EDIT: I say this as both a cyclist and a driver. I can't believe how often I see cyclists do dangerous things. But for sure, I see a lot of drivers do mean, dangerous and stupid things, too. I just get tired of cyclists thinking that traffic laws don't apply to us.
Please stop. http://beyondthekerb.org.uk/2016/09/23/the-lions-share/
How about the person pedaling a bike in a town without a bike lane, at night, with a kid in a trailer in the back with a barely visible flag sticking up. He could have been the best bike rider in the world, yet I have no doubt he was doing a very unsafe thing.
Let's take the kid out of the equation. I don't quite follow the logic "well they are doing a less safe thing, so they should be able to do it and get the right of way because of it". Even taking the idea that they are an adult and if they want do put themselves in harm's way and should be allowed to, is silly, because it is rarely just one person isolated from everything. If they get into an accident it is not just them, but their family who will be impacted, emergency services, doctors' time.
I believe mikepurvis's comment was that a lot of responsibility disappears, not all responsibility.
It is the driver's responsibility to not drive faster than can be seen. There can be cyclists, certainly, or someone with a seizure or heart attack who ended up on the ground, or pets, livestock, or wild animals. People do hit deer in the middle of the night, when the deer freezes up and the cars are going too fast to break in time. To reflect my Florida upbringing, people do accidentally drive into sinkholes which appeared in the middle of the street, again because they were driving too fast to break in time.
They drive fast because their experience mislead them. They think that years of driving at night at a given speed, without problem, means it's safe to do so. Think of how some drunk drivers will keep doing so, on the belief that they can hold their liquor enough to handle a car. Until the day they cannot.
A driver who hits a cyclist - even one without lights - was going too fast to control the car safely.
This of course has limits. But the car can cause much more damage, so the operator of a car should have higher responsibility than that of a bicycle.
So no, it's not that cyclists are doing a less safe thing, it's that motorists are doing a less safe thing.
Caveat aside, I'm constantly amazed that this argument gets brought up over and over again.
Traffic laws exist to ensure public safety. So let's cut the bike/car bullshit about the laws being equal for both.
Let's take a simple offense like running a stop sign at 15 km/hr and suppose that a pedestrian gets hit. What's the difference between a car doing this and a bicycle? Both the bike and the car are going 4 m/s. But there's a huge difference between getting hit by a car that's 1500 kg plus passengers versus an 80 kg person plus a 9 kg bike. Simple thought experiment, you've just been hit by something. What outcome would be more favorable? Would you rather have a Honda Civic on your spleen or some asshat bike courier named Jack? Two tonnes versus nine kilograms?
The crime may be the same, but the outcome is far different. I've seen a van run a red light and the cyclist traveling orthogonally ride right into the side of it going 45 km/hour. Not pretty.
It's not difficult to drive, ride, or walk safely. Just do it and stop whining.
That's such a willfully stupid response. Compare these:
Bike:Compact:SUV to pelletgun:handgun:rifle
Morever, did you read the first thing that I said? "Before I get all the hate I have to say of course cyclists should obey the laws." Thank you for adding NOTHING to the conversation except for demonstrating the whacked out stupidity that is the core problem here.
Your kind argues that we have to obey the same laws as motorists while forcing us into the gutter. "Separate but equal?"
Bike:Compact:SUV to pelletgun:handgun:rifle
Like I said, a bicycle is very capable of severely injuring or killing a pedestrian, which is why I group it together with automobiles. I'm not familiar with how powerful pellet guns are, so I don't know how that analogy applies. I suspect they are at least capable of causing severe eye injury, and I would encourage the exact same precautionary behavior with pellet guns as with handguns and rifles (trigger discipline, don't point at people, etc.).
I guess I'm a little confused by what point you're trying to make. If your preface was intended to invalidate everything you wrote after it, then it's my mistake for trying to do the same.
A pellet could injure someone and damage an eye. What if a bullet hit the same spot? Those are very different outcomes. Conceivably a pellet could kill someone if was a David vs Goliath one in a million shot. Reckless endangerment takes into account the threat level created by the offender. Why not traffic laws? The threat level sort of tops out when you're a squishy human getting hit by a vehicle. Compact vs SUV don't matter much unless you want to get all Rorschach about the splatter pattern. Dead is dead.
That said, I've spent much of my life in cities crowded with bikes and pedestrians and the difference between a bike and a car, pretty much any kind of car, is huge.
There's the weight difference, but also the completely different posture, ability to see around you, ability to stop or even just drop your bike and jump off. Bikes are much easier to steer, as well as smaller in 'surface area' that can hit another person.
I've gone on daily commutes where I'd ride at relatively high speeds right through the tourist-infested center of Amsterdam, and while I'd not do that anymore (wiser and older), accidents were incredibly rare, despite the fact that most tourists don't understand the concept of a 'bike lane'.
In my opinion the average city biker is much more like a pedestrian than like a car driver. Obviously that doesn't mean bikers shouldn't respect the road, but putting bikers in the same category as drivers seems a bit silly to me.
(that said, high-speed cyclists are quite a bit more dangerous. but around here they usually avoid heavy-traffic areas. could be different for the US maybe)
In my opinion the key attribute isn't the size, weight, or speed, but rather simply the path being used. To me, the key distinction of pedestrians is that they have their own "road," with very different rules and specific rules to handle encounters with the other type of road. Bicycles, on the other hand, use the same road as automobiles (and usually the same lanes), with only slightly different rules than automobiles.
But let's back up for a second and look at this dynamic differently. An automobile is a metal cage moving over 3 times the speed of a cyclist with a completely safe and insulated cabin. If a driver behaves dangerously near a cyclist, the cyclist dies. If a cyclist misbehaves near a driver, the driver is very far from harm.
Car vs. Motorcycle
Truck vs. Car
For example, it's not okay for a car to rear end a truck or for a pedestrian to jaywalk.
Then, let's think for a second and realize that a driver is not an evil demon who will just laugh when a bicycle gets in the way and, while trying to avoid killing a cyclist, may as well get into danger himself/endanger other people.
Ffs, people create pileups trying to avoid dogs jumping in the traffic, you believe nobody will blink an eye when a cyclist does the same?
But the cyclist is not. Why is it ok for the cyclist to behave unsafe, end up in in the hospital, crippled for life, or dead?
Is ambulance ride going to cost less because the person did it to the themselves or it was someone else' fault? I don't think it will.
Would you say that people shouldn't wear seatbelts, after all, they are just hurting themselves mostly? How is this different?
The impact of dangerous cycling is orders of magnitude lower and unlike dangerous driving does not significantly endanger others.
Yes, I'm bitter.
And think about the children!
it's not uncommon for them to run red lights, cut across multiple lanes without checking for cars behind them, and all sorts of other batty bullshit.
the point that i believe is often lost in these debates is that bikers and drivers _cannot_ share the same road. you can paint as many pretty lines as you want, but as long as bikes and cars have to share the same pavement, there will be no resolution