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My thoughts on this are that we drastically need to reduce vehicle (car, suv, etc) safety. As vehicles become safer and safer, drivers feel more confidence, and

My thoughts on this are that we drastically need to reduce vehicle (car, suv, etc) safety. As vehicles become safer and safer, drivers feel more confidence, and make everyone else less safe. For example - many cars now have dipped (low beam) lights on during the daytime. This makes cars more visible, great, but by consequence everyone else becomes less visible. Crush zones in cars are a great way to absorb energy from an impact and save the occupants... unless you're a cyclist or pedestrian on the receiving end. Alternatively we revisit the concept that bicycles and cars are compatible and either put the cyclists with pedestrians (I can already hear the chorus of issues), or build out completely separate cycling infrastructure (at what cost), or make cars 3rd class citizens on the road that are obliged to yield to everything else (maybe except on motorways?).

codingdave 5y ago
I'm curious where you live? Because it seems more and more cities are adding bike lanes and separate bike paths, and cars are already obliged to yield to everything else, at least everywhere I've lived in the USA.
- philshem 5y ago
  Historically, bike lanes were added to move the bikes off the road in order to keep the car traffic flowing. They have had nothing to do with cyclist or pedestrian safety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cycling_infrastructure#Early_20th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cycling_infrastruct... https://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6121129/bike-lanes-traffic-new-york https://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6121129/bike-lanes-traffic-new-... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-05/when-adding-bike-lanes-actually-reduces-traffic-delays https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-05/when-addi... Edit: added Wikipedia link
  - codingdave 5y ago
    Hm. The Vox article that you posted starts with: "The main point of building protected lanes was to make biking in the city safer." The Bloomberg article is talking about the same data, where the flow was found as an added benefit, not the point of the infrastructure work. Your Wikipedia article states that the original designs that were driven by the auto industry were nixed and replaced with safety-driven designs which are still in place today.
ranko 5y ago
There's the (controversial) concept of "Risk Compensation", which covers some of the same ground; when we feel safer driving (eg, when we start wearing a seatbelt), we unconsciously compensate by driving with slightly less care. There are two problems with this: the risk is often transferred to other people, and the magnitude of the compensation is not guaranteed to be the same. The Netherlands is a great example of reworking the streets to make them better (see for example: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic... and https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/how-the-dutch-got-their-cycling-infrastructure/ https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/how-the-dutch-...). There was a large and well-organised campaign starting in the 1970s.
- jb1991 5y ago
  Still lots of problems... Netherlands is second worst in Europe for bike fatalities: https://www.iamexpat.nl/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/netherlands-second-place-cyclist-deaths-europe https://www.iamexpat.nl/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/netherlands...
  - Xylakant 5y ago
    The article you quote contradicts your assertion: > Despite this, the Netherlands is defended in the report. As cycling is a lot more common in the Netherlands compared to other countries, it stands to reason that more cycling fatalities occur. According to the report, the Netherlands is one of the safest places to cycle, with extensive cycling infrastructure networks.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
noobermin 5y ago
I'd choose the separate infrastructure. We already spend billions on highways every year (often new highways which will end up being liabilities down the road as opposed to maintenance) we can spend a little on better infra. I'd rather not treat the situation as zero sum and basically wish more drivers and car riders die in larger numbers. Again the situation isn't zero sum, we can save both car rider lives and bike rider and pedestrian lives.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  In terms of space requirements, the situation is zero-sum in many places (or pretty close to it). The buildings in a city (or other established area) are a set distance apart. What’s the split of what’s between them is what you’re deciding on and that often involves non-monetary tradeoffs.
noahtallen 5y ago
I don’t really follow a lot of your points. Why are making cars visible making other things less visible? If everything is just a bland surface, and the eye can more easily make out a car, that doesn’t mean that pedestrians blend into their backgrounds any more or less noticeable than they were before. How are crush zones related? If it was just the surface of a less-crushable area, isn’t that just the same or worse for people getting hit? I mean, your overall point is right. Cars are mostly not compatible with pedestrians and small vehicles like bikes and scooters. There does need to be more separation between these modes. One example is flashing yield signs for pedestrian crossings. This separates pedestrians from traffic and makes them more noticeable. Separate-ish bike lanes are getting more common too. I think making certain streets car-free is a good idea in dense areas too. Another note is that (IIRC), cars are already required to yield to pedestrians and bikes in many areas. But when it comes to most roads outside of dense areas, cars aren’t going anywhere because cars are the mode of transportation which makes most sense when things are spread out and there aren’t a lot of people.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I’m old enough to remember when only motorcycles commonly had headlights on during the day. They were quite a bit more noticeable then than today as a result. Same with only cop cars having third (or third and forth) brake lights. You paid attention and noticed them.
ramblerman 5y ago
What if the risk was a manslaughter charge? Of course not in all cases, but if we had better ways of showing you were on your phone and cruising at 50 in a neighborhood.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  That’s what the risk is today, is it not?
trhway 5y ago
Your post is typical example of self-righteous and egotistical attitude of cyclists. Making cars less safe would make other people suffer more, and riding with pedestrians would endanger the pedestrians. How can one even suggest to explicitly increase danger that way for others in order to decrease danger for themselves?. Instead, I'd suggest the cyclists look at themselves. In my experience (Bay Area, mostly PA/MV/Sunnyvale) cyclists are less educated in traffic rules, less respectful of those rules and less polite than any other traffic participants - from riding wrong side of the road and riding on sidewalks to riding while reading smartphone to flying over STOPs to angrily banging on my car for taking over the bike lane before right turn as rules dictate (yep, hard to believe, yet it is true - i'm standing waiting for cross traffic to pass, and that cyclist instead of waiting behind me squeezes between me and the sidewalk while several times angrily banging on my car's roof while making the face - the poor moron had obviously no idea about the traffic rules, and that that specific rule is precisely for his own safety).
unishark 5y ago
I've been in places where bicycles are required to be on the sidewalk (shoulder really doubles as sidewalk) and hate it both as a pedestrian and as a biker. Also the website mixes relative and absolute stats. Car fatalities at "all time lows", relative to other years where tens of thousands die in cars. While a vastly-smaller biker-death stat is compared to the other years of vastly-smaller stats. Need to compare in terms of deaths per mile traveled or something. We probably don't want to make a change that leads to ten thousand more driving fatalities in hopes it will help a few hundred bikers.
screye 5y ago
There is a great thread about this on twitter [1] SUVs/Trucks have longer blind spots. They cause significantly worse accident outcomes due to hitting the upper body and sending the person under the car, instead of over. I might be stereotyping, but I have found big cars to be particularly popular among women and mothers, many of whom have even larger blind spots due to be shorter/ the car seat not going up high enough. > “We really feel we can see what’s in front of us, and if you tell somebody they can’t see eight feet in front of their vehicle, they think you’re crazy,” said Amber Rollins, who maintains the national injury and fatality database for KidsAndCars. “Unfortunately, not a day goes by that we don’t add a child to our database.” > That database shows each year at least 3,000 children are injured and an average of nearly 60 kids are killed in frontover accidents in the United States. KidsAndCars tracked 575 frontover deaths over the past 10 years, compared to 304 deaths in the prior decade– an increase of 89 percent. Small crossovers are particularly egregious because they are often just raised up hatchbacks with similar sized interiors and worse driving, worse visibility, and worse safety for everyone but the car sitting highest. I have similar but less valid complaint about SUVs when wagons have existed for time immemorial, with wagons driving better and having fewer blind spots. On a similar note, horsepower has constantly gone up with zero improvement (or even decrease) in the quality of drivers or changes to speed limits. Why do cars need 400+ Horsepower when the buyer explicitly claims to be buying these SUVs for comfort over drivability.[2] [1] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1396939038456750089.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1396939038456750089.html [2] https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2021-01/trends2020-highlight4.png https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2021-01/trends202...

codingdave 5y ago

I'm curious where you live? Because it seems more and more cities are adding bike lanes and separate bike paths, and cars are already obliged to yield to everything else, at least everywhere I've lived in the USA.

philshem 5y ago
Historically, bike lanes were added to move the bikes off the road in order to keep the car traffic flowing. They have had nothing to do with cyclist or pedestrian safety. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cycling_infrastructure#Early_20th_century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cycling_infrastruct... https://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6121129/bike-lanes-traffic-new-york https://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6121129/bike-lanes-traffic-new-... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-05/when-adding-bike-lanes-actually-reduces-traffic-delays https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-05/when-addi... Edit: added Wikipedia link
- codingdave 5y ago
  Hm. The Vox article that you posted starts with: "The main point of building protected lanes was to make biking in the city safer." The Bloomberg article is talking about the same data, where the flow was found as an added benefit, not the point of the infrastructure work. Your Wikipedia article states that the original designs that were driven by the auto industry were nixed and replaced with safety-driven designs which are still in place today.

ranko 5y ago

There's the (controversial) concept of "Risk Compensation", which covers some of the same ground; when we feel safer driving (eg, when we start wearing a seatbelt), we unconsciously compensate by driving with slightly less care. There are two problems with this: the risk is often transferred to other people, and the magnitude of the compensation is not guaranteed to be the same. The Netherlands is a great example of reworking the streets to make them better (see for example: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic... and https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/how-the-dutch-got-their-cycling-infrastructure/ https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/10/20/how-the-dutch-...). There was a large and well-organised campaign starting in the 1970s.

jb1991 5y ago
Still lots of problems... Netherlands is second worst in Europe for bike fatalities: https://www.iamexpat.nl/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/netherlands-second-place-cyclist-deaths-europe https://www.iamexpat.nl/lifestyle/lifestyle-news/netherlands...
- Xylakant 5y ago
  The article you quote contradicts your assertion: > Despite this, the Netherlands is defended in the report. As cycling is a lot more common in the Netherlands compared to other countries, it stands to reason that more cycling fatalities occur. According to the report, the Netherlands is one of the safest places to cycle, with extensive cycling infrastructure networks.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

noobermin 5y ago

I'd choose the separate infrastructure. We already spend billions on highways every year (often new highways which will end up being liabilities down the road as opposed to maintenance) we can spend a little on better infra. I'd rather not treat the situation as zero sum and basically wish more drivers and car riders die in larger numbers. Again the situation isn't zero sum, we can save both car rider lives and bike rider and pedestrian lives.

sokoloff 5y ago
In terms of space requirements, the situation is zero-sum in many places (or pretty close to it). The buildings in a city (or other established area) are a set distance apart. What’s the split of what’s between them is what you’re deciding on and that often involves non-monetary tradeoffs.

noahtallen 5y ago

I don’t really follow a lot of your points. Why are making cars visible making other things less visible? If everything is just a bland surface, and the eye can more easily make out a car, that doesn’t mean that pedestrians blend into their backgrounds any more or less noticeable than they were before. How are crush zones related? If it was just the surface of a less-crushable area, isn’t that just the same or worse for people getting hit? I mean, your overall point is right. Cars are mostly not compatible with pedestrians and small vehicles like bikes and scooters. There does need to be more separation between these modes. One example is flashing yield signs for pedestrian crossings. This separates pedestrians from traffic and makes them more noticeable. Separate-ish bike lanes are getting more common too. I think making certain streets car-free is a good idea in dense areas too. Another note is that (IIRC), cars are already required to yield to pedestrians and bikes in many areas. But when it comes to most roads outside of dense areas, cars aren’t going anywhere because cars are the mode of transportation which makes most sense when things are spread out and there aren’t a lot of people.

sokoloff 5y ago
I’m old enough to remember when only motorcycles commonly had headlights on during the day. They were quite a bit more noticeable then than today as a result. Same with only cop cars having third (or third and forth) brake lights. You paid attention and noticed them.

ramblerman 5y ago

What if the risk was a manslaughter charge? Of course not in all cases, but if we had better ways of showing you were on your phone and cruising at 50 in a neighborhood.

sokoloff 5y ago
That’s what the risk is today, is it not?

trhway 5y ago

Your post is typical example of self-righteous and egotistical attitude of cyclists. Making cars less safe would make other people suffer more, and riding with pedestrians would endanger the pedestrians. How can one even suggest to explicitly increase danger that way for others in order to decrease danger for themselves?. Instead, I'd suggest the cyclists look at themselves. In my experience (Bay Area, mostly PA/MV/Sunnyvale) cyclists are less educated in traffic rules, less respectful of those rules and less polite than any other traffic participants - from riding wrong side of the road and riding on sidewalks to riding while reading smartphone to flying over STOPs to angrily banging on my car for taking over the bike lane before right turn as rules dictate (yep, hard to believe, yet it is true - i'm standing waiting for cross traffic to pass, and that cyclist instead of waiting behind me squeezes between me and the sidewalk while several times angrily banging on my car's roof while making the face - the poor moron had obviously no idea about the traffic rules, and that that specific rule is precisely for his own safety).

unishark 5y ago

I've been in places where bicycles are required to be on the sidewalk (shoulder really doubles as sidewalk) and hate it both as a pedestrian and as a biker. Also the website mixes relative and absolute stats. Car fatalities at "all time lows", relative to other years where tens of thousands die in cars. While a vastly-smaller biker-death stat is compared to the other years of vastly-smaller stats. Need to compare in terms of deaths per mile traveled or something. We probably don't want to make a change that leads to ten thousand more driving fatalities in hopes it will help a few hundred bikers.

screye 5y ago

There is a great thread about this on twitter [1] SUVs/Trucks have longer blind spots. They cause significantly worse accident outcomes due to hitting the upper body and sending the person under the car, instead of over. I might be stereotyping, but I have found big cars to be particularly popular among women and mothers, many of whom have even larger blind spots due to be shorter/ the car seat not going up high enough. > “We really feel we can see what’s in front of us, and if you tell somebody they can’t see eight feet in front of their vehicle, they think you’re crazy,” said Amber Rollins, who maintains the national injury and fatality database for KidsAndCars. “Unfortunately, not a day goes by that we don’t add a child to our database.” > That database shows each year at least 3,000 children are injured and an average of nearly 60 kids are killed in frontover accidents in the United States. KidsAndCars tracked 575 frontover deaths over the past 10 years, compared to 304 deaths in the prior decade– an increase of 89 percent. Small crossovers are particularly egregious because they are often just raised up hatchbacks with similar sized interiors and worse driving, worse visibility, and worse safety for everyone but the car sitting highest. I have similar but less valid complaint about SUVs when wagons have existed for time immemorial, with wagons driving better and having fewer blind spots. On a similar note, horsepower has constantly gone up with zero improvement (or even decrease) in the quality of drivers or changes to speed limits. Why do cars need 400+ Horsepower when the buyer explicitly claims to be buying these SUVs for comfort over drivability.[2] [1] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1396939038456750089.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1396939038456750089.html [2] https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2021-01/trends2020-highlight4.png https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2021-01/trends202...