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Comment by unicornporn | Hacker News Reader

I'm at my 12 year of every day bike commuting. Before I commuted 10 km each direction, now I'm at 6 km. If I have activities after work, I ride to them too. So my total ride length is a fair bit longer than what my commute is.

The public transportation network here in Stockholm is good, but wouldn't even consider cramming myself into a packed subway train or bus. Even at this time of the year when it's -5 degrees celcius and snowy I really enjoy my daily rides.

It cuts commuting time in half and I shave off another two hours of sitting without moving a day.

If possible, I highly recommend bike commuting. Get a good bike (with gears) and rack mounts for bags. Gravel/adventure bikes are fun to ride and work well on all surfaces. Supple 650b tyres are all the rage these days. They will give you plenty of comfort while sacrificing very little when it comes to performance[1].

Tomorrow I'll be going to the outskirts of town with work. Then it's 50 km. I already look forward to that workday adventure. :)

[1] https://janheine.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/12-myths-in-cyclin...

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I commuted by bike for years in NYC and frankly I do not recommend it. The traffic has always been bad but it’s now significantly worse, and the bike lanes that exist make riding even more dangerous. You are always within reach of parked cars doors, and the lack of a physical barrier on most lanes means they are often driven over by cars.

Perhaps worst of all, even faulty bike lanes give cyclists a sense of entitlement and false security. The fact remains the roads were not built for cycling and cars always win in a battle for space.

I’d love to see bike-only roads, routes, or such. But until there is both proper segregation and consequences when cars kill cyclists (there are currently none) it’s a death wish.

Every day I see eager young cyclists riding with no helmet, no lights, and not infrequently without brakes (on fixies) and I am compelled to yell out my advice on working harder at staying alive.

Commuted for years, also Brooklyn to Manhattan about the same distance. Had to stop due to back issues but I can echo all the OP’s benefits.

Biking is somewhat dangerous in NYC, and every other American city. I agree with OP that NYC drivers are generally very good though. It’s the bikers responsibility to bike as though drivers are -trying- to kill you. First heard that advice when riding motorcycles and it’s stuck with me.

I’ve been in a few spills on my bike. A big one with a pedestrian who strolled into a protected high speed path at prospect park. Another one with an invisible pothole at night in park slope. The last was pure user error, riding tipsy from my local bar home :)

Generally, riding in nyc, like walking in nyc, is a unique skill set. You really MUST be able to do things like look behind you while riding, and it’s quite helpful to be able to accelerate to near traffic speeds. Of course you must assume any car door can open at any time. Route planning also goes a long way; it’s usually worthwhile to take a slightly longer route to stay on smooth streets or protected lanes. Extra wide one-way streets in Brooklyn are generally quite good for cyclists as well.

> Generally, riding in nyc, like walking in nyc, is a unique skill set

I don't mean to fear monger, but I suspect that confidence is just as dangerous as ignorance when you're on a bike in NYC. Very experienced cyclists also end up dead: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/nyregion/cyclists-death-s...

Cycling in NYC can be fun, healthy, and might eventually help push the city into better accommodating non-vehicular traffic. But it's also particularly dangerous, there is no getting around that.

I'm not sure that a story of one experienced rider being struck and killed invalidates the common sense argument that more experience is better than less experience.

I did not mean to impress that the techniques I mentioned above, if mastered, would result in 100% safe riding.

As far as biking being particularly dangerous in NYC, you'd need stats like miles traveled vs fatalities for a number of major cities to make that determination. It might be more dangerous in NYC, but it might not.

> The last was pure user error, riding tipsy from my local bar home :)

Doesn't that count as DUI where you live?

No, that's a common misconception: https://www.nysdwi.com/rochester-dwi-on-a-bicycle-new-york-l... and https://www.avvo.com/legal-guides/ugc/a-state-by-state-guide...

probably yeah.

Don't ride in the door zone. Don't let cars make you ride in the door zone. Take the car lane instead.

I've gone 15,000 miles safely in dense urban environments because I am heads-up about the 2 main threats: intersections, and the door zone.

Just be prepared to be ticketed by overzealous NYPD cops.

http://gothamist.com/2017/04/28/nypd_bike_lane_tickets.php

> Don't ride in the door zone. Don't let cars make you ride in the door zone. Take the car lane instead.

Please don’t do this. During the time that I commuted on a bicycle, it was very frustrating when other cyclists didn’t follow the rules of the road (zipping through stop signs is another example). It causes resentment in drivers. This leads to aggressive behavior towards cyclists.

You are mistaken about what the rules are in most states. To take one example, in California, you own the lane and cars cannot pass unless they can give you three feet of clearance.

http://ktla.com/2013/09/23/gov-brown-signs-law-requiring-car...

I don't care how much resentment it causes that should never result in aggressive behavior towards cyclists.

As if one cyclists behavior should or could influence a vehicle operators behavior towards other people sharing the road. Utterly ridiculous. Anybody that is not capable of keeping their emotions bottled up to the point where they will take out their frustrations on unprotected bags of fluid from within a ton+ of armor should be relieved of their license.

If you can't safely pass your place is clear: behind the other traffic.

I don't know the rules of the road for NYC. Where I'm from though, you are supposed to take the lane. Quite frankly, it's insane not to take the lane, since people think they can pass you in their car, while staying in the same lane.

Traffic lanes are rarely wide enough for two vehicles to travel side by side with sufficient space between them.

For example, on a street with 10 foot wide lanes, a 6 foot wide car would have a margin of 2 feet on either side of it and 4 feet between it and a car in the adjacent lane. For buses that are 8.5 feet wide, they have about 0.75 feet on each side and 1.5 feet between them and another bus in an adjacent lane.

A cyclist is about 2 feet wide at a minimum. To have a 2 feet of space on each side, they need a lane that's 6 feet wide. To have 0.75 feet on each side, they need a lane that's 3.5 feet wide.

For the car and bus examples above, neither can leave enough space in the lane while they're in it for a cyclist. So the only way to safely pass one is to change lanes.

>Please don’t do this.

Please do. Being doored isn't something you want to have happen to you; and can have pretty life changing results if you're unlucky.

If you're in a car and you can't pass if someones riding out of the door zone then you probably don't have room to pass anyway.

In most (all?) states in the US cyclists are legally allowed to take the lane when it is unsafe to stay to the right.

The UVC (Uniform Vehicle Code) that most states base their traffic laws on states that bicycles do not have to keep as far right as practicable when the lane they're in is a substandard width lane. They further go on to define a substandard width lane as one where a cyclist and another vehicle cannot travel safely side by side with both vehicles within the lane.

Cycling in NYC is highly dependent on the bike lanes on your route. There are good stretches of quality bike lane here and there (especially in Brooklyn), however there are parts of e.g. Chinatown that I would not recommend on a bike.

I would add to that list the entirety of Queens, where I regularly see people cycling down Northern Boulevard. I'm not familiar with roads in other cities to compare it to, so you'll have to use your imagination when I say: it's very dangerous.

Much of Queens Boulevard already has a protected bike lane, and more will soon: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/08/04/eyes-on-the-street-th...

None of the bike lanes on Queens Boulevard are protected. And according to the article, when it is "protected", it will be with "plastic posts".

Here's what cement dividers on Norther Boulevard protect riders from (scroll down for photos): http://qns.com/story/2017/12/07/poorly-designed-hastily-cons...

I have never looked at the data for NYC but for many cities cycling is about as dangerous as walking. The data might surprise you.

Driving without brakes is just ridiculously dumb in general, but especially so in a place like NYC.

have been riding in NYC for past 2 years. I do agree that bike lanes give you a false sense of security. You have to remain vigilant at all times. It's not that stressful. For me, I have come to enjoy riding in the city now. You need time to develop the sense of various moving objects around you.

At least on the island of Manhatto, the roads were not built for cars, either ;)

I'd hate to ride anything 'supple' on my commute path, which includes a lot of debris and broken bottles.

I do miss riding on smaller wheels though. 26" was much nicer to get rolling than 700c, and there's a lot of stop-start. 26" rigid bike are extinct now though it seems.

Parent is suggesting combining 650b/27.5" wheel sets with large volume 27.5" tires. This gives you an outer wheel diameter near a 700c wheel. Something like this Durano 27.5 x 1.10 tire [1] and sealant would make for a bomb proof commuter.

[1] https://www.schwalbetires.com/bike_tires/racing_tires/durano...

Only thing keeping me from commuting year round is lack of studded tires. I'll have to fix that until next year, because as I'm standing here, hoping for a train that's not jam packed, I really miss cycling.

I've been mostly biking to work for years now, on an island off the northwestern coast of Norway.

I have found that studded tyres are more of an annoyance than an asset on 99 out of 100 winter days.

On anything but wet ice, regular tyres do surprisingly well - to the extent that I've felt no need for studs at all during quite literally thousands of kilometers of riding in the snow - yes, grip is not as good as on asphalt, but then again - studs will not magically make the road bare; they only give you a bit of extra margin under very specific conditions - wet ice, basically.

On wet ice, studded tyres will just postpone the inevitable. You WILL topple. On those days, I just jump in the car.

Additionally, the noise of a set of properly studded tyres is enough to drive me nuts, though obviously YMMV.

Thanks for this! I biked many years throughout the year to work in Finland but after series of bronchitis hitting me on consecutive winters I quit winter biking. I'm thinking maybe I could try again - and given your analysis I'll not let my lack of winter tyres stop me :)

Just avoid slicks (d’oh!) and you’ll likely be fine. The only concession I’ve made to winter conditions is riding at slightly lower tyre pressure to get a larger contact surface. In snow it doesn’t make much of a difference, but on ice it works wonders.

As for the bronchitis, I’ve luckily steered clear - but a colleague of mine who had it good and hard a couple of times swear that since he started wesring a mask, he hasn’t had even a hint of it.

I have ridden with studded tires but have found that my normal skinny road tires do surprisingly well for our winters here in (Canada).

I agree. I biked in today after it snowed maybe 4 inches last night. If i had studded tires it would have been nicer but my slicks do pretty well. And really if there is ice few tires will really protect you from slipping.

The thing that gets me is roads that are sort of driven on. Heavily trafficked roads are great because cars usually expose the bare concrete and roads with no cars are great because you can ride through powder no problem. But when a few cars have created ruts...it make steering very difficult. I don't know if different tires help with this or if that's just the way it goes when you're total mass is <200 lb.

Studded tires make a significant different in ice, and can help to get our of those ice ruts as well. I went down enough times in the ice to move to carbide studded snow tires and it helped a lot. My bike commute is a lot farther now though (~20 miles) so I have downgraded to a fair weather cyclist.

I should really get some of these. I keep trying to "muscle through" but...it sucks.

Yeah, I know. It's just one of those things where I can picture myself climbing the Poisson CDF of inevitability...

They're quite affordable if ordered from Germany: https://www.bike24.com/p238233.html

Have you gotten in accidents?

I've fallen thrice (that I can remember). Two of these times was when I was stupid enough to ride on ice with slicks. The third time I tried to pull some fancy trick up a curb (just stupid). So, I've scratched my jeans. Other than that: nothing (touch wood). Nowadays I run studded tyres in the winter and they're crazy effective.

I don't recommend riding without a helmet or hövding, but this article gives you some insights into the risks of riding a bike in cities: https://www.vox.com/2014/5/16/5720762/stop-forcing-people-to...

How hostile are the drivers in Stockholm? Bay Area drivers aren’t super friendly to cyclists (to be fair, plenty of cyclists also behave like assholes, cutting in front of cars and crossing intersections when they shouldn’t.) My biggest concern during a year of using my bike to commute was making sure I didn’t get ran over by a car taking a turn, because signaling is not always their forte.

I don't find them to be very hostile. A lot of drivers are extremely stressed (particularly in the morning) and unfocused though. I always try to expect them not to see me at all and I pick safer roads over marginally shorter roads.

Some cyclists get very worked up by ill behavior from motorists, getting into dangerous situations to prove their point. Motorists are protected by a >1000 kg shield of metal, so I try just get on with my day.

cutting in front of cars and crossing intersections when they shouldn’t

What drivers who have never used a bicycle don't even consider is that as a cyclist you are extremely mobile and have a much better overview of the road. A cyclist can cross an intersection on red with little danger, a car attempting the same would be murderous.

In countries like the Netherlands most everyone has biked to school from the age of 6 before they are turned loose in a car at 18, there is much better mutual understanding between car drivers and bike riders over there.

It is NOT OK to go through red lights, whether in a car, on a bike or on foot. The rules are the rules and we should all abide them.

It happens all the time in London where bikes go through red lights and weave through pedestrians (sometimes at speed) who are crossing the road. Pedestrians are even worse - and often walk or run across red lights and almost get hit from a bus, car or bike. It’s madness!

I many places is is allowed and even encouraged for cyclists to go through red lights and stop signs. It's called the Idaho stop [0]. It's believed to be safer than waiting at the red light provided that the intersection is clear. Consider that rear-end collisions are the most common cause of cyclist fatalities [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

[1] https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/how-get-killed-bike-your-ch...

This worries me. What if the intersection is clear but the joining roads are blind (as is often the case in old European cities). Could I cross the red light, get hit and then claim “well I was just following the Idaho stop... I’m not at fault here. The intersection was clear when I set off”?

I’m surprised about it being safer, and would be interested to see some stats on it. It could be more common in the US where cities are grids because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a near miss where a cyclist almost got rear ended in London. However, I do see a lot of cyclists getting cut off by buses and cars on corners and at junctions.

This kind of stuff gives cyclists a bad name. Everyone should follow the same rules. Makes commuting much more predicable.

> It is NOT OK to go through red lights, whether in a car, on a bike or on foot.

Actually, it depends.

Just last week, I learned that it is perfectly legal to jaywalk in Germany, IF it does not interrupt flowing traffic or endanger anyone. Also, you must take the shortest path (orthogonal to the lanes) when crossing a road. (§25 Abs. 3 StVO)

I jaywalk all the time. It's just ridiculous to wait at a red light when the street is completely empty.

No, it isn‘t legal to ignore a red light. How did you get that idea?

"Going through" a red light is not the same as "ignoring".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

Treating a red light as a stop sign is different from behaving as if it's not there.

In many provinces of Canada, motorists can turn right on a red light after coming to a full stop.

Still illegal in Germany.

I bike to work everyday and I don't follow the rules of the road, and neither should other cyclists.

In a system designed for cars, it's just false piety and won't keep you any safer.

The one rule I do follow is that I am courteous and polite to everyone, drivers and pedestrians alike, and I remain hyper alert to everything that is going on around me.

That's the only rule you need.

IMO The point of the rules are to remove as much subjection and interpretation to how road users should behave as possible.

For example, what should the rules be when overtaking other riders? Should I overtake on the outside or the inside? We know that having a rule on overtaking makes it much safer.

Courteous and politeness are great, but a lot of people don’t drive/ride/walk like that. What happens then?

If people aren't inclined to be polite or courteous, what makes you so sure they will follow 'the rules' anyway?

But following the rules makes you predictable in terms of what actions you're going to take and makes it easier for other road users to interact with you in a predictable manner.

I don't ride erratically because it freaks people and it's impolite.

It depends how many people are around, and on the entire situation.

I've had sketchy situations when stopping at stop signs. The drivers in my area don't expect cyclists to stop at stop signs, since most don't.

So in that case following the rules made me more unpredictable, and confused everyone involved.

I think the main problem is that we have traffic control devices that most people don't follow. For example, stop signs at roadways where yield signs would suffice. Traffic lights which don't switch to blinking mode when traffic volumes are low.

But there are situations where not following the rules makes things more dangerous for those involved. For example, a driver stopping to allow someone to make a left turn in front of them. That can be seen as a courteous gesture, but the car the next lane over that doesn't stop ends up broadsiding the vehicle making the left turn. In this case, just following the rules of the road would have prevented a crash like that.

To add a note of international confusion, in some parts of the US I believe it is legal to turn right through a red light.

Germany has a separate sign for this, the green arrow: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Gr%C3%BC...

It means that when the traffic light shows red and you want to turn right, the traffic light works like a "STOP" sign instead.

  A cyclist can cross an intersection on
  red with little danger

Unfortunately, the 30% of riders who can't do this competently spoil things for the 70% of riders who can.

I don't own a car and I cycle thousands of miles a year, so I'm very much on the side of cyclists over motorists - but last year, as I walked across a pedestrian crossing with a green light, I was hit by a bicyclist running a red light - who promptly fled the scene without so much as an apology.

This kind of thing creates strong, memorable emotional responses people are keen to share. If I'd been more seriously injured, or if the fall had broken my expensive consumer electronics, or if I wasn't a cyclist, or if an infirm relative had been in the accident instead of me, even more so.

This being the case, it isn't realistic to convince other road users to approve of cyclists running red lights; getting them to do so is as unlikely as that last 30% of riders spontaneously becoming competent.

I find Bay Area drivers (Palo Alto) area to be polite, almost to a fault. I've had a few aggro assholes, but normally the problem is they're unpredictably nice.

For example, if a car passes me 50 feet before a stop sign and then either has their right turn signal on or otherwise indicates a turn (turns the wheels to the right as they stop), I often just pull in the lane behind them so there is no confusion about whether I'm going to get run over or not... but it seems to more often CAUSE confusion, because they're waiting for me to go by them on the right, which I appreciate the courtesy, they have the right of way.

I often have the same issue at 4-way stops; if they arrive before me and I slow to a stop and put my foot down, THEN they start waving me on and want me to go before them. Of course if I were to blow the stop sign, other people could potentially be annoyed by that. But only about 20% of drivers go before me when I arrive after them and stop and put my foot down.

Also, sometimes I try to pull into the "gaps" between parked cars to allow a car behind me to pass, if there is lots of space and I will not need to pull back into the lane for awhile.... but too often indecisiveness and timidity on the part of the driver mean now I'm having to negotiate my way back into the lane with a car still behind me.

What tires do you use to ride on ice? I've wiped out on ice myself, and it has scared me off from riding when it is icy.

Schwalbe Winter (30-622): https://www.schwalbe.com/en/spike-reader/winter.html

I rode a couple of kilometers on an iced lake some weeks ago without trouble.

There's also the more expensive Marathon Winter: https://www.schwalbe.com/en/spike-reader/marathon-winter.htm...

Marathon Winter has more studs. They're placed closer to the edge of the tyre and it's debatable how much difference if it makes if you don't lean into the curves. I try to lean less on frozen ground, so I suspect they would be pointless for me.

Studded tyres actually works best on ice. Theoretically, if snow covers the ice they could be ineffective. I myself have not found this to be a problem.

Another vote for schwalbe. I've put ~10k miles on non-studded marathons without a flat, so I went with those.

Yet another vote for them. After I tried my first set of Schwalbes, I've never looked back. They are terrific. (Marathon Plus MTBs, btw - works brilliantly on gravel, in moderate mud, snow and ice.)

Marathon Winters are the only ones that seem to be effective against the copious amounts of sharp stones used here in winter to sand all cycleways. Otherwise I have managed without studs the previous winters. But five flats during 250km of riding was too much.

I use the same tires in winter as in summer (normal city bike tires). But I ride them at much lower pressure (under 2bar vs 3.5bar in summer). Then they don’t slip at all.

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