Hacker News Reader

Comment by andrewem | Hacker News Reader

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...

View on HN

> 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’."

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

>> 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.

> 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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com