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.
Bikers want to be treated like bikers. Unfortunately that classification doesn't really exist in the US so it becomes situational.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 they be treated exclusively as a pedestrian? Sidewalks are not designed for any user faster than about 3 mph.
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.
> bicycles
They are going from marginal / casual use to daily use. Some regions are there. Many are not.
Bikes where there before paved roads existed. Cyclists where the reason we started building them in the same place.
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.
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).
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'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.
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.