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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

This applies in all directions: as a cyclist I see car drivers who behave badly, as a car driver I see cyclists who behave badly, as a pedestrian I see cyclists and car drivers who behave badly.

I definitely see many cyclists who behave badly and who think that both road and pavement belong to them while the law does not apply to them... especially as a pedestrian (perhaps there's an aspect of relative 'power' at play).

But an important point, I think, is that the cycling infrastructure in the UK is wholly inadequate, which certainly does not help cordial relations.

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I think there's a bit of selective vision at work for motorists particularly - many, many times when a passing acquaintance discovers I commute by bike I hear "I saw a cyclist fly right through a red light etc." I then agree that there are some reckless cyclists out there - and how many bad drivers do they see in a day, a week, a year? I'd say it's precisely because there are so few cyclists that whatever we do stands out - but it's no surprise apparently that drivers blow through stop signs, fail to signal etc.

I welcome cyclists, but experienced my first cyclist rage incident a couple of days ago.

I was driving to take a right turn into Mathilda Ave, Sunnyvale at its widest point from a small inner 25 mph road. Naturally, I came to a stop before the six lane right turn. And then checked left for incoming traffic.

I saw a cyclist about 20 yards away on the left staring daggers at me and throwing up his arms in anger! Not exactly sure what he was angry about, as my car was stopped well outside Mathilda ave.

However, definitely better than being chased by a car for a whole minute because I merged from one freeway to another at the speed limit, so the person who was driving at twice the speed limit in the merge lane had to slow down.

> as a car driver I see cyclists behave badly

> is that the cycling infrastructure in the UK is wholy inadequate

I recently had a cyclist clumsily drift into the outside lane of a 40mph carriageway at around 10mph with one hand on the handlebar. A few metres to the side of the carriageway? An incredible stretch of smooth, fast, dedicated cycle path, separated from the road by a wide grass verge.

While he's one of the worst examples I've seen in a while, and not representative of all cyclists, he's proof that even the best infrastructure in the world won't stop some people acting like they own the roads and putting themselves in harm's way in the process.

This lack of understanding and emphathy goes a long way.

- Perhaps the cycle way had issues that made it un-navigable. Maybe it got tacked, had a load of glass, perhaps it was not smooth. You don't really know how bad some off-road areas are until you are 2 feet away (then you notice, oh yeah, this is rooted to crap, or there are other issues).

- Maybe the cyclist needed to make a turn that was coming up?

- Maybe the cyclist had joined the road way not long ago and was going to hop over

- Maybe the road way was just safe enough rather than go on a path that significantly reduces speed of travel. A 20% reduction in speed, every day, two ways, over distance - adds up. It's not quite enough for something to be "safe", needs to be functional as well. If you make a commute be an hour when it could be 20 minutes instead, that infrastructure is not "perfect" (that is a real example, some infrastructure I've seen wants you to ride on super crowded side-walks where you can do at best 3mph for 2 miles. On the road that goes by in about 5 minutes, can sustain 25mph on it and 2 miles is done in no time; and this is just one two mile stretch of a 6 mile distance).

> he's proof that even the best infrastructure

It turns out what looks like "the best infrastructure", is really often a sad joke when you try to ride in it. Protected lanes sound nice, but turning left (in the US) out of one is a nightmare and is super dangerous because nobody can see you or is expecting for you to cross lanes.

This again goes back to perspective. Those protected lanes might seem lovely, but in practice can be totally useless. The far edge of the road might look ideal, but if you look at it you'll see it's uneven, full of debris, has grates, and places where the road crumbles away and is not even there. You won't notice these at all traveling faster than 20mph (let alone at 50mph) and from 20 feet away.

That's lots of hypotheticals. I've used the cycle path in question myself many times. It's one of the best I've seen, and part of a great network around my city. The road he chose to use instead is one of the busiest routes into the city centre, and frequently sees accidents, many of which are fatal. It's certainly not a road I'd choose to cycle on myself.

Indeed it is a lot of hypotheticals. That was my point, from "I've no clue why anyone would ever choose to do this, there is no reason!" To, here are a dozen reasons you don't really think of until you are on the perspective of actually riding a bike.

It's super common, people wonder why cyclists sometimes aren't fully riding at the edge of a bike lane, near parked cars.. etc. I've had drivers yell at me to get on a path before when they didn't know there was a very valid and very transitory reason to not being in it.

Part of the bottom line is that we assume too much and can insist that we tell others what to do. Meanwhile, we just don't have the perspective to know the reasons and are actually just wrong.

> It's one of the best I've seen, and part of a great network around my city. The road he chose to use instead is one of the busiest routes into the city centre

It does sound like a logical place to ride. Still questions arise. Some paths I've found are great when you are going 10-15mph, but are unusable for 20-25mph travel. Was it at all a busy cycle path, or was it crowded with dog walkers, kids and other cyclists? I clearly do not have the context to know (I'm picturing a clear sunny day, a perfectly open path next to an open field, but I suspect this is a horribly wrong picture).

Without ranting too much further, the point I make is that there are so many unobvious reasons that you can't really know. Meanwhile, we often think we do, so we yell "hey, get on that path where you belong!"

Motivated drivers can similarly justify all sorts of reckless behavior like driving up a shoulder, cutting through a parking lot, ignoring no-passing indicators, cheating the wrong way up a short 1-way segment, excessive speeding, etc etc

And you're right that there's a social kindness in empathizing with those people rather than loathing them. But that doesn't change that the behavior is reckless and elective, that there's value in calling it out as such.

One's not in the right just because they feel justified.

Assuming best faith that this was accurate, definitely you can't make everyone even in the best of infrastructure behave. This is just as likely in a car as a bike. The difference is that it's trivial for a car crash to maim or kill a cyclist or otherwise endanger another driver or even a building or a home. A cyclist is much less likely to maim or kill and a pedestrian even less so.

Any infrastructure that doesn’t make cyclists fall into a giant meat grinder is wholly inadequate.

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