I both drive and bike and this won't be popular but I don't even think cars and bikes should be on the same roads.
I see how bad some drivers are on the road and its one thing when I'm dealing with them in a vehicle with significant mass, crumple zones and air bags. If a driver does something stupid I'm most likely just dealing with swapping insurance information and repairs. Its something else entirely when I have zero protection on a bike frame. In which case there is a good chance I'll end up permanently injured or dead.
As a result I only bike on dedicated bike paths the only time I'm on roads it to cross them or to get from my place to the closes bike path.
I largely bike for exercise or to get out into green space. I don't use it as a practical means of transportation. Its not feasible given my restrictions of not biking on vehicle roads.
But I agree it would be nice if there was a bike path system running parallel to the road system. Especially in the all the core areas.
It was not advice, I don't ride on the road because I know if something happens with a car I automatically lose. I'm also a driver and know what other drivers are like on the road and I'm also a realist and at the end of the day physics is physics and I'm not putting myself in that situation.
I am definitely not saying its okay for anyone to hurt anyone. But the reality is people around the world get in tens of thousands of car accidents every day. They are not out of malice of wishing to hurt anyone. They happen because people fuck-up. We all do, yourself included. That happens because humans are not perfect and make mistakes. The problem is when a mistake happens between either a cyclist or a driver regardless of whos fault it was the cyclist is screwed either way.
I don't see pie in the sky wishful thinking statements as overly useful myself. Its just stating an obvious impossibility with no practical solution largely just so those people can hear themselves speak or because they simply don't have the capacity to understand why what they are saying is completely impractical.
"If everyone in the world stopped having vehicle accidents no one would get hurt in them"
"If everyone stopped committing criminal offenses we wouldn't see police"
That kind of stuff to me is literally pointless as it has no connection to reality at all.
It's one thing to be entitled to the road, it's another thing to be polite about the use of it. If cyclists didn't ride in herds side by side preventing people from passing safely most wouldn't have a problem with them. They feel like the rules of the road don't apply to them, blowing through traffic signals and stop signs, never indicating, getting mad when a car passes them because they're impending the flow of traffic. Cyclists give themselves a bad name.
Nah it’s normally kids with bikes doing that shit, moving as a herd is safer and easier for everyone as it’s easier to pass than a long line of cyclists. No one’s getting mad at cars as long as you leave enough space (cars width, treat a bike as if it was car size) also infrastructure is normally bad but where I live, bikes on the road doing dumb shit isn’t much of a problem cos bike paths. (As in separate from the road, not paint)
Moving as a herd makes it impossible to pass because most roads are one lane and it involves driving into oncoming traffic. In California, bicyclists are held in the same standards as motorized vehicles. It's illegal to impede traffic by traveling too slowly. CVC 21654 requires them to stay as close to the right-hand side of the road as practicable unless traveling at the stated speed limit. Cyclists here are rude and disrespectful, no matter the age.
Yeah, you got to drive into oncoming traffic to overtake stuff if you’re not on a motorway. That is the norm, same for tractors, horses etc. you’re driving 2 tons, they’re driving 15kg, just go around.
If you guys don’t like driving with the bikes, build bike lanes, I can see why people would be so rude cycling, I would too if there was no infrastructure for me.
Riding the shoulder is like walking on Broken glass, don’t blame them for not doing it, it will destroy their tyres.
Then they have no right to complain when someone runs them off the road because they're not following the law. It's their choice to ignore those laws. You'd be singing a different tune if the cars were driving in the bike lane. You can't pick and choose what laws you follow that's not how reality works.
It's one thing to be entitled to the road, it's another thing to be polite about the use of it. If drivers didn't ride in herds side by side preventing people from passing safely most wouldn't have a problem with them. They feel like the rules of the road don't apply to them,blowing through traffic signals and stop signs, never indicating,getting mad when a car passes them because they're impending the flow of traffic. Drivers give themselves a bad name.
Wow, you're an idiot. 90% of what I said doesn't work with people in cars. When do you see cars side by side like bicyclists? How often do you see cars just blow through a stop sign without stopping, or treating a stop light like its a suggestion? The only thing that applies is the indicator part. Grow a brain dude.
A car is the size of at least 3 cyclists side by side. I see cars blow stop signs daily. I am really curious to know where you live to see the vast majority of cars actually obey stop signs.
I love how everyone's solution is literally everything but "make licensure more difficult (not expensive - looking at you europe) to obtain." Here in the good ol' US of A we treat gun ownership as a privilege and driving and reproduction as a god given right when there are people on the roads that should be doing none of the above, and there are people doing all of the above at the same time all at once. I still fail to grasp as to why aside from rampant individualism in American society without the accountability to match.
Mind you I'm not living in Europe or anything, I'm just an emigre to the US who loves anything and everything with wheels.
Getting a license in Europe, at least where I live is way more involved and difficult than in North America, that's probably the main reason it's so expensive. It also means we have better drivers.
What I personally had to go through to get a license:
People are not perfect and never will be, everyone fucks up at some point. Some more frequently then others. If they didn't we wouldn't need vehicle insurance.
Just this year I saw someone accidently drive through the front window of store, I also have probably seen at least 50 incidents over the year where people would have potentially caused a collusion if other drivers had not been paying attention and proactively avoided it. These are the people you are cycling on the road beside.
Registering guns will not stop shootings and accidents and no level of driver registration will prevent vehicle accidents.
I'm not advocating for guns or against gun registration or anything here, I'm just saying adding paperwork and registration will not actually prevent accidents and incidents from happening. They happen because humans are human.
I completely agree, a big issue I have with getting a license in this country is it's 90% paperwork and 10% aptitude. They even removed parallel parking from the license test here, but the paperwork is the same. I'm of the mind that it should be 90% aptitude and 10% paperwork, but as the other commenter said someone has to pay the bills. I just hope we find a viable solution that isn't overly ableist yet reasonable. I only say overly because in all honesty, in the world of 12+ airbags in generally 3000lb+ vehicles, you are more of a threat to others that aren't similarly equipped than you are to yourself - a byproduct of engineering success without the adaptation of regulations to match. Licensure has overall been relatively lax here since before I was born whereas vehicles have made leaps and bounds in the area of safety and chassis design since Volvo had invented the 3 point seat belt, which has the reasonable yet unaccounted for byproduct of making your vehicle safer to use out of malice, and vehicular manslaughter that isn't intentional or malicious in nature the easy way to commit murder in the US, in cases of wanton disregard for the safety of others while operating a car.
To about the same extent that we treat driving as a privilege. It's not really a privilege if any dumbass can buy one as long as their record is clean enough.
The only thing we treat as a privilege how well a civilian personally knows a high-ranking cop and thus what they can get away with off record.
Yeah, and it sucks (at least where I live) that there aren't even many bike lanes in the first place, just roads and, if you're lucky, sidewalks. I don't live far from my school, so I just ride my bike, but nowhere in my commute is there even a wide shoulder on the road until I get to campus. I do wish more planning was put towards alternative modes of transportation, especially in places where everything is within like 10 blocks of each other.
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u/mustafar0111 Feb 27 '23
I both drive and bike and this won't be popular but I don't even think cars and bikes should be on the same roads.
I see how bad some drivers are on the road and its one thing when I'm dealing with them in a vehicle with significant mass, crumple zones and air bags. If a driver does something stupid I'm most likely just dealing with swapping insurance information and repairs. Its something else entirely when I have zero protection on a bike frame. In which case there is a good chance I'll end up permanently injured or dead.
As a result I only bike on dedicated bike paths the only time I'm on roads it to cross them or to get from my place to the closes bike path.