Comment by mmooss
2 days ago
> So much North American rhetoric is focused on hatred of the cyclist
My impression is that only people in the bicycling social world believe that. It seems like a victim mentality that they reinforce by repeating it to each other. It's always possible I just haven't seen it, but localities around the country are building bicycling infrastructure, which doesn't correspond to hatred. Where do you see it?
I hardly ever hear someone expressing hatred of cyclists. People who ride obviously like it. The great majority don't care about it - it has little impact on their lives. In cities, on streets I see people honk at, yell at, and flip off cyclists just like they honk, flip off, and yell at other drivers. IME the cyclists generally 'drive' as well/poorly as the automobile drivers.
I do notice that people in spandex racing outfits on road bikes tend to behave with attitude problems toward everyone - pedestrians, non-racing cyclists, cars, etc. They are aggressive and fly by people, often with little margin, at dangerous speeds without warning. It's as if they think they own the road. I was just talking to a bike mechanic I know who brought it up. If people don't like them, it's obvious why.
Some drivers seem to resent the idea that they should have to share the road, or slow down for anyone. Even if cyclists do everything right, they're still slower than cars, and so will present at least a minor inconvenience for drivers.
In Canada the fight has gotten nasty, with governments in Alberta and Ontario putting forward legislation that could remove existing bike lanes.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-ford-bike-lan...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-government-b...
Maybe "hatred" is too strong of a word, but if I were a cyclist in Toronto or Edmonton I'd feel rather victimized.
While I think cycling is great - environmentally, for health, apparently for mental health - bikes and cars don't mix unless they are going approx. the same speed in 1-2 lanes.
Driving a car, bicycles are hard to see - I wouldn't be surprised if visibility in cars is specified to be sufficient to see other cars. Bicycles appear out of nowhere and disappear. Also, cyclists - no better or worse than their automobile counterparts - don't always drive well, and they do things that cars don't such as weaving through small spaces between cars; running lights as if they are pedestrians, but on the road; appearing from sidewalks and other places - really anyplace. I don't object to creative driving - as I said, (city) drivers aren't much different in their way - but it makes bikes unpredictable and hard to see. Then there's the speed difference - bikes much slower than traffic are as dangerous as cars driving that speed (again, except I can see the cars). As long as there's one lane - and if cyclists 'own the lane' and don't let cars squeeze by - it's safe: you can see the bike; multiple lanes and the bike ends up in blind spots, weaving back and forth itself, etc.
I read that in (Belgium? The Netherlands?) the law is that if there is a small (10 km/h?) difference in speed between cars and bikes, they cannot share the road.
Cyclists never do everything right, though. Contested stop signs are a prime example. For every cyclist who stops properly, 99 blaze through with attitude. They are lawless, and cause safety issues for drivers who have to deal with it.
You’ll also see them run red lights, cut off pedestrians, bike right into oncoming traffic (in the same lane, no less), cut across three lanes of without blinking. All in the name of laziness, not safety.
s/[Cc]yclists/drivers/g
You have crazy bikers, and you have crazy drivers. I’ve seen way more of one in my life, and that one’s definitely more dangerous.
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> All in the name of laziness, not safety.
Bikes are different machines with different capabilities and parameters. That they aren't used like cars isn't laziness or even lack of personal safety, but maybe lack of discipline to operate as if it has the capabilities and parameters of a car.
Whatever the motive, it's still dangerous because everything on the road needs to operate in an integrated system of rules. Bikes acting like bikes are unpredictable and using different rules.
But consider the functional differences:
> Contested stop signs are a prime example. For every cyclist who stops properly, 99 blaze through with attitude.
Bicycles both stop much more quickly than cars and take more effort to restart. Restarting from a stop and accelerating to full speed takes energy and wears on tired muscles - and it's not just one intersection but 100 in one ride.
So many times I've seen bikes approach the intersection at moderate speed. That's dangerous in a car - you might need to stop short, you might hit someone or something with your 2,000 lbs metal object which could cause serious harm even at slow speeds. On a bike it's fine - you can easily stop your 200 lbs object, which is also much smaller and more maneuverable and thus avoids collisions easily, and which does little harm at slow speeds.
So the bike does the bike thing, but the car sees a car thing: The car see the bike moving at a normal rate, and assumes it will act like a car and drive right into the intersection. The car stops and lets the bike go first.
> run red lights
At lights, bikes are like (very fast) pedestrians. On foot, at least in the US and many parts of the world, if the road is clear people don't wait for the light, they just cross. Functionally, there's no reason for bikes to do differently. That's dangerous to do in a car because their size and lack of maneuverability makes them big targets and makes accidents hard to avoid, and because they cause serious harm even at slow speeds.
> cut across three lanes of without blinking
Again, bikes are much smaller (able to fit in small spaces) and much moremanueverable. It makes some sense for a cyclist; it would be far more dangerous in a car.
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I'm sure lots of cyclists have anecdata about that hatred. My personal favorite was somebody in a Santa Clara neighborhood a block from the DMV shouting at me to "get off the f***ing road!" Clearly they didn't read the part of the DMV manual that mentions that bicycles must "not ride on the sidewalk"[1], and missed that cyclists are allowed full use of the lane.
I now live in rural suburban Michigan, and even on these rural backroads I have jerks in trucks yelling at me on my e-bike going 20+ mph to "get out of the f***ing way".
Maybe those people do not represent the majority, but it feels like they do, and those actions feel threatening when coming from a multi-ton vehicle directed at a 75 pound vehicle. (Fat-bike ebikes are heavy.) It's also odd to experience this on a rural road on a lake shoreline because isn't the countryside supposed to be slow paced?
1. https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/california-driver-han...
My personal favorite was someone shouting "go back to California!" our their window. I'm a TN native born and raised.
Second favorite was, a truck did an illegal pass maneuver around me on a blind turn (another 15s and we'd be around the curve) and almost hit another truck head on, then raced off. The driver of the truck that almost got hit rolled down his window and asked me "do you really have to ride here?"
i feel like you should have a petition ready in hand for that moment to respond
> not if you sign this to get dedicated infrastructure put in
We just had a death on the road, from a driver hitting a cyclist in a group. I'm a life-long cyclists, and I now am somewhat fearful about cycling on the road. I see so many groups that take an entire lane and not even care about the cars behind them - it's easy to understand the frustration of the drivers. It's a knotty problem, I wish we had more bicycle lanes.
Obviously I wasn't there for the "taking the lane" circumstances you've seen, but where I live there are very few sections of road where it would be safe for a vehicle to attempt to occupy the lane while a group of cyclists are in it, and cars should be overtaking instead. It's no more difficult for a car to overtake when the cyclists are "taking the lane."
You clearly haven't spent much time on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, FaceBook, or really anywhere there is a huge community. Americans fucking HATE cyclists.
> The great majority don't care about it
My own dad will take any opportunity to actively bitch about perceived annoyances perpetrated by cyclists and opine about how useless bike lanes are expensive and not actually productive because people only use them for exercise. Why don't you try actually bringing up cyclists and bike lanes somewhere, especially in the south, and then you tell me what people think.
Drivers mostly hate on other drivers, but they make time to hate other road users as well.
> Americans fucking HATE cyclists.
I haven't met those Americans, somehow. Maybe it's just more social media nonsense - people joining the mob fun and far overestimating the loud voices?
This feels more like a the company you keep situation than social media nonsense.
You happen to have a social circle that doesn't have any issues with cyclists, perhaps there are a number of them in your group.
But there are almost assuredly social circles that feel otherwise, that revel at the opportunity to roll coal as they pass a group of cyclists, that joke about running them off the road.
A quick google indicates there have been numerous studies on the subject that seem to support the idea that bicyclists are often reviled by some portion of the population, correlated with those who rely heavily on automobiles.
And, I mean, just scrolling this thread seems to show plenty of anecdotes to support the idea. Seems pretty systemic given the breadth of the anecdata.
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Did you ask them? Lots of things I don't like don't come up until it's relevant.
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As a general rule, with this kind of thing, if you're not in a group that's targeted by such comments, you are probably not going to see those comments. Even if the majority don't care, it only takes a small hateful minority to create a lot of hate aimed at a given group.
None of this has been my experience.
I love the way you start out claiming there's a victim mentality and then end up expressing your hatred of cyclists. The truth will out...
Yes, many bicyclists are straight up obnoxious and unsafe, and without any license plates on the bikes, it’s hard to hold them to the proper lawful behavior.
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