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Comment by lxgr | Hacker News Reader

> Do horns and bells really prevent accidents?

They absolutely do, for indirect reasons:

> Generally it's a lot easier just to press the brake

Maybe easier, but it hardly seems fair, nor realistic.

With a bit of experience, you can tell when pedestrians are likely to stumble onto the bike lane without looking. Then you have two choices: Significantly reduce your speed, or ring your bell first and only reduce speed if they still haven't noticed the oncoming bike.

If you only reduce speed, you'll be traveling at a very low average speed, and time is money (especially for bike delivery workers, but I also hate having to sharply decelerate for people glued to their screen or otherwise completely unaware of their surroundings even if I'm not in a rush), so you can take a guess as to whether "just reducing your speed" is practicable.

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> If you only reduce speed, you'll be traveling at a very low average speed, and time is money

Well this is a bit of an appeal to consequences. I would say (a) this is a very good reason to build dedicated infra, and (b) if something ever does happen, a court is really not going to take this line of reasoning very well, so be careful with it... even if in practice it's how you consider it.

I'm completely in favor of building dedicated infrastructure, but I can't do that by myself. (Also, how do you prevent pedestrians from crossing said dedicated infrastructure without looking? Should it be fenced off? But I agree that there are better and worse implementations of dedicated bike lanes.)

What would you suggest cyclists do until that happens? Never go faster than walking speed? Then I can leave my bike at home. Cycle on the road, where cars can hit me, instead of the dedicated bike lane, use of which is often mandatory?

> a court is really not going to take this line of reasoning very well

A court will rule in favor of the pedestrian stepping onto a bike lane without looking getting hit by a bike that's too close to do anything?

> What would you suggest cyclists do until that happens? Never go faster than walking speed? Then I can leave my bike at home. Cycle on the road, where cars can hit me, instead of the dedicated bike lane, use of which is often mandatory?

I don't know where you live but it's quite unusual here to be cycling through areas that have a lot of pedestrians. If the bike lane is a dedicated one, pedestrians are very rarely in it. But yes if all else fails, the road is preferable to the pavement if you're unwilling to cycle slowly enough.

> how do you prevent pedestrians from crossing said dedicated infrastructure without looking?

That's a UX problem. You can also ask how to prevent cars driving on the cycle lane. Which we do in a multitude of ways. You just need to physically communicate segregation and danger.

> A court will rule in favor of the pedestrian stepping onto a bike lane without looking getting hit by a bike that's too close to do anything?

Here, absolutely, if they consider the cyclist is going too fast for the conditions. There's a concept of a hierarchy whereby the more vulnerable class is almost assumed not to be at fault. Same for a car hitting a cyclist, or a motorbike, even.

> If the bike lane is a dedicated one, pedestrians are very rarely in it.

Pedestrians step onto the dedicated bike lane I use to commute on average at least once per way for me.

> But yes if all else fails, the road is preferable to the pavement if you're unwilling to cycle slowly enough.

Of course I'm taking the road if there's no dedicated bike lane. Cycling faster than walking speed on the sidewalk seems reckless to me.

> That's a UX problem. You can also ask how to prevent cars driving on the cycle lane. Which we do in a multitude of ways. You just need to physically communicate segregation.

Yes, but I can only use the bike lane that already exists. Of course I prefer the ones with better UX.

> There's a concept of a hierarchy whereby the more vulnerable class is almost assumed not to be at fault.

Not where I live. You are allowed to e.g. trust adult pedestrians without any visible signs of impairment to not randomly step into the road. Otherwise, driving cars next to sidewalks or crossing intersections would only be possible at walking speed as well.

Of course, if you already see somebody approaching the road, somebody walking unsteadily, visibly intoxicated etc. you are obliged to still brake preemptively. The question here is whether visible noise-cancelling headphones would be considered a similar visible impairment, I suppose.

Personally, I just always assume I haven't been noticed, because ultimately I don't want to run somebody over even if I would be legally in the clear. That's a different story, though.

Our bike lanes are just a line on the sidewalk and pedestrians routinely walk on them, cross the sidewalk in them without looking, let their toddlers/pets run into them, etc. Also, nobody realizes that a bicycle bell means "someone is coming", so they just ignore it as background noise.

I had to mount an airhorn onto my bike. At least people listen to that, though it's so loud I only use it in emergencies.

I would be worried about a horn like this because if they get startled and move into the path of a car on the actual road, or do any other stupid thing that injures them, you're going to have real problems.

Luckily the actual road is many tens of meters away from the bike path, but you're right otherwise.

I get your point about not wanting to reduce speed, but it's worth considering how the law might react in a worse-case scenario.

Here in the UK, there was an infamous case of Charlie Alliston who ended up getting a ridiculous 18 months prison sentence after colliding with a pedestrian who hit her head and subsequently died. He was riding a "fixie" without a front brake and was cycling at around 18mph through some green traffic lights. The pedestrian was crossing the road further on (i.e. not at a junction which is fairly normal) and wasn't paying enough attention, so Charlie shouted at her to get out of his way. He started to reduce speed (rear brake only), but then decided that he could just aim for the gap behind her, but she then reacted to his shouting by stepping backwards into his path.

The point is that the judge awarded such a tough sentence partly due to Charlie not taking all available actions to avoid a collision and also because his bike was illegal to use on the road due to having just one brake. So, if you rely on a bell to clear your path, you could be held liable if they don't respond and you collide.

To be clear, I am still reducing my speed if I don't get positive confirmation that I've been noticed or if there's not enough time for a reaction to even happen.

My bell just gives me the significant improvement of possibly getting a reaction from the pedestrian long before I need to start braking.

However, not everybody does cycle like that. And while legally and ethically dubious, the bell still helps in that case as well.

I don't know, the sentence doesn't sound ridiculous if you're cycliing at 18mph towards someone, without a front brake, and your precaution is "it's OK, I can guess which way they're going to go".

The sentence was very harsh compared to lots of drivers who have killed people in far worse ways. I don't want to excuse him as he was also a complete arsehole on social media after the collision and his cycling was reckless. The lesson is that even if you think you have priority, you have to do all that you can to avoid hitting someone.

Hm yeah, I don't know about drivers' sentences, true.

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