3 ms·

This statement sort of requires an asterisk in that it's entirely dependent on your schedule, city, your location within it and your capacity for recognizing an

by YCode 9y ago

This statement sort of requires an asterisk in that it's entirely dependent on your schedule, city, your location within it and your capacity for recognizing and taking risk. Some people for example would say the same things of motorcycles, yet there is no shortage of people who recognize and take the risk to ride out there. Also, many cities have a plethora of bike paths that network through them and lanes set aside for bikes. That combined with high-visibility gear and recognizing those pain points to avoid or tread carefully mitigates a great amount of the risk you take. It's a factor to weigh in for sure, but it's not as bad as you make it out to be. Anecdotally that's a shame about your co-workers, but for example there are dozens of people who bike to work everyday at my work and none of them have died in the ten years I've been here. So I suppose you should really phrase that as a factor to consider rather than a blanket statement that it's not worth the risk in the U.S.

dominotw 9y ago
>Some people for example would say the same things of motorcycles, yet there is no shortage of people who recognize and take the risk to ride out there. This is not an equivalent analogy there are no health benefits from motorcycles, people do it purely for fun. If you are getting someone sort of thrill biking around heavy vehicles then, by all means, go for it . I am talking about people choosing biking for their supposed health benefits. > many cities have a plethora of bike paths that network through them and lanes set aside for bikes. That combined with high-visibility gear and recognizing those pain points to avoid or tread carefully mitigates a great amount of the risk you take. I only have experience with chicago lanes. There are very few of them and almost none of them are actually protected from the traffic. For example, a car making a right turn has no option but to go into the bike lane, almost no one is trained to watch out for bikes and cars mirrors are not designed to accommodate bikers. There are many many issues like this. But as you said it would be much safer if bikers knew what they were doing but biking on street requires no tests, anyone with a bike can get on the streets with 18 wheelers. Some of these people have never driven a car and are just guessing what needs to be done. They don't think general traffic rules apply to them, like zooming past stop signs , running red lights ect. I see this on a daily basis. Why do we allow this to happen is beyond me.
- YCode 9y ago
  That's a fair point; I wonder if some kind of licensing program or systematic training* for bicyclists would be beneficial. Maybe incentivize it with a tax break or something if you take the (paid) training every x years and bike to work at least x days a month on average. * I'll draw another inappropriate comparison here and say similar to the Motorcycle Safety Foundation that designs the cirriculum for virtually all motorcycle training

by YCode 9y ago

dominotw 9y ago

>Some people for example would say the same things of motorcycles, yet there is no shortage of people who recognize and take the risk to ride out there. This is not an equivalent analogy there are no health benefits from motorcycles, people do it purely for fun. If you are getting someone sort of thrill biking around heavy vehicles then, by all means, go for it . I am talking about people choosing biking for their supposed health benefits. > many cities have a plethora of bike paths that network through them and lanes set aside for bikes. That combined with high-visibility gear and recognizing those pain points to avoid or tread carefully mitigates a great amount of the risk you take. I only have experience with chicago lanes. There are very few of them and almost none of them are actually protected from the traffic. For example, a car making a right turn has no option but to go into the bike lane, almost no one is trained to watch out for bikes and cars mirrors are not designed to accommodate bikers. There are many many issues like this. But as you said it would be much safer if bikers knew what they were doing but biking on street requires no tests, anyone with a bike can get on the streets with 18 wheelers. Some of these people have never driven a car and are just guessing what needs to be done. They don't think general traffic rules apply to them, like zooming past stop signs , running red lights ect. I see this on a daily basis. Why do we allow this to happen is beyond me.

YCode 9y ago
That's a fair point; I wonder if some kind of licensing program or systematic training* for bicyclists would be beneficial. Maybe incentivize it with a tax break or something if you take the (paid) training every x years and bike to work at least x days a month on average. * I'll draw another inappropriate comparison here and say similar to the Motorcycle Safety Foundation that designs the cirriculum for virtually all motorcycle training