Hacker News Reader

Comment by frereubu | Hacker News Reader

The centres of most UK towns and cities are now limited to 20mph. Although in practice that means that people drive around 25mph - i.e. just low enough not to be caught for speeding - it does make the streets less threatening for both pedestrians and bikes. The thing that would make it better for cyclists is to line up the speed limit of e-bikes (currently set at a max of 15mph) and the speed limit. Currently the 15mph / 20mph disjunction means that some idiots still try to squeeze their cars past relatively fast-moving e-bikes (which then often catch up with the car at the next set of lights...), whereas if those bikes could go at 20pmh or the speed limit was 15mph I don't think they'd bother.

Edit: Although generally once you get out of the very centre there are arterial "stroads" which have 30mph limits, but side-streets are usually still 20mph.

View on HN

Counterpoint: I regularly go 40-50 km/h on my (not e-)bike on a downhill rural road (40 km/h speed limit) and drivers still feel obligated to overtake me.

Absolutely true, and that's happened to me plenty of times too. There's definitely a trigger in the minds of some drivers where seeing a cyclist means that they need to overtake them because the vast majority of the time the cyclist isn't going to be near the speed limit.

I tend to overtake cyclists specifically for their safety. I figure that the farther I am from them, the lower a chance of a collision there is. If that holds true, then the only options when encountering one is to slow down and possibly impede other traffic, or speed up, overtake, and move away. This works for single cyclists. Groups would be different, but I've never encountered them.

If there is traffic, that means that your spot behind the cyclist will immediately be replaced by another car. If everyone acts like that, the biker caries a bubble of faster-than-average cars with them. Hardly ideal.

I propose a different protocol: Slow down, and follow the cyclist until the situation allows to safely overtake the cyclist at a nice distance without speeding up too much. You will still travel faster than the cyclist, and you have actively contributed to the safety of the cyclist.

If we're optimizing for the cyclist's safety wrt a "pack" of cars, they themselves should pull over and wait for the "pack" to pass. Otherwise, a driver doing their best to clear the hazard as quickly as possible is the ideal compromise. A cyclist that is impeding the natural flow of traffic with a slower speed than is normal for the road is a danger to himself and others; any individual driver cannot account for the behavior of other drivers, particularly those who might drive recklessly if impeded by others' attempts to wait out a slow cyclist. Your protocol increases the danger, per likely factors.

The other wrinkle to this is that, outside of cities, cycling in America is a luxury sport. The people who partake in it are most in the position to force changes to infrastructure that supports safer cycling. NJB and other similar commentators make it clear that infrastructure improvement, not changes to driver behavior, is the most efficacious way to imrpove cyclist safety.

> Currently the 15mph / 20mph disjunction means that some idiots still try to squeeze their cars past relatively fast-moving e-bikes (which then often catch up with the car at the next set of lights...)

To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic.

Now, of course car drivers should remain vigilant and continually check their mirrors, but nobody is infallible, and I'm sure there are plenty of drivers that do not take proper care.

> To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic.

The speed is the issue. A collision at low speeds is much less likely to be fatal [0]. Being closely overtaken by a car when you're going at 20-25mph on a bicycle is 1) a scary experience and 2) unnecessarily dangerous for the cyclist (and not at all for the driver).

[0] https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...

Instead of digging through that PDF, the charts on this post show how a higher speed can drastically increase the odds of fatalities:

* https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/05/31/3-graphs-that-explain...

Remember from physics class that kinetic energy is generated proportional to the square of velocity. Doubling speed quadruples energy.

Not only does speed increase the damage inflicted by a given collision, it also makes them more likely: there is less time available to see and respond to hazards, and the space required to stop also is proportional to (speed^2). So for a given road, the risk level (frequency * consequences) is probably even steeper than squared: perhaps more like (speed^3).

no, this is an all-too-common misconception, because you’re missing the other half of the distribution where accidents were avoided because the car speeded past an accident that would have happened at a lower speed.

speed increases the severity of an accident (e.g., more fatalities vs. injuries), but doesn’t generally cause the accident. distractedness and impairment are overwhelmingly the primary causes of auto accidents. it’s important for policy decisions that we keep this very clear, and why we have ineffective, revenue-oriented programs like speed enforcement rather than attention-oriented policies.

With respect, this feels like whataboutery. "To be fair" makes it sound like cars speeding past cyclists is a response to cyclists whipping between lines of cars, but they're entirely separate issues and can both be wrong at the same time without needing to be compared to each other.

"Whataboutery" gets banded around waaaay too much - I see nothing wrong with pointing out apparent hypocrisy and/or discussing comparable situations.

Also, it was not my intention (and I honestly don't see it in my words as hard as I look) to suggest there was any kind of "tit for tat".

> To be fair, this behaviour isn't one-sided. Often bicycles, e-bikes and motorcycles squeeze through small gaps between cars moving slow'ish in packed traffic.

This is conflating two different activities: when a bicyclist or motorcyclist is moving in space between cars, they're using space which is already open and it doesn't impose a risk to the driver of the vehicle or require the cars to move. That's distinct from people trying to illegally pass, which creates new demands for space and frequently endangers other road users and often obstruct oncoming traffic.

The underlying issue here is that cars are the least efficient use of space by a significant margin. That means that drivers see other people taking advantage of space which they are unable to use and feel like they're losing in some way, which often leads to attempts to prevent it. When I lived in California, even though lane-splitting was legal I used to regularly see drivers move their vehicles to the edge of a lane or a few times even open their car door(!) to block motorcyclists. This was clearly because they perceived it as unfair that someone else wasn't jammed the same way they were, but misattributed the problem to the motorcylist rather than the drawbacks of their personal vehicle choices.

By that logic, even people in cars should be driving up on the shoulder, driving in unused bike lanes, squeezing in wherever they want, utilizing the unused space. I don't think it would work that well if everyone operated like that. Thankfully they don't.

But you're on a bike, so you deserve special treatment. An award for sacrificing comfort and safety in the name of efficiency! You demand deference when drivers see you, for them to slow down and fall behind as you sit up proudly on your bicycle in defiance of modern technology. You shout to the heavens, "I don't need infrastructure! I have yours already! I'll ride wherever I want!" The thought makes you chuckle at the plebs still riding in comfort and safety in their automobiles, capable of carrying a drunken friend, an elderly parent, or a new piece of furniture. What a bunch of fools. Don't they see how efficient they could be?

I don't understand how it could be at all controversial that different vehicles require different regulations. 18 wheelers are not allowed to go everywhere cars can go and cars should not be allowed to go everywhere cyclists and pedestrians can go. Cars are an order of magnitude heavier and faster than a bicycle and significantly restrict the visibility of their operator - they are far more dangerous and the law should reflect that.

They should switch to kph from mph so the effective speed limit is lowered to ~15mph while being labeled as 25kph. Drivers will feel like their going '25' so less likely to feel inconvenienced :)

About half would just do 25 mph.

Would only work for the current generation of drivers.

Maybe we could add a few zeroes each few years? So in some decades they'll be driving ultra fast at 25000 meters per hour? ;)

I rarely look at my speedometer. I set my speed almost entirely by feel, road conditions, and other cars.

Which is kind of the point of the human-scale roads movement. If you design roads that feel fast, people will drive fast.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com