socialization which basically says cars own the road and any injury caused by a car is the pedestrians responsibility, whereas bicyclists are interlopers and any injuries by them, no matter how minor, is far worse than a car killing a pedestrian.

All the cities I lived in had comparatively decent cycling infrastructure, far from what it's like in NL, but still decent enough.

Now, I've never been to NYC but the problem there was that some people seem to hate cyclists no matter what you do. You can behave 100% correct and with care but you will still get people who feel you ought not to be on the road at all and will still try and drive you off the road no matter what you do, or they will pass you as close as possible just to annoy you, or where there's really no space at all. I've had people stop their cars just to hurl abuse at me, God know why. Things like that.

99.9% of drivers can be perfectly fine and just 0.1% are these kind of people, then you're going to run in to one of them every few days or weeks depending on how much you cycle, simple because you'll easily encounter over a hundred cars in a journey (And in reality, it seems to be far more than 0.1% unfortunately).

It's this kind of aggression, harassment, and violent assault that makes cyclists cycle on pavements. No matter what you do you're going to get shit, and at least on the pavement it's not dangerous.

Hell, on multiple occasions I've received shit for cycling on the cycle path.

You need to be an exceptionally cheerful and positive person to not become somewhat jaded by all of this.

Or let me put it in this way: if a large group of normal people are doing something wrong while performing in just one activity, then there's probably something wrong with the system surrounding that activity and not all of those people.

The only reason you’re more afraid of bikes than cars is because you’re socialized to accept cars.

Bike lanes usually adjoin sidewalks, as opposed to car lanes, which usually have some buffer.

But also because if you were hit by a car the likelihood of you being around to write a comment about it would be extremely low.

Why didn't they stepped unknowingly into car's lane - but did so into bike's lane?

It's all in the design.

Unless someone explains it to you, though, I’m not really sure how anyone could be expected to know?

My British girlfriend once unplugged my alarm clock because she thought there was no way to use the power plug above that otherwise, my alarm plug was "blocking" that one. I just reversed the socket and put it back in. She felt stupid, but since British plugs can be put in one way only I can understand simply not thinking of that.

Being new to the place, we tend to notice things that other people already took for granted.

NYC - cars, bikes and pedestrians all feel like they are the most important.

Paris - there are no rules, and someone will steal your bike anyway.

Amsterdam - bikes are on top and know it, cars and pedestrians can fight for the scraps.

Germany - cars are king. Some pedestrian crossings you even have to wait two lights to make it all the way across the road.

I'm still amazed about the roundabout around Arc de Triomphe.

Thank you.

That being said in order to maintain the beautiful traditional architecture and layout of the city centre sacrifices must be made, and as a cyclist I also feel the pain of being blocked by pedestrians. Everyone suffers a little bit, which from what I've heard seems to be a dominant Dutch political philosophy reflected in its coalition governments.

Compared to what? Los Angeles? Cairo?

Less sarcastically: I get your point, but it's a tradeoff. It's a beautifully car-free (and just plain beautiful and eminently livable) city otherwise. Yes, you do have to be careful about the bikes (as one must with cars, buses, and trucks, motorbikes and scooters just about anywhere else) -- but wherever you go, you pick your battles.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/disconcerting-rise-road-rage-shoot...

> So far this year, as of June 7, a person has been killed or injured in a suspected road rage shooting on average every 18 hours in the United States

The first-class citizens might as well take pity on them, after all.

After a few days there I finally started to get the system. Because some areas have sidewalks and bike lanes at the same level, I noticed cyclists will often use the sidewalks to pass slower bikes. I realized then that just like in any other big city, you have to stand up for yourself and when a cyclist is on a pedestrian right-of-way and decides to get up in your face, you're completely within your rights to push back and kindly show them the edges of the bike lane they've left. It reminded me a bit of figuring out how to get around NYC.

Outside of the cramped shared spaces in Amsterdam the aggression levels are understandably much lower and the separation between bikes and pedestrians is more manageable, and I never once had an issue elsewhere in the Netherlands.

I feel like getting hit by cyclists a few times does not mean you're more attuned to getting out of their way, but rather attuned to either walking in bike-lanes or just totally not paying attention. Or unlucky. Normally I'd say just unlucky, but....

I don't think the attitude of "you're completely within your rights to push back and kindly show them the edges of the bike lane" shows a winning strategy for "getting out of their way".

The reality is that we're all travelers within the cities we live in and visit, we all have places we want to get, and most of us do not want to interfere with each other negatively. "pushing back" is not the way you cultivate that, and not what most pedestrians or cyclists expect.

Yup, THIS. Right. there.

This is also the main thing other countries don’t realize. Bikes here are slow. They’re not meant to be performant. They’re meant to bring you slowly (but steadily) from A to B.

Also I much prefer a busy road full of cyclist with little sidewalk, than a busy road full of cars with dedicate sidewalk. All the noise and smog makes the walking plain terrible and borderline unhealthy.

The difference between cars is that cyclists - as a general rule - totally ignore any rules. Pedestrian crossing? Pah! Rules are for others! Instead scream obscenities at the pedestrian as you weave past and around them (at <10cm distance) for having the temerity of slowing you down when they are legitimately crossing the cycle path. A cyclist was recently prosecuted in London for killing a pedestrian when they drove into them at high speed after shouting at them to get out of the way failed to work... There must be loads of other non-fatal collisions that don't make the news

TL;Dr - During in rush hour it can be hard to cross the cycle lanes, but roads are fine. Cars generally do not try to "go around you" at very close distance when you are a pedestrian, but cyclists do.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists...

https://whyy.org/articles/cyclists-violate-traffic-law-no-mo...

As a cyclist just trying to get from point A to B at my default speed of 20km/h it’s immensely annoying when one of them suddenly turns onto the street forcing me to brake like a madman (and then build up all that speed again).

NL has about 2.6 pedestrian deaths per million compared to the US’s 19 or so (which must have only gone up since the pandemic).

And this is not even adjusting for the significantly greater walking that’s done in the NL.

Have you tried it? They're truly a wonderful place for cyclists.

(well at least back in 2001, no idea how is it now)

You learn to look left and right before stepping into a path or road.

There is no sane or remotely cohesive design to layouts and few curbs and so on

This sounds like someone complaining about being razed by cars while strolling in the middle of the street.