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Comment by settrans | Hacker News Reader

> you will not kill someone if you ride after a night drinking

(other than yourself)

Worth noting that most car drivers have insurance. If you carelessly run over a child, you'll feel bad, but the insurance will pay for all the court cases.

If you run over a child on a bicycle, most cyclists don't have insurance, and there is a reasonable chance you'll have to sell your house to pay compensation to a child who is now in a wheelchair for life.

In the US.

Car insurance liability limits will be insufficient if you kill someone, and you’ll be on the hook for the remainder. Umbrella will cover you in both scenarios.

While much more rare than with cars, biciclysts still sometimes fatally hit pedestrians.

Some numbers from 2021 in the UK:

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

> Chart 4 shows that, again, in terms of absolute numbers, cars are the vehicle type most often involved in fatal collisions when others are killed, followed by HGVs and Light Goods Vehicles (LGVs). Very few other road users are killed in collisions with pedal cyclists or pedestrians (5 and 6 respectively in 2021).

I wonder if "road accident" includes incidents on the pavement? Not clear from that document.

Cyclists on the pavement make me so angry. (Also, "pavement" means "sidewalk," for the Americans reading.)

Why be angry about it; they are just scared of cars like the rest of us, I live in a neighborhood where the cyclepath just merges into the pavement. The cyclepath actually continues on the pavement if you look at the papers. My point is that we have pretty heavy traffic of inexperienced cyclists, and I never have an issue with them.

As a cyclist I avoid pavements, the are very seldom the best route anyways. I do understand the fear that make them seem like the best options.

I use the pavements to walk on, and I don't fear cars, they tend to keep on the road. In the UK it is a criminal offence to ride a bike on the pavement, and with reason: the elderly, small children should have some safe means of getting from A to B. If these selfish criminal cyclists are so scared of cars then they should get off their bikes and push them along the pavement.

Indeed. Still better though.

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