7 ms·

In my experience, most people don't have a great understanding of what keeps cyclists safe in mixed traffic (i.e. not within a protected lane), and how opposed

In my experience, most people don't have a great understanding of what keeps cyclists safe in mixed traffic (i.e. not within a protected lane), and how opposed those things often are to the law. As a former professional urban cyclist, I constantly broke the law to keep myself safe, while keeping my first priority never to endanger pedestrians or other cyclists. A kind of Three Laws where the unarmored travelers come first, then myself, then the folks in big steel boxes. Cyclists need a different set of laws on the road for everyone's benefit. But people have become so inured to the constant threat and frequent (and often fatal) harm of motor vehicles, that they fixate on and exaggerate the threat of cyclists, and illogically insist that they need to follow the same rules of the road as cars. Cyclists should follow rules of the road -- special rules created for a special vehicle.

throw0101a 4y ago
> […] then the folks in big steel boxes. Motorcyclists have the colloquialism "cager" for automobile drivers for the big steel cages they are contained in.
- mynegation 4y ago
  - valeness 4y ago
    - dang 4y ago
      Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - notch656a 4y ago
    If I were a lawyer for an injured motorcyclist, I would relish showing a defendant's comment such as yours to the jury.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      > While approximately 34% of motorbike crashes involve no other vehicle, only around 19% of car crashes are single-vehicle accidents. There may be no defendant.
  - dang 4y ago
    "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
qubex 4y ago
Special rulesets can be set up for certain classes of vehicles provided that observable behaviour experienced by other road users is predictable and unchanged. Otherwise it’s just a new recipe for disaster.
- eckmLJE 4y ago
  Completely agreed. There's plenty of existing cyclist behavior that is not scalable and should be discouraged in whatever bike-specific rules of the road are considered.
pclmulqdq 4y ago
As a non-cyclist, a lot of us don't particularly care what keeps you safe if you behave erratically and not according to the written rules. We want you to behave in a way that keeps everyone safe. A lot of cyclists - and a lot of drivers - do not. The right thing to do is to follow the rules as written and lobby for change rather than to go about doing things that the rest of us don't understand because you perceive them as safer. I think the Idaho stop is actually a good rule as long as you have to slow down to 10 mph/15 kph as you go through the stop sign - I have lived in NYC and nearly been on the receiving end of an asshole on a 20 mph bike several times.
- btbuildem 4y ago
  As a non-cyclist, it would behoove you to listen to someone with first-hand experience, and decline the opportunity to make yourself look like a dunce by speaking your mind.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Hold on, I have no firsthand experience of cyclists because I don't ride a bike through the street? So all those times I have walked (and driven) around cyclists mean nothing at all because I'm not the one on the bike? Right now, we have car-centric rules that apply to cyclists, and that is pretty unsafe for cyclists and drivers, but pedestrians are often the ones on the receiving end of cyclists' bad/unpredictable behavior today. I agree that cyclists need different rules, but I also think that cyclists need to have those rules written down and follow them. If you have walked around NYC for any length of time, you will experience an area that has: (1) a lot of cyclists, (2) decent infrastructure and well-defined rules for cyclists, and (3) a lot of cyclists who break those rules when it is convenient. That is completely untenable.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  > We want you to behave in a way that keeps everyone safe. What evidence do you have that their behaviour significantly impacts the safety of others? The statistics clearly show the drivers are largest cause of injury and fatalities on the road, and bikes cause so few injuries and fatalities that the stats are basically just noise. Additionally if you look at UK police reports of incidents between bikes and cars, the police almost never attribute blame to cyclist behaviour. Only something like 10% of cases are cyclist found to be partially at fault, and never fully at fault.
afry1 4y ago
Indeed. It feels unsafe to follow the "rules of the road" on a bike because the rules were created for an entirely different kind of vehicle. I think about this a lot when approaching a stoplight or stop sign. For any road user, where is the most dangerous part of any road? You guessed it, the intersection. When is an intersection safest? When it's empty. So, for a cyclist, it makes the most sense to cross through the most dangerous part of the road when it is devoid of danger; i.e., when it's empty, or when other cars are stopped. This of course gets a little dicey when you consider protected turns, leading pedestrian intervals, jaywalking, or anything else which would make that "empty" intersection a little less empty and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. But generally speaking, I feel way safer running a predictable red light than crossing it with moving traffic.
- u801e 4y ago
  > It feels unsafe to follow the "rules of the road" on a bike because the rules were created for an entirely different kind of vehicle. The rules of the road[1] were first developed in the early 20th century before motor vehicles were very common. They were designed for operators of vehicles like animal driven vehicles, cyclists, and early motor vehicles (anything on wheels). > So, for a cyclist, it makes the most sense to cross through the most dangerous part of the road [an intersection] when it is devoid of danger; i.e., when it's empty, or when other cars are stopped. > [...] > > But generally speaking, I feel way safer running a predictable red light than crossing it with moving traffic. I don't see how the second part follows from the first. Your assertion is that it's safe to cross an intersection when it's empty or when other cars are stopped, but then you say you feel safer running a red light. But when the light for cross traffic is green, cross traffic will neither be stopped or not in the intersection. Statistically, you're far more likely to get hit by cross traffic compared to same direction traffic, so while you may feel safer, you're actually putting yourself in more danger. [1] https://www.enotrans.org/wp-content/uploads/RulesOfTheRoad.jpg https://www.enotrans.org/wp-content/uploads/RulesOfTheRoad.j...
  - eckmLJE 4y ago
    Here is a grossly simplified illustration: I'm approaching an intersection on my bicycle and the light ahead is red. The motor vehicle traffic is stopped at that red light. I pass by that stopped traffic and get closer to the intersection. My head is largely above the cars stopped at the crosswalk and I have good visibility. I scan the entire intersection (from an elevated view standing up on my pedals, without any pylons or mirrors obstructing my view as in a car) and note that there are no pedestrians in or entering the crosswalk, and no motor vehicles approaching cross-wise (the intersecting street that has a green light). I can clearly see that the way is clear and it is safe to proceed. The law would say I should stop and wait for the light to turn green. However, when the light turns green, all the motor vehicle traffic anxiously accelerates and jockeys for position in the intersection. If I'm in a bike lane, some of the traffic may be attempting to turn across my lane (and right into me) to beat the pedestrians into the crosswalk. If I've taken the lane and I'm between a car ahead of me and one behind me, the car behind me may get upset that I'm not moving quickly enough and honk, swerve around me, tailgate me, etc. This is unsafe and frightening, and I seem to be slowing other people down. Instead, if I arrive at that red light and I can clearly visualize that it is safe for me to proceed, I will then proceed through the light and get out of everyone's way while having an impact on basically no one. Still, the folks in cars will be very upset with me, and sometimes still honk, or write angrily on message boards about bike scofflaws, because I'm breaking the law (I suspect it's more that they're upset they're stuck in their car and experiencing classic road rage), even though if I had remained with them at the light, I'd likely just be getting in their way. --- To move on from the grossly simplified example, there is a matter of degree to how clear the intersection is. Maybe there is a pedestrian just entering the crosswalk, but I'm in the center of my lane a good 15 feet away from them. That still seems safe to me. Or there is a car approaching the intersection that has the green, but they're still a good 50 feet away and I have plenty of time to make it through the intersection. On the one hand, some more reckless/careless riders will make closer calls than I would think are acceptable or safe. And on the other hand, many pedestrians who don't have honed spatial awareness will insist they were "almost hit" by a cyclist when it really wasn't close and the person could have suddenly sprinted and not been in danger. As I learned how to ride in the city, I had to start safer and gradually find my way to what I considered acceptable. I couldn't rely on the law to tell me, because if I followed the law, I'd be risking my life unnecessarily. I'm not trying to say it's clear or obvious what the rules should be, but just that in the current situation, applying the existing laws evenly to cars and bikes doesn't make sense.
mynegation 4y ago
People can barely keep one set of rules in their head. Having to maintain two set of rules will hardly make anyone safer.
- joshlemer 4y ago
  There are already different sets of rules for trucks, cars, bicycles, and pedestrians.
- The-Bus 4y ago
  I would hope that drivers understand how to interact with motorcyclists, trucks, emergency vehicles, and trains all of which have separate sets of rules and could interact with a car.
u801e 4y ago
> In my experience, most people don't have a great understanding of what keeps cyclists safe in mixed traffic (i.e. not within a protected lane) There is really no fundamental difference between pedalcyclists and motorcyclists on surface streets where traffic moves between 0 and 30 mph. Neither one needs a barrier separated lane to operate in traffic. > As a former professional urban cyclist, I constantly broke the law to keep myself safe, By breaking the law, you made yourself less predictable to other drivers and pedestrians. That actually decreased your safety because people were expecting you to do one thing, but you did something else. The key to safety is to be predictable and following the same rules of the road as drivers of other vehicles. When I rode my bicycle yesterday, I just stayed in the middle of the travel lane and complied with traffic control devices. I didn't have any close calls or threats to my safety even though I was riding in moderate to heavy traffic. > Cyclists need a different set of laws on the road for everyone's benefit ... A kind of Three Laws where the unarmored travelers come first, then myself, then the folks in big steel boxes. The current rules of the road require pedestrians to follow a certain set of rules when crossing or walking along a roadway and group cyclists with drivers of vehicles in that they have to follow the same set of rules in terms of right of way, signaling, and where to position themselves laterally when preparing to make a turn at an intersection. Some cyclists want to operate in a manner similar to pedestrians (using side paths and crossing at crosswalks), but the problem with that is that even the slowest cyclists move much faster than a walking pedestrian. This means that a cyclist a second away from entering the intersection would be much further away compared to a walking pedestrian. This makes it less likely a motorist or motorcyclist would see them and yield to them compared to the pedestrian. In fact, this is the reason why statistics show that riding on the sidewalk is more dangerous compared to riding on the road with traffic. Even if the rules were changed to match your proposal, that doesn't address the issue I brought up about cyclists moving too fast to really be seen by motorists so that the latter have time to see them and yield to them.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  > There is really no fundamental difference between pedalcyclists and motorcyclists on surface streets where traffic moves between 0 and 30 mph. Neither one needs a barrier separated lane to operate in traffic. Spoke like someone who has little experience of either. I can tell you from experience that the introduction of a physically separated cycle lane on a 30mph road which is part of my commute as reduced the number of close calls I’ve had from every couple of days to zero. As would like to remain alive and with all my limbs intact, I would strongly argue that your opinion on this topic is somewhat simple and desperately lacking.

throw0101a 4y ago

> […] then the folks in big steel boxes. Motorcyclists have the colloquialism "cager" for automobile drivers for the big steel cages they are contained in.

mynegation 4y ago
- valeness 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That only makes everything worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- notch656a 4y ago
  If I were a lawyer for an injured motorcyclist, I would relish showing a defendant's comment such as yours to the jury.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    > While approximately 34% of motorbike crashes involve no other vehicle, only around 19% of car crashes are single-vehicle accidents. There may be no defendant.
- dang 4y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

qubex 4y ago

Special rulesets can be set up for certain classes of vehicles provided that observable behaviour experienced by other road users is predictable and unchanged. Otherwise it’s just a new recipe for disaster.

eckmLJE 4y ago
Completely agreed. There's plenty of existing cyclist behavior that is not scalable and should be discouraged in whatever bike-specific rules of the road are considered.

pclmulqdq 4y ago

As a non-cyclist, a lot of us don't particularly care what keeps you safe if you behave erratically and not according to the written rules. We want you to behave in a way that keeps everyone safe. A lot of cyclists - and a lot of drivers - do not. The right thing to do is to follow the rules as written and lobby for change rather than to go about doing things that the rest of us don't understand because you perceive them as safer. I think the Idaho stop is actually a good rule as long as you have to slow down to 10 mph/15 kph as you go through the stop sign - I have lived in NYC and nearly been on the receiving end of an asshole on a 20 mph bike several times.

btbuildem 4y ago
As a non-cyclist, it would behoove you to listen to someone with first-hand experience, and decline the opportunity to make yourself look like a dunce by speaking your mind.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  Hold on, I have no firsthand experience of cyclists because I don't ride a bike through the street? So all those times I have walked (and driven) around cyclists mean nothing at all because I'm not the one on the bike? Right now, we have car-centric rules that apply to cyclists, and that is pretty unsafe for cyclists and drivers, but pedestrians are often the ones on the receiving end of cyclists' bad/unpredictable behavior today. I agree that cyclists need different rules, but I also think that cyclists need to have those rules written down and follow them. If you have walked around NYC for any length of time, you will experience an area that has: (1) a lot of cyclists, (2) decent infrastructure and well-defined rules for cyclists, and (3) a lot of cyclists who break those rules when it is convenient. That is completely untenable.
avianlyric 4y ago
> We want you to behave in a way that keeps everyone safe. What evidence do you have that their behaviour significantly impacts the safety of others? The statistics clearly show the drivers are largest cause of injury and fatalities on the road, and bikes cause so few injuries and fatalities that the stats are basically just noise. Additionally if you look at UK police reports of incidents between bikes and cars, the police almost never attribute blame to cyclist behaviour. Only something like 10% of cases are cyclist found to be partially at fault, and never fully at fault.

afry1 4y ago

Indeed. It feels unsafe to follow the "rules of the road" on a bike because the rules were created for an entirely different kind of vehicle. I think about this a lot when approaching a stoplight or stop sign. For any road user, where is the most dangerous part of any road? You guessed it, the intersection. When is an intersection safest? When it's empty. So, for a cyclist, it makes the most sense to cross through the most dangerous part of the road when it is devoid of danger; i.e., when it's empty, or when other cars are stopped. This of course gets a little dicey when you consider protected turns, leading pedestrian intervals, jaywalking, or anything else which would make that "empty" intersection a little less empty and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. But generally speaking, I feel way safer running a predictable red light than crossing it with moving traffic.

u801e 4y ago
> It feels unsafe to follow the "rules of the road" on a bike because the rules were created for an entirely different kind of vehicle. The rules of the road[1] were first developed in the early 20th century before motor vehicles were very common. They were designed for operators of vehicles like animal driven vehicles, cyclists, and early motor vehicles (anything on wheels). > So, for a cyclist, it makes the most sense to cross through the most dangerous part of the road [an intersection] when it is devoid of danger; i.e., when it's empty, or when other cars are stopped. > [...] > > But generally speaking, I feel way safer running a predictable red light than crossing it with moving traffic. I don't see how the second part follows from the first. Your assertion is that it's safe to cross an intersection when it's empty or when other cars are stopped, but then you say you feel safer running a red light. But when the light for cross traffic is green, cross traffic will neither be stopped or not in the intersection. Statistically, you're far more likely to get hit by cross traffic compared to same direction traffic, so while you may feel safer, you're actually putting yourself in more danger. [1] https://www.enotrans.org/wp-content/uploads/RulesOfTheRoad.jpg https://www.enotrans.org/wp-content/uploads/RulesOfTheRoad.j...
- eckmLJE 4y ago
  Here is a grossly simplified illustration: I'm approaching an intersection on my bicycle and the light ahead is red. The motor vehicle traffic is stopped at that red light. I pass by that stopped traffic and get closer to the intersection. My head is largely above the cars stopped at the crosswalk and I have good visibility. I scan the entire intersection (from an elevated view standing up on my pedals, without any pylons or mirrors obstructing my view as in a car) and note that there are no pedestrians in or entering the crosswalk, and no motor vehicles approaching cross-wise (the intersecting street that has a green light). I can clearly see that the way is clear and it is safe to proceed. The law would say I should stop and wait for the light to turn green. However, when the light turns green, all the motor vehicle traffic anxiously accelerates and jockeys for position in the intersection. If I'm in a bike lane, some of the traffic may be attempting to turn across my lane (and right into me) to beat the pedestrians into the crosswalk. If I've taken the lane and I'm between a car ahead of me and one behind me, the car behind me may get upset that I'm not moving quickly enough and honk, swerve around me, tailgate me, etc. This is unsafe and frightening, and I seem to be slowing other people down. Instead, if I arrive at that red light and I can clearly visualize that it is safe for me to proceed, I will then proceed through the light and get out of everyone's way while having an impact on basically no one. Still, the folks in cars will be very upset with me, and sometimes still honk, or write angrily on message boards about bike scofflaws, because I'm breaking the law (I suspect it's more that they're upset they're stuck in their car and experiencing classic road rage), even though if I had remained with them at the light, I'd likely just be getting in their way. --- To move on from the grossly simplified example, there is a matter of degree to how clear the intersection is. Maybe there is a pedestrian just entering the crosswalk, but I'm in the center of my lane a good 15 feet away from them. That still seems safe to me. Or there is a car approaching the intersection that has the green, but they're still a good 50 feet away and I have plenty of time to make it through the intersection. On the one hand, some more reckless/careless riders will make closer calls than I would think are acceptable or safe. And on the other hand, many pedestrians who don't have honed spatial awareness will insist they were "almost hit" by a cyclist when it really wasn't close and the person could have suddenly sprinted and not been in danger. As I learned how to ride in the city, I had to start safer and gradually find my way to what I considered acceptable. I couldn't rely on the law to tell me, because if I followed the law, I'd be risking my life unnecessarily. I'm not trying to say it's clear or obvious what the rules should be, but just that in the current situation, applying the existing laws evenly to cars and bikes doesn't make sense.

mynegation 4y ago

People can barely keep one set of rules in their head. Having to maintain two set of rules will hardly make anyone safer.

joshlemer 4y ago
There are already different sets of rules for trucks, cars, bicycles, and pedestrians.
The-Bus 4y ago
I would hope that drivers understand how to interact with motorcyclists, trucks, emergency vehicles, and trains all of which have separate sets of rules and could interact with a car.

u801e 4y ago

> In my experience, most people don't have a great understanding of what keeps cyclists safe in mixed traffic (i.e. not within a protected lane) There is really no fundamental difference between pedalcyclists and motorcyclists on surface streets where traffic moves between 0 and 30 mph. Neither one needs a barrier separated lane to operate in traffic. > As a former professional urban cyclist, I constantly broke the law to keep myself safe, By breaking the law, you made yourself less predictable to other drivers and pedestrians. That actually decreased your safety because people were expecting you to do one thing, but you did something else. The key to safety is to be predictable and following the same rules of the road as drivers of other vehicles. When I rode my bicycle yesterday, I just stayed in the middle of the travel lane and complied with traffic control devices. I didn't have any close calls or threats to my safety even though I was riding in moderate to heavy traffic. > Cyclists need a different set of laws on the road for everyone's benefit ... A kind of Three Laws where the unarmored travelers come first, then myself, then the folks in big steel boxes. The current rules of the road require pedestrians to follow a certain set of rules when crossing or walking along a roadway and group cyclists with drivers of vehicles in that they have to follow the same set of rules in terms of right of way, signaling, and where to position themselves laterally when preparing to make a turn at an intersection. Some cyclists want to operate in a manner similar to pedestrians (using side paths and crossing at crosswalks), but the problem with that is that even the slowest cyclists move much faster than a walking pedestrian. This means that a cyclist a second away from entering the intersection would be much further away compared to a walking pedestrian. This makes it less likely a motorist or motorcyclist would see them and yield to them compared to the pedestrian. In fact, this is the reason why statistics show that riding on the sidewalk is more dangerous compared to riding on the road with traffic. Even if the rules were changed to match your proposal, that doesn't address the issue I brought up about cyclists moving too fast to really be seen by motorists so that the latter have time to see them and yield to them.

avianlyric 4y ago
> There is really no fundamental difference between pedalcyclists and motorcyclists on surface streets where traffic moves between 0 and 30 mph. Neither one needs a barrier separated lane to operate in traffic. Spoke like someone who has little experience of either. I can tell you from experience that the introduction of a physically separated cycle lane on a 30mph road which is part of my commute as reduced the number of close calls I’ve had from every couple of days to zero. As would like to remain alive and with all my limbs intact, I would strongly argue that your opinion on this topic is somewhat simple and desperately lacking.