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When it comes to slowing down or stopping, getting car drivers to slow down or stop is nothing compared to trying to get bicycles to so do. The vast majority o

When it comes to slowing down or stopping, getting car drivers to slow down or stop is nothing compared to trying to get bicycles to so do. The vast majority of cars will stop at an intersection. The vast majority of bicyclists will not. Ask a car to respect a very slow limit in a school zone? No problem. For fear of tickets most every car will slow down. But ask a bicyclist to respect a school zone or stop at a pedestrian crossing and they will stare in bewilderment. A speed limit? For a bicycle? (As a kid I was ticketed while on rollerblades for speeding in a 15kph zone. In many jurisdictions the rules apply to everyone.)

chitowneats 5y ago
Cars weigh many tons and take up an entire lane. Bicycles do not. Many thousands of deaths per year caused by automobiles in the US. For bicycles, it's vanishingly small. I've never met a cyclist that doesn't slow, look both ways, etc, at city intersections. This demand that we come to a complete stop every 30 seconds while navigating dangerous city roads could only come from those who do not use this vastly safer and greener form of transportation.
- sandworm101 5y ago
  > Cars weigh many tons and take up an entire lane. Bicycles do not. Nor does my motorcycle, which is narrower than many of the bicycle+cart/recumbent bike combinations I see these days. And my car weighs far less than "many tons", less than two in fact. > This demand that we come to a complete stop every 30 seconds Maybe for pushbikes. But "bicycle" now includes all the electric bikes that, imho, are getting close to motorcycles in terms of speed (ie they can maintain the speed limit). Stopping every thirty seconds is just the price of using the road. If you don't want to stop then lobby for and use separate bicycle paths away from the street.
  - chitowneats 5y ago
    You've misunderstood my position. I'm not talking about vehicles with motors. Your original comment refers to "bicycles".
    - sandworm101 5y ago
      Oh, I understand, but pushbikes are now just a subset. I was passed this morning in a school zone by a fat-tire electric "bicycle" doing at least 45 in a 30kph zone (he also blew through a crosswalk with kids in it). The fact that some people choose to move their bikes with human muscle, and others use a mix of muscle and motor, is beside the point. They are all just unregulated bicycles.
      - asoneth 5y ago
        <strike>It is misleading to refer to anything going 45mph as a "bicycle" even with quotes. It's an unlicensed motorcycle. E-bikes top out at 28mph or less in most US states. In many other countries the limit is ~15mph. Many mopeds can't even hit 45mph. But to your anecdote, it's not altogether surprising that someone driving an illegal motorcycle is also willing to break traffic laws.</strike> My mistake, I misread 45 as 45mph. I agree that anyone riding like you describe is breaking the law and should be ticketed/fined. (Personally I would not consider a fat bike that can be throttled up to 28mph to be a "bicycle" in any meaningful sense of the word, but I acknowledge that is a semantic battle that has already been lost.)
        sandworm101 5y ago
        Please read more carefully. 28mph equals 45kph. So the bike I mentioned was very likely doing 28mph, his max speed, roughly 50% over the posted limit and well within pushbike territory in hilly terrain. (School zone are generally 30kph.)
        asoneth 5y ago
        My mistake, I will correct. (Though I am curious where you are that has a 28mph ebike limit but that uses kph measurements.)
        iso1631 5y ago
        In the UK an e-bike should only provide power when traveling at 20mph/32km or below. Above that it's classed as a moped and needs a helmet, license, etc.
- zepto 5y ago
  > I've never met a cyclist that doesn't slow, look both ways, etc, at city intersections. Just 2 days ago I had to swerve to avoid a cyclist who came into an intersection without slowing down against a traffic light, with a phone held to her ear with one hand, and only one hand on the handlebars.
acdha 5y ago
This is a very selective view, and it's inaccurate in several ways. It's flat out ignorance to claim that car drivers follow the speed limit, reliably stop at intersections or stop lights, etc. Where that's true, it's only to the extent that there's heavy enforcement — here in Washington DC, I rarely make it a day without seeing someone in a car running a stop sign or going the wrong way down a one-way street (in front of a playground, too), and slowing for a school zone means going from twice the limit to rolling the stop sign at 10mph while using a phone. That brings me to the second flaw: you have to compare the risks to others — that is, after all, why we care in the first place. A bicyclist, even on an e-bike, is much, much, much safer than someone driving a car for many reasons: 1. they're accelerating slower to a lower maximum speed 2. they're exceedingly unlikely to be distracted by a phone or entertainment system 3. they have far less kinetic energy because the combined weight is a tiny fraction of a car or especially the massive SUVs and trucks which have become endemic 4. they need far less distance to stop 5. they aren't insulated from their surroundings with metal and glass (no blind spots) and not having engine noise or a sound system means they can hear other people, too 6. they have better steering 7. they need need far less space, which means that it's far more likely that they can avoid a collision, especially combined with the previous points making them more likely to notice in time to react. Put all of that together and you are left comparing people driving cars, who kill the equivalent of a medium-sized city and severely injure an order of magnitude more people every year, to bicyclists causing a tiny fraction of those injuries. While it certainly makes sense to build infrastructure which improves the safety, it's nonsensical to ignore the cause of almost all of the roadway deaths
- sandworm101 5y ago
  Then lobby to have the laws changed so that bicycles don't have to obey the same rules. At the moment, rules like speed limits and stop signs apply to all conveyances on the road, even horse-drawn carriages. The fact that bicycles are better for safety/cities/traffic/environment is not part of the law. Maybe it should be, maybe they should be given special privileges, but that just isn't the way the law is written today.
  - acdha 5y ago
asoneth 5y ago
> Ask a car to respect a very slow limit in a school zone? No problem. For fear of tickets most every car will slow down. That does not match my experience. Drivers in my area go 5, 10, and even 15mph over the legal limit with seemingly no repercussions[1], even in school zones. And yet excess speed is a contributing factor in many of the road deaths here. (Whereas drivers or cyclists "rolling through" stop signs at ~4mph when no one is waiting don't seem to be nearly as deadly so I'm less concerned about that.) We are in agreement that there is a culture of lawlessness on many roads and that better traffic enforcement is sorely needed. But personally I would begin by enforcing those laws that will save the most lives. [1] The exception being US military bases. An MP can and will pull you over for going 1mph over the limit on a downhill. And your CO may be informed. I've never seen such well-behaved drivers! It makes military bases one of the safest places to drive/bike/run/walk.
- acdha 5y ago
  > (Whereas drivers or cyclists "rolling through" stop signs at ~4mph when no one is waiting don't seem to be nearly as deadly so I'm less concerned about that.) I have a 4 year old, so that's my metric as well: how often do I have to help him not get seriously injured? The answer is multiple times a day with cars and maybe once in his lifetime for everything else.
carapace 5y ago
The most egregious stunt I've seen a bicyclist pull took place at Ocean Ave & Victoria St, San Francisco: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ocean+Ave+%26+Victoria+St/@37.7260644,-122.4649679,19z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x808f7dc9486458b5:0xf298534dc5eec780!8m2!3d37.7260633!4d-122.4644207?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ocean+Ave+%26+Victoria+St/... There was a Muni Metro light rail train (eastbound) stopped at the red light with passengers disembarking onto the narrow island, there are no cars in the lane between the island and the sidewalk so folks are crossing the street after leaving the bus. Young (20's) guy on his bike comes zooming down the hill (from the West), sails through the people crossing the street and through the red light (blind, because of the train and the slope of Victoria st.) He's got both hands off the handlebars, holding his phone, texting or whatever, his eyes are on the phone not on the road, he's got headphones in, and the icing on the disaster cake: no helmet. "Life's pretty cheap with that sort."
analog31 5y ago
What I've observed is that everybody in the US -- cars, bikes, pedestrians -- is driven by opportunity and convenience. Cars drive above the speed limit while texting. Bikes and cars roll through stop signs. Bikes take short-cuts that avoid obstacles and intersections. And so forth. The law is the law, but is not an immovable boundary condition. People will factor the likelihood of enforcement or injury into their habits. Enforcement (in my locale) follows patterns of crashes or complaints. Parts of town where lawless cyclists cause actual problems will find themselves on the receiving end of an enforcement "sting."
NoSorryCannot 5y ago
I don't generally think it's a good idea to enforce that every road user have to follow rules that were designed for cars. Someone on a bike (or skates or...) is slower and has better use of their hearing and is less deadly to others, but has to work harder to get going again from a dead stop. Cyclists and cars have different "superpowers", like how bikes can share a footpath with pedestrians and cars get to go 80mph down a freeway. It's reasonable.

chitowneats 5y ago

Cars weigh many tons and take up an entire lane. Bicycles do not. Many thousands of deaths per year caused by automobiles in the US. For bicycles, it's vanishingly small. I've never met a cyclist that doesn't slow, look both ways, etc, at city intersections. This demand that we come to a complete stop every 30 seconds while navigating dangerous city roads could only come from those who do not use this vastly safer and greener form of transportation.

sandworm101 5y ago
> Cars weigh many tons and take up an entire lane. Bicycles do not. Nor does my motorcycle, which is narrower than many of the bicycle+cart/recumbent bike combinations I see these days. And my car weighs far less than "many tons", less than two in fact. > This demand that we come to a complete stop every 30 seconds Maybe for pushbikes. But "bicycle" now includes all the electric bikes that, imho, are getting close to motorcycles in terms of speed (ie they can maintain the speed limit). Stopping every thirty seconds is just the price of using the road. If you don't want to stop then lobby for and use separate bicycle paths away from the street.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  You've misunderstood my position. I'm not talking about vehicles with motors. Your original comment refers to "bicycles".
  - sandworm101 5y ago
    Oh, I understand, but pushbikes are now just a subset. I was passed this morning in a school zone by a fat-tire electric "bicycle" doing at least 45 in a 30kph zone (he also blew through a crosswalk with kids in it). The fact that some people choose to move their bikes with human muscle, and others use a mix of muscle and motor, is beside the point. They are all just unregulated bicycles.
    - asoneth 5y ago
      <strike>It is misleading to refer to anything going 45mph as a "bicycle" even with quotes. It's an unlicensed motorcycle. E-bikes top out at 28mph or less in most US states. In many other countries the limit is ~15mph. Many mopeds can't even hit 45mph. But to your anecdote, it's not altogether surprising that someone driving an illegal motorcycle is also willing to break traffic laws.</strike> My mistake, I misread 45 as 45mph. I agree that anyone riding like you describe is breaking the law and should be ticketed/fined. (Personally I would not consider a fat bike that can be throttled up to 28mph to be a "bicycle" in any meaningful sense of the word, but I acknowledge that is a semantic battle that has already been lost.)
      - sandworm101 5y ago
        Please read more carefully. 28mph equals 45kph. So the bike I mentioned was very likely doing 28mph, his max speed, roughly 50% over the posted limit and well within pushbike territory in hilly terrain. (School zone are generally 30kph.)
        asoneth 5y ago
        My mistake, I will correct. (Though I am curious where you are that has a 28mph ebike limit but that uses kph measurements.)
      - iso1631 5y ago
        In the UK an e-bike should only provide power when traveling at 20mph/32km or below. Above that it's classed as a moped and needs a helmet, license, etc.
zepto 5y ago
> I've never met a cyclist that doesn't slow, look both ways, etc, at city intersections. Just 2 days ago I had to swerve to avoid a cyclist who came into an intersection without slowing down against a traffic light, with a phone held to her ear with one hand, and only one hand on the handlebars.

acdha 5y ago

This is a very selective view, and it's inaccurate in several ways. It's flat out ignorance to claim that car drivers follow the speed limit, reliably stop at intersections or stop lights, etc. Where that's true, it's only to the extent that there's heavy enforcement — here in Washington DC, I rarely make it a day without seeing someone in a car running a stop sign or going the wrong way down a one-way street (in front of a playground, too), and slowing for a school zone means going from twice the limit to rolling the stop sign at 10mph while using a phone. That brings me to the second flaw: you have to compare the risks to others — that is, after all, why we care in the first place. A bicyclist, even on an e-bike, is much, much, much safer than someone driving a car for many reasons: 1. they're accelerating slower to a lower maximum speed 2. they're exceedingly unlikely to be distracted by a phone or entertainment system 3. they have far less kinetic energy because the combined weight is a tiny fraction of a car or especially the massive SUVs and trucks which have become endemic 4. they need far less distance to stop 5. they aren't insulated from their surroundings with metal and glass (no blind spots) and not having engine noise or a sound system means they can hear other people, too 6. they have better steering 7. they need need far less space, which means that it's far more likely that they can avoid a collision, especially combined with the previous points making them more likely to notice in time to react. Put all of that together and you are left comparing people driving cars, who kill the equivalent of a medium-sized city and severely injure an order of magnitude more people every year, to bicyclists causing a tiny fraction of those injuries. While it certainly makes sense to build infrastructure which improves the safety, it's nonsensical to ignore the cause of almost all of the roadway deaths

sandworm101 5y ago
Then lobby to have the laws changed so that bicycles don't have to obey the same rules. At the moment, rules like speed limits and stop signs apply to all conveyances on the road, even horse-drawn carriages. The fact that bicycles are better for safety/cities/traffic/environment is not part of the law. Maybe it should be, maybe they should be given special privileges, but that just isn't the way the law is written today.
- acdha 5y ago

asoneth 5y ago

> Ask a car to respect a very slow limit in a school zone? No problem. For fear of tickets most every car will slow down. That does not match my experience. Drivers in my area go 5, 10, and even 15mph over the legal limit with seemingly no repercussions[1], even in school zones. And yet excess speed is a contributing factor in many of the road deaths here. (Whereas drivers or cyclists "rolling through" stop signs at ~4mph when no one is waiting don't seem to be nearly as deadly so I'm less concerned about that.) We are in agreement that there is a culture of lawlessness on many roads and that better traffic enforcement is sorely needed. But personally I would begin by enforcing those laws that will save the most lives. [1] The exception being US military bases. An MP can and will pull you over for going 1mph over the limit on a downhill. And your CO may be informed. I've never seen such well-behaved drivers! It makes military bases one of the safest places to drive/bike/run/walk.

acdha 5y ago
> (Whereas drivers or cyclists "rolling through" stop signs at ~4mph when no one is waiting don't seem to be nearly as deadly so I'm less concerned about that.) I have a 4 year old, so that's my metric as well: how often do I have to help him not get seriously injured? The answer is multiple times a day with cars and maybe once in his lifetime for everything else.

carapace 5y ago

The most egregious stunt I've seen a bicyclist pull took place at Ocean Ave & Victoria St, San Francisco: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ocean+Ave+%26+Victoria+St/@37.7260644,-122.4649679,19z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x808f7dc9486458b5:0xf298534dc5eec780!8m2!3d37.7260633!4d-122.4644207?hl=en https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ocean+Ave+%26+Victoria+St/... There was a Muni Metro light rail train (eastbound) stopped at the red light with passengers disembarking onto the narrow island, there are no cars in the lane between the island and the sidewalk so folks are crossing the street after leaving the bus. Young (20's) guy on his bike comes zooming down the hill (from the West), sails through the people crossing the street and through the red light (blind, because of the train and the slope of Victoria st.) He's got both hands off the handlebars, holding his phone, texting or whatever, his eyes are on the phone not on the road, he's got headphones in, and the icing on the disaster cake: no helmet. "Life's pretty cheap with that sort."

analog31 5y ago

What I've observed is that everybody in the US -- cars, bikes, pedestrians -- is driven by opportunity and convenience. Cars drive above the speed limit while texting. Bikes and cars roll through stop signs. Bikes take short-cuts that avoid obstacles and intersections. And so forth. The law is the law, but is not an immovable boundary condition. People will factor the likelihood of enforcement or injury into their habits. Enforcement (in my locale) follows patterns of crashes or complaints. Parts of town where lawless cyclists cause actual problems will find themselves on the receiving end of an enforcement "sting."

NoSorryCannot 5y ago

I don't generally think it's a good idea to enforce that every road user have to follow rules that were designed for cars. Someone on a bike (or skates or...) is slower and has better use of their hearing and is less deadly to others, but has to work harder to get going again from a dead stop. Cyclists and cars have different "superpowers", like how bikes can share a footpath with pedestrians and cars get to go 80mph down a freeway. It's reasonable.