Drivers go out of their way to pass me on a motorscooter, I guess because I remind them of a bicycle. My scooter accelerates from 0-60 before you can say "zero to sixty" and tops out at 80mph. Sometimes they're driving so dangerously that I slow down to let them pass both because they might hurt someone, and because I don't want somebody so crazy behind me.

I find it bizarre how much some drivers feel like they're imposed upon by other people who dare to be outside.

I was on an ebike doing 32km/h in a 30 zone and cars keep overtaking me

The entitlement of car drivers in unbelievable, they feel like they own the ourdoor space, park on sidewalk, and the only reason we havent paved every forest and ocean is their mercy

I keep wondering if this can be directly related to car advertising.

Most car ads always show the car as alone on the road or street, as a symbol of ultimate freedom ("own the road" often comes back as a catchphrase). Yet this can't be further from the actual reality of driving.

Maybe the cognitive dissonance is what drives (pun intended) driver entitlement and anger when challenged.

Around here you’d be passed by the majority of traffic regardless of vehicle for going “only” two over the limit.

Just this morning I was walking down the street on a sidewalk and as I crossed in front of a driveway - having checked first - a car pulled out of the garage right up against my leg and stopped, and when I stepped away they started moving again to get close. The stuff people do in cars when they don't have right of way is absolutely deranged sometimes.

Yesterday I was at the four way stop in the parking lot next to the corner of the Costco building in Mountain View, after coming down the driveway from Rengstorff. As usual, many people were crossing the far side of that intersection as they left Costco, and of course I waited for them.

After I'd been there 30 seconds or so, a big SUV pulled up to the stop sign on my left. He was wanting to make a left turn toward Total Wine. Obviously, I had the right of way over him, and the pedestrians pushing their grocery carts out of Costco had the right of way over both of us.

After another 30 seconds, the SUV driver had had enough. He barreled through his left turn as shoppers were still crossing the driveway, barely missing one of them by a foot or two.

For some reason, driving a car causes a strong desire to move forward quickly in most people. Even for me, a person who hasn't owned a car in over a decade and always bikes or walks everywhere, whenever I get behind the wheel of a car, I get incredibly anxious when I'm stopped waiting for something, and I have to consciously tell myself it's OK if I wait for 30 seconds.

I have no idea what causes this, but I've noticed it in many others. Maybe because if you do wait a bit, some drivers behind you will get irritated and honk, flash their lights, tailgate, and pass you via some dangerous maneuver? That might be enough to associate waiting with anxiety for people who'd normally be ok with waiting.

You could be on something, as I must tell my wife all the time that she should focus on what's in front of her, not on what is behind her. She'd do silly things otherwise, like speed if she thinks the driver behind is too close, or miss turns to not bother... why??? For me it's the other way around - I was once stopped by a police barrage because a patrol followed me half the town with their lights on to tell me a stoplight was broken and I ignored them (didn't look back once)

Please try more actively not to be a bad driver and don't encourage others to be bad drivers too. You should always be aware of what's going on behind you. It could be the police or it could be an ambulance that you haven't heard because of the radio, it could be a tailgating driver ready to smash you into pieces unless you drive extremely defensively until they leave the road, it could be someone in an emergency, a truck with malfunctioning brakes hurling down the street and many more.

The road is a place when generally incompetent people are forced to operate heavy machinery and no one is really safe there, even inside a car.

It seems like people get irrationally anxious and angry having to wait behind people moving slower in general. On paths that cyclists share with pedestrians, cyclists are usually even more angry and aggressive with pedestrians than drivers are with cyclists (pedestrians are expected to move out of the way and often get yelled at if they don't). There seems to be this almost atavistic response people have to something in front of them impeding there movement.

A lot of people have no idea of the destructive power of the three ton death machine they are in command of. For that reason I think it should be mandatory to volunteer in a crash recovery ward at a hospital for 100 hours before getting a drivers license.

I’ve had a few bike accidents (usually me vs a trash can that suddenly rolled onto the bike lane, or similar obstructions of the road) where I had to go to the ER.

I obviously had to wait a few hours, because while I may have a concussion and broken some bones, there are people with far worse injuries in the ER.

One time I had to wait 12 hours because a major car accident had happened, and I saw them move the victims of that into the ER.

I was instantly reminded of the difference in danger, and very glad that my injuries happened with a 20 kg vehicle at 20 km/h, and not a 2000 kg vehicle at 100 km/h.

These people never consider the possibility they will actually hit something, their driving skills being so above average and all..

Personally I think they don't think about this. They want to feel safe and that's where the thinking ends.

Which is why we should force them to see the reality of what happens when people do. And they'll talk to those people who are severely injured, who will say "it was never going to happen to me either".

I'd bet the number of licensed drivers would drop, people wouldn't want a license after seeing the harsh reality.

A lot of people buy these three ton machines to feel "safe". In turn they don't feel the need to protect others from that machine. In my LA neighborhood I saw a lot of moms barreling through the neighborhood in their big SUVs with their kids while talking on the phone or texting. I have had several occasions where I had to jump out of the way to not getting run over. I don't think the drivers even noticed me.

when I had my motorcycle most near misses were also with SUV drivers not paying attention when changing lanes. The more expensive the SUV the more dangerous.

And the worst thing is: when they do run someone over the DA won't prosecute because they want to be re-elected, and when it does end up in criminal court the jury won't convict because they know it might have easily been them.

How do you square the "three ton death machine" with the whole "recreationally gallivanting across Africa in a Jeep and blogging about it for internet points" thing? Your words say a car usage should be minimized. Your actions say another thing. It comes across a lot like taking your private jet to a climate summit. I'm genuinely curious how you reconcile this apparent conflict.

There are two answers to this:

1. The person you're responding to is clearly aware of the responsibility required when driving a large car (their comment says this explicitly);

2. An outbacking trip through Africa is not meaningfully comparable to daily automotive commuting. It's probably safe to assume that the GP practiced outsized caution, given the logistical and legal complexity of such a trip.

I think that there is less traffic in Africa, and therefore, there is less chance of a dangerous collision.

I see this nearly everyday and wonder how it took billions of years to produce a species which is so dumb?

A lot of the genetic evolutions for individual survival do not perform well in a group setting.

It’s kind of like how our love for sugar once, it’s abundantly available, turns us into a diabetes machine.

And if you're in a position of power (on top of your massive SUV throne) evolutionarily you'd do better to run down your competitors.

So evolutionarily we should see men on SUVs riding down other men and rounding up women, I suppose.

For humans, a lot of the "dumb" stuff is rooted in our evolutionary history as primates, for whom dominance hierarchies are a big part of their evolutionary environment.

For our nearest ancestors, chimps, being a dominant male has a lot of value in terms of reproductive success. So it's not shock to me that humans males are prone to the same sort of dominance assertion and performance of being highly placed that chimps are. I read this sort of behavior as the driver asserting his "superiority", putting "lesser" people in "their place".

If you're interested, de Waal's "Chimpanzee Politics" was a real eye-opener for me. There was a big chunk of human behavior that went from "what is wrong with him" to "ah, ok, primates gonna prime".

When cars were first introduced to US streets there were pedestrian clubs who wanted them regulated as much as possible. Sure, one could argue this was because it wasn't that common to own a car back then and therefore those who didn't liked to "stick it" to those who did.

However I think it is hard (and unwise) to ignore the role which (car) culture has played in this. Before car culture streets were a thing one shared with pedestrians, horses, carriages and cars. If you change that culture and priorize other things in your public spending for a decade you can end up somewhere entirely else [queue pictures of Amsterdam in the 70s vs today]. This influences culture and therefore the way motorists will treat cyclists.

I am not saying that the nature-side of the nature vs. nurture debate isn't existing. It is quite clear that both sides exist from what we can observe. Thr nature side is much harder and riskier to change in our favour than the culture side.

The way it worked in the Netherlands is a good example. If your bicycle infrastructure is good enough, more people will bicycle. If more people bicycle, more motorists bicycle. This means more motorists understand what it feels like as someone cycling. This in turn means there is less conflict for both sides.

Unlike other species, we have optimised our ability to create losing conditions for some.

I don't think I have ever seen this behaviour? This must be a cultural thing?

I live next to a street which I cross daily (I am legally allowed to cross here in Germany, as the next pedestrian crossing is far enough away).

When I cross I make sure nobody has to worry about hitting the brake (provided they go with roughly the same speed they did before).

Yet it happenstwice a week that some lunatic thinks "hey the street is for cars" and starts speeding towards me (definitely also over the speed limit) just to get to a stop at the red light down the road.

This article is so insane, it just has to be some sort of outrage-bait (that actually worked for me, although my blood typically has a pretty high boiling point).

It seemed obvious satire to me (not funny or sophisticated, but satire nonetheless).

Felt like my suspicion was confirmed after seeing that other “Men of the Year” articles in the Free Beacon include “The Brothers Cuomo” (https://freebeacon.com/men-of-the-year/2021-men-of-the-year-...) and “Dem Who Spent Campaign Cash at Strip Club” (https://freebeacon.com/men-of-the-year/2021-man-of-the-year-...).

In this case the cyclist is the primary butt of the joke, not the driver. But the grandparent’s description of the article as “pure incitement to violence” is ludicrous hysteria.

Seems a satirical essay akin to a Modest Proposal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal

"A Modest Proposal" is meant to make the rich think twice about their treatment of the poor. Do you think the Free Beacon wants its readers to feel worse about rolling coal and abusing cyclists?

FWIW, I live in one of the least right-wing cities in the US (Baltimore), and cyclists here report that aggressive driving towards them is common.

A few have reported that pedestrian aggression towards them is common, too.

Yea. I lived in Brooklyn, NY for many years, and definitely experienced aggressive driving there, too. Often times, the offenders would complain that the bike lanes were new and bicyclists were guilty of gentrifying the neighborhood. Now I live in Virginia, and it's usually huge trucks or SUV's with Trump stickers that tend to be the most aggressive.

Anti-cycling sentiment seems to be one area where the "both sides" argument has at least a hint of truth to it.

It doesn't take a lot of people for aggression to feel common to cyclists.

Just as a proxy measure of right-wing-ness, 11% of people in Balitmore city voted for Trump, and 35% in Baltimore County.

But I think the aggression is part of dominance assertion, a behavior that is more approved of on the right, but you still see plenty of on the left.

Rolling coal on cyclists, and proudly posting videos of it on youtube, and plowing trucks through the bicyclists, and writing articles portraying the perpetrators as heroes, is a hell of a lot worse than the common everyday "aggression" that American cyclists experience.

They're absolutely not equivalent.

Can you link to hundreds videos of left wingers with Biden bumper stickers rolling coal on anti-environmentalists, smashing their scooters and pickup trucks with Priuses, Biden supporters murdering right wing protesters with their cars just like a Nazi Trump supporter murdered Heather Heyer, and articles glorifying those attackers as left wing "heroes" and "man of the year"?

Or are you just trying to make another tired and dishonest false equivalence to justify and carry the water for right wing violence and aggression that is no way reflected on "both sides"?

And rolling coal is only a drop in the bucket of the mainstream right wing violence that's happening today. I can't recall anyone on the left wing rioting and breaking into the capitol, hanging a noose to murder the vice president, proudly marching and waving Confederate flags and flagpoles with spear tips, vandalizing and defecating through the halls of the Capitol, or shooting a nail gun at FBI agents as revenge for Mar-a-Lago then getting killed in a shootout with automatic weapons by the FBI. (Or do you agree with Trump that was a false flag operation? What's your evidence?)

Did I simply miss all those news stories about left wingers rolling coal and executing insurrections and attacking the FBI, just because of the left-wing media bubble I live in, and if so, can you please provide a link to them to prove that "you still see plenty of it on the left"?

Or are you just ignoring the whole point and moving the goalposts a few football field lengths to make a false equivalence?

You seem to be arguing with something I didn't say. So much so that I'm wondering if you meant to reply to something else.

If you're really trying to reply to me, could you please connect what you're asking of me with what you said?

I mean cyclists here talk about getting "bricked" (what it sounds like, getting a brick chucked at them)

Just as a note, the County and City have a somewhat antagonistic relationship, although County residents probably make up a decent number of drivers within City Limits.

Yes, that was my thinking. A lot of urban core drivers come in from the suburbs. I'd be willing to bet that people from outside the city are behind a disproportionate share of aggressive incidents.

Yeah, as a resident I doubt that. We have a pretty aggressive driving culture and I don't think we can blame it on Trumpers driving in from the Burbs to cause trouble.

> The right wing in the US is so pathologically sociopathic that they actually glorify assholes for rolling coal on bicyclists as heroes, and think it's hilariously funny.

Or, you know, perhaps the articles that make money based off of clickbaiting people with outrageous premises that make people mad are not indicative of the vast majority of people. I find that when I talk to people, you know face to face in person, we usually agree on 90% of topics regardless of which side of the aisle you fall on.

The internet and social media thrives on labeling your in-group as the heroes and your out-group as racist, homophobic bigots (left and right). I really hate this mentality because it paints a broad stroke on a whole lot of people that are not crazy and holding radical ideas.

I would hope on HN I could expect the average commenter to be able to realize this and recognize that there's a lot more commonality than social media and news media would like us to believe. And that the average HN commenter wouldn't resort to automatically pointing a finger at their out-group and casting all social woes and responsibility on them. There are jerks on both sides of the aisle. There are great people on both sides of the aisle.

And just as an example, here's Chris Cuomo bullying a bicyclist[0]. I'm sure there are others on the left like this as well, but I'm not going to automatically assume that somebody on the left hate or loves bicyclists. I don't know that because we're all individuals and make our own decisions at the end of the day.

[0]: https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/long-island-bicyclist-verbally...

> People like that should have their driving license taken away

Cyclists shouldn't even be allowed on the road without a license. It's unbelievable the amount of crap I have to deal with on a daily basis because of people on bikes and motorcycles. Cyclists going the wrong way and against traffic, on the side walk, blowing past pedestrians at high speed even on pedestrian crossings, running red lights, failing to signal turns, travelling at obnoxiously slow speed, a whole group of them travelling side by side talking while blocking half a dozen vehicles behind them, travelling in between the traffic lanes, weaving through traffic, colliding and destroying car side mirrors even stationary parked cars, driving extremely aggressively in general, doing wheelies near me... It goes on and on, and any number of these behaviors can combine into something new. Every day cyclists invent new stupid shit for me to deal with. It takes serious effort not to accidentally kill someone on a bike.

I like that you had to specify 'legally' because riders in America basically never follow traffic laws.

Where I live I don't think cyclists even know the traffic laws.

According to a study by the ADAC (German auto club), cyclists have a better understanding of the StVO (German traffic regulations) than motorists, on average.