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Comment by notatoad | Hacker News Reader

I think this is the "missing link" in the new transportation ecosystem. Right now, alternative transport exists in a sort of grey zone where if you ride on roads drivers are angry about how you're taking their space, and if you ride on sidewalks people are angry about how you're taking their space.

mopeds look enough like a motorbike and are already accepted enough that a high enough concentration of them could go a long way towards taking back the road as a true multi-use space, rather than a car exclusive space that other users sometimes get to encroach onto. mopeds and bicycles and jump scooters can all coexist in the same space happily. mopeds and cars can coexist happily.

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As a visitor, I would say one under-appreciated aspect of Dutch bikes lanes is that they're not really bike lanes. Practically, 95% or more of the vehicles on there are bicycles, yeah, but the other 5% are all sorts of wonderfully wacky vehicles, some motorized (mostly electric) some not.

It seems to work like this: Are you in big, heavy and fast vehicle? Go in Road Type 1 (cars, trucks, motorcycles)

Are you vehicle-less, or is your vehicle very slow or non-motorized? Go in Road Type 2 (pedestrians, strollers, wheelchairs, etc)

Are something else? Go in Road type 3 (bicycles, mopeds, electric bikes, electric skateboards, non-car people movers etc etc).

In North America, rather than building Road Type 3, we fight viciously over how to sort a galaxy of vehicles into Road Types 1 and 2. Even when a 3rd road type is built, they are frequently designated for some exclusive type of vehicle - ie, places where non-pedelec e-bikes or electric skateboards are not allowed in bike lanes.

Amsterdam's actually banning scooters from bike lanes as I understand it. [1] Which seems reasonable. When I was there recently, there were certainly some vehicles using the bike lanes that didn't seem to belong.

[1] https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3nng4/amsterdam-...

This will actually change, mopeds will be banned from bike paths in Amsterdam: https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2018/06/mopeds-may-be-banned-f...

I agree with you about the 3 types of roads and especially that most of the USA don't build Road Type 3 enough (fully separated lanes, please!). But, which kind of vehicle goes on which road type has more to do with speed than size.

Nice observation. I live in the Netherlands and the fastest growing “type 3” vehicle is not the moped but the electric bicycle. All the benefits of a bicycle with the increased range of a moped.

Why delegate motorcycles to the same category as cars? The lighter ones solve the horrendous density problem of cars just as well as other forms of transport, yet are also able to keep up the with regular cars on the motorway.

Because a motorcycle moving at 40+kph in what is, in effect, an extension of the sidewalk is a terrifying prospect, and a motorcycle going at 15kph just to be in the bike lane would defeat the purpose of owning a motorcycle instead of something less expensive.

Having a moped race past you with 50km/h on a bike lane is a pretty terrifying experience and I'd much prefer that they use roads.

Bike lanes are too narrow for motorised vehicles, and some ebikes are pushing the limits as well (eg. Urban Arrow bikes don't make me feel very safe on narrow bike lanes either)

Sensible places ban all motor vehicles from sidewalks and bike paths. They belong in the road with other low speed ICE powered scooters and mopeds.

A bike with a small electric motor is no problem in a bike path, and allows people who have mobility issues, just don't like sweating up a hill on the way to work, etc. to still cycle instead of drive.

A low powered moped doesn't belong in the road in most places.

That's true but some motorized gadgets are pretty slow. One time, due to a stoplight, I crossed an intersection at the same time as a guy on some sort of skateboard with an engine. My acceleration on my bicycle was much better than his, and I left him far behind. Several blocks later (this was a road with few stoplights), I heard his noisy approach from behind and enjoyed his triumphant smile at having finally overtaken me. Apparently his motor had a bit more power once it got totally revved up... The point is, he was a menace to anyone on the (thankfully deserted) sidewalk, and would have been something of hazard in the street.

I would hazard that the limiting factor for the skateboarder wasn't the motor but the fact that if he accelerated as quickly as the motor would allow he'd fly off of it. Electric motors are notoriously torque-y. (which many users enjoy)

This was about 12 years ago, so it was actually a two-stroke motor. More power at full RPMs meant less torque at lower RPMs... Nevertheless policy probably shouldn't consider something so rare so this is a bit OT.

You can't really (usefully) regulate based on speed; any alternative transportation can potentially be really dang fast. I've seen motorized wheelchairs hitting 50km/h.

I think it makes the most sense to regulate based on maximum achievable momentum (maximum engine torque is used as a heuristic for this), or even maximum achievable collision force (momentum ÷ surface area of forward-travelling side) of the vehicle at any carrying capacity.

So a motorcycle is a lot more dangerous than a moped, not even because of the weight of the vehicle alone at speed, but because you can fit two people on there, the motorcycle has enough torque to get up to the same speed with those two people aboard, and so the whole vechicle-rider system will have more momentum (impart more collision force) at the same speed.

And some electric skateboards / hoverboards are also very dangerous, because if they manage to fully torque up while without a rider, they can shoot out and hit someone in the legs with a high momentum delivered across a very small front facing plane. Like a bullet!

(And, obviously, trucks are more dangerous than cars, simply because you can put a bunch of stuff in the bed and still get them up to the same speed as a car.)

Although the simple solution here is policy and divided roads, I could imagine a simple-ish technological solution: a torque governor hooked up to normal-force sensors on the suspension. So a motorcycle with one person on it would simply not be able to "work as hard" as the same motorcycle with two people on it [except when going up a hill, since normal forces would increase]; and a vehicle with no rider at all would immediately clutch to neutral and brake to bleed off the "above limit" torque.

Drivers and pedestrians are angry because some bikers want to be treated as cars AND ALSO sometimes pedestrians. Drivers don't want to kill anyone, and pedestrians don't want to be maimed.

>Drivers don't want to kill anyone

this is not universally true.

in the rare case they do (i know a guy who was intentionally run down), and in the common case they just don't care, assuming that any cyclist-involved collision is the cyclists fault for being on the road. your attitude here - to immediately call out cyclists specifically, just because i dared to suggest that non-car, non-pedestrian traffic deserves a safe space to travel in - is exactly the problem. The roads are not the private domain of the automobile, and as long as people treat them like they are, some traffic will be forced to seek refuge on the sidewalk.

Well bikers are angry because they don't want to be treated as cars OR as pedestrians, but those are the only two classifications much of the US has. Many people on a bike are unable to even maintain 25mph for a slow city road, let alone 45mph or 55mph, so treating them like cars is ridiculous. But they do commonly go over 3mph, which is the speed of your average pedestrian.

Bikers want to be treated like bikers. Unfortunately that classification doesn't really exist in the US so it becomes situational.

Is a cyclist going 15 mph in a 25 mph zone much worse than a truck going 55 mph in a 65 mph zone?

The difference is that trucks are slow and heavy, and bicycles are slow and light.

People are afraid of crashing their car into a truck. A bicycle is just a little annoyance in the road that you squeeze past as quickly as possible.

They're not at all comparable.

a 180# person and a 10# bike going 15 miles per hour slamming into a side of a car because they decided stop signs don't apply to them is more than a little annoyance.

Bikes need to realize that YES they are smaller and lighter than trucks / cars but that doesn't mean they can't cause real damage and need to obey the same rules.

I'd like to buy one of those 10 pound bikes please!

:) I purposely down scaled the weight so that someone couldn't claim i was trying to exaggerate things.

Are you kidding?

If a bicycle hits a car it might scratch the paint. If a bicycle hits a truck you'd be lucky if the truck driver notices.

If the other vehicle hits the bicycle, the cyclist will be lucky to survive.

I know some cyclists take liberties on the roads. I'm sometimes a cyclist myself and I too get annoyed by cyclists. But it's a fact of physics that cyclists are much more vulnerable than any car driver.

tell that to my friend who had to get her insurance to cover body work to both the door and body panel of her car when a rider smashed in to her, got up and took off without having to have any responsibility for the damage.

lucky if they notice ... lol fuck off. I'm not saying they are the same thing, or that cars are more vulnerable -- if you inferred that from my statement then you weren't reading, I simply stated that they can and do cause damage to property and people if they hit things.

You directly implied that the difference between the damage that bicyclists and cars cause when they collide with things was small enough that bicyclists and drivers should follow exactly the same rules.

i do think they should follow the same rules if they are to occupy the same space.

I agree they should.

However if someone does not follow the rules then the fines need to be vastly greater for cars.

You don't need to be Einstein to understand: E = m/2*v^2

A good start would be to place all the burden of liability on the driver with the heavier vehicle (maybe have a 20% difference in which it is split 50:50).

The free market could then sort out insurance premiums.

You do have a point, traffic does seem to be much more reasonable to be in and interact with the faster you go. If you can average >15mph and follow the rules of the road, most people in cars are quite pleasant in my experience. However the many people darting out on red lights and going the wrong way down the road tend to give most drivers a bad view on cyclist.

Well, one is 40% "too slow" and the other is ~15%, so yes :P

Have you tried driving a car over a long distance averaging 15mph?

Besides, that bicycle is moving at around half the street speed, while the truck is much nearer the top speed. A 40mph speed is more equivalent.

> Have you tried driving a car over a long distance averaging 15mph?

There are usually opportunities to pass cyclist that present themselves without having to travel a long distance at 15 mph. But there are many instances where one has to spend a long time driving at low speeds in a car (e.g., traffic jams).

How does any of that apply to the GP's question?

Yeah, it's kind of unreasonable to expect to get away with biking on a two lane highway with no shoulder, someone will get hurt doing that.

Why is it that "someone will get hurt doing that" is acceptable when discussing a bicycle on the road doing 20mph, but no one ever seems to accidentally run into farm implements or construction equipment traveling on the road at 5mph?

Size and norms.

Big, slow things are not the same as smaller slow things.

Farming vehicles are purpose built and we have a long running understanding about farmers using roads.

These new vehicles present new problems, and or people are still thinking about it all. We have not settled into any solid norms yet.

> new vehicles

> bicycles

I thought perhaps the username was just really literal.

Scooters, bikes, are "new" in the sense of traffic norms, unlike the tractor.

They are going from marginal / casual use to daily use. Some regions are there. Many are not.

> bikes, are "new" in the sense of traffic norms

Bikes where there before paved roads existed. Cyclists where the reason we started building them in the same place.

Yes they were.

They are, despite that, "new" in the sense I put above.

Apparently, I need to expand on "norms" The thought did not come across. Next time.

1) Construction/farm equipment goes much faster than 5mph.

2) There’s very little of it, and it’s pretty much impossible to miss because it’s so big.

3) It’s usually professionally driven (YMMV).

Heavy equipment is heavy and poses a lot more risk to a car than a bicycle, so cars just plain give them more space. You can’t bully a tractor off the road with a Honda Civic like you can do to a cyclist.

Getting hit from behind is the least common type of collision for a cyclist. They're much more at risk of collision at intersections because of the misguided keep as far right as practicable law that's in effect in most states.

"as far right as practicable" means you can take the lane when necessary.

Most states model their traffic laws after the UVC (Uniform Vehicle Code). For the keep as far right as practicable law when traveling at less than the normal speed of traffic, the UVC lists several exceptions to that requirement.

One is the substandard width lane which is defined as a lane that's too narrow for a cyclist and motor vehicle to safely pass side-by-side within the lane [1].

Given that most surface street lane widths range from 10 to 12 feet, they're not wide enough for a motor vehicle to pass a cyclist safely while remaining in the lane. That means that, for all practical purposes, the keep as far right as practicable requirement is an exception rather than a rule.

[1] http://iamtraffic.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/UVC2000.pdf (page 168 § 11-1205-Position on roadway subsection 3)

I can tell that you are a bad driver. Lots of the biking I do now is in the situation you describe, and it's no problem at all for 90% of drivers. They learned to pass slower vehicles safely. You didn't, but it's not too late!

I don't think you live here then? Naer the mountains it's dangerous to take your hands off the steering wheel because there are so many curves, passing is an extremely dangerous thing to do no matter how slow the biker is going.

I'm not against biking (I say get rid of the cars and figure something else out together) but the fact is some rural areas lack the infrastructure to make it safe for bikes and cars to coexist.

I've lived in the mountains before; actually I've lived above 10,000 ft. I get your meaning on taking one's hands off the steering wheel, although I reckon lots of people would say that's always somewhat dangerous. On mountain roads, where there aren't dedicated passing lanes, generous shoulders, and long straight sections between switchbacks there are often occasional pull-offs for slower traffic. Cyclists use those, and often get off the road to let others pass even without those. Certainly that's the case everywhere I've seen in the mountains.

Although perhaps you're not really talking about mountains? Elsewhere in this thread you seem to be talking about narrow defiles through hills and curves in some impossibly remote location. If we are to take you at your word, the roads you're driving aren't actually suited to automobile travel, and certainly not to 60mph highway-attitude automobile travel.

Cars only coexist with themselves because most drivers have safe habits. Those same safe habits allow car drivers not to kill cyclists.

It is not at all unreasonable. Roads do not belong solely to cars. If you can't pass a cyclist safely, you don't pass at all.

Right and an unplanned hour long delay is reasonable?

What the hell kind of road are you on that is only two lanes but also is busy enough that you can't safely pass for an entire hour?

The kind that you shouldn’t bike on: two lane highways with lots of curves and hills and absolutely no shoulder.

Well, bikers aren't allowed to be either. And that is the big issue.

I have tried biking in parts of US, and I genuinely fear for my life in some parts of the road. There is often literally no alternative but to go on the footpath and ensure I do not die.

This is in a Boston suburbs, which still have relatively OK infrastructure to accommodate bikes. I believe it would be much worse elsewhere.

How can a biker be treated exclusively as a car? E.g., what happens when the biker reaches a stop light that does not detect them? Only a pedestrian would use the walk sign.

How can they be treated exclusively as a pedestrian? Sidewalks are not designed for any user faster than about 3 mph.

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