w3news
10 months ago
Emission zone shouldnt be the issue, it is about the amount of cars and road safety for every user. Check e.g. the Dutch road design, where many kids ride bikes. This is already for decades, and has nothing to do with emission zones. But another road design can also help reducing emissions. It is about how many people can travel safe, and with big cities, you have to reduce cars to increase the amount of people that can travel safe, like bikes, walking, and public transport. Road and city design is very important for a livable city.
danieldk
10 months ago
This. Though it doesn’t stop at road design. You also have to change the regulations so that car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents, even when a cyclist or pedestrian made the error. Pedestrians and cyclists are orders of magnitude more vulnerable. Putting much more of the legal burden on car drivers makes them more careful.
The hard part is that you also need to build a cycling culture. Most car drivers in NL are more mindful of cyclists, because they are cyclists themselves as well.
Circling back to road design. In our mid-sized Dutch city, it’s often faster to go from A to B than by bike than by car because of the excellent biking infrastructure and car-free city center. Everything is designed around cycling, some traffic lights will even give bikes a green light more often when it’s raining.
magicalhippo
10 months ago
> car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents, even when a cyclist or pedestrian made the error
Here in Norway the traffic law states[1] that everyone should be considerate, heedful and careful to avoid harm, and this stands above everything else.
So you can indeed get (partial) blame even if the rest of the rules and regulations say you did nothing wrong.
For example you can't just ram a cyclist or a pedestrian if you have the right of way, but you saw them, or should have seen them, in time to take avoiding action.
Having a quick look at the NYS traffic rules[2] as a semi-random point of comparison, I'm assuming most states have something similar, it does say at the start that "no person shall operate a vehicle in a manner that will endanger any person or property".
This seems to be similar in spirit but not quite the same. I guess I could see the NY courts could find in favor of the driver where the Norwegian courts would not, depending on how they draw the line of endangering.
[1]: https://lovdata.no/lov/1965-06-18-4/§3
[2]: https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/trafrule.pdf
umanwizard
10 months ago
What the law says is one thing. What actually gets enforced is another. There is almost 0 probability of any consequences for a driver in NY who kills a cyclist, regardless of whose fault the incident was, as long as the driver doesn’t flee from the scene.
The US is not really a developed country with stable rule of law in the same way most countries in Western Europe are.
Cockbrand
10 months ago
It’s similar in Germany, where truck drivers regularly kill cyclists on right turns and get away with a four figure fine and (if the judge has a bad day) a few months of license suspension.
umanwizard
10 months ago
That is not similar at all. In the US they would not get the four-figure fine nor the license suspension.
magicalhippo
10 months ago
Here in Norway, the one crossing lanes has the blame almost regardless. So with a bicycling lane on your inside, you have to be very, very careful.
However the exact limits to that are being tested. There's just been a case in front of the supreme courts here[1], where a e-cyclist in a bike lane got run over by a truck doing a right-hand turn in a busy intersection.
A similar case back in 2019 ended with 60 days of jail for the driver of the truck[2], though that one seems more cut and dry.
[1]: https://rett24.no/articles/dodsulykken-pa-st.hanshaugen-opp-...
[2]: https://www.aftenposten.no/oslo/i/XgJWg7/syklist-paakjoert-l...
mettamage
10 months ago
Even if the cyclist has the right of way?
sva_
10 months ago
All the damn time. Here's a recent one: https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/hamburg/Radfahrer-erfasst-Lkw...
2700 Euro and 1 month license suspension.
In Germany, you have to cycle extremely carefully if you want to survive.
thefringthing
10 months ago
It's often said that if you want to get away with killing an American, first give them a bicycle. Drivers just say "they came out of nowhere" or "the sun was in my eyes" and that's that.
fooblaster
10 months ago
I don't live in ny. Is this really true, even if the cyclist is in a bike lane?
umanwizard
10 months ago
Yes. Due to how space is used in the US (with all but a tiny minority of people living in car-centric areas), most Americans view cars as tools and bikes as toys, think the main purpose of roads is driving, and feel that cyclists on public roads are an annoying nuisance.
This mentality is a bit less common in major city centers, but by no means nonexistent.
So a pro-car and anti-cyclist bias pervades every part of the justice system: police, prosecutors, judges, and juries, and it's extremely unlikely for a driver to be found guilty of anything in an incident involving a cyclist, unless the driver did something overtly malicious like fleeing the scene.
consteval
10 months ago
I mean, yeah kind of. You can weasel your way out of manslaughter trivially. Generally people aren't punished for true accidents.
user
10 months ago
aqme28
10 months ago
New York is actually notorious for lax prosecution when it comes to drivers killing pedestrians and cyclists.
seanmcdirmid
10 months ago
You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure like the Dutch do. Not just designing but redesigning roads when accidents happen. A city like Seattle attempts to put the burden on drivers in theory, but crappy road designs (including lots of occluding on street parking) with little to no change when accidents occur often move incident sentiment firmly into the “not much the driver could have done” accident category.
Reason077
10 months ago
> "You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure"
Building cycle paths/cycle lanes is very cheap compared to building motor vehicle lanes.
seanmcdirmid
10 months ago
Not building good ones. You have right aways to consider also, often your best option is to build on an existing road, but if you don’t get rid of onstreet parking on that road it’s a huge hot mess.
consteval
10 months ago
Yes, but in the US motor vehicle infrastructure is seen as a given, whereas cycling infrastructure is seen as a privilege.
consp
10 months ago
Which is why bad road design is a mitigating factor. You can technically get away with speeding in the Netherlands if the road design is very inadequate. This happened a a few times when most cities were simply spamming "30kph" signs everywhere and did not put road furniture in place to limit the speed. They quickly learned that was not enough as drivers fought their tickets. It's not as black and white as a mentioned but you get the jist of it. You thus always need incentive for the municipality to fix the road design.
USiBqidmOOkAqRb
10 months ago
>You can’t really do that without investing heavily in cycling infrastructure
With the insane amount of investment put towards appeasing cars [sic] I think it's just a matter of prioritizing.
WalterBright
10 months ago
In the Seattle area, cyclists routinely wander out of the cycling lane on the RHS into the car lane, and wander back, and some are determined to ride on the 4 inch stripe separating the two. None of them ever look over their shoulder before doing this.
A couple weeks ago one swerved out of the bike lane so he could draft behind me.
Around the same time, oncoming cyclists (a cohort) not only wandered out of the bike lane, they wandered into my lane (the oncoming traffic lane). I had to brake hard.
I do not understand what is the matter with them. Brain damage? I've ridden a bike on the roads for decades, I always rode as if the cars could not see me.
The people who lay out the paths must be high, as there are multiple places where the bike lane and the car lane swap sides in an X. Don't they remember those kid slot car toys that had an X piece of track for the purpose of crashing the slot cars?
These aren't kids, they're adults.
aden1ne
10 months ago
Dutch cyclists also do all these things. As a driver in the Netherlands, you'll quickly learn that cyclists don't stick to any rules, they will cross red lights, use the wrong lane, use the sidewalk if it saves them 2 seconds, ignore yield signs etc, and in general they will come from every direction imaginable.
In a car, the onus is still on you to pay more attention. Defensive driving style is the norm - assume mistakes will be made and rules will be ignored. After all, you're driving a 1-2 ton machine whereas a cyclists will be generally be <100kg at slower speeds, bike included.
That said, road design of course matters a lot. In the Netherlands, bike lanes in 50 kph (~30 mph) zones are preferably separated by a curbstone. Meaning it is often physically impossible to cross into the car lane. Bike lanes for roads with higher speed limits are rare in urban areas, and nearly always curb-separated where they exist. Intersections will have islands for cyclists and pedestrians to pause. Most residential areas are 30 kph (~20mph) zones, where most bike lanes have dashed lines. Counterintuitively, cars are expected to drive with two wheels on the bike path in these cases. This prevents cyclists from being in the car's blind spot[0].
[0]: See example from wikimedia: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/Fietsstr...
WalterBright
10 months ago
Is it really too much to ask cyclists to stay in the bike lane? not draft behind cars? don't wander into the oncoming traffic lane?
What good is a lawsuit going to do for a crippled cyclist?
I once took a performance driving class. One of the lessons is "be predictable". The other drivers have an excellent chance at missing your car if you're moving in a predictable fashion.
seszett
10 months ago
Cyclists rarely leave the bike lane for pleasure, it's usually either because a car is parked on the bike lane, pedestrians are walking on it, or because there's litter or a bad surface (bikes are much more sensitive to uneven road surface, but at the same time bike lanes, especially those that are separated from the road, are often built with lower standards than the streets).
Reading your comment one would think cyclists are just suicidal for the fun of it, but try to think of them as humans who have a goal to achieve and are trying to achieve it with the best efficiency/safety balance they can find, like other people. Cars are everywhere on the road, impeding and endangering cyclists, so it's often a matter of trying to find the "least dangerous" way to do something, and that might even involve getting on the wrong side of the road at times. But it's not for fun.
WalterBright
10 months ago
> Cyclists rarely leave the bike lane for pleasure, it's usually either because a car is parked on the bike lane, pedestrians are walking on it, or because there's litter or a bad surface
I see them doing it all the time, and I can clearly see there is no problem with the bike lane.
jodleif
10 months ago
Also remember cyclists actually have to work to keep their momentum. Did you stop and check for crushed bottles? Glass will puncture your tires on a bike
snatchpiesinger
10 months ago
> Cyclists rarely leave the bike lane for pleasure, it's usually either because a car is parked on the bike lane, pedestrians are walking on it, or because there's litter or a bad surface (bikes are much more sensitive to uneven road surface, but at the same time bike lanes, especially those that are separated from the road, are often built with lower standards than the streets).
Or you know, turning left (or turning right in the UK). Or entering a roundabout, where it's generally better to take your lane, if you are not leaving at the first exit.
vfclists
10 months ago
Why don't cyclists use cycle lanes - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1U0BloMOx0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN7mSXMruEo
Can you think of why it is a good idea for vehicles which weigh 2000kg and more to be used to transport 90kg loads all day long at needless risk to lesser road users?
Why can't the motor vehicle industry develop smaller powered vehicles sheltered from the elements for personal transport, something not much more than a 3 wheeled scooter with a canopy?
As a technically aware guy does that really make sense?
Motor vehicles as they are are primarily recreational vehicles and status symbols, not means of moving 100kg individuals and their handbags or briefcases if they are carrying any around town.
WalterBright
10 months ago
> As a technically aware guy does that really make sense?
I've ridden my bike for decades. I:
1. do not veer into traffic without looking
2. do not rely on the cars seeing me
3. stay right as far as I can
4. do not draft
5. do not pass them at speed on the right when they could open a door or turn right into a driveway or other road
6. look at their eyes to see if they see me
7. do not overspeed my ability to brake
8. do not imagine that blaming the car will restore my shattered body
It's just common sense.
vfclists
10 months ago
Do you ride as a commuter, or as a recreational cyclist or as Strava beater?
The point I'm making here is that a commuter cyclist is not supposed to be hyperaware or extra vigilant of the dangers they are surrounded by if they are not riding on a dedicated motor highway.
In fact riding on what in the UK we call the hard shoulder on the motorway (which is illegal anyway) is way way more safer than riding in the city, even though there may be cars whizzing by at 70mph.
Drivers going around town don't drive in a hyper-aware state for fear that they may be crushed by an 80 ton battle tank traveling at over 70mph for a minor lapse in judgement, or even carelessness. They even divert their attention to fiddle about on their mobile phones and their Tesla touch screens without coming to any harm.
Why should a cyclist making the 15 minute 3 mile journey in to work in an urban environment be in a hyper-vigilant mental state unlike the driver?
I'm not saying it is okay for cyclists to ride around in alackadaisical manner which too many of them do, but the consequences for such lapses should not be death or serious injury, especially if they are just riding around town.
When a cyclist says that they find their 4 mile commute to work more stressful than the weekend rides out of town where they may do a 100 miles in day, you know there is a problem, and this is an experienced cyclist.
Take a look at this clip and tell me where the young woman erred? In fact she didn't. If the driver had been ahead of her in the outer lane, checked for her presence before swinging out and waited for her to pass there would have been no danger. He just swung out from the inner lane assuming that she had noticed him, when she hadn't and had no cause to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tnd1lCwI9Yc
There is nothing to even suggest that the side of the cab had turn indicators that she would have noticed when he begin signalling only after getting alongside her - in the other lane -.
The comments should tell you the kind of dangers cyclists face, and it is usually drivers most of the time.
Please remember that not all cyclists by nature are as aware as you are, but they should still be able to ride their bikes just like drivers who may be even less than vigilant cyclists.
WalterBright
10 months ago
It isn't necessary to be hyperaware to simply look over your shoulder before wandering into a car lane.
> the consequences for such lapses should not be death or serious injury
Well, that's indeed what the consequences are.
> He just swung out from the inner lane assuming that she had noticed him
All my posts here are about the cyclist assuming that cars see them.
> they should still be able to ride their bikes just like drivers
Drivers are required to signal and look before changing lanes.
lenlorijn
10 months ago
You say this as if cars adhere to the rules given at all times. The difference is that bikes do it at their own peril and cars do it at the peril of others. Give cyclists good infrastructure separate from cars and they'll use it.
WalterBright
10 months ago
I rarely see cars leave their lane.
The bike lanes around here are wide, clear, and dry. There is no excuse.
They don't even glance back over their shoulder before veering into the car lane. That's pretty perilous.
lenlorijn
9 months ago
I'm sorry but anecdotal evidence is barely any evidence at all. I could list a very large number of news reports of cars ramming in to houses an businesses, which I can promise you are not built in a lane. Bike lanes and car lanes should be physically separated, sure for bikes to not veer out of lane, but more importantly to keep cars in theirs. In any of these situations cars are still the ones bringing a 1.5k bundle of glass and steel to the fight. Just take a quick look at https://x.com/WorldBollard for numerous examples of cars going all over the place and making a mess of it.
consteval
10 months ago
> Is it really too much to ask cyclists to stay in the bike lane?
Yes, this is like asking cars to stay in their lane. How often do you see a car outside of their lane? For me, every day.
Even if everyone had perfect intentions, mistakes would still be made. What then? Everyone has been operating on the assumption mistakes would not be made. So then, your assumption was incorrect. If you instead assume mistakes will be made, i.e. defensive driving, then you're better off.
nottorp
10 months ago
Frankly the one time I visited NL I was afraid of cyclists as a pedestrian.
Not to mention that when getting out of my hotel there was a road and a bicycle path but no pedestrian sidewalk for the first half a kilometer...
aden1ne
10 months ago
That sounds like an odd setup. Any chance this was near the airport?
Also did you visit the Netherlands, or only Amsterdam? Because honestly, Amsterdam is in a league of its own with the hordes of tourists who have no clue what they are doing on a bike.
nottorp
10 months ago
> That sounds like an odd setup. Any chance this was near the airport?
No, but near the edge of the town.
> Also did you visit the Netherlands, or only Amsterdam?
Never been to Amsterdam, just two small towns on the other end, towards Germany. My hotel was at the edge of Enschede.
zezcat
10 months ago
I cannot agree more, the cyclists and all the high speed scooters are crazy in Amsterdam. Horrible experience. Everytime trying to cross a roads it felt like I am risking my life.
guappa
10 months ago
Ah yes, cyclists love to complain about the evil car drivers. They never mention all the times they are a danger to pedestrians somehow.
In DK plenty of bus stops the bus opens directly onto a bike lane, and they won't stop to let people out of course.
Panzer04
10 months ago
Can't speak to your specific circumstances, but often bike lanes are just terrible. They allow cars to park in them, or they are too narrow, or they are blocked by construction, etc.
In general far less consideration is given to the blocking of a bicycle lane than a car lane, so cyclists are often disinclined to use them. They also often just... end, at places like intersections (so it's a good idea for the cyclist to occupy a regular lane or somesuch ahead of time).
I guess the point is that you often don't know all of the reasons someone might be riding in a specific way, and it's worth giving the benefit of the doubt.
WalterBright
10 months ago
> I guess the point is that you often don't know all of the reasons someone might be riding in a specific way, and it's worth giving the benefit of the doubt.
What would you think of a car wandering randomly into other lanes?
Filligree
10 months ago
If there were frequent boulders and rapidly moving aggressive bears in their intended lane, then I would give them a pass for dodging.
Want cyclists to stick to the cycle lane? Make it safe for us to do so. Anyhow, it’s perfectly legal to cycle in the car lanes.
WalterBright
10 months ago
The bike lanes around here are wide and clear. Nothing unsafe. They still regularly veer into the car lane.
> it’s perfectly legal to cycle in the car lanes
Reminds me of a phrase: "don't be right, dead right".
Filligree
10 months ago
Cars have no trouble seeing bicycles that are in front of them.
Which is why I don't like to be in the bicycle lane at a crossing. Inevitably someone will turn left without seeing me there.
downut
10 months ago
Here in GA it happens all the time. LoC with the driver staring at a screen or off into space deep in a conversation. It is mandatory for me to drive within the lane because if for instance there is a 2' shoulder with a rumble strip I'll get a full size semi driving 55 mph right on that right white line within an inch or two of me. Ordinarily nice people get very aggressive in their gigantic killing cages.
bondarchuk
10 months ago
That would clearly be much worse because a car is much more deadly.
gwervc
10 months ago
Living in European cities with multimodal transportations, what I fear the most are cyclists. Cars drive on very clearly delimited space, respect the driving code quite properly and are visible and audible from far away.
Bicycles on the other hands drive fast, both on road and pedestrian ways with a sense of entitlement that they somehow have priority over pedestrians. They are also harder to spot. My worst fear when walking in the city are those Uber Eats guys riding huge electrical bike and going as fast as possible. An impact with that is a sure way to hospital if not worse.
WalterBright
10 months ago
As a pedestrian, I had several near collisions with cyclists in London.
foldr
10 months ago
I find cyclists in London annoying too, but the vast majority of serious injuries to pedestrians are caused by cars.
As proof, I cite this amusingly stupid 2024 Daily Mail article which notes that "more than 30 pedestrians have been killed by cyclists over the past decade".
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13396307/The-rise-d...
guappa
10 months ago
Let's not forget that bikes also usually have an electric engine, and sometimes even snow tires. So they are neither slow nor light.
vfclists
10 months ago
If it is a proper bike lane, ie a physically separated bike lane that shouldn't happen. If the speed at which you are allowed to drive at is high enough that colliding with a pedestrian or cyclist will cause them serious injury or death then the road design is wrong.
Simple fact is people make errors in judgement, suffer lapses in concentration, or even develop strokes when they are on the highways. A person moving around on urban roads who suffers such an event should not suffer life-changing injuries or death from it.
A safe road environment which pedestrians and cyclists are allowed to use is one in which the horizontal impact of a collision shouldn't result in serious injury or death. Death should only come from an impact which involves in serious head injury, such as the head striking the sidewalk, a heavy vehicle rolling over a person, or the case of a frail elderly person.
If you get back to UK law for instance, there are 19th century laws(they still on the books) which forbade "furious riding" on public highways which should tell you that riding at a gallop on a public road was illegal, and would be even more so in a built up area shared with pedestrians and other horse carriages. There were no cars or even bicycles them. It is one of the laws under which cyclists can be prosecuted.
Cars doing 30mph outpace galloping horses which should tell you that even at 50kph cars are driving at speeds considered dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists around them.
Yet a cyclist who has no more protection than a pedestrian is supposed to share a road with 2+tonne vehicles of reinforced steel travelling at speeds far faster than a horse rider or carriage driver riding furiously.
How does that make sense?
I see you are Walter Bright of Zortech C++ infamy and the D language ;)
close04
10 months ago
> Cars doing 30mph outpace galloping horses
> Yet a cyclist who has no more protection than a pedestrian is supposed to share a road with 2+tonne vehicles of reinforced steel travelling at speeds
By speed alone, bikes are to pedestrians what cars are to bikes. A pedestrian will walk at 3-5km/h. A bike will be 5-7 times faster than that at 15-35km/h (especially since the advent of e-bikes which ignore assist requirements). Cars will be 1.5-4 times faster at 40-50km/h. Where I live I feel less safe as a pedestrian sharing the sidewalk with a bike lane than I feel on the bike sharing the street with cars (except car doors randomly opened in my path, that's what terrifies me). Not a day passes without a cyclist almost running me over when I cross on a green light, or because they try to squeeze around on the sidewalk at unsafely high speeds.
When it comes to protection, the usual killer is a strong hit on the head. You don't need too much speed to cause a fall. But despite cyclists riding and implicitly hitting the ground at higher speeds, protecting the old melon with a helmet is still seen as optional (embarrassing, unfashionable, uncomfortable). Cyclists take fewer precautions than drivers while exposing themselves to higher risks than pedestrians.
Can't tell you how many times I was asked why am I bothering with the helmet, "I'll get suntan stripes". In my circle of friends the only other one wearing a helmet for city riding (everyone wears it on the long roadbike rides) is one who has a lot of kids as is terrified of leaving them without a father. Everyone else rides as if the epitaph of "The other guy should have paid more attention" will give anyone consolation.
Illotus
10 months ago
If only the speed was the big issue, but mostly it is the mass. Even with all the reckless cyclists there are very little fatalities where cyclist runs over pedestrian. Ultimately separating all groups would be the best, but heavy consequences for the heaviest road users is ultimately the solution.
close04
10 months ago
> Ultimately separating all groups would be the best, but heavy consequences for the heaviest road users is ultimately the solution.
I agree that physical separation would be the best, with curbs or fences not just painted lines.
As a pedestrian I would very much like to not share the sidewalk with any vehicle under any circumstances. Most people riding a vehicle on the sidewalk have no real legal constraints and the least respect I've witnessed anyone having towards the rest of the people. Pedestrians come in all shapes, sizes and ages, can't walk like robots and will easily step into the bike lane, or drop something, or a child will run around, etc. Riding at 30km/h in that environment is common and stupid.
As a cyclist I'd much rather have the cycling lane on the street. Cars are more dangerous but also generally more predictable than pedestrians on a narrow sidewalk. Driving also has more regulation and enforcement. From my experience cars are a danger to me as cyclist at intersections (the dreaded right turn) and a terrifying thought when it comes to doors opening in front of me.
As a driver I'd rather lose a driving lane to a cycling one than to have cyclists randomly bobbing in and out of my lane, crossing my path after crossing a red light, or after ignoring the right of way.
steve_gh
10 months ago
The classic one is the number of cyclists riding along with their helmet dangling from the handlebars.
WalterBright
10 months ago
I've been told by a cyclist that a lot of Seattle bikers have implants for front teeth.
danieldk
10 months ago
Which shows that there is something wrong with Seattle. In my city the vast majority of people cycle. In my 42 years, I can only remember one person who lost a tooth cycling. We were kids and there was no car nearby.
I cannot even think of many people with a serious injury at all. And me and my peers started cycling when we were 4 or 5 and most still do it daily (it’s the primary means of transportation within the city).
Build a bike infrastructure, make car drivers more responsible. People will be healthier because they have daily workouts.
vfclists
10 months ago
> By speed alone, bikes are to pedestrians what cars are to bikes. A pedestrian will walk at 3-5km/h. A bike will be 5-7 times faster than that at 15-35km/h (especially since the advent of e-bikes which ignore assist requirements). Cars will be 1.5-4 times faster at 40-50km/h.
When it comes to collision you should remember the formula "half m v squared". A cyclist with his bike is usually less than 100kg which yields on impact. A collision with a pedestrian can be as bad for the cyclist as it is for pedestrian.
A car will be at least 20 times heavier and twice as fast as the cyclist and will not yield on impact. The bonnet and windscreen maybe, but not the chassis after the bumper yields.
> Where I live I feel less safe as a pedestrian sharing the sidewalk with a bike lane than I feel on the bike sharing the street with cars (except car doors randomly opened in my path, that's what terrifies me). Not a day passes without a cyclist almost running me over when I cross on a green light, or because they try to squeeze around on the sidewalk at unsafely high speeds.
Statistically you are in far more danger of getting killed by a motor vehicle on the sidewalk or an intersection than you are by a cyclist riding the sidewalk or jumping a red light. A cyclist will usually inflict a painful bruise on collision. Even needing to be hospitalized is unlikely.
Despite the blatant and often overlooked red light jumping by cyclists on busy city streets, how many fatalities occur from that behaviour, compared with those from motor vehicles?
Another thing to be said. The danger from the cyclist stems primarily from the cyclists riding manners, and has more to do with the social and cultural attitudes. The danger of the motor vehicle comes from the nature of the motor vehicle itself, its mass, steel reinforcement and speed which is compounded by the attitudes of drivers.
The average speed of a cyclist on urban streets is roughly that of a top level marathon runner if not less, and how scared are you by the danger a marathon runner with a metal bar held in front of them poses in a collision?
> Can't tell you how many times I was asked why am I bothering with the helmet,
On the matter of cyclists wearing helmets, how different is a cyclist riding on a narrow road without a sidewalk differ from pedestrian walking the same road? Does the absence of a safe sidewalk to use mean the pedestrian should wear a helmet in case they collide with a car?
Helmets worn by cyclists are no different from those worn by horse-riders or in other high impact sports. They serve to protect the helmets from impacts incurred on their own account, not from collisions with motor vehicles, although they do help in the latter.
close04
10 months ago
> When it comes to collision you should remember the formula "half m v squared"
Of course a car is faster, heavier, and more dangerous but spherical cow and all that. I've never seen a "frontal" collision between a pedestrian and a cyclist. And 99% of incidents I've witnessed between cars and cyclists were side swipes (the car slides into the cyclist's path and the contact is on the side) or the car flat on cutting off the cyclist who subsequently hit the side of the car like a wall. Neither are influenced much by speed.
> how different is a cyclist riding on a narrow road without a sidewalk differ from pedestrian walking the same road?
About 25km/h of difference. Meaning anything the cyclist does happens 7 times faster than with the pedestrian. Hit a pothole? You fly over the handle bars for some meters at 25-30km/h instead of 1.5m under pure gravity.
> They serve to protect the helmets from impacts incurred on their own account
Helmets are there to protect your head from an impact. They don't bother to assess blame.
You're really taking this as "but that's worse so nothing else matters". And this makes you forget one obvious thing: everyone is a pedestrian, not everyone is a cyclist or a driver. Whether you're 8 or 80 years old you're a pedestrian so there's no excuse to endanger them because "it could be worse". And another big difference is street traffic is regulated, sidewalk traffic is not. A cyclist among pedestrians is a more immediate and unpredictable danger to pedestrians (sure, not deadly, a broken wrist is just really unpleasant).
The bottom line is that from my personal experience looking around as mainly a pedestrian and a cyclist, this conversation withstanding, cyclists are the group of people who always expect the favorable treatment even though the cyclist who respects the law is more of a mythical creature. On the street the cars are bigger and faster so should pay more attention. On the sidewalk the same logic no longer applies, the bike is "not that fast or heavy", the injuries aren't "that serious" so the pedestrians should pay attention instead.
bluGill
10 months ago
Almost all roads are designed in the US by a professional engineer who is legally liable for the design. we need hold them responsible for not designing good infrastructure. If politicians don't allow for something safe than their job is to say it cannot be done.
guappa
10 months ago
Because professional engineers never once in history made a mistake.
bluGill
10 months ago
If you are ignorant of things well known in the literature that is not a mistake. Even if everyone else is, that is not an excuse, their job is to design things safe.
guappa
10 months ago
I wonder about your life, if you can be so certain that people do not make mistakes. I really am curious how it would be to live in such a world.
zezcat
10 months ago
please never change to how the dutch do it. If you do not cycle in the netherlands, it's a nightmare. The cyclists don't obey traffic laws, hell they don't even look down roads most of the times for oncoming traffic.
guappa
10 months ago
The dutch also invested in having a completely flat nation.
tromp
10 months ago
They're quite rare but we do have some steep hills, like this 22% one:
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8471239,5.8741469,3a,90y,196...
GateCrasher
10 months ago
Which is a valid, but much less important argument since the advent of the electric bike
richardw
10 months ago
I wonder if the flatness of the country plays a part? I live on a hill and am surrounded by hills. A 3km ride in any direction and back is hard work. Lots of e-bikes here, and lots of mountain biking. But when I suggested getting a bike to my SO for her to get to the closest bus stop faster, the hills were the reason why she’d rather walk.
tfourb
10 months ago
This is almost completely solved by e-bikes. You can convert practically any bike to an e-bike and while it does cost money, it is cheaper than the costs associated with driving a car or the bus by orders of magnitude over the life time of the bike.
Walking is fine as well, though. No real reason to play off walking and cycling against each other.
richardw
10 months ago
> Walking is fine as well, though. No real reason to play off walking and cycling against each other.
Reason 1: a 6 year old who would like more time with an overworked mother who can’t move from her job (yet) due to visa reasons.
dncornholio
10 months ago
E-bikes are at least 5 times more expensive. Not everyone can afford one.
Filligree
10 months ago
Far cheaper than cars though. But compared to walking, yeah.
seanmcdirmid
10 months ago
I rode a bike in Lausanne, which was a primarily 3D city. T was a bit of a struggle to get up the hill in the morning though, you could coast back down at night. Before that I lived in Seattle which wasn’t as extreme, but if you lived on say Queen Anne hill instead of Ballard, I could see where that wouldn’t work out. Maybe that’s why Minneapolis has better cycling infrastructure than Seattle.
loa_in_
10 months ago
The best part of biking uphill is that you can just walk alongside your bike if you want to take a break and you lose nothing
Reason077
10 months ago
e-bikes are getting pretty popular. Solves the hill problem.
robertlagrant
10 months ago
Yes, super-recent developments may obviate hills, but 40 years of city design have already happened. The Netherlands case was easy mode, and they leaned into it while extending their cities. That's not useful for almost any other country.
Also e-bikes are expensive and heavy, of course, so they're a good gentrification measure, if you're into that sort of thing, but they aren't for everyone.
GateCrasher
10 months ago
Alot cheaper and less heavy then a car.
robertlagrant
10 months ago
And cheaper and less heavy than a space shuttle. But neither will seem that relevant when it comes to parking and securing your electric bike when you live 5 floors up.
Reason077
10 months ago
Lack of parking can be a barrier to adoption with any type of bike. Nobody wants to lug any bike up stairs.
But it's a solvable problem. Newer apartment buildings in London must provide secure cycle parking for residents and visitors.
For older buildings that lack such provisions, London councils often provide secure (covered, lockable) on-street cycle storage facilities. 1 or 2 car parking spaces can be converted into parking for many bikes! [1]
WalterBright
10 months ago
A local nurse told me they had a lot of victims of "Lime Disease" in the hospitals, i.e. people who rode those Lime bicycles without a helmet.
dncornholio
10 months ago
> The hard part is that you also need to build a cycling culture.
> You also have to change the regulations so that car drivers are (partially) legally responsible for accidents
This is all easy to create. It all starts with infrastructure. If you have infrastructure that is safe for bikes, you will create culture. You will also open up extra legal safeguards, but it has to start with infrastructure.
hansvm
10 months ago
> even when a cyclist or a pedestrian made the error
Surely this depends on how bad the error is?
Suppose you have a cyclist and driver traveling opposite (180 degrees) directions on the same road toward a 4-way stop. The driver stops, looks all ways, notes the cyclist approaching the intersection soon, and enters the intersection. The cyclist then does not stop, does not signal, and turns left (from their perspective) in front of the car which was already in the intersection.
Most of the time, you'd probably need one more failure for that to result in a collision (manufacturer's defect in the accelerator, cyclist slips and falls, ...), but suppose the car did hit the cyclist and none of those other failures were the driver's fault either. In your model, how much legal blame should the driver have?
lenlorijn
10 months ago
I briefly studied law in the Netherlands and it was used as an example. Our lecturer told us that if "A person on a bike would jump out of an airplane on a bike, land with a parachute on a highway and get hit by a car, just maybe would the car have a case." The reasons for this are varied. Cars are insured, bikes are not. But most importantly, in basically all traffic situations with cars and bikes the car introduces the danger and should thus bear the responsibility of any accidents.
If I go out in public swinging a katana, and someone walks in to it. I'm still the person swinging a katana in public. Driving around in 1.5 metric tonnes of steel and glass comes with certain responsibilities.
CalRobert
10 months ago
I think the big issue here is that drivers are tested (poorly) and licensed. Cyclists aren't, which is good because it includes kids. Are we going to hold 8 year olds legally liable? They're allowed to bike on the public streets and roads, after all.
dncornholio
10 months ago
> Surely this depends on how bad the error is?
Not really. If you cross the road on a bike and you get hit by a car, they will have to pay at least 50% of costs, even if the car didn't speed.
Another example is a car crossing the green light but a cyclist crosses when it's red and gets hit. Again the car has to pay up.
This seems out of this world but with how protected the cylists are on the road from infrastructure, these events happen way less than you think.
tyre
10 months ago
and the incentives already exist for cyclists to avoid accidents!
short_sells_poo
10 months ago
This also requires said vulnerable participants to stop having a deathwish. I'm scared to hell from cyclists in London, because they are inconsiderate and extremely unpredictable. Try rolling up to a major 4 lane intersection, and you are going to have cyclists materializing out of thin air on both sides.
Furthermore, visibility on UK roads is very poor. You often have very tall hedges lining streets, which means you can't see more than a few meters until the very last moment.
You'd need to basically rip up the entire city and rebuild it from scratch, and then replace all the inhabitants with rational actors. It's simply not going to happen otherwise.
vfclists
10 months ago
> and you are going to have cyclists materializing out of thin air on both sides.
It is called filtering and it is totally legal in the UK. It should be no problem if you are patient and allow the cyclists to ride off first when the lights go green.
In a properly designed system the green light should come on for the cyclists first, then the larger vehicles can follow on after that.
short_sells_poo
10 months ago
Ah yes, thanks for mansplaining that to me. I was totally unaware that the concept of filtering exists - particularly as a motorbike rider of 20 years...
With that out of the way, like all things, filtering works when all participants are careful. Motorbikes are actually quite a bit easier to deal with (as a car driver), because a) they can be heard and b) they are quite a bit bulkier.
Even as a motorbike rider, it's not cars that I'm most afraid of, but cyclists. Again, this is not about arguing against being careful - on the contrary. I'd like the cyclists to exercise just as much care as they are asking others to exercise. It's basic self preservation. What good is it to a dead cyclist that it was the truck driver's fault?
arghwhat
10 months ago
Yes, but until the ICE is gone, emissions and car flow is linked.
An ultra-low emission-zone limits car flow by only allowing a smaller subset of cars to pass. A restriction on car flow reduces emission by allowing fewer emitters.
A low-emission zone can be a way to gradually reduce car traffic, and at the end it may be low enough that you can limit car traffic to residents only, or even no one at all.
p0w3n3d
10 months ago
Sorry but it's simply to put the rich in power to drive their new EV SUVs while limiting people with less money from driving their own car. People who have 4 kids: "sorry your Citroen is not enough. Buy yourself an ID Buzz we don't care."
arghwhat
10 months ago
Driving a used Renault Zoe or Nissan Leaf does not "put the rich in power". Larger cars will also become available on the used market, but that requires the market for new cars for "rich people" to be very active as that's how the used car market works.
pjc50
10 months ago
Everyone living in zone 1 or two is either extremely rich already or very heavily subsidized.
pmyteh
10 months ago
That's not entirely true. There are places in Z1-2 where people live in flatshares etc. on ordinary salaries. I lived in an ex-council flat near the Elephant with three other people for a few years, for example.
That doesn't change the substance of your point, though. Very few people living in Z1 or Z2 run a car unless they're rich: parking is extremely difficult and public transport is so good that there are very few reasons to want one unless you're regularly leaving London.
INTPenis
10 months ago
Being from Sweden that is how I measured safety for a large part of my adult life. How safe I felt in a new area directly depended on how far I could walk with my dog without crossing car traffic.
In Malmö for example I could walk for 2 hours and only cross 2 roads. Because the bicycle network is so developed they have underpasses for bikes that us pedestrians can use.
Then I lived in the balkans and saw the stark contrast.
But there's no point in shoving this down American's throats because their whole country is far too vast for European design. They need to fill it up with people for a few hundred years like Europe before they will be forced to implement good street design.
ninalanyon
10 months ago
> their whole country is far too vast for European design.
That's not really true though. There is no particular reason to think of the vast almost empty spaces when thinking about urban and suburban spaces. There are plenty of walkable towns in the US, the problem is that there are vastly more towns that are not. I spent quite a lot of time in Raleigh NC and the surroundings in the 1990s and early 2000s and walked and cycled everywhere. There were a lot more roads to cross than in Malmö of course but it was still quite reasonable.
One need not be forced to implement good urban design, one merely needs to want it.
And I would also say that most towns in Sweden are not really very typical of European towns, even Norway next (where I live) is different. Sweden has a lot more space available than most European countries and in fact has an average population density (25/km2) lower than that of the US (33/km2).
ginko
10 months ago
>Because the bicycle network is so developed they have underpasses for bikes that us pedestrians can use.
Underpasses are usually a detour for pedestrians. IMO they're hostile car-centric design.
INTPenis
10 months ago
I think you misunderstand what I mean by underpass, maybe I'm not using the correct word.
Here is a good example of where I used to walk daily when I lived in the area.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/55%C2%B034'55.1%22N+12%C2%...
user
10 months ago
elric
10 months ago
It is worth noting that London has ~80% of the population of the Netherlands but is some 5 times smaller. That's very much apples to oranges.
Stricter low-emission zones result in fewer cars in the short term (because some subset of the existing cars no longer enter). In the longer term they might result in fewer cars because the initial car reduction brings other benefits (such as safer cycling/playing/whatevering and reduced congestion which benefits public transport).
user
10 months ago
pif
10 months ago
> It is about how many people can travel safe
This is not false, but it isn't either completely true!
Those pesky car commuters keep driving because they have yet to be offered a solution that decreases the only metric every commuter is interested in: clock time from door to door.
user
10 months ago
underdeserver
10 months ago
Clock time is not one metric. The metric I care about more, as a users of a car, bike, rental scooter, bus, and subway, is the variance in door-to-door time.
If it takes less 80% of the time but 20% of the time I'm 20 minutes late, I won't use public transport. (I'm not talking about rare occurrences, I'm talking about once a week on a random day being late.)
I also live in a very hot city with 5 months of summer a year, so walking distances and A/C are also a critical factor.
Cclayt1123
10 months ago
Given the challenges of enforcing strict regulations on emissions, could a market-based approach like a carbon tax be a more effective deterrent for high-emission vehicles and corporate practices?
systems_glitch
10 months ago
It's certainly a limiting factor in our small "city" of around 6500, vs. air pollution.
space_oddity
10 months ago
Yet the importance of thoughtful urban planning is often underestimated
Vinnl
10 months ago
Obligatory link to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A?cbr...
Channel detailing Dutch (and other places') infrastructure design.
soomerons
10 months ago
[dead]
mdrzn
10 months ago
This comment is a great example on how to "lie" with statistics. Saying they are in the "top 10 of highest co2 emissions in Europe" (they are 9th) is such bad faith without explaining that they are also the 9th most populated country in Europe.
eporomaa
10 months ago
>If anything, the dutch have a cycling problem.
I disagree, I don't see how less cycling or more cars would be better?
> ...ALSO have the highest road density in Europe for cars
It is the densest non-micro state in the world, would that not explain the road density?
You cannot protect a cyclist in a car collision using a helmet, the solution is separate infra?
Other than that you have positive outcomes of increased general health.
soomerons
10 months ago
off course you can. And it's been proven over and over. Are you really trying to argue that wearing a helmet is not safer than not wearing one?
Not all car and cyclist collisions are high speed, big impacts, in fact, statistically speaking, most of them in the netherlands are slow speed knocks, cyclist, get bumped, when a car tries to squeeze by, and the cyclist falls and hits their head on the concrete or whatever else is close by.
And then there are all the cyclist against cyclist collisions, someone gets knocked off, and smacks their head against the curb.
But I guess the dutch way of saying "we are dutch and are born on a bicycle and know how to cycle", (and they really actually don't), is easier to say than, looking at the actual stats, and seeing they are wrong.
aqme28
10 months ago
What stats are you referring to? The Netherlands has one of the lowest per-km cyclist fatality rates in the world, at least with 2009 numbers[1]. Would be interested to see if that has changed.
[1]: https://blogs-images.forbes.com/niallmccarthy/files/2015/02/...
They also have decently good numbers for traffic fatalities in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
Vinnl
10 months ago
(Some extra nuance: it is of course true that, ceteris paribus, wearing helmets is strictly safer. It's just that the Dutch stats show that proper infrastructure is even more important, and cyclists are less of a danger to other traffic participants than people in cars, which is why there's no stronger push for making people wear helmets — it might cause them to stop cycling. At an individual level, for sure, wear helmets, but as a society, there are better things to focus on when it comes to traffic safety.)
I don't actually know how strong the evidence is for that.
Vinnl
10 months ago
Your source for helmets making up lots of deaths is talking about a recent increase in deaths, even though the lack of helmets has been a thing for decades.
It's not the lack of helmets by itself that's a problem; it's the combination with high-speed electric bicycles, and their primarily being used by the elderly, that is causing deaths.
Yes, old people falling and sustaining heavy injuries that they wouldn't have had with a helmet is a problem, but not one that (I think) can be solved by street design.
If you see that in 2018, the Netherlands had 4.7 deaths per billion vehicle kms, vs. the US's 6.9, and then consider that it's a very densely populated country where lots of traffic intersects, then I would count that as a big success.