Biggest Barrier to Biking Is a Fear of Cars
treehugger.com
treehugger.com
Car lifestyle is heavily subsidized by the state now.
* Bicycles are now granted the same "always have right of way" status as pedestrians. The ensuing panic following the damages payout for the first cyclist to be maimed by a vehicle causes local governments to enact laws restricting cyclists to designated bike lanes and sidewalks. The bill is sold as a measure to protect cyclists but it's really so insurance premiums for drivers don't go up. Since breaking local laws doesn't eliminate the liability the city police aggressively ticket cyclists who "jayride."
* Minimum parking spaces mandated by the city go away. And nothing changes because parking spaces in tight areas are worth their weight in gold to the businesses that own them.
* Zoning for multi-family homes and apartment complexes open up. Developers see $$$ and buy up land in trendy well-to-do areas and build "luxury" apartment complexes. It's great for a while until those apartment dwellers want more space and to stop paying rent forever and move to where you can still find affordable single family homes -- low income areas! Ooops, you wanted to avoid gentrification, right?
You can't law your way out of a culture that likes cars and single family homes. You have to make a desirable end-state for people with kids and hobbies. This might work in SF where there is a huge amount of latent demand but in your average med sized city it'll backfire.
This is the thing I never really understand.
Dense urban living seems very nice for young workers who want cheap rent and a small walkable world.
It's pretty hostile to having children or any hobbies that take any kind of space.
You can't have a metalworking shop in a condo.
Also, no, I don't have my own metalworking shop, but I do have a Hackerspace nearby, which not only has more tools and equipment than I could ever need, but people to enjoy them with.
The US suburban life is all fear and isolation based. Your home is your castle, your lawn is a moat. Your SUV/Pickup is your steed, used to go into battle every day with a hostile world. You can have a gun before you can have a beer... You only think you need all that space because your are not willing to share it with others as part of a communal society.
Look, I agree with you, it would be amazing if we had actual community spaces, but I didn’t make the system I just live in it. Short of starting a commune (I’ve tried, there was a 4k square ft repurposed church with like 12 bedrooms and lots of land in the city for less than the average home I wanted to go in on with my friends) having a home is the best you can do to have a space that’s yours and you can share with others.
Yeah pretty much. Hell is other people. The few years I spent living in "walkable" neighborhoods exactly like what you describe were the most depressing times of my life, where I wound up contemplating suicide frequently.
The truth is that what you are describing is the ideal and reality is often far from that.
In my case you couldn't go play football in the park, because it was a homeless camp. You could walk to a lot of things but it was basically just endless arrays of coffee shops and such. There were grocery stores in walking distance but they were all priced at a premium. Housing prices and rent prices were sky high, and rental rates were so low that landlords were able to get away with illegal shit like raising yearly rent by more than the legal allowed percentage. Majority of rentals wouldn't let you own a pet, which sucked too. There wasn't any kind of accessible maker space, for that you had to drive. It wasn't even very close to transit! I knew a lot of young families lived in my area but I never saw kids outside playing.
So no, my wanting to be away from that existence is nothing to do with fear of people. Just a desire to have my own space where I don't have to hear my neighbors through the walls all the time. A desire to be able to own the place where I live, and change it however I like. The desire to have enough space that I can set up my own gym/shop/whatever I like, without having to pay a subscription to access it and then compete with other people to actually use it when I want to.
And I wanted a cat.
Children and most hobbies need friends more than they need empty space. A city where you live in a flat and can play football with your neighbours in the park is much more child-friendly than a suburb where they live in a house with a lawn that they use maybe twice a year.
> You can't have a metalworking shop in a condo.
You can have one on the block, with other people to learn from, and you'll probably get more out of it. Rooms in your house are a means not an end.
Most suburbs have parks?
Hell my girlfriend grew up in a suburb that had a manmade lake that was close enough for her and her friends to walk to. Find that in the middle of a city. Your local pool doesn't even compete.
Like the Serpentine in London's Hyde park... Or the bathing pond in Hampstead Heath, or the boating lake in Regents Park or Beckenham Place Park swimming lake for a less iconic one near me...)
In the middle of your neighborhood.
Plenty don't, or the kids can't get to them, or there just aren't enough families within walking/biking distance for the kids to socialise.
> Hell my girlfriend grew up in a suburb that had a manmade lake that was close enough for her and her friends to walk to. Find that in the middle of a city.
I live "in the middle of a city" and I'm next to one river which has sports fields alongside it, and in the other direction there's another river within walking distance (15 minutes) with a nice landscaped park. Admittedly no lakes, but the first river is about 400m wide and people do jetski etc. on it if that's what you want.
I'm pretty lucky, but I have a wood-shop in SF. I live in a duplex townhome, with a garage. The garage has enough room for a car and some shelves and workbenches. I drive the car into the street and park it there (and block my driveway, and nothing else), and suddenly I have plenty of room if I need to get a table-saw out. Yea you need to be intentional and tidy... I share a lot of the tools with my neighbor, and we added weights rack and treadmill too with our space.
I know several people with very comparable living situations in the city. I also have a small backyard. Would kids want to play a 10 person football game back there? No. But you can have some private space to grow a garden, and BBQ in summer, and sit outside with a book on a nice day - its a 10 minute walk to a few parks if you wanted space for something more active. I see kids playing in the street all the time too.
I also live within a 15 minute walk to 50+ restaurants and stores, I can commute via light rail to the office downtown if needed, I can take transit to the airport, etc. I almost never drive, which is a very common way to die for younger Americans and I walk a lot, which is healthier too. It saves me a lot of money on car maintenance and insurance - if you tell the insurance agency that you don't commute with your car, you can often get the premium to $<50/month, which helps defer the cost of living in the city.
Oh and there are hackerspaces, co-working spaces, etc should you need them less or be on a stricter budget. They have much better tools and equipment than I have, even better than in most big suburban homes.
You can't have everything, but you can have a lot, and you just have to change your balance of compromises.
Stop posting hyper generalized subjective perspectives as expert opinion? It just gets sad and you come off like an entitled know it all. Jfc the internet is full of idiots and empty back and forth.
We have lists of businesses that are not getting built right now because they can't afford enough space to build both the store and the mandated parking. Business owners tend to overestimate how far their customers are coming from and hence their parking needs, but they'll be outcompeted by those who get it right.
> It's great for a while until those apartment dwellers want more space and to stop paying rent forever and move to where you can still find affordable single family homes -- low income areas! Ooops, you wanted to avoid gentrification, right?
Gentrification is the problem of prices going way up when a place gets made nicer. Stopping making places nicer is cutting our nose off to spite our face; rather we should make more places nicer so that the price of nice places isn't so high.
To do a proper right turn in the US in 2023 there are three directions a driver needs to look.
1. To the left for oncoming car and bike traffic.
2. To the right for bicyclists riding up the wrong way of the street or on the sidewalk riding towards you.
3. Behind and to the right for any bicyclists that choose to pass your car on the right while you're making a right turn (even if you're signaling your turn).
For context 2 & 3 happen to me more than once per year.
The driver looked to the right and I thought our eyes connected, but he proceeded from the stop sign to make a right turn right into me. Fortunately, he stopped as soon as he knew he hit something and I only ended up under his bumper, with a slightly bent up bike and major bruise on my left thigh.
In this case, I would have actually been safer (and in better view of this driver) if I had been riding on the road.
Up to that time, I rode over 1,000 miles outside in the summer, mostly on roads. Now, I no longer trust traffic at all and ride mostly on the extensive bike trail system in Minneapolis-Saint Paul metro area, except when I consider the road to be a better option.
The thought of sharing the road with distracted drivers and other drivers who choose to be assholes to cyclists makes the road riding just too risky.
> 2. To the right for bicyclists riding up the wrong way of the street or on the sidewalk riding towards you.
Is biking the wrong direction on a bike path on a one-way street legal in the state or country that you were in? Are you surprised that you got hit when you were biking going the wrong way down a one-way street?
I was certain the driver saw me when he looked to the right and we made eye contact, but apparently he was looking in my direction beyond me toward the street.
On the other hand I have seen bicyclists (also electric scooters) riding at high speed on a sidewalk shoot out quickly into a low visibility intersection. If you were the driver at the wrong time wrong place you would hit that bicyclist, and probably feel bad about it.
Leisurely biking on the sidewalks I think is fine, but above a certain speed the bikes should be on the road obeying normal traffic laws.
Another thing, when I was young, large trucks were not allowed to drive inside City Boundaries in my US State, plus they were not allowed on the roads on Sundays. But that ended when Regean forced my State to de-regulate their Trucking Regulations in the 80s.
So yes, I can see why people are afraid now.
But one positive, now-a-days I do not get bottles or cans thrown at me and dogs are much more friendly :)
http://bikeretrogrouch.blogspot.com/2014/01/foresters-effect...
quoted accident statistics from the 1970s where it seemed every scenario other than the “cyclist gets hit from behind by a driver out of ignorance or malice” such as “cyclist hit dog”, “cyclist hit parked car” (my worst cycling accident of all time), “cyclist hit cyclist” (I still think cops oughta arrest cyclist for rising in peloton), “cyclist got hit by driver in intersection because the bike lane had no visibility where it crossed the road” killed more cyclists.
Newer accidents statistics seem to show the “hit from behind” accidents happen more than previously indicated, particularly in the American South.
It's a painful problem to actually make it happen because cities are all about network effects (you live there because people you know are there, etc). I just think it would be very appealing to me to live in a city that is optimized for biking + walking instead of having to own a car.
If I were ever to get rich, this would be an area I'd throw funding at to figure out. Is anybody aware of any research in this area?
Marc Lore is working on this, throwing his billions into a concept for a new city out in the desert somewhere: https://cityoftelosa.com
The team at Culdesac are trying this in a "compliant" way, they built an apartment complex with basically no parking in Tempe, AZ but are positioning it as a car-free neighborhood. I believe this is their prototype and they hope to scale it up in future projects, this is about as realistic of a path as I think anyone has.
Building for cars is required by law across North America, and getting around that is quite hard.
I'm optimistic that I can make strides closer to home. I have only ever lived in places that predated the advent of automobiles. At one time, they were very accessible via walking, biking, rail, and trolley. So, last fall, when I moved back to Providence, I made it my mission to get involved in local transit activism. It's been a great source of social and civic satisfaction, and I intend to repeat the exercise when I move again next Fall.
It feels like positive change is (slowly) happening.
The book itself is a beautiful physical object. I really wish we could do cities from scratch.
As NotJustBikes has taught me, you don't have to start from scratch. Many cities in Europe were bulldozed for the car only to regret this decision decades later. Now you have bike utopias like Amsterdam.
Trains for intercity travel.
- Rapid gentrification. Foot/bike accessible urban infrastructure turns out to be the hottest possible commodity.
- Luxury pricing of car parking, insurance, and spacing. This seems harmless until you remember that e.g. poor people shop at box stores (which depend on a car to access) in order to bring down the cost of living. Intentionally pricing car access as a luxury good makes the poor pay for climate progress. Making cars more expensive to own and operate is an inflationary force that disproportionately afflicts the poor.
- Gentrification + Inflation = Displacement. It's almost a joke at this point -- if your neighbourhood is putting in a bike lane, and you don't own your home, you are basically watching them tidy up for the next tenant, who will be like you, but better-off, and will pay more in rent.
When I see a bike lane getting put in, I know I'll be moving in a few years. And those twee little bicycle-lane-only traffic lights? Cute, right? Those are basically tombstones for your local art scene, because that whole block is 'going Vanhattan' (portmanteau of 'Vancouver' and 'Manhattan').
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with bikes, and I listed the above adverse outcomes as 'concomitants', and not side-effects. I don't want to suggest that the lines of causality are that clear.
But talk about 'optimizing' cities is fundamentally talk about redistributing those cities, and redistribution creates (or effaces) winners and losers.
This is a transition problem more than anything. Those are used by poor people today because the state subsidizes that way of shopping. If the state subsidizes a different way of shopping, that will become the cheap way of shopping
They are very, very real for the people experiencing them. Life itself is transitory, often on a shorter timeline than the problems encountered throughout.
No it isn't. I think you know the answer to the question "are transit riders more or less affluent than drivers on average?"
> And those twee little bicycle-lane-only traffic lights? Cute, right? Those are basically tombstones for your local art scene, because that whole block is 'going Vanhattan' (portmanteau of 'Vancouver' and 'Manhattan').
Please name one place where this has occurred in Vancouver (which I am intimately familiar with).
they did need bollards at the entrances to these lanes otherwise someone in a smaller vehicle would eventually try to use it to get around the traffic
Even though cars may be present anywhere in the 辅路, they're not going fast when looking for parking. So I still felt far safer cycling in Beijing (a city of 20MM people) than I do in San Francisco (sub-1MM).
I was rear-ended because the driver behind me was on their phone. When I am driving now, all I can see is the amount of people that are looking at their lap and completely ignoring the road. I have even seen people watching TV while driving.
This has made me, for better or worse, a really conservative and defensive driver.
edit: grammar good
It's uncanny. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. That half cocked head, the periodic glancing up, one hand out of view. It's the posture of like half the drivers out there.
It's new normal.
I think Austin is a bit more dangerous because 1) there are far more oversized pickup trucks driven by city people that reduce the driver's visibility (part of the whole "Texas identity" thing) and 2) the city finds it acceptable to allow/encourage cyclists onto streets where the speed limit is 55mph which are basically highway speeds (sometimes there are painted bike lanes, sometimes there isn't).
Within the first few months of moving to Austin, I had a middle aged woman aggressively cut in front of me while I was riding down a hill and yell at me for riding in the street (which is not only legal, it's required for cyclists). Then follow me home in her pickup truck and try to call the police. Police never showed up, likely informing her she was in the wrong.
When I was first driving (16) I got a ticket for some silly thing like turning on red when I shouldn't have, so I went to 'diversion program.'
Every other person there was there for speeding, but the part that really got me was when the instructor asked everyone who thought they were a good driver to raise their hands, and we all did.
She had the minimum required insurance for KY, 25/50/10, which is ridiculously low. My ER visit was $22K, and the total bill was $45K after all was said and done, including a nose surgery. That is only the doctor/hospital costs, not pain and suffering. I had to pay $20K above my car settlement for a (used) replacement car. The bodily injury claim is still pending with my own insurance company for underinsured motorist, and they've ignored me for 4 months. I have a 2-year deadline coming up, so if they continue to ignore me, I'll have to sue them.
And the fine for texting while driving in KY? That would be $25.
It's been a shitshow for nearly 2 years, all because some dumbass was using her phone instead of driving. I hate driving now and avoid it whenever possible.
And because of fractured nature of how these decisions are made, and the vetocratic nature of how our political system gives everyone a way to say 'no', every bike lane is a painful fight. And in the end, even if a bike lane gets built, the city doesn't actually put physical barriers to stop people parking cars in them. Then you factor in the lack of traffic enforcement in this city and the situation is pretty dire.
That said, there has been very slow progress. Compared to 15 years ago it is quite a bit better, but good lord it is a very drawn out fight. I try to encourage folks to show up to local community board meetings to advocate for bike lanes because I do think it makes a difference.
Thinking about how much is within a 5-6 mile distance of you at any point in time in NYC, you can see the potential for NYC to be an incredible place to bike if we prioritized safety, pollution and efficiency when we allocate street space in the city.
Drivers are out of control and are blissfully (or willfully) unaware of the dangers they pose to others.
One fear is that if a handful of bike lanes exist, cyclists will feel confined to them, that they don't feel it is safe and permissible to ride on the roads -- like you need to haul your bike on the back of an SUV to an authorized bike trail if you want to bike.
If I had my way, downtown areas would have very low speed limits, and narrower streets would discourage cars from going fast. People who need cars (or, make deliveries) could still use them, but the streets would be slow enough that pedestrians and cyclist would feel seen and in-control.
Thankfully, this is exactly the sort of urban design we're gradually seeing more of, at least in many bigger European cities.
New UK Department for Transport guidance is for all urban and residential streets to have 20 mph (~30 km/h) speed limits, down from 30 mph previously. It is, however, still up to local authorities to actually set those limits. In London, most streets have been 20 mph for a while now.
The "Well there's your problem" podcast goes over a lot of his ideas in great detail [0]. The crux of it is what the above study says: if you want to encourage cycling you have to build dedicated infrastructure (and maintain that infrastructure in all weather and conditions) in order for people to view it as something reliable.
The key is to avoid what the parent poster specified by just increasing supply: to assuage fears that there are "only a handful of bike lanes and paths (and thus cyclists fear they are confined)" is to just build more. It's vastly cheaper than our current car-focused infrastructure. Cities exist today that seem to figure this out without turning into Amsterdam, so surely the rest of us can figure it out as well.
Cycling specific infrastructure can do a lot, but it can never be a solution for all destinations because of limitations enforced by pre-existing infrastructure.
But more pragmatically, vehicular cycling is often the best choice because of visibility and predictability, and also as regards driver awareness and expectation: it at least seems safer if drivers are accustomed to sharing the road than if they never have to.
I'm not convinced that the answer is just more infrastructure. IME, most bike paths are just bad. They're some combination of poorly designed, poorly made, or poorly maintained. There's one on the way to my office that has marked loading bays for trucks such that I have to keep getting off onto the car traffic because there's no way I'm passing between a vehicle and the sidewalk. Why would you build something like that there? And of course if you decide that it's just too risky to use the bike path people scream at you because they think they're entitled to that lane that you didn't even ask for.
I can't read videos, but how does he sustain this claim given that Tokyo exists and has a large cycling modal share with virtually no bike lanes?
Vehicular cycling is absolutely right IME. If you want to build "dedicated infrastructure", junction priority changes and advance stop lines should be a lot higher on the list than cycle lanes on plain road (which is not where the killing of cyclists by drivers is happening).
The place would be a lot better for cycling if they installed more dedicated infrastructure, but it works as-is for many reasons: there aren't that many cars in most places, because parking is rare and expensive, vehicle speeds are rather low, motorized vehicles have most of the liability for accidents with pedestrians or cars (no matter what: if a kid runs out in front of you and you kill him, it's your fault), theft is very rare, and people are extremely non-confrontational so even though many pedestrians hate sharing the sidewalks with cyclists, they just put up with it. Back in the US, I had people screaming at me and trying to start physical fights with me when I rode on sidewalks and there was no one else on the sidewalk except them. Here, people just step aside. Another thing here: cyclists are legally required to carry liability insurance, in case they hit a pedestrian.
Anyway, you're not going to replicate Tokyo's success with cycling by simply copying one feature. The whole culture here makes it workable despite the lack of great cycling infrastructure, as well as many other things that are basically impossible elsewhere.
Finally, while the infrastructure could be better in many places, things are constantly improving; newer developments (housing, malls, Olympic sports venues, etc.) have bicycle parking as a standard feature, for instance.
That's most of the cycling that happens, from what I've seen. (I also live here)
> The big roads do have painted bike lanes
Very ward dependent; some places do, many don't, and even in the places that do they're a recent thing.
> Another thing here: cyclists are legally required to carry liability insurance, in case they hit a pedestrian.
That's a very recent change - I think it was only last year or the year before.
> Anyway, you're not going to replicate Tokyo's success with cycling by simply copying one feature.
I suspect you might if that feature was "make street parking illegal", because everything else flows from that - narrow streets become possible, sharing those streets becomes necessary. But my point is mainly that this idea that segregated cycle lanes are the sine qua non is very wrong; Tokyo definitely proves that much.
Basically, cyclists have a choice: take roads and risk getting hit by cars, or take sidewalks and risk running over pedestrians. The risk to the cyclist is FAR lower with the latter, so that's the rational choice to make, and that's what they've done. Getting hit by a car is easily a death sentence; hitting a pedestrian can cause serious injuries, but that's rare, and usually the risk is to the pedestrian.
If you really want safety for everyone, you need to separate all 3 modes of traffic. It works ok here much of the time just because people are tolerant and non-confrontational, the car traffic is rather low-speed (unlike America), there's no that much car traffic in the first place (no place to park! So much of it is taxis and delivery trucks), and a lot of the streets are really narrow (also leads to low speed for cars).
Personally, I stick to sidewalks unless there's a cycling lane, or the street is so low-traffic and low-speed that I feel safe on it. So little residential back streets are fine, but the big boulevards, forget it.
IMO, I think that, at least in my area, they could do better just by painting cycling lanes on the sidewalks, and educating people to use the appropriate lane (cycling lanes for cyclists only; too often I see careless people walking in the clearly-marked cycling lane), and also by widening some of these sidewalks where possible. They could also stand to put some of the roads on diets to make wider sidewalks and cycling lanes. Maybe levy some more parking taxes to pay for it.
I really don't think this is it; yes, you see a few cyclists riding on the pavements alongside the main roads, but you see many more making their way along the side/back streets which don't even have a segregated pedestrian pavement - and don't need one.
> This causes lots of interactions between cyclists and pedestrians, which has led directly to the requirement for liability insurance that I mentioned before, because of so many pedestrian injuries.
It's not "so many", otherwise that would have happened decades ago. It's largely an (IMO over-) reaction to one dramatic case where a cyclist hit an elderly person who then needed a lot of expensive medical care.
Yes, many parts of Tokyo are like this, with lots of side/back streets that help cyclists avoid even needing to ride along the main boulevards. But not all of Tokyo is like this; it seems like every time I run into someone online who lives here, they completely forget that Ariake/Odaiba exists, or maybe they've never been there. There are a lot of places where you can't really take a side street because the geography prevents it, so cyclists are forced to divert to main streets for some distance (like over bridges) where they then share the sidewalk with pedestrians.
>It's largely an (IMO over-) reaction to one dramatic case where a cyclist hit an elderly person who then needed a lot of expensive medical care.
It's interesting how societies don't weigh risks rationally when it comes to cars. How many people (esp. pedestrians/cyclists) have gotten seriously injured or killed in car crashes? But that's just considered "unavoidable" for some odd reason, and little to no effort is made to avoid it in the future. But a cyclist hurts a pedestrian (and not even fatally, as is common with crashes involving motor vehicles) and suddenly everyone freaks out and wants to ban or restrict cycling. Why aren't they trying to ban car driving?
To be fair, I do see this insurance requirement as not too onerous. It really is possible to seriously injure a pedestrian when you're riding a bicycle at speeds well above those that pedestrians can travel, and we already require motor vehicle drivers to have a lot of insurance coverage. Bicycle insurance here is quite cheap really. Mine was only 3000 yen/year. So I don't feel this particular requirement is really an overreaction. However I do wish they'd be more proactive on the infrastructure side and do more to make cycling safer, and not by painting stupid bike icons on the sides of high-speed, high-traffic boulevards, which to me is an insult.
Ariake/Odaiba you just can't reasonably cycle at all IMO - e.g. you're simply not allowed to cycle across the Rainbow Bridge or through either of the Tokyo Minato tunnels (neither in the traffic lanes nor on the pavement) so if you're coming from the west you have to go 5-10km out of your way before you even start. I tried to go to the cycling course on Wakasu once and gave up, and I'm a pretty confident/experienced cyclist who can usually handle tangling with road traffic. Rather than it being a success story of cycling on pavements / segregated cycling infrastructure, I would bet that the mode share of cycling in Ariake/Odaiba is just a whole lot worse than Tokyo in general.
People cycle in Odaiba and Ariake all the time. Have you never been there?
No, they're not crossing the Rainbow Bridge, but they don't need to. They live in Ariake and cycle around it just fine. There's no need to cross the Sumida with a bike for most people.
>I would bet that the mode share of cycling in Ariake/Odaiba is just a whole lot worse than Tokyo in general.
It sounds like you've never been to Ariake. There's tons of bikes, and lots of bike parking at the various destinations there. You don't seem to realize that a lot of people actually live in (or close to) Ariake. Take a look at a satellite view on Google Maps: those big towers next to Ariake Gardens mall are housing towers. People live there. And people live in other parts of Koto-ku and cycle to Ariake, because it's close by bike. There's wide sidewalks and even actual bike lanes (separate from the road) in some places. But there's probably no one trying to cycle regularly between Ariake and the west side of the Sumida, but that doesn't make Ariake "un-cyclable".
> People cycle in Odaiba and Ariake all the time.
I saw fewer and emptier bike parking areas than on the "mainland", and fewer people cycling around.
> those big towers next to Ariake Gardens mall are housing towers. People live there.
Some people do sure. The fact remains that it's a lot less residential than most of Tokyo.
> But there's probably no one trying to cycle regularly between Ariake and the west side of the Sumida, but that doesn't make Ariake "un-cyclable"
Well, I was actually a person trying to cycle regularly between Ariake and Meguro at one point, so there was at least one, but it simply wasn't practical. No, one poor connection doesn't make a place un-cycleable, but it's indicative.
AFAICT, most cyclists in Tokyo do not ride long distances at all: they use their bikes to ride around their local neighborhood, and especially to get groceries. I've met a bunch of people who told me the only time they ride a bike is to get groceries, in fact. They don't use their bikes to ride halfway across the city; they use the trains for that. People who ride long distances seem to be pretty abnormal.
I refuse to cycle in it, but I can feel the judgement of every driver trying to pass me. I would much rather that cycle lane wasn't there.
I was pacing the vehicle in front of me and briefly took the lane around an s curve on a town street sharrows, a couple blocks from a stop sign. The guy behind me closed the following distance to intimidate me and when I went up on the sidewalk and yelled at him at the stop sign, he told me to go ride on a bike path.
He put my life at unnecessary risk for the offense of being on a designated bike street...
That's not the case in every country. In Denmark, if there's a cycle path/lane you're required to use it.
Quite a sinister and successful brainwashing campaign by car manufacturers and lobbyists.
Helps that the bike path situation here is decent, where you're usually on a shared-use path with a curb, although you really need to pay attention when the bike path crosses a road. Some people just don't see you and others don't know that they actually need to yield to cyclists in quite a lot of intersections.
But, as with all other outdoor activities, I dress for it. I wear raingear when it rains, etc. I've been through plenty of downpours and have never arrived at my destination soaked, once I take the raingear off.
I realized that even if I was a master at city biking, through no fault of my own I could easily die or be seriously injured, and I haven't ridden a except for fun now and then since.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPSxU8a8CwM
This video changed my life.
Alex Honnold has honed his craft to a point where he can casually do things that would probably have a 99% mortality rate if tried by most climbers. These folk aren't that good, but there's a huge gulf between your average road bike enjoyer and someone who races to win alleycats. While this behavior on a bike CAN cause severe injury, including to bystanders, I think compared to checking directions on your phone etc. the amortized increase in mortality for those around you is likely much lower.
I think it's wrong to "glorify" this behavior, but I don't want to live in a world where we can't appreciate the beauty of it. Where we don't understand why some people chose to do it, and where we can't take a step back to reflect that perhaps chasing this visceral sense of aliveness is worth some the danger it may cause to other people, perhaps more so than checking your phone while driving, or even going maskless in public during flu season.
Although honestly, sharing a road with cars isn't that big of a problem as long as car drivers are responsible drivers. Put more emphasis on interaction with bicycles in driver license tests, and keep the murderous idiots that you get in some countries off the roads.
That some other countries have drivers who don't care about the lives of cyclists is utterly insane to me. Those people do not belong in cars, or even out in public.
But I wouldn't dare bike to work in most places in the world... Even in Belgium I would hesitate to do this in the big cities.
In rural areas you may have less traffic, but it will be travelling much faster, and not every driver may be paying attention and looking out for cyclists.
I can see how it can be the 2nd biggest barrier, although for me in Seattle it's the fear of my bike being stolen. Dunno if I'm lucky or what, but the only 2 times I've been in serious cycling accidents it was 100% my fault (both times at 20+ mph passing cars on the left - rear ended another car once, and rode into tram tracks the other). I'm still afraid of cars but not as much as having to uber back in wet cycling clothes if my bike gets stolen :)
More like the fear of being CRUSHED by "the cars"