Hacker News Reader

I live in Minneapolis, which regularly wins awards for US bike infra. I used to cycle to work. It was great in some ways, but I never felt safe because even with the supposedly great bike infra we have, drivers were a problem. In fact I felt safer on my motorcycle, which shouldn't be the case.

"Car culture" generally brings out the same primate programming you see in the "comments section". There's a level of pseudo-anonymity that brings out the aggressive asshole in all of us and make it unsafe for the most vulnerable.

I believe only dedicated bike infra is the way to solve this in the US. Dedicated bike infra is a fraction of the cost of car infra.

I moved to Minneapolis a few years ago from Boston.

I felt a good deal safer biking in Boston, where the infrastructure is terrible, drivers are generally much more aggressive, and yet, I felt, more accepting of cyclists.

In Minneapolis cars seem to be frightened, angry, or just not paying attention with regard to cyclists.

The dedicated bicycle infa that does exist (greenway) somewhat mitigates this for me. You can't get everywhere via dedicated bike path - but it's better than most midwestern cities, in my experience.

In fact I felt safer on my motorcycle, which shouldn't be the case

I feel the same way, but it makes some sense. You've got better brakes, fifty horses on tap, and you're fully armored.

Like, I don't know, how an armored knight might feel compared to a leather-clad foot soldier.

It's especially poignant when I first hopped on a mountain bike after dirt biking for years. I felt naked and powerless.

At urban traffic speeds, a motorcycle driver can use their engine power and acceleration to have almost complete control over their position relative to other vehicles. So most of their driving time can be spent in positions that feel safe. They can feel in control.

A bicyclist does not have this degree of control over speed, so they spend much of their time in positions, relative to other vehicles, that do not feel safe.

I don't know about motorcycles, but once you learn to control your bike beyond steering on flat ground (hopping curbs, maintaining balance at a stop or at low speeds, recovering from skids) you can get your bike out of sticky situations.

I feel much more at ease on a bike than in a car. Not to mention you aren't gridlocked in a huge box when the traffic gets bad.

Right but with a motorcycle you're matching traffic speeds, and in fact, usually going faster, so everything comes from in front of you. On a bicycle you're at the mercy of everyone behind you seeing you and recognizing the speed differential and so on.

I guess what I'm talking about is more relevant when riding in a tight urban core like say NYC. In that case the traffic is not actually moving that fast making a bike much more efficient.

"Car culture" generally brings out the same primate programming you see in the "comments section". There's a level of pseudo-anonymity that brings out the aggressive asshole in all of us and make it unsafe for the most vulnerable.

Its night and day when you are on a bicycle versus a car. I get conversations and interactions with people while biking that makes the experience so much more "human" (for lack of a better word).

I have been preaching car-free downtowns for years, and continue to believe it is the correct next step for healthy city and town life.

> I get conversations and interactions with people while biking.

Never happens for me. Probably because I'm about twice as fast as the average cyclist and basically pass them like they are standing still.

The guys that go head to head with me or that I can't keep up with tend not to be conversationalists, which suits me fine.

Riding side by side and chatting, in traffic, would be impractical, even if either of us wanted to.

The stops at intersections are brief. Plus you get separated; one just makes the green light, the other stops and that's it.

And then, what's there to say?

"Hi, I know everything about bicycle maintenance and fitness". "Wow, me too!" "`Kay, see you later".

> I'm about twice as fast as the average cyclist

A TDF winner then?

One article I read suggested that the helmet de-humanizes the cyclist in the same way a car de-humanizes drivers. This is one reason pedestrians are treated better than cyclists. This is not a suggestion to not wear a helmet, although there is ample evidence that you're better off without one.

That said, I'll take my chances and wear a helmet :)

> there is ample evidence that you're better off without one.

Not anything that can be called rational evidence.

I've suffered several falls in which I heard a very loud crack: that of helmet hitting pavement, hard. That would have been my head, each time.

http://www.howiechong.com/journal/2014/2/bike-helmets

It's not enough for me; I wear a helmet each and every time I ride (well, except on recent bike-shares in Paris, Stockholm, Vienna, and Munich, where none were available). But I've crashed bicycles a number of times in my life, even once crashing into a car as a teenager (flipped, bounced off the car, hit the ground) and still never hit my head.

Anyway, it's just interesting to read about what causes head injuries and what makes a cyclist prone (or not) to them.

That seems dubious to me. I think that pedestrians are viewed more favorably than cyclists mainly because everyone spends a lot of time as a pedestrian. By contrast, most people aren't cyclists, which means that drivers tend to view them as an out-group, and therefore an object of contempt. This also helps to explain why people are often more incensed by traffic violations by cyclists than by drivers or pedestrians.

I was recently the victim of an attempted mugging, while walking. This occured on a busy road with dozens of cars driving by in the short time this took to happen, but with no other pedestrians around. No car stopped, no driver offered any assistance. I am convinced that, instead of cars, if cyclists or pedestrians were going by, someone would have helped me (even just by calling the police).

I've cycled for years, and gotten all the physical abuse, verbal abuse, horn-blowing, being cut-off, etc. that goes with it. I think a lot of drivers really aren't functioning members of society when they get in their car. They're in their own little world, not connected with reality.

> I am convinced that, instead of cars, if cyclists or pedestrians were going by, someone would have helped me (even just by calling the police).

Cyclists and pedestrians turn a blind eye and avoid involvement with crimes they witness, too.

Of course, they are more likely to actually be around long enough to recognize what's going on, but that's no guarantee of willingness to get involved.

Being around long enough to recognize what's going on increases the chance of some intervention. Casual criminals usually try to avoid areas with a lot of pedestrians (more chance of a do-gooder I assume), whereas roads with a lot of cars seem to be less of a deterrent.

I think that's a big part of it. A driver might have gone by the attempted mugging and even if they noticed it, might have only seen half a second of the incident; not long enough to process it.

While biking to work yesterday, I saw a collared/tagged dog run across an arterial, almost getting hit by a large semi-truck. I stopped and followed the dog. I was eventually led to what turned out to be its house -- it barked at me and was standoffish so I couldn't get to its tags, but eventually the owner came out and the dog snuck back under the fence.

I definitely would not have stopped had I been in my car.

I would have helped you. But I'm categorically insane.

Indeed - the number of educated people who believe there was a 'car tax' that paid for the road was outstanding. Until recently nearly all taxation went into a central pot and was allocated from there. Sadly this is now changing which I think will further drive the sense of 'ownership of the road' that many drivers have.

It boggles my mind how places have set up toll roads, and then somehow negotiate the tolls to a third party. Just, why!?

(Alternatively, someone please educate me on how what I think I "know" there is false. Thanks! :) )

the idea is that an enterprising private company can manage costs and deliver services at a lower cost than a Gov run one.

Not really sure i 100% agree, but I suspect that oversite would be better with a Gov run Toll

That idea sounds fine, absent all of the evidence I've heard of where the vast majority of the toll money is going outside of the city where the toll road is.

I suppose taxes aren't much different, in that most go somewhere else. But, at least with taxes you can see a money stream back to the city and argue it up. With it going to a private company, you are sorta screwed.

Except for the fact that the cost of collecting tolls exceeds the cost of collecting a tax on fuel [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13817279

Tolls achive more than just crudely approximating a car's impact to the road system. Tolls can influence traffic behavior and congestion; which I'd guess is the point of that LA article.

Also, I'm curious how those costs look when you have open road tolling, as recently implemented in Massachusetts. No toll takers, just cameras, computers, and a call center "somewhere".

There's also the cost of setting up and maintaining system that doesn't apply to fuel tax collection (since it's already in place).

> Tolls can influence traffic behavior and congestion

That's more like "give poor people a reason not to drive on certain roads/lanes" if you take the glass half empty view of things.

at least here in the US we have a fetish for older guys in business casual with a little bit of a beer gut that knock off early to put in a quick 9. as long as one of those guys is taking a cut, we're happy.

thats the way it seems

Privatized vs government run. In some situations a privatized provider can be more effective than a government run one. If the private company has the call center in Tennessee, their accountants, lawyers and headquarters in Phoenix, they can be cheaper than a government run organization that has all employees living in a high cost area in CA. There are also economies of scale for a private company to manage these services for many different areas. S a city getting half of the toll revenue from a private company can get more money than collecting all of it themselves and hiring people.

Some folks, if inclined towards skepticism, think that it's a form of give-away: Hand it to a private business, and bail it out when it fails. Some of these things work, and some fail. A couple of interesting privatization episodes to consider:

* Public education --> Charter schools

* Public and nonprofit colleges --> For-profit education industry

As someone who doesn't own a car, and rides a bike for everything, I get this argument on why I shouldn't be on the roads quite often. I just want to leave this article, here:

https://momentummag.com/free-rider-myth/

for those who believe that a gas tax is used to pay for roadways, and since cyclists do not pay a gas tax, they have no business riding the roads.

As the article points out, driving on roads is heavily subsidized. WE ALL pay for the privilege of driving a car on public roads.

Let's also not forget that road wear's relationship with weight is greater than linear, which is to say that doubling the weight will more than double the wear. Your average cyclist is going to be 10x smaller than a normal 4 door car.

IIRC, it goes with the 4th power of the axle weight, which is much more than just nonlinear

The thing that gets me (as a cyclist) is that I commute almost entirely on local roads that are largely paid with my property taxes.

Yet the people that seem to complain most about bikes on the road are commuting from 2 counties away and very little of their tax money goes to paying the roads that I'm commuting on. And they act as if that me riding in that tiny 3 foot wide painted strip on the road is caused them to have an hour long commute in stop and go traffic from 30+ miles away.

roars by cyclist after 2 seconds' wait, races up to traffic ahead, slams on brakes, gets passed by cyclist at the stop sign 30 seconds later

I'm going to take a guess (and if I'm wrong, I apologize), that you also own a car, which would have a tax on the gas it consumes. Thus, you may in fact be contributing to the gas tax, while also riding a bike and having people think you're a freeloader (while also getting to work, paying Federal taxes that contribute to the loans that subsidize the actual construction of the road ways ,etc).

I don't own a car, but as the article I linked points out, more than 50% of commuters would need to ride a bike for their commute, before car drivers subsidize the cost of roads for cyclists.

It would be then that I would be interested in talks about cyclists contributing extra to the costs of infrastructure through some sort of... tax - that infrastructure would also look amazingly different. One can dream :)

Well, yes and no - my family owns a car, but my wife drives it most days. We got rid of our second car when we moved within easy bike commuting distance of my job.

That may be the situation in the U.S. – definitely not comparable in most of the EU.

Also worth bearing in mind that not all the money that goes to road infra for motor vehicles can be attributed to the costs of enabling the use of passenger cars, as at least part of that is needed for other aspects of a functioning society (transport, etc.)

The traffic free routes for kids to bike to work is genius. The only reason we are worried about our 8 year old biking to work is that she doesn't have good presence to stop at intersections. I think it is a great idea, though, and glad I can tell her I bike to work every day. Looking forward to her biking, as well.

I volunteer for UK cycling charity Sustrans. Whenever I've helped out at a stand at a local fair/festival, the number one question is always parents asking "Where can we take our kids to ride without traffic?".

Fortunately the UK is very slowly catching on to what has been standard practice in the Netherlands and Denmark for years, but outside London progress is still glacially slow. As an example: the cycle track mentioned by awjr in Oxford (along Marston Ferry Road) was put in in the 1970s. It's outstanding, and a huge success. Yet Oxford hasn't built anything like it since.

I do wonder sometimes if the UK needs a "Stop the child murder" campaign similar to the "Stop de kindermoord" that occurred in the 70s in the Netherlands. https://www.dutchreach.org/car-child-murder-protests-safer-n...

It's had a profound impact on their society. That's not to say the country does not suffer from congestion, just most journeys under 7km are done by foot or bicycle and the health benefits are huge despite their rather calorific diets ;)

The level of child travel independence alone in the Netherlands is almost alien to other countries.

>The level of child travel independence alone in the Netherlands is almost alien to other countries.

This was so evident when I was there. Just the number of kids biking to school together, not with a parent, and at such a young age... it was really cool.

I live in a small town in the middle of the US. Our schools have very large numbers of kids who bike every day. Probably aided by the lack of busy roads in town and a commonly shared culture that biking and free range kids are ok.

> More interestingly is that Highways England has now recognised you cannot share space safely between vehicles with very different speed profiles and developed design standards for delivering better road networks that support walking, cycling, and driving.

Here in Seattle, the vast majority of bike vs car accidents are (relatively) low speed left and right turns (of cars into bikes) [0]. The issue isn't just speed profiles. This is of personal interest to me as I am typing this up one handed after recovering from (among other things) tendon repair surgery on my right hand from a negligent left turner.

[0] https://www.dugganbikelaw.com/courtesygapequalsdeathtrap

As a child (born in the UK mid-seventies), there were about only a dozen or so people that got picked up and dropped off at school (the poshers). Most children walked, the bike sheds were always maxed out.

As a similarly aged child in the USA, nearly every child was bussed to school in a school bus. When I was growing up, school was far away, only reachable by car or bus. After looking it up on a map, I discovered that it was less than a mile away, and would have been easily bikeable or even walkable if there was a safe route to get there. I think I spent more time waiting at the bus stop each day than it would have taken to just walk there.

On a few occasions I missed the bus and mom drove in to pick me up since walking home was unthinkable.

Born in '81, about a 1mi walk home, we spent most of it walking through the ditch on the side of the road, playing in drainage culverts under the road, etc. Not safe, but fun!

Where did you get your obesity figures from? https://jakubmarian.com/percentage-of-obese-population-by-co... puts the Netherlands only slightly below average with 19.8%. (The UK seems to have a problem though; with its 28.1% it's a bit of an outlier in Europe.)

> More interestingly is that Highways England has now recognised you cannot share space safely between vehicles with very different speed profiles.

On limited access highways (motorways), trucks (lorries) can share space with cars that are going quite a bit faster (70 mph vs 40 mph) when going up steeper grades. This is typically accomplished by providing an extra lane of travel for the slower vehicles to use such that faster vehicles can easily overtake them.

One major problem that cyclists have when riding on roads with motor vehicles is that there is a belief that it's okay to share a lane with a cyclist while overtaking them. This reduces the separation between the cyclist and the overtaking vehicle and increases the chance for a collision. As far as I know, this doesn't seem to be the case when overtaking any other type of vehicle.

Motorcyclists also "enjoy" cars that "visit" their lane.

I very nearly had a bad crash on a stretch of bicycle/pedestrian only road.

Why? Ice. It put me of bicycling in the winter, permanently. You can separate the lanes all you want but king Winter does not care.

Ultimately while bycicling has it usages, with self-driving vehicles coming in the near future I don't see driving go down, I see biking go down. If I was a parent, I would much rather see my children well-protected behind steel, airbags, advanced AI and safety belts all engineered to keep them safe than to have to have the drive around on two thin wheels with nothing but a flimsy helmet to keep them safe.

One of my childhood friends had a fatal car crash on a road due to ice -- that metal cage is no guarantee of safety.

I rode my bike throughout winters in college and had a few minor crashes due to slippery roads. If I were to do the same now, I'd use studded bike tires for better grip in ice which were unheard of back then.

If the road isn't plowed and salted, as we do for car-oriented roads to make them usable through the winter and ought to do for all transportation-oriented bike infrastructure, one can purchase a set of studded tires very affordably: https://www.bike24.com/p238233.html

I use studded tires in the winter.

http://www.icebike.org/the-ultimate-guide-to-winter-bike-tir...

> If you want people to not drive, you have to give them really good active travel choices that enable people to make that choice of their own volition.

A good choice is essential, but it's not enough. The choice has to be better, to the extent of nerfing the alternatives. See Stevenage where they had both options - driving is still hugely dominant. http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/stevenage/

Err all the post ww2 "new towns" where predicated on mass car ownership see Milton Keynes where many areas don't have proper sidewalks

From the article I linked to:

> While most cycle path advocates and cynics like to argue over the merits and demerits of the duff ‘red ways’ of Milton Keynes, very few pay any attention to Stevenage. This is odd because Stevenage’s cycleway network was built before the one at Milton Keynes, and was built as an intrinsic and key part of the New Town plan, not an afterthought, as at Milton Keynes. Throughout the 1970s Stevenage was held up as proof that the UK could build a Dutch-style cycle network. An article in New Scientist magazine in 1973 claimed that “Stevenage cycleways and cycle underpasses [are] premiere exhibits…[in a] traffic revolution.”