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Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

> I get scolded every time I bring it up.

Then stop bringing it up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35239672

You get scolded because you are victim blaming. Regardless of whether or not you support better bike infrastructure or limiting cars or whatever measures: it should be safe to bike around town, and if it isn't blaming the cyclists isn't going to help, it will just cause the cyclists to remove themselves from traffic after which there is even less of a reason to do something about it.

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This is not victim blaming. Nobody blamed cyclists here. It is a true and obvious statement from an observer that cycling is dangerous in San Francisco.

Cycling is dangerous everywhere there are cars. SF is not unique in this.

Danger is a matter of degree. There are plenty of places where the risk of getting hit by a car is lower than in SF.

Of course, there are also places where the risk is higher. SF is just an example used because someone prominent died in SF whilst on a bicycle. The easiest thing the USA could do to make cycling safer without investing a cent in infrastructure is to adopt the rule that by default if a car hits a cyclist the car is at fault. The effect of that would be instantaneous, every bike would have an invisible force field of liability around it. Sure, some might abuse it, but nobody in their right mind is going to play chicken with a car.

> The easiest thing the USA could do to make cycling safer without investing a cent in infrastructure is to adopt the rule that by default if a car hits a cyclist the car is at fault.

That would obviously be an unfair and dumb rule because fault should always be determined on a case-by-case basis. We would also have a massive amount of fraud caused by cyclists intentionally hitting cars, just like the rash of pedestrians running in front of cars in Russia.

I ride bikes and I also drive cars, and I've seen a ton of dumb behavior from both cyclists and drivers. Nobody is immune to being a dumbass in this category. They just shouldn't mix.

The problem is infrastructure. In the places where cycling is safe and normally practiced by normal people, the bicycles and cars are mostly separated. US cycling advocates have been pushing for the wrong things for years, asking for rights on the road as though bikes are the same as cars, when in reality the only thing that works is separate roads.

> Nobody is immune to being a dumbass in this category. They just shouldn't mix.

Even in countries with the best bike infrastructure they still mix. It's the cyclists that come off second best (to put it mildly) in any confrontation so they need extra protection and a default 'car is in the wrong' rule made a huge difference in those places where it was enacted. To categorically dismiss it without further research is a bit silly assuming you actually want to make progress. The enemy of the good is the perfect and this is no different. Obviously there are problems with such a rule, but that's the wrong way of looking at it. The question should be does it have more advantages than disadvantages and that seems to be solidly proven by now.

People that believe that cyclists would en masse run in front of cars like in Russia either have a very negative idea of society or want to dismiss the idea without further consideration because they in fact do not want things to change at all whilst pretending they are looking for progress.

This doesn’t seem practical. Anyone with a bike could side-swipe a car to get a payout.

And consider the less malicious case of an out of control cyclist leading to cars swerving into pedestrians to avoid hitting the bike.

This is a profoundly bad idea whose negative implications and undesired second order effects would be intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer.

Living in SF is dangerous.

> it will just cause the cyclists to remove themselves from traffic after which there is even less of a reason to do something about it

Please re-read this. How are you not advocating for people (including children) to sacrifice their lives so that we can get attention to the issue?

And no, I'm not going to stop bringing this up. I'm right and it's not even close.

At what point will you stop optimizing for the number of dead children? Why not keep them in a padded room with some electrical impulses to stimulate their muscles as needed, while feeding them a perfect blend of nutrients for exact caloric intake.

Edit: lol this doesn't even break the site rules... it's a legitimate question. Fuck you dang.

We've banned this account for continuing to break the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> How are you not advocating for people (including children) to sacrifice their lives so that we can get attention to the issue?

I am not advocating anybody sacrifice their lives, including children.

> And no, I'm not going to stop bringing this up. I'm right and it's not even close.

Suit yourself, but then at least stop complaining about the pushback.

> after which there is even less of a reason to do something about it

Please explain what you meant here. Less of a reason to do something about what? I don't know what you could mean other than people getting are getting hurt or dying, and if that stops happening then there will be less attention on the issue.

Could you please stop perpetuating this flamewar? I'm sure you started it unintentionally, but this is not what HN is for and destroys what it is for—regardless of how right you are or feel you are.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

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