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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

"Widely" ? Maybe in altruism-display places like SoCal, where the expectation for traffic interaction is to stop and have a ten minute meeting about how to proceed so everyone can feel leave feeling superior.

In general it's just called yielding, and that it happens in all four dimensions is implicit. The difference in China is that the tolerances are smaller.

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The law as written means you have to yield on a bicycle in exactly the same way you would a car. There’s no room for China-level tolerances, as you describe.

People may also be picturing different scenarios: NYC couriers and delivery people swerving around them inspires scorn, as do cars driving around you at 30mph in a crosswalk even if no contact will be made. Edit: but the former scenario should happen more often than the latter simply because the car is often too big to pull the same stunt without actually causing physical injury.

I love the picture of a 10 minute traffic meeting, though.

Can you elaborate on where this is coming from? I know you're exaggerating, but in my limited experience I haven't noticed abnormally long yield times at intersections in southern California.

Try walking at a moving car in a parking lot, such that if both of you maintain your velocity you will clearly pass behind the car after it has passed. 9/10 times the driver will "helpfully" stop and "helpfully" wave you on in front of them, delaying both of you.

There used to be something called a "Californian stop" that was a partial stop rather than a full stop, but after living in LA for a year, I never saw it happen.

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