Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco | Hacker News Reader

Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco

fastcoexist.com

157 pointsduck266 comments

I've spent most of my life with cycling as my primary mode of transportation, living in Minneapolis, Santa Fe, London and SF/Oakland. I ride fast and generally try to go with the flow to avoid inconveniencing drivers while also being considerate to pedestrians. I think this traffic cone thing is pretty cool, but I have a larger observation to make:

Here's the thing about SF: everyone is way too fucking agro. Drivers freak out when they can't drive 50mph down a city street. The cyclists are banging u-locks on hoods because someone cut them off. Everyone is road raging like crazy.

I lived in London for 3 years, with all the narrow streets and everything overcrowded to the bursting point. Central London is 10x as crowded as SF in every way, and yet somehow the pedestrians, cyclists and drivers all manage to co-exist. It's not a panacea for sure, it obviously can't compare to Amsterdam, but the whole Keep Calm and Carry On mentality definitely applies to transportation. You know what happens? Buses pass other buses by going into the oncoming traffic lane and oncoming traffic moves over to accommodate them. Pedestrians spill into the streets sometimes, and cars don't kill them. Vans and lorries sometimes drive up onto the pavement (ie. sidewalk) in order to get around an obstruction. Pedestrians pull off to the side of the walk way if they need to pay attention to their phone. Everyone implicitly acknowledges: hey, it's crowded, we have to cooperate to get where we're going.

SF could use a lot more of that attitude. I thought the west coast was supposed to be chill.

> to avoid inconveniencing drivers

I used to cycle like that, in London.

I moved to Copenhagen, and quickly had to change my behaviour. Drivers are firmly at the bottom of the heap here, and everyone knows it. It's inefficient and confusing to others to disrupt this.

And that is how it should be. Cars are great to go between cities fast, but inside cities they should behave like guests. Ironically, most drivers are guests to a city as well, coming from the suburbs. Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city, and should be honored as such. In most medium to big Dutch cities this is the case, although there is always room for improvement.

"Cars are great to go between cities fast, but inside cities they should behave like guests"

No, especially in north american cities where you can walk few places, cares are another form of transit, like anything else.

Relatively few people actually ride bikes.

"Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city" this is completely false in most situations, especially in North America.

You cannot reasonably walk 5Km to work every day and back. The vast majority of people live far from work.

Even with cities that have good public transit, it's not optimal in tons of cases.

Cars - or things like them - are going to stay. They are not going away.

You're talking specifically about North American cities, where everything is designed around automobile usage. And that is the problem the article talks about. It has been designed with this goal in mind so much, that it results in lots of pedestrian and cyclist deaths. Cities that are not designed like this are much compacter, so distances become smaller.

Commuting 5km by bicycle is fine, takes roughly 20 mins if the roads are decent. Using a tram or bus that has a decent frequency it will take roughly the same time, even including a few minutes of walking.

See example: https://www.google.nl/maps/dir/52.1136289,5.0897208/52.08605...

> Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city

The more I think about it, the more I think this is a myth. Everybody say they are the most efficient, but with regards to which metric? The only important metric is door-to-door time.

If I can walk a short distance to the bus stop, have a ride and then walk another short distance to my workplace, then I'm lucky and I don't even consider driving to work.

But if I have to drive to the nearest bus/train station (actually, to the parking nearest the station), then ride to the city centre, then a bus to the suburbs, then a walk in the suburbs... sorry, the car will make much sense, even with the traffic jams.

“The suburbs“ is not "inside the city". That was his whole point: cars from outside should behave like guests, not like they own the place.

When I'm on a bike, I just hate public transport with a passion. Why, because some enlightened person decided it was a good idea for traffic lights to give priority to trams and busses. Net effect is waiting for a red light while the tram is still at a stop not even ready to cross the intersection.

Beyond that, give and take space within the rules. There is no need to go out of your way to make space for cars, but also don't be a jerk and take priority just because you are on a bike.

Pedestrians, cyclists and public transportation are the most efficient mode of transportation inside a city, and should be honored as such.

You're thinking of motorcycle/scooter. All the speed and independence of a car, while taking up only a fraction of road and parking space. And I can still haul lumber and groceries on my motorcycle.

Agreed, but the funny thing about London is that cyclists tend to be more of a menace than cars. There is a noticeable minority who just don't want to stop for pedestrians.

Cycle couriers/deliveroos are the cycle equivalent of the white van man and the black cabbie - they drive for a living and time is money, so they try to kill you if you so much stand in their way.

Luckily even if they crash into you, they are as likely to kill themselves a you - something that cannot be said of white van men...

Ok, but it's really lycra clad commuters I've had bad experiences with... some of them are just oblivious

I don't find black cabs threatening. It's the Ubers who are usually really dangerous. Not sure if it's because they're new to their jobs (a high turnover occupation?), or half asleep.

If they're in lycra, they're very unlikely to be a commuter. They'll be a sports cyclist, not a utility cyclist. Utility cyclists wear normal clothes.

In London, it's quite common to see cycle commuters with sports clothing. They take a shower and change clothes at the office

> lycra clad commuters I've had bad experiences with... some of them are just oblivious

Or perhaps it's because they're often faster than you, come out of nowhere with no audible warning, cut you off based on their expectation of your predictability, and then shake their asses at you.

> cyclists tend to be more of a menace than cars

That must be why bikes injure 60,000 people per annum in the UK, and kill ~2,000. Then there's the ~40,000 deaths from pollution. Oh wait, that's the cars.

Maybe you need to rethink what you mean by "menace"? Annoying and inconvenient (even threatening) is not the same as deadly.

> That must be why bikes injure 60,000 people per annum in the UK, and kill ~2,000. Then there's the ~40,000 deaths from pollution. Oh wait, that's the cars.

40k deaths from impact from car, or 40k deaths from pollution? The two are not the same. Cars produce a lot of pollution. So do offices. So do busses. So does the underground tube network. Impact from car I'm sure is cause for a lot of injuries and deaths, use the real numbers to make your point if you want it to be taken more seriously.

Here's an anecdote, since this already isn't an argument based on numbers and facts. I've never been hit by a car in London. In the space of a year, I've been hit by two cyclists and lost my takeaway dinner on account of a third.

Cyclists need to learn red lights apply to them to. Skipping through red lights, or worse, jumping onto the pavements at red lights to be able to bypass 'legally', all the while ringing their bells, is incredibly antisocial and does nothing to help build any sympathy to the many cyclists who get hurt and/or killed by drivers every week.

> Cyclists need to learn red lights apply to them to.

As do motorists. Cars go through red lights all the time but we don't seem to notice, for some reason. If you'd been hit by cars this year, you would have suffered far more serious injuries and possibly death. That hardly ever happens with bikes.

My figures for KSI are possibly a little out of date, there are actually 180,000 of them each year in the UK:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reported_Road_Casualties_Great...

> 40k deaths from impact from car, or 40k deaths from pollution?

I think it's clear I was talking about pollution there.

http://www.nhs.uk/news/2016/02February/Pages/Air-pollution-k...

> 'There had previously been a focus on pollution from solid fuel burning, such as coal – which, as a result, fell dramatically. However, this has been replaced by concerns about exposure to pollutants from transport sources, especially cars. Even the "cleanest" of engines can produce nitrogen oxides, ozone and particulates – small specks of matter, such as soot. All three may have a potentially harmful effect on health.'

> As do motorists. Cars go through red lights all the time but we don't seem to notice, for some reason.

Hell, I've seen buses run red lights and once almost kill somebody in my city. Nobody complains, nobody does fuck-all about it. Deaths from road vehicles are seen as normal, having a bruise for a couple of days on the very rare occasion a bicycle runs into you is the end of the world.

> > Cyclists need to learn red lights apply to them to.

> As do motorists. Cars go through red lights all the time

I'd suggest an experiment: find a central location in a city, and sit down next to a traffic light. Ideally during a commuter period.

Watch for an hour, recording the number of cyclists who jump a red light, and the number of motorised vehicles which jump a red light.

Which would you expect to have the most? Would you expect one to significantly outnumber the other, and by what proportion?

> Which would you expect to have the most?

Cars, by a significant proportion - because there are far more of them than bikes. But what I would "expect" is neither here nor there. (You can find examples of both kinds of law-breaking if you look on youtube, for example.) The main point is: when bikes do this, it is obnoxious but far less dangerous than when motor vehicles do it. This is reflected in KSI statistics.

It has been pointed out that the way cyclists and motorists jump red lights is different: some motorists tend to be "amber gamblers" or last-second red-light jumpers, whereas some cyclists tend to go right through regardless of the light phase. This looks worse and leads to confirmation bias when discussing this subject. The thing where motorists jump red lights is so commonplace we simply edit it out of our daily experience. If you look, you will see all kinds of motor vehicles going through red lights at just about every opportunity.

Another point is that cars get fewer opportunities to run red lights when there is a car in front, since if the guy at the front stops, usually everyone behind him has to as well. Bikes can move along the line of traffic and go through the red light at just about every time. So a very small number of law-breakers on bikes gives the impression that everyone is doing it.

Another experiment for you: wait at an intersection and see how many cyclists obey the law all the time. One of them might be me, which is one reason I get annoyed at being tarred with the same brush as a minority of cyclists. We usually don't do this for motorists, and it's not the result of "experiment" but bias and prejudice.

> > Which would you expect to have the most?

> Cars, by a significant proportion - because there are far more of them than bikes.

Personally, I would expect bikes, based on what I routinely see whilst walking to and from work.

There are factors which make it less likely for motorised vehicles to jump red lights. Firstly, they're identifiable (number-plate) and can be tracked down after the incident without needing to immediately chase them down. This increases the likelihood that they're held accountable. Secondly, as you pointed out, it only takes one motorist to obey the law, and the others are forced to follow suit, whilst it's easy for cyclists to filter to the front, then break the law.

I understand when you point out that the consequences of a motorist jumping the lights are much more severe, and I do agree with that, but I disagree with the idea that motorists jump red lights as often or more often than cyclists.

Whether cyclists should be permitted to jump red lights, cycle the wrong way on a one-way road, and be exempted from similar traffic controls is another question. There's a lot to suggest that the anger at cyclists is the routine brazen law-breaking, so exempting them from the law would go some way to defuse that anger. As the regulations were aimed at the more serious consequences of vehicular impact, exempting cyclists wouldn't have the same level of risk.

If you do this, divide the number of people who run a red light out of the number of people who have the opportunity to run that red light.

Once one car stops, no following cars have a chance to run the light.

Any bicycle that stops somewhere within a few car-lengths of the junction could wiggle round and run the light.

In my experience in London, a higher proportion of cars run the lights.

Real numbers on actual collisions (UK urban areas, 2012):

Pedestrians killed by motorists: 253

Pedestrians killed by cyclists: 1

Pedestrians seriously injured by motorists: 4,426

Pedestrians seriously injured by cyclists: 78

These numbers won't change the feeling.

You know, you'll get soaked under rain, but a lighting can kill a person. Still, if you ask people what is more annoying between rain and lightings, what do expect as a result?

On the other hand, if a lot of drunk people cross the street with no caution, statistically many more will be hit by a car rather than by a bike (many more cars than bike, larger volume, reduced possibility of lateral movement), and an accident with a car is statistically more dangerous than with a bike due to the mass.

So, to sum up, number of people killed has hardly any correlation with annoyance. If I risk one accident per year with a car and ten with bikes, I'll be "against" bikers.

> Here's an anecdote, since this already isn't an argument based on numbers and facts. I've never been hit by a car in London. In the space of a year, I've been hit by two cyclists and lost my takeaway dinner on account of a third.

That's pretty much my experience too. However, my comment was downvoted to the death, as it doesn't make sense in statistical terms.

Anyway, one very real issue here is that the average London cyclist doesn't know when it's safe to pass a red light, and when it's not. There is a lack of road-reading skills.

Can I counter your anecdote with my sister's friend, who was killed by a car on an urban, residential road? He's not able to post on HN.

Arguments on anecdotes are pointless, when there are statistics available.

> I've never been hit by a car in London. In the space of a year, I've been hit by two cyclists

The thing is, the people who were hit by cars instead of by cyclists are dead and therefore not posting about it on HN.

(Compare the story about WW2 bombers in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Wald .)

Perhaps I should have said : more of a menace to me.

Want some fun? Try being someone who commutes in the Bay area via a combination of walking and public transit.

Cars give me very little trouble. Bicycles, though.. at least a couple times a week I nearly get killed by one.

At crosswalks, typically I'm in a crowd of people and drivers know better than to try to make a turn through the crowd. Cyclists, though, will blow through, even just flat running a red light, and seem to have blind trust they'll be able to avoid hitting anyone even at high speed. One recent example: a guy on a bike, coming off a downhill stretch and towing something behind him, ran a red while I was in a crosswalk, close enough that I literally had to jump back. He was doing easily 30mph, and I'd be dead or seriously injured if he'd hit me, but did he care? Nope, he had places to be!

Same thing happens with bikes zooming down the wheelchair ramps off the Caltrain platforms; there are signs telling cyclists to dismount and walk the bike, but they know nobody's going to enforce it on them.

The one and only time I've seen anything done was about three months ago when a bike, stuck in traffic on the street, suddenly hopped onto the sidewalk and scattered a bunch of pedestrians in doing so. Lucky for them and unlucky for the cyclist, he did it right in front of a motorcycle cop who ran over, grabbed him, and gave him an earful and a citation.

And don't even get me started on trying to get home the nights Critical Mass does its rides. I just leave early and hope to avoid them.

Bicycles are a tool for turning ordinary people into selfish jerks, jealously guarding their precious forward momentum. A pedestrian doesn't mind if they have to stop for a moment, it's no big deal. A driver doesn't mind stopping for a moment either, it's easy to get back up to speed again. But for a cyclist, having to stop is a minor disaster requiring a massive effort to get back up to speed, so they start behaving like desperate people, and desperate people have little regard for the rules or for the wellbeing of others.

Combine that with the feeling of moral superiority which inflicts those of an environmentalist bent when they're doing something which they consider virtuous, and you've got a recipe for major jerkhood.

I'm a pretty relaxed cyclist. I ride more or less upright, but the forward momentum is precious. It's no problem to stop while walking, it takes no more energy to start walking than to continue walking. Same goes for driving a car. On a bike on the other hand, starting to cycle requires much more energy than keeping momentum.

That said, some "avid cyclists" are total jerks.

On a bike on the other hand, starting to cycle requires much more energy than keeping momentum.

To which I have to say: that's on you. The only way to have multiple modes of transportation -- motorized, pedal, and foot -- coexist is for everybody to give a little. Which means there are times when you will have to stop and yield and wait for someone else, even if it costs you "momentum".

(and this is the polite version of the response; the impolite version points out that your argument is no better than a driver who gets impatient in stop-and-go traffic; manual transmissions are horrendous to drive in those conditions, but nobody suggests manual drivers should get legal exemptions to red lights and stop signs the way people suggest -- and some places have even established -- for cyclists)

Take out "motorized" and the traffic code pretty much goes away. Intersections with semaphore lights, all of it. It's all for the sake of motor vehicles. Pedestrians and cyclists can stay out of each other's way without anyone having to stop.

I never had a problem with a manual transmission in heavy traffic. If you look some five to ten cars ahead to anticipate what is going on and leave a bit of space, you don't have to come to a full stop. You can use first gear to creep very slowly, if necessary. Also, as long as you have some forward momentum, the clutch picks up very easily in second. I handled most congested situations in second gear with just clutch work every now and then.

Also, if I had to come to a full stop, I wouldn't start again if it was obvious that the car ahead of me would be only able to move three feet before coming to a full stop again. Automatic transmission drivers tend to stare at the bumper of the car ahead of them and track every minute movement.

I understand where you're coming from, but reality is what it is, and how we design streets should reflect it, meaning we should design streets/cycle tracks so that cyclist don't have to stop at every intersection. If we want more cyclists and less cars in our cities.

In Copenhagen they have the "green wave" for cyclists. If you cycle at about 20 km/h you'll get green lights all the way through the city, they even have LED signs counting dow for next light change so you can slow down to hit the green or accelerate to reach the green before it changes to red.

> On a bike on the other hand, starting to cycle requires much more energy than keeping momentum.

Sounds like that can be fixed by having electric bikes that generate energy when braking, which can be used to accelerate again.

Jerks happen to use various ways of moving around. Some happen to use a bike, please don't use generalization.

While momentum argument is real, my personal philosophy as a daily commuting biker in France is "I'm the more exposed to risk and the more hated road user, so don't get in the way of cars and don't ever dare touch pedestrians"

That being said, yes I do pass red light when I have good clearance and I don't "emergency brake by courtesy" for pedestrians that are not already engaged in crosswalks or clearly far from my course.

Theses two paragraphs are perfectly compatible IMHO. It's just that in order to play with the rules you must know and accept them and be aware that you are doing something borderline. And by borderline I mean something specifically NOT dangerous to others and yourself. If it's dangerous it's just plain dumb and irresponsible.

> I don't "emergency brake by courtesy"

It's not by courtesy, it's by driving code. And the fact that you don't judge your behaviour dangerous doesn't imply that it's not perceived as dangerous by people around you: as such, you are just egoistically imposing an annoyance to people contrary to their right. In other words, you're misbehaving.

Well I don't know how it work in the USA. But here in France half of the time, if you strictly apply the driving code as a biker and "emergency brake by courtesy", the pedestrian will bluntly look at you with a suspecting look for 5 seconds before eventually crossing.

Other half of the times they will say "you go sir" then you debate on who get to go first. At worst you "win" this unwanted honor you then have to slowly start again your momentum under the condescending eyes of the pedestrian that will say later "bike run like jerks!" to his friend.

While on bike, if the pedestrian is not engaged it is really smoother and smarter if you go first and the pedestrian go after. If he's engaged most of the time you can ride behind him, if not then you brake and don't even dare touch him.

Usually the only case you really have to emergency brake at a crossroad is when clearly the pedestrian is about to cross anyway and/or pay really no attention to his surrounding.

> Well I don't know how it work in the USA. But here in France ...

Btw, I live in France, too. The same happens to me while driving, too. I agree that regaining momentum is much more annoying while riding, rather than driving. Still, a small amount of time is wasted in both cases. I usually take it as an opportunity to exchange a smile with the grateful pedestrian. That's one of the aspects of France I love :-)

I think you are being way too charitable to cars. Maybe it's where you are from, but I can't say that is my experience.

>A driver doesn't mind stopping for a moment either,

This has to be a joke right? Drivers roll through stop signs all the time. Sometimes they don't even stop. And don't get me started on the "Red light means only 2 more cars can go through" attitude. Anytime I cringe at having gone through a yellow-turning-red, I am always surprised/relieved/disappointed to see several cars follow me through.

Sometimes I'm afraid to stop at a just-turning-red light because I know the cars behind me expect to be able to speed up and follow me through the beginning of the red light, and if I stop they might rear-end me.

You sure you are talking about the Bay? That's exactly what happens in Geneva.

To the guy who down-voted my comment, please care to explain?

It was a woman, muhahahahah

Yeah, the pedestrians don't do themselves a service either. Crossing on red is common and now in the uprise of having something in your ears or looking at something in your hands there are a lot of obvious missteps into a cyclists line. I think we should not be as quick to dismiss dasil003's comment. We can all back off a bit, cyclists, drivers, and pedestrians alike. Stop riding the edge, back off, and just take an extra second to proceed, an extra one or two seconds can make all the difference.

The number of deaths in bicycle - pedestrian collisions is about 1 (one) every few years.

I'm sure there are idiots cycling just as there are idiots driving, but if I get a choice between an idiot on a bike and an idiot in his truck potentially hitting me I'll take the bike every time. These things quite frankly don't compare.

Yeah, but the number of cyclists compared to motorists is probably a couple of orders of magnitude lower as well.

Baltimore is surprisingly much the same, with the delightful twist of cyclists who cheerfully (and ubiquitously) ride on the sidewalks, and who then try to act like you're the asshole when you explain politely to them that they need to get off the God damn sidewalk and into the God damn road. Don't even get me started on cyclists who use the light rail. They're worse than football fans, which is saying a lot; football fans pregame and travel in packs, but at least they are susceptible to an authoritative baritone instructing them to move into open space rather than packing up by the doors, and to make way when passengers need to board and disembark. Football fans don't try to be rude; they just don't know any better, and are willing enough to be told. People with bikes are just likely to act like they own the whole damn train, and take great offense to the news that they do not.

Cars are fine. As a pedestrian, I love cars. They behave predictably and their drivers are often polite to a fault - I've developed a whole physical language to explain that, while I greatly appreciate a driver's consideration and courtesy, I also feel it benefits no one for a much faster-moving vehicle to await someone on foot, and therefore to please go ahead and make the turn or whatever, so you don't have to wait and I don't have to hurry, but thanks again for looking out.

This is tough to fit in a single gesture, but I think I've got it taped now. The key is not to mind hamming it up a little, because it does after all have to be easy to read from a distance, and to get the whole upper part of your body involved - you want to combine a smile of thanks with a forward incline of the head, connoting a degree of deference, with a rather sweeping motion of the arm across the billboard of the torso and out to full extension in the direction the driver was about to go anyway, to convey the intended outcome. Laugh all you like, but this works; I rarely have to repeat myself even once, and I usually get an answering smile and wave from the driver besides.

So yeah, cars are great. Cars are whales. Bicycles are sharks, fast and deadly and hard to hear coming up from behind. Usually piloted by assholes, too, which I guess sharks aren't, but when I'm just trying to get to work in one piece and I'm having to deal with the adrenaline shock of yet another near miss, I get a little loose with my metaphors.

Sir, your comment is a piece of art. The third paragraph, in particular, a masterwork.

You are far too kind, sir. But I thank you very kindly all the same.

Fellow Baltimorean here! My main mode of transportation is cycling. I try my best to use bike lanes and stay in the street and off the side-walk. That being said, sometimes it's scary/unsafe to ride in the street due to having a combination of high-speeds/single lanes/parked cars. Even streets with bicycle lanes (St. Paul St. is a good example) can be uncomfortable due to the above problems.

I'm excited for the cycle track on Maryland Ave. to be completed and I'm hoping that solves some problems.

Pleased to meet you! I've spent a lot of time on a bicycle here, especially last year when I was having trouble finding work and needed something to do other than sit home and go crazy. I never found it necessary to ride on the sidewalk, by and large because I was quite willing to avoid busy thoroughfares and use alleys or less heavily traveled parallel streets instead. Going a couple blocks out of my way seemed very much worthwhile when what it bought me was the opportunity to ride without terror.

Don't get me wrong. I know how scary it is to ride on a busy street - there's nothing quite like that feeling of wondering if the next car that overtakes from behind is the one with your name on it. Gets you right in the small of the back, doesn't it? That's almost exactly how it feels to be a pedestrian on a sidewalk with a bike overhauling - except in that case it's a lot more of a surprise, which makes it not one whit more pleasant to go through even if it is over sooner. Spare a thought, won't you?

Excellent post!

How would you handle the following? -> On the last stretch of a trip, your destination is in the middle of the block. Do you ride to the corner and then walk your bike to the destination or reduce speed and ride on the sidewalk?

Thanks!

To your question: the former, not least because it gives me a chance to catch my breath and let my heart rate drop a bit for a gentler transition from riding to not riding. But that's a personal preference and a side note to the main point, which is that if I'm on the sidewalk, I'm walking, not riding. Perhaps you prefer otherwise, but at the very least I'd ask that you slow to roughly walking pace and, if you must overtake a pedestrian, use a bell or your voice to announce your approach. It's not that I am unwilling to share a sidewalk with a cyclist, though I prefer you not make it necessary; it's that I'd much prefer you don't scare the hell out of me in so doing.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a well-reasoned response. Enjoy the wonderful weather today!

Thanks for humoring me. You have a good one too!

The thing we need in the United States are traffic tickets. A lot of people get tickets on freeways (where there is a dedicated highway patrol that exists only to write speeding tickets), but nobody gets ticketed on surface streets, no matter how badly they drive. I see garbage trucks barrelling through red lights at 45mph. I see taxis driving the wrong way down one-way streets. I see black cars driving 60mph down narrow residential streets. This has to be stopped, or people will keep dying in traffic.

The city-wide speed limit in NYC is 25mph, unless marked down to 20mph in special areas. This law needs to be enforced aggressively. Drivers don't need a big fine; I bet people will adjust their behavior from just a stern talking-to and a $20 ticket or something.

As it stands right now, people are needlessly dying for no reason. Driving in the city, all your time is sucked up by sitting at traffic lights. It doesn't matter how fast you get to the next traffic light, because if you're speeding, it's going to be red.

(There was an interesting pilot program to give $50 tickets to people exceeding the speed limit by 30mph in school zones. Tons of opposition. This makes me think what we really need to do is just start closing roads to private vehicles. People think they're entitled to run over children at 50mph, just because they fucking feel like it. Where did we go so wrong!?)

Looking out my window on a small residential street in Brooklyn, I'm always amazed at the traffic snarl. It's basically a dead-end street. And yet someone is always double-parked, preventing fire trucks from going through. One time a fire truck got boxed in by someone double-parked, and an MTA service vehicle that double-parked behind it. Eventually the MTA vehicle got towed away, and the fire truck slowly backed out. Hope it wasn't an important building that was burning down.

If you're blocking an emergency vehicle in the UK by bad parking they have the right to smash your vehicle to get past - and it's your fault.

I'd like a citation for that, I don't think that's true. I imagine they can legally tow your vehicle away, but I reckon damaging the bodywork of your ambulance or fire appliance to move another vehicle out of the way is not standard operating procedure.

There is however an act called the The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 [0] which makes it an offence to obstruct emergency vehicles.

[0]: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-emergency-wor...

Fire And Rescue Services Act 2004 says they can "move or break into a vehicle without the consent of its owner". I don't know if that's sufficient.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2004/21/section/44

Sure, but GP's comment suggests ramming the vehicle out of the way on the way to a shout.

>I reckon damaging the bodywork of your ambulance or fire appliance to move another vehicle out of the way is not standard operating procedure.

I think you misread the comment. He's saying the opposite, ambulances and firetrucks could damage a citizen's car if it's blocking the emergency vehicle--not the other way around.

> they have the right to smash your vehicle to get past

Um...I'm pretty sure that reads as "if your car is in the way they get to drive into it to move it out of the way". I like to think our emergency services drivers aren't driving such a reckless manner as to be smashing into stationary vehicles along the way to a shout.

Perhaps GP's comment is poorly worded and they mean that the emergency services have a right to break into a vehicle by way of smashing windows to facilitate its removal.

Wow! Got any backup info on that? News that you've read or a recent law?

>There was an interesting pilot program to give $50 tickets to people exceeding the speed limit by 30mph in school zones. Tons of opposition.

This is already present. School zones already have reduced speed limits during certain times and often increased fines, just like work zones. Was the backlash against automated ticket cameras that target the owners of vehicles? Against lengthening the times of enforcement?

30mph over is already a ticket for much more than $50.

> There was an interesting pilot program to give $50 tickets to people exceeding the speed limit by 30mph in school zones. Tons of opposition.

This sounds way, way too little. I'm not sure of the exact numbers, but I'd expect you to lose your driving license for a violation like this in Finland, temporarily at least.

Just for comparison, exceeding the speed limit by 15-20 km/h in a low-speed zone results in a fine of 200€ (~$225), and in excess of 20 km/h (~13 mph) gets you day-fines.

And yes, if you make millions, the day-fine ticket can get expensive; the current record is €112,000 for exceeding the speed limit by 14 mph. Which I think is fine -- $50 slap for a millionaire doesn't provide much of a deterrent, does it?

>There was an interesting pilot program to give $50 tickets to people exceeding the speed limit by 30mph in school zones. Tons of opposition.

At least here in Ohio, speeding in a school zone during restricted hours results in doubling the fine and mandatory court.

Also, at 30 mph over the speed limit, the officer can charge you with reckless operation which is a large fine and requires remedial driving lessons.

There was an interesting pilot program to give $50 tickets to people exceeding the speed limit by 30mph in school zones.

I think you mean to say opposition to the proposed speed cameras. Doing 30 over even in Bumphuck, Nevada puts you at risk of not only paying a fine much larger than $50, but going to jail for reckless driving. (Well, the fine isn't so much of a risk, as you're almost guaranteed to pay much more than $50). I seriously doubt more than a few nut jobs are going to be in support of people doing 50 mph in a school zone.

OTOH, there are legitimate reasons to oppose speed cameras.

This can now be automated. Video the activity, provide the necessary markers (maybe a time based hash or whatever) so the provenance of the video is sound, and follow the general rules for evidence gathering and chain of custody, archive it, and send the car owner a bill. Increasingly municipalities are making these kinds of things civil offenses, not criminal, so they can attach liability to the car owner for some kinds of infractions. Whether that stands up to the state's highest court without a state law, IANAL so I dunno.

Next, eventually there will be just enough autonomous cars, all of which will obviously only ever go the speed limit, and at least in moderate traffic it'll effectively prevent human driven cars from doing the usual bad shit; we'll be left with the edge cases of just really bad shit.

I would agree that London is a fast flowing city when it comes to cycling but it is also a pretty dangerous one. I've personally seen another cyclist killed while out on my bike and I know we have a bit of a problem with just how dangerous the roads can be while on a bike.

It's kind of strange to see the intensity of London driving described as "chill". I wonder if the huge difference in availability of public transport has something to do with it; most Londoners and many of the commuters into London simply don't drive on a daily basis and probably won't even own a car (where would you keep it?) So the traffic is much more likely to be commercial.

The medieval street layout also makes it hard to get up speed in London.

To be clear, I never said London was chill, that's what I thought the west coast was supposed to be. London I would describe as just-get-on-with-it-then for the most part, which as I said is not perfect, and sure there is still a fair amount of road rage, but on balance it's more crowded, works better, and a couple notches less shrill by everyone involved.

>SF could use a lot more of that attitude. I thought the west coast was supposed to be chill.

Doesn't London have one of the highest rates of pedestrian/cyclist deaths in the world?

This is a traffic engineering problem, not an attitude issue.

I don't have time now to write a comment laying out a comprehensive rebuttal of all the foolishness that some people have suggested here (bicyclists need to be licensed! bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers! we shouldn't have bicyclists on many roads because cars go too fast!).

Instead, I'll say that just as people walking need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadways - these are called sidewalks - so too people on bicycles need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadways - these are called protected bike lanes, or cycle tracks, or various other names.

For some recent commentary on this topic from Boston, see the following. The first is from a columnist, and the second from the President of the Boston City Council:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/08/12/bikes/yOFRBYH...

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/07/11/the-road-fear...

You will like this website: http://cyclingfallacies.com/

> I don't have time now to write a comment laying out a comprehensive rebuttal of all the foolishness that some people have suggested here ... bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers

In the UK, all vehicles on the road are required to abide by the highway code. Yep, that means bicycles have to follow the same rules as drivers.

In the 1990s, schools in the UK ran cycling courses to ensure that children as young as 9 were already learning the highway code, and would be able to cycle on the roads safely. The London police to this day continue to run cycling courses to provide the same level of training.

I can't speak to the rest, nor in other countries, but in the UK, it is absolutely not foolish, but actually required by law, for cyclists to follow the same rules as drivers.

In California, bicycles also must follow the same rules as other vehicles. It is unlikely that is the issue in San Francisco, it is more of a lack of respect for bike lanes and seeing it as an inconvenience. Our culture here is so car oriented that it is showing its ugly side from every angle.

This is what happens when bikes follow rules designed for cars:

http://archives.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/07/30/this-is-wh...

It's patently stupid to have the same rules for bikes as it is for cars since they are completely different vehicles.

Now perhaps this is a case of semantics: The Highway Code has rules for all users of highways, but obviously within those rules some apply to cars, some to pedestrians, and some to cyclists. Still point remains that the specific rules are different depending on what vehicle you're in, and we'd be wise to think critically about this.

A good example of this is the Idaho Stop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

This is the crux of the issue. Many of the laws we're supposed to follow aren't fit for purpose.

I do stop at red lights - and I can tell you it pisses people off no end. People want to gun it off the lights, and instead they're stuck behind me. I have been involved in an 'accident' where the driver behind me tried to overtake off the lights, through the junction, and into the traffic island on the other side.

At the same time, it's obvious cyclists don't get carte blanche either. Anyone who's seen a bicycle plow through a pedestrian crossing like a god-given right, can see that much.

We need rules that make sense, and then enforce them. Meet us in the middle. Trying to enforce rules that don't make sense doesn't work (and not just for us - many of these cause us to frustrate or hinder other road users too)

Yep.

I observe red lights in London. I observe red lights in Oxford. Locations where, however imperfectly, the highway authorities consider cyclists in the design process.

I used to work in Burton-on-Trent (ex-industrial town in the English Midlands). My daily commute involved one particular intersection so badly designed that the only way to avoid a dangerous and potentially fatal car/bike interaction, if you were at the front of the queue, was to set off 5 seconds before the lights went green. (It has since been redesigned, thankfully.)

If you build infrastructure and formulate laws to benefit motorists and to potentially kill cyclists, don't be surprised if cyclists break those laws.

Funny. I guess there were never enough bikes in the US to make rules to keep them out of the way.

In the Netherlands, one of the rules is that bikes do not take the middle of a lane, but instead the right side of the right most lane (and if there is a bike path or a bike lane nearby, they have to use that).

So this kind of protest would be impossible, because on any road wide enough that a car and a bike can share a lane, cars can just overtake within the same lane the bike is in.

> In the UK, all vehicles on the road are required to abide by the highway code. Yep, that means bicycles have to follow the same rules as drivers.

They're required to follow the road traffic act. The highway code is a simple guide to the road traffic act, and it contains best current practice, but people are not required to follow the highway code.

> The highway code is a simple guide to the road traffic act, and it contains best current practice, but people are not required to follow the highway code.

True, but failing to follow the highway code can result in legal liability.

From https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-highway-code/introduction:

"Although failure to comply with the other rules of the Code will not, in itself, cause a person to be prosecuted, The Highway Code may be used in evidence in any court proceedings under the Traffic Acts (see The road user and the law) to establish liability. This includes rules which use advisory wording such as ‘should/should not’ or ‘do/do not’."

> Instead, I'll say that just as people walking need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadways - these are called sidewalks - so too people on bicycles need physically protected infrastructure on essentially all roadways

Where do we stop? Should we have skateboard lanes as well? Unicycle lanes? Lanes for people who wish to taxi down the road in a Learjet?

We can't accommodate every form of transportation with its own infrastructure.

No you can't accommodate every form of transportation, but you can have Motor Vehicle, Person Powered Vehicle, Person.

Comparing Unicycles and skateboards is like saying we have to have a different lane for each type of truck, car, SUV, motorcycle, etc etc.

Would you agree that we should choose which forms of transit to accommodate based on their needs and their utility? Cycling is a well-established form of transit that many people participate in, and which can serve a large portion of the transit needs of a city in relatively little space and with zero carbon footprint.

Getting more people out of cars (and off of buses) and onto bikes requires making them feel safe and unstressed. The best way to do that is to create dedicated bikeways. The Dutch have been doing this for 70 years or so, it works amazingly well, so much so that people don't even wear bike helmets!

Also, nobody is saying that Segways, skateboards, inline skates, unicycles, etc. wouldn't be welcome in the bike lane, if they can stay in their lane and move predictably at a speed compatible with cycling.

"Cycling is a well-established form of transit that many people participate in,"

Many do, but it's very small about 2%. In SF it's 4$, NY it's 1%. And overall in America - it's negligible (outside of cities it's impractical).

So - bikes are a distant 4th after cars, public transit and walking. It's not going to change.

In the UK, apparently, 3% of adults cycle every day, and 9% at least once a week. The reason for the difference would likely be that we have many roads on which it is reasonable to cycle, and lots of infrastructure for cyclists - you can cycle to a train station, hop on the train with your bike, and cycle to work on the other end, for example.

> you can cycle to a train station, hop on the train with your bike, and cycle to work on the other end

Sadly, since May 2016, you now need a reservation - at least 2 hours in advance - for a number of First Great Western routes [1]. And you can't reserve online, it's either by phone or at a station's ticket office.

Although folding bikes don't count…maybe FGW has bought stock in Brompton Bikes?

[1] http://road.cc/content/news/183443-train-cycle-reservation-s...

Apparently phone reservations are required on certain ScotRail services as well, although they're trying to get the people running their website to build them a cycle reservation tool. That sucks.

> The Dutch have been doing this for 70 years or so

The other thing the Dutch do is give priority to all bikes on shared roads where there aren't cycle lanes.

Not true. On shared roads, bikes and cars are equal. For a long time they were not, bikes had to yield to cars even when the bike was coming from the right. But that was fixed.

Bike paths create a whole host of new problems. On big streets with multiple lanes of cars traffic, bike paths are generally a good idea. On smaller streets, bike paths tend to be too narrow, and trucks turning right have a good chance of driving over a bike. And people designing intersections seem be often clueless about where to put cycle paths and traffic lights for bikes, creating a big mess.

>> bicyclists should have to follow exactly the same rules as drivers

I mean....where the hell do you live where they do not? Everything about giving priority, obeying traffic lights, one-way streets, should absolutely apply to bicycles, how can it possibly not?

Well it technically does apply in a purely legal sense. However many cyclists don't really care and I've never heard of a any cyclist suffering any legal consequence because of this.

Over 11,000 fines were issued to cyclists for breaking traffic laws in the UK in 2013.

Copenhagen? Amsterdam?

In both cities, you'll see lots of "Except cyclists" plaques beneath prohibition signs.

That leads to more respect for the rules where the prohibition includes cyclists. (Though it's not 100% followed — but it isn't by drivers either.)

In the UK, where cyclists are generally ignored, I'd regularly ignore one-way restrictions. Most have clearly been implemented to direct cars, without any thought to cyclists.

I don't think non-cyclists realize how much risk you take on when you ride in the city.

In my town we really only have bike lanes on the two main roads that go up and down the bulk of the city, and they ride dangerously close to lines of parked cars. I was riding downhill once when someone opened their door in front of me without looking -- luckily I managed to get past, but had they opened it a few moments earlier I would've slammed into it and possibly fallen into traffic.

Another time I was riding down a street without a bike lane. There was a row of parked cars on the side so I was rode roughly a door's length away from them, enough to keep me safe but taking on enough of the lane that other drivers wouldn't be able to pass without driving in the opposite lane. I hear a car suddenly rev up behind me and blare their horn as they sped past, sideswiping me and almost knocking me off my bike. I managed to confront the driver at the next intersection, "Hey were you trying to kill me?" "Yeah, I was" (he had two kids in the car too)

Cones are a smart way of tricking people into respecting these boundaries, but I wonder how long it'll be until drivers start violating them when they realize they're not official or the city starts removing them. In the meantime I might get my own cones though...

As a driver it's the main reason I refuse to ride a bike, I don't want to die.

Even here in perth that is generally trying to help bike riders I just don't see how it's safe to ride around at 20-30km when the speed limit is 70km and there isn't enough room to overtake without going into the other lane.

I just don't see how you can be safe when people are trying to overtake you in giant utes going twice your speed trying to get home/to work.

How about as a driver, you don't pass cyclists when it's not safe?

Hard to blame non cyclists, they just have no fucking idea. Once you've seen it from the other side of the barrel it's hard to remember how you saw it beforehand.

It is not hard to blame drivers here in NSW because it is illegal to pass within 1m of a cyclist.

Nobody ever gets fined though, cyclists still just get killed.

Gah. I'm sorry. That sucks.

1) Why do you assume he's passing cyclists when it's not safe?

2) It doesn't help unless all drivers do this, which they don't, which is the problem and the point.

I probably could have been clearer, but my "as a driver..." Was not meant to single the poster out individually, but to apply broadly to all drivers. Many drivers seem to feel that it's their God given right to pass whenever they want to.

I grew up in NSW where cyclists were not allowed to ride on the footpath (even though nobody uses them on the central coast) and I always made sure to overtake using another lane or if the cyclist had his own clearance on the side to ride in.

This person never said that they did pass cyclists while it's unsafe. They only perfectly described what actually does happen. As someone who commuted via cycling daily in Sydney for several years, "I just don't see how you can be safe when…" perfectly reflects my own opinion on the matter. It wasn't safe and I could not be safe and I couldn't imagine how I could be safe. I just chose to do it anyway because it was better for me physically (so no as it wasn't suddenly deadly), the environment and it was faster.

One ought to be able to describe shitty reality without others supposing that they support said shitty reality.

In NSW it is illegal to pass within 1m of a cyclist. I ride to work, and every single day people ignore that rule.

I have never seen anyone fined for it. Our police/government just doesn't care, and attitudes like yours don't help. Cycling on the road is legal and until it isn't, just saying, "I don't see how it's safe" is irrelevant.

I also drive, but I'm capable of not losing my mind and putting other people's lives in danger to save a few seconds on my trip.

If another road user is going too slow for you, you need to suck it up and find a safe, legal place to overtake.

I don't anymore, relocated, but I did commute for years in Sydney and I couldn't find a trace of unhelpful attitude in this person's post. They just stated facts. Didn't say that they agreed or disagreed. They didn't say that they passed people in an unsafe way or that they felt the need to or desire to. They just said that _people_ do. Which is true. We've both experienced it…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12333894

Reading it back, I did sound overly aggressive to the poster. I didn't mean that.

The attitude I was talking about is, "I don't see how it's safe because drivers can't get past".

The way I see it, the only ones in the wrong in that situation are the impatient drivers who are breaking the law by trying to pass when it is not legal or safe.

The main reason cycling isn't safe is because drivers are overtaking unsafely when they might be delayed by a cyclist.

People seem to think that it's acceptable for drivers to break road laws just because they are being inconvenienced.

This behaviour is not acceptable, and indeed is illegal (although unfortunately not enforced - thanks for protecting our safety NSWPolice!).

The post I was replying to made no mention of the fact that drivers are meant to exhibit some semblance of patience from time to time, and seemed to be saying that cyclists are unsafe on the road because they can't maintain a 70kph speed, when in reality cyclists are unsafe because drivers are breaking the law.

All good, good luck and stay safe out there. Roundabouts always scared me more than cars overtaking. Also, the occasional parking lot was a surprisingly good place to get backed over very slowly.

Make sure you carry photo ID though. That actually can attract a fine.

Yeah, but the last few weeks they've been heavily enforcing their new-ish $375 penalty for not wearing a helmet... Who would've guessed that NSWPolice would selectively apply the new laws and penalties???

I actually have no problem with those fines but they should be enforcing the 1m rule as well.

Why wouldn't you wear a helmet as a cyclist anyway?

It sucks that NSWPolice are more interested in fining cyclists and are ignoring people actually putting other people's lives in danger.

When I drive and I see people riding with no helmet, I can't help but think to myself, "well you obviously don't care about your own safety at all, why should I?"

As a cyclist, I cringe when I see other cyclists breaking road rules. There is already much too little respect for us on the road, and doing stuff like that will erode the little respect we do get.

>Why wouldn't you wear a helmet as a cyclist anyway?

Because a dinky bicycle helmet won't change anything if you are hit by a car. Even a motorcycle helmet won't help. The only time a helmet helps is in low speed accidents.

I believe this is directly contradicted by the statistical evidence. I'll see if I can find a reference...

Edit: you are correct that at high speeds (over 50km/h) bike helmets become less effective when hit by a car. However, many car/bike accidents occur at speeds below 50km/h, in which case helmets can and do save lives. [1]

One could make a similar statement to yours regarding any safety device. A seatbelt probably won't save me if I hit a truck going 120km/h in my car. But it will help in a lot of other situations, so I'll still wear it.

[1] http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/experts-prove-cycle-hel...

I'm not exactly Lance Armstrong, so I can barely make it to 25km/h on my bicycle (without a good tailwind or a downhill run) and I certainly can't maintain it for long.

What's the bottom end of that effectiveness curve look like?

It's 100% clear that helmets have zero effectiveness at 0km/h[1] - I bet the "effectiveness" of helmets is statistically the same a zero at 1km/h and 3km/h as well - where's the data that shows the shape of that curve? How does that compare with various categories of cycling?

I note that what the linked study/article "proves" is that if you have a crash in which you might die, a helmet will improve your outcome in some of those cases. To me that has (at least) two obvious responses: 1) wear a helmet, or 2) don't have those sorts of crashes. Me pedalling to the shops or the cafe at 10-15km/h on cycle paths or quiet backstreets is enormously safer than me riding at 25km/h on a busy or main road, or on a downhill mountain bike course - with or without a helmet. Why to "the helmet guys" get to choose which risk minimisation strategy I'm required to employ?

[1] to be more accurate, the benefits of having a helmet on while stationary on a bicycle are no different from the benefits of having a helmet on while standing still - something the safety-crats haven't (yet) suggested is necessary...)

I suspect the speed is the closing speed between the cyclist and whatever they hit? Reading the article, it is unclear and might even be solely the speed of the car.

Maybe best to try and find the original paper to clarify that one.

EDIT: http://bast.opus.hbz-nrw.de/volltexte/2013/692/pdf/41_Than.p... looks relevant, but I can't see the claims repeated in e.g. the Mirror article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07o-TASvIxY

Anyone just blindly downvoting snovv_crash should check out the video above and any number of other resources, such as this one:

http://www.cyclinguk.org/campaigning/views-and-briefings/cyc...

There are strong feelings on both sides, but many cyclists feel helmets are a distraction from the real issues which make cyclists unsafe: poor road design and unsafe driving. Cycling itself is (counter-intuitively) a very safe activity which looks dangerous; everyone assumes driving and walking are safe but often they are not. Yet nobody seriously proposes helmets for pedestrians or drivers, just cyclists.

How is walking not safe?

Pollution and idiot car drivers.

You don't have to look far:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm... [XLS]

That's 8,643 pedestrians killed between 2000 and 2013 on UK roads. It's not even solely when people are crossing the road: cars frequently mount the pavement (sidewalk) and kill pedestrians.

A bicycle helmet changes the probabilities significantly towards survival, in all crash types.

In majority of bicycle deaths, the most serious injuries are to the head, and the "dinky" helmet is what makes a difference.

A large majority of bicycle deaths are low speed accidents. (Over here (Finland) a majority of them actually does not even involve a motor vehicle; here we have a pretty good segregated bike/pedestrian route network.)

"Significantly" "in all crash types"? That's not what the evidence I've seen suggests. Nor does it align with my personal anec-data. In all the crashes I can remember having in the last decade on a bicycle (nearly all failing to unclip when stopping or failing to negotiate an obstacle at low speed) I've never even touched my bicycle helmet (or head, if nt wearing one) to the ground.

There's quite a few studies recently that've revealed quite glaring errors in the claims that bicycle helmets reduce injuries in any significant fashion for typical cyclists. Sure you'd be foolish doind a mountain stage of the Tour de France without a helmet - but for a typical non-heavily-trafficed-commute or a weekend ride-in-the-park - there's very few accidents where a helmet makes any statistcal difference.

I also recall recently reading a study that calculated the overall benefit of bicycle helmet laws were negative when the reduction in cyclists was taken into account, and it's resultant lower level of public health. Have stringent helmet laws, and fewer people ride bicycles; fewer people riding bicycles results in more overweight/unfit people. Nett cost to health system goes up, not down.

I will never question your choice to wear a helmet - either always or occasionally. I do question your motives for supporting the establishment to _require_ (with threats of punitive fines) me to wear one, without conclusive and in-controversial evidence that it is of statistically significant benefit _to the sort of riding I do_...

If you want to "lowest common denominator" the argument - explain to me why you don't wear a helmet with driving/riding in a car? Have a guess as to what the most serious injuries in cases of automotive deaths are…

For a typical non-heavily-trafficed-commute or a weekend ride-in-the-park - there's very few accidents.

When there's an accident, the helmet makes a difference.

"It seems intuitive that bicycle helmets would be an effective means of reducing head injury, and indeed helmet manufacturers and standards associations worldwide conduct rigorous tests to determine the impact absorption and other qualities of helmets. It is however, important to go beyond laboratory tests and understand whether helmets reduce injuries in the event of a crash in real‐life; hence the review by Thompson et al.1 This review included five well conducted case‐control studies and found that helmets provide a 63–88% reduction in the risk of head, brain and severe brain injury for all ages of bicyclists. Helmets were found to provide equal levels of protection for crashes involving motor vehicles (69%) and crashes from all other causes (68%). Furthermore, injuries to the upper and mid facial areas were found to be reduced by 65%, although helmets did not prevent lower facial injuries. The review authors concluded that bicycle helmets are an effective means of preventing head injury."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2598379/

And then my personal anecdata: 25 years ago I went over the bar as I hit the brakes to stop before a child that ran to the cycle path from a bush. I broke my radix but not my head - I did not have a helmet. I realized how lucky I had been. I started to wear the helmet.

Last winter I fell when I didn't notice ice on my home road. Before I could unclip, I was falling sideways. I bruised my ribs and hit my head on the ground, but avoided cracking my skull because I did have on my helmet that I've been wearing the 25 years since the previous bone breaking fall.

Don't be stupid. Wear helmet when riding bike.

A bicycle helmet is not designed to protect your head from the impact of a car. It may try, but your helmet would have to be huge.

A bike helmet is made to slide across the pavement in the event of a crash. This allows you to decelerate at a slower pace and minimize damage.

Think of a bike helmet more like a ski helmet. It protects you from the ground, and will do very little if you ski into a tower. http://www.bhsi.org/mips.htm

That's totally incorrect. You could be sideswiped by a car, lose your balance and fall onto the ground.

Yes, a helmet won't help if you have a full-frontal collision with a car going at 100km/h, but there are many situations (most situations?) where that isn't the case and a helmet will help.

It's quite obvious why the helmet issue is so well enforced... It's extremely easy to pull over a cyclist! Compared to a car that is.

> It's extremely easy to pull over a cyclist! Compared to a car that is.

It's also quite easy to take a bike through a park or somewhere a car can't go and get away...

I used to live in Sydney and commute daily by bike. Now live in Amsterdam and I've never have worn a helmet, along with what seems like 99% of the locals.

I now realise the helmet thing is mainly about cars and just the way one needs to ride in Sydney to survive. Lanes end abruptly, major pot holes in roads etc.

It's anecdotal but you get the feeling progress and freedom is not really Australia's strong point these days!

That is true - but _only_ for some types of bicycle rides.

I can get from my place to the local shopping centre, a bunch of cafes or pubs, and the Cook's River bike path - all without needing to ride in "traffic" or on major (or even busy) roads. The chance of a helmet providing _any_ safety benefit for me riding to do my grocery shopping, is about as high as the benefit of me wearing a helmet while _driving_ a car to the shopping centre.

(And don't think I'm completely anti-helmet - I also ride motorcycles and wear a helmet 100% of the time on that, only _mostly_ because it's the law.)

Because I'm a grown up who can evaluate the risks/benefits for myself, and I'm sick to death of nanny-state victim-blaming resulting in erosion of rights and freedom?

When you drive - do you wear a helmet? Why not?

I don't wear a helmet when I drive because when I'm driving I'm strapped inside a steel cage that does a very good job of protecting me in the case of a collision.

I do wear a helmet when I'm on a bike, not because of nanny-state laws, but because many drivers drive in the manner of someone with the luxury of being complacent because they are strapped inside a steel cage that does a very good job of protecting them in the case of a collision.

Isn't there evidence that drivers give you more room if you don't wear a helmet.

This oft-quoted study at the University of Bath in England:

http://www.bath.ac.uk/news/articles/archive/overtaking110906...

I'd like to see a more extensive study, although my own experience of using a helmet and hi-viz clothing seems to confirm, some motorists see the gear and think "experienced cyclist, I can pass closer".

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-h...

Unfortunately, one is a lot more subjective than the other.

Now I cycle to work and recently let my drivers license lapse. But the 1m rule sounds draconian to me. It means drivers have to keep about two metres from the kerb. That's not always possible on Sydney roads.

Sure, if the cars are moving fast then I would like a wide space. But in heavier / slower traffic (which was the common case when I lived in London), then I only need a "lane" wide enough for me to ride through. And heck, usually I'm the one doing the overtaking.

That's the law, draconian or not. I personally don't want to come within 1m of a 1500kg vehicle, probably driven by someone playing with their phone, going faster than I am.

It is possible on Sydney roads if drivers wait until there's an overtaking lane, which is actually the only legal solution.

Anyway, it's never enforced so what difference does it make? Drivers will continue to only care about themselves and cyclists will continue to be maimed and die.

Countries with governments that aren't crap have separate tracks for cyclists, which is really the only safe solution.

We have painted pictures of bikes in car lanes right in the door zones for parked cars. And that's in the good places. It's an absolute joke.

> Countries with governments that aren't crap have separate tracks for cyclists,

It's not about crap governments. It's about practical responses to the world as it is.

Now I live in Munich and enjoy riding on dedicated bike lanes. But these are built on seriously wide roads. In Sydney that space is used for other things.

Such land-use decisions were locked in during the early 20th century. Now it's perfectly reasonable to think the Nazis made better land-use decisions than Labor and the UAP. But it's no use crying over spilled milk.

Copenhagen has plenty of narrow roads in the city centre.

Many don't have a bike lane. If there's no room to overtake safely, most drivers simply wait.

So cyclists can't have safe infrastructure because of history, and also can't expect drivers to obey the road laws because of impatience. That's just great.

> Now I live in Munich and enjoy riding on dedicated bike lanes

You do realise the lanes in Munich almost certainly weren't built by the Nazis? And the layout of roads, especially major ones, will have been altered since then, and can be altered in the future?

I'm not familiar with Munich, but the Netherlands got their bicycle lanes after lots of public campaigning in the 1970s [1].

In many European cities, the streets have been significantly remodelled within the 20th century. Just last month, a large road I use in Copenhagen was altered to increase the size of the bicycle lanes [3], reducing the width of the car lanes. Late last year, a road near the hospital was altered to block off parking close to a junction, which made visibility much better for everyone.

London is currently building a major east-west route [4].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands#Ove...

[2] http://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-geography-travel-germany-mu...

[3] http://www.kk.dk/nyheder/bredere-cykelstier-i-gothersgade

[4] https://tfl.gov.uk/travel-information/improvements-and-proje...

I'm saying there is little relation between quality of current governments and what bicycle lanes you have.

It seems to me that continental european cities often have very wide roads once you get out of the old towns. Given the location, these must have been built around the mid-20th century. By all kinds of governments.

There is a strong relation between current (or recent) governments and bicycle lanes. For decades, people in London said the streets were too narrow for cycling. Once the mayor declared maintaining car speeds was no longer a priority above everything else, the traffic engineers found space.

I've never visited Sydney, but it seems to have plenty of wide roads — I picked some central roads at random.

Oxford Street has a bus lane on either side, plus two car lanes in each direction. On StreetView, the bus lane is filled with parked cars, and appears to be also a cycle lane. Reducing the width of the car lanes, removing parking from one side, or removing one lane of traffic would provide ample space.

Palmer Street has two lines of parked cars, and enough space for three lanes of cars in between. Plenty of room for a dedicated cycle lane.

One thing that doesn't help is that there is more rubbish on roads closer to the kerb, and that items unlikely to tax a car can trouble a cyclist. So cyclists are forced further from the kerb than they might otherwise need to be.

I wonder if automated streetsweepers would be efficient enough that they could run much more regularly?

> But the 1m rule sounds draconian to me.

Germany has even stricter rules in practice: courts have regularly decided that a minimum of 1.5m ... 2m is necessary, depending on the situation. In special cases, even up to 2.8m have been deemed necessary.

BTW, even if cars don't actually touch a cyclist, but merely frighten them and cause them to react, it's already a traffic offense. Difficult to enforce in practice, of course.

Details for German-speakers: https://www.adfc-nrw.de/kreisverbaende/kv-bottrop/radverkehr...

In Australia it's 1m for roads with a speed limit up to 60kph, and 1.5m for any road with a speed limit above that.

The speed differential is what make me scratch my head as well, from both safety and traffic engineering perspective. In the USA lots of mountain highways have turnouts and "Slow vehicles must use turnouts" signs [0]. On the flip side, once in a city, a single cyclist is entitled to slow down everybody else, traffic fluidity be damned.

[0] http://www.aaroads.com/forum/?topic=12036.0

It's not "on the flip side" at all. On a highway, a cyclist and other slow vehicles are obligated to use the turnouts. But in the city, there are no turnouts or "slow vehicles must use turnouts" signs. So cyclists and other slow vehicles are not obligated to use non existent turnouts there. Why don't you complain about giant slow trucks not using imaginary turnouts in the city as "the flip side"?

Yes, and there is quite a big difference between highways and city driving. In the city you are just racing to the next stop, even if it took a whole 10 seconds until it was safe to pass the cyclist. How long is one red light?

This post shows two huge flaws in the way car traffic works:

- You don't have a right to drive at 70 km/h! It's the upper bound!

- Cyclists are seen as obstacles and not as road users.

I don't own a car but sometimes have a ride with other people and it's scary to notice how aggressive some people are towards the other road users. And I'm even more frightened by those people who drive too fast (for their skills) just because they don't want to get in the way of the aggressive ones.

But luckily, there are also very cool drivers!

> - You don't have a right to drive at 70 km/h! It's the upper bound!

Sure that's fine but when 1 lane is going 70 and another 30 for whatever reason you have an objectively more dangerous situation. You can't just expect people to sit and in the 30 lane, be happy and not try and pull out in front of others to get into the fast lane.

> - Cyclists are seen as obstacles and not as road users.

I would say that most people see elderly/drunk/wtf drivers who drive around well under the speed limit as obstacles too. Have you ever tried driving home after work at half the speed limit? I haven't but from my limit experience seeing others do it you don't exactly get a nice reaction from people.

We can sit around saying how unfair, dehumanising and whatnot it is to people to see cyclists as an obstacle but I don't see how you can just stamp that out without real changes to how the system currently works, I just don't see how logically the culture can change without an complete overhaul in values.

> And I'm even more frightened by those people who drive too fast (for their skills) just because they don't want to get in the way of the aggressive ones.

To be honest, the aggressive drivers aren't the scariest, it's the clueless ones that are much more scarier. They sit in lanes daydreaming until the realize they need to move somewhere and just make it happen, merge now, blinker in a second then check my blind spot.

Fast drivers usually have much better awareness of who is around them and because of that do stupid things which can end up bad, most accidents though are caused through negligence rather than fast drivers.

Sorry to tell you, but you're 100% confirming my opinion.

Drivers as you (I suppose you are describing the way you're driving), are in my eyes the most dangerous on the street.

They probably won't be causing the most accidents directly, but they put other people under stress and push them not to respect their own limits.

We have more and more elderly people who need to be active in the society and also more and more people who only drive a car a few times a year.

And when you will get older (and it will happen! believe me!), you will still want to drive a car and you will have the same attitude my mother has: driving too fast, because she does not want to feel like an obstacle. But you will not be driving as well as in the good old times.

Anyway, statistics don't lie: 93% of the US drivers seem to consider themselves better than average... (says Wikipedia)

Yet I don't think that's where the accidents happen, the biggest risk for cyclists seems to be traffic (in particular lorries) turning into and out of junctions.

I've biked to work in New York, SF, and LA for years. The only reason I don't still do so daily is that I got lazy (I suck). Most cities have ways to make it safer if you're clever (LA in particular has bikeways along its rivers).

SF is a "plaintiff friendly jurisdiction" as the phrase goes, but I've had knives and guns pulled on me there too (usually for having the nerve to ask "WTF" after being doored).

I'm not happy it's this way but if everyone gives up and decides to be a puss, nothing will change. I was listening to a guy in Zimbabwe who got beaten for years trying simply to mobilize nonviolent protests against the wicked Mugabe regime. We have it so easy in the US, it's kind of shameful to give up.

YMMV (yes, ha ha only serious).

You've had guns pulled on you for riding a push bike?

Only in America.

The worst I ever got when I rode my bike (I also got lazy) was a driver threatening to beat me up (while his wife and kids were in the car) after I had the nerve to turn from the turning lane at the traffic lights. On the other side, my brother pulled a screwdriver on a cyclist once (he's a real piece of work).

Pulling a gun is one thing. Actually pulling the trigger though? Four whole months in prison…

http://www.streetsblog.org/2009/11/23/charles-diez-gets-120-...

I feel like you are living in bizzaro-land over there, where you can get life in prison without parole for stealing a pair of socks [0], yet shoot someone in the head and get 4 months. Deal a couple of rocks and get 42 years in federal prison [1], rip off millions of dollars from thousands of people, get off scot-free.

[0] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/cruel-and-unusual-...

[1] http://famm.org/atiba-parker/

Yeah, I don't think anyone can strongly disagree. At the end of the day it's mostly people trying and failing to get a fair shake and give others a fair shake. Along the way we tend to overestimate what a fair shake is for ourselves and those like us and underestimate similarly for "the other". There are some that take advantage of such a system by playing into those biases but by and large I genuinely believe most people are trying to do right.

Things that seem bizzaro from time to time may be the price for living in a plurality.

And when he's riding with his wife and kid. Incredible.

Good god. If I were the guy getting shot at in that case I'd be planting IEDs on their roads. What a travesty.

>I don't think non-cyclists realize how much risk you take on when you ride in the city.

That's why everyone should try it! To understand that it's not that scary and to better understand their responsibilities as an automobile driver.

"Hey were you trying to kill me?" "Yeah, I was"

And people wonder why revenge fantasy is so appealing: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~mjh/spike.html

(I would have at least turned to the kids and said "Hey did you hear that? Your Dad's an asshole!")

I wouldn't antagonise someone who'd just tried to kill me. Not sure of phrasing that would get the guy to change his attitude, but I don't think involving his kids would get the best response.

When he's a big brave "motorists activist" while wrapped in and (barely) in control of a ton of metal cage doing 30mph, sure. But when he's stopped at a light and you're beside him in a position his weapon cannot be easily aimed? They're _mostly_ pretty soft and pathetic and mouthy. I often quite enjoy antagonising them into a frothing rage.

(Note: this is a point of view from a country where they're spectacularly unlikely to be carrying a firearm or even a knife, ymmv…)

Yeah, after that I told him (as calmly as I could coming off the adrenaline from almost getting hit) something to the effect of "You have your kids with you, I'm just trying to get home like you and I'm required to ride on the road". He actually shut up and apologized pretty quickly.

> I managed to confront the driver at the next intersection, "Hey were you trying to kill me?" "Yeah, I was" (he had two kids in the car too)

Even in the fairly bike friendly city of Portland, OR I've had drivers harass me. I had a dude nearly clip me, pull a u-turn at the next intersection, come back around, turn around again, and tailgate me while blaring his horn. He rolls down his window, yells at me for riding on the road (I was in a bike lane), all the while his family is in the car...

Damn... I can't imagine the mindset people need to get that angry at people passively going their own way.

I've had bad experiences with maybe 1:1000 drivers. But when it's bad, it's really bad.

I've had the same exact, "Do you know you're going to get someone killed driving like that?" Followed by, "Good. I hope you all die." WITH A KID IN THE CAR!

> I don't think non-cyclists realize how much risk you take on when you ride in the city.

The only times I saw cyclists in a risky position, they were not respecting neither driving code nor common sense (ex: overtaking on the wrong side, in a narrow space between moving cars and pavement, at an unreasonable speed; or the more classical: ignoring red lights, priorities or forbidden directions).

There is evidence to suggest that running red lights is safer for cyclists. I certainly feel safer when I get a head start and get ahead of the traffic in town.

http://www.rudi.net/node/16395

I'll add an advice to the final list: don't overtake a motorized vehicle at a shorter lateral distance than what you'd accept where the vehicle overtaking you.

I'm sincerely sorry for the people who died in those accidents, but the only evidence I found in the article is that queuing behind a lorry would have prevented all of them.

Would you also suggest queuing behind a lorry while on a bike lane? That's where "our" (where I live) numerous turning-lorry victims get killed. Nearly without exception slow, defensive cyclists (as far for from the lycra crowd as possible, you can get a pretty good idea what type of cyclist they were from pictures of the maimed remains of the bike) who would not have enough velocity to serve laterally faster than the truck. More aggressive cyclists survive by carefully modulating speed so that they never next to a potentially turning vehicle at the critical point. (Which btw means that they will go through the same "dark amber" lights as the car next to them, because that is where all attention goes in the final approach).

The main problem with trucks are not their huge blind spots, but that the rules of physics require them to start their turn very late in the intersection. If you ignore the turn signal (or the driver did not set it) they will look like going straight for a very long time. It's just a very, very good trap (except when the driver yields, as law would require).

This trap is also a good illustration of the general "attractivity" of red lights for cyclists: crossing traffic (that would kill you if ignored) is a lot more predictable than turning traffic (that can kill you without warning). Personally, I tend to consider red lights a welcome opportunity to catch my breath while noone is trying to kill me. If on pole position in the bike lane, I will prepare to sprint ahead of turners (cars are whales, as correctly observed somewhere else I'm this discussion), or stare at the bumper ahead of me just like everybody else (I could look farther ahead, but the latency between "starting soon" and "starting now" would drive me mad)

> Cones are a smart way ...

Cones will keep you near the parked cars, too.

> I was riding downhill once when someone opened their door in front of me without looking -- luckily I managed to get past, but had they opened it a few moments earlier I would've slammed into it and possibly fallen into traffic.

A friend's ex-wife killed a cyclist by carelessly opening the door and hitting them. Not even another vehicle involved, they just collided with the door or the ground in a very unfortunate way.

I googled for some statistics:

USA

    1% of all trips is by cycle [1]
    743 cyclist fatalities per year (2013) [2]
    population 320 million.

Denmark

    17% of all trips is by cycle [3]
    33 cyclist fatalities per year (2013) [3]
    population 5.6 million.

Cyclist fatalities per 1 million people:

    USA:      2.3
    Denmark:  5.9

...per cycling frequency:

    USA:      232
    Denmark:   35

I guess I was expecting worse. American cyclists die only 7x more than Danish cyclists.

[1] http://www.bikewalkalliance.org/storage/documents/reports/20...

[2] https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...

[3] http://www.cycling-embassy.dk/facts-about-cycling-in-denmark...

I imagine that the more cyclists there are, the better the awareness and appreciation of their choice to ride, and the better the infrastructure.

In Australia, there are a lot of people who seriously despise people choosing to ride. They will excuse the attitude in a number of ways ("Some cyclists run red lights to get head starts!"), but the hatred is deeper. Either us vs them, or jealous that others have made a decision they are unwilling to make? It's baffling.

"American cyclists die only 7x more than Danish cyclists."

reason that this is so 'low' is a difference in the population that cycles.

I don't know for Denmark, but in the Netherlands, about 60% of cyclists dying in traffic are over 65 years old (106 out of 185 in 2014).

> I don't know for Denmark, but in the Netherlands, about 60% of cyclists dying in traffic are over 65 years old (106 out of 185 in 2014).

I am curious why is that. Reflexes, heart attacks, hip injuries ?

As a well-traveled cyclist, I yearn for the truely separated roadways my peers ride in other places. In Holland, for instance, their cycletrack treatment is closer to a special sidewalk for bicycles than a repainted stretch of highway. Each mode of transportation (walking, riding, driving, mass transit, etc.) has its own path. This separation of concerns (segmented by both mass and speed) makes getting around safer and easier for everybody.

The thing that San Francisco has and Amsterdam doesn't is private garages in most freestanding buildings. For instance, the northern-most section of the Wiggle has the city's most protected bike lane - there are cement planters separating the bike lane from fast-moving car traffic. Unfortunately, to support private garages, there are gaps in these planters enabling homeowners to enter/exit their driveways. Delivery vehicles and private cars frequently idle in the spaces between these planters, trapping cyclists in the bike lane and forcing them to merge into car traffic that isn't expecting them.

The city does nothing to stop this, and the drivers are incredibly hostile. I've tried getting off my bike and asking people (as kindly as possible) to move, explaining how parking in the bike path puts me life at risk. The nicest response I've gotten was being told to go fuck myself: even the old man in a bus driver's jacket idling in his car was shockingly violent in his reply. Delivery drivers don't give you the light of day. There's a tow company on this stretch of the Wiggle that frequently has trucks blocking the path. I noticed someone had parked to deliberately keep the path clear one day and earnestly thanked him for doing so. Even he threatened me.

San Francisco politicians respond with platitudes everytime once of us dies, but they do fuck-all to actually protect us. Our local transportation board reimagined one neighborhood street as a promenade, prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists and creating a destination for people from all over the city to come patronize local businesses. A handful of shop owners who came of age when the car was the dominant form of transportation raised concerns about parking. Rather than pointing out the plentiful parking on literally every nearby street, offering to construct a garage, or pointing out that users of all forms of transportation would flock to a human-scale shopping district in numbers that more-than made up for the lost parking, the city caved with the mayor scuttling the whole project.

We're just starting to get separated bike lines in New Zealand, where the bike lane is on the other side of the parked cars, so the parked cars essentially make a barrier.

It's not perfect, you can still get doored by the parked cars, but at least you aren't going to get run over at the same time.

We have those in the Park here. Passengers seem to be less trained to watch for bicycles than drivers, so I wonder if it's actually safer overall.

But that's not the problem I'm pointing out above. So long as cars park in garages under houses and need to cross the sidewalk and cycletrack to get to the street, it will need to be physically possible for a car to cross the cycletrack. So long as that's true (without frequent police intervention) San Francisco drivers will pull into the cycletrack and idle there, trapping cyclists in the path or forcing them into traffic that has even less room for them than it did before the protected path.

I think it's a bit different here because most of the places where we have separated cycle lanes tend to have driveways with enough space to park a car without sitting in the cycle lane.

I think that it is safer overall in that when you do get doored, it's a lot safer. Sort of like how red light cameras reduce fatal accidents, but increase fender benders.

How about a bollard in the cycle path just past every driveway? Expensive, but would prevent access to the cycletrack by vehicles.

> Passengers seem to be less trained to watch for bicycles than drivers, so I wonder if it's actually safer overall.

It's the driver's responsibility to remind the passenger — or for children, use the child lock function.

As an obvious foreigner in Denmark, I've been reminded by taxi drivers in Copenhagen to check for bicycles before opening the door. A colleague told me his children are taught to open the car door with their opposite hand, which means you look through the window naturally.

> I've tried getting off my bike and asking people (as kindly as possible) to move, explaining how parking in the bike path puts me life at risk. The nicest response I've gotten was being told to go fuck myself

Wow, this makes me so angry. Is it possible to call the cops on them?

I think I've done it once or twice - usually not until after I get home though. Letting unhinged people know I'm threatening their anonymity is something I try to avoid.

Can you wear a camera and publicly shame those that act like that? Or are there legal issues?

I take photos and send them to 311. Sometimes the report gets marked as "car tagged", but I've never got an answer as whether that's a traffic ticket.

As a former bicyclist, and a current motorcyclist and "cager", let me give one piece of advice that has kept me alive to this day. Your safety and protection is entirely up to you. No government, painted lines or traffic cones are going to save you on the road. When you're on the road, the only thing that matters is "the right of weight".

If you're hit by a car, and you're not in a protective cage of steel, it's not going to matter if the other person was in the right or the wrong. You're still dead.

If anything, these traffic cones are a dangerous placebo; making cyclists feel safer than they actually are in their interactions with cars. Want to actually be safe from cars when on the road? Ride in a cage of steel. Want to survive on two wheels? Ride as if every person in a car is intentionally trying to kill you.

Yeah, it's probably overly pessamistic; no, it's not fair. But I'm alive and uninjured.

> Yeah, it's probably overly pessamistic; no, it's not fair. But I'm alive and uninjured.

Don't you think that's a little bit of survivorship bias? I'm sure there are plenty of cyclist who have been killed who 100% agreed and rode in that way, but they obviously can't speak on the matter.

Of course it is dangerous and potentially lethal when you get hit by a car, but how can you suggest that it's not beneficial to have measures in place that at least attempt to protect cyclist. It makes cyclist 'feel' safer, because it is in fact safer. Look at countries like the Netherlands that have excellent cycling lanes and safety measures. It makes drivers more aware that there are cyclist around them, and urges them to be more cognizant of their surroundings.

Would additional space for bikes hurt bikers? I think it depends. If there is enough room to add better bike lanes without affecting car traffic negatively, the it will probably help. But if cars are forced into smaller spaces, I think more cars "in a hurry" will disregard the lines in favor of a clear road. Sure, they will be in the wrong, but it won't help the dead cyclists any.

And places like SF, with their already bad car traffic and limited land? They would definitely fall in the latter case in my book.

> but it won't help the dead cyclists any

Perhaps if more bicyclists wore GoPros as a normal part of their travels (or more CCTV were pointed at bike paths), the legal system will reduce the number of violations and thus deaths.

> If you're hit by a car, and you're not in a protective cage of steel, it's not going to matter if the other person was in the right or the wrong. You're still dead.

I get the point you're trying to make, but you're papering over some big trends.

If the car that hits you is going 20 MPH, you've got a 5% chance of being dead. At 40 MPH, you're looking at more like a 85% chance.

Ride defensively - sure, but remember that those government painted lines and rules and street design help influence behavior that could very easily save your life.

A huge proportion of accidents happen when the cyclist is hit from behind. You think you're alive because of your defensive riding alone? You're also alive because you were never plowed into by a distracted driver that one day, a situation you would have very little control over.

There's more of a spectrum than simply being alive or dead. What are you going to do with a broken femur or pelvis?

As for being hit from behind, as a motorcyclist this is one of my greatest fears - consider how often cars get rear-ended! As such, I actually feel that at traffic lights it is safer to lane split, as this also helps me get in front of the cars once the light goes green.

The cones aren't a placebo, they actually alter driver behavior. It's important when challenging an idea not to exaggerate its flaws. No practical number of orange cones will physically protect cyclists in a collision, but the psychological impact of well-designed infrastructure can have substantially better outcomes, which is why some places are much safer for cyclists than others.

That said, not all bike infrastructure is equal. Some of the new "protected" lanes in Seattle, for instance, are quite dangerous and I prefer to remain in general traffic.

You're right that cyclists should ride as if everyone driving a car is trying to kill them. But one effective way to do that, if designed well, is to actually separate car drivers from cyclists. Even an artificial separation can save lives, if it's done right.

One more bone to pick: making cyclists feel safer isn't necessarily dangerous. One of the reasons cycling is unsafe is because so few people do it, and one of the reasons so few do it is because they fear for their safety. There are even people who suggest that helmets are in aggregate counterproductive to bike safety for this reason (and I think they have a point, but I wear a helmet for other obvious reasons). Better perceived safety leading to more cyclists on the road will almost certainly result in better real safety outcomes.

I agree that mindset is safer, but defensive riding and defensive infrastructure are not mutually exclusive concepts. Both save lives.

From the individual perspective this makes sense and a mindset everybody should have. Collectively, when you add these sorts of things up it has a measurable impact on reducing the total number of injured cyclists.

Rider skill is a huge factor that receives almost no attention. I constantly see shockingly poor cycling skills, because most cyclists have received little or no training. Those riders are a hazard to themselves and to other road users. They don't know how to position themselves on the road, they make poor observations and signals, their basic bike handling skills are inadequate.

If you're going to ride on the roads, you need to know how to do it safely. I don't know what the situation is in the rest of the world, but here in the UK we have a national network of accredited trainers; courses are often free or very inexpensive, subsidised by employers or the local government. If cycle skills training isn't available in your area, write to your representative and ask why.

http://bikeability.org.uk/

> Your safety and protection is entirely up to you.

This is just not true. There are ways to persuade cyclists and drivers to behave more safely without saying things that are obviously untrue.

Bike lanes in SF: https://www.google.se/search?q=bike+lanes+SF&safe=off&client...

Bike lanes in Stockholm: https://www.google.se/search?q=bike+lanes+stockholm&safe=off...

Bike lanes in Amsterdam: https://www.google.se/search?q=bike+lanes+amsterdam&safe=off...

I guess SF / USA have something to learn from Europeans and that is to build some shit between the bike lane and the car lane. Let it be cones, rails or whatever just not a painted line.

Don't worry, you're not alone.

Australia's bike infrastructure also sucks.

Well, I do live in Sweden in a city where everyone bikes. So I am happy :)

I just like to promote our model of society since it's so much better on so many levels.

This is an overview of how the Dutch do it as presented by a city planning guy from Seattle. Lengthy, but I was glued to the screen.

https://youtu.be/l0GA901oGe4

If you live in SF and want to help, the team doing this is on Twitter at @sfmtra and looking for volunteers and donations. Safe biking is good for the health of humans,their communities, and the environment

Orange cones are a novelty. Put them everywhere and behaviour will eventually return to where it was. The same thing happened with high-mounted brakelights on cars - they significantly reduced rear-end collisions for a few years, but eventually the trend returned to where it was beforehand.

> Put them everywhere and behaviour will eventually return to where it was.

don't understand this comment - you mean to say vehicle drivers will eventually resume driving on lanes that are separated by traffic cones?

i suppose they can... but i assume most drivers will try to avoid knocking/running these things over

Have you looked at a job site in California or New York lately? I guarantee you this is not universal. Unless cones are made of cement people WILL blow through them.

Drivers in San Francisco don't hesitate to run over plastic posts that separate some bike lanes from car traffic. Other lanes have cement planters separating them - drivers still manage to park in the bike lane.

Cyclists need to follow the rules in order to command respect, frankly.

I wish this wasn’t true but I see dozens of cyclists every week (no exaggeration at all) doing things that are blatantly illegal and definitely dangerous. FLYING through stop signs. Deciding to just “go” at a red light when there seems to be no traffic. Turning wherever they want without signaling. Assuming they have the right of way in pretty much any situation. Multiple riders in parallel formations that make them move into the road anyway. The list goes on, and on, and on. I am not kidding.

And that kind of behavior just makes me not want to help. I’m sorry, you have to make sure you are at least doing everything possible to help yourself before you expect drivers to make any more concessions.

I love this! I feel so uncomfortable cycling on main roads, knowing that if the person behind the wheel of the x-ton vehicle beside me does one small mistake, I end up paralyzed or dead. The bicycle is a really great means of transport that deserves more love (and space on the streets).

Here is an outside view, fwiw, the official recommendations for bike lanes in Germany. In German, but lots of pictures!

http://www.kompetenzzentrum-radverkehr.de/fileadmin/redakteu...

Question: Is there an association like AAA is for cars that represents bikers in the US? That could take on the discussions with the government.

After reading some of that, it contains some recommendations that lead to annoying and sometimes dangerous situations for cyclists that I recognize from my everyday cycling experiences in Germany.

Just one example:

They seem to encourage usage of pedestrian paths with "bikes allowed" signs on medium traffic streets with ~50km/h speed limit, think main road of a small-ish town. These have become waaay too popular, especially in small towns and some areas of bigger cities too.

They make the cyclist choose between these two options:

* share the pavement with pedestrians, but with barely any separation from the pedestrians; so you're either really really slow or you endanger pedestrians

* use the road and share it with drivers who think it belongs solely to them and endanger cyclists

So either way, it's a bad experience and potentially dangerous.

As a life-long New Yorker (Manhattan and more recently Brooklyn) I just don't understand why anyone would ever ride a bike in NYC, period. I even stopped rollerblading in NYC when some asshole driving backwards (presumably to get a parking spot) nearly killed me and did knock me silly.

I have a motorcycle license I got one summer when I had free time. I learned that cars and pedestrians are your enemy, and that you will probably regret being a motorcyclist eventually. So I quickly stopped.

The simple answer is to not bike in NYC, or get rid of cars in NYC. Although I have moved to Brooklyn, I think the "get rid of cars" is in Manhattan is a great idea.

But, if we must bike, by all means, let's get segregated bike lanes. I have seen them in Union Square, around Prospect Park, and other places. BUT!

That said, bikes are worse than cars IMO in yielding right of way to pedestrians. I was nearly killed by a high speed biker IN A CROSSWALK ACROSS A SEGREGATED BIKE LANE outside the Intrepid museum nearly a month ago, and the moron had the gall to yell at me as he barely missed me to watch where I was going. Literally two seconds later nearly the same thing happens with another biker. Insane.

Furthermore, bikes don't remotely follow the rules of the road. Stop lights? Ignored. One way streets - or even one way bike lanes - ignored. No riding on sidewalks? Well, mostly followed. Pfew.

As a pedestrian, I fear bikes more than cars. They are silent, they are fearless (if they weren't they would not ride like this), and they don't care about pedestrians.

Personally, I'd rather get rid of bikes entirely, or at least put a cop at every corner writing expensive NYC moving violations to each bicyclist when they inevitably break the law. A million citations a day would be fine by me, and would help pay for more shared infrastructure like subways, bus lanes, and, yes, even segregated bicycle lanes.

Heh, just today I was biking down a hill in a segregated lane. Green lights ahead of me, all the way to the waterfront.

Some guy in the crosswalk, going against the signal (I have green lights for several blocks), left to right across the street. I'm half a block away but I'm going downhill and going pretty fast. I yell, "Watch out!"

He keeps moving, so I start to veer to the left to go around him to the left. THEN he stops, so I yell again, "Keep moving already!" I veer harder left to get around him.

I still have green lights, he's going against the signal.

He steps backwards!!! Now I'm going to hit him for sure, so I brake hard, skidding down the hill, veering now well out of the segregated lane, into a car lane, barely avoiding a full-on collision. My leg hits his bag, and of course I cuss up a blue streak.

I don't get it. I come to a complete stop at stop signs wherever there's any traffic, and I always slow down because cars blow through them constantly.

I never cross against lights, and when I cross with lights, I do so with caution because cars blow through those, too.

I do see more and more bikes on the roads, though, which makes me happy about cars learning to share the roads a bit. We cyclists pay taxes, too, of course.

Yep. Pedestrians, especially New Yorkers, are j-walkers. I spent the last 12 days in various places in Japan and boy, there are none of those except in places without crosswalks. It was weird!!

But yes, best thing to do is be predictable if you're doing something (even if it is wrong).

People sometimes think New Yorkers are crazy drivers. To the inexperienced it probably looks that way. However after driving here most of my life it's just that we learn how all the other New Yorker drivers will react to what's ahead of them so we can react, in a sort of organized chaos. Sometimes, anyway. And we know to give out of state plates and certain vehicles extra "unpredictability" points. It doesn't always help (like when a moron Georgia plate minivan driver decided to merge directly into me at the Brooklyn Bridge entrance from southbound FDR despite being on the wrong side of a solid/dashed lane marker, back was only one lane to the bridge. And then not pull over!!!), though.

Even though I am a car owner and driver I would still be an advocate of limiting cars in the city.

The 'be predictable if nothing else' advice is critical. Best piece of driving advice I ever got from my dad. I'm currently in Hyderabad on a business trip and the only reason there aren't constant wrecks and fatalities here is because the only rule in the chaos is be predictable.

It's the same in Vietnam. Coming from the west, the driving there looks verifiably insane. After a few weeks you learn their rules (or how to compensate for lack thereof) and it doesn't feel as unsafe anymore.

However, Vietnam's roads are unsafe.

I saw five road accidents within a three-week holiday, including one fatality.

The statistics are a quick search away, but I suspect accidents are underreported in Vietnam. I saw a motorcyclist hit by a luxury car on a mountain road, just outside a café. Most bystanders seemed more concerned about possible damage to the car, than to the dazed rider. The car driver didn't even get out of the car.

A bus ahead of mine slammed the brakes on, and I saw people were running into the street. It took a while for us to pass the commotion, but when we got there I saw a body covered with a sheet of cardboard and a flattened bicycle. The bus driver stopped the bus a few minutes later, and wandered around it waving incense, which he left in a special holder on the number plate. Neither he nor his ticket collector wore their seatbelts when we resumed driving.

A man in Hanoi was wandering into the road in a daze, with blood coming from his head. A motorbike was on the road on its side, and a helmet nearby. I think he simply fell off, but I'd guess the helmet wasn't being worn properly.

That sucks, but it's not really a surprise that someone who is startled reacts poorly.

Years of living in third world countries have taught me that if you are going to disregard traffic rules, at least have the courtesy to do so in a predictable manner.

"I'm half a block away but I'm going downhill and going pretty fast. I yell, "Watch out!""

At that time, you should have started braking. The road isn't yours, even if others break/bend the rules, like you do, when you 'never' cross the lights.

Oh, I love you motorists.

I get the impression you think I'm a motorist. If do, why do you think that?

The correct course of action would have been to slow down and anticipate having to come to a full halt if necessary. The pedestrian was defying traffic laws and on the middle of the road -- you shouldn't expect them to behave predictably from there on.

In my country driving instruction emphasises the importance of anticipatory and cooperative driving. Anticipatory in this case means taking the high likelihood of further misbehaviour of the pedestrian into account, cooperative means reacting early so you don't further create risks by surprising traffic behind you if you need to come to a full stop later on.

This applies to bikes as well as anybody else on the road (including pedestrian). You should generally expect others to follow the rules but if there are indicators they won't (e.g. they're violating them or they're too young or appear confused/erratic) you should anticipate that they might create dangerous situations.

So, yes, the pedestrian was obviously and blatantly violating the rules but your description makes you sound equally reckless. If you were going so fast you couldn't slow down enough to mitigate the risk of a collision, you were going too damn fast. Going downhill doesn't mean you're allowed to go full speed, in fact it means quite the opposite.

EDIT: The most important takeaway is predictability. Traffic rules are 1/10ths about helping you and 9/10ths about helping other people. Bikes don't strictly need lights for visibility, for example, but riding with a light allows other people to actually see you in suboptimal conditions.

>rules of the road

Whenever I see a bike article, i do a search for 'rules of the road', there always is at least one, and reply to the comment containing the first match.

I bike to work every day, and I don't follow the rules of the road.

And I am sure than anyone doing the same wouldn't follow them for long either. Show me anyone who stops at a stop sign on a bike, that's just false piety.

Following a bunch of rules and expecting everyone to be safe is naive.

The rules of the road which are designed for cars can get you killed on a bike. There is a left hand turn at the end of my commute just before a rise in the road.

If I try to follow the rules of the road there, I will likely get hit head on by a speeding or distracted car.

In that case i ride on the sidewalk. If there are pedestrians I go walking speed. If I have to I just scooter the bike. Most people are fine with this.

I do follow some rules, though: I am courteous to everyone and I aim to not inconvenience anyone with my riding.

Some similar grass roots efforts in PDX after a teen pedestrian was struck and killed by a speeding (~55 in a 35) reckless driver earlier in the week:

https://twitter.com/bikeportland/status/767223666014720000

I would support a true separation of all vehicle modes. As an avid walker, I've had far more run-ins with speeding bicycles nearly hitting me (and a few which did hit me) than I have with cars. If it were easy to create a solid separation that would keep cars and bikes separate, and prevent bikes from using sidewalks, count me in, you have my vote and my tax dollars to make it happen.

Why not put parking spots (where possible) outside the bike lane, so the cars protect cycle path. Its done in some places in Denmark.

It's a good idea in theory, but having ridden this setup in Golden Gate Park[0], I'm constantly worried about getting doored and ride as far away from the cars as possible. I'd argue one's chances of getting doored are higher than an auto rear-ending a biker, so it would take up a lot more space to implement correctly.

Also, for passenger in a car, can you imagine (carefully) opening a door, hoping not to door a biker, only to try to cross a stream of bikes to reach the sidewalk? It's a bad scenario for all parties.

[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=golden+gate+park+bike+lane&b...

> "Orange cones are really a great prototyping tool," says the activist. "They put something on the ground that's visible. Cars really slow down around orange cones—it's really a remarkable feat of psychology."

Keep this up and pretty soon it'll be like when CNN prefixes a headline with "BREAKING NEWS: ...".

I PhD student in Switzerland. Here, we just have a yellow marking for the bike lane, and car drivers are surprisingly considerate towards bikers. I don't know what the penalties are for hitting bikers, but biking here is a bliss. Even in big cities like Zurich and Geneva!

Really, god bless this beautiful country :)

I wonder if these guerillas could paint a fake curb that looks real enough that cars wouldn't want to cross it?

This is an idea I have proposed before. A 2D painted kerb that looks 3D when viewed from the perspective of a driver. One response was that it would take a while to adjust road marking standards, etc. I figured it'd be worth a cheap trial with cameras watching car behaviour though.

Mostly unrelated, but does anyone have (or has seen?) an opinion on self driving cars and how that may impact cyclists on the road? Do you think the shift to autonomous vehicles will make the road safer for people on bikes?

Yes, definitely. But it will be some time before most cars are self driving.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2015/08/2...

I can't imagine how autonomous vehicles could make cycling less safe. The only thing I'm coming up with is that the side profile of a bike at night could get "filtered" as noise and ignored. That same scenario must happen just as often with human drivers though.

My biggest concern while cycling in Sydney was going through roundabouts at night. Cars in front or behind me with bright blinking lights? Just fine. Cars potentially coming at me from the side where nothing but my own reflective vest to identify me? Terrifying.

At least in Germany reflectors on the spokes are mandatory. And most tyres have a reflective strip built in, so the night-time side profile of a cyclist should usually clearly mark the shape, even if the cyclist isn't reflective.

Wow SF has some shitty looking roads considering how much money is in the area.

In London the cycle super highways are painted bright blue. Seems to work.

Several problems, which could be solved my municipalities, and illustrated by this twitter feed: https://twitter.com/lyoncorrompu

- Cars stop on the bike lane: It may sound reasonable to stop on the rightmost lane, but in fact they obstruct both the bike lane and the car lane. It would be more reasonable for cars to stop on the car lane.

- Red lights: It's less dangerous for cyclists to ride the red light than the green light. It's incredible, but there are less accidents, even if the cyclist does it every day and isn't fully aware of his surroundings. But car drivers go crazy when they see a cyclist burning the red light (which isn't surprising because it's a penal infraction in France, like drunk-driving).

- Bikes riding in the sidewalk or the wrong lane, sometimes in the opposite direction, by night, when there are other solutions. Most infractions could easily be sorted out by the police, but they're more busy acting like they're fighting terrorism (by stationing under the Town Hall palace with weapons drawn out) than checking for traffic infringements.

- Pedestrians walking on the cycle lane, which is prone to injury, often due to cars who park on the sidewalk.

- Bikes without lights: That's not much of a risk for the cyclist, because they know very well they may die from their own mistake and get a Darwin Award of stupid deaths. No, I'd rather focus on the risk for the car drivers, who will be considered guilty of killing a cyclist, even though he was in the dark without light, sometimes in the opposite direction than he's supposed to be. Bikers without lights are a jail threat for all car drivers around.

- Also note the counter-intuitive feat that not requiring the helmet saves more lives across a country than the compulsory helmet law.

All in all, if justice were served, cars should be given the short end of everything because they kill massively in four ways (accidents, immediate pollution, carbon emissions, driver's health) and occupy more space.

I propose the following modification to HN moderation:

Comments that fall along entirely predictable, nonproductive back-and-forth lines: in this case, expressions of hostility between cyclists and non-cyclists, should be deleted. There should perhaps be a link to previous iterations of the discussion, or to neutral resources on how urban planning can integrate cyclists.

This comment has been made with the deliberate decision to not read anything else written in this thread. The topic and the fact there are 100+ posts tells me everything I need to know about what's in it.

I don't mind giving up the road to cyclists in cities. I just hope that one day they are finally treated like cars. Bikes on city roads should have to be registered with plates. Bikes in many places in Japan are registered and it makes it a lot easier to figure out when someone is riding a bike they aren't supposed to have. The plates would hopefully go along with police actually enforcing the traffic laws on cyclists so they can't simply blow through traffic lights, stop signs, peddle through pedestrians on the sidewalk, drink and peddle, etc. If cyclists want the same respect as cars on the road, they should be expected to follow the laws just as seriously as someone with a car.

Yes because a 20 pound bike does exactly the same damage as a 6000 pound car. Both to driver and victim. Excellent thought process.

Also slapping plates on bikes will totally fix the issue of theft. Cars never ever get stolen, because they have plates.

I disagree with your underlying assumptions and your suggestions. What you are suggesting would penalize the sorts of people who rely upon their bicycles to get to work each day.

I think the bigger problem is that people on bicycles don't always obey the laws which are in place to protect both them and motor vehicle drivers. The parent mentioned cyclists who run through traffic lights and similar infrastructure with wanton disregard for the situation (I have witnessed this many times myself). This creates a situation that is dangerous to everyone involved and is quite illegal. However, there is no recourse as there is no easy way to identify them as you would a motor vehicle as there are no plates or identifying items on the bicycle.

Ultimately I agree that adding plates is a bit extreme, but I think it's also disingenuous to say there is no problem and ignore them.

Edit: I would also like to note that I'm not commenting on motor vehicles disobeying laws in similar situations, they routinely do, however that does not take away from the fact that there is an issue here as well.

> people on bicycles don't always obey the laws which are in place to protect both them and motor vehicle drivers

I'm willing to buy an argument that "vehicular cycling" (using the road in a way that's similar to a car) can be safer in certain circumstances and that obeying traffic lights, stop signs, and so on can help cyclists and drivers share the road more safely. I have certainly felt that way when I've cycled in communities that aren't used to many bikes on the road.

On the other hand, the idea that traffic laws are there to protect cyclists just doesn't make sense to me. By and large, traffic laws in the U.S. seem to privilege the material concerns and safety of drivers.

> On the other hand, the idea that traffic laws are there to protect cyclists just doesn't make sense to me.

I think traffic laws encourage predictability and predictability leads to safety for everyone -- cars, pedestrians, and cyclists.

Having driven in 3rd world countries a few times where traffic laws were completely ignored, it was always shocking to drive again in the US. Everything seemed so controlled and ordered by comparison.

Stop sign/light honoring daily bike commuter here who often scolds cyclists that do not obey the law, but I think you'll find that the statistics do not bear out the danger you present. How many fatalities (or even serious injuries) result from cyclists blowing through stop signs? If you remove the offending cyclist from that stats, I'd guess you're looking at about zero. I do remember a case in PDX a few years ago where a reckless cyclist struck and killed a man, but it is exceedingly rare.

I seem to remember a trial which was piloted in London (UK) a few years back which permitted a cyclist to go through a red light if turning left. Can anyone shed any light on how this worked out?

Presumably fine? It's perfectly acceptable for any sort of vehicle to turn right after stopping at a red light in Alberta, Canada and I've never heard of it causing a problem.

I know that seems weird for people where right on red is illegal, but it's really no different than what happens at a stop sign.

Turns out it was only a proposal which was never tried after all:

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/oct/27/cyclists-run-...

Johnson and Transport for London requested permission for a trial back in 2009, but it never took place. TfL has concentrated instead on remodelling junctions to allow “early release” (where cyclists get a green light before cars) and “hold the left-turning traffic” (keeping cyclists and cars apart on left turns).

Bicycles are banned on sidewalks in most major cities because a head on collision can still easily cause a fatality. When the existing traffic laws on bikes are rarely enforced, this becomes a much more likely outcome as the laws are ignored.

Who the hell rides on the sidewalk in a major city? It's faster to ride in traffic in major cities, and since the drivers are usually stuck in heavy traffic, they're less likely to suddenly do something idiotic. It's probably safer for everyone if cyclists ride in the road where they belong downtown, which by itself should be reason enough to ticket lawbreakers. (Of course I'm sure you'll agree that anyone doing 56 in a 55 should be pulled over, too! /s)

That said, if you start ticketing people for riding on sidewalks in the suburbs, pretty soon you won't have any bicyclists at all in the suburbs. Drivers are much, much worse on suburban and rural roads in my experience. Not because they're less skilled or less likely to be texting while slapping the kids and fiddling with the radio, but because they're going faster. Downtown they're all stuck in traffic (haha!).

As an anecdote I've seen this happen a few times (in New York of all places!) and it's incredibly annoying. My observation is that the riders who tend to do this are often inexperienced, which makes the entire situation worse: they wobble on the sidewalk and disrupt pedestrian flow dramatically because everyone gives them way wider berth.

Should we require pedestrians to be licensed before we build dedicated walking infrastructure? Oh wait, we already did: they're called sidewalks.

I hope for your sake that you're just trolling and aren't really as ignorant as you make yourself sound.

Seriously? This is easily the worst argument against bicycles I see bought up again and again. Next time you're driving count how many people you see breaking the law be it bicycle, pedestrian or motor vehicle. Now count how many you see receiving fines/being talked to by the police.

But let's go ahead and agree with you and add number plates to bicycles - ignoring the huge costs incurred by the state - how exactly does that help enforce any laws? Bicycles are to small and light to trigger most red light cameras and to slow for speed cameras. So you're only left with visual enforcement by an officer of the law, which will have to physically stop the offender to issue any fines... which... o, hey... you don't need a number plate for that.

> Next time you're driving count how many people you see breaking the law be it bicycle, pedestrian or motor vehicle.

If I don't count minor speeding (<10 mph over), I see a much higher percentage of cyclists breaking the law than cars. I drive through a busy four way stop while commuting and nearly every bicyclist does not stop and about half don't even slow down. I don't think I've ever seen a car just completely blow right through the intersection.

Interesting that's likely a location thing. Also I'd question < 10mph over isn't speeding, assuming even a 60mph speed limit you're allowing drivers to travel at over 10% faster than posted.

Depending again on location, there's almost definitely laws on indicating turns which I'd say is probably the one I see ignored the most (to cut off the 'I see bicycles not indicating' line, most places have a 'when safe to do so' clause for bicycles).

Plates identify owners, not drivers. A cyclist exposes a lot more identifiable features than a driver hiding behind steel and carefully shaded, angled, and semi-mirrored glass.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com