But different regions will have different laws and public opinion.
Even within cities it's pretty normal to have a 10+ mile commute each way. My commute would be about that far and include crossing 2 bridges, one of which would be a not insignificant climb (350ft). And I live relatively close to the office relative to many of my over-30 peers.
My wife & I both have our parents "nearby" or at least, relative to most of our friends.. nearby. That is to say, 75 miles away. My siblings live 200mi away in different directions, about 400mi apart. Etc.
Just a big place, some stuff works different. :shrug:
Cities are expensive and not building enough housing
People move further out due to cost
(it's because it's illegal. Because of parking minimums, density maximums, and level of service rules. Which exist because of cars. Which you need to go 10 miles because everything is so far apart. Because of those rules. Because of cars.)
The law may not make a distinction, but prosecutors and juries definitely do.
No, humanity has collectively definitely not decided that. Bikes have utility, so do cars. Their domains of utility superficially overlap ('transportation') but both serve well in different contexts. Where it goes wrong is where faulty reasoning such as this is used to prioritize one kind of traffic over another, which especially given that it is nearly impossible for a cyclist to kill a car driver but trivial for a car driver to kill a cyclist (or indeed any other user of the road) is kind of bizarre.
The road is a shared resource and traffic rules and infrastructure should be 100% based on inclusivity and safety for all participants. And if one class of participants routinely endangers the others then they should be held accountable, no matter what the perceived utility.
To speak for all of humanity is ridiculous, humanity isn't that homogeneous and besides you can be a driver today and cyclist tomorrow or the other way around.
That doesn’t make anything in your response less valid about how we actually should treat these resources.
Also, it’s a bike friendly thread. I am well aware of the audience reading the post, the point was to encourage discussion rather than unthinking reflexive action.
Also there are a few bike friendly areas inside the US, it’s just uncommon.
There’s awesome bike trails near them but they have no way to get there safely on their own.
I guess you mean because you suffer more, rather than legally? Because I'm pretty sure if you hit a cyclist with a car in the UK, you're almost definitely at fault (in the car).
Not that it matters if you're heavily injured. Similarly I hate being a pedestrian in the US. It's terrifying with the turning on red, even though I know I'm in the right, I don't trust the car to stop.
I have to admit that personally I find there's literally no topic like bicycles that gets people to jump from logical arguments to just spewing hatred (or total disregard) and your comment is just the precursor to the literal dehumanisation that cyclists face on roads.
The possibility of doing so in any but the most limited situations is currently unthinkable by most people. If I could wave a magic wind I would ban all cars and Taxi in NYC, but that’s a seriously minority opinion.
Not humanity only the planners of unwalkable/uncyclable sprawling towns with bad public transportation...
However, the rationalizing I see from some cyclists is like "just world fallacy" level stuff to me. I've seen enough stupidity on the road to understand that using a bike in mixed traffic is an extremely at-your-own-risk situation, and regardless of what the laws are, it doesn't matter if you're dead. Drunks/distracted drivers and random accidents don't care what the law says.
NYC has a half decent (especially in North Brooklyn) network of concrete barrier protected bike lanes, and yet I still see a tremendous number of cyclists going wrong way, and/or on unprotected roads literally 1 block from the pristine protected bike network, helmetless, playing with their phones, etc.
As someone who occasionally drives in the city (in order to exit/enter on weekends), the reckless disregard for their own lives is.. to me, poor risk management. And my driving is all of 1-2 miles to get from my parking garage to the nearest highway onramp (which some activists want to abolish.. which would leave me to.. drive locally, further, in more mixed traffic, for longer? lol).
I operate in the world as it is, not in the world as I imagine it should be. Cyclists are too small a minority of road users in US, even in most dense urban cities where it could/should work, for us to upend the entire transport infrastructure for them.
It reminds me as well of the Zoomers who only want climate change solved if it overturns the entire socioeconomic order away from capitalism, lol. Cool story, but do you want a solution or to be mad?
I don't think this can be taken at face value. Cars make the road (or stroad more often) worse for biking and walking, so more people drive, in a self reinforcing feedback loop.
I shouldn't have had to move to the Netherlands to be able to ride my bike for my daily needs and feel safe.
Humanity has not "collectively" decided to prefer cars over other modes of transit. Other countries, most notably the Netherlands, do in fact prefer a much more multi-modal transportation system over a car-centric one like in the United States.
Moreover, your comment ignores the contentious history about this decision in the United States, which was very much imposed on many communities without their consent and to the advantage of a select few who benefited from private automobiles over public transport and other modes of transportation like bicycles. I suggest reading historian Peter Nolan's book "Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City" if you are curious.
As to the decision making process, it’s very true that humanity doesn’t hand out power equally. But, while we can strongly disagree with the system that doesn’t actually change what currently exists without action.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
But a lot of kids are alive who would be dead without their efforts.
The difference is how much kids where biking, which has a lot to do with the utility of biking in a flat high density country.
Utility -> Use -> Risk -> Deaths -> Change
https://www.walkbiketoschool.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/...
""" In 1969, 48 percent of students in grades K through eight (ages 5 through 14) walked or bicycled to school.1
In 2009, only 13 percent of students in grades K through eight walked or bicycled to school.1
In 1969, 89 percent of students in grades K through eight who lived within one mile of school usually walked or bicycled to school.2
In 2009, only 35 percent students in grades K through eight students who lived within a mile of school usually walked or bicycled to school even once a week. """
From an American perspective the temptation is to bring up suburbs etc, but being bike unfriendly is a global thing. It’s really about the physical effort to travel X distance and therefore the reasonableness of biking such distances to see a friend.
Humanity has collectively decided cars have more utility than bikes. It’s possible to completely isolate bikes and cars onto separate networks that don’t overlap but humanity decided it’s generally not worth the investment. Thus your given the freedom to take risks, but the general assumption is you’re partially at fault in any collision.
Disagree and downvote all you want, but that’s simply reality whatever you personally prefer.