Comment by trjordan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by trjordan | Hacker News Reader

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As pointed out in the article, it can be a crime, depending on jurisdiction and local laws. The problem is prosecuting that crime in the same way you'd process a murder with a knife, because the public doesn't see them the same way.

Honestly, I get that. Driving a bike on a road with cars seems dangerous. I do it, and I don't want to die, but it's not the same as walking on the sidewalk or sitting in my yard. If there were bad choices made by the driver, then sure, let's prosecute. But passing a biker going 15mph on a 45mph road doesn't seem crazy. Going 72 in a 65 doesn't seem crazy. I like to think I'm an aware driver, and I haven't hit any bikers yet, but I've seen myself be two distracted moments away from hitting one. It's not crazy that I would be checking my maps app at the same time a police siren comes into view, leading me to miss the biker who'd just turned into the lane next to me.

The problem seems to me that we've built both physical and social structures around roads being for cars. It needs to feel comfortable to bike while taking up a whole lane, both for bikers and cars. ("Drive at the speed bikers go" isn't reasonable, imho.) Bike lanes help a lot, and having a lot of bikers around helps a lot. But we can't just start with "killing a biker is deliberate murder", because it's simply not. It's old attitudes being applied to a new world, and I'd rather find a way to bring people into the new world than punish a few of them for making a mistake.

> It's not crazy that I would be checking my maps app at the same time a police siren comes into view, leading me to miss the biker who'd just turned into the lane next to me.

Perhaps it's not crazy, but it is illegal. You're supposed to keep your eyes on the road, and looking at your smartphone is just as bad whether you're texting or using a map app. Phones have voice output for this reason.

If you need to take your eyes off the road, then first stop. If you don't, and as a result hit someone, then yes, it's murder.

Poor example on his part. The same situation could happen while changing the radio, adjusting AC, or even looking in a different mirror. The safety-dogmatism of "If you need to take your eyes off the road, then first stop" is not practical advice.

There's an allowance for these things, where you can spend half a second fixing something, but some people are astonishingly bad drivers and get fixated on things for tens of seconds, still driving.

The problem is with way the laws are written, it's almost impossible to prosecute bad drivers. I was clipped by a driver while cycling, who then flipped me off because I was in his way (I had the right of way). I reported to police and they didn't even pursue a ticket because "he will just deny it and we won't get a conviction".

Pedestrians and cyclists are dying at alarming rates. The vast majority are not "unavoidable accidents" but drivers making dangerous decisions. Most drivers are courteous, but a small number are repeat offenders who consider the road a battle and cyclists an opponent.

Any contact between a car and pedestrian/cyclist should be a serious offence. It won't stop every death, but if the first time you clipped someone, police actually acted on it and you had your licence suspended for 30 days, it would stop a good number of them.

Proof in the issue from the article: less than 1% of collisions injuring a pedestrians were cited for careless driving.

This is completely the opposite of my experience.

Here in Chicago, bicyclists are the cause of nearly all accidents. The overwhelming majority weave through traffic, run red lights and stop signs, and even ride the wrong way down one-way streets.

Bicyclists in Chicago also regularly hit and injure pedestrians, sometimes causing deaths.

When bicyclists start actually following traffic laws, then we can start talking about blaming the car drivers automatically in accidents.

This is verifiably false. The car is at fault in the majority of crashes. Search if you want sources, there are dozens of studies on the issue.

You're complaining about cyclists killing pedestrians when the ratio is at minimum 5,000:1 when compared to cars? Really?

Your "overwhelming majority" claim is also absurd. You as a non-cyclist, see a few bad actors and come up with a generalization that is verifiably false. Meanwhile, when you see a bad driver, you don't blame all drivers. It's the same us vs them principal that allows racism.

First, notice I specifically called out my assertions as anecdotal, but I imagine many large cities are the same.

I am a cyclist, but I am not dumb enough to ride a bicycle in downtown automobile and pedestrian traffic.

I walk over a mile each way from the train station to my office, and have been hit twice by a bicyclist during that walk. I stand by my observation that the majority of bicyclists in Chicago are extremely dangerous and do not follow traffic laws at all.

They also wear headphones and even look at their smartphones while blowing red lights and riding down sidewalks packed with pedestrians. The delivery messengers are of course the worst in this regard.

The city put in special bike lanes on many streets and still bicyclists don’t use them and ride the sidewalks instead.

> The city put in special bike lanes on many streets and still bicyclists don’t use them and ride the sidewalks instead.

The bike lanes can't be very good then

They bicycle lanes are fine, on some of the most-used streets.

It’s the bicyclists that aren’t very good. Just today I saw an idiot without helmet riding no-handed down the middle of Madison street, wearing headphones and looking at his phone. If he gets tagged by a car, it will not automatically be the car drivers fault.

[citation needed]

> It's not crazy that I would be checking my maps app at the same time a police siren comes into view, leading me to miss the biker who'd just turned into the lane next to me.

I think this is much of the problem. It should be crazy to do that. Yet so many people do it, regularly, and can't conceive of their daily life without doing it, so we just accept that it is not crazy. And then when it causes a problem, as it inevitably will, we say "oh well, accidents happen".

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