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Comment by noobermin | Hacker News Reader

Reading the comments on the article is fascinating. Drivers (of which I am not one) have a bunch of disdain for cyclists. I agree that some are just plain stupid, unconcerned for their safety and for others, but many drivers are just plain stupid, unconcerned for their safety and for others... and stereotyping in either direction. isn't fair.

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It's a case of in-group vs out-group, self-identification, etc.

If you said "I'm not going to respect drivers because they speed all the time," everyone would think you were a nutter; but the same sentiment for bikes gets a thumbs-up.

There's a bunch of disdain on both sides, huge amounts of rule-breaking, etc. People are people, people 'bend' rules toward their own gains.

But the thing I want every car-driver to remember, when they talk about their dislike of bicycles, is that they are driving a very deadly weapon (as Doc Brown says in Back to the Future "He's in a '46 Ford, we're in a DeLorean. He'd rip through us like we were tin foil!"). An angry jerk of the wheel 'to get back at a that bicyclist' puts the bicyclist in the hospital with permanent brain damage.

I guess all I'm saying is, be careful out there.

Along those same lines, cyclists should remember that they have both considerably more mass and velocity than the average unprotected pedestrian.

Yes! As a driver I don't have very strong feelings about bicyclists, as a pedestrian I am terrified. It has happened very often that I had to jump out of the way of bicyclists that were running red traffic lights and stop signs.

A lot of people say these kinds of things, as if they are constantly dodging homicidal bicyclists, but the statistics of bicyclist-pedestrian violence show that it is quite rare, and not particularly violent when it does happen. If you had a choice, you'd be much better off with the world's most aggressive, negligent bicyclists than in a city full of average motorists.

I've nearly been hit by cyclists going at least 30 miles per hour running through red lights. They careen past looking dazed. In many cases I've had to jump out of the way at the last second to avoid a collision.

I've been actually hit by a car as a pedestrian. I believe the recorded statistics on injuries are very much in support of the comment you replied to.

OK, you were _nearly_ hit by someone on a bicycle, and you lived to tell everybody about it on the Internet. Meanwhile, 2.4 million Americans are injured in car collisions every year, and tens of thousands of them die.

I'll just leave this data here to back up my assertions for future readers. This, from Streetsblog today:

"From 2000 to 2013 (the most recent year for which official bike crash data are available), cyclists killed eight New York City pedestrians, according to DOT. During that time frame, drivers killed 2,291 people walking. There were two reported incidents in which people on bikes struck and killed pedestrians in 2014, when DMV data show drivers killed 127 pedestrians.

All told, cyclists fatally struck 10 people in NYC in 14 years, compared to 2,418 pedestrians killed by drivers, making cyclists accountable for .4 percent of pedestrian deaths."

Considering that in NYC cars transport hundreds of thousands of times the number of people that bicycles do, the pedestrian death toll for bicycles per useful unit of transit is far higher than that of motor vehicles.

And of course accidents will happen. I am referring to being nearly hit at high speed several times by cyclists who were blatantly disregarding the traffic signal. It's just needlessly reckless.

Also, you have not addressed the issue of why someone who is allegedly healthy enough to cycle would be so lazy as to want to avoid having to stop at a signal and pedal to get up to speed again.

It's not about saving energy. It is much more dangerous for bicyclists to stop at stop signs.

By the way, transportation mode share in NYC is only about 10:1 in favor of cars over bicycles, not 100000:1

I go to one of the largest public universities in the US. I try to be a good biker (stopping at worst, true idaho stops at stop signs, full stops at red lights, of course). In between classes, when student pedestrian traffic is heavy on sidewalks many bikers dart and cut through the thick of people. It definitely is an annoying experience. I think I've witnessed only one accident however. While, as a biker on the road, I've experienced near death a number of times and being actually hit once, although not violently enough to case damage to me.

So yes, there is a lot to be said about bikers from a pedestrian point of view and a lot to be said about cars from a bikers' point of view.

That works great until such time at you jump towards the side the cyclist was intending to pass on. Then you might get hit.

The proper thing to do when being approached by a cyclist is whatever you were doing up to that point. The cyclist can't read your mind. They can't compensate for every possible thing you might do.

They know you are there and it will hurt them just as much as it will hurt you if there is a collision. They are not going to hit you on purpose.

Judging by the extremely reckless behavior around cars that many cyclists engage in, I am not persuaded that they are conscious of their own safety or the safety of others.

Additionally, many seem to be in some kind of trance while careening through red lights. There is a "walk" sign for pedestrians, and there is no way you can safely stop to avoid a collision.

Also, if you don't have the strength to start and stop the bike safely, then there are other options such as a segway or motorized scooter.

What those cyclists do is they are getting extremely good at predicting movement of cars and pedestrians and finding a collision-free path. Bikes (both motor and human powered) are generally much better at evading than at stopping. That "trance" is actually deep, but deliberately unfocused ("sense everything at once" instead of "focus on one thing at a time") concentration.

Ignoring the obvious illegality, this would still be bad for mainly two reasons:

#1 it all breaks down as soon as a pedestrian does something unpredictable (which he of course has every right to do) and

#2 the external behavior gets imitated by people who don't actually have the skill (and who won't know they don't have it before they hit someone)

I do appreciate that cycling is fun and that it's a great method of transport. The part I don't understand is why someone would feel the need to behave recklessly and go through red lights and put pedestrians at risk. It just seems like antisocial behavior.

I've nearly been struck as a pedestrian by cyclists sailing through red lights in SF...

It's so dangerous and reckless. There is no way the cyclists could have stopped or turned the bikes to avoid me. I walk at a decent clip and so depending on the intersection, no way the cyclist would have seen me in advance either.

The part I don't understand is that if you are riding a bike and don't have the strength to start and stop the bike appropriately for traffic safety, then you shouldn't be riding a bike. Get a segway or a motorized wheelchair.

They don't really have much more mass. My bike plus me has about the same mass as a mildly overweight 6'0" man.

I think he meant kinetic energy, not mass. (E=mc^2 of course but probably not what he means here.)

A 180lb cyclist going at 20mph has the same kinetic energy as an 8000lb person walking 3mph.

I would also guess most of the drivers who complain live in a city that lacks proper bike lanes. Bikes wouldn't need to interact as much with drivers if we defined space for them.

Most bike lanes don't fix intersections, which is where my biggest beef with most cyclists in my area is.

I drive about once day a week and bike five days. I get to be on both sides, and gosh darn do I hate both groups. I hate a few drivers in all areas, and most cyclists at intersections. (t's a daily thing to see cyclists fly through an all-stop intersection when there's someone at the cross first. It's a weekly thing to see a car driving the wrong way down a one-way road.

That said, it's the drivers that are going to kill me. (Leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 26: the human driver.)

Seeing the number of other cyclists that just blow through lights and stop signs, I'm pretty sure that the majority of them must not even know that they're supposed to stop.

There are a few bike specific lights on my route to work and the number of cyclists that stop at these intersections is astronomically higher than at other, equally busy intersections.

>Seeing the number of other cyclists that just blow through lights and stop signs, I'm pretty sure that the majority of them must not even know that they're supposed to stop.

As a biker, I think we need to educate others on this. If we bikers want respect, we need to be willing to share the road sensibly. I have a bit of strong feelings towards drivers, but I also disdain bikers who don't follow the rules and just make it harder for the rest of us to garner the respect we badly need on the road.

Do schools I the US teach children how to safely ride a bike? When I went to primary school in Germany we had a cop cone by several times and we went to a parking lot that had fake roads painted on it and he taught us about traffic rules and we ride bikes around the lot while he gave us feedback. We learned about right of way, arm signals etc.

Not a thing where I grew up in the US

Another good idea (seen in the Netherlands) is to give red lights a countdown [0]. In my limited, anecdotal experience, people are more willing to wait when it's clear how long it'll take. Of course, this should be done in combination with bike-specific traffic lights, of which i am an advocate.

0. https://s3-eu5.ixquick.com/cgi-bin/serveimage?url=http:%2F%2...

You're right that bike lanes don't fix intersections, and much of the problem stems from the New World-style grid city layout. Roundabouts are much safer for cyclists, although not a panacea of course. It's also a chicken and egg problem: right now there are enough cyclists in 'cycle-unfriendly' cities so to say to be dangerous, but not enough to find safety in numbers. Inner cities in much of Europe are cycle-friendly because there are so many cyclists that they interact with other agents in the transport system as swarms more than as individuals. This makes the reactions from other agents very different.

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