We need a similar study for aggression against (road) cyclists too. I've never seen a sport provoke so much aggression from men.
(Dogs vs cats is bad too)
Every thread about cyclists being abused includes someone like you mentioning that some cyclists ignore stops with the implication that they started the whole fight or that the fight is justified.
Agreed that cars are way more dangerous than bikes, but here in California I do see a lot of aggressive recreational cyclists that act like they have a chip on their shoulder. While they may not be a danger by crashing into things like cars do, their behavior does cause sometimes dangerous issues for other people on the road.
No one should be throwing things or trying to hurt anyone, but it absolutely is past and repeated negative experiences with cyclists acting irresponsibly that make drivers resent them, just like careless assholes in cars can make cyclists resent drivers.
My belief is that the worst offending car drivers are simply psychopath bullies who know they can safely abuse, threaten, harass, assault, etc. those pansy spandex wearing cyclists. They do it because they enjoy it.
Some people are simply not fit to be a part of society.
I never equated the two. I used them as an example of how people come to blame all members of a certain class for the consistently harmful actions of a few members of that class. It's not fair, but it's common.
> Being delayed by a few seconds generally only results in aggression from car drivers if and only if the cause is a cyclist.
"Being delayed by a few seconds" is annoying for everyone no matter what the cause. That's not really the problem drivers have with cyclists though. It's having to slam on their breaks because someone on a bike ran a red light or having to swerve to avoid a cyclist who suddenly and illegally darted into their lane that makes drivers upset.
> My belief is that the worst offending car drivers are simply psychopath bullies
Maybe a number of the most extreme offenders actually are? The majority of people who have problems with cyclists on the road however are certainly not. I'd agree that people abusing cyclists for "fun" really are a problem and that they shouldn't be on the road.
Sometimes I don't have to be in the crosswalk to notice them, because they'll take an electric-powered cycle onto the sidewalk.
I am not exaggerating. I pay attention when I see a bicyclist actually stopping so I can cross in the crosswalk when I have the light, or otherwise following the rules of the road. I wish I had the presence of mine to thank those cyclists. But they are rare.
That doesn't seem fair, that is not what I said. You're misrepresenting me. I do not know if you intended to or not.
A group is generally regarded based on the behavior of a very small minority of its membership, usually the very worst or the very best. This seems like general human nature. There are many examples of this if you care to look for them. I have a few examples in mind, but they are unfortunately politically-charged examples and I have no desire to bring politics into this more than I just did.
Here's the thing: people WILL literally try to run you off the road, even when you're the most careful law-abiding cyclists that exists. I've had people try to run me off the road even though it was a dedicated cycle path, only to proceed to rant at me that it was all a waste of money. Even standing still at a traffic light will have people drive up way close up to your rear wheel and you look back and they shout "piss off you cunt". The amount of aggression from some is unhinged beyond proportions.
So when people come back with "yeah, but some cyclists break rules" ... Well sure, but that kind of misses the point. You get aggression even when following the rules not doing anything.
Not counted in that kind of data are all the times drives are forced to swerve or slam on their brakes to avoid accidents. The fact that cyclists are harder to see than trucks and SUVs make them even more of a danger to drivers because they can come out of nowhere from directions drivers would never expect traffic to come from and by the time they are visible it may be too late.
I can't say if bikes are more of a danger than trucks but I can absolutely say that they are often a danger to drivers.
The very assertion that they "come out of nowhere" speaks to the visibility problems inherent to driving a veritable locomotive down a city street. Yesterday, I witnessed a truck going around a curve on hop up on the curb and drive down the sidewalk briefly. This was at ~55 mph, and upon swerving and dropping the wheel back down into the road the truck wobbled and barely managed to miss the other cars in the road; a bike nearby, even on the sidewalk, would not have had a chance. Imagine being on that sidewalk; how's that for coming out of nowhere?
If there is any world in which a cyclist poses more danger to a truck, we're certainly not living in it.
Now I think about it, I'm in doubt if you actually categorized cyclists training on open roads as participating in sports? Swap out "cyclists" with "car enthusiasts". That's nonsense.
ETA: I'm a cyclist myself.
- a game, competition, or activity needing physical effort and skill that is played or done according to rules, for enjoyment and/or as a job
- all types of physical activity that people do to keep healthy or for enjoyment
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/sport
I cycle purely for transportation, because it’s cheaper and faster than the alternatives. I certainly don’t compete while cycling to work, and don’t cycle for enjoyment or to keep healthy. It certainly hasn’t kept me healthy give a driver seriously injured while cycling to work, hospitalised me for week, fractured multiple vertebrae making me unable to exercise for 2 months, and resulted in my taking 3 months off work to deal with the injuries and trauma.
So yeah, there’s plenty of people out there that cycle in a manner that doesn’t meet your dictionary definition of a sport.
Road cyclists training on the road train their skills, how? I see no difference in me riding on the road versus Jonas Vingegaard in the "training skill department". Nah, it is recreation or transport in my opinion. Not a sport. The problem is exactly that: When road cyclists think they are doing sports on an open road, they create problems which often end in road rage and sometimes in deaths. The cycling community needs to look inward. They behave like the rotten part of motorcycling.
I stopped riding with other cyclists and motorcyclist for this reason. They are a danger to themselves and each other.
In Brazil and the USA quite often I experienced aggressive drivers when cycling, actively driving closer to me on a bike while shouting to get off the road, and twice in São Paulo I got hit by a car purposefully (waiting for traffic lights and got bumped from behind by a car once, cycling uphill and a car passed me and swerved onto my side on another).
While in Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands I never experienced a single aggressive driver when cycling. In Germany I had a couple of drivers shouting at me in Berlin but given it's Berlin I can't generalise if German drivers are more adversarial against cyclists, it's a very car-centric culture though so I guess it will correlate.
Just some anecdotes, unsure how much of a pattern it is, would be interesting to compare with other people in car-heavy cultures (Australia perhaps?).
Cyclists are just as bad as drivers when it comes to contemplating The Other.
"They're talking mess at the poor benighted car havers" isn't going to fly. (Signed, a car haver who walks ~five miles a day; you are all full of sin.)
It seems pretty logical to assume to me that you'd almost always have fewer ped fatalities if more people were biking instead of driving.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/08/killer...
The original context was shared country trails; I guess your comment was due to a misreading rather than intentional goalpost-moving but the way those arguing for cyclists seem to leap immediately to deny all and any misdemeanours and bridle at any criticism doesn't help good faith discussions.
Suggesting it was to justify aggression and violence towards anybody is bad faith at best, a lie at worst. Please don't use such tactics here, and certainly not with me.
Early years: No reaction
Inquisitive 5-12 year olds: No reaction
Adolescent boys: 1x "Nice bike", 1x trying to race me while doing a wheelie (but no verbal response)
Adult women: No reaction
Adult men: 1x started exchanging nods with me after passing each other going in opposite directions daily for ~3 years (but no verbal response)
After 5 years of 3-season daily commuting in the midwestern US, I can report 2 instances of being struck by side mirrors, one instance where the driver matched speed and pushed me off the road and off the shoulder into the ditch before speeding away, 4 times getting hit by thrown beer cans or other trash, twice had tires chirp when someone on their phone noticed me only at the last second, 3 times someone in a diesel has stood on the brake and accelerator simultaneously to "rolled coal" on me, and I've received more middle fingers and curses of the general form "Get off the road, asshole/fucker/idiot!" than I can count.
The other big danger is a lot of new or timid drivers are afraid to cross the center line even in passing zones, and instead of giving the legally mandated 3 feet outside town/5 feet in city limits, will try to pass very slowly in the same lane. This causes a line of traffic on the 35 MPH (nominally ~55 km/h, actually driven at ~45mph/70kph) street, which provokes the drivers caught in the line.
The more physical assaults went down significantly after I mounted a highly-visible action camera on top of my helmet, but verbal assaults seemed to go up.
Of course n=1, my experiences may not be representative, etc.
In the last 2 years of riding bikes and walking the dog, my two closest calls with cars have been on the sidewalk during walkies.
Getting angry when someone cuts you off is different to being angry about cyclists just existing.
personally i just cycle on footpaths, i'm not really interested in what the law says. me getting hit by a car is a much more dangerous and likely situation than me riding into a pedestrian, and police aren't going to abandon their car on the road to chase me on foot.
I don't like some cyclists because of their blatant and unsafe disregard for the rules.
It's not uncommon to see:
- Cyclists ignoring red lights
- Cyclists ignoring stop signs
- Cyclists riding on a busy sidewalk
- Cyclists yelling at pedestrians to move rather than stopping at an intersection as required
- Cyclists taking up the entire lane and not permitting cars to pass
- Cyclists going the wrong way down a one-way street
Some of the worst offenders are e-bike users, who can move very fast and in unexpected ways. It's no fun to have someone silently fly by you from behind, inches away, at 20mph while they are riding what's basically a motorcycle on the sidewalk.
I frequently walk in the city, and scooters/bicycles are far more of a hazard than cars. They often can't decide whether they want to be pedestrians or cars, and they often don't follow the rules for either, putting everyone (including themselves) at risk.
This is explicitly permitted in most places and is often the only safe thing to do. In a situation like that, if you can't overtake such a bike (or car, or tractor) safely, you must wait until it is safe. The bike (or car or tractor) has the right to the entire lane.
First search result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iuhblb_9qec
"mounting the pavement" temporarily isn't the same as driving on it for multiple metres.
If you claim never to have seen that happen, then you must live in a hugely law abiding place. I live in a small town with a pretty old average age, and I see this regularly here. In London it was worse. Maybe as a cyclist you look out for these things more, or maybe you just get to see them more due to your positioning.
No they're not, because they carry an order of magnitude less kinetic energy.
> Cyclists taking up the entire lane and not permitting cars to pass
as they fucking should, this is the safest thing to do, you're in a metal box and if I let you pass you'll do it too fast and too close
> Cyclists ignoring red lights > Cyclists ignoring stop signs
In civilized places bikes are explicitly allowed to treat red lights as stop signs and stop signs as yields.
> No they're not, because they carry an order of magnitude less kinetic energy.
Yeah, go ahead and tell them that after they hit you on the sidewalk or going the wrong way down a one-way street.
I'm not sure if this is serious, but it's one of the more obviously false claims I've seen on Hacker News:
https://everytownresearch.org/reports-of-road-rage-shootings...
>Experiencing aggressive driving on the road is not uncommon—roughly eight in 10 drivers surveyed by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reported having at least one incident in the month before the survey.
In response to your other comment:
>angry about cyclists just existing.
I don't think these people are angry at cyclists per se at all, they're angry about a perceived anti-car sociopolitical shift, and cyclists are just a visible artifact of that.
Believe me, people ARE angry at cyclists - it might be for the reasons you suggest, but their anger is directed at the humans on the bikes.
That was about 5 minutes of time out of a two hour peak period - I'd be amazed if you didn't get several hundred an hour if you sat there and counted. There are, alas, no cameras on this junction - probably because MetPol would be doing nothing but processing these violations 24/7...
It strikes me as insane that road with so much pedestrian traffic, lined with shops, in a part of London where only something like 30% of the population drives, has so few provisions for pedestrian or cycle safely. With pavements barely wide enough for walking, covered in obstructions, and road markings that looks more like an IQ test, than anything helpful.
Exactly that one, yes.
> I avoid going near Old Kent road in anything except a car
Yeah, I used to cycle it a fair bit 10-15 years ago but I wouldn't bother these days either (plus there are decent cycleway options for avoiding it.)
Edit since you edited yourself (only their first sentence was in the comment when I first replied):
> The fact that even those who don't drive cars hate cyclists says something. As a pedestrian I see myself much more endangered by cyclists, which swerve everywhere (including the pavement), than by cars, which stay within their lanes.
I've only seen swerving cyclists everywhere when infrastructure for cycling is poor or non-existent. Anywhere where there's a minimally decent infrastructure I don't see cyclists sharing space with pedestrians on sidewalks, nor swerving crazily around.
Maybe it's an issue with not providing appropriate infrastructure instead? If there weren't roads you'd see cars not following lanes, etc.
This is simply how cyclists behave in the absence of incentives to act otherwise.
You don't solve this problem by having more infrastructure, you solve this problem by brainwashing the cyclists and drivers to follow the rules, and enforcing the rules.
Car people see anything 'weird' and just lose their minds to the point that killing another human is an acceptable outcome to them. It's extremely reliable. Get a bike and you will find out exactly how many psychopaths are out there.
EDIT: I make it a point of honour to try to stick to the Highway Code whether on my bike or in my car. Still random drivers harass me when I'm on my bike.
I had someone lean out of a car and try to put a plastic bag over my head when I was cycling once. I would love to hear what I was supposed to have done to justify that.
You just have to look at how the press drone on about "lycra clad louts". There's an obsession with identifying us by what we wear as a justification for violence.
That's not hurt feelings but actual broken bones and blood violence.
Off the top of my head I can think of several newspaper articles calling for barbed wire to be strung across cyclepaths in the UK (Hahaha, joking of course!) and reports where that happened and someone was seriously injured. All in the same paper (Hahaha, no connection obviously!)
YouTube is full of people in cars attacking cyclists and it's got fuck all to do with breaking traffic regulations.
Not excusing the other crazy stuff you've put up with. That's insane.
Not sure why that would make me difficult to drive around. If I'm on a motorway I overtake and when I've finished my manoeuvre and I just move over again.
If I see an amber light then I do what the Highway code suggests and stop if doing so won't cause a problem. If I see a red light definitely stop.
Many drivers imagine that bicycles are not permitted in roads and some take it upon themselves to make my life dangerous in an effort to enforce that.
My theories about this:
* A cyclist forces the driver to go out of 'auto pilot' and actively think about driving for a few seconds, which annoys people disproportionately
* Cyclists represent a sort of 'others' that we project all kinds of negative feelings on.
* Cycling for transportation in North America is only recently taken seriously and this can be used to blame them for any kind of new societal changes that are perceived negatively (liberalism, inflation, political correctness, higher taxes).
I think most of it comes from shockingly dangerous behavior, which I am concerned will blowback on me.
I've seen cyclists in the freeway slow lane, cut across 8 lanes of busy traffic, and they seem to love windiest roads with hairpin turns and no visibility. Perhaps most brazenly, in the middle lane of 65 mile road, in black at night, with no reflectors.
What I have seen, often, is drivers on residential or downtown streets bearing down on law-abiding cyclists with murderous aggression for no apparent reason than simply having to share the road. General statements like yours kind of support the notion that many drivers who have had a crazy experience with a poor cyclist feel justified in taking out the anger from that experience on any and all cyclists.
While I don't take out mt anger on random bikers, I agree that 'sharing' is a common origin. Many roads are simply not practical or safe to share with bikes.
If each had all the roads they could want, and didnt have to share, then I dont think either would care about the other.
Reality is that they do have to share, it isn't safe or convenient, and therefore people get angry.