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Comment by shermantanktop | Hacker News Reader

If they bring that to Seattle, we’re going to need to print a lot of blue tickets. A lot.

Cyclists here operate in a gray area a mile wide. They are nominally supposed stop at stop signs and red lights, respect pedestrian right of way, signal turns, and all that stuff. But virtually none do, and I’ve never seen any consequences.

Well, I did witness one karmic consequence where one cyclist t-boned another cyclist as they both sailed through stop signs in SLU, sending the victim flying through the air. Luckily nobody was hurt.

Perhaps this gray area is intentional -lax enforcement due to prioritization or even a tacit understanding that cycling needs encouragement, and tickets are a bummer.

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> Cyclists here operate in a gray area a mile wide. They are nominally supposed stop at stop signs and red lights, respect pedestrian right of way, signal turns, and all that stuff. But virtually none do, and I’ve never seen any consequences.

All of the signage and rules were introduced and installed to make driving safe - because, as your anecdote shows, being an idiot on a bike is just not that dangerous.

If cars drove at an average of 15mph, weighed 30kg, and had the all-around vision of a cyclist, then you wouldn't need so many rules for their use either.

Cyclists always have an excuse for not following the rules...until someone else breaks the rule that benefits the cyclist, then it's the end of the world and you get sworn at like you have just tried to murder them. As a pedestrian, I am more afraid of cyclists and scooters than of cars. Cars actually stop and give way to me, cyclists and scooters never do. They block the footpaths and pedestrian crossings, they ride on the footpath (not allowed here), they ride on the wrong side of the road and in the middle of the lane, they ride through red light while pedestrians are crossing in front of them, I have even seen them ride through red light into intersection in front of busses and cars and pretend there was nothing wrong with that expecting other vehicles to stop. People on two wheels are just the most self absorbed inconsiderate a-holes.

> I am more afraid of cyclists and scooters than of cars.

You shouldn't be. Cars are a leading cause of death across the world. The likelyhood of being hit and killed by a cyclist is, I don't know, very small? Nobody even collects statistics on it: it just doesn't happen often enough to register.

> like you have just tried to murder them

I think a lot of the anger comes from the fact that a lot of people, maybe even most people, are just not temperamentally suited to operating heavy machinery in mixed-use public spaces every day. They'll be half asleep, or on the phone, or distracted and daydreaming, and then the visibility in a car just isn't that great, so you don't have good situational awareness. So cyclists get a lot of bottled up anger from all the times a car has knocked them down, or they've come a hair's breadth from death, and the driver is still halfway thinking about what they're going to have for lunch as they drive off, wondering about the cyclist that 'came from nowhere'.

You also can't really just follow the rules of the road as a cyclist: if you have right of way, but the car driver doesn't see you, you're still dead. You have to operate under the assumption that cars can't see you even if you're literally right in front of them.

> > like you have just tried to murder them > > I think a lot of the anger comes from the fact that a lot of people, maybe even most people, are just not temperamentally suited to operating heavy machinery in mixed-use public spaces every day.

Your reply is good and just like to add to it: The mentality of "like you just tried to murder them" is so laughably detached. It's not like they did, they just did. Distracted/Ignorant drivers DO try to kill you. So many (car)people underestimate the real dangers of a self propelled metal wall. I love driving both cars and bikes, but I am also very very aware that a single collision above 10 mph can be lethal. It's not anger about pendantic rule following. It is bottled up frustrations in the face of blatent negligence.

Cyclist are shooting nerf blasters while drivers close their eyes while using a machine gun.

Getting hit by a motor vehicle will ruin your life. Getting hit by a bicycle will ruin your day, maybe week.

Cyclists are a legitimate danger to the elderly insofar that they can cause them to break their hip which can be a death sentence, and them breaking laws can cause drivers to panic and crash.

Should we rely on the individual’s belief about the level of harm they might cause when deciding whether to enforce the law when they break it?

It's not 0 risk; 12 pedestrians were killed by bicyclists in NYC in 2021 (I don't have more up to date data, there doesn't seem to be a ton out there). Cars killed 1,927 pedestrians in the same year.

If we make a bold assumption that we can just scale those numbers by volumes, cars would have killed 100 people in the same period of there were as few drivers as bikers.

I think cyclists underestimate the difference made by the force focusing effect of landing on a bar as opposed to the roof of a car, as well as that bicycles are basically flat in the front instead of sloped, so people can't slide over the top.

If I could pick between getting hit by a Honda Civic at 20 mph or someone on a bike at 20 mph, I'm picking the Civic. Basically any car low enough that I can go over the top of, I'd rather get hit by that than a bike.

I would rather get hit by a bike than an F-150, though. There's no way I'm going over that, I would definitely end up under it.

I guess if you get hit by a bike (which is pretty unlikely, because bikes are slow and have good visibility), you probably hit it at an angle. So you're likely to get a handlebar hitting you, but there's not going to be much weight behind it, then the bike itself and person on it are going to sort of ragdoll into you, which sucks, but is probably better than getting hit by 2-tons * 15mph force.

I mean, I would rather not be hit by either. But I think physics suggests it's probably better to be hit by the lighter object.

I suspect bike collisions are more common than car collisions, but generally less of an issue. I would imagine bikes only pose a substantial threat to a healthy person at the high end of their speed range.

Pulling the handlebar causes the wheel to turn and redirect the solid center stalk at you. Perhaps not a direct hit, but enough that I don't think the bike will just glance off.

> but is probably better than getting hit by 2-tons * 15mph force.

I think you're presuming that both are eating the full force of the moving object. Most cars are designed to deflect things over the top of them rather than impart force into them, because doing so with air makes them aerodynamic. A car that just plowed into anything in front of it would have terrible aerodynamics.

It just so happens that most objects behave similarly in front of a car. That sloped shape of the car (especially the windshield) imparts upward force. People that get hit by cars often land not far from where they were hit (relative to where you'd think), because most of the force is vertical. They're also a flat surface that is very good at dispersing the force over a lot of a body, instead of concentrating it.

Bikes take the opposite approach, which is to conquer wind resistance by minimizing their exposure to it (I.e. being small). This makes for sharp, poorly dispersed impacts and a propensity to plow into things rather than push them over. They do have less relative energy, but it's conveyed into other objects in a much harsher way.

This is all presuming similar speeds, though. The high end of a bicycle's speed range is right around the minimum speed cars even travel at.

> I suspect bike collisions are more common than car collisions

You do? I was thinking the opposite: I've never hit anybody on my bike, I've never been hit by a bike, I've never seen nor heard of anybody being hit by a bike. How about you? I have absolutely hit a few cars, though.

I figure that since you have to pay attention when cycling, otherwise you end on the ground, and speeds are relatively low, you're never really in danger of hitting someone. I had a close calls with a kid literally jumping out of a bush once, but that's it.

Obviously, I'm not cycling on sidewalks, so in cities with crappy infrastructure, maybe it's more likely.

Vis-a-vis the chance of injury: I think car bonnets have generally got higher in the last few years, but I think the main question is the weight. If you get hit by a bike, both you and the bike are going to bounce. If you get hit by a car, you're going to be doing basically all the bouncing. The energy of an impact is F = mv/2t. So mass is just as relevant as velocity.

Regardless, the statistics bear this out: your stats showed that even if there were as few cars as there are bikes, they would still kill an order of magnitude more people. Perhaps this is because cars are much faster, perhaps this is because they hit more people, or injure them more when they do so, but I think in general if you're taking a purely objective, statistical view, every person who leaves their car in the garage and takes the bike instead makes everybody safer.

> You do? I was thinking the opposite: I've never hit anybody on my bike, I've never been hit by a bike, I've never seen nor heard of anybody being hit by a bike. How about you? I have absolutely hit a few cars, though.

You would have to weight that by usage, though. There are dramatically fewer cyclists; especially if you weight it by distance travelled.

I've been in dozens of bicycle accidents, they just primarily consist of me being young and bad at riding on a bike, or hitting a curb wrong, or taking a hard turn with muddy tires a couple of times. They just don't rise to the point where they stick out in my memory.

> The energy of an impact is F = mv/2t. So mass is just as relevant as velocity.

That formula measures the kinetic energy of an object, not the energy imparted by an impact. Just as a stupid example, a 2,000kg car moving at 100m/s has the same kinetic energy as a 2,000,000kg ball moving at 0.1m/s. The outcome of getting hit by those objects is completely different though.

> If you get hit by a bike, both you and the bike are going to bounce. If you get hit by a car, you're going to be doing basically all the bouncing.

Sure, I agree with this, but disagree with the conclusion. From a physics perspective, what you're saying is that someone who gets hit by a bike is absorbing all of the kinetic energy of the bike, where someone who gets hit by a car is only absorbing a fraction of the car's kinetic energy.

> I think car bonnets have generally got higher in the last few years, but I think the main question is the weight.

I still think you're under-weighting those bonnets, the bonnets getting higher is a big issue for pedestrians. Think about the direction of the force as those bonnets get higher. Low bonnets push below your center of gravity and center of mass; they don't have the angle to impart velocity to most of your mass. High bonnets can impact directly with your center of mass, which will most definitely impart velocity.

https://sklc-tinymce-2021.s3.amazonaws.com/comp/2022/03/Head... that's a pretty decent diagram of what a relatively low-speed impact with a low-bonnet car looks like. As long as the person is reasonably healthy and doesn't crush their skull when it hits the hood, their odds of surviving are good. At some velocity, that impact with the windshield does become energetic enough to be a big problem (like immediate death, or being flung a dangerous vertical distance).

When that bonnet gets high enough, rather than pushing the pedestrian into a sitting position and then over the top of the car, it collides with their stomach/chest and they either get mashed into the grill and eat the full energy of that collision, or they get pushed under the chassis into the wheels.

So the relevant question becomes whether that fraction of the car's kinetic energy is greater than or less than the bike's total kinetic energy. It's probably really more about acceleration, but that should roughly align with the kinetic energy.

> Regardless, the statistics bear this out: your stats showed that even if there were as few cars as there are bikes, they would still kill an order of magnitude more people. Perhaps this is because cars are much faster, perhaps this is because they hit more people, or injure them more when they do so, but I think in general if you're taking a purely objective, statistical view, every person who leaves their car in the garage and takes the bike instead makes everybody safer.

I wouldn't even try to venture a guess at that aggregate. I would guess bikes are probably less likely to kill people, but there's a ton of confounding variables like how long-range travel is handled, whether the density of riders affects safety like it does with cars, etc.

It's hard to make direct comparisons anyways because of usage limitations. I suspect cars would be enormously safe if we limited them to operating at bicycle speeds. The quick stats I could find say that in a vehicle-pedestrian collision at 20mph, there's only a 2.5% chance of fatal injuries for the pedestrian. That jumps to 20% at 30mph. At 10mph, it's well under 1%. Motorcycles are basically bikes that operate in the same realm as cars, and they have a very poor safety record for everyone involved.

I have come off my bike a whole lot of times, but they've always either been I've been doing something stupid, or the street design is stupid (there's a spot in my city where you can sit and watch cyclist after cyclist eat shit when they hit a particular bunch of tramlines).

In general, I think anything can be made safe if you make appropriate design decisions: consider nuclear reactors. Unfortunately, we live in an era where urban planning is generally neglected as a discipline, so states tend to try and push safety onto the street-users, which is often pretty silly: no amount of high-vis gear and protective equipment is going to make sharing a road with 60mph cars safe. You can't stop drivers from driving drunk by just shouting at them: you actually have to plan cities so you can get home from a bar without using your car. You can't stop cyclists from riding on the sidewalks without providing cycle lanes, and so on.

The thing that boils my blood a bit is that the car industry has lobbyists, while cyclists do not, so often planning law is massively in the favour of cars. For example, in Germany, you need multiple cyclist fatalities before the city is even allowed to build a bike way[0].

[0]: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stvo_2013/__45.html --- basically, the city is only allowed to cordon off a bit of the street for 'specific' uses when there's a proven danger. So the road is, in the eyes of the law, 'generally used', even if in practice only cars can actually safely use it, and the city is not even allowed to put in a bike lane unless in the normal course of events you get like a bunch of cyclists being mulched.

I’m much more afraid of getting hit by a car than a cyclist because I understand basic physics.

You shouldn't be. Both can easily kill you.

In my anecdote, both cyclists had helmets, gloves, and other safety gear. The pedestrians they ride through and around do not.

Cyclists operate in the uncanny valley between cars and pedestrians. They have the speed of cars, the mass of pedestrians, and the predictability of a spooked squirrel.

Right. Pedestrians have nothing, bikers have helmets and gloves, and cars have two ton steel frames. They're entirely different threat classes.

A better comparison than squirrels might be dogs. A large dog has about the speed, mass, and predictability of a bicycle, and I bet they're regulated similarly as well. You're expected to remain in control of your dog/bike and it takes an egregious infraction to face legal repercussions.

I’m saying something that other people here said. It may not make sense to you, and perhaps it is irrational, but:

I spend more time being afraid of cyclists than I do being afraid of cars.

The intensity of fear may not be as high, but the frequency is very high. If I see a car, it’s a car. If I see a cyclist zooming toward me, I am looking for what I can do if and when they do something crazy.

Oh, I'm not suggesting you're wrong to be! I also totally mean my dog example. I think you'd be crazy not to keep a small part of yourself constantly aware of every strange dog you meet. What I am suggesting is that societal effort would be wrong to be. Cars are killing people in ways bikes just aren't.

Man the number of times while I was at UW that a cyclist just sideswiped me while I was in the middle of a crosswalk instead of just reducing speed momentarily. And they didn't even need to be on the road! Burke-Gilman is right there!

Cars also have bad enforcement with far, far worse consequences. The issue is, policing cyclist when cars murder 100s of people just doesnt make sense.

Any $ spent on policing cycling is a $ not spent on a policing cars.

And arguable one of the main reasons cyclist behave like they do, is because they fundamentally dont operate in an envoirment that is designed for them. The rules as stated dont actually make sense.

What actually need to happen is for the infrastructure to be actually designed will cycling in mind, and with rules that actually make sense for cycling.

Forcing stopping at stop signs is objectivly dumb for cyclists, just as an example.

How about when they are within 5 feet of a pedestrian about to step into the crosswalk? That one happens to me regularly.

The cyclists have eyes only for cars. We pedestrians are treated like NPCs in a game. I kind of understand it —as you describe, it’s a survival strategy. But it’s incredibly antisocial behavior.

In Washington, cyclists can treat stop signs as yield signs, as long as there is no other traffic approaching the intersection.

Obviously, though, if you almost hit a pedestrian then you aren't properly yielding.

I've seen drivers do a lot sketchier things than cyclists here.

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