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> “I don’t think a lot of Americans are aware . . . how far behind we are on bicycle and pedestrian safety,” Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. Secretary of Transportati

> “I don’t think a lot of Americans are aware . . . how far behind we are on bicycle and pedestrian safety,” Pete Buttigieg, the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, said. Republicans warned, “Democrats are coming for your cars.” No one is coming for your cars. I'm actually surprised that there isn't more direct action against overly aggressive drivers, "rolling coal", and the like, given how passionate cyclists often are about being cyclists. It's amazing how so many of them seem to take gratuitous threats to life and limb in stride. Perhaps that's survivorship bias, inasmuch as the people who don't have this reaction stop cycling instead (at least on roads).

tjr225 4y ago
Cyclists in the US are mostly well aware of how hated we are for even just basically following the law and somehow surviving with motorists who probably shouldn’t be allowed to drive.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  You unfairly blame motorists. They are pissed off because bikes don't belong on roads, but politicians make them ride there. They'd be angry if you drove the same speed in a car, too. Blame the politicians for refusing to fund separate infrastructure so bikes, cars, and pedestrians don't have to share the same piece of asphalt. As a car driver I don't want bikes in the lane with me. And as a pedestrian I don't want them on the sidewalk with me. We know the solution but refuse to implement it.
  - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
    They do belong on roads. Paved roads were created for bicycles. The law classifies them as road vehicles. You are required to know the vehicle code in order to qualify for a drivers license. Right of way precedence is one of them. Being "pissed off" because another citizen is exercising their rights within the law isn't an excuse to harm them without repercussions.
    - User23 4y ago
      Most jurisdictions have not only a maximum speed, but also a minimum speed. Impeding the flow of traffic is an infraction. Literally nobody cares when cyclists stay on the right and don’t obstruct the flow of traffic.
      - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
        Most states don't have a minimum speed limit or only have it on limited access highways. There will be a classification for slow moving vehicles with additional stipulations. Most states also have an AFRAP rule for being as far to the right as practicable. The key point is that practicability may require being anywhere in the lane depending on circumstances. If you have the right of way people without the right of way have to yield and drive safely. Driving behind a bicyclist in the lane to avoid debris is no different that driving behind a combine taking up 75% of the entire road.
        rootusrootus 4y ago
        I can't remember the last time I've witnessed a motorist abusing a bicyclist. I'm sure it happens, because of course there are exceptions. By and large most people seem to share the road just fine. The one time I thought I might see some actual mayhem was after I waited in a long line of cars on a relatively narrow uphill street that were waiting for an opportunity to safely pass a slow moving bike. It went pretty well. But about halfway up that hill we got stopped at a light, and that bicyclist rode right up the line of cars to the front, and made everyone pass him again. LOL. Nobody actually did anything aggressive, but you could feel the unhappiness there. He was a dick. Most riders are not, just like most motorists are not.
        KennyBlanken 4y ago
        > I can't remember the last time I've witnessed a motorist abusing a bicyclist. It's easy to not witness something when you're not the subject of it. For example complaints of racism, sexism, etc by the victims in the workplace are often met with claims by white men that they 'rarely see it.'
  - tjr225 4y ago
    No I do not. Motorists in this country are quite literally insane, whether I am sharing the road with them in a bicycle or a car. It’s so bad I can barely even cross the street as a pedestrian- even when I’m clearly with my children!
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      This is very regional, you cannot generalize across a country the size of the United States. In my city motorists stop immediately if you even look like you might want to cross the road. I've even inadvertently caused someone to get a ticket myself because I didn't look before stepping off the curb, and as soon as I did that the crosswalk became mine. I would have just let the car go, he was pretty close, and it would have been unreasonable to force him to jam the brakes and screech to a halt, but by putting my foot in that crosswalk I made it illegal for him not to stop, and the cop 100 feet up the road whipped out and wrote him a ticket for it. Cops around here like to do that.
      - john_the_writer 4y ago
        Agreed.. though didn't catch that they said the US.. Could be the Vatican City. Then saying it is regional is rather silly.
  - joebob42 4y ago
    Agree. I'm a very levelheaded, defensive driver, and I never actually do anything to harm bicyclists, but they make my blood boil every time I get stuck behind them.
    - tjr225 4y ago
      Maybe you aren’t as level headed as you think you are.
  - taeric 4y ago
    Sorta. The motorists do need to grow up and realize they are driving a giant machine that has a ton of responsibility with it. I live in an area with basically no bike lanes. Few street lights. Yet we are fairly well known for being very favorable for cyclists. So it can happen. And make no mistake that there are some folks that hate sharing the road with cyclists. By and large, they act like adults and don't pitch fits.
    - rootusrootus 4y ago
      That works the other way, too. Bicycle riders frequently treat pedestrians just as badly as cars treat them, so I don't see anyone with the high ground here. I don't much care to ride a bike, but I love to walk everywhere, and I have to tell you that getting hit by a bike hurts. I love to see them get their own lane.
      - andrewem 4y ago
        Getting hit by a bike hurts. Getting hit by a car or truck kills. This is the crucial distinction which one must disregard in order to argue such equivalences.
        john_the_writer 4y ago
        Totally.. I don't honestly know one person who's been hit by a bike. Not counting people opening doors without looking.
      - taeric 4y ago
        Certainly there are bad bikers, too. Probably bad joggers. To a large extent, it is the same in all cases. The heavier item has more responsibility to pay attention in mixed use areas. The really dangerous vehicles should be separated and put in dedicated lanes.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - beej71 4y ago
    But it does seem like the motorists who are angry blame the bikes, not the politicians.
wardedVibe 4y ago
"Well there's your problem" and NotJustBikes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm29fd-s7tQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm29fd-s7tQ had a discussion about [John Forester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forester_(cyclist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forester_(cyclist)) and that generation of cycling activists in the US. For whatever reason, they were extremely vocal about having cyclists treated the same as cars; they're the people we have to thank for Sharrows, denoting car lanes as also valid bike lanes. Its unfortunate that the kind of rider we need to enable is precisely the kind who doesn't care enough to advocate on their own behalf.
- seoaeu 4y ago
  That podcast is over two and a half hours long so I didn’t listen to find out exactly what points they make about this, but presumably the strategy was because at the time cyclists not being treated like cars didn’t mean “bike lanes everywhere” but rather “bikes banned on city streets”
  - actionablefiber 4y ago
    It's a good listen; it's been a few months since I heard it at this point, but the long and short of it is that vehicular cycling could be sensible as a compromise step if your starting point is complete, hopeless addiction to the car. Forester, though, thought of it as a set of prescriptions for how cycling should be done, and was influential in advocating to the DOT against dedicated cycling infrastructure.
- et-al 4y ago
  I'm hesitant to blame Forester for the GP's question. Yes, Forester was against bike lanes, but he still championed for equal treatment that would result in the courts actually taking car-bike collisions seriously. The sad fact is most Americans view biking as a "hobby" and not a viable mode of transportation. So bikes don't belong on the road [0]. The politicians who make the laws, the police who enforce them, the judges who would oversee any trials, and the media who reports on this deaths all suffer from this "windshield perspective". They prioritize cars above all. It's only recently with a new generation of urban planners are we finally seeing improvements in infrastructure and policy. [0] - see this comment for a perfect example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31500161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31500161
handol 4y ago
>I'm actually surprised that there isn't more direct action against overly aggressive drivers. What direction action could a cyclist take on a car driver that intentionally buzzed them while passing? I suppose if you happen to catch up to them at a light you could vandalize their car. Make a habit of doing that and you'll wind up the victim of an unfortunate accident that no one will be punished for.
- 0xcde4c3db 4y ago
  I'm sure there are logistical hurdles to this that aren't occurring to me, but I was basically thinking along the lines of posting GoPro videos with visible license plates to an online community of like-minded folks and "allowing nature to take its course", so to speak.
  - heretogetout 4y ago
    Maybe aggrieved riders can track down the employers of the drivers, starting with plates and photos. If violence isn't worth a cancellation, what is?
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago
    It's generally been my experience that online communities of cyclists tend to have fairly high moral standards (for example, every single one I'm in has very strict and explicit rules against sexism, racism, homophobia, etc) and vigilantism isn't really even joked about. People will get plenty upset and outraged, but I've never seen people even joke about harming a driver in an incident, even when they caused substantial injury or even death. Literally all we want is for people to be held legally accountable - in both the criminal and civil sense. That aside, vigilantism is by and large something that only ingroups can "get away" with. When outgroups do them, things generally end very poorly for them. Politicians, press, police, courts, etc would never abide violence by cyclists. I mean, for chrissakes, cyclists are subject to incessant violence by motorists and nobody bats an eye.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    I think maybe the better answer is to give that to the cops. And if you're unhappy with enforcement, elect different politicians. A major reason we have a justice system to begin with is so we don't have vigilantes.
uxp100 4y ago
Yeah, Critical Mass is the one org I’m aware of that does direct action, and it’s moment has kind of faded, for various reasons. But yeah, I don’t really take it in stride, I go home and whine about it, but getting spit on, called a faggot, driven off the road and hit by red light runners is just normal for biking in the US (and it doesn’t vary that much regionally either, when I lived in California people yelled slurs more, but maybe drove a little more reasonably than where I live now) There is not really a natural coalition for this topic. Cycling is kinda seen as a crunchy or vaguely liberal thing, but in local politics the left is pretty strongly against doing anything punitive, for principled reasons. Which ok, no technological enforcement, no stronger license requirements, no more stringent vehicle inspections, I get why, but sorry, funding the bus system does nothing when a large part of the problem is people doing it on purpose. The guy doing 25 over the speed limit in the wrong lane running red lights is doing it for fun, not because his bus is 20 minute headings instead of 15.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
irjustin 4y ago
> No one is coming for your cars. Not by outlawing them like trying to outlaw guns, but by zoning. More walkable cities, public transportation, etc. All good things I believe.
danans 4y ago
> I'm actually surprised that there isn't more direct action against overly aggressive drivers, "rolling coal", and the like, Bicycling is viewed by most Americans as a recreational or exercise activity, not as a legitimate primary means if transportation. When you bike to work on a road, you are perceived of as recreating in front of someone trying to actually get somewhere "important" in a car. Direct action by bicyclists gets perceived through the same lens.

tjr225 4y ago

Cyclists in the US are mostly well aware of how hated we are for even just basically following the law and somehow surviving with motorists who probably shouldn’t be allowed to drive.

rootusrootus 4y ago
You unfairly blame motorists. They are pissed off because bikes don't belong on roads, but politicians make them ride there. They'd be angry if you drove the same speed in a car, too. Blame the politicians for refusing to fund separate infrastructure so bikes, cars, and pedestrians don't have to share the same piece of asphalt. As a car driver I don't want bikes in the lane with me. And as a pedestrian I don't want them on the sidewalk with me. We know the solution but refuse to implement it.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  They do belong on roads. Paved roads were created for bicycles. The law classifies them as road vehicles. You are required to know the vehicle code in order to qualify for a drivers license. Right of way precedence is one of them. Being "pissed off" because another citizen is exercising their rights within the law isn't an excuse to harm them without repercussions.
  - User23 4y ago
    Most jurisdictions have not only a maximum speed, but also a minimum speed. Impeding the flow of traffic is an infraction. Literally nobody cares when cyclists stay on the right and don’t obstruct the flow of traffic.
    - kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
      Most states don't have a minimum speed limit or only have it on limited access highways. There will be a classification for slow moving vehicles with additional stipulations. Most states also have an AFRAP rule for being as far to the right as practicable. The key point is that practicability may require being anywhere in the lane depending on circumstances. If you have the right of way people without the right of way have to yield and drive safely. Driving behind a bicyclist in the lane to avoid debris is no different that driving behind a combine taking up 75% of the entire road.
      - rootusrootus 4y ago
        I can't remember the last time I've witnessed a motorist abusing a bicyclist. I'm sure it happens, because of course there are exceptions. By and large most people seem to share the road just fine. The one time I thought I might see some actual mayhem was after I waited in a long line of cars on a relatively narrow uphill street that were waiting for an opportunity to safely pass a slow moving bike. It went pretty well. But about halfway up that hill we got stopped at a light, and that bicyclist rode right up the line of cars to the front, and made everyone pass him again. LOL. Nobody actually did anything aggressive, but you could feel the unhappiness there. He was a dick. Most riders are not, just like most motorists are not.
        KennyBlanken 4y ago
        > I can't remember the last time I've witnessed a motorist abusing a bicyclist. It's easy to not witness something when you're not the subject of it. For example complaints of racism, sexism, etc by the victims in the workplace are often met with claims by white men that they 'rarely see it.'
- tjr225 4y ago
  No I do not. Motorists in this country are quite literally insane, whether I am sharing the road with them in a bicycle or a car. It’s so bad I can barely even cross the street as a pedestrian- even when I’m clearly with my children!
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    This is very regional, you cannot generalize across a country the size of the United States. In my city motorists stop immediately if you even look like you might want to cross the road. I've even inadvertently caused someone to get a ticket myself because I didn't look before stepping off the curb, and as soon as I did that the crosswalk became mine. I would have just let the car go, he was pretty close, and it would have been unreasonable to force him to jam the brakes and screech to a halt, but by putting my foot in that crosswalk I made it illegal for him not to stop, and the cop 100 feet up the road whipped out and wrote him a ticket for it. Cops around here like to do that.
    - john_the_writer 4y ago
      Agreed.. though didn't catch that they said the US.. Could be the Vatican City. Then saying it is regional is rather silly.
- joebob42 4y ago
  Agree. I'm a very levelheaded, defensive driver, and I never actually do anything to harm bicyclists, but they make my blood boil every time I get stuck behind them.
  - tjr225 4y ago
    Maybe you aren’t as level headed as you think you are.
- taeric 4y ago
  Sorta. The motorists do need to grow up and realize they are driving a giant machine that has a ton of responsibility with it. I live in an area with basically no bike lanes. Few street lights. Yet we are fairly well known for being very favorable for cyclists. So it can happen. And make no mistake that there are some folks that hate sharing the road with cyclists. By and large, they act like adults and don't pitch fits.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    That works the other way, too. Bicycle riders frequently treat pedestrians just as badly as cars treat them, so I don't see anyone with the high ground here. I don't much care to ride a bike, but I love to walk everywhere, and I have to tell you that getting hit by a bike hurts. I love to see them get their own lane.
    - andrewem 4y ago
      Getting hit by a bike hurts. Getting hit by a car or truck kills. This is the crucial distinction which one must disregard in order to argue such equivalences.
      - john_the_writer 4y ago
        Totally.. I don't honestly know one person who's been hit by a bike. Not counting people opening doors without looking.
    - taeric 4y ago
      Certainly there are bad bikers, too. Probably bad joggers. To a large extent, it is the same in all cases. The heavier item has more responsibility to pay attention in mixed use areas. The really dangerous vehicles should be separated and put in dedicated lanes.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- beej71 4y ago
  But it does seem like the motorists who are angry blame the bikes, not the politicians.

wardedVibe 4y ago

"Well there's your problem" and NotJustBikes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm29fd-s7tQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm29fd-s7tQ had a discussion about [John Forester](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forester_(cyclist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forester_(cyclist)) and that generation of cycling activists in the US. For whatever reason, they were extremely vocal about having cyclists treated the same as cars; they're the people we have to thank for Sharrows, denoting car lanes as also valid bike lanes. Its unfortunate that the kind of rider we need to enable is precisely the kind who doesn't care enough to advocate on their own behalf.

seoaeu 4y ago
That podcast is over two and a half hours long so I didn’t listen to find out exactly what points they make about this, but presumably the strategy was because at the time cyclists not being treated like cars didn’t mean “bike lanes everywhere” but rather “bikes banned on city streets”
- actionablefiber 4y ago
  It's a good listen; it's been a few months since I heard it at this point, but the long and short of it is that vehicular cycling could be sensible as a compromise step if your starting point is complete, hopeless addiction to the car. Forester, though, thought of it as a set of prescriptions for how cycling should be done, and was influential in advocating to the DOT against dedicated cycling infrastructure.
et-al 4y ago
I'm hesitant to blame Forester for the GP's question. Yes, Forester was against bike lanes, but he still championed for equal treatment that would result in the courts actually taking car-bike collisions seriously. The sad fact is most Americans view biking as a "hobby" and not a viable mode of transportation. So bikes don't belong on the road [0]. The politicians who make the laws, the police who enforce them, the judges who would oversee any trials, and the media who reports on this deaths all suffer from this "windshield perspective". They prioritize cars above all. It's only recently with a new generation of urban planners are we finally seeing improvements in infrastructure and policy. [0] - see this comment for a perfect example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31500161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31500161

handol 4y ago

>I'm actually surprised that there isn't more direct action against overly aggressive drivers. What direction action could a cyclist take on a car driver that intentionally buzzed them while passing? I suppose if you happen to catch up to them at a light you could vandalize their car. Make a habit of doing that and you'll wind up the victim of an unfortunate accident that no one will be punished for.

0xcde4c3db 4y ago
I'm sure there are logistical hurdles to this that aren't occurring to me, but I was basically thinking along the lines of posting GoPro videos with visible license plates to an online community of like-minded folks and "allowing nature to take its course", so to speak.
- heretogetout 4y ago
  Maybe aggrieved riders can track down the employers of the drivers, starting with plates and photos. If violence isn't worth a cancellation, what is?
- KennyBlanken 4y ago
  It's generally been my experience that online communities of cyclists tend to have fairly high moral standards (for example, every single one I'm in has very strict and explicit rules against sexism, racism, homophobia, etc) and vigilantism isn't really even joked about. People will get plenty upset and outraged, but I've never seen people even joke about harming a driver in an incident, even when they caused substantial injury or even death. Literally all we want is for people to be held legally accountable - in both the criminal and civil sense. That aside, vigilantism is by and large something that only ingroups can "get away" with. When outgroups do them, things generally end very poorly for them. Politicians, press, police, courts, etc would never abide violence by cyclists. I mean, for chrissakes, cyclists are subject to incessant violence by motorists and nobody bats an eye.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  I think maybe the better answer is to give that to the cops. And if you're unhappy with enforcement, elect different politicians. A major reason we have a justice system to begin with is so we don't have vigilantes.

uxp100 4y ago

Yeah, Critical Mass is the one org I’m aware of that does direct action, and it’s moment has kind of faded, for various reasons. But yeah, I don’t really take it in stride, I go home and whine about it, but getting spit on, called a faggot, driven off the road and hit by red light runners is just normal for biking in the US (and it doesn’t vary that much regionally either, when I lived in California people yelled slurs more, but maybe drove a little more reasonably than where I live now) There is not really a natural coalition for this topic. Cycling is kinda seen as a crunchy or vaguely liberal thing, but in local politics the left is pretty strongly against doing anything punitive, for principled reasons. Which ok, no technological enforcement, no stronger license requirements, no more stringent vehicle inspections, I get why, but sorry, funding the bus system does nothing when a large part of the problem is people doing it on purpose. The guy doing 25 over the speed limit in the wrong lane running red lights is doing it for fun, not because his bus is 20 minute headings instead of 15.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

irjustin 4y ago

> No one is coming for your cars. Not by outlawing them like trying to outlaw guns, but by zoning. More walkable cities, public transportation, etc. All good things I believe.

danans 4y ago

> I'm actually surprised that there isn't more direct action against overly aggressive drivers, "rolling coal", and the like, Bicycling is viewed by most Americans as a recreational or exercise activity, not as a legitimate primary means if transportation. When you bike to work on a road, you are perceived of as recreating in front of someone trying to actually get somewhere "important" in a car. Direct action by bicyclists gets perceived through the same lens.