So do bikes.
see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32376016
> And I mean, really a lot, the amount of people cars kill is staggering.
The amount of kilometers cars run is also staggering.
Nobody is saying cars are good, but at least cars don't run on sidewalks, they stay on the roads and pedestrians don't walk in the middle of the road "just because they can".
Rules are rules, unless someone thinks that bikers are special and aren't subject to the same laws the rest of us have to follow.
Unfortunately it's much easier to encounter bikes going the wrong way, biking on pedestrian only zones, zig-zagging between people walking in a park, jumping on the sidewalk or skipping the red light, than cars (in proportion to the number of vehicles circulating)
The comment that you cite doesn’t actually have any supporting citations…
> Rules are rules, unless someone thinks that bikers are special and aren't subject to the same laws the rest of us have to follow.
I would love for enforcement of cyclists who break the law to increase. But that would require actually providing working infrastructure for bikes.
You can’t write someone a ticket for not riding in a bike lane when literally every single block someone has parked in the bike lane. If there was a place where every single day on every block, someone parked in the only road for cars in a major city and on a major road artery, this would be a national news story. But this is what happens on weekdays at ~8:45am where I am in LA.
Every city also has completely different rules about cycling, which very few people bother to know about. In many cities it’s fine to ride on the sidewalk.
There are indeed different rules for cyclists. There's the Idaho Stop and variants, Paris allows cyclists to go treat red lights as give way. Here in the UK, some one-way roads have a bit of paint to indicate that cyclists can use it in either direction.
Personally, I find that traffic lights are fundamentally designed for motor vehicles and there's better designed junctions that can allow cyclists/e-scooters to go through (with care) whilst the larger vehicles are stopped. Also, zebra crossings are much better for cyclists to use as they don't have to automatically stop (which costs speed, momentum and energy) when there's no-one on it or if they can safely pass behind the person crossing.
if not, they can't
and people on foot need to be sure that nobody is going to come that way, it's not the bikers decision.
rules are rules, they ate there for safety reasons, exceptions to the rules, are still rules.
> , I find that traffic lights are fundamentally designed for motor vehicles
they are designed to simply make precedences rules obvious.
they were invented for railroads.
I dream too of a way for people to always be allowed to cross safely, for example using light bridges, for pedestrians
except that when they are available, like where I live, bikers use them even if they are explicitly forbidden to any vehicle.
this is the bridge, you can clearly see the sign and the blockers
https://blog.urbanfile.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/2018-0...
> they are designed to simply make precedences rules obvious.
While what you are saying is true, the crosswalk signals that accompany traffic lights have a considerably shorter green than that for automobiles. Traffic lights are also timed to favour the continuous flow of motor vehicle traffic, rather than pedestrians or cyclists. In other words, pedestrians (and, to a lesser degree, cyclists) are considerably disadvantaged by traffic lights.
Another consideration for cyclists is that amber lights are timed for motor vehicles. Entering an intersection as the light changes means that a cyclists will usually be leaving the intersection once the light is red. On the other hand, stopping under such circumstances is an excellent way to be struck by an automobile from behind since the driver does have enough time to clear the intersection.
Judging from what I've seen on Not Just Bikes, it is possible to design controlled intersections that strikes a more reasonable balance between multiple users. Unfortunately, that is not the case in my neck of the woods yet.
If you look at the details of most controlled intersections in my city, it becomes abundantly clear that pedestrian and cyclist safety were (at best) secondary considerations. Some of them are so bad that pedestrians are expected to wait to cross in a blind zone. Things are slowly changing around here, unfortunately it takes a lot of money to undo something that should have been done properly in the first place. NIMBYism also makes change near impossible in many areas, since the loss of as much as one on-street parking spot per block is considered by some to be a more heinous crime than pedestrians being run down. (Thankfully parts of the city are seeing change due to lower vehicle ownership by nearby residents.)
Not all the red lights are like that.
And a reply to that comment states: […] it does not appear to actually show a per-mile statistic. Where are you getting that from?
And as the tabloid paper itself states:
> Since 2011, bicyclists have injured more than 2,250 pedestrians — including at least seven who died — according to stats from the city Department of Transportation and published reports.
So 6 / 2250 = 0.002666666667, or 0.3%. What percentage of car-pedestrian incidents lead to death? I'm guessing it is >1%.
> Nobody is saying cars are good, but at least cars don't run on sidewalks, they stay on the roads and pedestrians don't walk in the middle of the road "just because they can".
First off, they do not "stay on roads". See "Car smashes into Toronto bike shop and the metaphor is lost on no one":
* https://www.blogto.com/city/2022/05/car-smashes-toronto-bike...
* https://driving.ca/auto-news/crashes/toronto-motorist-drives...
Also "Why Cars Rarely Crash into Buildings in the Netherlands":
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra_0DgnJ1uQ
And pedestrians walk/cross the middle of the road all the time, at least where I live. This has been dubbed "jaywalking" as part of a campaign of anti-pedestrian propaganda in the earlier twentieth century:
Comparing it per-kilometer is disingenuous due to the wildly different speed. If you want to make a fairer comparison, you should look at it per travel-hour. And cars definitely do all the things you mention bikes doing wrong - you are probably just so used to it that you don't notice it anymore.
that would be awesome. if only there was a way to monitor bikes and who runs them...
anyway, per hour is even more faulty than per kilometers.
nobody drives a bike for 5 hours straight, unless it's a professional competition.
> And cars definitely do all the things you mention bikes doing wrong - you are probably just so used to it that you don't notice it anymore.
I've never seen a car jumping on the sidewalk intentionally or running high speed among people in a park walking their kids in a stroller, in the almost 50 years I've been on this planet.
Plenty of people do, actually. When I was a bit more overweight and trying to lose it, I used to go for 4-6h long rides around London in the weekends, and 3-4h long rides in the evenings after work.
Lots of non-professional cyclists go on cycle tours where they can ride for 10h or more for several days.
On top of that, 1h-1h30min long rides to and from work and other places were quite common as they are for many cyclists, and I suspect this is about the same for drivers in big cities.
Another fact is, bikers, electric or not, simply disregard any traffic rule. Cycling (fast) on sidewalks. Ignoring one ways, red lights or well literally anything that makes traffic rules.
The problem with bikers is mostly their mentality. Feeling above others, above rules, 'I have everything under control' mentality, in past few years added the sense of righteousness because they are 'ecological' (on their 5k$ ebike with tons of eco waste required to produce one, instead of boring good old public transport which works pretty great here).
When my wife worked at emergency, they had a case where pedestrian was hit by cyclist in similar situation as my experiences above (crossing road on green, mental cyclist comes speeding on his red light). Pedestrian went into coma and died 4 days after the accident, 40 years old healthy guy with family. These kind of cases don't make big news, its not terrorism but it happens. Just talk to emergency folks.
But cars kills pedestrians they hit. A lot. And I mean, really a lot, the amount of people cars kill is staggering.