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Comment by DoingIsLearning | Hacker News Reader

> What exactly are the skills that you need to ride your bike in the normal road that are not needed when you ride on a bike lane?

There should not be a set of skills to acquire to be on a road with cars. Roads in city centers should be safe enough for children to cycle to school.

For bigger arteries, this is achieved with segregated traffic in bicycle lanes. For smaller roads, this is achieved with sane city centre speed limits and respectful driving. That is the way it is implemented in countries like the Netherlands and they are in no way achieving this with extraordinarily skilled drivers or cyclists.

Your skills on a bicycle should be as basic as keeping safety distances and signaling your intentions. If I am putting 3 tonnes of metal in motion, it is ny duty to not act recklessly. This is the mindset that needs to change (on top of the infrastructure change).

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So do you mean to say that bicycles do not collide with each other and therefore there is no need for them to have rules to share the road/bike lane or whatever? So, for example If I am being passed by another cyclist, can I just turn left without looking behind? I think you may wish that there was no need for skills, but that's just not reality. You need to know how to keep riding on a straight line for example, because other drivers of bicycles, cars, or whatever, expect that you won't suddenly cross their trajectory without warning. Since you also need to change your lateral position, regardless if you are riding on a bike lane or a normal road you need to be able to ride a straight line while looking behind, for yielding or lane negotiation. Also you need to do the same things when on a curve trajectory. Of course you need to be able to calculate the speed of other vehicles. For example, when entering a roadway, bike path, or whatever, you need again to be able to yield properly. I mean, we are talking about vehicles, I am not talking about fooling around in the park. In fact, it turns out that bike paths require additional skills. It requires additional skills because you need to figure out when its design contradicts the rules of the road. For example, when you have a right turning lane, that is exterior to a bike lane that just goes straight. That's a very dangerous situation where cyclists and motorists have to outsmart the engineer to avoid the right hook type of accident. Again, the bike lane discourse that bike lanes are easier to use is just false.

> So do you mean to say that bicycles do not collide with each other and therefore there is no need for them to have rules to share the road/bike lane or whatever?

Not to be rude, but is the worst example I've ever seen of arguing against the weakest possible reading of something the comment you are replying to didn't say.

I've raced bikes and been in bike-on-bike crashes at 70km/h, and I've been hit by a car when I was riding at about 20km/h. Give me the bike-on-bike crash any day.

I'm not a huge fan of bike lanes, but OTOH I have to admit I've basically stopped riding most roads after being hit and having constant near misses.

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