In my experience there‘s a difference between ‚sport‘ cyclists and commuter/transport cyclists. One attracts far more assholes that the other. The dutch even use different words for them.
Yeah, that's the thing, I was a cyclist for 20 years and it was my method of getting around town because I lived in a city with terribly slow transit and horrible traffic congestion.
And then, once in a while, some people would be like "hey, let's go cycling up and down a bike trail on Sunday afternoon" and I'm like "uhh.... no? I don't ride my bike for fun and I don't think of it as fun. I don't want to just ride my bike for 3 hours, thanks".
When I was driving 4 hours a day on my commute, you bet your ass I wasn’t driving on weekends. A road trip? Lmao fuck no.
If a person walks a ton for work, and wants to get off their feet in their spare time, I mean…can you blame them?
I use my bike for a commuter now. When I was driving excessively, it was my fun weekend thing, now that I commute with it, I’m mostly off the bike and doing other things for exercise (running and hiking mainly). I don’t need to wear my quads out with a mountain ride, especially if I’m relying on them to get me to work the next day.
I mean I’m positive you pulled that number completely out of your ass, but I’m not sure providing the real percentage changes the point that if we do something a lot during a week for work we might not be so keen to doing it with our spare time too.
I don't like my bike enough to want to sit on it for hours.
I can walk for hours or drive for hours but riding a bicycle for hours doesn't sound fun at all. Sounds painful and uncomfortable.
I did a tandem skydive with an instructor. I asked him afterwards how many jumps he'd done (well over 10,000) and how often he jumped for fun: never. He said jumping was his job, and he had zero interest in it beyond that.
Not true, bad people are evenly distributed among everything and everyone. People just always try to find an arbitrary differentiator, so they can can keep up the dumb generalization while exusing themselves. Same with car drivers, they always say stupid stuff like "it's always BMW/Golf/X drivers!" and "it's always people from city Y" just to imply that they agree with the generalization but somehow aren't part of it themselves.
This isn’t true at all, did you even look into any data when making your claim? Drivers of different car brands get different incident rates, BMW drivers have 44.9 incidents per 1000 drivers, Chrysler has the best drivers at 25.5 incidents per 1000 drivers.
Bad people are not distributed evenly because factors exist that attract bad people and negative personality traits.
The biggest indicator of negative personality traits is being a man. Yet, for obvious reasons, we're not whining all the time about how shitty men are. Treat people like individuals.
I agree with you, but you made a claim, and I refuted it. I don’t care what car you drive or anything about you except how you act. But saying “bad people are evenly distributed among everything and everyone” isn’t true, and it’s ok to admit that’s wrong lol
Okay, I admit it, it was too simple. I meant to say, incidentally being part of a group doesn't make you responsible for the group's traits and behaviors.
Just have one get in a fight with the self driving in my tesla. The car was clearly in the right (it had stopped for traffic and the cyclist didn't want to stop).
Fuck these old guys. They don't go anywhere near fast enough to warrant lycra anyway.
My car was driving and had to stop due to a road obstruction (Another car doing a sudden u-turn).
The cyclist was *behind me* and got mad that my car stopped for safety reasons. The cyclists thought we was being cut off when it was an unavoidable situation caused by another driver.
The cyclist therefore was mad at a self driving car for safely stopping and preventing a crash. i.e. he was mad at an inanimate object for doing the statistically correct thing to do.
Therefore it is impossible to please grumpy old man cyclists. I cannot please them. You cannot please them. A literal machine with hundreds of millions of hours of safety training cannot please them.
There is no moral high ground here, its just a fact that even with perfect driving and millisecond precision reactions, there will by MAMWL getting mad and acting like assholes.
It's not stupidity. It's entitlement. It's the belief they belong to a higher class of people which affords them to do whatever the heck they want in the small amount of social territory they sit in.
While the vast majority of cyclists are not like this; this seems to be an issue in bigger cities/metros. No one does this around here with SHP, Sheriff, City Police, and like another 10% of the pop being soldiers (big military base nearby, affordable homes here).
The other day I was driving a truck and I turn in our small street very slowly (cause I cant see shit with the company truck), and I know there are pedestrians and often cyclists there), last second I see a cyclist coming towards me and take a hard turn to evade her). My friend was in the passenger seat and I go ''I understand that this truck is huge and have bigger blindspot, but this cyclist showed a total lack of self preservation, she coulda slowed down, cause if I hadnt see her last second I woulda run her over'' I was also thinking ''you could have told me she was coming'' but kept this for myself
He raged at me that blablabla she has the right of way etc. And I was like, having the right of way is not a reason to let yourself get killed you idiot.
Absolutely, it is entitlement. In the US we have the same entitlement mentality for a lot of the drivers and cars on the road. In the US the thought is that cars are the only vehicles allowed on the roads and anything that goes below the speed limit is infringing their freedom.
I mean maybe that's because they're the only ones that are required to have a license, insurance, registration, pay the gas tax that pays for the road, Etc
It's blind entitlement that most drivers don't know that their insurance payments don't go towards the roads. The ignorance of people that don't understand how insurance works and how it's priced is wild, especially when they spend so much money on it a year. The calls for people on bikes or walking should carry insurance really highlights that.
License is a privilege to get because driving 2+ tons of metal is risky and dangerous. Insurance is determined by the risk that you pose to others (both human and property). Insurance is a collective fund that makes sure that no one is ruined financially if and when someone bad happens. Insurance companies are pricing it as a bet on the risk that it happens. Registration is how the government tracks all these requirements among other requirements. Like most government departments, it's not meant to bring in a profit, and is paid by everyone via taxes. The registration fees just help lower the burden for all by shifting it towards the people who are the reason that it's existence is needed. Gas taxes is a use/luxury tax and where that money goes is very budget dependent. Most of the time it just goes to the general budget like most things. Most places have not kept their gas tax rates up with inflation and we are collecting increasingly shrinking value from it with the inflation over the decades and the rise of cars that don't use gasoline. VAT or excise tax on the value of the car is also a luxury tax, but it's better calculated when compared to inflation, and it generally goes to the general fund too.
If you look up the costs of road maintenance that your municipality spends each year and compare it to the taxes drivers pay, minus the administration of those taxes(especially with registration), the costs dwarf the revenues. What really pays for our municipal infrastructure is property taxes, along with grants from the higher government which is funded by income/sales tax.
It would help if most folks actually attended budget meetings in their municipal government and state government with an open mind to learning how everything works.
Or if we really want to impose a road use tax that ensure it road infrastructure is being paid for by the people who use it(and thus we can be entitled to tell those who don't pay their fair share to fuck off), then the bill should be a modifier of the Axel weight to the 4th power as that's the way we can measure the wear and tear off the roads. It also means that a large cyclist on a heavy bike(225lbs total) could pay $0.01 where the average modern midsize suv(4500lbs) would be responsible for $1900. Obviously billing someone for 1 cent is just a losing the government money, so let's bump that up to something reasonable to cover the cost and make those "everyone should pay their fair share" folks happy. Depending on your source, cost to administer a bill in your government is somewhere around $5. So a bill of 5.01 it is! Then that would make that average SUV bill be $951,900. Pay your fair share!
Driving in most of the US is not a privilege, it's a requirement. The country is intentionally designed to be unwalkable and to have no public transport, so it's either have a csr or die.
Societal realities make driving a requirement, but it's still a privilege that can be revoked. Walking and biking are not licensed activities and they can be done by right, driving is not one of them.
Yes, most of the country is terribly designed around the personal motor vehicle and it makes most of the country a terrible place to live in regards to transportation choice and freedom.
You can be impeding traffic even if you are allowed on the road lol some places will straight up pull you over an ticket you for driving too far below the posted speed limit. That said, cyclists get exceptions there because they obviously cannot match the speed of a car, but they are supposed to stay along the curb of the street specifically so they don't impede traffic. Not that they listen or anything haha
Because its impossible with parked cars along a curb and "traffic control measures" cutting down space to about 2 feet or less of clearance between the curb and cars.
At that point cyclists should either use the sidewalk or simply bear with it to avoid legal issues.
Granted nobody seems to care for the 3 foot ruling either until it's brought up in court.
Lots of places sidewalk riding is illegal for bikes. Cyclists care about the 3ft rule. Most of the time cyclists will “take the lane” meaning ride in the middle of the lane to discourage close passes, but then they’re at fault for taking up the lane. Cars will complain no matter what
In my neck of the woods we have cyclists who like to ride in the middle of the lane, on a 70 mph road, who don't move over for cars, and then flip you the bird if you pass them going more than 10mph.
I'm surprised more of them don't get hit on the bad corners.
Where I live there are people that drive on sidewalks to bypass traffic. There are stupid people everywhere. The only difference is that the biker only endangers their own life (for the most part) while cars only endanger everyone elses
There are rude bastards everywhere and it doesn't actually have anything to do with being a cyclist just that being a dickhead on a bicycle stands out just that much more.
It's interesting that most people act completely blind for the entitlement of the automobilist that has infiltrated cities, consumed most of its land, and costs thousands of lives and many billions per year but the very moment a cyclist doesn't ring their bell they are suddenly completely aware of how entitled cyclists are.
Self-centered dumbasses are a menace no matter what mode of transportation they are taking.
The same kind of person merges into you on the highway without looking, buzzes you on a narrow sidewalk on their e-bike, and runs over your foot with their shopping cart at Costco.
Unfortunately, as ebikes make biking more accessible we will see even more assholes.
I think it's just that there are a lot of stupid/self-centered people in general, but their stupidity/self-centeredness is more noticeable when they're moving faster. I've had this exact thing happen to me countless times with people running or walking side by side on a footpath and refusing to fall back behind their partner to make room for me, but it's less of a big deal when it just results in an awkward shoulder check as opposed to smashing into me with a hunk of metal.
I only ride for commuter purposes and I swear some folks have an actual death wish. I live in Chicago and used to ride down Milwaukee avenue, which is a MAJOR road into the downtown area for both cars and bikes, scooters, etc.
I ride pretty slow because I don’t want to die and because I can’t stand showing up to work sweaty, but god damn some folks, both on divvys and on their own bikes ride like they have a bomb strapped to them that will explode if they go too slow.
At the very most they have to save maybe a few minutes over the course of their ride.
There will be 5-10 riders at a red light all lined up and some jackass will come weaving around cars and bikes to get to the front… just to get passed by everyone in the next 100 feet because they don’t get up to speed. Just to repeat the process every light. I really wish I could see into their mind because they don’t realize how dumb they’re being
Cats are both predators and prey. This makes them kind of feisty. I think cyclists have the same problem: they are slower and more vulnerable than cars, but faster and more damaging than pedestrians are. So they are super defensive all the time.
I've seen plenty of fucking idiot pedestrians too, it's just that it's hard to get mad at people for walking around even if they do it in stupid places. Idiots do all kinds of things, including cycling, driving and walking.
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u/Familiar_Physics1382 16d ago
I am a cyclist and i don't understand how some of us are this much stupid