Hacker News Reader

Comment by crmd | Hacker News Reader

It’s the egregious rate of moving violations that has turned me off to bicycle activism.

I see maybe one car a week run a red light in my Brooklyn neighborhood, versus hundreds of bicycle riders. It’s been over a decade since I saw a car driving the wrong way down a one way street, versus a dozen bicycles per day. I’ve never seen a car drive on the sidewalk, but I see a few dozen bicycle riders per day drive on the sidewalk.

And yet the bicycle activists in nyc are shouting for the police to crack down on cars, when bicycles are committing easily 100x more moving violations per mile driven.

View on HN

There's a clear distinction between these two modes of transit which is suspiciously absent in this comment: A car or truck is a quickly moving multi-ton metal box with a stopping distance of ~40 feet at only 20mph. As such, a vehicle is an immediate threat to anything around it. In contrast, bicycles may pose an indirect threat to others e.g. causing an accident (a threat posed by vehicles as well) but their immediate threat i.e. loss of life due to collision is essentially zero.

It's also worth noting that drivers tend to be less alert than bikers. Distracted drivers (e.g. drivers on their phone) are a major cause of vehicles running stops signs/lights. When bikers run stop signs/lights, they are generally very aware since their lives depend on them being aware -- they are acting with intention.

In any case, for these reasons and others, there are states that actually observe what is called an Idaho Stop for bikers which allows them to roll through stops signs and lights if it is safe to do so.

I agree 100%.

Look, if you're biking down the same road I'm driving on, all I want from you is for you to follow the rules, be visible, and be predictable. That includes stopping when you're legally required to stop, signalling when you intend to turn, using a headlight if it's dark, riding in the right direction, and either pulling all the way the fuck over and walking your bike through the intersection or using the left turn lane if you want to turn left (not riding your bike through the crosswalk). Do these things, and we don't have a problem. I'm more than happy to give at least 3 feet of space when passing (I try to give more and will switch lanes if it's practical to do so), and to generally give due consideration to the fact that you and your vehicle together weigh ~200 lbs, while my vehicle alone is somewhere in the neighborhood of 15x that, and I can go way faster than you.

For some reason, this appears to be controversial on the internets. I've written more or less the same thing on Reddit and gotten tons of downvotes for it. I attribute it to the "smugness" the article mentioned. And, I'm not going to go running people over or anything, but you should definitely remember that in California, people generally don't even get prosecuted for killing cyclists unless they're either impaired or leave the scene.

Govern yourself accordingly.

Fortunately, bicycles are not responsible for 100x more injuries and deaths than cars, too. To me, that suggests that "number of moving violations per mile" may not be the most important metric.

This is explained by the vehicle. It's trivial to stop and start in an automatic car as there's little difficulty involved and no actual driver energy expended. Cyclists have to brake and then exert energy to get back up to speed. The equivalent for cars is speeding; how many cars do you see driving at the speed limit? The design of most cars makes it trivial to go over the speed limit; there's only a marginal difference in driver feeling between going 25 mph or 35mph.

If you've ever driven with manual drivers you'll see that they tend to creep at stops or run reds more frequently than automatic drivers because of the added difficulty of shifting into gear from a stop. It's all just based on vehicle design incentives.

> It's trivial to stop and start in an automatic car as there's little difficulty involved and no actual driver energy expended

There is car energy expended. A running car needs a lot more energy than a bycicle to brake. That's why the impact between a car and a bycicle puts the bycicle in disadvantage.

Given that most car drivers exceed the speed limit most of the time, they likely commit more moving violations per mile than bicyclists do.

In DE there were some ciclists who lost their driving licence for speeding while riding a bycicle so i wouldn't hold my breath.

> I see maybe one car a week run a red light in my Brooklyn neighborhood, versus hundreds of bicycle riders.

On the other hand, I see cars run red lights on a daily basis in my city. I've almost been t-boned twice on my bike from cars doing that.

In some countries driving the wrong way for cyclists on a one way street is allowed. I don't know who thought this is a good idea.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com