6 ms·

It's cute how almost everyone here is bringing up like one or two instances they had an issue with a cyclist. when you could ask any cyclist how many issues the

It's cute how almost everyone here is bringing up like one or two instances they had an issue with a cyclist. when you could ask any cyclist how many issues they have with cars and the volume of negative interactions is MASSIVELY different. Oh cool, you met a single bad cyclist. Every time I go out on foot or on bike I meet like 3 bad drivers. Oh, and when I meet a bad driver I am likely to die or be critically injured, when you meet a bad cyclist you're likely to scratch your paint. It's important to zoom out and have some perspective.

giantg2 4y ago
"It's important to zoom out and have some perspective." I could say the same to you. I'm listing one of many bad experiences. Look at my other comments - I'm advocating for stricting driver testing because the current stuff is a joke. How about the percentage of bad drivers vs bad cyclists? I see a lot of bad drivers because they're more drivers. I'd guess about 1 in 40 cars I see are doing something illegal and unsafe. I'd say I see 1 in 10 bicyclists doing something illegal and unsafe. Yes, the severity is likely higher with a car. But don't handwave away the possibility of serious injury or death in an accident involving a bad cyclist, particularly if another driver is trying to avoid hitting them. Hitting a cyclist can be a lot like hitting a deer, and there are fatalities associated with that every year. Edit: why disagree?
- avianlyric 4y ago
  We have stats on this, I’m sure you know how to use Google. But TL;DR drivers break the rules more often than cyclists. Almost every driver breaks the speed limit on a regular basis. It happens so often that it’s completely normalised and ignored, despite the fact it significantly increases the risk of serious injury and death to vulnerable road users. Fatality rate of pedestrians in car related collisions rises from something like 10% to 100% between the speeds of 30mph and 40mph. Yet many drivers see no issue with ignoring a 20mph or 30mph speed limit in a residential area.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Ok. None of this disagrees with what I've said. And thank you for not being an asshole like the previous commenter. Just curious... Do you have asource for your data though? Google seems to indicate that cyclists and drivers are similar in their law breaking. https://whyy.org/articles/cyclists-violate-traffic-law-no-more-than-drivers-new-data-shows/ https://whyy.org/articles/cyclists-violate-traffic-law-no-mo... I'd love to find data like this for the US. If your Google-Fu is better, can you source me some? https://fullfact.org/news/are-cyclists-blame-road-accidents/ https://fullfact.org/news/are-cyclists-blame-road-accidents/
    - avianlyric 4y ago
      You said: > How about the percentage of bad drivers vs bad cyclists? I see a lot of bad drivers because they're more drivers. I'd guess about 1 in 40 cars I see are doing something illegal and unsafe. I'd say I see 1 in 10 bicyclists doing something illegal and unsafe. Collected data disagrees with you. Strongly suggesting you’re falling prey to confirmation bias, or you’ve become highly desensitised to driver misbehaviour. Neither of which would be surprising if you live and drive in the US (my experience of driving in the US, is that it’s almost designed to make it hard to do the right thing as a driver, little to know affordances in the infrastructure to allow for normal human error). > Just curious... Do you have asource for your data though? Google seems to indicate that cyclists and drivers are similar in their law breaking. I assume these conclusions change by locality, and collections method. However I’ve never seen a study demonstrate that cyclists break the law substantially more than drivers. Certainly nothing close to the 4:1 ratio you suggest. > I'd love to find data like this for the US. If your Google-Fu is better, can you source me some? I don’t have any US data unfortunately, I’m mostly interested in the UK where I live. Ultimately the TL;DR is that cyclists are no worse at rule breaking than drivers. They just tend to break different rules, and driver rule breaking is almost entirely normalised. Big difference of course is severity of outcome, which pedestrian fatality rates suggest is about 400x to 1000x greater when a car is involved. If drivers really cared about the safety of road users, they be up in arms about poor driving standards, and the lack of consequences for drivers that kill people. They wouldn’t be shouting about cyclists.
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  > I'd guess about 1 in 40 cars I see are doing something illegal and unsafe. It's about 95 in 100 in my experience. No exaggeration. It's remarkable when a car comes to a complete stop at a four-way non-lighted intersection. Or when they travel no faster than the speed limit (this is slightly more common in my experience). 1 in 40 is really hard to believe unless you ignore rolling "stops" and speeding.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Rolling stops aren't that common in my immediate area. It gets worse if you go into the city though. I'm not even counting all of those since I'm saying "and unsafe" as well. If a bike or car does a rolling stop without anyone around, I don't care. You are being illegal, but there nobody there. It completely changes if there are people around.
josephcsible 4y ago
This is misleading because you're neglecting the base rate. Drivers only notice fewer bad cyclists because there's fewer cyclists overall.

giantg2 4y ago

"It's important to zoom out and have some perspective." I could say the same to you. I'm listing one of many bad experiences. Look at my other comments - I'm advocating for stricting driver testing because the current stuff is a joke. How about the percentage of bad drivers vs bad cyclists? I see a lot of bad drivers because they're more drivers. I'd guess about 1 in 40 cars I see are doing something illegal and unsafe. I'd say I see 1 in 10 bicyclists doing something illegal and unsafe. Yes, the severity is likely higher with a car. But don't handwave away the possibility of serious injury or death in an accident involving a bad cyclist, particularly if another driver is trying to avoid hitting them. Hitting a cyclist can be a lot like hitting a deer, and there are fatalities associated with that every year. Edit: why disagree?

avianlyric 4y ago
We have stats on this, I’m sure you know how to use Google. But TL;DR drivers break the rules more often than cyclists. Almost every driver breaks the speed limit on a regular basis. It happens so often that it’s completely normalised and ignored, despite the fact it significantly increases the risk of serious injury and death to vulnerable road users. Fatality rate of pedestrians in car related collisions rises from something like 10% to 100% between the speeds of 30mph and 40mph. Yet many drivers see no issue with ignoring a 20mph or 30mph speed limit in a residential area.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Ok. None of this disagrees with what I've said. And thank you for not being an asshole like the previous commenter. Just curious... Do you have asource for your data though? Google seems to indicate that cyclists and drivers are similar in their law breaking. https://whyy.org/articles/cyclists-violate-traffic-law-no-more-than-drivers-new-data-shows/ https://whyy.org/articles/cyclists-violate-traffic-law-no-mo... I'd love to find data like this for the US. If your Google-Fu is better, can you source me some? https://fullfact.org/news/are-cyclists-blame-road-accidents/ https://fullfact.org/news/are-cyclists-blame-road-accidents/
  - avianlyric 4y ago
    You said: > How about the percentage of bad drivers vs bad cyclists? I see a lot of bad drivers because they're more drivers. I'd guess about 1 in 40 cars I see are doing something illegal and unsafe. I'd say I see 1 in 10 bicyclists doing something illegal and unsafe. Collected data disagrees with you. Strongly suggesting you’re falling prey to confirmation bias, or you’ve become highly desensitised to driver misbehaviour. Neither of which would be surprising if you live and drive in the US (my experience of driving in the US, is that it’s almost designed to make it hard to do the right thing as a driver, little to know affordances in the infrastructure to allow for normal human error). > Just curious... Do you have asource for your data though? Google seems to indicate that cyclists and drivers are similar in their law breaking. I assume these conclusions change by locality, and collections method. However I’ve never seen a study demonstrate that cyclists break the law substantially more than drivers. Certainly nothing close to the 4:1 ratio you suggest. > I'd love to find data like this for the US. If your Google-Fu is better, can you source me some? I don’t have any US data unfortunately, I’m mostly interested in the UK where I live. Ultimately the TL;DR is that cyclists are no worse at rule breaking than drivers. They just tend to break different rules, and driver rule breaking is almost entirely normalised. Big difference of course is severity of outcome, which pedestrian fatality rates suggest is about 400x to 1000x greater when a car is involved. If drivers really cared about the safety of road users, they be up in arms about poor driving standards, and the lack of consequences for drivers that kill people. They wouldn’t be shouting about cyclists.
dpkirchner 4y ago
> I'd guess about 1 in 40 cars I see are doing something illegal and unsafe. It's about 95 in 100 in my experience. No exaggeration. It's remarkable when a car comes to a complete stop at a four-way non-lighted intersection. Or when they travel no faster than the speed limit (this is slightly more common in my experience). 1 in 40 is really hard to believe unless you ignore rolling "stops" and speeding.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Rolling stops aren't that common in my immediate area. It gets worse if you go into the city though. I'm not even counting all of those since I'm saying "and unsafe" as well. If a bike or car does a rolling stop without anyone around, I don't care. You are being illegal, but there nobody there. It completely changes if there are people around.

josephcsible 4y ago

This is misleading because you're neglecting the base rate. Drivers only notice fewer bad cyclists because there's fewer cyclists overall.