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I was just talking about this exact same thing with a friend last night. We were passing a cement truck at an intersection near my house, when she said "be car

I was just talking about this exact same thing with a friend last night. We were passing a cement truck at an intersection near my house, when she said "be careful, this corner is dangerous". When I inquired as to what she meant, she explained that an acquaintance of hers was mowed down by a cement truck a few years earlier while riding his bike. The truck didn't see him. We really do need to separate car and bike traffic. It is accepted that pedestrians cannot intermingle with cars on the road, which is why we have sidewalks. Why is it so common to have a 50 pound bicycle compete for road space with aggressively driven 5,000 pound vehicles?

alrs 6y ago
Building a bicycle infrastructure parallel and separate from the existing transportation infrastructure is absolutely infeasible. This boils down to "bicycles should not be allowed on the road." If that's your argument, make it.
- avianlyric 6y ago
  > Building a bicycle infrastructure parallel and separate from the existing transportation infrastructure is absolutely infeasible. This just isn’t true, and countries like the Netherlands demonstrate that. And it doesn’t boil down to “bicycles should not be allowed on the road”. I think the argument GP is making is “car shouldn’t be allowed in the same spaces as bikes”. Just like we don’t allow cars on pavements.
  - alrs 6y ago
    The Netherlands does not have a 1:1 parallel infrastructure that completely separates bicycles from cars. If a car isn't allowed where a bicycle is, then a bicycle isn't allowed on the road.
    - avianlyric 6y ago
      > If a car isn't allowed where a bicycle is, then a bicycle isn't allowed on the road. This again is not a given. Cars aren’t allowed where pedestrians reside. But (in the EU a least) pedestrians are allowed on roads, and have priority. You should stop considering these relationships as purely exclusive, and consider them as a hierarchy. Pedestrians -> Bike -> Car. Each can use the space of the lower mode of transport but not the higher. In many European countries this also dictates default liability in accidents. The reason for this is quite simple, pedestrians are more exposed than cyclists, cyclists are more exposed than drivers. So each class of transport should yield to more vulnerable forms of transport. Rather than attempting to claim that one form of superior to another, we should be aiming to build systems that encourage the cheapest and most efficient forms or transport first, and then find ways to allow more expensive and less efficient forms of transport to co-exist with them.

alrs 6y ago

Building a bicycle infrastructure parallel and separate from the existing transportation infrastructure is absolutely infeasible. This boils down to "bicycles should not be allowed on the road." If that's your argument, make it.

avianlyric 6y ago
> Building a bicycle infrastructure parallel and separate from the existing transportation infrastructure is absolutely infeasible. This just isn’t true, and countries like the Netherlands demonstrate that. And it doesn’t boil down to “bicycles should not be allowed on the road”. I think the argument GP is making is “car shouldn’t be allowed in the same spaces as bikes”. Just like we don’t allow cars on pavements.
- alrs 6y ago
  The Netherlands does not have a 1:1 parallel infrastructure that completely separates bicycles from cars. If a car isn't allowed where a bicycle is, then a bicycle isn't allowed on the road.
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    > If a car isn't allowed where a bicycle is, then a bicycle isn't allowed on the road. This again is not a given. Cars aren’t allowed where pedestrians reside. But (in the EU a least) pedestrians are allowed on roads, and have priority. You should stop considering these relationships as purely exclusive, and consider them as a hierarchy. Pedestrians -> Bike -> Car. Each can use the space of the lower mode of transport but not the higher. In many European countries this also dictates default liability in accidents. The reason for this is quite simple, pedestrians are more exposed than cyclists, cyclists are more exposed than drivers. So each class of transport should yield to more vulnerable forms of transport. Rather than attempting to claim that one form of superior to another, we should be aiming to build systems that encourage the cheapest and most efficient forms or transport first, and then find ways to allow more expensive and less efficient forms of transport to co-exist with them.