And if you want further proof, just read the list of bicycle fatalities in SF [1] and see who is at fault. Most of the time it is the vehicle. And guess what happens when a vehicle is ruled at fault and kills a cyclist? Nothing [2]:
> Unfortunately, the lack of charges in this tragic case is par for the course in our justice system which continually fails to prosecute traffic cases as the crimes that they are. Four people were killed while biking in San Francisco last year, and no charges were filed against the drivers in any of these cases.
The myth that all cyclists are irresponsible and reckless is untrue and needs to die. Most cyclists are drivers and thus can emphasize with drivers and understand and predict what they are doing. However, most drivers are not cyclists, and often think a cyclist is doing something wrong when they are not. Or maybe they only notice when cyclists are doing something bad and their selective memory is reinforced. The point is, most drivers are good and most cyclists are good. A little more empathy on both sides would go a long way towards improving the situation, and untrue claims like "90% of the time the cyclist is at fault" is not helping.
1: https://medium.com/improving-our-cities/a-list-of-people-kil...
2: https://www.sfbike.org/news/statement-on-lack-of-charges-in-...
And if you want further proof, just read the list of bicycle fatalities in SF and see who is at fault. Most of the time it is the vehicle.
This point has nothing to do with whether or not the majority of cyclists are responsible and law-abiding. All it does is suggest that drivers are inattentive, and that the state is strongly biased toward drivers and wrongly backs them up when they kill someone.
I wouldn't say that most cyclists are irresponsible (more that they tend to take risks, risks which may actually be reasonable and acceptable), and I certainly don't believe that most cyclists are at fault when there's a fatality involving a car (quite the opposite). But suggesting that most cyclists habitually follow the rules of the road... that's just absurd in my experience.
probably 80 or 90% of cyclists are responsible and law abiding. There are maybe 10 or 20 percent who are bad, run red lights and do other crazy shit
Just to be clear, your statistics don't actually disagree with each other. It's entirely possible -- I'd even say likely -- that the 10 or 20 percent of cyclists who "do crazy shit" are involved in and responsible for 90% of bicycle-involved accidents.
If you assume that the 20% of fatal accidents that are purely the driver's fault are evenly distributed among cyclists, can you also assume that any 10-20% of cyclists are involved in 90% of accidents?
Fatal accidents don't have to be like general accidents. But.
When I grew up in Germany, infrastructure was good and people obeyed traffic signs etc, when I lived in London it was every man for himself, as abiding by the rules was often more dangerous than not, and sometimes not even possible.
Have you thought of why this is so common? A bicycle uses human power, stopping is a much bigger hassle than sitting lazily in a car. And a bicycle approaches a stop sign much slower than a car, this having a better overview before crossing.
In fact, it's somewhat telling that most bicycle fatalities don't involve a cyclist doing something stupid: most cyclist law-breaking is done when the cyclist believes it's safe to do so, and they're usually very attentive and aware of their surroundings for the duration. It's when the cyclist is in a normal state, and has no reason to expect a surprise attack-by-car, that the fatalities happen.
(As a pedestrian, I very much sympathize with this. I tend to jaywalk quite often when walking, and when I do, I'm super attentive and ensure it's safe before crossing. It's probably more likely that I'd get hit by a car when I have the right of way than when jaywalking. But I'm still breaking the law, as is the cyclist when he/she runs a stop sign.)
And it's horrible.
The bicyclists ROUTINELY violate nearly every sane traffic law on the books. They go the wrong way against traffic, refuse to stop for stop lights or pedestrians in crosswalks, ride on sidewalks, have few if any safety features like headlights or taillights, and on and on.
If cyclists would simply follow the traffic laws that already exist, there would be many fewer deadly accidents between cyclists and pedestrians (yes, you read that right) and cyclists and cars.
If cars would simply follow the laws that already exist there would be many fewer deadly accidents between cars and people who die when hit.
But a cyclist running a red light is so commonplace in NYC that they think that it's not even a ticketable offense.
http://nypost.com/2014/09/24/most-cyclists-are-still-ignorin...
"There were no pedestrian deaths from cyclists in 2010, 2011 or 2012, according to city data."
I live in the Netherlands now but lived in NYC for 15 years and biked a lot while I was there. I'm not going to argue that NYC cyclists are perfect and follow all the traffic laws all the time, but at the same time, they're really not much different than Dutch cyclists. When it comes down to it, cyclists do what they have to do to get where they're going and avoid getting hit by cars. Some differences I have noticed: in the Netherlands, it's explicitly allowed for cyclists to bike against traffic on one way streets. Many more bikes in the Netherlands do have lights because 1) it's a 60 EUR fine otherwise and they enforce it and 2) the heavy dutch style bikes just tend to have them built in, whereas on the typical NYC bike, they're externally mounted and will get stolen off your bike in a heartbeat. The Dutch actually can be very aggressive cyclists, cruising through red lights when there's no traffic coming, passing suddenly and closely, flying through crowds of people, squeezing past trams, and generally inducing mild heart attacks in someone like me watching, but they're also extremely skilled since almost all of them have been biking nearly everywhere they go nearly every day of their lives since they were small children. They pull off complex maneuvers that I would never dream of and do it while texting. The final difference is that pedestrians here tend to be a bit more aware and will be careful to stay out of the bike paths.
Yes, but bicycles are no cars. So the city need also to come up with bike lanes and adequate regulations. It is too easy to blame the participant which has no real place in traffic.
The Dutch >50% rule was introduced after a randomish clump of accidents in which adults in cars survived and children on bicycles died. There were many mortal accidents year after year, a lot of Dutch felt that car drivers weren't behaving sympathetically, and that particularly gruesome clump of accidents drove public opinion far enough to pass the >50% law.
THEN the culture changed, AFTER the change in rules.
Most of the cyclists I see are pretty well-behaved, stopping at lights and behaving nicely.
The drivers, though, have no idea what to do with this strange two-wheeled human-vehicle centaurish thing which randomly appears on the road with them.
They'll swerve out into oncoming lanes of traffic if I'm by the side of the road. They'll pull to a near crawl and form a column behind me. They'll speed up and buzz my bike going 40 mph. They'll honk at me as they come up behind me, pass me, and drive past. One nice lady tried to run me down in her SUV because I had the gall to pass on her right. And if there're two (two!) bikes sharing a lane? They'll completely lose their minds at the sight of such a miracle.
Let's use hand signals, and show which way we're going--haha, just kidding, no drivers in the city seem to understand the difference between "I'm turning left", "I'm turning right", "I'm about to brake", and "being on a bike is so awesome I'm just going to flail my left arm around".
Also, the roads here are just barely good enough for cars--on bikes, you'll merrily eat a pothole and go flying, or bend a rim, or whatever. The sidewalks are even worse, otherwise we'd be on those.
And then there are the pedestrians! If drivers are clueless, people that are ambling around or jogging are malevolently stupid. Call out your passing side ahead of time, and they stop and crane their head around trying to see if God himself was talking to them--instead of, you know, moving out of the way in the indicated direction. Then there are the uppity joggers who will get in your face for sharing a dirt path ~4m wide.
The biking culture is getting better here, but it can really grate on one's nerves.
You completely lost me with this paragraph as your attitude to pedestrians is almost an exact reflection of the problematic one that many drivers have to cyclists.
Unfortunately, we are accepted neither by the drivers nor the pedestrians...I would be happy to stay off the sidewalks entirely (there being other safety issues with them) were the roads not so much worse.
Anyways, gripe as I do, I still consider it my responsibility not to hit pedestrians, since I'm the larger vehicle.
My position is that walking is humanity's natural way of moving around and that urban landscapes where they maintain primacy are by far the most pleasant in which to exist and move around. We obviously also need other modes of transport in our modern world but every effort should be made to keep these other modes of transport from taking over primacy. Unfortunately this is exactly what cars have done. There is much less of a threat from cyclists to pedestrians but still, as a cyclist, I feel that is up to us to respect pedestrians and not the other way round. Of course, I would also like to see car drivers demonstrate the same attitude towards cyclists (and, of course, pedestrians).
The reason this causes relatively few accidents is because people driving cars in cities are extra careful.
Because of this I'm inclined to believe that the safety of cyclists is a result of regulation much more than 'responsible' cycling.
Now, granted, the author's complaints about US automobile manufacturers' influence on society can still apply, because that can at least partially explain the lower ratio of bicycles to automobiles in the US. There are undoubtedly other contributors to this low ratio, like the significantly higher median income and vastly lower population density of the United States.
Even if the kid say, hides behind a tree then decides to cut across traffic without warning?
The fact that I'd go to jail for that is what's insane.
Even if there's no speed limit - driving in a middle of town, near a path or pavement lined with trees you should be careful, and slow down.
And in rare case that there's a tree near motorway and somehow a kid on a bike managed to get there and hide - you will manage to explain yourself before court.
What's important is the attitude. IMHO the attitude "anybody who misbehaves on a road deserve to die" is more insane than having to explain yourself after you killed someone, even if it's not your fault.
Death has smaller utility than discomfort.
You are putting words into mouths.
It's more like, "acknowledge that if you misbehave on the road, your chances of getting killed increase and it may be your fault." I don't know why it's impossible for some people to hear that without imagining the "deserves" part.
Then again, I live in Denmark, so my views might be a bit skewed.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/3739+Hollandsche+Rading,+N...
I was cycling south on the bike path, against the flow of the traffic in the lane of the road closest to the path when a work van pulled into the path at speed and nearly killed me (I managed to move over into the median between the path and road in time to avoid a collision).
The rest of the bicycling scene was fantastic, but given my short period there, it was quite an experience to record.
Last time I mentioned this to a Nederlander they said I must not have had the awareness of a native (I did not link the location that time), but it seems clear enough that a vehicle had no business pulling onto that path to travel (of course they might pull across it into a house or whatever).
It is essentially "Marine Law" - the most maneuverable must make way way for lesser. Perfect common sense.
With boats, maneuverability. With "road sharers", survivability.
Edit: s/waking/walking/
For example, a bicycle is moving much faster than a person opening a car door. It is clearly the fault of the bicycle if he runs into it.
Now see the problem?
The reality is that cars and bicycles do not belong on the same roads. Period. Bicycles need bike lanes that are separated from roads.
In the Netherlands, we would say check the street before opening your car door. If you open your car door on a narrow street and a car hits it, is the driver of the other car also responsible?
People start riding a bike when they are 2 years old. So everybody knows how fragile you are on a bike.
Most roads cars and cyclist share are 30 km/h roads.
You need to have lights while driving at night.
And so on.
It's called the cycle hire scheme.
In this time, not a single cyclist has been tried for anything, and yet several of them have been killed by HGVs.
Registrations aren't stopping cyclist fatalities.
I don't really have own experience of London traffic, but from reading newspapers, it looks like you should do less to cars and more to heavy goods vehicles and buses.
It really is just the HGV, and the construction industry related HGV at that.
"You should"... well I and very many others are. However the essence of the issue appears to come down to a mix of the economics of being a HGV driver, local politics, and the nature of congestion and traffic in an old city.
The economics is that HGV drivers are paid by the job. They are effectively incentivised to complete a job as fast as possible to increase their earnings. Being paid to go faster isn't very compatible with driving safer.
The politics is a blend of TfL (Transport for London) not having the authority to re-design many junctions, local councils wishing to maximise traffic flow, and residents not wishing to tolerate construction traffic outside of work hours. This means that construction traffic can only operate during the work day (when it's most congested), on roads that were not designed for such a volume of HGV traffic, with junctions not designed for cyclist safety or space. A very recent HGV fatality is directly contributable to Westminster Council refusing to implement recommendations by TfL to make a junction next to a bridge safer... this was last week, you'll find the info online easily enough.
The last point relates to the city itself. You'll see from other comments that the best thing to do is to segregate cyclists from the motorised traffic, but that requires space. London is an old city and we cannot move buildings and streets to accommodate this segregation outside of more than a handful of wide boulevards and roads (such as the Embankment where it is being done). We can only achieve segregation by turning 2-way streets into 1-way streets (as is being done on Tottenham Court Road), but even then that adds pressure to surrounding roads. There are limits to what can be done to provide extra space and re-designs to existing junctions and roads.
Possibly the best thing is the cross-London move to a 20mph speed limit.
But the biggest remaining thing that could be done might be to change the economics of the construction industry in London. Perhaps just place an outright ban on HGVs that do not meet some strict requirement for operating in such a busy metropolis. Perhaps just change the status of road fatalities by HGVs such that they are considered a Health and Safety issue of the work-site that the work is being done for... i.e. if the victim's family can sue the construction site for death then perhaps that will change the job incentives enough to bring in safety features, etc.
But yeah, we are on it.
Interestingly enough, over here (Helsinki) we have lots of segregated bike/pedestrian paths, and many cycling activists want to remove them from inner city and have bicycles on the street among other vehicles, "to be equal".
Personally, I think they're nuts. The separate paths are good, even if we still have to watch out in intersections.
http://chi.streetsblog.org/2013/10/24/no-a-bike-license-fee-...
Is this insane and unfair? No, it's about the responsibility that comes with driving a big, dangerous hunk of metal amongst unprotected civilians. For a country where most people believe that they can be considered responsible enough to own firearms, that responsibility for something that is potentially equally deadly shouldn't be that big a burden.
The notion that you can legally run down and kill a child on a bicycle just because that child was "wrong" is what's insane.