14 ms·

Dehumanization of cyclists predicts self-reported aggressive behaviour to them

39 points by anonymfus 8y ago

scandox 8y ago
Happens to pedestrians where cyclists are the majority too. It's dehumanizing turtles all the way down.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  It happens anytime people are afraid of another group for any reason.
  - x220 8y ago
    Hell, I'd say humanization is outside the norm. I don't have enough brainpower to really imagine the feelings and needs of the thousands of people I come into close proximity with every day. I just follow rules of the road like everyone else (except, apparently, cyclists).
  - antisthenes 8y ago
    I'm not afraid of cyclists as a pedestrian nearly as much as I'm afraid of drivers when I'm a cyclist. Conversely, whenever I'm on a bike, if pedestrians are present, I always slow down to walking speed, make sure they are aware of my presence and pass them safely and slowly. I am awarded no such courtesy from drivers.
    - kelnos 8y ago
      I think the issue with that different treatment is that, aside from the inconsistent availability of dedicated (and hopefully buffered) bike lanes, there aren't spaces "made for" bicycles. I hear arguments along the lines of "roads are made for cars", and I think people would nearly equally argue that "sidewalks are made for pedestrians", so cyclists can't really win: they're the unwelcome interloper wherever they are, and need to yield and watch out for the "intended" users of the space.
      - antisthenes 8y ago
        Pretty much this, yes. No amount of courtesy and rule-following can compensate for a complete lack of biking infrastructure on like 95% of all commutes.
dfxm12 8y ago
I wonder where this begins. Is it learned at home (from a parent driver who complains about bikers a lot)? Is there a popular TV show where they keep making fun of bikers? Do people have one bad experience with a biker and just apply that to all bikers? My driver's ed instructor had a saying that cyclists should be shot! It was a comedy line, yeah, but he kept repeating it...
- moate 8y ago
  >>Do people have one bad experience with a biker and just apply that to all bikers? As someone from the US, this phrasing confused me. "Bikers" has a much more common meaning here. If someone says they're going to a biker bar, they will not be putting on a spandex riding suit and peddling. That said, I feel that both cyclists and bikers suffer from similar problems. I've always assumed that because of the high visibility of their difference relative to cars, people notice their illegal road behavior more. Cyclists blowing through red lights, motorcycles weaving between lanes, all of this is extremely visible to other motorists. The behavior then gets tied to the vehicle, rather than individual riders, and then people start to feel that these riders are always problematic.
  - dfxm12 8y ago
    As someone from the US, this phrasing confused me. "Bikers" has a much more common meaning here. I'm from the US and I disagree. Maybe in your community that's the more common meaning, but you can't extrapolate that to the entire country. Context clues should make it obvious what I mean anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnxEZJCey4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnxEZJCey4 So you think we dehumanize people we judge to be criminals? That would be unfortunate, if true. Sure, it might be reasonable to dehumanize the perpetrators of some heinous acts (serial murder being just one example), but weaving between lanes (which isn't even illegal everywhere to my knowledge) falls way short of that.
    - kelnos 8y ago
      > So you think we dehumanize people we judge to be criminals? Yes. I mean, that's pretty much what the article posted here is about. And this extends to other things that also fall far short of heinous acts: people in the US jailed for minor drug offenses are similarly dehumanized by many people in the "war on drugs" crowd.
apocalypstyx 8y ago
It used to be (circa late 1800s) that the word 'typewriter' referred to three things: 1) the machine itself 2) the operator of such a machine could be referred to as 'a typewriter' 3) the combination of the two, that is, the machine and the person driving the machine are a singular unit (which is also speculated to be one of the reasons for a major upsurge is 'ghost-possessed typewriter fiction' at the same time [the girl operating the machine might become more than mere instrumentation]. What this is getting at is (in contemporary america) I'll argue that it is the combination of the homosapien + an automobile that is defined as human. (Just look at how we derogatorily consider those who have to take mass transit because they do not possess [or are possessed by] an automobile, therefore cannot fully actualize themselves as human beings.)
loco5niner 8y ago
> This could result in a reduction in cyclist road trauma or an increase in public acceptance of cyclists as legitimate road users. Sounds like it's working from the assumption that cyclists are legitimate road users. Problematic assumption.
- Angostura 8y ago
  > Problematic assumption. Why so?
- bhandziuk 8y ago
  Who is a legitimate road user if not someone on a public road trying to get from A to B?
pessimizer 8y ago
Just reading internet comments by drivers against cyclists would set your prior for that; the animosity is often off the charts.
- d4rti 8y ago
  And the comments here are no better than the usual, with the classic anti cycling tropes on full display: - Don't pay (road tax) - Illegitimate road user - Riding abreast (in my jurisdiction this is legal and in many places it is and in fact encouraged as it makes a group of cyclists easier to pass) - Stop signs/red lights/don't obey traffic rules (as if cyclists are the only group for which any of this is true)
  - deleted 8y ago
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  - bhandziuk 8y ago
    The red light thing is always funny. Driver's just don't notice other driver's run red lights either because they're far away from the intersection, their view is obstructed by other cars, or they're just doing other things during a red light. I'd say, from my bike, I see a red light run once every 2 days and I only go through about 5 lights on the way to work.
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luiscleto 8y ago
I don't drive or cycle (on a regular basis), and I haven't been particularly exposed to generic rage towards cyclists. I don't think I see cyclists as any less human than cars and their drivers, or bikers for that matter. Yet of all the aforementioned groups, the only ones I've learned to be especially cautious of (and to which I linked negative preconceptions) are cyclists. This was never a problem for me when living in the Netherlands, where there is good infrastructure and rules. (At least after getting past the phase where you simply need to adapt to the ridiculous number of bikes when compared to other countries). After moving to Dublin, it doesn't matter if you're on the sidewalk, pedestrian-only bridges, or crossing a pedestrian crossing when the light is green, you always have to watch out for bikes because you never know when one is heading right into you, regardless of how many traffic rules they need to be breaking to do so. From my own anecdotal evidence I've learned to expect worse/reckless behavior from cyclists compared to any other road user. I'm sure they aren't worse people that anyone else and this is probably aggravated by the severely lacking infrastructure over here, but I seriously doubt "dehumanization" is the root cause of the problem here (even if it may contribute to a vicious cycle). From a driver's perspective, better infrastructure would probably also make them stress less over accidentally causing serious harm to a cyclist over something that would otherwise be their fault. That said, I don't have stats or studies to back any of this up and this is all assumed from my own observations.
ypzhang2 8y ago
Not 100% on topic, but one of the pet peeves I have noticed with cyclists is quite a few of them do not obey the rules of the road. As vehicles, they have to stop at stop signs and lights, but feel like quite an appreciable percentage do not. I'm not saying drivers are entirely faultless, but feels like its to a lesser extent and not as flagrantly.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  "to a lesser extent and not as flagrantly." I'd wager a higher percentage of cyclists stop at all stop signs than motorists who strictly obey the speed limit.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    Whenever I find myself in a conversation with a driver complaining about cyclists blowing through stop signs, I ask if they always follow the speed limit. Often I get a rant about how the speed limits are almost always too low. As far as I can tell roughly the same percentage of cyclists break the law as drivers. Unfortunately most people take a selective view of this, ignoring what drivers do. (I'm a cyclist who always stops at stop signs. In fact, I have helmet cam video of myself going through a cyclist stop sign enforcement operation without any issue from the police.)
- kaybe 8y ago
  The problem is that many of the rules absolutely do not make sense for cyclists. It seems to me that for rule-following of motorists there is a correlation with rule quality as well (compare different countries). This is not an excuse but an attempt for explanation.
- kartan 8y ago
  > As vehicles, they have to stop at stop signs and lights, but feel like quite an appreciable percentage do not. I guess that this is a problem of how energy conservation works. When a cyclists stops they lose all their gained energy, like any other vehicle. But then, the cyclist needs to put a lot of effort to get again to their original speed. If that stop is in front of a slop the cyclist only option is to get off the bike and walk. So, maybe it is more a fault on the design of the roads than on the cyclists.
grawprog 8y ago
My main problem with cyclists as both a pedestrian and in a vehicle comes from them seemingly arbitrarily deciding when they're a vehicle and when they're a pedestrian. They'll blow through stop signs and red lights, then yell at you for being in their way, they'll illegally turn in front of your vehicle, then yell at you for not giving them the right of way, they swerve through traffic changing lanes without signaling then again, will get angry with you when you have to slam on your brakes to avoid killing them, they'll go back and forth between the sidewalk and street without paying attention to pedestrians or cars and yelling at anyone that gets in their way. My experience has been, they wish to be treated like pedestrians, as in, have the right of way whenever they want, whether it's with a vehicle or an actual pedestrian, until they decide they're actually a vehicle. For me, when i'm on a bike, i'm a vehicle. I obey traffic laws, yield to cars much of the time, because they will crush me and give pedestrians the right of way at intersections. Cyclists that don't do these things piss me off. ETA: This may have come across like I was targetting all cyclists. I meant, the ones that do things like this are the ones I have a problem with. There's plenty of cyclists I see more often that don't do things like this. I have no problem with them I don't judge them as a group. I dislike in general when people do dangerous things on the road. Whatever vehicles they're in or not in. These just so happen to be the shitty things i've experienced cyclists doing that bug me.
- deleted 8y ago
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- natestemen 8y ago
  there are cases when you should treat a cyclist like a pedestrian and others where you should treat them like a car. i don't think any driving teachers are doing a good job at teaching this, but as soon as you get on a bike you realize how silly it is to make a full stop at a stop sign, both from a safety point of view as well as a physics point of view.
  - peterlk 8y ago
    Nope. You follow traffic laws. If you're in the lane at a stop sign, you stop. If you're on the sidewalk, you can behave as a pedestrian. Stop can mean different things in different places, so rolling through might be fine in some places.
veryworried 8y ago
I have to conclude I hate cyclists. This isn't something that just happened, but rather has been due to a long history of bad experiences with cyclists. My earliest contempt for cyclists began in elementary school, where cyclist kids would just jump on their bikes and ride home while I had to slog through a long bus drive. Cyclist kids felt they were just better than others. Then in college, cyclists going to and from class on their bicycles were annoying as hell. How many times I would just be walking minding my own business and a dude on a bike out of nowhere weaves through a crowd and just cuts across me nearly hitting me, and at an unsafe speed. I'm sure when you're riding a bike you have no idea how fast you're going, but as a pedestrian it's easy to see how close these individuals were to disaster. What if I had suddenly stepped in a different direction into the path of the bike? As a careerist adult, cities are no better. I distinctly recall one time in New York City where I was about to cross an intersection when suddenly I heard someone shout, a cyclist was heading straight for me downhill and I jolted myself backward narrowly missing the bastard. He could have easily struck me down. And then of course on the roadways there is always an anxiety when I see a cyclist. I have to make sure I move aside at least three feet and slow down considerably because I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison. I don't have a problem if you want to risk your life but you should have to accept the responsibility of your actions all on your own at that point.
- natestemen 8y ago
  > I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison lol cyclists are dying left and right and barely anyone is going to prison. the privileged class (drivers in this case) will always protect their own.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    Yeah, I like how they play the victim here. Amelie Le Moullac's death was totally normal in SF and it was covered up super hard.
- pertymcpert 8y ago
  > I have to make sure I move aside at least three feet and slow down considerably because I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison That's why you slow down and give them space? Because you don't want to go to prison? Not because you don't want to hurt them?
Kiro 8y ago
This is completely foreign to me coming from a country/city where bicycles are the norm.
jchanimal 8y ago
This is why I avoid helmets.
dr_orpheus 8y ago
In my own experience I think a lot of this comes from both cyclists and cars not understanding the rules on how to interact with each other. For example, I see a lot of cyclists riding too far out in to the road, riding two abreast when there is not really a shoulder, not signaling properly or rolling through stop signs. And on the other side I see a lot of cars passing cars while cyclists are present or turning in front of cyclists. I am an avid cyclist, and I think I probably get angrier than the average person when I see a cyclist breaking the rules cause I am thinking to myself "you are making the rest of us look bad."
- kiliantics 8y ago
  In most places, cyclists are actually entitled to the full lane and are allowed to cycle two abreast.
  - peterlk 8y ago
    Additionally, it is often safer to assert space on the road as a cyclist in order minimize the probability of being clipped by a car passing too closely.
  - dr_orpheus 8y ago
    In Colorado, most of the laws are written in a way that basically says you may ride that way as long as it doesn't impede the flow of traffic [1]. And if you are being overtaken by a car you are supposed to move as far to the shoulder as possible. [1] https://www.codot.gov/programs/bikeped/information-for-bicyclists/bike-ped-manual/2008-10-official-bicycling-laws.pdf https://www.codot.gov/programs/bikeped/information-for-bicyc...
SrslyJosh 8y ago
Gee, what a surprise. Also, I have some amazing news for you about "ironic" racism...
mynegation 8y ago
As a driver, a cyclist, and a pedestrian I thought about it a lot. I think it boils down to an interdependent combination of culture, infrastructure, and rules of the road and their enforcement. First, it really helps if cycling infrastructure is separated from car and pedestrian infrastructure as much as possible. The more separation, the better. In Ottawa, for example, there are several dedicated cross-city bike trails, but not too many in Toronto, they are far and wide between, and it shows. It is not always possible and in that case I would give bicyclists preferential treatment on dedicated side streets. The bike trails should be immediately visible to anyone, e.g. painted green for the full length. This makes it immediately visible for everyone: turning cars, passengers exiting the vehicle, pedestrians who decided to jaywalk and scanned the space for cars, but not bikes. The road rules should be clear, strict and unambiguous for bikes. I understand that stopping at the STOP sign is inconvenient on a bike (losing momentum and balance, braking and pedaling up is hard), but cyclists should ignore stop sign if and only if there is no one else on the intersection. If there are cars, pedestrians, or other bikes crossing it, cyclists _must_ resort to the stop rule. I do not know how many times I have seen cyclists thinking this does not apply to them.
klank 8y ago
In a past life I did somewhat serious cycling in rural Georgia as training for triathlons. So everything I'm about to say is with the caveat that it's my personal experience in one small slice of America. Myself, and everybody I rode with, had stories of objects being thrown out of windows from passing cars in an attempt to hit you. Mainstay was was bottles but a friend did have a phonebook thrown at them. We laughed about that one...who has a phonebook these days and who keeps it in their car? Had cars stop and try to start fights as well. Consistently though, both while on the bike and in my social interactions with others, there is a close association between cyclists and liberals. The cycling was a visible qualifier but the anger, and not surprisingly, dehumanization, was driven more by their political and social leanings than any truly inherent dislike of cyclists.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
The unfortunate truth is that bicycles do no belong on the road with cars. The car/SUV weights 2000-5000 pounds and can go much faster than a bike. It is also heavily "armored", in that most car collisions do not result in serious injury to the occupants. The bicycle has much lower weight, and lower speed. In addition, the majority of bicycle collisions are going to result in at least some minor injury. The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a significant number of biker deaths.
- btrettel 8y ago
  > The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a significant number of biker deaths. There's actually quite a bit of opposition to separate infrastructure from cyclists. While the risk of being hit from behind is reduced on separate infrastructure, there has to be intersections at some point, and that's where the danger amplifies. In Austin, I almost never ride on the Guadalupe St. cycletrack because about one third of the time that I do, a driver turns across it without looking at an intersection. There are signs saying to look, but that doesn't seem to stop the problems. Infrastructure can help, but it needs to be designed well, and what I see typically in the US is not designed well.
btrettel 8y ago
Aggressive behavior against cyclists is unfortunately fairly common, but as a daily transportation cyclist I worry more about well-intentioned bad drivers. For example, these are the drivers who turn across the bike lane without checking for on-coming cyclists. It's not that these drivers don't consider cyclists as fully human. They're just bad drivers and probably have similar problems with other drivers. Cyclists are just more vulnerable to them.
- ubu7737 8y ago
  I had an accident like this. I was hauling ass down a one-way, two-lane street in the bike lane (shoulder). A woman in a sedan pulled in from a side street on the left, crossed into the right lane, then swerved across my lane to make a right turn into a shopping plaza. I had no vector for escape, it was too sudden. I believed I would go through her right rear window and wind up in the car. Instead, the bicycle and I slammed laterally against her car and flew forward at her angle, my sternum striking her passenger-side mirror. As it happened, I thought it would kill me, but the mirror just exploded into a hundred pieces. I landed on the ground with my bike next to her now-stopped vehicle, solar plexus aching but otherwise almost unharmed. She was very apologetic. She said she had many friends who were cyclists, and she was aghast at the idea of hurting any of them. She told me if I was unhurt, and agreed not to request the police, she would happily absorb the damage to her vehicle (it was really badly damaged by my bike scraping over 4 feet of her paint). After I caught my breath and realized I was unharmed, I told her it was a fair cop and we were good. But I will definitely never forget the terror I felt as I slammed into her.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    Classic right hook: http://bicyclesafe.com/#righthook http://bicyclesafe.com/#righthook I've had many close calls like that, but fortunately have avoided collision. Drivers saying that they are "really pro-cycling" or whatnot means little to me now. If they were, you'd see it in their actions. That's not to say that mistakes don't happen, but "mistakes" happen so frequently to cyclists that it's hard to conclude anything other than that most drivers don't understand how to drive safely with cyclists on the road. Good intentions are not enough to be "pro-cycling" in my view. For what it's worth, I would have called the police and requested an ambulance and I recommend the same for every bike crash, no matter how minor. (And I would have made it clear that the driver would be paying for all medical costs.) It helps make the police's statistics accurate, and adrenaline may prevent you from seeing how hurt you really are. Best to play it safe. I'd like to underline the importance of keeping the statistics accurate. I've talked to a city traffic engineer about how one intersection was dangerous and they said they weren't going to do anything about it because they received no reports of crashes there. I'm confident that they occur, but they're not reported to the city. Don't let being "nice" prevent safety improvements.
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gavygavs 8y ago
Cyclists They're delaying me seconds at intersections, they're forcing me to spend more time checking that I don't door them, they leave their bikeshares on my sidewalks, and some ((I assume)) are good people.
falcolas 8y ago
And cyclists call people in cars "cagers", and presume they're all out to kill the cyclist. The only difference in the dehumanization is that people in cars can more easily kill people not in cars.
xkcd-sucks 8y ago
Can't we just force everyone to ride motorcycles? That would be a rare compromise that makes both sides happy!
dang 8y ago
Cyclist vs. driver vs. pedestrian threads are always the same, which suggests we should just ban them.

39 points by anonymfus 8y ago

scandox 8y ago

Happens to pedestrians where cyclists are the majority too. It's dehumanizing turtles all the way down.

mywittyname 8y ago
It happens anytime people are afraid of another group for any reason.
- x220 8y ago
  Hell, I'd say humanization is outside the norm. I don't have enough brainpower to really imagine the feelings and needs of the thousands of people I come into close proximity with every day. I just follow rules of the road like everyone else (except, apparently, cyclists).
- antisthenes 8y ago
  I'm not afraid of cyclists as a pedestrian nearly as much as I'm afraid of drivers when I'm a cyclist. Conversely, whenever I'm on a bike, if pedestrians are present, I always slow down to walking speed, make sure they are aware of my presence and pass them safely and slowly. I am awarded no such courtesy from drivers.
  - kelnos 8y ago
    I think the issue with that different treatment is that, aside from the inconsistent availability of dedicated (and hopefully buffered) bike lanes, there aren't spaces "made for" bicycles. I hear arguments along the lines of "roads are made for cars", and I think people would nearly equally argue that "sidewalks are made for pedestrians", so cyclists can't really win: they're the unwelcome interloper wherever they are, and need to yield and watch out for the "intended" users of the space.
    - antisthenes 8y ago
      Pretty much this, yes. No amount of courtesy and rule-following can compensate for a complete lack of biking infrastructure on like 95% of all commutes.

dfxm12 8y ago

I wonder where this begins. Is it learned at home (from a parent driver who complains about bikers a lot)? Is there a popular TV show where they keep making fun of bikers? Do people have one bad experience with a biker and just apply that to all bikers? My driver's ed instructor had a saying that cyclists should be shot! It was a comedy line, yeah, but he kept repeating it...

moate 8y ago
>>Do people have one bad experience with a biker and just apply that to all bikers? As someone from the US, this phrasing confused me. "Bikers" has a much more common meaning here. If someone says they're going to a biker bar, they will not be putting on a spandex riding suit and peddling. That said, I feel that both cyclists and bikers suffer from similar problems. I've always assumed that because of the high visibility of their difference relative to cars, people notice their illegal road behavior more. Cyclists blowing through red lights, motorcycles weaving between lanes, all of this is extremely visible to other motorists. The behavior then gets tied to the vehicle, rather than individual riders, and then people start to feel that these riders are always problematic.
- dfxm12 8y ago
  As someone from the US, this phrasing confused me. "Bikers" has a much more common meaning here. I'm from the US and I disagree. Maybe in your community that's the more common meaning, but you can't extrapolate that to the entire country. Context clues should make it obvious what I mean anyway. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnxEZJCey4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnxEZJCey4 So you think we dehumanize people we judge to be criminals? That would be unfortunate, if true. Sure, it might be reasonable to dehumanize the perpetrators of some heinous acts (serial murder being just one example), but weaving between lanes (which isn't even illegal everywhere to my knowledge) falls way short of that.
  - kelnos 8y ago
    > So you think we dehumanize people we judge to be criminals? Yes. I mean, that's pretty much what the article posted here is about. And this extends to other things that also fall far short of heinous acts: people in the US jailed for minor drug offenses are similarly dehumanized by many people in the "war on drugs" crowd.

apocalypstyx 8y ago

It used to be (circa late 1800s) that the word 'typewriter' referred to three things: 1) the machine itself 2) the operator of such a machine could be referred to as 'a typewriter' 3) the combination of the two, that is, the machine and the person driving the machine are a singular unit (which is also speculated to be one of the reasons for a major upsurge is 'ghost-possessed typewriter fiction' at the same time [the girl operating the machine might become more than mere instrumentation]. What this is getting at is (in contemporary america) I'll argue that it is the combination of the homosapien + an automobile that is defined as human. (Just look at how we derogatorily consider those who have to take mass transit because they do not possess [or are possessed by] an automobile, therefore cannot fully actualize themselves as human beings.)

loco5niner 8y ago

> This could result in a reduction in cyclist road trauma or an increase in public acceptance of cyclists as legitimate road users. Sounds like it's working from the assumption that cyclists are legitimate road users. Problematic assumption.

Angostura 8y ago
> Problematic assumption. Why so?
bhandziuk 8y ago
Who is a legitimate road user if not someone on a public road trying to get from A to B?

pessimizer 8y ago

Just reading internet comments by drivers against cyclists would set your prior for that; the animosity is often off the charts.

d4rti 8y ago
And the comments here are no better than the usual, with the classic anti cycling tropes on full display: - Don't pay (road tax) - Illegitimate road user - Riding abreast (in my jurisdiction this is legal and in many places it is and in fact encouraged as it makes a group of cyclists easier to pass) - Stop signs/red lights/don't obey traffic rules (as if cyclists are the only group for which any of this is true)
- deleted 8y ago
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- bhandziuk 8y ago
  The red light thing is always funny. Driver's just don't notice other driver's run red lights either because they're far away from the intersection, their view is obstructed by other cars, or they're just doing other things during a red light. I'd say, from my bike, I see a red light run once every 2 days and I only go through about 5 lights on the way to work.

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luiscleto 8y ago

I don't drive or cycle (on a regular basis), and I haven't been particularly exposed to generic rage towards cyclists. I don't think I see cyclists as any less human than cars and their drivers, or bikers for that matter. Yet of all the aforementioned groups, the only ones I've learned to be especially cautious of (and to which I linked negative preconceptions) are cyclists. This was never a problem for me when living in the Netherlands, where there is good infrastructure and rules. (At least after getting past the phase where you simply need to adapt to the ridiculous number of bikes when compared to other countries). After moving to Dublin, it doesn't matter if you're on the sidewalk, pedestrian-only bridges, or crossing a pedestrian crossing when the light is green, you always have to watch out for bikes because you never know when one is heading right into you, regardless of how many traffic rules they need to be breaking to do so. From my own anecdotal evidence I've learned to expect worse/reckless behavior from cyclists compared to any other road user. I'm sure they aren't worse people that anyone else and this is probably aggravated by the severely lacking infrastructure over here, but I seriously doubt "dehumanization" is the root cause of the problem here (even if it may contribute to a vicious cycle). From a driver's perspective, better infrastructure would probably also make them stress less over accidentally causing serious harm to a cyclist over something that would otherwise be their fault. That said, I don't have stats or studies to back any of this up and this is all assumed from my own observations.

ypzhang2 8y ago

Not 100% on topic, but one of the pet peeves I have noticed with cyclists is quite a few of them do not obey the rules of the road. As vehicles, they have to stop at stop signs and lights, but feel like quite an appreciable percentage do not. I'm not saying drivers are entirely faultless, but feels like its to a lesser extent and not as flagrantly.

bryanlarsen 8y ago
"to a lesser extent and not as flagrantly." I'd wager a higher percentage of cyclists stop at all stop signs than motorists who strictly obey the speed limit.
- btrettel 8y ago
  Whenever I find myself in a conversation with a driver complaining about cyclists blowing through stop signs, I ask if they always follow the speed limit. Often I get a rant about how the speed limits are almost always too low. As far as I can tell roughly the same percentage of cyclists break the law as drivers. Unfortunately most people take a selective view of this, ignoring what drivers do. (I'm a cyclist who always stops at stop signs. In fact, I have helmet cam video of myself going through a cyclist stop sign enforcement operation without any issue from the police.)
kaybe 8y ago
The problem is that many of the rules absolutely do not make sense for cyclists. It seems to me that for rule-following of motorists there is a correlation with rule quality as well (compare different countries). This is not an excuse but an attempt for explanation.
kartan 8y ago
> As vehicles, they have to stop at stop signs and lights, but feel like quite an appreciable percentage do not. I guess that this is a problem of how energy conservation works. When a cyclists stops they lose all their gained energy, like any other vehicle. But then, the cyclist needs to put a lot of effort to get again to their original speed. If that stop is in front of a slop the cyclist only option is to get off the bike and walk. So, maybe it is more a fault on the design of the roads than on the cyclists.

grawprog 8y ago

My main problem with cyclists as both a pedestrian and in a vehicle comes from them seemingly arbitrarily deciding when they're a vehicle and when they're a pedestrian. They'll blow through stop signs and red lights, then yell at you for being in their way, they'll illegally turn in front of your vehicle, then yell at you for not giving them the right of way, they swerve through traffic changing lanes without signaling then again, will get angry with you when you have to slam on your brakes to avoid killing them, they'll go back and forth between the sidewalk and street without paying attention to pedestrians or cars and yelling at anyone that gets in their way. My experience has been, they wish to be treated like pedestrians, as in, have the right of way whenever they want, whether it's with a vehicle or an actual pedestrian, until they decide they're actually a vehicle. For me, when i'm on a bike, i'm a vehicle. I obey traffic laws, yield to cars much of the time, because they will crush me and give pedestrians the right of way at intersections. Cyclists that don't do these things piss me off. ETA: This may have come across like I was targetting all cyclists. I meant, the ones that do things like this are the ones I have a problem with. There's plenty of cyclists I see more often that don't do things like this. I have no problem with them I don't judge them as a group. I dislike in general when people do dangerous things on the road. Whatever vehicles they're in or not in. These just so happen to be the shitty things i've experienced cyclists doing that bug me.

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natestemen 8y ago
there are cases when you should treat a cyclist like a pedestrian and others where you should treat them like a car. i don't think any driving teachers are doing a good job at teaching this, but as soon as you get on a bike you realize how silly it is to make a full stop at a stop sign, both from a safety point of view as well as a physics point of view.
- peterlk 8y ago
  Nope. You follow traffic laws. If you're in the lane at a stop sign, you stop. If you're on the sidewalk, you can behave as a pedestrian. Stop can mean different things in different places, so rolling through might be fine in some places.

veryworried 8y ago

I have to conclude I hate cyclists. This isn't something that just happened, but rather has been due to a long history of bad experiences with cyclists. My earliest contempt for cyclists began in elementary school, where cyclist kids would just jump on their bikes and ride home while I had to slog through a long bus drive. Cyclist kids felt they were just better than others. Then in college, cyclists going to and from class on their bicycles were annoying as hell. How many times I would just be walking minding my own business and a dude on a bike out of nowhere weaves through a crowd and just cuts across me nearly hitting me, and at an unsafe speed. I'm sure when you're riding a bike you have no idea how fast you're going, but as a pedestrian it's easy to see how close these individuals were to disaster. What if I had suddenly stepped in a different direction into the path of the bike? As a careerist adult, cities are no better. I distinctly recall one time in New York City where I was about to cross an intersection when suddenly I heard someone shout, a cyclist was heading straight for me downhill and I jolted myself backward narrowly missing the bastard. He could have easily struck me down. And then of course on the roadways there is always an anxiety when I see a cyclist. I have to make sure I move aside at least three feet and slow down considerably because I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison. I don't have a problem if you want to risk your life but you should have to accept the responsibility of your actions all on your own at that point.

natestemen 8y ago
> I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison lol cyclists are dying left and right and barely anyone is going to prison. the privileged class (drivers in this case) will always protect their own.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  Yeah, I like how they play the victim here. Amelie Le Moullac's death was totally normal in SF and it was covered up super hard.
pertymcpert 8y ago
> I have to make sure I move aside at least three feet and slow down considerably because I know if I hit them I'll probably be spending time in prison That's why you slow down and give them space? Because you don't want to go to prison? Not because you don't want to hurt them?

Kiro 8y ago

This is completely foreign to me coming from a country/city where bicycles are the norm.

jchanimal 8y ago

This is why I avoid helmets.

dr_orpheus 8y ago

In my own experience I think a lot of this comes from both cyclists and cars not understanding the rules on how to interact with each other. For example, I see a lot of cyclists riding too far out in to the road, riding two abreast when there is not really a shoulder, not signaling properly or rolling through stop signs. And on the other side I see a lot of cars passing cars while cyclists are present or turning in front of cyclists. I am an avid cyclist, and I think I probably get angrier than the average person when I see a cyclist breaking the rules cause I am thinking to myself "you are making the rest of us look bad."

kiliantics 8y ago
In most places, cyclists are actually entitled to the full lane and are allowed to cycle two abreast.
- peterlk 8y ago
  Additionally, it is often safer to assert space on the road as a cyclist in order minimize the probability of being clipped by a car passing too closely.
- dr_orpheus 8y ago
  In Colorado, most of the laws are written in a way that basically says you may ride that way as long as it doesn't impede the flow of traffic [1]. And if you are being overtaken by a car you are supposed to move as far to the shoulder as possible. [1] https://www.codot.gov/programs/bikeped/information-for-bicyclists/bike-ped-manual/2008-10-official-bicycling-laws.pdf https://www.codot.gov/programs/bikeped/information-for-bicyc...

SrslyJosh 8y ago

Gee, what a surprise. Also, I have some amazing news for you about "ironic" racism...

mynegation 8y ago

As a driver, a cyclist, and a pedestrian I thought about it a lot. I think it boils down to an interdependent combination of culture, infrastructure, and rules of the road and their enforcement. First, it really helps if cycling infrastructure is separated from car and pedestrian infrastructure as much as possible. The more separation, the better. In Ottawa, for example, there are several dedicated cross-city bike trails, but not too many in Toronto, they are far and wide between, and it shows. It is not always possible and in that case I would give bicyclists preferential treatment on dedicated side streets. The bike trails should be immediately visible to anyone, e.g. painted green for the full length. This makes it immediately visible for everyone: turning cars, passengers exiting the vehicle, pedestrians who decided to jaywalk and scanned the space for cars, but not bikes. The road rules should be clear, strict and unambiguous for bikes. I understand that stopping at the STOP sign is inconvenient on a bike (losing momentum and balance, braking and pedaling up is hard), but cyclists should ignore stop sign if and only if there is no one else on the intersection. If there are cars, pedestrians, or other bikes crossing it, cyclists _must_ resort to the stop rule. I do not know how many times I have seen cyclists thinking this does not apply to them.

klank 8y ago

In a past life I did somewhat serious cycling in rural Georgia as training for triathlons. So everything I'm about to say is with the caveat that it's my personal experience in one small slice of America. Myself, and everybody I rode with, had stories of objects being thrown out of windows from passing cars in an attempt to hit you. Mainstay was was bottles but a friend did have a phonebook thrown at them. We laughed about that one...who has a phonebook these days and who keeps it in their car? Had cars stop and try to start fights as well. Consistently though, both while on the bike and in my social interactions with others, there is a close association between cyclists and liberals. The cycling was a visible qualifier but the anger, and not surprisingly, dehumanization, was driven more by their political and social leanings than any truly inherent dislike of cyclists.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

The unfortunate truth is that bicycles do no belong on the road with cars. The car/SUV weights 2000-5000 pounds and can go much faster than a bike. It is also heavily "armored", in that most car collisions do not result in serious injury to the occupants. The bicycle has much lower weight, and lower speed. In addition, the majority of bicycle collisions are going to result in at least some minor injury. The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a significant number of biker deaths.

btrettel 8y ago
> The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a significant number of biker deaths. There's actually quite a bit of opposition to separate infrastructure from cyclists. While the risk of being hit from behind is reduced on separate infrastructure, there has to be intersections at some point, and that's where the danger amplifies. In Austin, I almost never ride on the Guadalupe St. cycletrack because about one third of the time that I do, a driver turns across it without looking at an intersection. There are signs saying to look, but that doesn't seem to stop the problems. Infrastructure can help, but it needs to be designed well, and what I see typically in the US is not designed well.

btrettel 8y ago

Aggressive behavior against cyclists is unfortunately fairly common, but as a daily transportation cyclist I worry more about well-intentioned bad drivers. For example, these are the drivers who turn across the bike lane without checking for on-coming cyclists. It's not that these drivers don't consider cyclists as fully human. They're just bad drivers and probably have similar problems with other drivers. Cyclists are just more vulnerable to them.

ubu7737 8y ago
I had an accident like this. I was hauling ass down a one-way, two-lane street in the bike lane (shoulder). A woman in a sedan pulled in from a side street on the left, crossed into the right lane, then swerved across my lane to make a right turn into a shopping plaza. I had no vector for escape, it was too sudden. I believed I would go through her right rear window and wind up in the car. Instead, the bicycle and I slammed laterally against her car and flew forward at her angle, my sternum striking her passenger-side mirror. As it happened, I thought it would kill me, but the mirror just exploded into a hundred pieces. I landed on the ground with my bike next to her now-stopped vehicle, solar plexus aching but otherwise almost unharmed. She was very apologetic. She said she had many friends who were cyclists, and she was aghast at the idea of hurting any of them. She told me if I was unhurt, and agreed not to request the police, she would happily absorb the damage to her vehicle (it was really badly damaged by my bike scraping over 4 feet of her paint). After I caught my breath and realized I was unharmed, I told her it was a fair cop and we were good. But I will definitely never forget the terror I felt as I slammed into her.
- btrettel 8y ago
  Classic right hook: http://bicyclesafe.com/#righthook http://bicyclesafe.com/#righthook I've had many close calls like that, but fortunately have avoided collision. Drivers saying that they are "really pro-cycling" or whatnot means little to me now. If they were, you'd see it in their actions. That's not to say that mistakes don't happen, but "mistakes" happen so frequently to cyclists that it's hard to conclude anything other than that most drivers don't understand how to drive safely with cyclists on the road. Good intentions are not enough to be "pro-cycling" in my view. For what it's worth, I would have called the police and requested an ambulance and I recommend the same for every bike crash, no matter how minor. (And I would have made it clear that the driver would be paying for all medical costs.) It helps make the police's statistics accurate, and adrenaline may prevent you from seeing how hurt you really are. Best to play it safe. I'd like to underline the importance of keeping the statistics accurate. I've talked to a city traffic engineer about how one intersection was dangerous and they said they weren't going to do anything about it because they received no reports of crashes there. I'm confident that they occur, but they're not reported to the city. Don't let being "nice" prevent safety improvements.

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gavygavs 8y ago

Cyclists They're delaying me seconds at intersections, they're forcing me to spend more time checking that I don't door them, they leave their bikeshares on my sidewalks, and some ((I assume)) are good people.

falcolas 8y ago

And cyclists call people in cars "cagers", and presume they're all out to kill the cyclist. The only difference in the dehumanization is that people in cars can more easily kill people not in cars.

xkcd-sucks 8y ago

Can't we just force everyone to ride motorcycles? That would be a rare compromise that makes both sides happy!

dang 8y ago

Cyclist vs. driver vs. pedestrian threads are always the same, which suggests we should just ban them.