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Comment by jberryman | Hacker News Reader

> but I can see both sides.

This isn't a "on the one hand, on the other" issue. Even the most foolish and aggressive cyclist is almost never endangering the safety of drivers around him, even indirectly. Yet all it takes is a nudge, honk, door opening, unsignaled turn, etc. to kill a cyclist.

Bicycle etiquette is for all practical purposes not a public safety issue, and IMHO responses of the "but bicyclists can be rude" variety to incidents like these only help perpetuate a driving culture aggressive to cyclists.

> In those situations, I think it's reasonable to ban bicyclists outright

Why not lower the speed limit, or add a bike lane? Just because you perceive the public roads as "car roads" and driving as "normal" doesn't make it so, and I don't think your convenience should trump someone's basic ability to get around.

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> Just because you perceive the public roads as "car roads" and driving as "normal" doesn't make it so

Why not? The roads were built for cars. Driving on them isn't just "convenient," it's exactly what was intended to happen. Don't get me wrong, there should absolutely be more bike lanes and other considerations so that cyclists can travel safely. But, the infrastructure in its current state is definitely built around automobiles, and mixing bikes in is dangerous.

I just spent 4 days commuting around Chicago on bike, so again, I'm all for it. But, as a cyclist, I think you have to approach it like you're in someone else's territory and subject to their whims. I don't believe an indignant "this is my road too" attitude is going to do you any favors.

> The roads were built for cars.

This is untrue.

"The coming of the railways in the 1830s killed off the stage-coach trade; almost all rural roads reverted to low-level local use. Cyclists were the first group in a generation to use roads and were the first to push for high-quality sealed surfaces and were the first to lobby for national funding and leadership for roads. Without cyclists, motorists wouldn't have hit the ground running when it came to places to drive this new form of transport."

http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/

I mean, that's nice and all, but it seems to be purposely obtuse. Again, just look at the current infrastructure. The width of the roads, traffic laws, signs and signals, intersections, highways, etc. I guess you "got me" in that, at some point, road construction was driven by cyclists, but that pretty clearly shifted some time ago. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make.

The prevailing notion that "roads are made for cars" is self-fulfilling, as people use it as justification for making roads further unsafe for bicycles (and other road users).

Seems like the other way around to me - if roads are made for bicycles then there is no reason to invest in infrastructure like dedicated bike-paths, bike-lanes or even wider shoulders.

Cute.

Because the majority of roads nowadays in use were built in 1830... /sarcasm

Here, even 70 years ago, several roads were just a dusty path through fields and many of them didn't exist yet. When they were actually built as a road, it was done for cars, buses, trucks and it was done from steep consumption taxes on gas and later from country-wide toll imposed on cars.

Of course, YMMV in your country. But I really think that you didn't have asphalt-paved 10 m wide roads 180 years ago.

re: paying for building roads, http://www.frontiergroup.org/reports/fg/do-roads-pay-themsel...

Local roads, which bicyclists mostly use, are generally paid for by property taxes or other local taxes, at least in the US. Only highways are paid for by federal gas taxes, and since that tax has been declining in real terms since 1993, highway funding also comes from general tax revenue.

> Why not? The roads were built for cars.

It is amazing how the marketing of car culture change people's perception of this. No, roads were not developed for cars. Roads and streets where predominantly pedestrian avenues prior to motorized vehicles. Pedestrians, cyclists (when the bike was invented), horses, and trollies (again, when invented) all occupied streets and the space was considered public.

Ok, I should have been more clear. I'm talking about the road system that we have in the US today. As I said in my other reply, this point is a historical gotcha that's completely irrelevant to the discussion of modern road use and biker safety.

> Even the most foolish and aggressive cyclist is almost never endangering the safety of drivers around him, even indirectly.

I highly doubt that. I have seen dozens of bicyclists cause absolute chaos in traffic. Granted, I've never seen any collisions, but I can't imagine that the chaos I've seen is "safe" compared to the normal flow of traffic.

> Yet all it takes is a nudge, honk, door opening, unsignaled turn, etc. to kill a cyclist.

True, but if your implication is that bicyclists should be able to freely use roads because of how vulnerable they are, then pedestrians should also be able to freely use roads.

Unpredictable cyclists endanger other cyclists and drivers - not because they are likely to hit them, but because they train drivers to react inappropriately. Drivers that don't respect cyclists (or pedestrians, or other drivers, of course) should be ticketed; so should cyclists that behave inappropriately - legally they can be, by the way.

Bike lanes apparently don't help as much as you'd think. There is a psychological aspect to providing a bike lane that makes car drivers think that bikers are already protected by the lane, meaning, in the end, that they don't actually give bikers as much room.

Edit: Bike lanes increase safety but I just added it to point out that it's a relatively complicated situation. I think lower speeds were the biggest factor towards increasing safety. I can't find the study either so the above really isn't worth all that much, my memory being what it is.

The worst is bike lanes painted such that you can only be in them by riding in the door-zone. Fortunately, those seem to be going away.

Bike lanes also don't help when bikers weave in and out of it.

Drivers opening their doors into the bike lane without looking doesn't help cyclists avoid weaving in and out of it. And before you say anything: In California (and I believe this is true in many other states), opening your door into traffic (and, yes, cyclists count as traffic) automatically puts you at fault in the even of an accident or incident.

resu_nimda: Many roads, especially in older cities like Chicago, were not in any way built as 'car roads,' as they were built before the widespread adoption of the car. Many were poorly retrofitted in an attempt to move automobiles in quantity, but this has generally been to the great detriment of the neighborhoods they pass through.

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