> Even conscientious cyclists who call “on your left” or whatever routinely underestimate the necessary reaction time and overestimate how far their voice will carry.

You are absolutely right. As a cyclist there isn’t really any good way to reliably avoid startling a pedestrian in a mixed environment. Even if you do the even more conscientious thing and you slow all the way down to match speed with them, and then “walk” with their speed for seconds and softly anounce your presence with an “excuse me” there are still some who get startled. I have had people act after all of that as if I tried to murder them. And I totally understand them! From their perspective they were all alone and “all of a sudden” a cyclist poped into existence behind them. And in their subjective reality they have just avoided a collision by jumping out of the way of some “crazy speeding biker”, but that biker only exists in their imagination. An outside observer would see a bike slowly catching up and matching speed with them, with zero chance of collision no matter what they might do, but that is not what they seem to experience.

I used to encounter this back when I would ride kick scooters on sidewalks. Startling is instinctual and the verbalization of offense at one's existence(which often follows DARVO dynamics) happens in the process of catching up. But I've had success not getting negativity with urban biking more recently.

I rarely try to overtake pedestrians directly when off marked multiuse paths. Instead I stop pedaling and walk the bike while saying nothing. The persistent tick-tick noise activates their awareness after a few seconds, but I have to wait for a sign, and sometimes none appears so I will walk the whole block and overtake at the intersection. Regardless, they like that noise much more than a voice or a bell, because it's a bike that isn't imminently bearing down on them, so it primes their expectations.

This is facilitated by defaulting to the lowest gear, setting the saddle position low, and letting yourself cruise slow most of the time. Everyone, whether car, bike, or pedestrian, wants to default to "never stop, always be moving". But sometimes you have to explicitly yield and the adjustments away from efficient road cycling help with doing so.

> As a cyclist there isn’t really any good way to reliably avoid startling a pedestrian in a mixed environment.

A loud freewheel is probably as close as it gets. I'd guess a loud freehub could work too, but I like my bikes old, so no freehubs. Maybe some sort of jetsons noise generator.

Where do you guys live? Here in Sweden we have a small bell on the steering you ring when you want to pass.

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&channel=iphone_b...

I have a Cricket bell, which can be rung normally, and can also be clicked down to act as a cowbell, gently ringing as i ride along (especially if i give the handlebar a quick wobble):

https://granite-design.com/products/cricket-bell

I use this when i ride along a shared-use path.

It makes no difference. Either people are walking in a group and talking, so they don't hear it, or they have earphones in, so they don't hear it.

Wide paths with a modest number of bikes are usually OK. But I've definitely been on narrower paths and trails where cyclists are expecting you to step off to the side every two minutes because you're in their way. I don't mind every now and then when I'm walking but it can get to the point where you can't really mix modes.

The problem with bells is that people tend to act very unpredictable; you never know whether they freeze or jump left or right.

They will freeze for a moment, then jump left, then right.

That's also possible.

Such bells are worse than useless when the pedestrian is a small child. A three-year-old moves into the traveling bicycle's path on the sidewalk when it looks at the source of the curious sound.

This sadly has become less useful with the increase in headphone usage by pedestrians.

A pedestrian with headphones needs to ensure that he can hear any relevant traffic noise, e.g. my bell or an approaching car. Noise-blocking headphones or loud music impeding the hearing of a pedestrian are a traffic offense.

In that case a loud freewheel wouldn't do much either though.

Yep, anything audio, like a whistle, shouting "ahoy there!", has less use these days and with tiny airpods being a thing now, it's not even possible to guess from a distance if someone is listening to music.

Possibly some kind of laser beam thing that sweeps the ground in front of you might work?

> Possibly some kind of laser beam thing that sweeps the ground in front of you might work?

That's what the TFL bikes in London do[0]:

"The Blaze Laserlight is fixed to the cycle frame and projects a green cycle-shaped image onto the ground around 6 metres ahead of the cycle."

[0] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/santander-cycles/blaze-lase...

I don't really get the AirPod proliferation. Even if I'm in the woods by myself, much less on a busy path, I can't stand the disconnection from my environment.

Do you drive a lot? Drivers are very used to the audio disconnect.

Before I did my licence I was a firm believer in "no earbuds on the road", but after a few driving lessons I got so used to taking in the traffic situation with eyes only that I quickly converted to an earbuds all the time cyclist. A few years later I stopped driving so much and my cycling reverted to ears-always-open without me even noticing.

I drive regularly. Yes, there is some degree of audio disconnect in a car. I also have various mirrors and sensors of various types. And I'm hopefully paying more attention than if I'm just walking around.

You are also a lot less squishy inside of a car.

Indeed; here it's mandated by law to have a bell on your bike (together with lights and reflectors back and front). I would expect that's the case in many European countries.

There are cheap bells that you mount on the handlebar but they tend to break easily (and don't produce much sound; typically just one ting). Decent bikes have a more sturdy design, see for example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_bicycle#/media/File:Du... (it's on the left, wrapped around the handlebar next to your hand). These tend to produce more sound.

I'm in the US near Seattle. I don't have a bell, and I've got too much junk on my bars already to add one. When I've seen bells in use, they tends to spook the pedestrians anyway. Obviously it helps if they're ubiquitous.

I'm in Finland and most bikes come with a bell attached to them. To me they kind of feel like a thing every bicycle should have, like cars have horns.

They're a legal requirement in Denmark. Some take them off, especially the Tour de France LARPers that go in groups in the countryside, and just shout at you instead. Everyone hates them.

Plenty of them do have bells, ring them a lot and only start shouting after the bell is repeatedly ignored. Stop pretending to be deaf and all will be fine.

Some people are deaf or hard of hearing.

In my experience, though, the worst sidewalk speeders are on skateboards or scooters. (I'm not saying you shouldn't skate; rather, when there was a close call or a collision, that's what they were barreling by on.)

a bell as well, but it sometimes scares the crap out of people.

The least bad way seems to be giving them plenty of opportunity to "notice the cyclist on their own". "Look how polite I am" vs "how dare they order me aside!"

My usual approach sequence is bell first (very early/far, only to soothe my nerves when the walker later starts that "should have used a bell!" tirade - sometimes a dog hears and understands that early bell and notifies its human) then generous freehub noise (first stage of "notice on their own"), then more bell and when I'm close, already effectively at walking speed, a short burst of blocking the rear brake. Unsurprisingly, people who appeared completely deaf to the bell right behind them a second earlier seem to hear even the tiniest scratch of a tire loud and clear...

> As a cyclist there isn’t really any good way to reliably avoid startling a pedestrian in a mixed environment.

Why couldn't you just ask (or require) bicyclists to use bells or horns of some sort? Pedestrians would get used to the noise after a while.

As an example; That has worked fine for at least a century since bells were introduced as a requirement on bicycles in the 1900's around here (yes that is no typo). Pedestrians are usually annoyed but do notices the cyclist and that's what you want to achieve.

I don’t understand the facination with the bell. In what way would it help with the situation as described? Do you think it would startle the pedestrians less than the human voice?

Bells have zero effect on pedestrians. Bells are required where I live and I repeat that experiment a lot.

> I don’t feel as strongly about separated bike infrastructure, mainly because my experience with it is that it’s more dangerous than riding in auto lanes, and that it creates an illusion of separation that both heightens that danger and heightens the dangerous attitudes of drivers trying to navigate it.

That's why I specifically said "dedicated infrastructure", painted bicycle gutters are NOT proper bicycle infrastructure either. Bicycles should be at grade with pedestrians, but on dedicated cycling pathways so there's no conflict between the medium-speed traffic from bikes and the low-speed pedestrian traffic (even though they may often run parallel with each other).

Ultimately I call it "bike infrastructure", but really it's better to think about it this way - we have three different speed classes that need dedicated rights of way to make sure everyone is safe.

High speed / automobiles - It's not just cars and trucks, motorcycles and high end electric scooters belong here as well (I don't share space with bikes when I'm going 40MPH on my eScooter, it's unsafe for cyclists and dangerous for me as well - so I take normal travel lanes because I'm going the speed of traffic anyway).

Medium speed / bikes / eBikes / lower end electric scooters / EUCs / etc - Things that have a top speed of 20-30MPH generally speaking. Doesn't need wide lanes, and ideally should have more direct routes with fewer stops to conserve momentum.

Low speed / pedestrians / mobility scooters / etc - Obvious, you're going 5-6MPH max here even if you're out taking a run.

> painted bicycle gutters are NOT proper bicycle infrastructure either

To be clear, where I live there are recently installed “dedicated” bike routes which are separated from car traffic by concrete barriers and curbs, and also separated from pedestrian traffic by curbs and intermittent heavy ceramic planters. The problem is that the separations are interrupted to allow turns and deliveries. All of the separation is partial. I feel a ton safer in a painted gutter, and much safer still in the middle of a car-wide lane.

To make matters worse, the particular “dedicated” infrastructure I’m thinking of is on the left side of a one-way street and introduced complicated signal timings that surprise even regular riders and drivers. I’ve posted this before here and elsewhere: when I have to go somewhere in that part of the city and have to brave even a stretch of the route, I deliberately choose to be in car traffic even with drivers irrationally yelling at me to get in the bike lane and trying to run me off the road with their cars, because it feels safer than being in the bike space.

The theory of dedicated bike infrastructure is interesting to me, but what I’ve seen in practice where I live mostly motivates me to ride on roads with sharrows right in the middle of the road clearly indicating that I’m allowed to be there even if every single driver forgot their driving instruction.

Growing pains will be around for decades, unfortunately. Cycling needs to reach a critical mass before cities and regions decide to start de-prioritizing cars to alleviate exactly the issues you have with improved infrastructure. The Netherlands has been working on their infrastructure for over 40 years and keep finding new and unexpected problems that you simply don't discover until you have more bicycles than cars, like parking (when you start down this path you just imagine putting posts everywhere for people to lock up to, eventually you need dedicated parking facilities just to keep bikes from littering the streets like cars already do)!

We'll get there someday, every great journey begins with the first step, so until we catch up I wouldn't fault you for continuing to take a travel lane.

> Growing pains will be around for decades, unfortunately. Cycling needs to reach a critical mass before cities and regions decide to start de-prioritizing cars to alleviate exactly the issues you have with improved infrastructure.

No, we’ve been through those growing pains. Riding almost anywhere in the city is delightful and I have no issues with drivers or pedestrians. Walking is only an issue when cyclists take the sidewalk to avoid construction.

Literally the only place I fear for my safety riding in Seattle is in or beside the “dedicated” bike lanes which are poorly designed and dangerous. Several steps were taken before I could say this, I’m sure you’re correct that other places need to take them too. But in my city the steps which they took to make shared traffic routes safer have been much more effective at least for my own sense of safety than the hazardous steps they’ve taken getting dedicated infrastructure wrong.

I'm pretty sure you're considering "bad" dedicated infra. In the Netherlands cars don't cut into the bike lane for turns.

https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/vancouver-needs-follow-dutch...

Yes, exactly, my point is that the dedicated infrastructure in my city is designed poorly and that it’s worse than not having it. I’d love a well designed system, but I’m not going to celebrate one which “only almost got killed two times today” is how I’ve most often described it. In contrast, I’ve only almost been killed three times riding in shared bike/car traffic. Once my fault, once road maintenance, once an impatient driver.

That video doesn’t load for me, but I found a direct link: https://youtu.be/5HDN9fUlqU8

I’d love to avoid cutting into the bike lane (required for right turns in most of the US), but some of those intersections are massive and the rest (1:18 in the video) replace the sidewalk with a bike lane. I don’t think either of those will be popular in American cities.

> separated bike infrastructure

> drivers trying to navigate it

Well, there's your problem - it's not actually separated.

If you have a T junction, either you're going to have the car path going through the bike path, or you'll need a bridge or tunnel.

And the best places for cycle commuting have high density - meaning more T junctions per mile.

'Truly separated' bike infrastructure isn't easy.

Yep, that is exactly my problem.

bikes honestly should follow pedestrians, a bike is not a car and the person who will be the most amount of injured will be the person on the bike over the person of the car. so maybe have both car and bike be able to see each other in bike lanes, and keep the sidewalks to the cars. there really should be an initiative to expand the shoulders in rural america. lost of places in america are not even walking friendly. america decided to be different and make cars the main focus which is killing us (toxic gas fumes everywhere)