What percentage of streets have physically separated lanes for biking, the way we have them for walking?

Bikes don't fit well with pedestrians or cars, and painted bike lanes are a joke -- imagine if you replaced every sidewalk with "painted walk lanes".

In places where there is good infrastructure, like the Netherlands, cyclist reputations for behaving badly are basically no different from pedestrian or motorist reputations.

Saying "the way things are is dangerous for me, so I'm going to break the law and be a danger to others instead because I'm what matters here" is not ok behaviour. If cycling is too dangerous for you, don't cycle. You don't get to say "driving in traffic is dangerous so I'm going to drive in the bus lane where there's less traffic", right?

[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/rules-for-cycli...

In Germany, protected bike lanes are mostly extensions of the sidewalk, and while it's not ideal, it still works pretty well.

Evidence I can find suggests that's not entirely true. While pedestrians dying to bikes is extraordinarily rare, police reports of crashes in the UK in 2019 involving a (pedal cycle, pedestrian) pair happened 375 times and killed 4 pedestrians (~1%). Crashes involving a (car, bike) pair happened 13,336 times killed 48 cyclists (~0.3%).

That is (bike, pedestrian) happens 35x less often than (car, bike) but is fatal to the weaker party 3x more often when it does happen.

This dataset is particularly "accidents involving a pedal cycle and pedestrians which don't involve any other vehicles" so it excludes car -> bike + walker, kills walker situations.

(Injuries are another matter).

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/reported... looking at sheet RAS40004: Accidents, vehicle users and pedestrian casualties by severity and combination of vehicles involved (ODS, 105KB) with Vehicle A being Pedal Cycle -> Single Vehicle accident with Pedestrian and Pedal Cycle -> Two vehicle accidents with Car.

Also, note that super bike-friendly Netherlands has 1/10th the pedestrian fatalities with 1/4th the population of the UK. If bikes are that dangerous, why would such a bike-focused country have radically fewer pedestrian fatalities?

From what I've seen, the data is pretty consistent, in that more car-focused countries tend to have more pedestrian fatalities.

I think that's kind of missing the GP's point. AIUI they weren't saying cyclists shouldn't move to the sidewalk when necessary. They were saying cyclists should do so with respect for the sidewalk's primary users especially with regard to safety. A sidewalk is a kind of commons, to be shared. "I need this now so you all get out of my way" isn't good sharing, and in many places (where the law explicitly gives pedestrians right of way) should deserve a ticket.

But realistically, "cyclists should be nicer" isn't a policy prescription. We're just shouting into the void here, you can't actually accomplish anything significant with, I dunno, billboards shaming dickhead cyclists. Whereas zoning or road design changes could result in actual, meaningful change. And that would also result in cyclists being a lot nicer.

And I fully agree that there are a lot of bad bikers, but a bad biker is a nuisance to a driver while a bad driver is a potential fatality to a biker.

You're leaving out an entire category of users. Not that I'm surprised, having been in many of these debates regarding the multi use path near my home. "Share the road" turns into "get off the path" rather quickly, in my experience.

You have to see how this is a completely selfish position right?

The road is dangerous for cyclists so cyclists make the sidewalk dangerous for pedestrians. Sure there's a difference in degree but that's not a justification.

> And I fully agree that there are a lot of bad bikers, but a bad biker is a nuisance to a driver while a bad driver is a potential fatality to a biker.

To me, the "bad cyclist" is generally creating havoc on both the sidewalk and the street, alternating between street, sidewalk, crosswalks, alleys, etc. as it's convenient. This is really what I'm referring to when I said "especially at closing time". Those people are creating a dangerous environment for even safe drivers who may either hit them or get in an accident avoiding them.

I don't often find the hobbyist biker doing things like that which are dangerous to themselves except treating stop signs like yields.

I'm not nearly as concerned about the hobbyist as I am about the guy who thinks driving his ebike home from the bar is a great way to get home without drinking and driving. And that is definitely happening, especially with electric scooters.

That depends how busy the sidewalk is, and how the cyclist behaves. Conversely, I see videos of many places in North America where cycling on the road, even in dedicated cycle lanes, is a suicidal activity.

> The road is dangerous for cyclists so cyclists make the sidewalk dangerous for pedestrians. Sure there's a difference in degree but that's not a justification.

Have you ever tried biking on a 45/50mph road? The chance of you not being hit at the end of the day is not high. I'm not sure where else would one bike when there's such a large speed difference.

And in some US cities there really are no alternative roads with lower speeds limits to bike on.

It's also legal in my state to ride bikes on the sidewalk. That doesn't cause much of a problem for pedestrians because unfortunately there are few bike riders or pedestrians.

I only mention this to make people aware that what's legal depends on where they live.

When deciding policy, one cannot afford to frame things in terms of personal responsibility.

The red light, yes, that is valid complain. But stop sign, meh.

But also, pretty much any transport mode features people with bed behavior: cars, pedestrians, roller skaters. Those people are not even that much demographically different, unless the transport ends up tied to politics.

If cyclists had 90% of the road, and cars were forced to share the remaining 10% with pedestrians, everyone would be complaining (with reason) that's it's incredibly dangerous