This is from a regularly scheduled Everglades Bike Club weekend ride in Key Biscayne, USA, on a 10km stretch of road, and all the drivers know to expect it will be there in the mornings.
This is from a regularly scheduled Everglades Bike Club weekend ride in Key Biscayne, USA, on a 10km stretch of road, and all the drivers know to expect it will be there in the mornings.
Personally speaking because I am both. Cyclists don’t obey the rules of the road to the same rigor as a car. Both parties are open to hate.
Now that said, only one of them is in a 2 tonne death machine.
Most cars don’t obey the rules of the road for shit. Case in point above
Yeah and case in point a cyclist is rarely going to kill someone in a head on collision but a car will.
Even in the post, one driver freaks out and does this unhinged maneuver, all the others stay behind the bikes. So fuck off with “most cars”.
Indeed, why should they? The rules of the road where made expressly for cars, not bikes, and there are several states which sensibly make carve outs for bicycles and motorcycles.
But, as you point out, the risk for breaking the rules–real or perceived–fall entirely on the cyclist, so I absolutely see no equivalence.
Ya don’t break a rule; the car runs you over because distracted driver.
Ya break a rule to avoid distracted driver; you get ran over because your rule breaking in your tiny and light bicycle triggered the road rage of someone in a SUV whose control was entirely based on spite and the fact everyone else should follow rules without exception (that the state legislature carved for cyclists to try to minimize their deaths).
Being a cyclist commuter is fun, much recommended.
The problem with cars is that they immediately make every other form of transportation incredibly shitty.
Pedestrians and cyclists get killed. Buses get stuck in traffic.
I hate cars, but what am I supposed to do? Getting out of my car is just an invitation to get killed by one. And if I wanted to live entirely without a car, I’d have to move to a city, where I would never be more than 12-feet away from cars and have to cross a road every block, risking my life because of shitty fucking cars.
When we say, “We’re not saying get rid of cars, we’re just saying we need options”, to not scare the carbrains, well, the only way to have real options (ie safe roads) is to have roads entirely without cars.
YUUP YUP YUP!
We have to get rid of these ‘reforms after reforms’ for car centric infraatructure and for car company, oil company, and plastics companies lobbyists because they will mever make us all happy. We CANNOT reform society in its current form to allow us to use cars and for all other people who use other forms of transportation to also be happy inside most municipalities. We are doing this right now and most of us are unhappy about our transportation. Car users get stuck in traffic, create traffic, and those who dont use cars get mowed down by them like its air.
WE NEED COMPLETE REVOLUTION. Reform will nnevevr work. We. Need. Revolution.
We have to completely revolutionize how we use our roads , transporarion paths , and transportation methods , and how we construct or even demolish different transporation infrastructure.
Making reforms around cars will lead us nowhere. Cars have always been a deadly or time consuming problem for all other people who use other forms of transportation…so…revolutionize society so that cars are so rare that ONLY the governmental officials or people out in VERY open areas using cars recreationally ever get to use them. Ban cars from the majority of the innards of EVERY municipality. YOU DONT HAVE TO BUILD CAR-CENTRIC INFRASTRUCTURE CITIES AND TOWNS WHEN IT IS PRACTICALLY ILLEGAL FOR CARS TO BE OPERATED INSIDE THEM.
I think this creeping incrementalism definitely has a limit. I think the goal is to build enough of a political constituency that you can push for the big changes… but for real change, you eventually have to TRULY inconvenience drivers. Look how the fucking freak out about barriers… like there was a barrier protecting a bike lane that kept getting hit by cars… so they removed the barrier!! The best we can do is paint and stick strips that cars always drive over or park on, and they’re still furious. So, yeah, we have to start defeating them on the local level, in places where it IS possible to live without even a drivers license–the kinds of places where the people with cars drive into for work and therefore don’t have a direct vote.
I would love for my city center to become car free. There is like a square mile that would make so much sense.
maybe its my metro area but I feel motorists are more likely to not follow the rules. There is cyclists but its a pretty low percentage. The ones that do though really do and make themselves a nuisance. There was a guy that would just ignore the red light on a major intersection. like two four lanes. during rush hour because I guess he felt since everything is slowed up he can just fuck right through.
Nah, you’re correct. Any time a study is done on this it finds that either drivers and cyclists break the law at similar rates, or drivers break it more.
There’s also the difference in why they do it. Drivers break the law out of convenience. Because it’s easier to do, or because it gets them where they’re going faster. Cyclists sometimes do that, but far more than drivers, they’re likely to do it because it’s safer. Because laws are often made for car drivers in ways that aren’t appropriate to cyclists, and so breaking the law is often safer. The classic example is treating stop signs as give way signs in places that haven’t implemented an Idaho Stop rule.
Sources:
Super thank you! Sources!
Depending on your local that could be perfectly legal. It’s called an Idaho Stop. You can treat stop signs as yields and red light like a stop sign. You’re not supposed to treat a red light as a yield so if he’s doing that it’s illegal everywhere as far as I know.
there are cars in the intersection which you can’t do with a stop so its not treating the red light like a stop.
My 2 cents is the closer to a downtown you get the better the drivers are because of proximity however the cyclists are shit at obeying rules. Outside downtown cars are horrible in respecting cyclists who usually end up better at obeying laws because of the speeds.
You’re actually right and it goes down to how drivers respond to their surroundings. Areas with narrower streets, more traffic, and more pedestrians encourage drivers to be more observant passively.
When you have a wide, clear, straight road people pay less attention.
It’s a psychology thing and some people are trying to design roads around the concept
Bullshit
Makes sense actually, the rules of the road were made almost explicitly for cars and in many cases following all of them can put a cyclist in serious danger.
Spend a few years downtown in any metropolitan area and see if you change your tune. The amount of cyclists (myself included) who drive through lights or advances, don’t indicate directions, wrong way on a one way street, cutting through parking lots or alleys the list goes on and on.
No, it’s objectively bullshit. It’s been studied many times and the result always proves that carbrained nonsense to be bullshit.
Drivers break the law all the time. They run blatant reds. They fail to stop when safe to do so at a yellow. They speed. They ignore stop signs. They fail to give way to pedestrians. The pass cyclists too close. They fail to indicate correctly at roundabouts more often than they do it correctly.
The only difference is people are too carbrained to even notice these. Oh, and the reasons for it (cyclists tend to break the law for their own safety unlike car drivers who do it for convenience) and the consequences when they do (cyclists endanger nobody except occasionally themselves, drivers endanger everyone around them).
“Cyclists don’t obey the rules of the road to the same rigor as a car.”
Because you don’t need a license for a bike, the rules are there because cars and motorbikes are incredibly dangerous compared to walking or biking (for everyone involved). A large part of people who bike don’t know the rules because they don’t need to, just the basic stuff and having situational awareness is enough. The issue is that many in all above mentioned kinds don’t have that, they’re either too dumb, thinking about something else or using their phones etc. But it’s way more important for the people who are in control of the most dangerous vehicles to be the ones who know and follow the rules.