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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

I totally agree with the idea in the OP (not that we have much free parking left in Chicago). But I have to get something off my chest, although it's tangential to this post. (I know this will be sacrilege to the many HN bikers but here it goes):

First a disclaimer: I, at 40+, cannot ride a bike reliably (yeah, I know, it funny, there's a long backstory), in fact I learned how to ride about 10 years ago, not by applying a kid's natural understanding but (almost) from physical principles, e.g. conservation of angular momentum (which I recently read from physics exchange is not how bikes work). So my comments are an outsider's view to bikers.

I find the behavior of most bikers in traffic to be dangerous, obnoxious and rude. Bikers often say that they should be treated on par with cars (in matters of passing, etc.), but they themselves operate somewhere between vehicles and pedestrians, combining the worse characteristics of each. I have observed many bikers not to stop at stop signs or red lights, because, you know, they're for cars, jeopardizing pedestrians. A 90kg man on a bike moving fast is an object you don't want to run into when you're walking. In parks (e.g. Chicago's long lake shore), although they should share their lane with people strolling and child strollers, they go about at high speeds. Many bikers ignore signs where bikes are prohibited on sidewalks and ride them among people.

And the worst part is you can't say anything, because these guys are living a healthy lifestyle, right? They are saving gas, etc. Now, this, of course, is true, but doesn't give them precedence over all other lifeforms on sidewalks.

Next time you don your cool biker's outfit and feeling totally Armstrong, please try to remember us, lowly people trying to share the sidewalks and streets with you.

View on HN

Your arguments make sense in an environment where cycling isn't deeply inherent in a culture. I've cycled across NYC, Chicago and LA, and also Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and London, Paris and Barcelona.

Amsterdam and Copenhagen are amazing: as a cyclist you feel completely respected and the sheer numbers of you give a sense of legitimacy. Your own traffic lights and true cycle lanes lead to really safe transport, and you feel like a separate part of the system: not a car or a pedestrian. As such, you feel like you give the proper attention to car and pedestrian traffic and will stick to the proper safe rules.

Now the US cities? You feel like you are part of a dangerous new thing, the cars are out to get you and pedestrians don't even consider you might be there either. Pedestrians walk on the cycle lanes (because there are so few of them I guess it's not part of city consciousness) and yes, it is easy to have the feeling like you've got a certain right to run lights and weave through a couple of lanes (because more often than not there are potholes next to the curb).

My hope is that US cities just barrel forward with making more cycle lanes. The safer you make it for cyclists the less risks they have to take, and the more cycle traffic there are the more awareness in general, making it even safer.

I'd say London, Paris and Barcelona are somewhere in between, I mention them as examples of cities moving towards greater cycle density which I've seen transform over the last 10 years with my own eyes, for the better.

It's important to note that both cycling and walking aren't "inherent" to cities or cultures. It's great to have a biking culture but it's also been repeatedly demonstrated that if you make it harder to drive (by reducing parking, using traffic calming, or using congestion charges) and easier to ride or walk (via bike lanes, mass transit, etc.), the population shifts its behavior over time, benefitting everyone.

I point this out only because saying it's cultural leads some folks to believe that if their city isn't currently bike/pedestrian friendly, it never will be. Too many cities in the US are simply heavily biased in their current setup towards cars yet everyone wonders why there's a traffic jam at rush hour.

Right, I completely agree with you, sorry if I didn't make that clear. That's why I pointed out London and Paris - they are making efforts to be more cycle friendly and it shows.

It turns out, lots of people have this very same "little thing" to get off their chest. Every discussion of urban cycling goes off on this particular tangent. It's tiresome.

If you talk to people who cycle in cities, you'll find a lot of anger and rage at drivers also. These people may be eccentric, but their opinion seems based on facts as well. So consider the other side.

As a further catalyst, I challenge you, as a driver, to start looking at other drivers (including perhaps yourself) and noting the violations, especially speed limit violations.

For instance, it's a fact that on my way up to work, every driver (including me) is breaking the speed limit (65 in a 60). Almost without exception, every day. On a street near where I live, it's very common to see people driving 40 in a 35 (not including me).

Where's the outrage at these drivers?

My perspective - I live in San Francisco and have neither a car nor a bike, so I don't think I'm biased.

I think part of the problem is that most urban pedestrians have fully internalized the threat model of bad drivers. Look both ways before crossing the street, don't assume that the driver sees you, cars are generally found on the roads, etc. On the other hand, we haven't fully internalized the threat model of bad bikers. Sometimes they're on the sidewalk, sometimes they're blowing through stop signs alongside a stopped car (so the average pedestrian thinks it's safe because the only thing that could hit him is stopped at the intersection). So bad bikers are more noticeable (to me at least) because I've never had a close call with a bad driver while walking. But both the biker things I described were near-collisions that have happened to me.

Where do you live that people go 65 in a 60?

Where I'm from (Chicago/ Milwaukee) you're lucky if traffic's only going 70 in a 50/55.

> Where do you live that people go 65 in a 60?

Seattle is like this in a few spots.

> Where I'm from (Chicago/ Milwaukee) you're lucky if traffic's only going 70 in a 50/55.

I grew up in Green Bay, WI. I know exactly what you're thinking. :)

Where's the outrage at these drivers?

Is there a contingent of bikers somewhere angry at drivers doing 65 in a 60? If not, what does it have to do with anything? The violations that people get upset about are those that actively endanger or inconvenience them or people like them.

I am a biker that is angry at drivers doing 65 in a 60. It's bad for gas mileage (and thus hurts me indirectly through climate change and trade deficits), it's bad for safety (and thus hurts me indirectly through costs of government service personnel and road repairs), and it promotes an attitude of automobile entitlement that hinders my safe cycling.

I am a biker that is angry at drivers doing 65 in a 60.

I'm not sure what your anger has to do with doing 65 in a 60 -- it seems like you might be angry at drivers, full stop. :)

My point is simply that people haul out the "cyclists don't stop at stop signs" argument, in a selective way, without applying it to all traffic rules that are targeted at safety.

You're right, the "65 in a 60" was a rhetorical device. I used it, of course, because it's a law that so many people break.

But seriously, rhetorical devices aside: speeding in residential districts is a real problem for pedestrian (and driver, and cyclist) safety. And I think that's pretty clear.

Why don't we talk about how consistently cyclists obey posted speed limits? ;-)

Note that my comment was not for drivers vs. bikers but rather bikers vs. pedestrians.

Nearly all of what you say is true. However, you neglect to mention that it all applies to pedestrians as well, and drivers of course have their own version of each.

I have observed (and swerved to avoid) many pedestrians who don't use crosswalks, ignore crossing signals (it is not OK to start walking when the "don't walk" is flashing") , and walk right in front of bicycles in a bike lane with a green light, all because, you know, rules don't apply to pedestrians. A 90kg man crossing the street is not something you want to run into when you're cycling. Cyclists don't "win" that collision in the same way a car wins a collision with either. Many pedestrians happily clog lanes that are clearly designated for cycling only, despite a clearly marked pedestrian lane being 3 feet to the left or right. (Vassar street in cambridge, MA is my favorite example of this.)

Next time you get upset about rouge bikers, remember to look around for rouge pedestrians too. I know I have to, because they sure as heck aren't looking where they're going...

Exactly, a thousand times this. We don't go around wishing there were no sidewalks just because pedestrians jaywalk, do we?

When I see a cyclist run a stop sign in front of me (and I always watch for this to happen), I think to myself: "if that was a pedestrian, they wouldn't have even had to stop at all, and would have taken a lot longer to cross leaving me waiting longer... so why be annoyed?"

But perhaps I can say this more easily because I both drive and cycle in a busy downtown area.

God forbid any of these picky, sensitive, rage-filled drivers drive in a country where not even cars follow simple rules like "staying in the lane"...

Does two wrongs make a right? Does pedestrian not using crosswalks give license for a biker to blow pass a red light?

Most people here are arguing that it isn't even wrong. If nobody's coming, you have clear visibility and lines of sight, there's absolutely no rational argument for this behavior being a "dangerous" action on behalf of either cyclists or pedestrians.

And before you start, it's not even remotely comparable for a car. In a car, you're essentially in a sensory-deprivation chamber, and you're several feet farther from the intersection — the difference this makes to your situational awareness is impossible to overstate.

On a bike, I have full range of vision, full hearing faculties (ride a bike for awhile, you'll be amazed at how much situational awareness you have from your ears alone), and the danger I pose to others in case of a misdjudgment is miniscule: either I'm the one who gets plastered by a car, or in the case of an unexpected pedestrian, my stopping distance is perhaps three feet.

I've done this for years and haven't had so much as a close call. On the other hand, I'm _far_ more concerned about pedestrians who step out into the road without looking because they don't hear a car coming. On the Georgia State campus, this happens to me maybe once a week.

In short, the time and effort devoted to this topic is nothing short of insane given the miniscule numbers of people affected. The number of people killed by _safe and lawful_ drivers per passenger-mile, per passenger-trip, or any other weighted measure is absolutely staggering compared to even the most dangerous cyclists out there.

If bikers blow red light with no one on around, people won't be complaining about them since they won't be there to witness it. People are complaining because clearly they saw bikers doing it in their vicinity.

Vicinity can include cars behind cyclists who do this perfectly safely.

But your point is completely irrelevant regardless. The existence of people who blow through red lights regardless of oncoming traffic does not make people who carefully and deliberately go through a red light with no oncoming traffic dangerous.

You are basically saying that bikers are such super road warriors that they don't have to obey traffic laws since they are all aware of their surrounding. Then don't get mad when car drivers ignore you and run you off the road since they don't expect you are not following the rules.

Not that you've been listening, but I'm saying that the risk to others posed by cyclists and pedestrians doing the equivalent of jaywalking is minuscule compared to the dangers we as a society tolerate from cars day after day.

Making as big a deal of it as you have been is insane. Your thinking is no different than those who argue that vaccines are dangerous due to increased incidence of autism. Even _if_ it were true, its importance is still overwhelmed by the sheer number of lives saved compared to the alternative.

It's complicated, though. I think there's probably at least a bit of selection bias at work. There are plenty of cyclists who take traffic laws as seriously as drivers. But you're not going to notice them as much. And, here, in Portland, it's easy because most (not all) drivers are used to having cyclists in traffic with them and understand how to behave.

I used to live in Seattle, though, which had a lot fewer cyclists, and drivers in general were not used to watching out for bikes, or understanding cyclists' behavior in traffic. So, there, I had a completely different mindset. I saw motor traffic and traffic laws, including lights, stop signs, etc. as obstacles through which to navigate. I had to always be vigilant about where cars were, where they were going, etc. I always had to take care to see if there was cross-traffic (including pedestrian) coming at intersections or not. I didn't really consider myself part of traffic so much, because most drivers didn't.*

To be fair, part of it was that the elevation changes in Seattle are so drastic that keeping momentum through intersections was a lot more important. And it's true that this is the attitude that many cyclists have: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71JZgBLKMTs

* The somewhat paradoxical part about this is that I've actually had more traffic 'incidents' with cars here in Portland. This is because the abundant bike lanes and friendly drivers don't require my full vigilance all the time. Which is obviously not true, but it feels that way. I let my guard down in a way that I shouldn't, and obviously couldn't in Seattle, but it's easy to get lazy here.

  > And the worst part is you can't say anything, because these
  > guys are living a healthy lifestyle, right?

The issue is one of stereotypes.

A lot of people have very visceral reactions to cyclists:

  I saw some guy on a bike doing something dangerous, therefore
  all bikes must be banned and/or all/most cyclists are evil demons.

On the other hand, I could show you numerous examples of people behaving badly in cars. Car collisions with pedestrians are more deadly than bicycle-pedestrian collisions. Should I move that we ban all cars? Or maybe we should just get rid of all roads, because if people are going to drive cars and be dangerous, we shouldn't have the government subsidizing them?

You argument in general, seems to be about cycle-pedestrian collisions/dangers. If we get rid of bicycle lanes, then we are either advocating that all cyclists use the sidewalk or the street. In this case, you'll either end up with either more pedestrians being hit by cyclists or more cyclists hit by cars. In either case, as the number of cyclists increases, this doesn't scale.

I think Forrester has some stats that show riding in a bike lane is more dangerous than sharing the road with traffic. But one could argue that bike lanes attract cyclists who haven't learned or thought about safe cycling, whereas the unmarked street scares that demographic away.

The problem city planners are having is that they want to be "bike friendly" in every way except educating road users. Some stripes on the road don't make cycling safe. Cyclists that think carefully and act predictably do, and no stripe on the road is ever going to do that.

We need drivers education classes that cover driving from the perspective of a cyclist. This will ensure that when drivers want to ride their bike, they do it safely, and it will ensure that drivers know to share the road with bicycles. (I would take it a step further and require licensing for bicycle-only drivers, but that is too unpopular to ever happen.)

  > Some stripes on the road don't make cycling safe.
  > Cyclists that think carefully and act predictably do

I don't have any data to back this up, but it's my feeling that there are more drivers on the road that just don't pay enough attention to the road than there are reckless cyclists. At the very least, when there are cycle lanes there is a 'barrier' where if a driver crosses it they are unquestionably in the wrong.

  > require licensing for bicycle-only drivers

I would argue that there is less of a need to cyclists to get licensed. Recklessly driving a car is far more dangerous than recklessly driving a bicycle.

Most drivers at least look where they're going. Nobody wants to cause an accident.

I've noticed that cars run as many stop signs as cyclists. The rule is come to a complete stop and yield to your left. Cars treat the rule as "sort of lower your speed and yield to people that haven't stopped quite as much".

This is chaos. The cyclists are just doing what the other vehicles do.

(Also, you can't be surprised that there are cyclists on the Lakefront Trail. If they ride on the streets, their average speed goes down to approximately walking speed because the traffic lights are timed for people going 35, not 20. If I ride a Roosevelt / Damen / Fullerton / Wells loop, it takes well over an hour and a half and is about 12 miles. If I ride from the museum campus up to the end of the Lakefront Trail and back, that's 20 miles and only takes an hour. If you want to be safe as a pedestrian, either ban cyclists completely or ask for them to widen the trail. "Slower traffic keep right" largely works, it's just that the trail is very narrow in a few key places.

My solution is to avoid the trail if it's a day where people are going to be having picnics in the middle of the road, which is basically only warm weekend days after noon. Any other time, nobody uses the trail and it's perfectly safe for cyclists to ride fast on.)

In the US and Canada, you generally yield to the driver on your right.

Different context. This would be more comparable to an expressway, where you should keep to the right side except for passing.

In my experience on trails (including the lakefront trail in Chicago) people on bikes tend to understand this, runners/joggers are usually pretty good about it, and people going for a walk are god-awful at it. I don't mind people going slow (its frustrating because I'm commuting not recreational riding) but when you have a group of walkers going four wide on one of the only trails in the city designated for bikes (downtown there's a separate walkway for pedestrians closer to the lake) blocking all traffic, and getting upset with you when you try to pass them that's beyond obnoxious.

P.S. this applies on normal sidewalks as well (also escalators, moving walkways, city life in general). Unless your the only one in an area, walk in a straight line and not 4-wide so people going faster can get around you and people going the other direction don't have to stop and wait for you to run into them.

</rant>

This is the sad reality of being a cyclist: we are the neglected middle child. In the eyes of the law, we are vehicles. In the eyes of motor vehicles, we are an annoyance that slows them down. So, the motor establishment builds separated bikeways for us and tries to use the law to force us to use them. Then pedestrians find these bikeways convenient and pleasant, and make them so dangerous for cyclists as to be essentially unusable. Then they post to HN (or whatever) and complain about all the bikes using the bikeways and how dangerous this is for their pleasant afternoon walk.

Personally, I don't believe in advocating for bikeways for this reason. Bikes will never get to use them, and if they cross traffic at all, they are death traps (because drivers don't look for objects moving as fast as bicycles on the sidewalk when they are turning). The only exception is the lakefront trail because it has a total of 12 street crossings in 20 miles (4 of them in the last mile of the north side, two that have essentially no traffic, and two in the last mile on the south side). This property makes it safe to use. All it needs is a really nice running path and sidewalk closer to the lake (so that pedestrians won't even want to use it), and finally you have a bicycle expressway, one of the few places anything in Chicago can go 10 miles in 30 minutes. This will never happen, though, because it will cost money and because the recreational cyclists will force the pedestrians off the pedestrian-only part onto the bike-only part. Sigh.

I think the best general solution is what Chicago does: a lot of streets have a picture of a bicycle painted onto the right traffic lane and signs that say "shared lane, yield to bicycles". This lets cars know that bikes are doing the right thing. Then you just need bicycle driver education (I like "Effective Cycling") so that the cyclists stay safe and don't impede the flow of traffic. Unfortunately, I've found that getting on a bicycle seems to mean turning off your brain and doing whatever feels right, which is often wrong.

(And that's why I don't like bike lanes, because they make doing the wrong thing feel like "the law". "There's that stripe, so I must make my left turn from the curb, that line on the road says so." Then they die and everyone whines about how dangerous cycling is.)

>>(And that's why I don't like bike lanes, because they make doing the wrong thing feel like "the law". "There's that stripe, so I must make my left turn from the curb, that line on the road says so." Then they die and everyone whines about how dangerous cycling is.)

... or they don't turn from the curb, cut over to the left lane and drivers get pissed because "my tax dollars paid for that bike lane and you'rs still blocking me" I agree, there's really no way to win.

Have you checked out the new cycle lanes on Kinzie/Jackson yet? What are your thoughts? I haven't been able to get down there yet (I'm in MKE and life keeps getting in the way) but I feel like I myself would hate riding in them. Of course the advantage is that these new bike lanes (protected and otherwise) might draw out far more riders than we see currently. It's a hard dilemma for me because I want to see more people biking and accepting bikes on the road, but I still want to be able to go my own speed and safely mingle with traffic to get where I'm going.

For those of you not from Chicago, Chicago has created an experimental bike lane on a downtown street. They put some reflective poles in the middle of the side of the road where cars park, then designated everything from those poles to the curb a bike lane. Cars now park to the left of bicycles and to the right of cars, creating an interesting setup. There is no risk of being "doored" now, but traffic coming out of side streets can't see bikes in the bike lanes. They've compensated for this with tons and tons of paint on the road and lots of signs.

I have ridden the Kinzie one in both directions. I usually need to turn left at Clinton or Des Plaines, and this is now very difficult, as it's tough to move from the poled-in area to the real traffic lane at speed. To turn at Clinton, I have to cut over traffic right after the bridge. To turn at Des Plaines, the lane change is simpler because the poles are gone, but that giant hill makes turning left there very difficult. I like to get over to the left well before the intersection so that I don't miss the turn due to too much traffic, but the poles force me to stay in the bike lane longer than I might want to during heavy traffic. (OK, there is never any traffic on Kinzie, so this is not a real problem.)

The stop signs along the route are very difficult for everyone, because nobody knows how to react to this weird lane thing that exists nowhere else on earth. Should cars yield to bikes? Should bikes yield to cars? There are some signs put up that try to tell you what to do, but I've read them a million times and can't remember what they say.

Kinzie is such a lightly-used street that I don't understand how these dividers help make the road safer. That big hill at the 5-way intersection is the only thing non-ideal about Kinzie, and of course that's never going to be fixed. Some reflective poles in the middle of the road don't do it for me.

While this doesn't excite me, there are changes that would. Parked cars could be removed from the side of the road, leaving enough room for cyclists and cars to truly share the right lane. (No need for bike lane markings; the extra room is just as good and much cheaper to create.) Speed limits could be lowered from 30 to 25, so that, with training, bikes and cars could actually be going to same speed. This means that traffic light timings would be just as good for bikes as for cars, meaning that there would be no travel time advantage for cars.

I doubt this will happen, so as a substitute, how about giving people speeding tickets in Chicago? I've never seen anyone get one, and I've seen people getting off the freeway and continuing to drive 75 on the surface streets. 75 on a city street? Come on.

Agreed, Kinzie would probably be better served by a bike boulevard template [1]. Milwaukee is trying something else, it seems like there will be a driving lane, then a half-curb type thing with a raised bike lane on the right. [2] No parked cars. I'm not sure how it will work (completion 2012) but I'm curious to see, it will certainly be easier to get in/out of it mid block.

Milwaukee is pretty bike-friendly in general though. Well sort of, the people typically will respect you on the road but don't ask them to spend a dime on bike lanes, trails, or anything else not related to driving a car as fast as possible. My ride to work (8 mi. now) is primarily on an off mile street so traffic is light and I have almost no problems with cars.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_boulevard

[2] http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/124686578.html

Kinzie Bike Lane:

http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/cdot/provdrs/bike...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64168757@N02/sets/7215762730854...

Here's the sign I was talking about:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/64168757@N02/5987403529/in/set-...

"<picture of bicycle> stop for peds". Isn't that what the stop sign means?

And here's the other one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagobikes/5828955426/in/set-...

I like the bicycle boulevard idea a lot. Traffic is not what scares cyclists, it's the speed difference that does. If everyone is driving 15mph, then nobody feels like they're in danger.

Also, getting hit by a car at 15mph is quite survivable.

Very poor wording on my part. Yes, you must yield the intersection to the car on your right. But the one on the left is the one that's going to kill you, because once you both try to get through the intersection at the same time, you have no escape route other than a very sharp right turn. If you mistakenly start moving when the driver to your right does, you can stop, turn left, or turn right, giving you three possible ways to avoid a crash.

(I looked this up in the Illinois driver manual, and it gets a size-negative-a-million one-bullet-point mention. No wonder nobody can use stop signs.)

One thing you miss here is the asymmetry of risk. Cyclists are at highest level of risk while on the road. They're moving at enough speed to cause serious injury to themselves, but they're still usually about half the speed of cars. Modern automobiles have excellent safety characteristics and pedestrians have more of an ability to take evasive action.

A mistake on a bike is going to almost always be a life-or-death situation as just falling onto the road puts them at extremely high risk for injury. The cost of errors made by car drivers has a huge impact on the morbidity of cyclists, while the opposite doesn't hold true. Even if cyclists were an order of magnitude more dangerous than car drivers, their poor decisions would have negligible impact on car drivers.

Even if we completely accept what you are saying, I think there are a couple reasons why that doesn't change anything.

We don't allow people to risk their own lives. We force people by law to wear motorcycle helmets and seatbelts (ignoring a very few number of states). That doesn't at all improve the chances for other people to survive. You aren't considering the fact that a bicyclist causes injuries to people who aren't them. There are plenty of scenarios for this, cars swerving into incoming traffic, into a utility pole into pedestrians to avoid a cyclist. Way more people die from swerving to avoid animals than from hitting animals; even hitting a deer isn't likely to kill you in a modern automobile, but swerving into a tree to avoid one will.

I think you have a valid point -- but my point about asymmetry of risk still stands. Even if cyclists cause more accidents because of this swerving to avoid maneuver, the injury risk to the cyclist in any accident (fatal or otherwise) is still much higher.

> pedestrians have more of an ability to take evasive action

Except when they don't, due to mobility problems or having pets with them or other reasons. Expecting anyone to jump out of your way when you come barreling down the sidewalk is going to hurt someone.

I'm not excusing poor behavior -- but that there is a significant statistical advantage to automobile drivers -- and that this should be taken into consideration. With great power comes great responsibility.

All those things would happen way less if there were dedicated bike lanes. And you should speak up when someone on a bike is creating a dangerous situation. I don't get why you would not.

... all these things would happen way less if there were dedicated bike lanes that were strictly enforced as DEDICATED bike lanes. Next time you're on a busy street with bike lanes, pay attention to the number of double-parked delivery trucks and other stationary non-bike business. These make the road more dangerous and slower (an important factor in route choice) than a non-bike lane street.

I agree that bike lanes have safety problems, but let's not take it out on delivery drivers. Have you ever driven a delivery truck? Quite often there is not physical possibility of legal parking. At some point lanes are going to be blocked, and not just the bike line. The best we can hope for is enough courtesy not to entirely block the street.

So the OP is ranting about cyclists running stop signs, but now we've decided it's OK for a delivery truck to block an entire street?

This is what annoys me most about drivers of cars: they are quick to criticize cyclists, but are very slow to criticize their own actions.

I'm not making a judgement call, I'm just saying, it's gonna fuckin happen because deliveries must be made. You can write all the tickets you want, it just is the cost of doing business.

Also I'm not sure if you're referring to me or not, but I commute 95% by bike, over 4000 miles a year.

"Quite often there is not physical possibility of legal parking."

By the same token, quite often there is not physical possibility of legal cycling OR driving. Courtesy is the solution indeed, yet the rhetoric on the issue seems to point the finger at cyclist more than other parties involved.

The problem with the delivery truck/bus blocking the lane is that its easy and much more safe for a car to take half of the extra lane without obstructing the flow. This is a much more challenging a maneuver on a bike. Finally, these vehicles block the bike lane and then half of the right lane. Imagine if a truck was wide enough to block the entire two-lane roadway and force motor vehicle traffic to precariously dodge traffic going in the opposite direction. Not a bulletproof analogy, but worth considering...

That almost never happens in my country. Streets with bike lanes are very common. Sometimes a truck might stop where it shouldn't for 1-2 min, but they'll be fined if noticed.

Streets with bike lanes are way faster in my experience. But I'm also used to dedicated bike lanes.

You are lucky. My cycle to work (downtown Toronto, Canada) is in all fairness rather relaxed (bike lane 80% of the way, largely non-arterial street), but it is a rare day when I don't have to leave the bike lane at least once for a stopped delivery vehicle or truck. Best part? Any tickets they may get are waived if they go to the transportation department and prove they were on delivery. Apparently it's the city's way of being business-friendly.

Bike lanes only work if they are physically separate from the road. Otherwise, they are covered with debris swept off the main road surface, populated by double-parked delivery trucks and cars,or a random hazard of opening car doors and cyclists who are too stupid to obey the rules of the road (e.g., riding the wrong direction).

That is not my experience at all (double parked trucks + cars + opening of car doors). If you have more cyclists, then traffic will get used to it. Until that happens it might seem worse, but in my experience bike lanes on the road are fine.

Of course, separate is better. Just not mandatory.

In theory, yes. If you want to see adults behave like they're immortal, spend an hour in Copenhagen bicycle rush hour. Copenhagen bicyclists are actively taught that they are superior to any other mode of transport, and it shows.

And yes, I have cycled in Copenhagen for years and not at all innocent in this matter.

Amsterdam cyclists are terribly annoying. But that doesn't mean it cannot work in other cities.

Like e.g. policy checking for cars speeding too much, police should also check the behaviour of cyclists. E.g. working lights when it is dark, running red lights, etc.

Though instead of checking for red lights, make sure the traffic signal changes quickly for cyclists. That's more effective.

Speak up in what way? Flag them down and scold them on the street? That's not a wise thing to do.

Scold them down?!? I said speak up, not start an argument. E.g. something like "please cycle a bit slower, your speed is dangerous / pedestrian area". Though don't be stupid about it. I was told not to cycle on a pedestrian path while I was going slower than a pedestrian.

And if you cannot speak up, then why complain about it? Think society only works if there is some level of checks in place if you're behaving nicely. And that should be done by people, not police.

That's why I used "scold" - no matter how politely you try to do it, most people don't take kindly to being criticized about their driving/cycling by strangers, particularly when it requires being stopped by said stranger. They will feel like they're being scolded. And they will probably respond in kind.

I find the behavior of most bikers in traffic to be dangerous, obnoxious and rude.

Yes. Bikers have this in common with the drivers of trucks, buses, cars, SUVs, joggers, pedestrians, etc. They all break any rules that make their lives harder if they believe they're likely to get away with said breaking. All of them, all the time.

They're all just people, and they're all really the same.

No, no, no. You don't understand. _I'm_ different. _I'm_ not part of the problem. Everyone else is, you see.

I have not had a car for over 20 years. I've ridden my bike forever - to/from school since I was in grade school. Currently I live in San Francisco which has, some could say, an aggressive bike culture. Sometimes, I am one of those guys and I used to ride in the monthly Critical Mass rides.

The fact of the matter is that we live in a pro-car country. California in general is a very pro-car state. The drive in diner was invented in CA. In L.A. your car is your second home and this is true in most of CA, imo.

That said, I prefer a dense city because I am not a car person. I grew up in southern CA and you were, literally, a loser if you didn't have a car. In high school, that was me - no car, just a 10 speed. I consider living in dense cities in the U.S. (did live in NYC for a few years) because I prefer the benefits of non-car transportation.

Back in SF there is the local bike coalition that is lobbying city to build more bike lanes and that imo is really good. I've been riding in this city for a long time and the new bike lanes popping up all over are definitely nice. I see guys in suits and girls in dresses riding in to work all the time; it can be done!

But SF is also compact and hilly. We cyclists compete with cars all the time for space. I am not much of a red light or stop sign runner, but the thing people in cars don't quite grep is that momentum requires energy (or gravity). In a car, it's a tiny fraction of what it is on a bike. So, if no one is around (you can approach an intersection slowed down) you can cruise through with a 99% chance that you will be ok. Lots of people do this all the time.

However, there are plenty that disregard this (people that even blow past me when I'm stopped at an intersection). But, these are people of a similar mindset (I think) of those that speed up to go around me on a small street when I legally have to right to ride where I am and at the speed I do. I can't tell you how many times I've been cut off or 'wronged' by drivers. Far more times than I have gone through a stop sign.

The other thing drivers don't understand is sense of space. They are in a protected steel cage and are 'controlling' thousands of pounds of weight at high speeds. Me, 200 lbs of flesh, rubber, and steel tubes. There are some drivers that I feel are fine and nice people - they let you go first, they smile, they don't race around you just so they can make it to that stop sign a few seconds earlier. But more than not, people in cars - from my experience - just don't give a shit. You're in they're way, wtf, I don't have to deal with this, fuck off - you're not a valuable being.

Same thing goes as a pedestrian, which is my second mode of transportation. I love to walk. When I lived in NYC, I walked that city all the time. I will always walk. And in NYC, the cars are aggressive there, but there are also so many people that there's a different feel to the whole 'critical mass' of peds at a red light with cars coming. Anyone who's lived there knows what I'm talking about.

In SF, it's a different story. We have not yet reached that tipping point in terms of pedestrian density. So when you walk across a cross walk, with the right of way, it's not uncommon to have a car zoom by you before you get out of the middle of the street. Which in my mind, is total bullshit.

Ultimately, I don't feel bad for the cars at all nor do I share their plight. My gf drives a short distance to work (she's pregnant) and when I have to use her car to drop or pick her up, I know what it's like to be on the other side and I make sure I always yield to bikes and peds. I think I'm in a small minority.

Running reds and stop signs by bikes is not the smartest thing to do. But I don't think I'll ever side with car culture here in the U.S. There are just way too many negatives from it now and most people just don't care about you. One thing I'm absolutely waiting for is cars that navigate themselves. When they arrive, then I think I'll support cars again. Until then, I'm 100% on the side of bikes and peds.

I think you're mistaken in dividing it up into a cars vs. bikes/pedestrians binary.

There are motorists who act completely inappropriately towards bikers, and there are bikers who act in a manner that is equally unbefitting. Both are a big problem, and the one doesn't justify the other.

Personally, as a non-car-owning biker, it really upsets me when I see fellow cyclists acting like dicks. It makes it that much harder for us to be taken seriously.

  > it really upsets me when I see fellow cyclists
  > acting like dicks

Too many people that drive cars ignore cyclists, and I think that the 'dick cyclist' to some extent stems out of the need to be seen on the road. I've heard people say that it's better to have a driver think you're an asshole, because at least that means that they see you.

In general, I find it really odd that people in cars think that cyclists need to watch out for cars and not the other way around. The person driving the car is the one holding the deadlier weapon, why are they not held to a higher sense of responsibility?

As an anecdote, one of my friends was hit by a car, and ended up in the hospital. She had the right of way, but that didn't stop the lady that was driving the car from calling her up to complain about the fact that her insurance was going to be more expensive after the accident.

Let that sink in. Someone driving a car, disobeyed the law, and put someone in the hospital, then called up that person to complain about their insurance increasing. I'll bet you that the driver wouldn't have called up to complain if the person she hit had been in a car rather than on a bicycle.

"it really odd that people in cars think that cyclists need to watch out for cars and not the other way around"

But isn't it even odder that cyclists think the same thing about pedestrians? My encounters with the "dick cyclist" has always been when I was walking. Isn't this similar to what cyclists think about the "dick driver"?

It seems whenever people are in a position of "power" they become pushy, impatient, and careless towards people in a "lesser" position, e.g. drivers towards bikers and bikers towards pedestrians.

In reality, most people that are cyclists are not dicks, at least where I am. Most people go out of their way to avoid pedestrians. There are some people that are 'dick cyclists,' but I see them act like dicks towards cards, pedestrians, and other cyclists alike. It has nothing to do with a position of power, and more to do with a general attitude.

The problem between car drivers and bike riders, is that there are a lot of drivers that view the position of the person in the car as the 'normal' position, and the position of the cyclist as the 'abnormal' position.

Take the article that the OP is in response to. It is written along the lines of:

  I drive a car, and do not drive bicycle. I therefore
  have little vested interest in infrastructure relating
  to bicycles and a strong vested interest in infrastructure
  related to cars. Therefore I see infrastructure related
  to bicycles as 'stealing' time/space/resources away
  from the infrastructure related to cars.

I think the difference in the two interactions is that if a biker hits a pedestrian they are likely to be hurt just as bad as the pedestrian if not worse.

A driver who hits a cyclist or pedestrian risks a dent in the hood at the worst. So while the "dick cyclist" is annoying, the position of power isn't comparable.

> The person driving the car is the one holding the deadlier weapon, why are they not held to a higher sense of responsibility?

They are. There are insurance requirements for driving, licensing, etc. I'm unaware of any legal restrictions on bicyling on public roads (apart from staying off certain restricted access roads, typically interstates).

We can argue about whether these requirements are adequate, but it's absurd to suggest that they don't exist.

> I'll bet you that the driver wouldn't have called up to complain if the person she hit had been in a car rather than on a bicycle.

I'll bet you that they would have, because I've seen it happen.

Why are you so certain that it wouldn't have happened?

  > We can argue about whether these requirements are
  > adequate, but it's absurd to suggest that they don't
  > exist.

Maybe I phrased my point poorly. My point was that people in cars tend to want to hold people on bicycles to a higher standard of road awareness than they hold themselves to. There's rarely a sense of, "Maybe I should be more careful," and more often a sense of, "You should just get out of my way."

A reasonable analogy would be hunters and guns. Hunters are required to get both a hunting license and a gun license (barring bow hunters, etc). If someone is wandering around in the forest during hunting season, who is the person that should be more aware of their surroundings. We can argue that both people should be, but the hunter is the person with the deadly weapon.

I've actually wondered why there aren't insurance and licensing requirements. I would be happy paying my fair share of infrastructure maintenance as a cyclist, especially if it helped give a voice and build safer roads for bicyclists.

> I've actually wondered why there aren't insurance and licensing requirements. I would be happy paying my fair share of infrastructure maintenance as a cyclist, especially if it helped give a voice and build safer roads for bicyclists.

There are big debates about whether bicycle (rider?) licensing would be effective, but my two concerns are:

1) Added cost gives no incentive to car drivers to start commuting by bike, which would have at least some effect on congestion, pollution and health.

2) How do you enforce it?

There needs to be a big improvement in driver education, and responsible cycling needs to be promoted from a young age. Cutting reds and not signalling is behavioural issue that won't be magically fixed by registration/licensing.

1) Added cost gives no incentive to car drivers to start commuting by bike, which would have at least some effect on congestion, pollution and health.

Maybe not directly, but the funds generated from licensing and penalties could go towards education programs, tax rebates for those who start commuting by bike, improving safety for cyclists, etc. My guess is that there's a network effect to be had. Once you hit a certain density or,(ugh) critical mass of cyclists on the road you get a point where it is safe and socially-accepted enough that it will become commonplace, and everybody wins.

2) How do you enforce it?

I don't know, I have no experience in the machinations of government. However, I'm confident that if you tell state and municipal governments that they could generate revenue off of it, they will find a way.

If you're a taxpayer and a cyclist, you're already paying way more than your fair share -- most infrastructure is paid for via property & income taxes.

Well I'm a small business owner, so my accountant does everything in her power to minimize my income taxes, and I live in San Francisco, so I will never be able afford to own property or pay property taxes, so I'm probably not paying my fair share.

If you rent, your landlord pays property tax on your flat. Every non-homeless person pays property tax.

I would argue that it's very possible to be an assertive cyclist whose presence is well-known on the road without resorting to actively breaking traffic laws or antagonizing your fellow road-goers.

It was the grandparent that started singling out bad bikers, all the while ignoring bad car drivers.

Bikes are a problem? Right. Cars kill over 1.4 million people a year, and injure over 50 million people. Anybody arguing about problem cyclists really need a reality check.

I don't care anywhere near as much about dick cyclists who may get themselves killed, compared to problem car drivers who will get me killed.

The bias in both these comments is so thick I could cut it with a knife. One can barely ride a bicycle; one wishes he didn't own a car.

My perspective: I both cycle and drive quite a lot.

When I'm driving, I hate cyclists, and when I'm cycling I hate drivers. Both groups are filled with complete freaking idiots who shouldn't be allowed onto the roads under any circumstances.

Cyclists don't just conflict with cars, they conflict with Pedestrians.

I've been hit by cyclists more than once. (And OK, I hit a pedestrian when I was riding a bike back when I was a teenager too.)

Walking in L.A. I experience near-misses with cyclists riding illegally on the sidewalk about as often as I experience near-misses from people running red lights when I'm in a car.

I guess there are not enough bike lanes?

I had a friend in college hit by a bike while he was walking on the sidewalk. There was a clear area for the biker to ride other than the sidewalk. Serious recovery time was required (almost blew his whole semester).

Couldn't understand why you are referring to my comment as "biased", I was trying to portray how bikers are seen from the viewpoint of the non-avid-biker pedestrians. Do you think my points were wrong or made-up? If so, it would be more useful to comment on those aspects.

Well everyone has a bias as everybody has a different perspective on the world. That you can't appreciate biking (through your own choice or no), makes yours particularly "thick" (in the context of biking).

I also think its not unusual for people in this thread to be able to drive, and thus the need to portray how bikers are seen largely unnecessary (in my view). Drivers are the majority, and even keen cyclists will probably be drivers too.

As an occasional cyclist, I get particularly annoyed with bad cyclists when I'm driving, as I feel they bring me down with them by association.

I personally tend to agree with your points, but that aside what I was noticing is you and my parent basically arrive at opposite conclusions with a strong conviction in your beliefs, and "coincidentally" both of your POV's align with your primary, chosen form of transportation.

You both make some valid points; I don't use 'bias' to imply you are wrong. Rather, bias affects the process by which you examine and evaluate your points.

I believe you (along with many commentators) assume that my primary mode of transport is driving, since nowhere in my comment I refer to drivers. I was commenting on sharing sidewalks and streets with bikers as a pedestrian. There were many times for me when, at a stop sign, a car stops, I start to cross, and nearly run into a biker who ignored the sign, this is what I was referring to in teh part about stop signs.

You could also call it, "opinion," instead of, "bias."

If you want car drivers to respect bikers, stop running red lights and stop signs. Since you want to be reckless and ignore safety rules, others would have less regard for your safety. The conserving momentum is just a BS excuse; stopping is for safety overall for everyone involved, not just you. A car can also run through stop sign to conserve momentum and save on gas but for overall safety sake it stops.

If you've ever driven or biked in San Francisco (or I'm assuming any other marginally bike-friendly city) you'll quickly understand that for bicyclists, stop signs are yields and red lights are stop signs. You're just going to have to get used to that, at least on low-volume, low-speed streets.

That of course is not what the law says, and many people (especially drivers and people who don't like bicycles) will disagree. However, it's a cultural norm which, when ignored, leads to far more frustrating four-way encounters. e.g. "law-abiding" cyclist approaches stop sign at the same time a car on the right has already arrived. Car, expecting cyclist to enter intersection (because that's what every other cyclist does) waits. Other cars approach intersection. Cyclist, wanting to abide by the law, slows so that first car can proceed through the intersection. Car waits, expecting cyclist to go through. Other cars wait. Law-abiding cyclist comes to complete stop. Well-meaning (but wrong) car motions cyclist to proceed, ceding right of way. Other cars seethe. Precious seconds wasted.

Sometimes as a cyclist it's better to just run that stop sign and save everybody the hassle. As a cyclist in SF, that's what I do, if there isn't already a car stopped at the intersection and/or very clearly arriving there before me. If there's a car starting to cross in front of me, I go behind it. If I'm coming up behind a car who has the right away as they proceed into the intersection, I'm going to piggyback through the intersection with them rather than stopping myself. I feel I'm abiding the spirit of right-of-way if not the letter of the traffic laws.

Also I notice that most drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians don't understand right of way to begin with, to the point of making weird and dangerous decisions: drivers stopping midway through an intersection trying to be "nice" to some pedestrian or cyclist whose turn it might not be. Dont do it! Take right of way when you have it. Pedestrians doing the same to motion cars through intersections even as they are in the middle of a crosswalk. Ack!

And no the conserving momentum thing is not BS. It's inherent to that mode of transportation. Watch how cyclists navigate stop signs some time. Even when they're more or less obeying the law, very few are coming to a complete stop. Starting and stopping a bike takes much more physical effort than it does a car. Combine that with the vast differences in kinetic energy between them, and I am so much more sympathetic to the cyclist cruising through the stop sign than the car who does the same (and again, actually take note sometime -- cars are as bad about not stopping at stop signs as bikes are).

Finally, as a car owner and driver, to other drivers: get over yourselves! You don't need to be in such a hurry. So what if a pedestrian crosses your path or a bike cruises through a stop sign? You have thousands of pounds of heavy machinery at your command. Be happy about that, pat yourself on the back,etc. You've already got a lot to be pleased with. If you need to stop more quickly than you would have liked, all you have to do is press down on that lever on the floor and you're back up to speed. Life is too short to get your blood pressure up about this sort of stuff. And if it does really get to you, maybe you should gasp park it and go for a walk.

> Life is too short to get your blood pressure up about this sort of stuff.

Likewise next time you see a car cut in front of your bike, just let it roll and don't let the rage get to you.

Inconvenience vs peril. One thing is annoying while another is potentially deadly. Different reactions seem justified, don't you think?

It's about bikers running red light and stop sign. It is definitely perilous, not merely inconvenience.

  > Since you want to be reckless and ignore safety
  > rules, others would have less regard for your safety.

Does that mean that I can treat people that ignore safety in cars the same way? Or does this 'if you even step an inch over the line, I will run you over' attitude only extend to bikers?

Reckless behavior endangering others are looked on dimly, regardless it's a biker or driver.

No to the extreme exaggeration 'if you even step an inch over the line, I will run you over.' It's more like 'if you run a red light or stop sign, I might accidentally run you over.'

It's my experience that a lot of people will get more pissed off at "someone using <vehicle> did <unsafe thing>" when <vehicle> is a bike. Maybe it's just that they've become numb to people doing dangerous things in cars because it happens so much more often?

I have never ever ever heard someone say that it's ok for a car to just blow through a red light. Just now, equalarrow made the implication that it is ok for bikes to go through red lights at their personal discretion.

Do you have an example of "someone using <vehicle> did <unsafe thing>" where it wouldn't be considered way more egregious if someone did it in a car than a bike?

I think it's possible you have a flawed perception because everyone accepts that it's absolutely not ok with cars, while tons of people argue that the same things are ok for bikes, then there is significantly more people complaining about bikes because most people that run red lights don't go around talking about how they know better than the law.

> Do you have an example of "someone using <vehicle> did <unsafe thing>" where it wouldn't be considered way more egregious if someone did it in a car than a bike?

Speeding, for one.

Talking on the phone or texting while driving, for another.

These things are responsible for countless preventable deaths on the roadways, and yet they're completely tolerated by most drivers.

Except text messaging, perhaps. In that case, it's always the asshole on their cell phone in the _other_ car doing something stupid. Of course, you never notice the dozens of times that _you're_ the asshole, because you're trying to fire off that quick text.

The thing about speeding and texting is that they are both incredibly difficult to do on a bike. I take your point though.

  > most people that run red lights don't go around
  > talking about how they know better than the law.

You've obviously never been pulled over for performing a 'rolling stop' at a stop sign. Most people that are pulled over for such things will complaint to high hell about them.

There is large area between running a red light at 90mph without even batting an eye, and coming to an almost (but technically not complete) stop before continuing through an intersection with a stop sign.

And there is a huge difference between rolling through a stop sign and rolling through a red light. I don't think the former is that big of a deal for both bicycles and cars, and I think the latter is a big deal for both bicycles and cars. I rarely see cars just decide to not stop for a red light, and I see bicycles do it on a weekly basis. I'm not talking about stop at a red light, look and see that no one is there, I'm talking about just go straight through a red light without slowing down.

Then you have your head in the sand.

Read ww520 comment, he mentions drivers taking cyclists seriously. This is a typical bias, and the implication is clear. He is a driver, he already takes drivers seriously, because he is one.

Whatever it means to 'take someone seriously', I am hoping he does not mean avoid running of the road.

I don't know what you are trying to interpret my words.

I take all participants on the road seriously, drivers, bikers, and pedestrians. I pay special attention to bikers to slow down, to get around them, or to yield to them when making turn since they are in a slower vehicle. I myself bike from time to time.

What I don't agree is the prevalent bikers mentality of ok'ing blowing redlight and stop sign, and the hypocrisy coming from the bikers to justify doing it.

Traffic laws are there so that participants of the road can share it SAFELY.

Bullshit.

Simply by choosing to ride a bike, a cyclist makes the roads so much safer (comparatively) for everyone else, they could cycle backwards through the streets while blindfolded and it would _still_ likely be a net benefit to the safety of others on the road (nothing claimed about the cyclist him- or her-self).

And this is before you consider the notion that the vast majority of drivers speed (speed limits are seen as the _lower_ limit by many), and many tailgate, roll through stoplights, turn and change lanes without signaling, and send text messages while doing all of the above.

The safety numbers are so overwhelmingly in favor of cycling, talking about the "endangerment of others" in this context is, quite frankly, laughable.

It's interesting to see how far bikers would twist the truth to justify running red light and stop sign.

Or, alternatively, how oblivious drivers are to the true human cost to their mode of transportation.

Let's take New York, since it wasn't too hard to find relevant data. Data can be found at:

  http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/Statistics/2010NYSAccSummary.pdf
  http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/Statistics/2010BicycleAccSummary.pdf
  http://www.nydmv.state.ny.us/Statistics/2010PedestrianAccSummary.pdf
  http://gruskinfoundation.org/pdfs/Pedestrian-Cyclist-Accidents_3-1.pdf

In 2010, there were: 311 pedestrians and 36 cyclists killed by motor vehicle drivers. On top of this, there were 16,090 pedestrians and 6,058 cyclists injured by collisions with motor vehicles. 4,898 of the injuries (of pedestrians alone) were considered moderate or serious.

On the flip side, we have the comprehensive statistics on pedestrian/cyclist injuries compiled at Hunter University. In 2010, 927 pedestrians were treated for injuries involving cyclists. Of those, 84 received inpatient treatment, indicating a moderate or severe injury. Note that they count zero deaths.

Let's compile what we've got:

  Cars : 347 deaths, 4898 moderate or severe injuries, 17,250 minor injuries
  Bikes:   0 deaths,   84 moderate or severe injuries,    843 minor injuries

Now let's involve the WHO. Long story short, cars cause over twice as many deaths due to emissions as they do from accidents. No joke. We'll make it an even 2x, just to be generous. And we won't even attempt to estimate the "injuries" in the form of asthma and bronchitis they cause.

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/369169.stm

  Cars : 1,041 deaths, 4898 moderate or severe injuries, 17,250 minor injuries
  Bikes:     0 deaths,   84 moderate or severe injuries,    843 minor injuries

Draw conclusions as you will. Unfortunately, it's somewhat impossible to reconcile the numbers at this point. Cars drive many more miles annually than bikes do, but cyclists also tend to live closer to their destinations, greatly reducing the number of miles they require traveling. Most estimates peg cycling traffic at around 2% of automobile traffic, give or take.

At that rate of comparison, cyclists would be expected to have caused 20.8 deaths, 97 moderate or severe injuries, and 345 minor injuries. If it were up to me, I'd opt for the higher number of minor injuries and greatly reduced number of deaths any day.

Please also take note that in this comparison, I was very generous to cars. We didn't add data on injuries and fatalities caused by car-on-car crashes versus bicycle-on-bicycle crashes, which I'm sure we can both agree would have come out far in favor of the cyclists. We also didn't consider non-fatal health effects of car emissions, and we rounded down fatal health effects. We also haven't even begun to talk about the year-over-year decrease in cyclist-related pedestrian fatalities in New York even though cycling participation has been increasing by double digits (as high as 26%) yearly.

And the cars _still_ came out looking bad.

What do all these have to do with bikers blowing through red light and stop sign?

On the flip side, these causalities reinforce the requirement of ALL road participants to follow the traffic laws. If the bikers stop at red and stop sign, don't you think the biker injures would go down?

Funny you should mention that. In the UK, at least, women are at greater risk of death while cycling precisely because they follow this exact traffic law.

  http://www.metro.co.uk/news/46427-women-cyclists-more-at-risk-of-death

And the numbers emphasize exactly the point I made earlier. Cycling is less dangerous than driving. So much so that nitpicking stupid crap like cyclists running lights with no oncoming traffic is idiotic. Even with behavior like this, they're _still_ safer than cars.

Daily, we put up with drivers who speed, talk on their cell phones, drive while drunk, tailgate, dart between lanes without signaling, roll through stop signs, pollute the air we breathe, burn through our limited reserves of fossil fuels, injure forty million people per year, and kill one and a half million people per year, and you're hung up on the, what, _tens_ of deaths caused by cyclists per year due to running red lights? If that?

While you're at it, why not join the crusade against the grave threat we face from children running with scissors?

Get. A. Fucking. Grip.

Funny you picked that story. The study was for woman cyclists having higher fatal collision with trucks than men. The study doesn't say cyclists stopped at traffic light having a higher chance of fatal collision with trucks. The news report picked two collisions and twisted the study's conclusion. Looks to me pretty bad reporting.

> Get. A. Fucking. Grip.

Nice way to live up to the angry biker image. Calm down.

  > Nice way to live up to the angry biker image. Calm down.

That's the fun thing about stereotypes. If a biker gets angry, he/she is 'living up to the angry biker image.' If a car driver gets angry, that's just 'normal.'

I'd argue running red lights is stepping several feet over the line.

Yeah, it's more like miles over the line.

While breezing through a stop without even looking or slowing down may be 'miles over the line,' coming to a rolling stop, situation dependent, is in more of a grey area.

You might want to qualify that statement before someone asks you about an empty, well-lit intersection with sweet sight lines at 2 am on a Tuesday night.

If you think car drivers disrespect cyclists for safety reasons (e.g. running red lights) and not for inconveniencing car drivers (e.g. by momentarily slowing traffic flow in one lane) you're fucking deluded.

While I agree with your point, I downvoted you because of your language. As long as you are on HN, please, stay civil. We don't need nor want this kind of discussion here.

>If you want car drivers to respect bikers, stop running red lights and stop signs.

As a cyclist who doesn't run red lights and stop signs, I haven't noticed any improvement in people's attitudes toward me when I tell them I'm a commuter cyclist. And why should I? I do it to get from A-to-B safely. I'm not some sort of cycling ambassador.

When a car behaves dangerously, that guy is an asshole. When a biker behaves dangerously, bikers are assholes. Let's hold everyone to the same standard, shall we? (relevant xkcd: https://www.xkcd.com/385/)

> If you want car drivers to respect bikers, stop running red lights and stop signs.

Sometimes this is true, but often it's not. Often, the person in the car is just jealous and angry that the cyclist breaking rules and getting away with it.

I ran a red light a few months ago, and as I did I heard a guy in a truck yelling angrily "Red light! Red light! Red light!" I ignored him because I've been through this intersection hundreds of times and it's infinitely safer for me to cautiously ride through the light and ride the next 50-100 yards on a clear road than it is to wait for the light and try to stay with the flow of traffic, which faces a simultaneous sharp curve and lane merge. These conditions are ripe for road rage, which can be fatal to cyclists.

If I ever get ticketed there for doing that, I will pay the fine and keep doing it. I don't think that will happen, though, since any time an officer is there I just give him a quick glance and he waves me through.

I do get irritated at cyclists who ride too fast on the sidewalk, though, and blow by pedestrians ringing their bells and such.

Also, cyclists could definitely apply some patience and courtesy (eg don't ride all the way to the front of a line of cars stopped at a stoplight and then take the lane as soon as the light turns green, forcing them all to wait for you.) It's not technically illegal and there aren't really any safety concerns, it's just a dick move. Have a some pity for the motorists. They are trapped in huge boxes of steel and forced to communicate with monotone honks and crude signals.

If you want bikers to respect car drivers, stop speeding and blowing yellows. Virtually all car drivers don't respect these two laws, yet they get upset at the large minority of bikers that blow reds and stop signs.

Some cyclists ride like idiots and some drivers drive like assholes when it comes to bikes. However, if you ride a bike, you'll be impacted by an asshole driver probably a couple times on your way to your destination, and then a couple more times on your way back. Talk to a driver about idiot cyclists and they'll give you a story from 6 months ago. It's not a fair fight, and not just because of the weight difference.

In Cambridge, MA the police have been enforcing traffic laws with bikers. Dunno what effect it has had, but enforcement, IMHO, as a place in getting bikers to obey the traffic laws.

Drivers, on the whole, behave pretty badly too. As a driver, biker, and pedestrian in the Boston area I don't think I would say any of those groups act better than others.

Would love separated bike lanes. Biking in the city is very satisfying, but also nerve racking for me.

I live and bike in Cambridge. We have separated bike lanes in some places, but pedestrians generally don't respect them in my experience. I used to think pedestrians that walked in designated bike lanes just didn't know it was a bike lane. But the lane on Vassar Street has a bike icon every 30 ft or so and is a different color than the rest of the sidewalk. Yet pedestrians still seem to prefer it to "their" sidewalk just to the left or right. Same thing on the Southwest Corridor, which has designated bike and pedestrian lanes, which are not respected ignored by pedestrians at all when I've been on them. If they are going to ticket cyclists, it seems only fair to start ticketing pedestrians walking in the bike lane too.

Same goes for Mass Ave. I don't think I've ever seen the bike lane on either side of Mass Ave not blocked by a pedestrian or parked car every couple of blocks.

  I don't think I would say any of those groups act better than others.

As a driver, cyclist & pedestrian in London I second this. Some cyclists are dangerous jerks. Some car drivers are dangerous jerks. Some pedestrians have their heads in their phones and cause a danger to everyone. Rather than ranting about it, I'd prefer each user group to just be more aware of the others & take a bit of care.

That and make all London taxi drivers cycle everywhere for a month to see how they like it ;-)

I once got a ticket ($140ish) for cruising through a stop sign on a bike. Ever since then, I come to an obnoxious tire-skidding halt at every stop sign before starting up again (and take the opportunity to swear at those who don't obey the rules).

The trouble is that I'm currently in America, where traffic planners have apparently decided that every goddamn intersection should have a four-way stop sign. This, to me, makes no sense -- put in roundabouts, or a Give Way sign going two out of four ways, to make traffic flow efficient. But anyway, it makes cycling anywhere a huge pain.

A couple of months ago, I started riding extremely rule-abiding, only making an exception for hook turns when I don't feel safe doing a normal left turn, mostly so I could feel morally superior to those who don't and feel better about myself. (It's great thinking I obey stop signs more than 90% of motorists I see!) Although it definitely helps that my ride is a rather casual 12 minute affair (and uphill, so all the stops give me a breather), after a couple of months it became rather second nature and honestly not a big deal. I also found that Toronto pedestrians smile at you when you give them way :).

Agreed about the lack of yield signs in North America though. Problematically, it normalizes rolling stops, making it harder to distinguish intersections where a stop is actually necessary.

I always tell people: if you knew you wouldn't get a ticket in a car for running a red light safely, you would do it. As soon as the police start ticketing for running red lights and stop signs on a bike, I'll stop.

I ride in Philadelphia and I try to be somewhat considerate to drivers. I slow down for every stoplight and stop sign, but if nobody's coming, I'm going to go through it, because I'm not going to get in trouble.

The cases when the light is red and I, as a driver, can guarantee that I can run it _safely_ are very rare.

They are even rarer as a cyclist (takes me longer to clear the intersection).

The number of times that I have seen cyclists run red light safely (both for themselves and others in that intersection at the time) is precisely zero.

I've seen several hundred instances of cyclists running through intersections at this point.

The only good thing here from my point of view is that once I got out of big cities both cars and cyclists got a heck of a lot more courteous and law-abiding, so the number of people I have to deal with who're just completely ignoring the rules of the road, blocking intersections, etc is much lower. Good incentive to not live in a city again...

What I hate is that here in Oakland even the private security from the community benefit districts and the police sometimes ride their bikes on the sidewalks. I've even had the security people get mad and me for not getting out of their way. I have to pay a fee on my property taxes for this "security" and they give me a hard time about walking on my own street.

Nice blog post (though more transit-vs-bikes oriented)discussing this here :

http://www.humantransit.org/2011/10/lamentation-bicycles-vs-...

Arguments don't differ very much from what follows your comment...

This sums up my own experience with cyclists. I've decided that they just don't belong on the roads. It's worse for everyone involved.

I have no problems with cyclists getting their own bike lanes, but until they do, I just wish they would stay off the roads entirely. I hate dealing with them both as a driver and a pedestrian.

As a cyclist and a driver, I agree that there are far too many jerks who think it's fine to run red lights if it saves them a little pedaling...

but the ones that really get me are people in dark clothing after dark with no lights or helmet pedaling up the sidewalk on the left side of the street behind a row of parked cars and out across an intersection at 15mph... who, when faced with a near-accident, rant about how they had the "right of way".

Even if you're right, the right of way doesn't matter when you're dead, buddy.

Don't forget the headphones. As a very safety-conscius cyclist, I cringe at other cyclists who wear headphones or anything that artificially reduces hearing.

Conversely, I've decided that automobile drivers just don't belong on the roads. It truly is worse for everyone involved--health of the driver, safety of everyone around them, health of the community, etc. The economic growth issues are also murky.

So what does belong on the roads, oh paragon of wisdom?

I think the point is that msellout feels (please correct), and I'm inclined to agree, that the assumption that cars are entitled on highways but cyclists are not is wrong.

There is probably more benefit in having less cars and more cycles than the converse.

It rather sounds to me like he just wants all cars off the road, and I'm not sure how you could arrive at a different conclusion without applying liberal amounts of conjecture.

>he just wants all cars off the road

Personally I think he was using hyperbole; countering the suggestion that cyclists shouldn't be allowed on the road and questioning the assumption that the solution to cycle-auto conflict had to fall in favour of the car.

Conjecture? Indeed.

A new breakthrough vehicle that runs on facetiousness, maybe.

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