Comment by slibhb
3 days ago
Drivers generally follow the rules. It's considered bad form when they don't, and they're occasionally ticketed. This doesn't apply to bikers. No one even expects them to follow the rules.
I'm not anti-bike. I bike a bit and I got hit by a car last year. Some crackhead turned left across the opposite lane right into me.
I'm just reporting what I see -- bikers do not generally follow the rules, and I find this interesting. Maybe they're being rational. Or maybe they're not. Either way it's interesting.
> Drivers generally follow the rules.
No, they don't. They break the rules all the goddamn time. Have you ever been on an American freeway? Most people are going above the speed limit, myself included.
Do you think most drivers give the legally required amount of space in front of their car while driving, especially on the freeway? It's not even close. Do people signal for the legally required amount of time before changing lanes? Again, not close for most drivers.
> I'm just reporting what I see
What you're actually experiencing is that you implicitly accept the status quo of certain rules being ignored for driving, because driving itself is more common (both for you and in general). But biking is different, it's more obscure, so the rule breaking stands out more.
This is very typical of cultures anywhere that driving is more common than biking, which is...well, most places really.
I feel like this is personal for you and you can't discuss it objectively.
Drivers are...not great. But as a general rule they follow the laws (albeit with frequent lapses). Cyclists do not follow the rules to the point where no one expects them to. It's genuinely weird for me to imagine a cyclist stopping at a stop sign.
I bike for 90% of my traveling. The examples you give for when cars break the rules vs what bikes do is telling. Yes, everyone breaks the rules, but cars (mostly) do it in safe and predictable manners. Most urban cyclists(including me tbh) break rules in very unsafe ways. Bikes routinely completely ignore stop signs even when there are cars waiting. The ignore red lights which cars never do. They swerve around in traffic, they ride on the sidewalk. Many refuse to use lights when biking at night. Urban biking behavior in the US is on average much more reckless than driving behavior.
Cars are more dangerous due to size and speed but if we’re just talking about who acts more recklessly and ignores more rules it’s easily bikes, at least in Chicago.
> Yes, everyone breaks the rules, but cars (mostly) do it in safe and predictable manners.
???
How is texting while driving safe? How is going over the speed limit safe? How is driving too close to other cars to stop in time safe?
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I know more people who have gotten tickets for running stop signs on their bikes than in cars (even though getting hit by a car at 10mph is much more dangerous to a pedestrian than a bike!). Hopefully Newsom listens to reason and gives up veto-ing commense sense traffic laws next cycle
Well, if you genuinely find it interesting, I can explain why they don't:
1. Cyclists live and die by inertia. Getting up to speed on a bike requires a lot of effort and every application of brakes erases that spent effort, which feels really bad.
In a car, it doesn't matter — you stop and accelerate with exactly the same trivial effort of pressing a pedal.
So all the grandstanding that cars stop at stop signs (since when, but ok), and cyclists don't is like bragging that you beat a disabled person in a 100m sprint. Good job, I guess.
2. Stop signs and traffic lights are made for cars, because of their speed, how dangerous they are, and how bad their visibility is. Cyclists are like pedestrians in that they do not need traffic lights, they can navigate just fine with just body language.
Telling whether running a red light would be safe in a car is essentially impossible, you're going too fast and can't see much, can't hear anything either. But on a bike you have perfect visibility, there's no box of metal all around you. You can hear quite well too.
Stop signs are an even better example. Literally the only reason for their use instead of yield signs is that the visibility at the intersection is bad enough that you need to stop to be able to yield. But that is only the case because your visibility is so bad in the first place.
Stop signs literally never make sense for bikes — there's no "hood", so your head is basically where the vehicle starts and you can lean forward to make that literally true if really needed, and you've got perfect visibility all around, no blind spots.
Hence why in a lot of places cyclists can legally treat red lights like stop signs and stop signs like yield signs.