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These days I'm finding myself doing half my trips on a bicycle and half in a car. In my experience one of the biggest barriers to micromobility in America is cu

These days I'm finding myself doing half my trips on a bicycle and half in a car. In my experience one of the biggest barriers to micromobility in America is cultural. Motorists can be aggressive and complacent because their vehicles are big and have airbags, and so long as they aren't impaired they won't be held accountable for harm they cause with their vehicles. Cyclists and pedestrians can act in a way that is entitled and reckless because they know they probably won't be held accountable for their behavior either. Except some of them sometimes forget that the laws of physics are less flexible. A few years ago I was driving my son somewhere, and a cyclist blew through a red light and slammed into the side of my car. Fortunately the only injuries were the ones that the cyclist inflicted on himself through his reckless disregard for the law. Judging how much damage he did to my car, if my son and I had been on our e-bikes instead then I think that guy could have easily killed my kid. Knowing that there are too many cyclists and motorists who behave with complete disregard for the law makes me feel like I really have no choice but to put my child in a big steel cage with airbags and crumple zones if we're going to travel anywhere on American roads. And before you ask, this was not in a big city, so public transportation was not a viable option for us that day. My personal experience seeing peoples' general behavior and attitudes on roads in both Japan and Amsterdam makes me wish we could find a way to adopt some of that culture.

scoofy 3y ago
People will always be entitled, but there needn't be dangerous contact. As a lifelong cyclist, the main problem (in my opinion) America faces here is the fact that we have exclusively car-first infrastructure. The American stop sign, to me, is the symbol of how entrenched everything is here. Stop signs make zero sense for any mode of transportation except for cars. A physical, traffic-calming rotary at every intersection, in every neighborhood would be much more sensible, and reduce conflicts. We could add collapsing bollards to create cycling corridors that cyclists actually want to be on, instead of the insane decision we've made to mix our cyclists and vehicles with a single line of paint on some of the busiest roads in the cities we live in. Where all of this runs into a problem is with emergency response vehicles. Because our fire/EMS infrastructure is path-dependent with our transportation infrastructure, they tend to bitch and moan any time physical barriers are put up, or pedestrian malls are introduced. The system is the way it is, and if it changes, they believe it will cause them problems. The Fire Department in SF has been one of the biggest roadblocks to creating safe parallel corridors for cycling infrastructure, blocking bollards, neutering rotaries to the point if ineffectiveness, blocking traffic calming features unless they allow for high-speed fire/EMS vehicles, thus defeating the purpose. If anyone wanted to make a long lasting impact on American society, this is the problem I would focus on solving. I think building emergency response vehicles (specifically fire, and ambulances) that can interact with a traffic calming feature that is impassible to normal vehicles but passable to bicycles and pedestrians (say via high clearance) would do more for saving lives, reducing emissions, and stemming the tide of the American development pattern across the world than almost anything else.
- steelframe 3y ago
  Why doesn't Japan need parallel corridors, blocking bollards, and so forth to keep their cyclist casualties down? https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-unique-safety-of-cycling-in-tokyo-b3b8eded727e https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-unique-saf... Key point from the article: "Public safety is facilitated by a culture of compliance."

scoofy 3y ago

People will always be entitled, but there needn't be dangerous contact. As a lifelong cyclist, the main problem (in my opinion) America faces here is the fact that we have exclusively car-first infrastructure. The American stop sign, to me, is the symbol of how entrenched everything is here. Stop signs make zero sense for any mode of transportation except for cars. A physical, traffic-calming rotary at every intersection, in every neighborhood would be much more sensible, and reduce conflicts. We could add collapsing bollards to create cycling corridors that cyclists actually want to be on, instead of the insane decision we've made to mix our cyclists and vehicles with a single line of paint on some of the busiest roads in the cities we live in. Where all of this runs into a problem is with emergency response vehicles. Because our fire/EMS infrastructure is path-dependent with our transportation infrastructure, they tend to bitch and moan any time physical barriers are put up, or pedestrian malls are introduced. The system is the way it is, and if it changes, they believe it will cause them problems. The Fire Department in SF has been one of the biggest roadblocks to creating safe parallel corridors for cycling infrastructure, blocking bollards, neutering rotaries to the point if ineffectiveness, blocking traffic calming features unless they allow for high-speed fire/EMS vehicles, thus defeating the purpose. If anyone wanted to make a long lasting impact on American society, this is the problem I would focus on solving. I think building emergency response vehicles (specifically fire, and ambulances) that can interact with a traffic calming feature that is impassible to normal vehicles but passable to bicycles and pedestrians (say via high clearance) would do more for saving lives, reducing emissions, and stemming the tide of the American development pattern across the world than almost anything else.

steelframe 3y ago
Why doesn't Japan need parallel corridors, blocking bollards, and so forth to keep their cyclist casualties down? https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-unique-safety-of-cycling-in-tokyo-b3b8eded727e https://medium.com/vision-zero-cities-journal/the-unique-saf... Key point from the article: "Public safety is facilitated by a culture of compliance."