As a bicyclist, I'm constantly told how dangerous bicycles are. Usually, I get a blank look when I explain, bicycles are very safe, it is the cars that are the dangerous part of the equation. Now I'll have to add fast billing ambulances to the list of dangers.
You could say that jumping out of a plane without a parachute isn't dangerous, it's the ground that's dangerous.
Cyclists make mistakes, make bad judgments, take big risks, just like car drivers. They are human too. You could say cyclists have a bigger incentive to avoid problems, but no driver I know wants to hit someone and injure them, and cyclists I know become inured to the risks after riding for years without injury - it seems to me that human attention loses focus unless something reinforces it; as a result 1 in 1,000 risks are very hard to focus on.
Cars and bikes don't mix except when cars are going bicycle speed. If your system kills people when they make a mistake, your system is very badly designed.
That's a pretty weak example; gravity is a physical force of nature and inescapable. Cars are a political choice that we made but don't have to make.
But that the comparison seems apt is pretty endemic of how cars are treated: an absolute must, as if they were a force of nature.
Never mind that a huge chunk of our population can not drive, and are therefore excluded from society by cars. Car dependency is a very exclusionary way to build a town. (Note that there is a difference between allowing cars, and car dependency. Making cars the only permissible way to navigate is car dependency. And it's possible to allow car travel without forcing car dependency, but it requires work and is not the default in the US)
I've been urban biking for years. It's no doubt dangerous. I don't think you become complacent like you do when when driving. You are pretty aware that these heavy fast moving vehicles are on the same road as you. Part of my commute was on a path off the roads, it was nice. I always leave plenty of time when riding so im not rushing.
even when there are separate lanes it's important to stay alert for cars turning onto side streets etc. (As a driver those right turns across a bike lane can be tricky, especially since really fast scooters are using those lanes too)
I think it depends if I'm coming home from the gym late at night I might be less aware than when I'm my usual self. Especially if the roads are quiet. I've had two near calls in London - once an uber driver swung in front of me out of nowhere to pick up a passenger and it was wet so my bike couldn't stop in time and I went into the back of them. The other a car was parked in the cycle lane and they opened their door just as I was passing.
I am now even more aware and paranoid when cycling but my real solution has to optimise my routes for reduced stress rather than speed or distance - I'll happily take a longer route if I know it's much more chill
I take it one step further: I'm not only invisible but am being actively targeted with prejudice by those who can see me. You very quickly develop a knack for predicting what "cages" will do at any given moment.
As a pilot, there is a sense of "falling behind the aircraft" when your situational awareness diminishes --- getting ahead of the plane by 30 seconds, then 5 minutes, and then 30 minutes translates to non-flying tasks/jobs too. It's a great mindset for "incident management" in any field.
Part of the experience of riding a motorcycle is being acutely aware of your surroundings at all times.
I rode a motorcycle as my daily commute for years, and then when I switched to a car it felt oddly strange how little I had to pay attention:
(Possibly controversial belief: riding a motorcycle makes you a better car driver. Motorcycling has made me pick up habits like always looking over my shoulder and not solely trusting my mirrors when changing lanes)
Not quite an acronym but to complete the trifecta, sometimes nobody was at fault and you just haddalayerdown (because we all know steel and human flesh are much better at slowing a motorcycle down than wimpy old rubber)
Cue an extremely vivid memory of a rainy drenched Washington DC street awash with glare and sparkle from the street lights. Car in front of me lit the brakes, and I grab the front handbrake on my little 250 to.... nothing. No result. "uh" escaped my mouth as I grabbed a somewhat panicked handful of brake and slammed on the rear again to.. absolutely nothing except a lighter rear wheel. Finally had to just lean into a quick hard veer into the oncoming lane cause the wet and my small bike was just gliding. I learned that day that my last word will probably be "um"
I think the problem is that in a lot of places in the west bicycles are forced to mix with motor vehicles, and away from pedestrians.
This always seemed like a weird trade off to me - “you are inconveniencing some pedestrians, so go in this other lane where you can die”
I grew up in Eastern Europe, where technically the laws are similar, but no policeman is going to stop you for riding on the sidewalk. So you naturally mix with pedestrians - that means you travel slower but a lot safer.
I remember going to Barcelona ~ 10 years ago and renting some bicycles to explore the city. I knew that this would be a different experience since the laws are different, but my partner at the time just didn’t care to follow local laws, so she just went on and started going on the sidewalks. The locals were _very_ strict in directing you off of them, no police got involved but I could see that happening if you tried to do that more.
Now I went there last year, and it was like the locals have “lost the war” on that - maybe because the city has built enough bike lanes that the few places where you _had_ to go on a sidewalk you weren’t that much of a nuisance or because the sidewalks themselves got bigger or something else, but the experience was a lot more pleasant than anywhere else I’ve cycled.
Bicycles should _not_ mix with cars in my opinion - let those travel at high speeds, just make mixing of pedestrians and bicycles regulated and safe and all would be well.
> "I've been urban biking for years. It's no doubt dangerous... Part of my commute was on a path off the roads, it was nice."
Ironically, in 10+ years of cycling in London, the worst accidents I've ever personally witnessed were bike-on-bike crashes on the crowded cycle lanes! Broken bones, possible head injuries, ambulances and police called. I do recall one near-miss involving a bus and a few dooring accidents but nothing the cyclist didn't walk away from.
No complacency is very real and necessary. When I bike everything is my responsibility, my life is in my hands, so I’m not looking to finger-point when a driver does something stupid or rash — it’s on me to be notice, anticipate, and react so that I don’t get killed.
> no driver I know wants to hit someone and injure them
As a cyclist I don't think this is completely true. I've been in cars with drivers who do dangerously close passes on cyclists and the common excuse is "oh I just want to scare them" or similar.
So while I guess it's technically true that even these drivers don't technically want to hit the cyclist the distinction is somewhat moot.
There is something about bicyclists, and especially skaters, that leads to active hostility from drivers.
On at least two occasions, I've had cars purposely try to hit me when I was skating. I know it was on purpose because in one case the driver said "you're not a vehicle" as he came within inches of hitting me, and in another case the driver, completely unprovoked, began cursing loudly and tried to run me off the road.
You might argue that the first one didn't actively "want" to hit me, but he certainly wouldn't have cared if he did.
> Cars and bikes don't mix except when cars are going bicycle speed.
I wouldn't want to get hit by a car going 15 mph. Or even 1 mph. So I would say cars and bikes don't really mix at all, especially since many drivers are either actively hostile to bikers and skaters, or indifferent about hitting them.
I agree, the system is very badly designed. Cars and bikes don't mix without carefully designed roads that make the lazy/default decision and the safe decision the same thing, because eventual complacency is human nature.
> You could say that jumping out of a plane without a parachute isn't dangerous, it's the ground that's dangerous.
In that metaphor cars are a force of nature. I've also heard "the laws of physics trump the law of man", and "what's more important: being right or being alive". People choose to drive; people choose to cycle; and people choose to walk. When I choose to drive, I have the means to kill someone else and I'm damn well responsible for that risk. After all, the person I hit didn't choose for me to drive.
> When I choose to drive, I have the means to kill someone else and I'm damn well responsible for that risk.
I agree, and part of my GP point was, I think almost every driver agrees, even in different words: Drivers are very adverse to hitting humans, whether walking or biking.
The driver who hit me on my bike didn’t give a shit, and only even came back because a friendly motorcyclist chased and caught him.
The driver who hit me on foot also didn’t care, and didn’t have insurance, and had multiple previous violations - and both his parents had hit pedestrians before as well.
I do see a lot of drivers opting to buy vehicle designs that entirely and unnecessarily disregard the safety of people outside of the vehicle. And I also note that about 7,000 pedestrians die each year being run over by motorists (in the US alone).
I see drivers regularly perform dangerous overtakes. They do these stuffs and expect the other person to avoid them instead. To me that is very much not "drivers are very adverse to hitting people".
Most drivers are reasonable, but some use their vehicles as weapons to punish cyclists for slowing them down -- even though in SF, you're likely to end up at the same stop light in 30 seconds.
When I bicycle commuted in the city, I had about one incident a week of a driver close passing or cussing me out. In one incident, a driver revved their engine at me and followed me home because I reminded them that they had to give three feet of space when passing. I thought I was going to die when they went for their glovebox. If I ever cycle commute again, it will be with a concealed weapon.
In other contexts, using violence for political ends would be called terrorism. On our roads it's just another day.
It’s not symmetric though. In a car your mistake has a much higher ceiling to the negative consequences.
And with great power comes great responsibility.
I’ve been honked for waiting for a safe way to pass a cyclist. The car behind me then just zooms past the cyclist after I make a manoeuvre. It’s not like all driver are out there trying to be responsible as much as possible.
When I stop to make way to either pedestrian or bicycle or kid (that is more dangerous than a pedestrian) I position my car in such a way that the car after me is as blocked as possible.
That means going more to my left (but not to much as to leave enough space on my right), turning a little (the car takes a little more space) and even turning on the turning signal (not the parking signal)
They get pissed (the cars. Walking Grandmas wave at me to greet me), so I hope I don't get shot at some point.
If there's not enough room for a car to pass safely (e.g., a wide shoulder, a bike lane, etc.), cyclists are encouraged to ride in the middle of the lane. If the cyclist rides on the side, cars try to squeeze past and eventually the worst will happen. Remember, 99% safety is almost certain death for a regular cyclist.
It’s not really safe to pull over for a bicycle in most street configurations in the US because that puts you squarely in the dooring zone of the parked cars.
So entitled because that is frequently the codified law. Often the exact same law that allows people to drive cars on the road. In other words they are just as entitled to the road as any other road user. Can you point to some source that indicates that most roads aren’t for cyclists?
In all of the places that I have commuted as a cyclist the rule is that cyclists are to ride “as far to the right as is practicable” or similar. Meaning the lane positioning is for the cyclist to be as far to the right as they judge is ‘practicable’, not as far to the right as is possible. Sometimes it is not ‘practicable’ to be on the shoulder or in the right side of the lane.
I don't think I've ever met a cyclist who's opposed to separated infrastructure for bikes and cars. Every local government project I've ever seen to build this kind of infrastructure runs into issues with drivers who don't think it's necessary or would somehow ruin their lives.
As a cyclist in vancouver I would say separated infrastructure is a mixed bag, I would have a car cutting me off (right hook as they say), many near misses when I had right of way several times a week on the dunsmuir bike path. I felt a lot safer biking in traffic in that area. OTOH I've enjoyed biking along the skytrain paths all the way out to surrey on occasion. The areas where the segregated path meet traffic have to be very carefully thought out.
As a former bicycle messenger I'm opposed to it. The trails are filled with baby strollers and inline skaters moving in and out of lanes. typically there is no right of way when crossing roads or entrances to parking lots. Blind corners with overgrown vegetation are par for the course.
Riding in traffic is an absolute pleasure when you know how to draft vehicles. The suction created by larger box trucks can actually pull you along with minimal effort.
Dedicated bicycle lanes on existing roads are the worst. You are trapped in an area where turning vehicles are going to T-bone you. Pedestrians will tentatively step out on the the asphalt as they ponder crossing the street. Want to swerve around them? Good luck, there are bollards or other barriers now separating the cycling lane from the rest of the larger roadway.
This is why there is a common international driving etiquette to not overtake on the outer lane. Yet, safety maxi city planners, who clearly never pursued cycling at any level, insist upon building dedicated cyclist lanes on the outside. I see many accidents posted as outrage bait on Twitter caused by cyclists attempting to overtake on the outside or being overtaken by cars attempting to turn. As a professional courier, I would have never attempted such maneuvers.
Overtake on the inside, like any other vehicle. Stay behind the brake light on the inside bumper. Be prepared to weave to the inside if the vehicle slows. If you are not keeping pace with traffic, yield to the outside and do not make a pest of yourself. Unless of course there is an immediate intersection, then you should defend against a turning vehicle.
Dedicated cycling lanes have issues and bike trails often do not go to the destinations you need. It is a nice alternative for leisurely cycling, but not applicable utilitarian transportation. I often wonder if the planners of these things have ever used a bicycle to pick up groceries or run errands.
Finally, all of the people crying about how dangerous cycling is, will most likely still complain or find other excuses to not ride their bike. That's fine. I'm not here to convert everyone into a cyclist. Personally, I have no issues sharing the road with cement trucks. "I would start riding my bike to work, if only you built me...", becomes, "It is too hot, cold or rainy to ride bikes" or, "I can't carry groceries on a bicycle, are you crazy?". It is much like the chronically overweight or those who claim they want to quit smoking. These people don't actually want to ride bikes. That's fine, but we shouldn't attempt to accommodate their excuses by wasting money building infrastructure which creates dangerous expectations for motorists and cyclists.
Stated preferences are not always what users want or need.
Yeah? Except where I live, we have "bike trails" wide enough, and newly paved looking enough that I could drive my car over them, in fact! The lawncare people for my neighborhood absolutely drive their trucks on them, with enough room to let people pass them by! And yet, I still see people on the regular roads, at the worst times: early morning when most people are trying to get to work, or right as the sun is going down when it is drastically harder to notice a bicycle.
One time I was going up a hill I've been up and down a million times, only to be shocked to find, after sundown, similar road with a BIKE TRAIL, some person riding their bicycle WITH NO LIGHTS, on a road where you're expected to go 45 (its actually 55 when I googled it!) or more, giving me little time to react, I have NEVER seen someone be so careless on this road, or even ride a bicycle on it, because its not a road for bicycles. So no, it's not just the cars that are dangerous, its the carelessness of bicycle riders that is equally dangerous.
To preface, I don't know anything about your specific area, but bike infrastructure is like car infra in that there are multiple classes of infrastructure for different purposes. What are commonly called bike trails tend to be off-road paths that go on meandering paths through nice parts of the city like parks and vineyards. That's not what my post is talking about.
People going to work typically take the most direct route there, which is usually the same road cars take rather than those trails. Thus you see people cycling on the same busy roads you're rushing to work on. That's an urban planning problem and one that I've spent lots of time trying to fix in my own community. In every case it's been held up by people who don't want to spend money on bikes and in one memorable case were worried about a traffic study that estimated an additional 30s worst case scenario for commute length increases.
As for the hill thing, cyclists are not obligated to have rear facing lights in any state I'm aware of, only forward facing. They need to have a rear retroreflector for visibility in most places. These come on all bikes by default and the only way to not have them is to intentionally remove them, which is uncommon. I assume they didn't since you didn't mention it, and I'm also going to assume the road doesn't have a bike lane since you mentioned a bike trail on some similar path instead. In that case, they're probably allowed to be there (though they should have forward facing lights and safety patches for their own sake).
Your responsibility as a driver is to drive at speed where you can identify and safely react to obstacles, including bikes. It sounds like that didn't happen here, but you're blaming someone else for the near miss.
> As for the hill thing, cyclists are not obligated to have rear facing lights in any state I'm aware of
In Florida, my state, they absolutely must:
- A bicycle operated between sunset and sunrise must be equipped with a lamp on the from exhibiting a white light visible from 500 feet to the front and both a red reflector and a lamp on the rear exhibiting a red light visible from 600 feet to the rear.
- A bicyclist who is not traveling at the same speed as other traffic must ride in the designated bike lane or as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway.
At least 24 states require bike lights during certain times of day or in limited visibility conditions, including:
Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, and Maine.
Every suggestion I've seen was to make car infrastructure significantly worse in order to add a bike lane to an existing road, while also making that road significantly slower and worse for cars.
I don't think I've ever seen real suggestions to make a seperated infrastructure grid for pedestrians and bicycles that isn't just a sidewalk or bike lane on an existing road.
I'd recommend Vancouver as a decent example of how segregated lanes can work in a North American city.
That said, can you give specific examples of what you mean by "make car infrastructure worse"? Usually segregation is just a matter of putting a barrier on an existing bike lane and painting lines, which doesn't actually change anything for drivers who stay in the lines. In some cases, a lane may be converted, but this rarely impacts travel times much for the same reasons adding additional lanes doesn't improve travel times. Vancouver did lots of traffic studies on this criticism in particular that you can read if you're interested.
Are you imagining an alternative in which a bike network is added to a city, but not using "existing roads"? Where would these entirely-new roads be placed? Would you knock down the buildings between two car-infrastructure-roads, to pave it for bicycles? I suppose you could remove the car-infrastructure-road entirely and make it just a bike-road / linear park. Or you could put the bike lane underground? Or build a separated-grade elevated parkway network above the city?
Of course no one wants to hit and injure other people. But every one want to get ahead of traffic, and then ignore the fact that more dangerous maneuver = more chance of hitting someone. Saying "no driver I know wants to hit someone and injure them" is just playing with semantics.
> Cars and bikes don't mix except when cars are going bicycle speed.
Which is why infrastructure in cities should not mix cyclists and cars. That is the real reason why cycling is safer in the Netherlands with separate bicycle paths and bicycle traffic signal.
When you speed, use your phone when driving or ignore basic safety rules then you can't really say you don't want to hit someone or injure someone.
I mean you can say that but it's as believable as shooting your rifle without looking in general direction of a crowd of people and then saying you really didn't mean to shoot anyone.
Unless you have very little experience riding around cars, here's how I read that comment: 'I'm either too defensive/argumentative to tell the truth or I'm not honest with myself.'
Analogously: Since the the election, I've seen endless people blaming Biden, 'the media', etc etc. The only one I'll take seriously is the person who says: 'I failed; I should have done better.'
I have tens of thousands of miles of experience, and have studied the law and best practices around cycling.
I vividly remember exactly the circumstances of each.
Most involve me riding as far to the right as practicable while someone driving a car hits me from behind, or quickly passes and does a right hook.
My favorite was the national parks employee who was drunk driving in Yosemite and hit me from behind. I'd love for you to explain how that one was my fault.
I know plenty of drivers who rather risk hitting someone that take a couple of extra seconds to drive safely. It seems to be give or take half of them, depending on the area.
Self driving cars are amazing in SF. I cycle there I feel much safer when there’s a self driving car behind me. Waymos, zooxes and cruises never accelerate hard to suddenly cut a turn in front of me rather than waiting behind me to turn across the cycle lane. They never get angry when there is no cycle lane and I’m forced to take up a full lane for a stretch. They have cold machine patience and attitude and to get away from my own anecdote the statistics just plain say they are safer.
They are expanding the areas the self driving cars can operate in year by year.
As much as I hate nanny state laws and acknowledge that self drivings not there yet I can see a future where humans are barred from driving. 40k deaths a year in the USA from humans driving and a fear of rightfully using the road for non driving activities due to poor human behaviour. I’m actually pretty hopeful we get there.
A waymo hit a cyclist in San Francisco a few months ago, by failing to anticipate that there may be traffic behind a turning truck and accelerating into it.
Just noting that the bicyclist is fully at fault for trying to jump the queue at a 4 way stop, and it sounds like they were going in a different direction than the turning truck as well. Hard to pin that one on Waymo, though I do feel like Waymo cars tend to drive a bit "city aggressive" at times, like asserting their right of way, sticking close to the car in front, etc.
I don't know what happened in this case, but it's possible that the bicycle stopped at the stop sign before the Waymo did, and then proceeded (behind the truck), entering the intersection before the Waymo. If so, there's nothing wrong with the cyclist's actions.
What I mean is: if the bicycle got to the intersection before the Waymo, then it would have had right of way.
Of course, it's also possible that the cyclist failed to stop at the stop sign.
But neither of us has seen footage of what happened. Presumably Waymo has a recording but, if the cyclist was hidden by the truck, that won't show what happened.
That’s not the law. Vehicles take turns at an intersection - there’s no total queuing order based on arrival time.
No, 'taking turns' is not codified in the law or mentioned in the DMV handbook.
If the Waymo stopped at the intersection after the bicycle stopped at the intersection, or if the Waymo's path was blocked and it was thus not entering the intersection, the bicycle would not be required to yield.
At a contended intersection, it should never be the case that two vehicles coming from the same lane take consecutive turns.
Are you sure about that? Consider the sequence of events in this hypothetical scenario:
1. The lorry arrives (from the North) first and stops at the stop line.
2. The lorry begins turning at the intersection, and is completely past the stop line but still in the intersection.
3. The bicycle arrives (from the North) and stops at the stop line.
4. The Waymo arrives (from the South) and stops at the stop line.
5. The Waymo waits at the stop line because, if it were to proceed, its path would intersect with the turning lorry's path.
6. The bicycle proceeds into the intersection, following the lorry.
How would the cyclist's actions in this scenario violate something in California Vehicle Code sections 21800 to 21809?
If the Waymo could not see the bicycle then them cyclist could not see the Waymo. So at best the fault lies with each party to make visual contact and determine who goes first.
> Just noting that the bicyclist is fully at fault
I disagree. Legislation does not abrogate drivers of all moral responsibility. Quite frankly, if a child jumps out from behind a parked car and you hit them despite following the law to the letter, you share some of the blame. I would argue that in all cases where a driver hits someone, they share some blame, because they chose to drive at a speed beyond their ability to react. It is the driver after all that causes the damage.
Obviously, the only solution is to drive at a much, much slower speed, which at some point becomes impractical, so we don't do this.
> because they chose to drive at a speed beyond their ability to react
That's just not possible to solve in practice. Unless you're moving at an extremely slow pace, there's always the lag of noticing + decision + activation. You can drive 10km/h and if someone walks right in front of you, there may be physically no way for you to prevent a collision.
Sure, slower speeds prevent many accidents, but always sharing the blame is a very bad idea.
That was nine months ago. How many human drivers in SF do you wager have struck a cyclist since? It’s easily in the hundreds.
Self driving cars do not eliminate risk to pedestrians or cyclists but they reduce it by multiple orders of magnitude, and they are trending in the right direction, whereas human drivers seem to be trending in the wrong one.
The statistics are still in their favour even at this early stage when the bugs are yet to be fully figured out though. There’s good reason today to feel safer around self driving cars even with the above example.
As self driving becomes more and more commonplace and even safer we’ll likely be focusing more on the 40k human caused fatalities.
> I can see a future where humans are barred from driving. 40k deaths a year in the USA from humans driving and a fear of rightfully using the road for non driving activities due to poor human behaviour. I’m actually pretty hopeful we get there.
Yes, I believe that in the distant future humans will look back on the late 20th and early 21st centuries and be appalled that people were ever allowed to operate cars like this. It will be like how we think about ancient practices of human sacrifice or gladiatorial combat.
> yet I can see a future where humans are barred from driving
Increase the unsupervised driving age to 18 (unless in an area with no robotic transport) and massively increase penalties for driving infractions. As in you lose your license on your second DUI or third at-fault collision, reckless-driving ticket or cell phone violation. (Maybe make a DUI count as two infractions for the second list.)
> People drive with a suspended license all the time
And if they’re not getting in accidents more frequently than population, that’s fine. I didn’t include this common citation for good reason.
> How else are getting to your job? Getting groceries?
Calling (or buying) a robotic car. We’re looking decades into the future when manually piloting a car is a privilege. (Or less than a decade in cities with public transit.)
If you’re driving drunk, hitting things, recklessly speeding or texting while driving, you shouldn’t be driving. We tolerate it, extraordinarily, because driving is almost a right in America. What’s changing is it’s going from a necessity everywhere but New York to a necessity where there isn’t Uber.
(In practice, at least from the few folks I know close to the incoming White House, it will happen through increasing liability for insurers. Nobody will be banned. It will just become expensive to human pilot. Or, if your FSD or equivalent isn’t engaged, hard to dispute fault.)
It’s hard to get your license suspended! You have to severely screw up, usually more than once. If you depend on a personal vehicle for your livelihood, you should avoid it!
Going out on a limb and guessing people for whom losing a vehicle is existential have the same executive-function issues as someone who will get their license suspended and then drive on it. (Also, poverty. Registration and renewal costs money.)
Why is it always about banning things? Just make the self-driving experience good and most people will choose it voluntarily. No need to ban things. Almost everyone would rather take a nap or read a book than sit in traffic or stare at the highway.
Sure, but look; if this were a discussion about people making irresponsible decisions that result in themselves getting killed, I can sympathize with the philosophy that we can simply encourage people to voluntarily avoid those things by making other choices preferable. But when people make irresponsible decisions that result in third parties being killed, this is when we make laws and ban things. This is why, for example, there is a ban on intoxicated driving. Not because of the risk of harm to the drunk driver, but because of the risk to everybody else, who want to stop volunteering to share roads with drunk drivers.
I think most people equate "bicycles are dangerous" with "cycling is dangerous", which seems perfectly reasonable to me. What matters is whether you'll get hurt using a bicycle, not the pedantry of whether the bicycle itself is the problem.
It's not pedantry when it's the root of the problem.
Cycling isn't dangerous, being on the street with cars is dangerous. Being on the street on a bike is dangerous, walking down a street is dangerous. Heck being in a compact car on today's streets with oversized/overweight vehicles is dangerous.
It's important to be precise about the source of the danger because it correctly identifies the problem.
There's a big push right now to ban people from buying and registering Kei cars with the argument being that they're too dangerous on american roads. If that argument holds, firstly, then it flows logically that they can nanny state people off of their bikes and motorcycles as well using the same argument. Secondly, Kei cars are not dangerous, getting hit in a kei car by an oversized SUV or "light" truck is.
Because whether it's people pulling the trigger or the gun itself, both are the direct source of harm. Bicycles are not the source of harm, cars are.
The analogous argument one way would be quibbling over whether it's the driver or the car. The analogous argument the other would be saying it's the shooting victims fault for being in a place where they are likely to get shot (bad neighborhood, in a position to surprise or threaten an armed individual, or maybe just in America)
Of the 1,360 bicyclist deaths in 2022, 928 died in motor-vehicle crashes and 432 in other incidents, according to National Center for Health Statistics mortality data. Males accounted for 87% of all bicycle deaths
Because it's true in both cases. The root of the problem is something else and the thing being blamed flippantly can be much less of a worry if the root problem is addressed. People dismiss the guns don't kill people argument because it fits a simplistic ideological talking point, but it's just a basic fact that whether guns are accessible or not, the people accessing them will be the cause of fatalities if there's something wrong with their conduct and context.
With bikes, in a different context, something similar applies: What causes fatalities isn't bikes themselves but how the roads, rules, other people/vehicles and social conduct around bike use use and sharing of roads are.
the other one is that flying is safer than driving, and I can bloody well promise you that there is nothing safe about flying at
all. Massive amounts of attention to the job, by very tallented people who are highly trained and supported, manages to do better.....statisticaly for flying, than the abomanable record of highway saftey.
And bicycles are equivilant to ulralight aircraft.Been hit twice while biking, doored a guy in my van, watched a guy on a bike get dead under a city bus late one night, front wheel and then the back ones
> How is this any different than "guns don't kill people, people kill people?"
In terms of guns, the reality is that people with guns kill people. An intent to kill plus an instrument designed to do so easily is often a lethal combination. People don't just kill each other more often when they have access to a firearms, they are also far more likely to kill themselves. [1]
The risk to cyclists and other road users also comes about by way of a combination of factors: poorly designed roads, lack of protected cycling lanes, lack of adequate pedestrian infrastructure, oversized vehicles, distracted drivers and so on. I suspect there are also a fair number of cases where cyclists/pedestrians make mistakes or engage in risky behaviour.
As a society, I don't think there is too much we can do in terms of altering people's behaviour. We can, however, do a great deal to alter the built environment to slow cars down and make things safer for other road users. Plenty of cities have made huge progress with this. There remain plenty that are terrible, and in my experience, many of the worst ones are in America. I think the last American city I was in was Vegas and my gosh, I would never want to cycle there. By contrast, I recently visited Montreal and was stunned by how good the cycling infrastructure was.
I mean, that statement is also true. And a huge number of gun deaths involve the shooter and victim being the same person.
One would argue it's a similar situation even further in that the SUV/Truck also isn't the problem, it's the inattentive driver that runs a person over. If you have a vehicle with the worst safety ratings on the market driven through a crowded city by someone who is adept at driving, there will likely not be an issue, just like if you have a responsible gun owner going to the range every week to fire off a few rounds, you likely won't have an issue.
People are always the problem. The regulations at play are generally built around the idea that if you don't give fallible people access to things that are either dangerous when handled by those unprepared, like an oversized truck, or things that are just designed to kill when someone doesn't really need one, that you minimize the chances of something going wrong.
Cycling is not dangerous because of nature, it's dangerous because of cars. It's not the same as "skydiving is dangerous" where the nature itself goes against you.
What matters is what we want to do as a society: leave the cars where they are as some kind of unmovable force of destiny, or actually manage them to not make them dangerous.
The only 2 bicyclists I know that were injured both (effectively) said they expected the car to yield or see them. One of them was in 2 accidents 5 years apart.
Certainly, legally, the cars were in the wrong every time... But the cyclists' mentality shocked me... They _expected_ the cars to respect they were there (and in one case they had their head down in a bike lane and didn't see the car pull out in the intersection to make a right turn) and were completely shocked when they get into an (avoidable) accident.
I certainly have nearly been in LOTS of accidents on my motorcycle around the DC beltway and interstates, but I dodged every one by understanding that other drivers are selfish and inattentive, keeping my bike in a lower gear & revved in heavy traffic, and watching out for myself. In my chats with the 2 bicyclists, their mentality seemed entirely different. I really don't get it, and I hope that's not common.
It's not about blame. It's about recognizing the need for safe infrastructure: physically separated bike paths, not painted gutters. Physics does care about the difference between crossing a painted line vs hitting a bollard.
Many cyclists bike like raving a*holes, and it is dangerous, both for them and for cars which cannot predict how they will behave. I could imagine cases where the the car might swerve and hit something else besides the cyclist. So yes, bicycles can be dangerous to cars in a roundabout way.
According to the NTSB, cyclists have 79 deaths per billion miles traveled. For comparison, cars were 11 per billion miles. Around 2/3rds of bicycle fatalities involved a motor vehicle. So even if we solved car-bicycle collisions, the fatality rate per mile would still be much higher than driving.
Bicycles are great, but compared to cars they are dangerous.
Most people just wouldn't have the time to travel as far by bike as they do by car, even if they wanted to. They'd take some other form of transit for long drives.
Car drivers do 13500 miles/year on average, even at a very sporty 20mi/h per (average!) a cyclist would have to ride full 29 days/year non-stop to match that.
Thus, a better measure would be accidents/hour of operation. I bet most avid cyclists do < 1000 miles/year and few do more than 3000 and that would mostly close the gap in death/hour of use.
That logic also applies to flying versus driving, but few make the same objection when someone points out that flying is safer than driving.
And at the margins, cycling does substitute for driving, just as driving sometimes substitutes for flying. The different modes of transportation do have various advantages and disadvantages, but the fact remains that cycling is significantly more dangerous.
Cars are more dangerous than bicycles because they’re larger and faster, yes. But when you compare cars vs. bicycles on the same road, together, bicyclists are in more danger. I can only surmise the people that tell you “bicycles are dangerous,” are just looking out for your well being and meant “you’re putting yourself in danger.”
Unfortunately, roads were designed for cars first. Even more unfortunate, people are not accustomed to sharing the road with bicyclists and only glance at their mirrors to check for large familiar cars. Thus, to say that “cars are the ones that are dangerous,” implies you think bicyclists have the de facto right of way and everyone should adjust to your presence.
In the U.S., roads were paved for cyclists first. There was a political fight over whether and how to regulate cars to prevent them from crowding out other road users. See "Fighting Traffic".
I meant to reference modern roads. Lane markings, signage, and setbacks are clearly spaced, designed, and optimized for traveling in a car. Those 45mph signs and the intentional spacing of lane markers were not designed because of bicyclists.
What law? Bicyclists do not automatically have the right of way. They are users of the road and must follow the same road laws as cars.
You say many roads… if you go by miles, you think major interstates weren’t designed for cars? How about rural roads… who do you think those long stretches of roads are designed for if not cars?
Slight tangent, but when I lived in a country in Europe, this was the way the law worked for car-cyclist collisions.
1. The car driver is assumed to be at fault. In absence of other evidence, the car driver is always 100% at fault for the accident. Including all consequences for hitting/killing someone.
2. If it is proved that the cyclist broke the law and acted negligently, the car driver is still 50% at fault for the accident, since they’re driving a more dangerous vehicle and should’ve actively prevented the accident.
People were extremely respectful to cyclists there, and gave a ton of space when passing
"An Oregon cyclist who was struck by an ambulance that made a right turn into him — fracturing his nose and leaving him with scrapes and other injuries across his body — has filed a $997,000 lawsuit against the ambulance provider after it scooped him up, drove him to the hospital and then billed him for the service, according to the suit."
$47K for current medical costs, $50K for expected future medical costs, and $900K for pain and suffering (long-term). So the provider may not be getting away with this.
Article does not say if cyclist has paid/will pay the ambulance bill.
Typically judge rejects the huge sums, and he gets more reasonable amount, if even fair. E.g. judge might award him only proven costs with receipts, and reject all the pain-and-suffering.
If an ambulance hits someone it's likely that the ambulance's insurance will have to pay their ER bill which will be higher than the ambulance bill. It's a net loss.
It sounds like what's actually happening here is that the cyclist's auto insurance is picking up the tab, and in turn suing the ambulance company to get their money back.
I always find this intersection of the auto and cycling worlds so strange. If he didn't have a car, he wouldn't have auto insurance, so I guess his health insurance would be covering the initial tab, and then suing the ambulance company to get their money back?
If you get a moving violation on your bicycle and show a driver's license to the police, it seems you get points in your license, but if you don't have a driver's license, you don't?
I live in SF. I haven't owned a car in many years. I bicycle or take public transit when my destination is too far to walk. I still purchase auto insurance that costs me something like $15/month. It has been years since I've driven, but I do this because I might rent a car on holiday or might drive a friend's car on a roadtrip someday. If I ever needed to get a car again, a period without auto-insurance makes insurance VERY expensive. I did that when living abroad before. I never thought about it covering me as a cyclist or pedestrian. God willing, I'll never need it.
BUI is a different infraction in many states than DUI, and in some states (WA) it's not even illegal, just like riding a horse while drunk isn't illegal.
Searching the record https://www.bicycleaccidentsnyc.com/new-york-law-on-biking-w... NY (sibling was asking about NY) does not give DUIs for bikes either. The key is Motorized. So you would get on on an e-bike or e-scooter but not a manual scooter, manual bike.
WA you can't even get a public intoxication ticket, you only get tickets if you're disorderly or causing a threat. In WA they CAN take you off the street and impound your bike at no cost to you (you can pick it up free the next day). They're actually supposed to offer you a lift as well.
And the penalties are the same as if he's driving a motor vehicle?
Here in NY, a DUI can really mess with your life for a while. While drunk cycling is probably penalty-worthy, I'm conflicted about it being a proper DUI
I got hit by a car last weekend. It was the "left cross". Fortunately I wasn't seriously injured -- just a minor concussion -- and my bike wasn't badly damaged.
It's a weird situation. The guy who hit me stopped but seemed like a crackhead. There wasn't enough damage to require a police report or involve insurance. But maybe I should have just to create a record of this idiot causing accidents.
A kid I knew in high school was knocked off his bike by an ambulance. He'd have come out of the incident better if the ambulance hadn't backed up to see what happened, for it backed over his legs. The city settled with him for what sounded like a lot of money in 1971, but not so much ten years later.
> Whose first instinct after possibly running over something is to back up?
It's pretty common. You're manoeuvring your vehicle, you hear a noise, you think you bumped a post or something and instinctively try to "undo" what you just did.
The TV adverts really caught me off guard during my first trip to the US as an adult. The disclaimers right at the end make you wonder how the ad could ever be effective - I mean, how could anyone respond positively to an ED ad that ends with "may cause death"!?
Isn't there a risk for other charges though doing that? Like hitting him on purpose to earn money? I wouldn't want to explain this for a jury as a lawyer.
I can see exactly how this happened: the ambulance drivers picked up the cyclist and drove to the hospital, which requires them to do a whole bunch of paperwork to ensure correct hospital billing, correct accounting for drugs etc.
I would assume at that point computers took over and led to the billing. In an ideal world you’d say “well obviously the target shouldn’t have been billed by the ambulance”, but I’m guessing their infrastructure does not have a built in mechanism for “we are the cause of this trip being needed”.
After that the rest of the lawsuit is likely just the only mechanism to get correctly compensated (the insurance company pays the hospital - if the victim had insurance - then goes to the ambulance co to get them to pay, which is via a “lawsuit”, probably with no intent to go to court, just that’s the mechanism of action. The ambulance company also probably has insurance, but often such insurance is contingent on being sued, because of course).
The large amount is not actually very large: ignoring all the immediate bills I’m sure lawsuit payouts have tax obligations, depending on severity of injuries recovery can be a very long time if ever, with increased costs through out life, and then you are always starting high with the expectation of a counter offer for settlement.
Knee jerk reaction about the ambulance service behaviour and general cyclist safety aside, 100k in medical expenses and a 1m lawsuit for a broken nose and other “unspecified” injuries is just mental.
The medical expense amount and every other direct cost is wild, but I guess I wonder how much would someone justifiably invoice to be hit by an ambulance. If it was a celebrity or ceo they'd probably bill quite a lot, but just a random guy?
Rocky mountain west American here. Our local (non-air) ambulance company went out of business. The local city and county government were forced create a government ran service and everyone was upset they were doing it (people literally argued we should just have nothing at city/county meetings). Our new government system works so much better, is cheaper, and is actually thriving with us even getting new stations for quicker response. Everyone in town still hates evil socialized medicine and says it can't work, in fact they just voted for the Presidential candidate that promised we can't have it. I love it here and love the people, but WTF?
The US seem to document it better. Googling for news on "florida man" is almost always impressive. Just now we have "Florida man has been arrested after allegedly hiding two radio-controlled explosive devices in the toilets of a casino", "Florida Man Accused of Hacking Disney World Menus, Changing Font to Wingdings", "Florida man bitten twice by shark at same beach over a decade apart" and others.
Aside from the crazy high bill, wouldn't a person whom this happened to get charged for medical coverage regardless of how it happened in every country without free healthcare?
I think it’s more easy to consider when you think about what is in the bill. Like do you really want them invoicing the company that hit you with “reconstructing their wiener”, etc information.
No, the at fault driver and/or their insurance would be responsible for paying their medical costs. The person who was hit doesn't pay their medical bills and then ask the insurance company for reimbursement. They file a claim with the insurance company to pay their medical bills directly. AFAIK all US states require bodily injury coverage to work that way.
This is not quite true - if your insurance policy does not cover the full amount you can be on the hook.
Of course if you don’t have insurance you’re kind of screwed, or your insurance doesn’t cover the full recovery costs you have to pay the medical bills and get stuck with them if the responsible party is under insured and lacks assets.
Accident created expenses seem like one of those things where if someone else is responsible for the costs you should be able to simply transfer all subsequent costs to them, rather than being stuck with bankruptcy or life long debt if they can’t afford to repay you.
Honestly there should be a transitive debt mechanism - but companies won’t like that because currently they can just force people to settle for some minimal payout knowing that they aren’t on the hook for anything that comes up down the road.
> if your insurance policy does not cover the full amount you can be on the hook.
If "your" means the person who got hit, it's not their insurance that's on the hook, it's the insurance of the person who hit them.
Yes, that person's insurance will have a limit, after which your own insurance coverage for uninsured or under-insured drivers would kick in. And if that also hits a limit, then you would have to sue the party that hit you for damages to get back anything you had to pay over the limit.
> you have to pay the medical bills and get stuck with them if the responsible party is under insured and lacks assets.
In this situation also, yes, once you were over the limit of your own uninsured or under-insured driver coverage, you would have to go to court to get the burden put on the responsible party, so that if that party were judgment proof, it would be the medical provider's problem, not yours.
> if someone else is responsible for the costs you should be able to simply transfer all subsequent costs to them
You can do this, but yes, it does take a lawsuit once you're over whatever limits insurance will cover, as above.
As a non-American, accident created expenses seem like one of those things where the state should cover the personal injury costs which helps to make healthcare cost at least half the price, leads to better outcomes, and avoids people being bankrupted simply because of their health.
> accident created expenses seem like one of those things where the state should cover the personal injury costs
As far as an individual who gets injured by someone else is concerned, "the state" is just another form of insurance. I'm not sure the state is any more reliable as an insurance provider than private companies; indeed, it might often be less so since it is subject to political pressures that private insurance providers are not.
There’s nothing more HackerNews-like than taking the time to complain about the necessity of certain commentary without adding anything to the discussion.
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