Over engineering in real life, solving lack of common sense by introducing a solution where the cyclist is paying.
I think the solution is nice for sure, but solving the wrong problem.
I think the solution is nice for sure, but solving the wrong problem.
I say it as cyclist. Pedestrians have right to be absent minded in parks and on public sidewalks.
I replaced my bell recently because mine had developed a form of 'tourettes' after a bit of plastic fell off. So I did survey the marketplace for something 'more me'.
This made me think about what the ideal bell should be. I reckon that you should be able to buy tuned bells, as in A - G with 440hz 'C' being in there somewhere. Maybe there could be different colours of the rainbow for each frequency.
This would be quite tuneful if I was riding with family or friends, with them also having a tuned bell on their bicycles.
Obviously no use for penetrating noise cancelling headphones, however, I don't think these are an issue. If someone is zoned out on headphones then it is on them if they have no spacial awareness. If they don't hear the bell, then that is on them.
I also think big auto is patronising, to think they have anything to offer the cyclist apart from death and pollution. What would the car dependent ones know about shared path etiquette?
Nowadays the biggest danger to me on shared paths are the Uber Eats delivery guys with their electric motorbikes. Early evenings can be quite risky with those zombies, particularly within half a mile of a McDonalds. They pose a true 'kinetic' risk that the jogger wearing headphones does not.
Walking in noisy environments is most of the usage people get out of noise cancelling headphones. The other use case is noisy workspaces or coffee places.
In the Netherlands, bicycle utopia, I cannot remember the last time I used my bell to alert a pedestrian of my existence. Granted, I never cycle in Amsterdam, but that is a special location where high-powered ship horns are probably required.
Regarding ANC, I naturally turn it off while cycling on my Bose Quiet Comfort II, as the ANC will try (and fail) to cancel the noise from the wind. I don't think this is a solved problem? So for bicycle-to-bicycle alerting, this also seems overkill.
When I put even an ounce of effort into my cycle I become a sweaty mess which can be a little antisocial depending on the situation
Personally, I see no use for this bell since in Austria bicycles share the road space with cars, trucks and trams rather than pedestrians, which could be more dangerous, and what I would need is a bicycle bell that could penetrate car enclosures so that drivers would get off their phones and pay attention to the stuff around them.
Yes, I know, ideally there should be dedicated cycle lanes only for bicycles but nothing in life is ever ideal, and the city isn't gonna do that anytime soon since that would mean completely eliminating car traffic on the narrow streets, witch would be political suicide, so a bell would be an instant life saver.
The OP seemed to suggest that people wearing ANC headgear should stop doing so, but both the bell and the ANC-wearing pedestrians are a non-issue in my lived experience.
It would be a shame if these "cyclist-pedestrian ANC-wars" distract from the real issue, that cyclists are not, but should be, a fully emancipated participant in traffic and infrastructure should be designed with cars (to a degree), bicyclists AND pedestrians in mind.
Your argument was not a solution. You just said, "NL fixd this, why haven't other countries?" which doesn't add any value.
Have you considered that other cities/countries can't just add infrastructure that hasn't been designed from the start to accommodate bikes the same way NL has without taking space away from pedestrians or cars as the roads have stayed as narrow as back in the 1800s?
And that fixing it is not a switch you can just turn on on a whim, but requires decades of political and societal change around repurposing infrastructure, plus capital, before consensus is achieved? Democracies are complicated, even moreson in times like these.
What do you do until then, when a bell is an instant improvement?
You're commenting off the sidelines without realizing why most countries can't flip a switch and become NL overnight.
>It would be a shame if these "cyclist-pedestrian ANC-wars" distract from the real issue, that cyclists are not, but should be, a fully emancipated participant in traffic and infrastructure should be designed with cars (to a degree), bicyclists AND pedestrians in mind.
Yeah but what do you do if they are? There's no ANC wars here, Skoda just made a better bell. Are you also against the development of better bicycle helmets, because where you live you don't need them? Like yes sure, infrastructure is the real solution, but what do you do until that arrives?
Why does Skoda, a car manufacturer, care so much about interactions between cyclists and pedestrians? As you say, a bell that penetrates the car enclosures would be much more useful. I suspect a similar reason why pro-safety helmet lobby groups in NL received a lot of funding from these same car manufacturers. I digress..
For your information, post-WWII infrastructure developments in NL were initially highly car-friendly. This only started to change in the 70s and 80s, when the government started to actually create bicycle-related traffic policy, after collective protests (e.g. popular pro-bicycle protest songs were written, children refused to go to schools unless bicycle paths were laid, etc.) also helped by the oil crisis of the time.
So, no it can't be fixed overnight, but it can be fixed in reasonable time (and not an unspecified amount of decades, political capital and funding). We are even living through a repeated history right now.
Which was my entire point. City wide infrastructure rehauls were massively easier and cheaper back then than today. The amount of nimbyism and red tape has ballooned exponentially in that time span, let alone the cost. Even NL wouldn't be able to do that today if they wanted to had it not done that in the 70s.
As somebody living in a city that's quite bike friendly, all things concerned, but still not close to Dutch or Danish levels of biking safety, I'll take any "technical solutions that try to solve social/political problems" I can get to make my commute safer.
Also, anything that makes biking feel safer will make more people try commuting by bike, which in turn increases the political will to change traffic laws and space use. Nothing exists in a vacuum.
This is btw also why cyclist's rights organizations (e.g. fietsersbond in NL) should be _against_ mandatory use of helmets. Helmets make it less convenient to cycle and reduces perceived safety, in turn reducing the amount of cyclists and as a result _actually_ making cycling less safe (and the vicious circle ensues).
Even only suggesting that it would be beneficial to use a helmet has this effect apparently, hence the organizations are only willing to state that they are "not against the use of helmets".
Just an interesting second order effect I think. You want to always be careful to optimize for the absolute number of safe rides, and not solely for the relative number of safe rides that might significantly reduce the absolute number of safe rides.
Not mandatory and at your own risk IMO, but as a simple thought exercise on your argument, answer me this: if a car hits you on your bike or another cyclists knocks you off your bike and your head hits the concrete/kerb, are you gonna escape better off from the accident with or without wearing a helmet?
Spoiler alert from my GFs sister who works at an ER in Austria: helmeted patients walk away without permanent brain injury which she can't say the same for those involved in accidents without helmets. Helmets saving lives isn't a lobby issue, it's a medical fact.
People telling you to not wear a helmet because it somehow reduces safety through some convoluted spaghetti argument, must be off their rockers, when they clearly save lives at impacts. That's like saying governments should be against mandatory seatbelts and airbags in cars because their added safety encourages a cycle of unsafe driving leading to more accidents, and that without them divers would be forced to drive more carefully and lead to more safety.
It's perfectly fine to militate for the utopia of building of safe cycling infrastructure everywhere for everyone, but please let's not unnecessarily put people's lives at risk by promoting this FUD that helmets don't increase safety, just so people can literally die on this hill.
By all means, each individual should do of course as they see fit according to their desired risk profile of where they live and how they want to live their lives, just don't ask others to put their lives in danger in order to emulate the lifestyle where you live where the risks for not wearing a helmet are much smaller.
In the basis we seem to agree. Note that I am not trying to discourage helmet wearing (nor for governments to do it), just arguing against making it mandatory or even officially advised (for healthy adults) to wear them. Actual cycling safety is in numbers, more than in individually taken measures. This is all discussed in way more depth on reddit btw [0].
> but as a simple thought exercise on your argument
I realize could have written the sentence you respond to better, I should have written "and [mandatory helmet wearing] reduces perceived safety", also I said "should" in the sentence preceding the one you quoted, but I should've said that the NL ones ARE against making helmets mandatory for exactly the reasons I specify (and that my opinion is that other rights' organizations SHOULD be against it). Quoted directly from tbe website of the, quite well-regarded and not off their rocker, Fietsersbond [1] (under the header "Veilig gevoel?", translated by kagi):
The Fietsersbond (Cyclists' Union) isn't against wearing a bike helmet. If you feel confident, you cycle more safely. It can be wise to wear a helmet in high-risk situations, for example, for seniors on e-bikes. Unfortunately, it has been proven multiple times that forcing people to wear a helmet actually backfires. People start cycling less.
A helmet mandate makes cycling feel more like a dangerous activity—something you should be afraid of. Getting around by bike also becomes more complicated. After all, what do you do with that helmet when you're not wearing it? And what happens if you forget the helmet or if it gets stolen? These are all factors—whether justified or not—that make choosing a bike less convenient.
I wanted to react to your car/seatbelt point, but I realize now you are the same person arguing about what constitutes starting points in the sibling thread. I don't mean to spread FUD and I also disagree that this is indeed FUD. I'm sorry that Austria is not as nice a place for cyclists as you would like it to be. I hope with this oil crisis you will find a way to foment some change re the emancipation of cyclists in your locality or even country.
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/ut5fcx/why_is_thi...
No, they simply have different ethical frameworks/moral philosophies (consequentialist vs deontologist).
I’d mostly agree with you in that I find it unethical to not promote bike helmets at all, even if this were to somehow increase aggregate safety, especially if that increase is delayed and hard to measure.
But I do see the point against making them mandatory if that makes people take their car instead of a bike.
It’s not like not wearing a bike helmet is a dangerous, addictive substance that people are somehow defenselessly exposed to and that they need protection from, and it’s ultimately their own decision if they value their hairdo more than their brain.
In my (Dutch) city, there is this infuriating piece of road where the bicycle path suddenly gets routed onto the kerb, intentionally mixing bikes and pedestrians. I believe the theory is that bikes will go slower so pedestrians don't need to worry about crossing the road as much or something.
Predictably, lots bikes are taken by surprise, either brake hard and suddenly or fly through pedestrians (who the biker thinks are in their bike lane, because they would be two meters earlier).
In my experience, when bikes and pedestrians meet, one of the two groups is in the wrong place and should be watching out/slowing down and waiting.
The example video shows various instances of pedestrians walking in bike lanes (and seemingly being surprised at the sudden appearance of a bike there). You can't fix stupid, but at least you can tell them to get off the bike path.
That is an unfortunate, probably experimental?, traffic design choice...
Paths where pedestrians and bikers (and other light transportation vehicles) are mixed are overwhelmingly common.
This could serve as the blueprint I guess, skip to the part about the 70s and 80s protests. Collective and popular protests helped by an oil crisis, recognizing vested interests in other modes of transportation (cars) that might want to work against your efforts.
Sounds neither simple nor technical.
If everything went perfectly everytime we wouldn't need any safety equipment, but things aren't always perfect.
I used to commute to work by bike in ~1M city in Europe, mostly on dedicated bike lanes, but some shared, and had just the smallest, barely audible bell, only because it was required by law. I don't remember using it much at all. I don't know what the problem is. Maybe the Londoners should take a good look at themselves.
I agree that on a footpath pedestrians should be treated as having priority.
A semi-common way I use my bell: when on a shared footpath with plenty of space to take over, I often use my bell when I'm still ten meters away, so that I don't give pedestrians are heart attack by suddenly dashing right past them.
(I have a nice ding dong bell. They don't seem to mind. It also helps that I often have a cheerful five year old in the back.)
For example, I can go into datacenter and it will cancel all the datacenter noise(aside for when air blows directly into mic, it overdrives it) but I can still hear what other person is saying.
Also I used them to generally listen to podcast so there was no wall of music to go thru, so sirens and such were easily discernable
If you listen carefully you can usually hear a cyclist behind you who may want to pass or is passing you, and having headphones probably makes that a lot harder
The most problematic people in traffic are never aware that they are the problem.
Safe or not - it is up to individual to decide if it is worth the risk.
I used to live in a city where I would walk everywhere but I had the constant fear of cyclists running over me because they would drive all over the pavements without any regard for pedestrians. Imagine walking and having to look around all the time. I find it amusing how people in websites like this one talk about how we have to be very afraid of cars when the true terror, at least for me, were cyclists.
They are though(at least here in the UK) - a guy was convinced of manslaughter for hitting a pedestrian on a bike just last month. In general the rule is that the person in charge of a bigger/heavier vehicle is the responsible party in almost all collisions.
One large fine, and people will learn.
Jaywalking is even a misdemeanor in some areas of the USA, it doesn't stop it from happening at all.
It's replacing a problem you can't solve (human stupidity), with one you can (a better bell).
I’m not sure arguing against a bell is helpful - people need to look on any road, especially with the advent of quiet electric cars.
You may notice that in this worldview (one which I find very hard to argue against) cyclists should give priority to pedestrians, no questions asked. I don't care about fancy bells or whatever, no-one takes those into consideration even when we (us, pedestrians, that is) can hear them because, and I repeat, cyclists are not as important as pedestrians are.
> Why can't the cyclists slow down when they see that there's a human obstacle in front of them?
Because if the space is limited and they actually want to get somewhere, they just don't have time for that? And slowing down often means stopping and causing a traffic jam.
Note that I mostly agree with what you wrote (and I give priority to pedestrians when I'm riding my bike) but there are different situations that have to be taken into account.
They for sure have time for that. When I drive my car can't use that as an excuse.
Even when you "actually want to get somewhere"?
Your worldview (mostly) applies to pedestrian crossings but that's the extent of it.
When there is infrastructure to support all 3 kinds of users, it seems a lot more equitable for everyone to use the space cooperatively.
I absolutely agree one should give way to more vulnerable road users, but that all 3 can have better outcomes (safety, speed of journey, efficiency etc) it all use it cooperatively and conscientiously.
To labour the point, on shared cycle and pedestrian paths with a line down the middle, does a bell ring combined with slowing down to a safe speed not seem like an appropriate warning?
I've lost count of the times I've been riding at walking pace behind someone, on a shared path, waiting to get past because they're completely oblivious to the bell ringing, politely asking, or even flashing lights.
I have very little time for people who freely absolve themselves of their personal responsibility to be aware of their surroundings and we shouldn't be encouraging people to zone out of society just so they can consume more.
I am comfortable cycling slower than walking pace and if I am in a real rush for speed I will cycle on the road but sometimes pedestrians can cause serious cycling accidents even when you're careful or slow.
I heard "human obstacle" last time in carmagedon!
They usually do. (The considerate and/or non-confrontational ones. There are always idiots, and people have the tendency to remember negative outliers and project their behavior on the group as a whole, which is unfortunate.) However, slowing down isn't the whole story. Riding a non-motorized bicycle is much easier if the rider can keep moving, however slowly, so it would be considerate in turn for the pedestrian to step aside and let the cyclist pass, if possible. A distracted pedestrian can be warned by a bell.
Separately, delivery riders as a category have an incentive to ride as quickly as possible, which is a recipe for conflict. Removing that incentive means removing or completely reimagining the service. I don't think that anybody has a solution or mitigation at present.
I don’t actually mind people doing that though. What is annoying is the entitled attitude that there should be no consequence for that choice, and everyone else should orbit/compensate around their lack of situational awareness.