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Because being 30 seconds slower to your destination requires a billion dollars of infrastructure to fix, rather than sharing a public road. Nice attitude.

I'm one of those annoying cyclists that head to the middle of the road when its narrow or has poor visibility. Its not to deliberately annoy anybody, it's to discourage impatient drivers from squeezing me into the barriers, the curbs or ditches.

I love it when somebody honks their horn and yells insults at the dire inconvenience of having to slow down for 100m, because it means I have been seen and said driver didn't kill me.

Its nothing to do with apathy and greed and everything to do with the insufferable entitlement of people who take knobs like Jeremy Clarkson seriously.

The "Not Just Bikes" channel in YouTube makes the awesome observation that building infrastructure for cyclists actually improves driving times for a car drivers, and may be actually cheaper to implement, certainly much cheaper to maintain.

The calculation for car-saturated cities is that each drive takes as long as fastest alternative mode, and no faster. Which kinda makes sense to me - as you build more infra people chose to not drive, making driving a lot more fun for the die-hards and the ones where that's not an option.

It's a safety thing as well. And those bike roads last a very long time compared to car roads. It would likely cause less polarization too!

a billion dollars can get you a LOT of bike infra. Or comparatively little road infra.

And "infra" can be planter boxes and moving paint, for a start.

This thread was a reminder that even in the Netherlands, when you design roads for higher speeds and try to change that by plopping down a sign, it doesn't work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Netherlands/comments/ss3t0u/whats_u...

If you can't go the speed limit, you should get off the road and let cars pass.

Funnily enough I’ve had cars cut me off in an unsafe manner to turn right in front of me so fast I had to slam my bicycle breaks… while I was going the speed limit.

Cars feel impatient behind bikes even when travelling the speed limit.

Also, if cars that aren’t able or willing to travel the speed limit are not forced to pull over for faster traffic… you’ve never been stuck behind a truck, old person or tractor?

I would not like to be stuck behind a car either. It's even against the law where I live to impede traffic with a motor vehicle.

Its interesting to listen to truckies on the UHF when confronted with impatient drivers. They have many of the same frustrations that cyclists do when an impatient driver does something stupid or dangerous, only it usually ends badly for the motorist.

> I’ve had cars cut me off in an unsafe manner to turn right in front of me so fast I had to slam my bicycle breaks… while I was going the speed limit.

To be fair, I've had this as a driver too. Everyone has seen the driver in an outside lane cut across two lanes of traffic to take a turn that they were in the wrong lane for.

Its a speed limit, not a minimum speed.

I would recommend getting a bike and trying it out. It makes you a better driver, because being considerate of other road users is its own reward.

>Its a speed limit, not a minimum speed.

Technically and legally yes, but in practice it's the minimum you are expected to drive.

>I would recommend getting a bike

I do have a bike and I always get off the road to let cars pass when there is one nearby.

> I do have a bike and I always get off the road to let cars pass when there is one nearby.

I'll take "things that never happened" for two hundred, Alex

But it does happen. The probability of me encountering even one car during a bike ride is like considerably lower that you are expecting.

> but in practice it's the minimum you are expected to drive.

No, it's not. Far from it. A speed limit of 70mph on a motorway is not the minimum, just because you, or other vehicles want to exceed it.

A speed limit of 20/30mph in a city center is not a minimum; it's actively dangerous to exceed it, and if you regularly exceed these you are a danger on the road.

A limit of 60mph on a national road is often granted based on road classification rather than the actual road; There are numerous A roads in Scotland that are _not_ safe to travel at 60mph for large stretches of due to poor road camber, poor visibility, narrow lanes, etc.

> I do have a bike and I always get off the road to let cars pass when there is one nearby.

This is a dangerous and unpredictable way to cycle, and can lead to cars overtaking you when it's dangerous to do so/they're not confident to do so, in the same way that an unconfident driver travelling at 40mph on a motorway is dangerous, or a car driving in a hard shoulder to allow overtaking is dangerous.

>and if you regularly exceed these you are a danger on the road.

98% of my driving is not in city centers

>A roads in Scotland that are _not_ safe to travel at 60mph for large stretches of due to poor road camber, poor visibility, narrow lanes, etc.

Slowing down for safety is different than going slow just because you feel like it.

>This is a dangerous and unpredictable way to cycle

It's not more dangerous that being a pedestrian. I'm already off the road before they even get close. I can trust that drivers can stay on the road.

"I do have a bike and I always get off the road to let cars pass when there is one nearby."

So if you were in London you would never get to the destination?

>So if you were in London you would never get to the destination?

I don't live in London, but if I were to do what I do where I live I would just push my bike around assuming there are always cars driving near me.

Oh bless the almighty car. We cannot question it's authority and we are all the better for serving it.

What's your point here? Are you advocating that drivers have no responsibility when it comes to road safety?

For context, everyone else's point is that both drivers and cyclists are struggling to maintain a safe environment because good infrastructure is lacking. But I just can't see your angle here.

I'm pretty sure the years where I cycled to school and work without any regard to the traffic code didn't make me a better driver; I just learned to expect the worst possible behavior from cyclists and to expect them to appear from unexpected directions (from the sidewalks, from one-way streets, running red lights...)

On Australian roads, Mustang and HSV Commodore drivers always seem to be on the verge of doing something incredibly stupid and endangering others. In reality its probably just confirmation bias but if I'm driving or cycling they always get a wide berth.

A cyclist doing something stupid is unlikely to live long and is mostly a danger to themselves.

> A cyclist doing something stupid is unlikely to live long and is mostly a danger to themselves.

well, I survived a few years of daily stupidity on two wheels.

Not just this, but you will learn to read and anticipate traffic in a far deeper way, through the human survival instinct: a slight swerve foreshadowing a lane change before an indicator is pressed; an aggressive posture and edging forward indicating unreasonable eagerness to enter an intersection. These are the kinds of things you'll particularly notice as a commuting cyclist, and which I have found to be of great value as a driver too.

This "speed entitlement" is something that bothers me even when I am also a motorist. I get honked out of my boots if I do not accelerate towards a red light. Drivers feel entitled to move forward as fast as possible, regardless of others, physics or logic.

Your comment made me chuckle; and not because I mean to minimize what you said.

I drive a 7,500 lb diesel pickup truck as my weekend “I’m going to the boonies to play with my man toys” vehicle. It’s a big and imposing vehicle that I operate responsibly. On longer highway trips I tend to lay in the speed limit into my cruise control and simply cruise (fitting eh?) in the middle lane of a 3-lane road or the right lane of a 2-lane road.

Guess what? I get honked at for driving too slowly even when I’m traveling at 70 mph that also happens to be the speed limit.

Just yesterday an especially irate specimen became upset when I was using the left lane to pass at 70 mph (otherwise known as the speed limit) to go past a very large truck that was using the right lane at 60 mph. Someone honked at me, flashed their headlights, then eventually passed me, got in front of me, and performed a brake check on me.

Imagine how upset this wheeled menace gets when they see a cyclist taking the entirety of a narrow road! Sigh.

From the perspective of the 20 drivers behind you, you are the inconsiderate person.

At least in Spain there is a minimum speed at which you can legally drive (half the max)…

I also take the lane a lot to avoid dangerous passes and don't like the entitlement of needing to drive at least the speed limit. However I do think more infrastructure's required, but mainly for a reason not mentioned here: safer infrastructure for cyclists will encourage more people to cycle, reducing the car traffic and making things more pleasant for all travelers. I know a lot of people who'd cycle more if they could do it without feeling like they might be killed every time someone else was in a rush.

(I'm in the UK where cycling on the pavement's not allowed, unless it's a marked cycle or shared lane, not sure if that's different in other countries).

> "bikes are much closer to pedestrians than cars, yet we ask them to share the road with cars."

Not in terms of infrastructure. A mistake that planners often seem to make is to build "cycle lanes" that resemble footpaths: lots of zig-zags, stops and starts, clutter, obstacles to manoeuvre around, and diversions at junctions that make cyclists take longer routes than cars and force them to give way to all other traffic.

The best bike lanes resemble motor traffic lanes: straight and continuous with as few interruptions as possible.

If you build bad cycle lanes, most cyclists just won't use them and you haven't really solved anything.

The other insane anti-pattern I see in US cities is to have the bike lane directly next to on-street parking. So if someone parks and opens the driver's side door it opens directly into the path of any oncoming cyclists. Almost every regular bike commuter I know has a story of being "car doored" or at least having several close calls.

"clutter, obstacles to manoeuvre around"

Of the clutter can be insane, there is a new, 3 meter wide path, and some donkeyballs-brained perdon has installed a lamppost, a large metal 'internet box', and some other metal box duagonally across the path, so you can't cycle through it any more, and get through on a wheelchair!

> The best bike lanes resemble motor traffic lanes: straight and continuous with as few interruptions as possible.

This. 100% this. The county highways around where I live have a paved shoulder that is as wide as a full lane of traffic. I routinely cycle on that shoulder safely with cars zipping by me at 55-60 mph and no one gets angry about it.

But I do run into the bottom 1% of drivers occasionally (usually at intersections) who either simply do not see me, despite the fact I'm wearing fire-engine red kit and have flashing headlamp and taillight in broad daylight, or choose to ignore that I'm there and intentionally put me in danger.

There are a couple of longer-distance high-quality road cycling trails around here (one is ~50 miles long, the other is ~120 miles long) but they are an inconvenient distance away. The other park-style trails around here simply aren't meant for road cyclists, for reasons that you've noted already.

> The problem is, when there is a 20 car queue stuck behind two cyclists riding next to each other, cruising along at 30kph in a 100kph zone (yes, this actually happens, often)

At least in the part of Australia I live in the only roads that are 100km/h are highways and bikes aren’t allowed there. I’ve yet to see this particular scenario. I don’t want to say it doesn’t happen but I don’t think it’s as common as it’s made out to be here

I do 100% agree on separated lanes with barriers or dedicated paths for bikes. Keeping it separate, even as a dedicated bike lane with a small barrier is so much better than trying to share the road with parked cars or crappy pot holes.

Ultimate I also think people just need to learn empathy. Loosing a minute of your commute isn’t worth getting angry.

Well, in the city centers, bikes are a LOT faster than both cars and pedestrians. Within cities, bikes should share the road with motorists. Outside of cities, they should share with pedestrians.

Until as a pedestrian, you are hit by a bike.

This aligns with my experience.

I cycle a lot in inner London - zones 1 - 2 ish. There are a few cycle lanes, paths through parks, canal towpaths, etc, but mostly, i'm on the road. For me, that's fine; traffic is never very fast, and the next junction is never far away, so there's a mix of overtaking cars, being overtaken by cars, and each of us blocking the other for a little while where there's no room to overtake. Also, there are a lot of bus lanes, which are even better - fewer vehicles, and less likely to misbehave.

I occasionally cycle in outer London, and there, i'm glad of the network of long-distance cycle paths, sparse though it is. Speeds are higher, and drivers are more impatient.

I once cycled in Swindon, including across the White Hart roundabout. I won't be doing that again.

Hungary has a great approach. The "cycling" infra is shared with tractors and carts outside of cities. They're basically agricultural access roads.

I didn’t notice any cycling infra when I was there 2 years back, and as far as I could tell, some regional roads were barred to cyclists. (To the point of a randonneur ride around lake Balaton advertising that you needed specific permits for the main road)

Not that the side roads were bad. Cars were better behaved than they are in Ireland anyway.

Cycling provision in Hungary is patchy, to a point where journeys may be impossible in areas where cycling is banned on certain roads. But as far as I can tell (without being able to understand Hungarian), it seems that there is a big push underway to develop infrastructure.

I recently had a ride from Bük to Csepreg which was mainly on a separate cycleway by the road. From Csepreg I was able to enter forest tracks which were very beautiful. I've also noticed quite a bit of new infrastructure in various parts of the country.

I can imagine Hungary becoming a very appealing cycling destination if they continue to develop the network.

In terms of efficient use of the road, it's clear to me that single occupancy cars should be eliminated as much as possible from cities and busy areas. 100 people cycling will take up substantially less room than 100 cars with one person in each and more importantly, 100 cyclists won't suffer from congestion.

As Cory Doctorow put it recently, geometry is against cars.

> The problem is, when there is a 20 car queue stuck behind two cyclists riding next to each other, cruising along at 30kph in a 100kph zone (yes, this actually happens, often)

I used to bike commute and I never caused this.

I also can't remember the last time I've seen this in real life as a driver.

Sometimes I get stuck behind a bicyclist that I'd rather not pass because there's oncoming traffic but that never lasts much more than 1 or 2 blocks and is inconsequential to my travel time.

It takes a long time to build the right infrastructure, the Dutch have been doing it for forty years and they aren't finished yet.

I could say the same about roads and highways, given that long stretches of the Autobahn are seemingly always in construction and/or certain stretches have been in construction for years.

When you're "done" with infrastructure you tend to get spectacular collapses.

Autobahn? I think you mean Gemany, the other person was talking about the Dutch (Netherlands)

Autobahn just means Highway, regardless I think the person you're replying to was making a general observation that public infrastructure, much like software is never really "finished".

I was making the point that we have a long way to go before the infrastructure is at an acceptable level, where there is no conflict between drivers and cyclists. Not that it never needs maintenance.

Vehicular cycling (bikes being treated as other vehicles) is dangerous if it‘s used to guide infrastructure (then the correct answer is complete separation and a few other tricks that boil down to avoiding contact between bikes, cars and pedestrians), vehicular cycling is, however, exactly the right approach of no biking infrastructure exists.

So vehicular cycling is both wrong and right at the same time. Correct as in guiding laws and behaviors when no infrastructure exists, but at the same time wrong in guiding new infrastructure. It should strictly be seen as a stop-gap, a measure only in place until infrastructure is in place.

Until then and in those places vehicular cycling is exactly the right thing to do.

I think this discussion often suffers from people thinking they have to find one correct answer for all situations. That‘s not needed. We just have to know when in which context vehicular cycling is the correct answer.

Bicycles go 4-5 times faster than pedestrians. In the city, bicycles are more than half the speed of cars. I can't seen any rational reason to class things with the larger speed difference together.

> the only reason this problem exists

Is because passing legislation designed to protect cyclists with dedicated lanes and clear up the roads for cars would require the votes of people who hate cyclists, and everything they think they represent.

> If they must share, bikes are much closer to pedestrians than cars

I disagree. Aggressive and fast driving cyclists are in no way less dangerous to pedestrians than a car. Keep the cyclists away, in their own area. This makes for easier rules based on consistent behavior of the participants.

Sometimes I wonder, why cyclist complain about the dangers of cars, while on the other hand they are a thread to pedestrians.

I think that every form of mobility has its own rules. Pedestrians walk fast at around 6km/h. Average is maybe around 4. A cyclist is way faster than that.

> Aggressive and fast driving cyclists are in no way less dangerous to pedestrians than a car.

That's just not true. A car weighs well over a tonne, and can comfortably travel at twice the speed any random bike can in a city (15mph on a bike in a city center is snappy, 30mph in a car is achieveable by the time you've cleared a junction). The impact of being hit by a car at 20mph and being hit by a cyclist at 20mph are also completely different for a pedestrian. You are far more likely to sustain serious injuries by being hit by a ton and a half of metal than 100kg of metal and squish.

And how many cars are in a car-free zones can hit you?

Biggest problem with cyclist is not what they are fast driving and behave aggressively. It is what they do it where people don't expect them.

And your whole comment reads like "You were made to an improvised bowling pin by a 100kg person a on a 25kg bike? Praise God it wasn't A CAR".

"Well thanks. Maybe a car would have been better, because it just would had driven over me and killed me, instead I'm now have a broken base of the skull and disabled down the waist."

> And how many cars are in a car-free zones can hit you?

That's not OP said, they claimed "Aggressive and fast driving cyclists are in no way less dangerous to pedestrians than a car".

Which is assuming the conclusion - yes, that kind of cyclist would be dangerous but their number and danger is vanishingly small compared to aggressive and fast drivers (50x more numerous and 10x more dangerous).

In the UK, drivers kill about 500-1000 pedestrians a year, cyclists maybe 10 at worst...

Indeed, there's a survivorship bias with cyclists.

If you've ever been hit by a cyclist going too fast, you'll have a very opinionated story to tell. If you've ever been hit going by a car too fast, you're just a faceless member of one of our more embarrassing statistics.

Please see the comment in the neighbouring thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30415828

In the UK many pedestrians are killed by motorists illegally driving on the pavement (sidewalk) every year. The only example of a pedestrian being killed by a cyclist I can think of happened on the road, and was so rare it was a major news story.

You clearly missed "Well thanks. Maybe a car would have been better".

I don't say cyclists kills people, of course not, you need to have a very bad circumstances for it to happen (mostly - hit the head on the pavement or have a great weight disparity, like running over a kid), but arrogance of many cyclists (just as like as arrogance of many pedestrians, especially on bicycle lanes TBH) coupled with speed and weight is a dangerous combination.

OP's comment has a light "bicycles are less dangerous than cars" fleur in it. Sure, of course 1000kg would always be heavier than 100kg (m * v = F; I know), but the problem is what we don't (or at least shouldn't) compare cars with bicycles here. We should compare how dangerous are both to pedestrians.

It appears a cyclist has never zoomed past you on a path downhill. If for whatever reason you step in a direction the cyclist doesn't expect and you collide, at the bare minimum both of you are going to the hospital.

Happened all the time to me on the way to work (cyclists zooming by, no collision fortunately, but some VERY close calls). Not the best to be honest.

Physics says that if a car and a cyclist hit you at the same speed you will come off worse from the car. Cars weigh a hell of a lot more than bikes.

The only way you get equal outcomes is that if both impacts will kill you.

And if a car is zooming down said hill, you're dead. That's the difference.

The KSIs would show otherwise. More pedestrians are killed on pavements (i.e. not whilst crossing the road) by drivers than cyclists.

There's a fundamental difference between the danger posed by cyclists and the danger posed by motorists. Cyclists have significant 'skin in the game' and can easily be hurt more in a collision with pedestrians. Motorists, meanwhile are unlikely to be hurt when colliding with either pedestrians or cyclists and so they can often get complacent about the danger they are presenting.

The UK is currently re-wording some of the Highway Code and an important part of this is the concept of responsibility - the faster, heavier vehicles bear more responsibility to keep everyone safe. HGVs>cars>cyclists>pedestrians

> Aggressive and fast driving cyclists are in no way less dangerous to pedestrians than a car.

Although I agree with your larger point, this is obviously not true.

This couple of comments sums up the problem with cycling so well.

Cyclists are neither pedestrians nor cars, and (I assume?) generally both groups would prefer the other had to deal with them. So, as a cyclist, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

> Sometimes I wonder, why cyclist complain about the dangers of cars, while on the other hand they are a thread to pedestrians.

Because, statistically speaking, cars are a way bigger threat to cyclists than cyclists are to pedestrians. Here's an article fearmongering against cyclists [1] (notice how even the link says "cyclist-killed...two-pedestrians-every-week", even though the true figure is "killed less than 10 pedestrians every year, compared with hundreds killed by cars"), compare it with the government's report for road casualties [2].

[1] https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/863550/cyclist-killed-bicy...

[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casua...