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Comment by jrockway | Hacker News Reader

This is an age-old battle, and it always seems like cyclists lose. Cars don't want bikes on the street, it's "their" space. Pedestrians don't want bikes on the sidewalk, it's "their" space. After many, many years of advocacy, cyclists get a patchwork network of bike lanes -- still dangerous, often filled with double-parked cars -- and now some startup wants that space for pizza delivery robots.

Personally, I think enough is enough. If your delivery robot can't "take the lane", then it's not viable and you should go back to the drawing board. Riding your bike in America is already treacherous enough, and this certainly isn't helping. We are already third-class citizens (and afterthought after streets and sidewalks are put in place), and we certainly don't need to go down another rank just because some startup wants the space for robots.

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I think it's mainly a matter of speed. A little 15 mph robot just fits best in the bike lane. If the robot was a 30 mph moped, then they belong in the street.

Also, if e-bikes and bike-speed robots become really numerous in the bike lanes, that should motivate more creation and better maintenance of bike lanes.

I'd much rather bike in the street versus the sidewalk. The sidewalk is just far slower and more treacherous. No one rushes in a truck fix a hole or branch blocking a sidewalk. In a car-based country, you want to be included with the favored mode of travel, even if you're second-class there.

> Also, if e-bikes and bike-speed robots become really numerous in the bike lanes, that should motivate more creation and better maintenance of bike lanes.

Bike lanes aren't, like, a natural resource to be shared. Cyclists fought hard to get them, in order to cycle on, and now we need to get crowded out of them to subsidize a startup on the theory that, once we can't use the bike lanes, we'll complain some more and maybe get as much space as we have today?

I mean, I like pizza and startups and pizza startups and I don't blame them for trying, but my reaction is a very strong fuck no. If you want to use the bike lane, build a pizza delivery robot that can ride a bike.

> If you want to use the bike lane, build a pizza delivery robot that can ride a bike.

How do you feel about bikes with sidecars?

That's not a cycle. Ithas poor turning and is too wide.

By "that" do you mean bikes with sidecars? Not allowing those is pretty rude.

If you mean the current robot, it could surely be redesigned.

Sorry, it just initially seemed to me that those would inherently be a problem due to the additional width and the narrowness of bike lanes. Maybe things are different in your area but it's like 2-3 ft. wide where I'm at.

The idea of a side mount robot that pedals your bike and controls it, if that's what you're thinking, sounds pretty cool tho and could work if narrow enough.

I think it's mainly a matter of speed. A little 15 mph robot just fits best in the bike lane. If the robot was a 30 mph moped, then they belong in the street.

-- I took your stuff 'cause it was the stuff that fit me the best.

Just because it's convenient to the robot be in the bike lane doesn't mean the robot has a right seize the bike lane.

Why not send a bicyclist to deliver pizza then?

The pizza delivery robot is a solution to an already solved problem and which creates problems for everybody else. The bike lane is for bicyclists and the like, no autonomous motorized things should be on them, bicyclists requested them for a long time and finally have them.

If the robo-delivery things prove so popular they may apply for their own type of lanes

> Why not send a bicyclist to deliver pizza then?

Because the business plan that they sold VCs on involves autonomous delivery, of course.

> Why not send a bicyclist to deliver pizza then?

...are you asking why autonomous robots exist? Like, at all?

>Why not send a bicyclist to deliver pizza then?

Humans cost $30k+ a year, no?

No.

Restaurant delivery is not a full time job and it is not a job that pays particularly well, particularly after factoring in expenses. Tips may make up for some of that, but it is an expense for the customer rather than the restaurant.

Autonomous delivery also has questionable benefits. Moving at 15 MPH, and likely being prohibited from using certain roads, means several vehicles would take the place of the more traditional delivery driver in a car. The restaurant would also be responsible for paying for upkeep of these vehicles. (If they have contracts with a company to operate these vehicles, they would be more aggressive at recovering their expenses than the typical owner-operator delivery driver.)

Pizzas as still getting delivered every day over at least an 8 hour window. A restaurant has to pay for that many man hours whether its the same human full time or not. In California that's $14/hr. In Austin I guess its still $7.25 an hour.

I'm not saying this robot is a great idea, just that humans are expensive.

> Tips may make up for some of that, but it is an expense for the customer rather than the restaurant.

Even ignoring how costs all add up eventually and affect consumer choice, if you can promise I don't have to pay a tip you can directly increase your delivery fee by $3 and I'll still be happier picking the robot.

We have machines to get rid of pointless busy work.

> Why not send a bicyclist to deliver pizza then?

Ok. But when this bike takes up exactly as much space in the bike lane as the robot would have, what have we gained? Theoretically the robot could take up less space since it doesn't need to be powerful enough for street speeds.

Speaking of which, drivers of cars must similarly share their lanes with self-driving cars.

A general societal increase in the average level of cardiovascular health which flows onto reduced health costs and a normalisation of cycling in general are two things I can think of off the top of my head.

Fair enough. While it was a rhetorical question, I have a couple counters too: increased spread of communicable diseases like coronavirus, highly-skilled robotics jobs traded for low-skill delivery jobs.

Those are just generic talking points that could apply to any automation

Then why not make them 30 mph robots? If a 15 mph robot is safe sharing the bike lanes with cyclists, why can't they make a 30mph robot that can share the lanes with cars? Even if the robots are in the bike lanes, they still have to contend with cars and pedestrians.

Well there's cost. If you only allow cars (and of course there are lots of self-driving car startups and corporate initiatives too) then delivery robots will be limited to bigger richer companies with small businesses at a disadvantage.

BC these foos don't want to comply with stricter regulation that would apply to cars.

the problem is it needs to adjust speed based on the bikes around it. 15mph in all cases is a disaster if it is unsafe to pass.

The more slow, small vehicles there are on the roads, the more infrastructure will bend to accommodate them. Pizza delivery bot vehicles are my allies.

That’s true. Put them on the roads and highways.

Please don't make bad faith arguments like this.

We can use this same logic for cyclists.

Exactly. There is currently a debate in the UK about whether to legalise lime-style electric scooters (yes, they’re still mostly illegal here!), and whether they should be allowed in cycle lanes.

I say provided they’re small and adhere to the same rules/speeds as bikes, then the more bike lane users we have the better! More traffic in bike lanes creates more demand for bike lanes, so more will get built. This in turn will encourage more cycling, so it’s a win for everyone!

More traffic in bike lanes means more dead cyclists.

Why? I agree there are more bike-on-bike collisions when cycle lanes get busy (I’ve certainly seen a few in London at rush hour), but unlike car-on-bike collisions, these rarely result in death or serious injury.

I live in Detroit, and when the "bikes win" they act like assholes. There is a weekly event called slowroll where herds of bikes go down a different route each week in the early evening. When they've rolled past the street I live on I find that for sometimes up to two hours you can't drive your car into or out of the place that I live.

Bicycles don't belong on a sidewalk. They need to be in the flow of traffic where motor vehicle drivers are aware of their presence. The solution is an optional navigable shoulder that doesn't become an enforced ghetto.

They do just fine on the sidewalks in Japan.

Cyclists are required to ride on the street in Japan.

They’re supposed to ride in the street unless it could be agreed that it’s safer on the sidewalk, which is both subjective and often true, so riding on the sidewalk is de facto allowed.

Edit: People are downvoting this; I guess because they don’t believe it? The law is here[0]. Also 73% of Japanese ride on the sidewalk more than the road[1]. So even without the wide open exceptions to the law, it’s still de facto allowed.

[0] https://elaws.e-gov.go.jp/document?lawid=335AC0000000105#5

第六十三条の四 … 三前二号に掲げるもののほか、車道又は交通の状況に照らして当該普通自転車の通行の安全を確保するため当該普通自転車が歩道を通行することがやむを得ないと認められるとき。

[1] https://www8.cao.go.jp/koutu/chou-ken/h22/pdf/ref/2-1.pdf

Sure, but in most of the US, riding on the sidewalk is illegal.

"bicycles shouldn't be allowed on the sidewalk because they aren't allowed on the sidewalk" isn't much of an argument.

The law isn't established at the state or federal level. It has been independently established at almost every municipality for good reasons.

"Good reasons" like "not caring about cyclists" and "make cycling more dangerous to keep people who can't afford a vehicle away from our neighborhoods"

Please don't misunderstand me. Cycling on a sidewalk is dangerous to the cyclist, particularly around driveways and intersections, where they are less visible to motorists.

In the same city on the same bike ride I and a friend have been accosted by police for both riding on the sidewalk and in the street. Different cops, blocks apart.

The law is subjective and when you’re rolling around in spandex on a multi thousand dollar road bike and a paramilitary USA “peace officer” stops you, the law doesn’t really matter. You just “yes sir” and hope to be allowed to move on

No they don't. I've cycled in Japan, sometimes on the side walk even though that's technically not allowed. Either you go very slow on the sidewalk or you're a danger to pedestrians. It is also much more dangerous for you at any intersection because cars don't expect objects traveling at bicycle speeds on the sidewalk.

The safest place for a bike is a separate bike lane on the road. If no separate infrastructure exists, the next safest place is on the road.

I don’t know about the last part, but it’s correct that bicycles shouldn’t be on the sidewalk. It’s dangerous to both pedestrians and the cyclist (cars can’t see them, they appear too quickly, and will run into them when they have to drive across the sidewalk).

In Seoul I seem to recall many of the bike lanes being on the sidewalk, not on the street. The biggest problem I had then was that people seemed to naturally gravitate towards walking on them, so they would often have pedestrians on them, but I think a car hitting a cyclist is worse than a cyclist hitting a pedestrian, so it seems like a good trade off.

I only know of one proper bike lane in Seoul that is on a road, and that runs from Sinchon down to the Han. People ride bikes on the sidewalks in Seoul because they're terrified of the taxi's.

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