I work for the dot as a rest stop maintenance worker. I’ve seen it all when it comes to stupid oblivious drivers. That includes truck drivers, people who do it professionally. I’m not saying that bikers aren’t morons too. What I’m saying is that we don’t have a bike problem. We don’t have a car problem either. We have an idiot problem. And it’s terminal.
I’ve been the car driver who nearly made jam out of the cyclist in the last panel. I’ve also been the cyclist hit by a car which was driving in the cycle lane.
Bad road users are everywhere and they use all sorts of transportation. Let’s stop with the division and generalisation.
one has a lot more power and uses a lot more space than the other
And we can still encourage both to obey the rules! Amazing!
rules aren’t neutral or grown out of the void. people with biases and maybe even ambitions create them for specific purposes
EDIT: To quote Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
Rules governing bike traffic are generally quite reasonable though. It’s not like the enlightened traffic planners in the Netherlands went “you know what, cyclists don’t have to obey red lights” for example. So I’m not seeing the biases you’re talking about, at least in this example.
Comparing running red lights to sleeping under bridges or steal for survival seems, at best, hyperbolic. In any case I don’t think that quote supports the view that the law is intentionally biased
The lights often automatically changes to cyclists priority in many places in the Netherlands, and often provide underpasses to avoid conflict points in the first place. It is not a comparable situation. Traffic laws and infrastructure in the USA, for instance, are incredibly biased in favor of cars, so their comment is absolutely relevant.
When I bike in the USA often the safest time for me to cross an intersection is unrelated to whether I have a green light, but more related to if anyone else at the intersection does. The safest time for me to go is when no one else at the light has a green light, not when I do.
Often they will, but what about the circumstances where they haven’t? We’re talking about a bike-first country which still does this.
My whole point here is that pro-cycling rule-makers will try to make cycling work in various ways, but those ways do NOT include letting cyclists ride across junctions when there is crossing vehicle traffic. The bias the person above is talking about is not about traffic light rules; it’s about missing other bits of bike infrastructure. And if that infrastructure is missing it does not make it sensible or reasonable to break other rules as some kind of counterbalance.
It is perfectly legal in many places in the world to run a red light on a motorcycle or bicycle, provided you wait a reasonable amount of time. So your example is complicated. Simply because the magnetic strips that detects cars don’t detect them. But if run a red light after waiting, I guarantee the average person will think I’m the same as the person that flys through the intersection without slowing down. In my experience the average car driver has no idea why bicycles make the decisions they make.
And it is perfectly reasonable to break rules, if breaking them is what is keeping me alive. I really could give a shit what the law is. I care about getting to work alive. And I will make decisions to that end first and the law second.
Your anecdotal evidence is noted.
Who can forget the time a cyclist ran a red light and killed sixteen people?
Fair but think about hitting and killing a cyclist who had run a stop sign or light. That doesn’t just go away. The person has to live with the trauma of killing another person potentially at no fault of their own.
When did a car run a red light and kill sixteen people?
I’m not sure about running the red light, but there are cases where people have intentionally used cars to run people down in a mass shooting kind of style.
I’m sure the parent whose kid or pet gets mowed down by a cyclist going full speed will appreciate that, hey at least it wasn’t more people who got hurt or killed!
Entitled assholes exist behind many modes of transportation. That cars can cause significantly more damage doesn’t make the others less dickish, like this guy:
(and yes, I drive AND cycle AND like to jog too, depending on what the task at- hand is).
That so many have come out screaming in the manner pretty much showcases the “rules for thee but not for me” attitude.
Give cyclists lanes, so they wouldn’t have to stand in a half metre gap between an 18-wheeler and a traffic barrier covered in mix of 19th century soot and souls of the damned. Then they’ll follow the rules, case in point: entire Denmark.
Live in denmark, can confirm.
I saw like hells angles waiting for the pedestrian light to go green before crossing, in the middle of the night on an empty street in denmark, so yes they seem to follow the rules there (it was a long time ago, but we don’t even did that in sweden, sweden where youd get hassled if you like didn’t have your not legally obliged bicycle helmet on).
In UK cities where there is extensive cycling and infrastructure, cyclists still run red lights quite often. As a cyclist I don’t obey every traffic law either.
On my old way to work there was a traffic light controlling the entrance to a car park from the main road, but entering traffic was so infrequent that it was always very tempting to dart across. On the same route, a cut across pavement for 25 metres saved negotiating a large roundabout or dismounting.
Neither place could really have had better infrastructure: the junction had poor visibility so you couldn’t see if a car was coming if you did chance it. Backing up the main road wouldn’t have been sensible so both of these mean it couldn’t have been a simple give-way. The section of pavement is narrow and on a bend, so to cycle it safely you must go slow enough to stop. Putting a cycle lane in there would have invited people to go too fast.
Car drivers love to criticize cyclists, but they don’t realize they’re the real aggressors in traffic. They both do most of the bad behaviors, and have the greater damage potential
Also, their existence necessitates the use of traffic lights/roundabouts at every intersection. Bikes don’t need that kind of infrastructure.
Video from BicycleDutch. Mind you, the video is now 8 years old, and the the traffic just got more.
In high traffic bicycle lanes they do, Amsterdam has tons of bicycle vs pedestrian crossings with lights, no cars involved.
And if you film at rush hour in the Netherlands you will find them.
There’s a time and a place. I used to live in the mountains and do a lot of mountain biking. There were a lot of really tight roads with no bike lanes or shoulder with blind turns and all it would take is someone just not automatically assuming there’s a cyclist on the other side of that turn going 15km/h on a road with a speed limit of 50+km/h to turn a nice bike ride into your last bike ride. I used to barrel down mountain trails and I could never stomach that risk guys would take on the roads.
boomer ass take
That would be your mum’s standards.
Ah, when people take comic strips too seriously and infighting seems like the only path forward.
Yeah the world have yo be car first, that why jaywalking is illegal to free space for car.
I both bike and drive. I will say, at least in my town, both bicyclists and drivers are egregious traffic violators.
Bicyclists consistently ride on the sidewalk, go the wrong way down a one-way, and run red lights and stop signs. Drivers go way too fast, go the wrong way down a one-way, and run red lights and stop signs.
If bicyclists are going to be on the road, then they need to be licensed. Also, drivers should probably require re-testing when licenses are renewed.
When crossing a bike lane in nyc it’s just common knowledge that the bikers will not stop for a red light. I’m usually walking with my small child, and while I am super aware, not everyone is
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Victim blaming is very cool. Laws do not ever treat cyclists like cars sometimes and pedestrians other times. This is a funny comic. /s
My biggest gripe with cyclists is that they act like a car when it’s convenient and a pedestrian when it’s convenient
Cyclists act like a cyclist when it is convenient and like a pedestrian when it is convenient.
Cyclists act like a car when it is the only way to avoid getting killed in car-centric hellscapes.
I watch cyclists every day hop right off the road at red lights just to use the pedestrian cross walk out of turn and skip the wait. There is literally no reason to do this other than having a death wish.
Perhaps it is safer cycling across a crosswalk while the only other traffic is pedestrians, instead of going with the flow of cars when cars turning left or right can run you over.
Perhaps you can run over pedestrians if you do so? FFS, just stop making the ashole moves you accuse car drivers of, if you want to be taken seriously! Never went to ER with a kid almost by killed by a 100kg male with a racing bicycle, didn’t you?
Build bicycle infrastructure.
It already exists even in burbs and is commonly referred to as a sidewalk.
No, that’s atrocious.
You don’t solve one endangerment by causing another.
The pavement is for pedestrians, the road is for cars. Between the road and the pavement you need to build a dedicated cycling path, at the expense of the road if necessary.
The Netherlands has shown how this infrastructure makes cities and towns safer and more livable.
There is no excuse.
