4 ms·

Funny, I often feel a similar way about bicyclists here in the city, especially the "self-entitled idiots" part.

dopidopHN 3y ago
Are idiotic bikers putting other life at risk or hoarding shared space? Or is it their attitude alone that irks you?
cooper_ganglia 3y ago
I agree, I’d rather be driving behind ten F-150s going the speed limit through town rather than 1 bicyclist holding up an entire lane of traffic behind them.
caconym_ 3y ago
Every class of road users has jerks in it, because all drivers, riders, and walkers are human, and conflicts can be inflamed by local road design and driving culture. Personally, I find it much more productive to focus on the economic and public health impacts of the various available forms of transit, rather than building my view of the Problems with Transit around the things that personally inconvenience me. Large pickup trucks in particular are a public health catastrophe. They kill occupants of other vehicles in collisions at about 2.5x the rate of other vehicle types (cars and SUVs), and they have abysmal pedestrian safety performance. On top of their high fuel consumption and emissions baseline, there is a nationwide trend called "coal rolling" in which truck owners modify their vehicles to produce thick black exhaust full of NOx, which bystanders are then forced to breathe. Pickup truck drivers also have some of the highest DUI rates around. Even setting aside my personal anecdotal observation that pickup truck drivers are by far the most aggressive and unsafe class of drivers on the road, it's clear that if we actually cared as a society about saving human lives, we would take measures to drastically curtail the use of large pickup trucks on public roads tomorrow. In comparison, though it does happen, it's vanishingly rare for cyclists to cause serious injury or death to bystanders, and they have zero emissions beyond manufacture and delivery. In my opinion, anybody drawing any kind of equivalence between the harm done by bikes and the harm done by large pickup trucks in the public transit sphere needs to do some serious introspection.
- PeterHolzwarth 3y ago
  In my city (Seattle) there's an intersection I walk through 4 or so times a day. More than once a week, I see bicyclists vaguely look around around from a slowed pedal, and then just blithely ride right through the red light. Over and over. Day after day. For a (no-exaggeration) decade that I've been living and walking in this spot. I haven't owned a car in a very long time, and every single close encounter with getting hit by something has been with a bicycle at a red light in Seattle (at the above spot, or elsewhere). Over and over and over again: not a one-off that has burned me on bicyclists, but over and over for year after year. So again I will repeat: as a pedestrian, the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists. Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians. Seattle bicyclists seem to view traffic laws as a joke.
  - caconym_ 3y ago
    I live in Seattle too. I've been here for twenty years, driving and biking and walking, and by far the most real close calls I've had have been on foot, from cars. A few on my bike too—in particular, I was hit by a Porsche SUV U-turning out of a parallel parking spot last fall, and received permanent ligament damage in my shoulder. > Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians. I used to have to cross a semi-busy road twice a day on my walk to and from work. I crossed at a marked crosswalk, but about 90% of the time cars would not stop unless I forced them to by entering the road myself (essentially playing chicken with them), and more than once they blasted through the crosswalk while I was still in it, speeding past inches from me. Never mind that the law says pedestrians have the right of way. This experience is not unique to the crosswalk in question—in fact, it is essentially universal. I find your assertion that "Seattle drivers seems [sic] to understand the idea of pedestrians" utterly baffling. Perhaps you are posting from a parallel universe, or one of the wealthy outlying neighborhoods that are Seattle in name only. > the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists. Just today, on my bike ride home on the stretch of the Burke Gilman between Fremont and Ballard, a red Jeep Cherokee blasted through a stop sign right in front of me, without so much as tapping the brakes. The onus was on me to account for his gross negligence, despite having the right of way. This sort of thing is so common I barely notice it anymore. -- So yes, I'm sure we can both fire off anecdotes about modal conflicts all day. I'm sure everybody who lives in a big city can. But I challenge you to show me with data that bicycles are any meaningful fraction of the public health hazard that large pickup trucks are. And, frankly—based on two decades of commuting throughout the city in all three modes at issue here—I would suggest that you are being intellectually dishonest with yourself regarding proportionalities. I can recall only a single instance where a cyclist put me in any real danger, and I would take being hit by a cyclist any day over meeting the six foot fascia of a modern pickup at the speed limit plus fifteen (since, as I'm sure we both know, nearly every driver exceeds the speed limit on a habitual basis).

Are idiotic bikers putting other life at risk or hoarding shared space? Or is it their attitude alone that irks you?

I agree, I’d rather be driving behind ten F-150s going the speed limit through town rather than 1 bicyclist holding up an entire lane of traffic behind them.

caconym_ 3y ago

Every class of road users has jerks in it, because all drivers, riders, and walkers are human, and conflicts can be inflamed by local road design and driving culture. Personally, I find it much more productive to focus on the economic and public health impacts of the various available forms of transit, rather than building my view of the Problems with Transit around the things that personally inconvenience me. Large pickup trucks in particular are a public health catastrophe. They kill occupants of other vehicles in collisions at about 2.5x the rate of other vehicle types (cars and SUVs), and they have abysmal pedestrian safety performance. On top of their high fuel consumption and emissions baseline, there is a nationwide trend called "coal rolling" in which truck owners modify their vehicles to produce thick black exhaust full of NOx, which bystanders are then forced to breathe. Pickup truck drivers also have some of the highest DUI rates around. Even setting aside my personal anecdotal observation that pickup truck drivers are by far the most aggressive and unsafe class of drivers on the road, it's clear that if we actually cared as a society about saving human lives, we would take measures to drastically curtail the use of large pickup trucks on public roads tomorrow. In comparison, though it does happen, it's vanishingly rare for cyclists to cause serious injury or death to bystanders, and they have zero emissions beyond manufacture and delivery. In my opinion, anybody drawing any kind of equivalence between the harm done by bikes and the harm done by large pickup trucks in the public transit sphere needs to do some serious introspection.

PeterHolzwarth 3y ago
In my city (Seattle) there's an intersection I walk through 4 or so times a day. More than once a week, I see bicyclists vaguely look around around from a slowed pedal, and then just blithely ride right through the red light. Over and over. Day after day. For a (no-exaggeration) decade that I've been living and walking in this spot. I haven't owned a car in a very long time, and every single close encounter with getting hit by something has been with a bicycle at a red light in Seattle (at the above spot, or elsewhere). Over and over and over again: not a one-off that has burned me on bicyclists, but over and over for year after year. So again I will repeat: as a pedestrian, the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists. Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians. Seattle bicyclists seem to view traffic laws as a joke.
- caconym_ 3y ago
  I live in Seattle too. I've been here for twenty years, driving and biking and walking, and by far the most real close calls I've had have been on foot, from cars. A few on my bike too—in particular, I was hit by a Porsche SUV U-turning out of a parallel parking spot last fall, and received permanent ligament damage in my shoulder. > Seattle drivers seems to understand the idea of pedestrians. I used to have to cross a semi-busy road twice a day on my walk to and from work. I crossed at a marked crosswalk, but about 90% of the time cars would not stop unless I forced them to by entering the road myself (essentially playing chicken with them), and more than once they blasted through the crosswalk while I was still in it, speeding past inches from me. Never mind that the law says pedestrians have the right of way. This experience is not unique to the crosswalk in question—in fact, it is essentially universal. I find your assertion that "Seattle drivers seems [sic] to understand the idea of pedestrians" utterly baffling. Perhaps you are posting from a parallel universe, or one of the wealthy outlying neighborhoods that are Seattle in name only. > the "self-entitled idiots" that I see on a weekly/daily basis, for more than a decade, are bicyclists. Just today, on my bike ride home on the stretch of the Burke Gilman between Fremont and Ballard, a red Jeep Cherokee blasted through a stop sign right in front of me, without so much as tapping the brakes. The onus was on me to account for his gross negligence, despite having the right of way. This sort of thing is so common I barely notice it anymore. -- So yes, I'm sure we can both fire off anecdotes about modal conflicts all day. I'm sure everybody who lives in a big city can. But I challenge you to show me with data that bicycles are any meaningful fraction of the public health hazard that large pickup trucks are. And, frankly—based on two decades of commuting throughout the city in all three modes at issue here—I would suggest that you are being intellectually dishonest with yourself regarding proportionalities. I can recall only a single instance where a cyclist put me in any real danger, and I would take being hit by a cyclist any day over meeting the six foot fascia of a modern pickup at the speed limit plus fifteen (since, as I'm sure we both know, nearly every driver exceeds the speed limit on a habitual basis).