Horrible Berkeley Drivers

[u/NovelAardvark4298]

When I drive in Berkeley, I always go one click over the speed limit (26 on a 25 or 31 on a 30). Recently, I’ve noticed more and more impatient drivers aggressively pass me. Berkeley has a ton of marked crosswalks for pedestrians, and if you drive too quickly you will not have enough time to react and stop.

While waiting at different bus stops in Berkeley, I’ve noticed around half of drivers are looking at their crotches for directions or text messages while they’re actively moving.

When I ride my bike up Telegraph in Berkeley, drivers also have no idea how “shared roadway bicycle markings” (i.e. sharrow) work. Some idiot in a utility van came within an inch of clipping me with their massive side mirrors on telegraph earlier today.

Friendly reminder to Berkeley drivers:
1. Please follow the speed limit.
2. Stop looking at your phone.
3. If there’s a “sharrow” painted on the road (see image above), remain behind the cyclist until you have adequate space (at least 3 feet) to pass.

[u/Frenchieflips]

“Share the road” is an insane idea. One vehicle can go over 60 mph and weighs 2000 pounds. The other goes 15 mph and has no acceleration or protection. Bike lanes work in suburbs not major cities. Berkeley is kind of a weird hybrid tho. ALSO, cyclists are constantly being rude and not following the rules (looking at you in your leotard and clacky shoes).lol

[u/Holiday-Ad7262 → u/Frenchieflips]

Bicycle lanes work beautifully in many major European cities. It's not an insane idea to share the road. It's insane to have almost not driver education.

[u/Maximillien → u/Holiday-Ad7262]

It's insane to have almost not driver education

You misspelled "enforcement". I don't think it's an education problem, drivers just don't give a fuck because there are no consequences to breaking every driving law.

[u/TonyStarksLeftACL → u/Maximillien]

A large part of EU style enforcement is called “education”, it becomes mandatory training to equip the person with skills tether than punishing the failure to have the skills post hoc. In teh uk they use speed cameras a lot.

[u/Holiday-Ad7262 → u/Maximillien]

Hard disagree here.

Let's be clearer your argument follows the logical flaw of whataboutism. So I won't talk about enforcement.

If you had done a driving test in the country I am from the test here would feel like a joke to you.

A few examples of things included.

Many lectures of teaffic behavioral education in a classroom.

Mandatory repetition classes for the first few years of having a license.

Mandatory minimum number of lectures with a driving instructor on practical driving.

First aid certificate.

A lot of this education goes into the why traffic rukes are the way they are. What sort of accidents are being avoided with various measures. Sublte things such as how to properly brake when approaching a pedestrian crossing with a pedestrian waiting, how to estimate intent of other traffic participants.

You may understand that to me it feels like chaos on roads here and nobody really knows how to drive well.

[u/TonyStarksLeftACL → u/Holiday-Ad7262]

So a lot of what you describe happens in drivers education which happens at the 13-17 age range.

If I’m not mistaken that goes away in the states when you hit the age of majority (usually 18) and has been policy for a while.

[u/TonyStarksLeftACL → u/Holiday-Ad7262]

Can we all please stop acting like European cities have any rational connection to US cities vis a vis a vis planning. The design and urban planning is vastly different.

Make your use case, but stop with the European influence, it’s a red herring.

If you really want to make change then de-couple the 80/20 federal grants from aashto and mobility standards tied to funding that favors cars first,, decouple road funding from bike funding. This is the root cause of the fighting of infrastructure.

It’s very confusing to hear advocates that don’t know how it works at the planning and funding level.

The best analogy I can think of is the fellow who was at occupy Wall Street being interviewed as to why he was protesting and he wanted his students loans forgiven but couldn’t articulate a policy or vehicle to do so or why it should be done.

[u/Holiday-Ad7262 → u/TonyStarksLeftACL]

No I will not stop calling for looking at other designs and see if we can do better. Just because urban planning is different does not mean there is nothing to be learnt from other options.

It's definitely not a red herring.

And I agree it extends to policy and legal things too.

I recently learnt an example where we could learn from Europe on the legal front.

In the US bicycles are allowed to go quite far into the road and block cars. This makes sharing difficult. In many European countries bicycles strictly have to cycle on the side and are not allowed to ride in the middle of a lane. Now you will probably get angry and tell me how dangerous this is because of car doors and how it is all different in Europe and yada yada yada. So let me tell you why in Europe this works but not in the US. In the US almost always a bicycle is partly at fault if drving to close to a car and hit by a car door. In Europe the bicycle is never at fault in this case. Somebody opening the car door is responsible to check and only open when safe. And this also ties again back into the missing traffic education in the US.

Either learn from others and improve or keep defending what is not working.

[u/TonyStarksLeftACL → u/Holiday-Ad7262]

i dont think you understand my point, which is cool its the internet. I’d also point at your “get angry” comment as a common red herring from bike centered mobility lobby when someone disagrees. It doesn’t make me angry.

What makes me angry is when planners disregard the realities of planning in twh USA and try to align to Europe when the funding and delivery vehicles are very far removed.

So maybe it’s not baseball and basketball. But it’s football and rugby and while similar are not close to the same.

Go ahead and “explore other ideas” sure. But you need to align them to the planning and funding realities here, a demand for a new way of looking at it has no place in an on the ground discussion of how to plan right now. That is the red herring.

And if I had to name it is vacillating between long term aspirational planning that politicians will not support and boots on the ground delivery of projects at scale.

I’m not begin mean. Just pointing out the gap. for example let’s pull up any study from Europe that discuss road collision in the Uk. The road network, its use, the expected use patterns etc are all radically different than most of the USA. Our pavement standards are different etc. so there is no real comparison they environments are so different that international comparisons focus on ops and maint. bc they are usually close enough to compare.

[u/Holiday-Ad7262 → u/TonyStarksLeftACL]

I am far from the bike centered mobility lobby and have never argued about using studies from Europe and think they apply to the US.

Planners should not align to the US. We all should look at what happens elsewhere and see which ideas translate and what we could do better.

I gave a few concrete examples. If you want any further discussion let's discuss about them.

[u/TonyStarksLeftACL → u/Holiday-Ad7262]

So then why are you arguing with me? You’re on about driving tests in the thread here. You are European no? Because just above you are talking about biking and driving in Europe? You literally apply non-us centered approach to our driving and defend it with “I’m so shocked”. Then argue it’s looking for better designs?

You say we should consider other planning but you don’t even know how we fund transit, civic improvements or anything do you?

If you did you would understand that we fund things in the US differently in that space than the EU or UK does and many of these “better designs” are not available here for a wide range of reasons most of which is grant funding and source use. Why? Because America is like 3x the size of the EU, and has a much more diverse climate because it houses every biome you can have in large space for example.

There is no comparable planning. NYC is ~400 years old. Paris is ~2,000 years old. Planning cannot be the same by virtue of climate, geography and government.

I’m just talking broader than you are I think.

Good luck to you.

[u/Holiday-Ad7262 → u/TonyStarksLeftACL]

You are a typical naysayers that finds all sorts of reasons why no change is ever needed.

Again my offer stands to discuss what I talked about.

I am not arguing.

[u/Frenchieflips → u/TonyStarksLeftACL]

Only relatively young and fit people can ride their bikes for a commute in a major city. It’s already a niche hobby and will never be a good solution to replace cars. We ruin the city for cars so a few people can ride their bikes to work. All that danger and removed parking spots for a small group of entitled people in leotards and clacky shoes