You're a cyclist who was just struck by a car driver. Why it was your fault
mcsweeneys.net
mcsweeneys.net
> Sixty-six percent of drivers routinely commit moving violations, compared with 5 percent of cyclists when they have somewhere safe to ride.
I don't think I've ever riden a bike without committing a moving violation.
- Failure to signal with your hand is a moving violation.
- Idaho stops (yielding instead of stopping at a stop sign is a violation in most state)
I do signal. It's pretty rare for bicyclists, but it's also 50/50 at best for cars, and they near universally operate with much less safety margin/more risk than any bicyclist (ironically the extra scared/slow/cautious drivers are often those that I see create the worst scares, damning all by their lack of clear confidemt cool execution).
It feels like only recently (in the US at least) are some cities & states trying to figure out what rules make sense for bicyclists. It's easy to just say, you're like a car, follow all those rules, but it doesn't really make sense. Bicyclists just don't take up enough space & are so much more nimble, so much more free, and often usage of those capabilities can speed up cities where cars, bikes, and people move around.
Seems a lot more reasonable to have risk-appropriate signage.
I think Germany has the best infrastructure and culture. It’s very organized and well respected. Bikes usually have a portion of the walk paths just for them and traffic lights for bicyclists that are generally well followed. Pedestrians do not walk into the bike paths or they get yelled at by other pedestrians and cyclists.
- We don't have stop streets really, and none where I cycle. Yields and roundabouts, so no need to stop.
- Hand signals are not a legal requirement
- I do stop at traffic lights
In a car I am sure I will go an mph or two above the speed limit at least once on every single journey.
Known as “Hollywood” stop in my house, at least when driving a car.
- Those too poor to buy a car
- Kids/early teenagers
- The elderly, past the point at which they're unfit to drive (this will be you and me someday, if we're lucky enough to live that long)
- Those with disabilities precluding them from driving
If we design our cities such that driving a car is the only safe way of getting around, what we're doing is making all of these people dependent on others to get around. Even if they're physically capable enough to bike or ride a mobility scooter to where they need to go!
Here in Los Angeles, a friend of mine was crossing a crosswalk last week. The light had turned green. Several other people in the intersection. She makes eye contact with a car turning left.
Or so she thought she had. The driver said she never saw. No lose of limb of anything like that, but my friend was taken in an ambulance to the ER. The other driver was uninsured.
LAPD arrived on the scene. No citation issue.
Not for hitting a pedestrian. Not for driving without insurance.
While she was in the ambulance the officer came over and gave her the contact info for the other driver & said to contact her tomorrow. That was it.
Infuriating.
Bikes/cars, cats/dogs, vi/emacs, Windows/Linux, Mac/PC, Musk/Zuck, urban/rural, Cali/Texas, capitalism/socialism, techno-optimism/techno-pessimism, Gens Boom/X/Millennial/Z, and vanilla/chocolate.
You down for that?
Cycling is more pro-social, better for the environment, takes up less space on the roads and for parking, and also helps against the obesity crisis. It should not be so dangerous in so many places.
I don’t know the extent, or how true it is in reality, but from my experience as a cyclist, dealing with drivers, I’d definitely believe it. Get someone out of the car and you can watch the patina of confidence and self-righteousness slide off in real time.
Overall, I'd say I like my fellow road users. They're kind to me generally and I try to do my best to them.
I don't know if you did that in purpose, but Critical Mass is the name of the San Francisco cyclist advocacy group
The problem is perhaps that Critical Mass is a free-for-all where participants don’t have to participate in any initial orientation and be told “Please don’t be a jerk”. Any time human beings come together in big groups, that is a necessity, and cyclists are no exception.
Routinely f'ed up my ability to get home as a teenager.
The SF Bicycle Coalition are even worse though, especially because they're funded by tax dollars.
I predict a large overlap between those people and the people cheering on vigilante violence against Just Stop Oil protesters.
Ironic how you replied to a comment about a group of people being subhuman with pointing out that the opposing group is in fact the subhuman group. Very mature.
These aren't commuters as it is ~40 minutes by car to the mothership and they're most often found on the nice days during the weekend wearing spandex, sometimes even with numbers on their back.
Independent of who's "right", when I bike, I don't do that, and can't say I've ever had anyone in a car angry at me.
I think these folks are the ones giving bikers a bad name by being antagonistic to prove a point.
I've also seen bikers upset when a kid is going slowly in a bike lane? So I think many of the spandex-clad dudes have some control issues.
The chances of you getting into a wreck for pulling over getting hit in a Tow Truck is in no way equivalent to a cyclist doing the same thing. You have visibility and weight.
As a non-cyclist, ya it can be a pain in the ass, but the cyclist has the legal right to the whole lane.
At least in California the law is:
"Any person operating a bicycle upon a roadway
at a speed less than the normal speed of traffic
moving in the same direction at that time shall
ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb".
"A new bicycle lane change law was approved in 2022 and took effect on January 1, 2023, across all of California. Motorists approaching or overtaking a cyclist on the road must now switch lanes if another lane is available."
https://maisonlaw.com/safety-laws/bicycle-lane-change/
Also to note:
"In certain circumstances, cyclists may “take the lane” and use an entire lane, just as a car would. Riders may claim a full lane if they are passing, readying for a left turn, steering clear of an obstacle, or if they feel the lane is too narrow to share with a car"
Once a law leaves latitude for how someone was "feeling", it effectively legalizes the practice in almost every scenario.
Thats cool! It's also not hard for motorists to wait literal seconds to safely pass a cyclists. Cyclists shouldn't need to pull over all the time to accommodate motorists need to speed down the road. You aren't entitled to go 10 mph over the speed limit. It's a limit, not a minimum.
>I've also seen bikers upset when a kid is going slowly in a bike lane? So I think many of the spandex-clad dudes have some control issues.
Wow! You did? Crazy! It's almost like a group of people with a shared hobby aren't a monolith and will display different opinions and behaviors!
The speed limit is 80km/h, but through the windy bit, you can only average 60km/h.
Let's assume the rest of the time you average 80km/h.
Say the windy bit is 2km, and the rest of the journey is 38km.
This trip would normally take you 30 minutes and 30 seconds:
((38/80)+(2/60))*60 = 30.5
((38/80)+(2/10))*60 = 40.5
Now compare that to a typical peak hour traffic delay.
Why are people willing to endanger the lives of cyclists for what is a very mild, occassional traffic delay?
It's flat and - at least north of the Blue line - there's good infrastructure. Combine that with dense population, and the lake and tons of parks nearby, and it's the best biking city I've ever lived in.
Snow is hard to bike in (I think, I dunno though, being in coastal California).
I’m sure it would feel like a lot to you, but Chicago doesn’t really get a lot of snow or ice. Prevailing winds in the winter are out of the northwest. The majority of the moisture picked up from Lake Superior gets dumped on the Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin before reaching that far south (Lake Michigan moisture is dumped in western Michigan and northern Indiana).
Biking infrastructure in Chicago is good in wealthier areas and pretty bad in poorer parts. There is definitely an element of unequal funding, but you have to understand that Chicago’s municipal system of government puts a lot of power at the hands of the alderman - they are like little mayors of their wards. If the people in a ward want bike infrastructure, the alderman will find the money for it. If the people in a ward don’t want to give up car lanes for bike lanes, it’s not going to happen. And that’s how they feel in the poorer areas. There have even been instances of bike lanes being removed in some neighborhoods!
I'd still be terrified of using a bicycle in Chicago. I never realized how many people almost never look at the road while driving until I had such a good view into their cars (yes, cyclists and moped riders are watching you). The only thing that alerted people to my presence was the rattly 30-year-old two-stroke engine under my ass.
TLDR is the simpler you make a road, the faster and less attentive drivers are. While a complex cobblestone alleyway might be very tricky to navigate, basically no one will be killed there because you wouldn't attempt to speed while looking at your phone on it.
Neither of those are options driving in a city of any size.
Cool is a multi-factor idea. Part of it is a D&D charisma stat: how literally cool you are, how hip. But it's also a check under pressure, your ability to be unphased & calm & in control of at least yourself, even/especially when things are going bad. In this ways, it's what D&D would use either Constitution for if physical, or Wisdom for if more mental.
To me, almost all of this problem comes down to cool. Very few drivers are actually impacted by bikers. They don't get to go as fast as they'd like, but the actual time impact is usually miniscule. The examples are so many, where yes as a driver you aren't as privileged, where it feels bad, but the impact is almost always so tiny. A biker doing an Idaho stop ruffles feathers because they are doing something you can't, but I'd say the curve is usually weighted much closer to 0s than to 3s cost.
Bikers can clear the scene so quickly & efficiently, in so many situations, in ways that would be inconceivable for slow maneuvering slow accelerating bigger cars. Opportunity as a bicyclist is so high, and as a car it is so low.
That imbalance is a true test of Cool. Most people let themselves get upset. Most people don't really consider the true cost of actions & situations; they feel wronged by the situation & don't consider how inconsequential the situation is. People lose their cool.
This inner strength of personality is one of the things I most admire, and one of the things I think that best helps this world along. Cool needs a better PR campaign for it. We need people with the strength of self to not be aggreived, who can brush dumb shit off. This is high high high on my list of societal projects, lessons of the world we should encode & share, and I just have so little idea how to promote being cool.
I was equal parts shocked and impressed by her. But she was definitely the sort of a-hole who makes cycling a more dangerous endeavor.
Things won't get better until cities invest in infrastructure like EU cities have, firm bike lanes and bike infrastructure that is not shared with cars.
I avoided taking the lane while I started, but after being forced into the gutter and nearly side-swiped multiple times, I started regularly taking the lane for my own safety.
That’s what really disappointed me about motorists as a cyclist - you give them an inch and they try to kill you.
Believe it or not, in some places it's actually required to ride in the road along with cars (my current city, for example).
> in practice that's absurd
Honestly, agreed.
> When you have a frail bicycle riding amongst numerous cars trying to keep up, or inciting rage and causing problems by not being able to, of course there will be accidents.
Big yikes, though. Given the likely dire outcomes of collisions between cyclists and cars, and the overarching systems that tend to force cyclists to share the road with drivers in the first place, it feels wrong to me to blame cyclists for "inciting rage".
That seems ridiculous! So you have bikes in between cars? How often?
> Given the likely dire outcomes of collisions between cyclists and cars, and the overarching systems that tend to force cyclists to share the road with drivers in the first place, it feels wrong to me to blame cyclists for "inciting rage".
I mean, the rage would be better directed at the city, but emotion isn't rational. If you have someone riding a bike in a lane, 'taking the lane', and can't be overtaken, and they can only do half the speed limit, of course people are going to get mad at them.
> Several states grant some right for cyclists to travel in lanes with cars, but in practice that's absurd.
Which I'll translate for you, from you:
> ~It's absurd for cyclists to use the roads
So, how do I get to where I need to go?
> So, how do I get to where I need to go?
Take bike paths, sidewalks, backroads etc. Or lobby your city for better bike infrastructure. Or accept the risk of the increased likelihood that you will end up a statistic.
Ideally both types of vehicles should be able to get along, but the reality is that both types of drivers have irrational emotions.
If you ride a bicycle or some other alternative transportation, the act of existing and using the road will draw road ragers from all sides. I've had several problems.
Once I was riding a bicycle down a busy college road and I happened to not be wearing my glasses. So, my fault, right? There was heavy auto traffic and it was all stopped, so I carefully turned left in front of a car, and I got absolutely boned by this amazingly horrible University-owned golf cart doing 25 in the oncoming bicycle lane. I had to basically hold him hostage until the police came to take a report on us.
Another time, same bicycle, same college town, I decided to take the left lane, a block ahead, in anticipation of turning left. This was a 35mph 4-lane road. So of course, autos immediately piled up behind me, screeching and honking and vrooming and all kinds of pissed, just because, I guess, they had to make a lane change to go around me, or they could stay there and stay enraged. I escaped with my person and bicycle intact.
Very recently, I was trying out the new e-Scooter shares. It is explicitly prohibited to ride them on the sidewalk. So I tootled around the back roads, all 25mph residential, and I was having a lot of fun ringing the little bell. So this chad swoops in front of me on a moped or rice rocket or something. And he slows down and swivels his head and in a kindly condescending tone he said, "you know you're not supposed to ride those in the street?" and so I just rang my bell and smiled. And he turned into the Incredible Hulk. He harried me and spat on my face and screamed at me and honked and stopped short and cut me off and raged for blocks, and I thought I'd never get out alive; it was very upsetting and it is not easy to continue riding when you are so triggered like that. I stayed calm, I didn't do anything against the guy, I sailed to the sidewalk and put the thing down and just walked away. But that put the fear of God into me.
> So of course, autos immediately piled up behind me, screeching and honking and vrooming and all kinds of pissed, just because, I guess, they had to make a lane change to go around me, or they could stay there and stay enraged.
To what extent were you impeding the normal flow of traffic?
> And he slows down and swivels his head and in a kindly condescending tone he said, "you know you're not supposed to ride those in the street?" and so I just rang my bell and smiled.
In no way was the guys reaction justified, but that does sounds like an antagonizing response.
Well, as I said, I was in the left lane for about a block; it was a 4-lane 35mph road, so everyone had a clear right-hand lane to pass me. Traffic was, I suppose, medium. The lanes were completely clear as I moved over to the left; it's not like I weaved through a clump of vehicles to get there. The road feeds a freeway, so it was a common thoroughfare for college students and townies alike to GTFO.
> In no way was the guys reaction justified, but that does sounds like an antagonizing response.
Shrug. I was in a happy-go-lucky mood and I was already smiling and ringing the bell. What else could I do? Scowl and lean on my horn instead? Pull over and illegally ride on the sidewalk like he wanted? Argue with him, Facebook-comment-style, about who knows the law better? It didn't occur to me that there are people who may be antagonized by a bike bell.
True
Let me tell you, as a pedestrian, I am eternally thankful to every cyclist who announces his presence behind me with something like "passing on your left", although a bell is much easier to use :-)
This is of course the gold standard on larger and faster streets, but remember that even the Netherlands doesn't put separate bike infrastructure on every street. On the smaller neighborhood streets, they... slow down traffic. And it seems to work pretty well.
Some background and pictures of what this looks like: https://mobycon.com/updates/sustainable-safety-the-dutch-app...
Interesting. How often is traffic slowed down? Pretty often I guess with the amount of bike riders. And no one cares?
In the US, drivers have the expectation that they should be able to take any street they want without delay. In the Netherlands that's not true; if you're driving on a fietsstraat for example, you are allowed there but it's explicitly not designed for you. There are other streets you're meant to take.
But also:
> Pretty often I guess with the amount of bike riders. And no one cares?
Probably because just about every driver there also rides a bike, and knows what it feels like from both perspectives. I'm in the US but starting to ride a bike around myself has certainly made me a more careful driver and more understanding of how to react around bikes.
Thanks for clarifying. This makes a lot of sense.
Drivers can be bad too, but for every terrible driver I see 10 obnoxious cyclists. Maybe drivers made them this way. For the most part, though, they are just trying to minimize exercise/get somewhere as quickly as possible.
You see motorists speeding, which kills tens of thousands of Americans every year and it doesn't register as bad. You see a cyslists roll a stop sign, which kills very few Americans a year, and it goes in the cyclist-hate bucket part of your brain. It's just plain ol bias.
And you can’t observe an urban Critical Mass ride and say, with a straight face, that they’re not behaving like a bunch of pricks.
Washington DC has some of the worst bicycle culture I’ve ever seen. Blowing red lights, asserting right of way over pedestrians and cars whenever it suites them, doing 50kmh on mount Vernon trail with pedestrians and small children everywhere. And a piss poor attitude to top it off when someone dares slow them down.
I can't tell if this is satire or not.
My point is that "right of way" is dumb. Cars and bicycles just don't mix.
Police arrives. Asks for video evidence, which no one has. Tells the cyclist, "You should follow the same rules as the car". The cyclist never moved.
This article rings true.
“If you've put yourself in a position where someone has to see you in order for you to be safe - to see you, and to give a f&%@ - you've already blown it.” ― Neal Stephenson, Zodiac
USA has a mixture where some folks want a lawless culture and some want a rule based and when they clash it’s ugly.
This is not a McSweeney’s to read when you’re trying to cool down.
Unfortunately drivers are so checked out, starting even before cell phones, that safe biking probably means a future with good self driving cars.
In fact, building proper bike lanes doesn't mean you can't have self driving cars too. It just means the people who didn't spend tons of money for a self driving car are less likely to hit the cyclists.
But anywhere you could be safely traveling 50mph+ is probably not the type of road I’m advocating building bike lanes on…
Why do we have one?
But they’re both forms of urban transportation that share the same infrastructure.
[1] https://www.bicycling.com/news/a20043758/drivers-dont-see-cy...
Ok, maybe it is not always fancy asphalt but paving for some parts of the whole route, but still - it is way, way safer.
I really rarely touch main roads. Like out of 1.5h trip I'm on main road maybe for 2mins at best.
I'm not sure where you're from so this answer comes from more of a USA perspective. In places like Copenhagen/Amsterdam, it's almost always easier/safer to just ride in the bike lane because they are so amazingly well made. But in most other places, you sometimes need to take the lane. Car drivers should be more grateful. We're taking cars off the road and reducing auto traffic.
Well, people have rights to do many things, it itself doesn't make it safe and I've been just talking about safety.
>We also do so because you're more likely to get hit by cars turning or pulling out or opening their door when you ride on the sidewalk.
I meant something like bike roads where there are no cars on the road or around it. e.g roads sorrounded by meadows
Well, have you considered that people on bikes are actually trying to, you know, access things that aren't meadows?
you go thru them, not to them.
At closed circuit tracks you may find they segment drivers or vehicles based on average and top speeds. But why would that matter when even the slow guys are going >100mph down the straight, and everyone there has opted into driving in such an environment? Because speed variance is the real danger.
A car driving down a country road with a 50mph speed limit is going 2-5x faster than a cyclist depending on the slope. And there's no shoulder or bike lane in the countryside so they have to block the lane. Coming over a blind hill even below the speed limit may not leave the driver enough time and distance to come to a full stop. If the oncoming lane has traffic in it there's not even an escape path.
I grew up biking and I love it, but I also grew up and recognize the dangers and how being a cyclist on a fast road is imposing your risk onto others. It's sociopathic to believe a driver who hit a cyclist feels no remorse, but some people seem to prefer martyrdom over adjusting their preferences a little, like picking up mountain biking or going to the velodrome. I liked riding around on 2 wheels so much and I didn't want to compromise on where I could go so I pulled my pants up and learned how to ride motorcycles. Now I can go anywhere I want on something that keeps me outside of the cage and gives me more power and agility than any car.
edit: perspective of a bike fanatic (I have 7 bicycles/scooters/motorcycles in my garage) living in the self-proclaimed "Bicycling Capital of the Northwest," where there's an astonishing 2 paved bike paths that are so swarmed with pedestrians as to be unrideable
This depends on the state, e.g. in Montana you can legally ride on all interstates. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-motorized_access_on_free...
* the bike lanes, while nice in though, are poorly planned out:
* they’re only on one side of the road
* they start and stop in weird locations and either foist you back into the main road, or onto a busy footpath. Getting from “where you are” to “where the bike lane is” is a multi-minute exercise in walking and crossing lights for 100m of lane.
* People - including cops, park in them frequently
* the city makes no attempt at cleaning them, so they’re filled with the detritus from the road and the footpath: gravel, wet leaves, broken glass, sand, tire-shreddings, these are a hazard to ride through.
* because they pack both directions onto one area, each lane is super narrow, and you end up stuck behind casual commuters (I love to see people riding, don’t get me wrong) and there are few chances to cleanly overtake
* in the city speed limits are pretty low, and between traffic lights at intersections and slow moving traffic (due to volume) it’s shockingly easy to outpace cars. Combine that with lane slipping, and you can often clear whole blocks at pace.
Going almost a mile out of the way to have less than half the trip on a bike path isn't a great combination.
This is why I hate bike routing apps they will always pick bike road or smaller street even if it is on the other side of the road or if it just like 100 meters long.
Those short bike paths. Unfinished fragments acting like real deal. If you use them you lose your initiative because when it ends you need to return to the road giving a way to the traffic on that road.
Often even continuous bike paths creates conflict points at crossroads and junctions even if it goes along main road.
Also if we are talking just about main road vs side streets. If prefer main road. It is safer because there are less crossroads and you have right of way. Cars that are going your direction are backing you in this right.
The best advice I can give is to only ride bikes on dedicated areas for bikes riding. Riding any where else is just asking for trouble.
It happens with motorcycles too. There are plenty of situations where a driver turns right in front of a moving motorcycle that's just crossing an intersection.
It's not all car drivers but given the magnitude of cars on the road it only takes a very small fraction to cause all the trouble.
My son got clipped on his (human powered) scooter by a truck at an intersection the other day. He had a walk signal so the driver should have yielded. Instead, the driver plodded through his left turn, unaware that his neglect put him inches away from prison.
So, yeah; cyclists can roll through an intersection all they want but, I'm not doing it.
[1] https://www.codot.gov/safety/traffic-safety-pulse/2022/may/a...
My experience in many cities that have adopted the Idaho stop (allowing cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs), is that most cyclists are hilariously reckless and roll through at full speed. Watching streams of cyclists hold up confused drivers at 4-way stops is endlessly entertaining.
OTOH, if you ever get distracted or otherwise fail to notice a driver racing a red you’re royally fucked.
If there’s no stopped cars in the lanes already (I live in a city, so this is super common for me), I’m way more guaranteed to do it, because trucks/buses/taxis/inattentive drivers barreling through “late yellows” is something I’ve seen waaay to many times.