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Comment by walletdrainer | Hacker News Reader

> If im cycling through a shared space, I find it extremely rude to ring the bell, because it feels like I'm telling people to get out of my way, but they have just as much right to a shared path as I do.

It’s certainly rude to ring the bell in a aggressive manner, but many bells are capable of producing much softer, more polite sounds.

In super busy old European capitals I find that people increasingly just ride around with speakers playing a constant tune at a reasonable volume, a massive improvement on dense streets full of varyingly sober people.

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> In super busy old European capitals I find that people increasingly just ride around with speakers playing a constant tune at a reasonable volume, a massive improvement on dense streets full of varyingly sober people.

I sometimes do that. It helps not having music that could be described as aggressive. I often use reggae.

However it means you need a speaker charged so it is not something I have ready everytime I use my bicycle, nor do I want to carry it everyday when leaving the bike attached somewhere so it can't be the goto solution.

I still think that ringing bells at people is a little rude, regardless of the tone. Like imagine if you were at the grocery store, blocking the isle and someone lightly chimed a bell at you instead of just saying "excuse me".

IMO if I'm in a dense pedestrian zone and I can't go around people and I can't communicate by voice, it means I'm going too fast.

>blocking the isle and someone lightly chimed a bell at you instead of just saying "excuse me".

Well, at least here in Europe I’d have to spend a decent amount of time deciding which language to use.

I'm also in Europe, and I always just either say the equivalent in the local language, or just use english. Even in the smallest most remote villages, you'd be pretty hard pressed to find someone who doesn't know the word "sorry".

I’ve found that speaking the wrong language often results in people freezing up as they process what I just said to them, that’s often counterproductive.

I just shout "dreen dreen".. which more or less is the sound a bike bell makes, works anywhere

I don't agree with the former, a bell is not rude if you actuate it in advance from far enough. I do that if I see people about to cross my path but looking somewhere else or if there are kids wandering because I know that kids tend to be imprevisible, are often not very aware of their surrounding and have a smaller field of view. If you are just a handful of meters from them, it is just too late to ring a bell, you should have slowed down already anyway.

There is nothing to be done against old people using noise so I just prepare to stop.

Still agree on the second statement.

On shared use trails, I suspect your voice might give out (especially given the headphone status of most pedestrians) and a bicycle bell is less ambiguous than a voice, which could be a fast walker, a runner, or a bicyclist.

I agree with you, but I can report that in Germany people ring bells constantly and it is simply considered normal. Big cultural difference.

Pedestrians still exist in non dense zones. It seems there's no way to win. I've been told that I should use a bell because vocal addresses are too startling.

Now if there's not enough room to pass safely and silently I completely slow to the pedestrians speed and THEN calmly say excuse me. But I'm convinced that there is just no universally correct way to do it. If you pass people in any way whatsoever, sooner or later someone is going to get mad about it.

A noisy free hub is my solution.

Back peddling or coasting gets people’s attention. Though moving slowly uphill and needing to back peddle is a bit of a test.

> Now if there's not enough room to pass safely and silently I completely slow to the pedestrians speed and THEN calmly say excuse me. But I'm convinced that there is just no universally correct way to do it.

Anyone who is mad that you politely passed them at a safe speed is just too sensitive about these things. You're totally fine there. But "room to pass safely and silently" could still piss people off depending on your speed and distance.

The conclusion I came to is that being totally fine there is independent from whether people could get pissed off about a thing. I try operate in a safe and reasonable manner. I'm sure some people are pissed, as some people will always be.

>> Like imagine if you were at the grocery store, blocking the isle and someone lightly chimed a bell at you

That sounds delightful. We should have more bells lightly chimed around us.

It's just cultural. If there's a cultural expectation of the ring/honk it's not rude. e.g. in India people will honk as a form of active group flock behaviour but foreigners will interpret it as everyone saying "get out of my way"; but in some European countries I have seen that people use the bell (much less noisy than the typical Indian street) and it's got the same meaning. In Hawaii, if you ever honk at someone, you're going to have a fight on your hands. In San Francisco, if you honk at someone and you're on Bush Street it means you're trying to help the traffic light change (it's a team effort) but anywhere else you get anything from a gun drawn, to a brake check, to a wave in apology for missing the light by being on the phone.

Overall, cultural expectations are everything here so it's best to just "when in Rome, do as Romans do".

Can you explain to me what it means to try to get the traffic light to change on Bush street? I tried searching for it but couldn't find anything.

It was a not-particularly-amusing joke that people honk because doing so helps the light change. It doesn’t, of course, but I used to work at a building at the intersection of Bush and Sansome (I think), the Standard Oil Building, and every day at 5 PM the honking would put Bombay to shame.

Here the pedestrian-bicycle problems are much more likely to occur on dedicated bike paths than in pedestrian zones (where bicyclists must ride at walking speed). Usually a pedestrian nonchalantly crossing the bike path at an angle without paying the slightest attention to what they're doing.

The same people tend to ignore the bell. They're in their own world. I usually shout at them to move in that case. A friend of mine instead bought a loud horn connected to a can of compressed gas, which commands attention much more easily than a puny little bell. Works on car drivers, too.

> imagine if you were at the grocery store, blocking the isle and someone lightly chimed a bell at you instead of just saying "excuse me"

Greetings from Sweden, where some people will verbally announce "honk honk" (tuut tuut) while avoiding eye contact – then bump into your leg with their grocery cart.

If you're in a grocery store and aren't maintaining enough situational awareness to preemptively move out of somebody's way, I file that as rude. I'm sure the ingredients on that box of slop are very engaging, but you should still be able to see and hear a shopping car rolling up on you.

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