5 ms·

Cyclist here, I only communicate with motorists by means of rude hand gestures... V2V should still help to avoid phantom traffic jams, but really I wish all tha

• wiredfool 2y ago
  I have to keep reminding myself to use the 5 finger wave instead of 1. But they didn’t signal, they came from nowhere, blah blah. There’s only one hand sign drivers recognize.
  • TomK32 2y ago
    Take more space if you need it for whatever reason is what I recommend to other cyclists. Dooring is a big issue, and motorists overtaking in blind corners, narrow steets or when you want to turn left. See the marks on the road where the outer tyre of vehicles leave there mark? That's the line a cyclist should ride on.
    • lupusreal 2y ago
      When I ride my bike on the street, I exercise an abundance of caution and assume all cars are out to kill me (through negligence if not outright malice.). But some cyclists seem to have another mentality, where if they merely do as they're supposed to while exercising their rights then they are personally in the clear. Why should I avoid that busy multi-lane road, I have as much right to it as the cars. They're the ones that suck. True in the legal sense, but being in the right won't unsquish me.
      • TomK32 2y ago
        Motorists will try to squish through if you give them just a little too much space. Please do no cycle with just a foot of space towards the side of the road as this is always an invitation for motorists to overtake when it's not safe.
    • bdamm 2y ago
      Generally, it's the right thing to do, but sometimes it leads to motorists feeling that you're in their space and getting angry about it. They simply don't recognize your place on the road. There is no easy answer other than an abundance of space for small (e.g. bikes, euc, e-scooter) vehicles.
      • beeboobaa3 2y ago
        They'll just have to learn to deal with that.
        • brendoelfrendo 2y ago
          Or they get angry and make aggressive maneuvers that put you and others at greater risk. Yes, motorists should just get used to sharing the road with cyclists, but reality is usually a compromise between what is the theoretically safest option vs what is the safest practical option given the current road conditions and the skill of surrounding drivers.
          • beeboobaa3 2y ago
            That's for their insurance to deal with.
            • saagarjha 2y ago
              Their insurance isn’t going to bring you back to life after they hit you.
              • beeboobaa3 2y ago
                I don't experience a murderous rage from drivers, but I'm also not american.
      • AlexandrB 2y ago
        My friend used to carry a copy of the driving regulations and confront motorists who got angry when he took up a lane. Obviously though this doesn't scale (either time or quantity wise).
• andrepd 2y ago
  Eh, you're looking at it the wrong way. Would you walk in the highway or in the middle of a 4-lane road? No, because there's 3 ton vehicles there speeding around. Ergo you need proper separated infrastructure: sidewalks, etc. Likewise, why would you ride a bicycle there? You need proper separated infrastructure, i.e. a segregated bike lane. There's more than enough space for that, but drivers scream bloody murder if you take away one of their 8 lanes to make a bike lane or a proper sidewalk or a speed bump or whatever (even though this would actually ease congestion for cars!)
• Myrmornis 2y ago
  Motorists need to understand that they cannot use their horn in close proximity of a cyclist, even if it is "at" a cyclist who has annoyed them. The noise is much louder when you're not inside a car, and it causes such a jolt that it's easy to lose control of the bike or stray into a road position you shouldn't be occupying.
  • efields 2y ago
    /s/cyclist/person/ But yes horns are for car-to-car.
  • jajko 2y ago
    Yes and no. For sure, they are dangerous to hearing and can easily provoke bad reflexive reactions that bypass our evaluation. But - where I live, good 80-90% of cyclists on the roads are absolutely mad a-holes, and I try desperately not using more appropriate words. Red light with all traffic stopped doesn't exist for them. Unfortunately they are part of road traffic on many places, even though some good additional cycling lanes appeared recently. I've personally as pedestrian have been almost hit 2x by cyclist going above 30-40kmh who zoomed through crowd of pedestrian crossing without even touching breaks, on red light. He drove not further than say 5cm from me, felt quite powerful wind wave he generated. This can easily end up in me being dead or permanently crippled (wife worked at emergency and they had exactly same case few years ago, the 40 year old pedestrian hit by cyclist on red light came in full consciousness, was dead within 2 days). If you have such a person doing very dangerous stuff, rather than quietly tolerating and enabling him/her, horn is way more appropriate if it can make a positive difference. And as a car driver I've seen so many cases like that. I've seen probably drunken cyclist trying to smash kick side mirrors of cars stuck in traffic jam. Just to be clear, I talk about Switzerland here. But not places are created equal - Geneva in this case is literally on french border from 3 sides, has tons of french folks living in it and even much more commute daily for work there. Suffice to say, Geneva has absolutely horrible traffic of all types compared to rest of the country (plus also highest crime). Bikes should be on dedicated lanes, if Dutch or Danes can do it and managed to put it into tightly built medieval cities, many others can too. Then all the power to you guys. But mixing with traffic where every cyclist is an hard-to-avoid obstacle, on very narrow roads, thats recipe for many unhappy participants and some bad situations. In US this should be easier since every city US road I've ever seen is absolutely massively wide, often equivalent of 2 lanes here.
• Bhilai 2y ago
  Since we are generalizing. Runner here, I only communicate with cyclists by means of rude hand gestures because cyclists think they own the road and leave no room for pedestrians. At the stop sign near my house, not one cyclist slows down or stops and infact many have yelled at me when I am running across. V2V probably wont solve this problem but I wish cyclists start to yield to pedestrians and stay a safe distance away from us runners because we dont want to get hit by cyclist folks.
  • nonameiguess 2y ago
    Honestly, as a runner I have a similar problem with other pedestrians. So many people walk in groups of three plus abreast taking up the entire sidewalk, pay no attention whatsoever to whether anyone else is on the sidewalk coming their way, and even single people stray back and forth wandering in a zig zag pattern, wearing noise-canceling earphones, and won't look up from their screen, making it all but impossible to safely pass them except by luck. Nobody has common courtesy and they all think they own the road. Everyone. It isn't just drivers. But drivers are nonetheless the most dangerous because they're operating heavy machinery that kills you on impact.
    • AcerbicZero 2y ago
      Its also a problem on the roads for cars/motorcycles; 4+ lanes wide, with a car in each lane going 3mph under the speed limit totally oblivious to the world around them, as traffic piles up behind them. Common courtesy should be a more important component of the whole education process.
  • TomK32 2y ago
    Hehe, luckily I'm both a cyclist and a runner. I am quite annoyed by fellow cyclists who ride on sidewalks but I understand that many don't feel safe on roads that I consider a nice sprint segment despite (or because of) lots of fast moving cars around me when I try to beat that Strava KOM... It's a lot about subjective safety feeling: Many cyclists feel safer on sidewalks, runners feel safer without cyclists, scooters and cars around them and motorists feel quite safe all the time in their metal box. Separating traffic, slowing down cars in towns and cities is the only way forward and even though it might seem very slow going or even small reversals like in Spain are taking place: It will happen within our lifetime.
• philamonster 2y ago
  Former bike messenger in large eastern US cities in late 90's/early 2000's here, just started commuting by bike this summer again after having not done so since probably late 2000's. I have mostly MTB'd the last decade or so. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/29/upshot/traffic-enforcement-dwindled.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/07/29/upshot/traffi... https://archive.ph/M2yod https://archive.ph/M2yod It is a totally different world on US roads these days. There is so much dumb shit I've done on a bike in my 20's that I refuse to tell my kids about and that makes me cringe thinking how lucky I have been and after about 2 weeks of commuting this summer I have abandoned that dream and instead choose to ride where the cars can't go. I am fortunate to have access to a massive trail system outside my front door but will avoid as much vehicle interaction as I can here on out. Aside from the crazy, impatient drivers there are so many other ways you can get destroyed by a massively oversized car or truck that the distracted driver can barely see out of. Not to mention the erosion of trust that people are going to actually behave on the roads, as illustrated in the above article. Riding on city streets was always something that put my faith in other humans to the test and since I already know the answer, the safest thing one could do is to simply remove yourself from the equation.
  • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    For real. Biking for a commute in the United States should come with hazard pay. So many drivers just absolutely, from the word go, hate cyclists with a burning passion. And the best you can hope for outside of that, is benign neglect, and since you don't pose the same threat a 3-ton suburban does to their suburban, they just don't look for you and don't give a shit where you are. I've been nearly hit so many times, and not in the way you think: it's low-speed stuff where someone is trying to make a turn out of a driveway, or backing out of their own, or waiting to go left across busy traffic, and they're so focused on looking for cars that pedestrians and bikes just fade into the background. And I know I'll probably get some dickhead typing an angry reply about how one time a cyclist didn't obey a stop sign or something and therefore we're the scum of the road fit only to coat the tread of his tires, but just like, this is not the same goddamn situation. I'm moving about a hundred pounds of light metal and rubber, and you're moving between 2 and 4 tons of machinery. Fuck off with this ridiculous equivalence.
• Alupis 2y ago
  Cyclists need to do a better job following the conventions and laws of the road. That would, on its own, dramatically increase safety of riders. Cyclists are pretty much the least predictable "vehicle" on the road. Are we a car today and following the laws? Or are we going to blaze right through that red light intersection because we're a bike! We're so close to a new Strava PR, after all! Sudden left turn across traffic - look out for me, I don't even look over my shoulder!
  • mtwshngtn 2y ago
    Drivers need to do a better job following the conventions and laws of the road. The number of times that a driver has merged into my bike lane to make a right hand turn without checking over their shoulder (or merging into me on purpose, if they're in a killing mood) is (metaphorically) uncountable. And no, only checking your mirror doesn't count! You reduce your blind spot if you actually turn your head, which is why you have to turn your head in your driver's license exam! I have been pushed off the road by a Tesla merging into a right turn lane -- a vehicle with a million sensors that should have been screaming at its driver. My friend, who was on a bicycle and following the conventions and laws of the road, was killed by a driver making a right hand turn. Many states (in the US) have minimum safe passing distances required for drivers to adhere to when passing a bicycle. Maybe 90% of the time (anecdotally, in very liberal-leaning, bike-heavy areas of the Bay Area in California!) they don't. And so in return, we take the lane (as we are permitted to do, by law), and pissed-off motorists try to kill us.
    • Alupis 2y ago
      These things also happen to motorcycle riders. The biggest difference is motorcycle riders don't ride in the bike lane until suddenly and without warning they pop into the road lane and ride straight through stop signs and red lights. Cyclists are often the plague of the road. Can't decide if they want to be treated like a real vehicle, or a pedestrian. They often choose both, whichever being convenient for them at the time. This often leads to the interactions you have described. Can cars be better around cyclists? Sure, without any doubts. But... cyclists need to do better around cars too. After all, the cyclist will always lose that fight.
• PaulHoule 2y ago
  The V2V killer app for most people is a device they can put in their house that will make drivers slow down in their neighborhood. For cyclists it is a device that makes your bike have the electronic image of a huge oversize truck and escort vehicles or a whole battalion of Hell's Angels or something.