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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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