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.
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.