Comment by cmurf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmurf | Hacker News Reader

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When I drive, I treat cyclists like pedestrians, and I don't care what rules they violate, they cannot hurt me. Ever. Whereas if I make a mistake, they're maimed or dead. That disproportionality is what flaws every "both sides are bad" type argument.

I bike about as many miles as I drive, and there are about the same percentage of bad actor cyclists as automobile drivers. But only a car driver has any chance of killing a cyclist, not the other way around.

Once I was riding bike just like a car, and a car driver tried to run me off the road on purpose. I pulled up beside him at a stop light, baby in a car seat behind him, and said driving like that will get someone killed. His screaming reply "fucking good, you should all fucking die, fucking get off the fucking road, the fucking road is for cars, you should be only on the fucking bike lane". And threw in a few more fucks. This was in Denver, on a 30mph two lane street.

Meanwhile my lizard brain is thinking, I'd like to take off my helmet and bash this guys face in, over and over and over again. I'm day dreaming of committing a violent assault, because it's clear to me his action of putting me in mortal danger was intentional, and that is a betrayal of civility, and a major loss of trust. For a little bit I really thought he wanted me dead and he had the power to do it. And the statistics show decent chance he'd have gotten away with vehicular homicide.

And he's teaching all of this psychosis to the kid in the backseat.

There is the concept in aviation that higher category aircraft must yield right of way to lower category aircraft. e.g. an airplane must yield right of way to a glider. That should apply between heavy vehicles like cars, and light vehicles like bicycles. And bicycles should yield to pedestrians. The problem is man state laws either don't recognize bicycles as vehicles, and those that do equate them and it's just not tenable quite a lot of the time. It's far less safe for a cyclist to come to a complete stop at a stop sign and dismount, than for them to do a hesitation waltz.

So when you talk about what pisses you off when your life isn't even in danger? That's psychotic to me. It's so completely control freak irrational that you get angry over people who don't follow rules intended for automobiles? It's just nonsense.

So when you talk about what pisses you off when your life isn't even in danger? That's psychotic to me. It's so completely control freak irrational that you get angry over people who don't follow rules intended for automobiles? It's just nonsense.

I have a few responses to this and your broader point. First of all, and to be more blunt and less charitable, I don’t choose to put my life at the massively increased risk of injury and death of riding a bike vs. a car. Saying that we should be most concerned with those who are in the most danger ignores their conscious choice in making a dangerous choice in the first place. Now on its own this would be a ludicrously callous point, but it leads to my next one...

Cyclists on busy roads put not only their own lives at risk, but the lives and wellbeing of others as well. As a pedestrian cyclists and scooterpricks blasting past are the danger, and as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous. The tendency of cyclists I’ve encountered to blow red lights and stop signs presents the danger of a car accident as one vehicle swerves or slams on brakes to avoid them.

Finally I don’t want to hurt or kill someone and if I did I’d be devastated. The fact that plowing into a cyclists while in a car is likely to leave me relatively unscathed physically doesn’t imply a lack of harm. Careless and selfish behavior predicated on a kind of nonexistent moral high-ground is the core of why it is so popular to utterly despise cyclists. We’ve all had to deal with the attitude of superiority and belief that cyclists are somehow saving us from ourselves. Of course people have a bad reaction to moralizing, proselytizing people who think the rules of the road don’t apply to them.

Choosing to ride a 10lb metal frame with just a helmet in motor vehicle traffic is manifestly unsafe, it was unsafe when you decided to do it and unsafe now. Shrugging and telling everyone else to take the responsibility for your safety onboard because you wouldn’t is obnoxious. It is especially difficult to accept when one has the perspective that despite the hype from a minority, cycling is not going to save us from ourselves.

> Saying that we should be most concerned with those who are in the most danger ignores their conscious choice in making a dangerous choice in the first place

There's nothing inherently dangerous about choosing to ride a bicycle. It becomes dangerous to ride a bicycle when operators of ~4000lb machines choose to not operate them safely around others.

> as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous

I'm fairly certain a driver also put the lives of everyone on the road at a higher priority than their own convenience. They aren't forced to "veer".

There's nothing inherently dangerous about choosing to ride a bicycle. It becomes dangerous to ride a bicycle when operators of ~4000lb machines choose to not operate them safely around others.

Nonsense. The injury rate on bikes dwarfs cars even putting aside collisions with motor vehicles.

https://www.rospa.com/rospaweb/docs/advice-services/road-saf...

Per billion vehicle miles, 1,011 pedal cyclists are killed or seriously injured, in comparison to 26 car drivers6.

That’s per mile traveled, and it’s two orders of magnitude more dangerous by bike.

Almost two thirds of cyclists killed or seriously injured were involved in collisions at, or near, a road junction, with T-junctions being the most commonly involved. Roundabouts are particularly dangerous junctions for cyclists. Not surprisingly, the severity of injuries suffered by cyclists increases with the speed limit, meaning that riders are more likely to suffer serious or fatal injuries on higher speed roads. Almost half of cyclist deaths occur on rural roads.

It’s also a given that all of the billions driving vehicles will not all be safe all of the time, it’s part of life. Some people are drunk, tired, old, or careless... there is no changing this. It’s something to strive to improve, but positive a magical perfect world which allows for cycling to be less risky than driving is fantastical at best, dishonest at worst.

I'm fairly certain a driver also put the lives of everyone on the road at a higher priority than their own convenience. They aren't forced to "veer".

Most people don’t drive for convenience, but necessity.

> Nonsense

Whoops, I shouldn't have been hyperbolic. I meant that the danger of a busy road comes from the cars, not that a bike becomes inherently more dangerous on a busy road. The fact that 84% of serious and fatal cyclist accidents also involve another vehicle is pretty strong evidence of the danger of cars, IMO.

> Most people don’t drive for convenience, but necessity.

The statement I responded to ("as a driver having to veer into oncoming traffic to avoid them is dangerous") asserts that a driver has no choice but to endanger themselves and others by entering the lane of oncoming traffic. My point is that a driver can also choose to slow down and pass the cyclist when the way is clear, but for their own convenience they choose to endanger their own life as well as other road users.

Using an automobile is as much an irresponsible choice as using a cycle, and treating automobiles as an unchangeable environmental condition is ridiculous. Just because a majority of people do something doesn't make it right or good. Even then, only considering wealthy populations in isolation can drivers be a majority.

Are people really voting this down? I'd love to read why...

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