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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   19385 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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The Economist has published an article (paywalled, sorry) on the state of cyclists in New York, which dropped the day I was leaving the city. It was the first time I had visited as an adult. I came away with some respect for it (loved the food, service, and how fast everyone walked). The point of the story is supposedly that cyclists are now being treated unfairly:

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has started issuing criminal summonses for bike riders committing a slew of seemingly low-level fouls. Now, if caught running red lights, stopping in the pedestrian crossing or wearing headphones, wayward cyclists must appear before a judge, even if they are not contesting the fine. If they do not, they risk arrest.

I’m a cycling nut, so the issue is close to my heart. In a T2 city, I feel like our role is that of a scapegoat. People fantasize about killing cyclists pretty regularly, and none of them understand the challenges and tradeoffs we have to deal with. At this point, I've just thrown up my hands in despair at this ever being better, so I just get on the road as little as possible.

The people on two wheels in NYC are a different breed. Each of the longtime residents I asked - 100% - are now more scared of cyclists than cars. My 3 day trip felt the same to me. Every car was attentive and respectful of me as a pedestrian. The cyclists were fast, heavy, and disregarded almost every crosswalk signal or red light, despite having their own lanes. What’s the quantitative danger?

Of the 449 pedestrian deaths in the city between 2020 and 2023, electric bikes, scooters and mopeds led to just eight of them.

Notice the sleight of hand here. What’s included are E-Bikes, scooters, and mopeds - each of these truly motorized vehicles. The number of people killed by analog cyclists nationwide has been, for many years, single digits. This is important. E-bikes allow users to achieve speeds and momentum totally beyond their skill, and are often part of poorly maintained machines that are part of sharing programs. My mind is blown that even 8 people have been killed - that's an enormous number even in a place as dense as NYC. It probably means a huge number of serious injuries as collateral damage.

Cyclists kill between 1-9 people in the US per year. Cars kill 7,000+ Pedestrians (Not to mention other drivers). If you compare lethality on a per-capita basis, it's not even close. Cars are 230x more deadly (Including only pedestrians, not the 40,000 total deaths). Per-person-miles-travelled reduces the disparity a lot. It gets down to where cars are "only" 8.5x more deadly than bikes.

Put simply, the fixie riders racing through the city are psychotic but not dangerous to pedestrians.

As you’d expect, the lede is buried, along with the Culture War. The cyclists zipping through the city on E-bikes are exclusively yapping in a foreign language on speakerphone, with DoorDash bags on the back of their cycles. Nothing should get in the way of private taxis for burritos.

E-bike riders are “one of the top, if not the single, highest generator of complaints” from constituents….Mr Hoylman-Sigal (city senator) supports putting licence-plates on commercial e-bikes, so that violators can be held accountable. But such proposals have gone flat due, in part, to a desire to protect the largely immigrant delivery drivers.

To recap how insane this is:

  • The problem is 100% illegal immigrants on E-bikes and mopeds
  • No solution to control this will be put forward out of sympathy for the illegal immigrants
  • Punishment must be metered out, though, since it’s one of the biggest problems facing the city
  • Therefore, the solution is to punish analog cyclists with social security numbers!

It’s so similar to LA, albeit with fewer vehicle fires and bricks on heads. The fix just cannot be the obvious and correct one. Instead, it’s to hop on Reddit to “map police hotspots” or refuse to stop as a way to LARP civil disobedience.

Has there ever been a case of a successful project in any large Western city to build a network of lanes exclusively for cyclists, scooter-riders and Walmart/mobility scooters?

Define large. Bordeaux and it's surrounding towns (more like suburbs but the French are strict about keeping them separate) has some roads like that. They work pretty well but for reasons of space it's mostly mixed cycle and bus lanes, cycle lanes next to cars, cycle lanes on wide footpaths and mixed pedestrian/cycling areas.

mixed cycle and bus lanes

That seems sort of dangerous. And yes, I'm sure Bordeaux counts as large.

I don't know how dangerous it really is but it feels pretty safe. Drink driving and aggressive driving in general is worse in France than back in Ireland so bus drivers are trustworthy in comparison.

In short I'd say: Very few. It's not easy.

I'm biased because I'm living in a city with one, but I think greenway networks (a la the Atlanta Beltway) that allow cyclists "highways" to only certain parts of urban landscapes, while requiring the traditional gruelingly slow || dangerous approach we're used to only in short bursts is a good model.

3 modes of transportation is a lot to support, your question illuminates how truly difficult it is, and so it's the best of many bad options that I've personally experienced.

Peachtree, GA has a rather famous network of golf cart paths, but I suppose it's not "large" per se.

The Netherlands would be the obvious case study. I'm not sure how exclusive their bike lanes are in relation to cars and pedestrians, but the bicycle is by far the fastest way to get around most Dutch towns and is the primary method of commuting to school or work for around a third of the population. Even the countryside has very polished and accessible lanes: since the country is geographically small, casually biking from a village to a major city is completely doable for many people.

All in all, I think bikeable cities are a no-brainer as long as there's competent central urban planning involved - its cheaper, faster, requires little space, and has health benefits. I personally hate biking in large cities, but I grew up in Vienna where bike lanes where mainly an afterthought and often set up in risky, high-traffic areas. From my visits to the Netherlands, it seems to be a totally different game there, since bike lanes dominate urban planning concerns more than cars.

I'm not sure how exclusive their bike lanes are in relation to cars and pedestrians

@2rafa commented on this very aspect negatively in this thread.

Bike lanes were separated by curbs from the main roads throughout all but the oldest part of Amsterdam when I was there. They had separate signals which all the locals generally followed (on foot or on wheels) and the tourists seemed to get the picture by about the second or third near miss.

I stayed in a deeply suburban part of town (outside the ring road), and at the subway stations the many bike racks were completely full after the morning rush.

Dutch cities in the 70s.

And currently car centric Oslo is transitioning to be a cycling city:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=zmp09Fd07oc

And of course Paris:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=woFlJx7Rv78

Yt comment:

I remember when I was cycling to work in Paris 8 years ago, I was all alone on my bus lane. now everyone is cycling! Simply amazing

It is a bit counterintuitive, but every bike ride is one less car ride, and this means a great cycling city has less congested traffic for cars. And fewer cars also cause less dedicated bicycle infrastructure. Typically no bike lanes are needed in low car streets.

It is a bit counterintuitive, but every bike ride is one less car ride, and this means a great cycling city has less congested traffic for cars.

In my experience, a cyclist on the road causes more delay for cars than another car would. Even though the bike is smaller than a car, it effectively blocks the same amount of space: the safety distance behind is the same, and that dominates the physical length. Being thinner is balanced by 2x+ the sideways distance for passing, plus for passing it usually doesnt matter how much of you sticks in the next lane, just if at all. And then they still are slower and often less predictable.

This depends on the existing mode share in your city. If you start with a high enough public transport share (true for journeys into or within Manhattan but nowhere else in the US, also true for the cores of European cities including London and Paris) then improved cycling infrastructure is taking people off busses and trains, not cars.

But the basic point that replacing a car lane with a lane which moves more people than the car lane (whether on bikes, busses, trams, or anything else) will tend to speed car traffic up.

improved cycling infrastructure is taking people off busses and trains, not cars

I would disagree with this. Bicycles are far closer to an individual mode of transportation than a subway, much less a bus. This is why delivery drivers are using them instead of shuttles and hub-spoke models. For a door-to-door journey an individual vehicle is the best option.

Bicycles are in many cases and uses strictly superior to busses and trains, while comparison with cars is more mixed.

That is why they often compete with those. Also, many strong areas of bicycles are more appealing to people with limited or no car access.

The deaths to pedestrians from cyclists seems like a bad statistic for either side to bring up, and a bad statistic in general.

  1. Cars are obviously more deadly on a per incident basis. I can't imagine a pedestrian surviving if I hit them regular speed in a car. I can't imagine a pedestrian dying if I hit them regular speed on a bike.
  2. Bike incidents are likely to be high, they share more spaces with pedestrians. Cars and pedestrians rarely overlap, they tend to intersect.
  3. The per mile deadliness makes bikes actually sound really deadly given how non deadly they seem. But that statistic is thrown off by high miles travelled by cars and low by bikes.

I think the risk to pedestrians seems minimal and bikes should just fully share the sidewalk with pedestrians. Bikes hitting people is most likely to ruin both people's day, but cars hitting bikes is most likely to ruin someone's life.

Every cyclist I've ever suggested this to hates it, and I think it's just because they don't like going as slow as you sometimes need to go on a sidewalk to be safe. But it is often what they are asking drivers to do: go slowly for the cyclists safety on the road. Which is when it turns into a whole political question. No one likes going slower than they can, so who has to suffer the indignity drivers or cyclists?

The answer seems obvious in my head, but I know I identify with drivers more (despite riding a bike around the neighborhood pretty often)

I'm a moderate on this - I hop on the sidewalk plenty on big roads. Once you start doing this, however, you realize how bad they are. Even with how much slower you are on them, a cyclist is going to see far more of this infrastructure than an average pedestrian. They end at random places (right when lanes crunch!), foliage overhang is a serious problem, dirt and potholes push you to the edge of the curb and risk you being struck by cars anyway...

This is also assuming zero competition from pedestrians. Once there is some, it turns into a nightmare. They're unpredictable, have dogs with them, etc. I just think "the system" (whatever it is) has to have some sort of tangible benefits to counteract the myriad downsides of cycling: mechanical maintenance, capital expenditure, and enormous risk of theft. I have to have some speed advantage even if it's not the 4x one I'd get on a road.

Sharing the sidewalk becomes absolutely worthless for cyclists at some fairly low pedestrian density easily exceeded in Manhattan.

and I think it's just because they don't like going as slow as you sometimes need to go on a sidewalk to be safe

Correct, because a big point of using a bike instead of walking is to go faster than walking.

But it is often what they are asking drivers to do: go slowly for the cyclists safety on the road.

I disagree with those cyclists too. But it's mostly not cyclists pushing for lower speed limits in Manhattan, it's pedestrian safety advocates. When cycling I'd rather mix it up with car traffic in Manhattan than pedestrian traffic; yes, it's nuts, but driving in Manhattan is nuts too, and walking there isn't exactly a calming experience. The basic problem is too many damned people in too little space. I recently spent some time in some European cities of far lower density (and size) and all modes of transportation (driving, cycling, walking, and public transit) were far better. I've spent time in dense European cities and that's not the case there.

I think the risk to pedestrians seems minimal and bikes should just fully share the sidewalk with pedestrians.

note that it requires wider sidewalks, and as soon as total cycling+pedestrian traffic is dense you are better of with dedicated footway and dedicated cycleway

You know, I consider myself a modest advocate in favor of better transit infrastructure, but the "induced demand! Just add another lane bro!" partisans irk me because there really are more (diffuse) benefits to more total miles traveled --- not necessarily commuting to suburbs directly, but mobility is generally good, and I'm not convinced the measures they suggest will actually improve things.

Sometimes it's been tempting to take the "just add a lane, bro" meme featuring an American freeway (often I10 in Houston) and re-render it showing an equally wide road with all these subdivided sections for things they would otherwise like:

  • Bidirectional 8 ft wide, ADA friendly sidewalk
  • 8 ft wide cycle lane on each side
  • lane width space for urban trees
  • dedicated bus lane
  • light rail/tram
  • inter-city rail
  • one actual car/truck lane in each direction

"Just add another dedicated lane, bro. This time it'll make them take mass transit or bikes." Although I personally would like more people to do that.

Going from 0->1 lanes is a heck of a lot more impactful than going from 10->11 lanes.

Intercity rail isn't going to be on every street.

Ditto for light rail.

Sidewalks are for streets, not freeways.

In space-contrainses areas most people would absolutely sacrifice trees.

I get where you're coming from, more movement does have a benefit that's often ignored, but it's disingenuous to compare the request for a bike lane or a sidewalk to another freeway lane.

Yeah, it is a bit unfair of a comparison broadly. But sidewalks and bike lanes keep getting wider. Very old neighborhoods often have 24" sidewalks (if at all), while now they seem to be 36 or 48 inches. Bigger new roads (like your 11 lane freeway) have 6 or 8 foot sidewalks, getting closer to the width of a car lane.

I actually do like sidewalks, and I like the idea of bike lanes even if I'm unsatisfied with how they're engineered here these days: painted gutters, really? Unidirectional lanes across a road that doesn't have safe crossings? I think the ADA et al makes us avoid non-level pedestrian/bike crossings, so they just don't provide them on medium streets. Bidirectional lanes without safe crossings or ways to turn across? Do they ever sweep bike lanes?

Sidewalks and bike lanes keep getting wider. Very old neighborhoods often have 24" sidewalks (if at all), while now they seem to be 36 or 48 inches. Bigger new roads (like your 11 lane freeway) have 6 or 8 foot sidewalks, getting closer to the width of a car lane.

IIRC (I don't have my books in front of me): The federal ADA requires new sidewalks to be 4 feet wide, with 5-foot-wide passing areas every few hundred feet. In areas where the sidewalk goes right up to the curb, the designer normally will make it 6 feet wide (including the 9-inch curb), to prevent trucks' side mirrors from clipping pedestrians.

AASHTO has issued different, wider guidelines for bike lanes, as well as for "shared-use paths" occupied by both pedestrians and bicyclists, but I don't recall the specifics.

I think the risk to pedestrians seems minimal and bikes should just fully share the sidewalk with pedestrians. Bikes hitting people is most likely to ruin both people's day, but cars hitting bikes is most likely to ruin someone's life.

I think this is a terrible idea. On roads, we have traffic rules which enable everyone to go at reasonable speed while still maintaining safety. On sidewalks, pedestrians are not required to follow any traffic rules. This means that a safe-ish speed to pass a pedestrian will always be quite low.

I agree that bike-pedestrian collisions are unlikely to kill anyone directly, but that does not mean that they are not bad. For an elderly, a broken bone requiring hospitalization can easily mean the beginning of the end, costing them multiple QALYs.

Then there are unintentional consequences. If you force bikes to the sidewalk, effectively halving the speed of responsible bikers, that will cause more people to drive cars instead. As someone who occasionally drove a car in a medium-sized European city, I don't particularly like having bikes ahead of me, they generally are slower than cars and their vulnerability means that I have to take more care for overtaking them than I would for another car. But most of the time I lost in traffic was actually lost to traffic jams which were caused by cars.

Driving cars is fairly regulated, while riding bikes is not. This means that there are a lot of reckless bikers out there. Ignoring traffic rules around cars is limited by a process called natural selection -- if you keep running red lights without checking the traffic, that is a problem which will solve itself. On the sidewalk, the cost of reckless biking would primarily fall on others.

If we had a way to consistently enforce a sidewalk speed limit, I would support giving bikers the option to use the sidewalk at speeds up to 10km/h. There are certainly times when I would gladly have made use of that option.

If I were dictator I would make a law that bikes can go anywhere, but never have right of way. If a cyclist is in an accident it will always be their fault- hit an old lady and go to jail, get hit by a car and die.

If I were dictator I would make a law that bikes can go anywhere, but never have right of way. If a cyclist is in an accident it will always be their fault- hit an old lady and go to jail, get hit by a car and die.

Why?

To put the onus on bicyclists, obviously.

I saw you already replied to someone else's obvious objection, but are you trying to discourage bicycling? Would leaving the laws the same, but having the DOT create "Travel (Method) Advisories" for each mode of travel be an acceptable alternative?

(I hate anti-car bulverism as much as I hate bad traffic engineering, but there's non-zero overlap between the recommendations for precautions to take, if you insist on ignoring recommendations against traveling to Somalia, and possible recommendations for cyclists, motorcyclists, and pedestrians.)

I don’t care whether adult cyclists are encouraged in their hobby or lined up and shot for partaking in it. I have strong sympathy for young teens, but those mostly know that ludacris’s traffic mix is aimed at them- I make you move, bitch, get out the way. Likewise I sympathize with the poor who can’t afford cars, but, again, they understand their station in life.

I care about the sidewalks being usable for pedestrians and the road being usable for cars. Hippies should get a haircut and fitness fanatics should avail themselves of exercise bikes and the like if either of them are going to cause problems for the priority groups.

Tbh this is just as bad a take imo as the fanatics wanting to get rid of cars in the countryside said bc they "just need better public infrastructure". Yes, cars are superior for rural regions and public infrastucture is just not feasible there, but for well-designed suburbia and especially for smaller cities, bikes are also just better in many circumstances. It has nothing to with hobbies, hippies or fitness fanatics (though regular exercise is one of the benefits of bikes!). They need so much less space, they're cheaper, more flexible, less dangerous for pedestrians, etc.

Reducing cars in the suburbs to pedestrian speed and giving them the blame for any accident is great, it means even smaller kids can run, play, and bike through the suburbs without me needing to worry much, It means I can walk and bike there without having to be attentive all the time, and as long as it is properly designed even if I need to drive through it's just a minute or so of slow driving.

In cities car culture is also awful, the smell got better but everything is just so clogged and noisy. Worse, the danger means that even if you want to bike, it makes you choose the car bc a single idiot can cost your life. When I was living in London, almost everyone biked for a while, and those who stopped always had an incident with a crazy car driver. I myself also had several such situations. The counter here is usually crazy cyclist, but crazy cyclists are merely annoying, even a collision will usually not even seriously hurt you (though I get very pissed when small kids are involved, but even there I can literally just jump in front & stop the bike if needed); Crazy drivers can kill you with frightening ease, and there is absolutely nothing you can do. There's a lot to dislike in the EU, but well-targeted car bans are great.

I don’t care whether adult cyclists are encouraged in their hobby or lined up and shot for partaking in it.

Then why the complication of policing cyclists' deaths by negligent/reckless and/or malicious driving, as per your reply to the other commenter?

the priority groups

Have you seen examples of "complete streets," designed to better enable mixed-modal transportation?

More comments

sounds tempting but it would cause problems with at least drivers deliberately causing accidents to murder cyclists (currently rare but would become more common if it would be legal)

Most people are selfish and somewhat amoral, but few people are psychos. Reckless driving/vehicular homicide would remain illegal, too, so the worst offenders would still be arrested.

At the end of the day cyclists simply need to learn to deal with the fact that they’re too slow for roads and too fast for sidewalks, and adjust accordingly.

OK, then it is not as simple as

If a cyclist is in an accident it will always be their fault (...) get hit by a car and die.

but few people are psychos

well, the problem is that just few can cause unacceptable damage (though such rule would effectively outlaw bicycle use anyway) and enough psychos have cyclist obsession for it to happen on day one

This is my preferred solution, as well.

Original article was proposing enforcement of rules against bikers. I do know that cities often have cops on bicycles.

Maximum speed and some enforced guidelines on sidewalks sounds great. Where places are less dense enforcement would be hard but also less necessary as there would be fewer pedestrians.

Roadways for motorized vehicles, sidewalks for human powered things.

Have you seen a sidewalk?

This is such a bad idea. Sidewalks are full of stuff like signs, trees, children, dogs, people moving in any direction at any time because inertia isn't a thing when you're walking.

The only sidewalks it's possible to bike on functionally would be completely empty ones near strip malls or residential neighborhoods in suburbia, at which point, sure, bikes can go crazy on those. But the second there's more than a handful of people per block this gets incredibly stupid.

Both bike lanes and sidewalks independently have the problem that their users have a wide range of speeds --- try running on a crowded sidewalk, even before they have sharp sudden turns. Bike lanes try to fit roadies wanting to go 20+ mph, kids and grandmas going near walking pace, and e-bikes that have been poorly regulated and go car speeds.

Roads have slow-moving vehicles, but there are special rules for the (often requiring specific placards, lights, and sometimes escorts).

I guess I could point to the analogue of data infrastructure: in the past we had separate phone and cable TV infrastructure and a variety of broadcast radio and TV, but that has been moving slowly towards common switched packet infrastructure where everything is passed through a single, big data pipe. I guess the question I have is if there is a way to develop roads like switched packet networks. Something like autonomous vehicles that consistently yield to pedestrians and cyclists on the same roads. There are (potentially) enough efficiency gains from replacing safety margins for humans in the loop with intra-vehicle communication (ignoring the security and safety issues for this thought experiment) to allow efficient dynamic allocation of the space. It works today on sparsely used suburban roads: without sidewalks or bike lanes, a few local human-driven cars at local speeds can share the space with pedestrians and cyclists.

bikes should just fully share the sidewalk with pedestrians

I see where you're coming from but what you're effectively asking for is the adoption of the Third World's model for traffic, where everything flows chaotically and you're just supposed to improvise your movements without a clear structure for who can circulate where. Unsurprisingly, every single country with this kind of laissez-faire traffic mentality has horrendously high accident rates.

Here in Vienna, our main shopping street was transformed into a pedestrian zone about a decade ago - initially, the plan was for large swaths of the street to have a hybrid system where both bikers and pedestrians could share the street without any dividing markers. This had to be amended very shortly after its inauguration because it made the street experience too hectic and demanding for everyone involved, especially on a shopping street where people want to leisurely stroll and window-shop, not constantly be on the lookout for bikers trying to swerve around them. For the bikers themselves, the system sucked too, since they couldnt just bike down the street in a straight line, but had to constantly change their direction to avoid pedestrians standing in their way. It was a lose-lose situation for everyone involved and the quick addition of bike lane markers on the ground largely erased the problem overnight.

I'd be fine with bikes lanes on side walks. Usually bike lanes are added to roads, if sidewalks were just enlarged and the bike lanes were added to them that would seem better to me.

what is the difference between a bike lane on a road and a bike lane on a sidewalk that was expanded onto the road?

I think you prefer the sidewalk bike lane as there is grade separation. It's possible to make nicely separated bike lanes in roads too. Not all bike lanes are painted lines, American cities just don't build nice ones.

I can't imagine a pedestrian's dying if I hit him regular speed on a bike.

Lots of people die from falling and hitting their heads on the ground.

Sorry slight exaggeration. I can imagine people dying from a simple fall, it just seems less likely than when they get hit by a car.

Every cyclist I've ever suggested this to hates it, and I think it's just because they don't like going as slow as you sometimes need to go on a sidewalk to be safe. But it is often what they are asking drivers to do: go slowly for the cyclists safety on the road. Which is when it turns into a whole political question. No one likes going slower than they can, so who has to suffer the indignity drivers or cyclists?

Are you proposing that drivers should be required to check sidewalks for cyclists and yield when turning left or going through an all-way stop? If not you are proposing a soft ban on cycling, in that cyclists are required to yield to everyone everywhere. If you are proposing that motorists should yield to cyclists in sidewalks when they would yield to cyclists in the road then you are proposing something that non-criminal motorists would find even more annoying than the status quo.

Fundamentally, primary safety (i.e. avoiding crashes altogether, rather than making them less lethal) requires cyclists to either be in fully segregated infrastructure (either grade separated at junctions as in Milton Keynes in the UK, or having their own phase at traffic lights as in Dutch cities) or to be in the road where drivers will see them.

In addition, a bike (ridden at speed by a competent adult cyclist) is more like a car than a pedestrian in that it can't stop safely if someone crosses its path without looking. The place where you are required to be paying sufficient attention to not cross other road users' paths without looking is the road, not the sidewalk.

If you want to ban bicycles (except as children's toys) in your community, that is a perfectly plausible tradeoff to make after considering the relative importance your community places on the health and fitness of the population, teenagers' ability to be independent, green goals etc. against a marginal speed improvement for drivers. But if there are bicycles in environments where the speed of car traffic is 30mph or less, they belong in the street. Society worked this one out while Henry Ford was still alive and nothing that matters has changed since then.

Bikes yield to everyone on nature paths and it has not effectively banned them at all. Instead such paths are filled with bikers.

I'd be fine with bikes only on streets in areas of less than 30mph speeds. As soon as it hits 35 though they are asking cars to generally slow down to accommodate them. At 45mph I think they are a danger to themselves and all other drivers.

I'm fine with effectively banning what I'd consider "racing cycling" this ain't the tour de France. Just like highways aren't NASCAR or formula 1. All people in shared commute spaces have to sacrifice the top speed of their vehicle for the safety of themselves and others.

As a cyclist, I avoid 40mph roads whenever I can. Unfortunately, sometimes they're the only roads going where I want to go.

Indeed, once you're outside an urban grid, there's often only one road (or two, where one is a limited-access highway) which goes where you want to go without going WAY out of your way. If you want to go from e.g. Urbana, MD to Hyattstown, MD (both suburbs of Washington DC) on a bicycle, MD 355 is it. Mostly two lines, mostly narrow/nonexistent shoulders, speed limit varies from 40 to 50 but mostly 50mph.

Nature paths don't have store entrances all along them for people to veer into or randomly pop out of.

Also frequently they are much wider than sidewalks.

They also don't have anywhere near the clutter (sandwich boards, planter boxes, utility poles) that sidewalks do. They also don't have as much pedestrian density (usually) as sidewalks.

I used to bike all the time until the end of high school in the mid 90s when I got a job in the neighbouring city and started my university studies here in Finland. What strikes me as the main difference and not something covered in comments is that back then cycling was mostly an improved alternative to walking or short bus rides. You could travel faster and cover longer distance than by walking. The speeds were moderate and not particularly important and having to stop at a crossing was barely more annoying than as a pedestrian. You might go for a longer ride the same way you’d go out for a long walk / run. Some people would bike to work if the weather was good but considered that a hobby. If the weather was shit, you took the bus (or drove a car). Nobody sane would bike when there was any significant amount of snow and ice on the ground. The only way anyone considered being a cyclist as an ”identity” was the same way some people were tennis players or runners.

Today there are people who ride bikes as back then but the public discussion is dominated by a new group who are Cyclists. Ie. people who make cycling a replacement for a car and a core part of their identity. They demand that everyone accommodate their wish to be able to get everywhere by bike fast. Speed is of essence. If cars or pedestrians get in the way, that’s their problem, not the cyclists’. Having to slow down and stop for crossings is considered a travesty and insult towards cycling. The same goes for having the bike lane change to the other side of the road. The unofficial uniform is tight spandex clothes.

By and large nobody over here has a problem with people who just casually ride a bike. Cyclists OTOH get well deserved hate.

Today there are people who ride bikes as back then but the public discussion is dominated by a new group who are Cyclists. Ie. people who make cycling a replacement for a car and a core part of their identity.

What a lovely strawman.

In my major North American city, basically every pro cycling person I see and hear has opinions like "my building has 0.3 parking spots per person, and I want to get to work faster than walking/transit" or "I like biking to my soccer league but the current layout of roads makes me fear for my life"

The vast majority of cyclists I see passing by my apartment window are on city rental bikes, which are 30 minute time limit (you only use for A>B, not recreation) and are super heavy so you can't go fast.

I've seen urban infrastructure advocates lament that the set of people on bikes is broad enough that serving all of them is difficult. Your "cyclists" want bike lanes to be wide and designed for faster speeds, and around here the equivalent group have even pushed against separate bike lanes in some places because they're often not designed or maintained for going closer to car speeds (30mph). I think there was hope that e-bikes and scooters might level that playing field, but so far they seem to get people to speeds way above their skill level and have gained a bit of a bad, although not irredeemable, reputation.

Yeah, many e-bikes are basically electric motorcycles driving on sidewalks and cycleways.

There's no limit on e-bikes speed in the US? EU bikes stop assisting at 25 kph, about 18 mph or so.

EU bikes stop assisting at 25 kph, about 18 mph or so.

EU bikes are supposed to do so. In practice most don't, some are openly described when available for sale as capable of 50 km/h

In practice, at least in Slovakia it's not common at all(I haven't even seen such a person iirc, though I have heard of them) and if you do so, it's classed as an electric motorbike and you need a driving permit etc.

That's the law but if you know a guy or have the knowledge yourself you can upgrade basically any bike with a motor which goes much faster. People working for Deliveroo and similar apps will know this type of guy.

I have almost never heard locals complain about this nuisance and even though I cycle twice a month in busy places I have never in practice observed e-bikes going fast, so I assume it's an enforcement matter.

I have heard of someone buying an e-bike without the speed limiter and using it for commuting outside a city. .

Disclaimer: I don't hate cyclists and have not had many negative experiences with cyclists while driving.

I always find it difficult to find sympaths for cyclists in America. My thinking goes like this.

  1. America is built for cars. Homes and jobs are far apart. Friends and employers expect you to travel distance only reasonably covered with a car.
  2. Thus, cars are a necessary part of life for most Americans. You need a car to get a job to feed your kids. You must buy and drive a car even if you don't really want to.
  3. Biking to work or to the grocery is not feasible for most people for many reasons. Your employer won't think it's cute that you show up sweaty, or drenched in rain, or 30 minutes late due to snow. Your wife won't be amused when you have to bike 30 minutes to Walmart every day to fill your backpack with food for the kids. How do you get to the hospital when someone is sick or injured? How do you take your family anywhere, especially when the kids are small?
  4. Thus, cycling is best thought of as either an elective hobby for those with money and time to burn, or a last resort for truly destitute and/or criminal. The former can afford a car if they want, they just choose not to. The latter have bigger problems than just not having reliable transportation and prioritizing bikes over cars won't fix those.
  5. Thus, I really don't care about cyclists' complaints. I mentally put cyclists in the same bucket as skateboarders, rollerbladers, and Segway riders. If you can do your hobby on public roads safely and without endangering yourself or or car drivers, then fine. If there's any inconvenience or risk to drivers, the just ban everything except cars and call it a day.

tl;dr I need to get to work on time or pick up food for dinner, I'm not interested in being delayed or inconvenienced to accommodate some bum or some stranger's vanity hobby.

An argument I'm somewhat sympathetic to is that if we don't accommodate cyclists, we'll be stuck in our current automobile-centric hellscape forever. That is probably true. However, my preferences go like this:

  1. Cities designed for bikes & public transit, cars rarely needed
  2. Cities designed for cars
  3. Cities designed for cars where cycling is awkwardly retrofitted into existing car infra with significant gaps where there are no provisions for bikes at all

In the U.S., number 3 seems by far the most common, and it sucks for everyone. The car/bike war is one of those problems that IMO can only really be solved by a strong executive power not beholden NIMBYs and lobbyists. Until one materializes, I'm supporting option 2 all the way.

American cities are also much warmer than most of Europe. I think there might be a mismatch there, because the Sunbelt is too hot much of the year for cycling to be enjoyable. It's much easier to dress for cold than for Phoenix summers.

Are there any tropical or subtropical cities with respected bike infrastructure? Maybe Shanghai back when China was bike-dominant?

I worked in Shanghai for a few months. Their scooter infrastructure is amazing. A wide lane for scooters separated from the car lanes by a concrete barrier. It goes: sidewalk, scooter lane, concrete barrier, car lanes, concrete barrier, scooter lane, sidewalk.

This would be perfect biking infrastructure, but they seem to be all in on small electric scooters rather than bikes.

Well yes, everyone who has the option of motorizing seems to pick that option except for a minority of hobbyists.

tl;dr I need to get to work on time or pick up food for dinner, I'm not interested in being delayed or inconvenienced to accommodate some bum or some stranger's vanity hobby.

I can count on one hand the number of minutes per month I'm delayed by a cyclist. On the other hand, every time the Penguins or Pirates play a weekday home game I'm treated to at least ten minutes of extra sitting in traffic so a bunch of suburbanites can treat themselves to a night of overpriced disappointment. And I'm just trying to get home or the grocery store; I'm sure there are other people out there who have jobs at the hospital to get to, or something even more important than my convenience. So if people's recreation getting in the way of convenience is the standard to set, then cyclists on public roads should be way down at the bottom of the list of things we need to get rid of.

I can count on one hand the number of minutes per month I'm delayed by a cyclist. On the other hand, every time the Penguins or Pirates play a weekday home game I'm treated to at least ten minutes of extra sitting in traffic so a bunch of suburbanites can treat themselves to a night of overpriced disappointment.

You need to figure out the amount of delay per cyclist and per driver, not the total amount of delay. The total amount is skewed by the much larger number of cars.

I would bet that if all those people went to the ball game on bicycles, your delays would not get any shorter.

I guarantee you they would disappear entirely if that were the case, since cyclists don't ride on the freeway.

I am more than in favor of banning pro sports as well

In the context of NYC though, these points are largely invalid. It's dense, walkable, transitable, employers don't expect cars, grocery stores are close enough to walk to, let alone bike. If you must drive (which is entirely reasonable for some use cases) it's a pain because of the traffic (as it's so dense even a small portion of drivers cause congestion). Less than half of NYC even owns a car, something like ~20% in Manhattan.

For a significant number of trips, cycling can not just be an alternative quirky choice (like rollerblading), but the ideal mode - direct to your destination, cheap, faster than transit or a car (due to bypassing transfers or traffic), no need to find parking, and with some cargo or kid capacity if you have the right bike.

Safety is one of the big blockers though, which is why cycling advocates want more infrastructure.

And yes, this does trade off against drivability, but NYC is definitely not Pareto optimal in this regard - there's room to improve design for cyclists without significantly showing down drivers.

I agree 3 sucks, but it doesn't have to be as awkward as your making it out to be. Filling in the gaps doesn't make it impossible for cars to function.

I will concede that very dense places are different.

There are of course many bigger problems than electric bikes or cyclists in the world or even in New York (crazy homeless for instance). Nevertheless, cycling shouldn't be needed in a rich country. Rich countries should have well-functioning public transport in urban centres which is apparently missing in America.

If you want to go somewhere, drive or use public transport. This is fast and you can use the travel time to read or whatever if you're not driving.

If you want to wander around, or exercise, walk. You can mull things over in your head without needing to be in a high state of alertness.

In between is not a good place to be as people point out downthread. It causes accidents due to there being no good infrastructure for it. And there's no good infrastructure for it because it fundamentally doesn't make any sense, there's no need for this medium speed, low-safety, exhausting means of transport.

Nevertheless, cycling shouldn't be needed in a rich country.

It's a fairly good way to get enough exercise. I vastly prefer cycling outside than being in a gym.

exercise, walk

Walking is incredibly weak exercise. Going full tilt on a bicycle at maybe 20 mph is incredibly taxing, you'll be spent after 1h, 1.5 hours. It's similar to running, but much lower risk of injury.

As long as we are banning modes of transportation, why not just ban driving in cities instead?

Most of the cars in cities are carrying only one passenger. Even if they carry groceries, the amount of groceries they carry would often fit in a cargo bike. And as you point out, public transport is always an option. For people who need to transport heavy goods, there is already a solution in the pedestrian zones: just have certain hours where cars and trucks are allowed to drive in (slowly), for the purpose of transportation.

Electric bikes are reasonably fast and likely have a lower TCO than cars. We will also free a lot of space currently dedicated to cars, and improve the quality of life for people living next to big roads.

People who still want to own cars can just park them outside the city.

I am not actually suggesting this, but it sounds more reasonable to me than banning bikes.

why not just ban driving in cities instead?

How many people do you see driving vs cycling? There's a reason for that. It's very silly to ban driving, I don't believe you think it's more reasonable to ban cars than bikes. And I don't even want to ban bikes.

"we designed a huge majority of the land use of the built environment for only one modality of transportation, and now that modality is the dominant form. Checkmate atheists"

You're not exactly working with a control group here...

we designed a huge majority of the land use of the built environment for only one modality of transportation

Horse and carriage, here in the East. The pavement's gotten better, the rights-of-way often haven't. Driving's just a lot better than cycling for most things. You can carry more stuff (and passengers), you're protected from the weather, it's harder to steal a car, you don't get tired doing it, etc. Downsides are it's bigger, takes a lot of space to park, and creates more traffic.

Driving's just a lot better than cycling for most things

Fully agree, that's why I own a car. I am typing this from the waiting room at the dealership as they replace my underside cover.

There is one thing that driving profoundly fails at though, both on its own and really really badly once you compare to cycling.

Scale.

The road capacity of downtown cores is fixed. The population, as more and more towers get built, is not.

Each human wants to go places, if they all pick "car", eventually it all stops working. Nothing can fix this aside from having people go places not in a car.

Coincidentally, bikes are ridiculously better than cars downtown as they are much faster.

From my apartment to the dealership is 19 minutes right now by car or bike. This afternoon rush hour, it'll be over 30 minutes by car, and still 19 minutes by bike.

The road capacity of downtown cores is fixed. The population, as more and more towers get built, is not.

The problem there is too many people in too little space. I spent some time recently in a couple of cities MUCH less dense than NYC (one was less dense than my suburb, in fact), and things were far more civilized. You could bike, you could drive, you could walk, all without being jammed.

Switching cars to bikes doesn't solve the problem of scale, it just delays it. Back in the 1980s, when China was much poorer, they still had traffic jams -- they were bicycle traffic jams. And in places with winter (which includes NYC), it doesn't help much at all, because bicycles are terrible in winter, and you need things to work in bad conditions as well as good.

The problem there is too many people in too little space

At this point it's all just preferences though. I believe what you say, it is a calmer existence in a less dense north american city. I also find it a soulless hellscape of awful design that I want to get away from immediately, whereas one of my favorite activities is wandering around Toronto with my dog (no destination, just vibes).

Edit: I should add, I have no problems with less dense cities, and think they should be free to shape their built form however they please, which they do. I dislike this form, so I don't go (which is fine). But then dense cities don't get this benefit, and have to cater to everyone's tastes, which results in really mediocre outcomes. If one doesn't like bike lanes, one should move somewhere that doesn't have or need them, instead of fighting to make everything worse for everyone, including themselves.

The issue is that people who have (valid) preferences for living in less dense cities then try to take their preferences and impose them on dense cities (also funny how the suburban preference people still love coming downtown, but the downtown people don't want to go hang out in the suburbs, I wonder why), and everyone loses because it fundamentally doesn't work because of spacial limitations and a refusal to change anything, ever.

Build bike lanes for more efficient transportation? No! Can't take space from cars?

Build LRTs or dedicated bus lanes? NO! can't take space from cars.

Build subways? Okay but only one as they are expensive.

WHY IS TRAFFIC SO BAD? WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED THIS WOULD HAPPEN?!?!?!?

I'll also offer some hope re: cycling. I bike most months of the year, basically only Dec/Jan are when my ability to bike is seriously constrained. Snow plowing infrastructure has improved a lot, and we have sidewalk plows now that do bike lanes, so they're quite clear. Also climate change means even Toronto winters are very mild. Feels like we get more rain than snow in winter now, and days under -10 are so rare vs my childhood.

Well, it is fixable for some values of fixable: build enough parking and roads to allow this to happen. Effect is that your city is now 50% parking by area and 20% roads by area.

This may be overall desirable outcome for some and worth benefits of everyone getting by car everywhere.

Yeah great plan, let's see how that's working in cities which have leaned that way like LA.... Oh wow no way, it's one of the most congested places on the continent? That's crazy! Who could ever have predicted that...

Maybe Dallas and Houston? They're doing better than LA, but no suprise their traffic congestion stats get worse every year. It's almost like this doesn't work at scale.

Putting aside the fact that cities that are 50% parking area absolutely suck.

More comments

That would be far too few roads for a dense city. NYC roads (including on-street parking) are 24% of the land area -- 36% in Manhattan -- and doesn't have enough.

you don't get tired doing it

Speak for yourself! I often have trouble keeping myself awake at the wheel.

That said, I'd like to add to your list of advantages: You can drive long past the point where injuries or sickness prevent you from walking notable distances.

get tired doing it

depending on context in modern world getting some exercise can* be benefit, not a problem

*obviously, not always

Rich countries should have well-functioning public transport in urban centres which is apparently missing in America.

well, cycling is useful if you are getting from or out of urban centers and when public transport routes fit poorly where you want to get

Nevertheless, cycling shouldn't be needed in a rich country.

cycling is both faster and cheaper than cars, public transport and walking (if you value your time at more than Eastern European minimum wage, cycling costs per km are minimal if you are not forced to cycle at roads with 100km/h speed limits)

Yes, it is not accessible if your city has no proper infrastructure, for people disabled and/or so fat to qualify as land whale. And in cities which are more vertical than horizontal. But that leaves plenty of use.

There's a lot of New York City talk in this thread. I accept that maybe for major cities such as that bikes are faster. They sure are not faster than a car anywhere I have lived. Like almost all Americans I don't live in New York City or any place nearly as densely populated. Cars beat bikes on total trip time and it is not remotely close.

Yes, outside denser urban areas cars are going to be much faster. Noone is cycling between cities because it is faster than car.

Any solution for the United States needs to work for fat people in the suburbs or it will simply not work.

Ok, maybe you hate suburbs and fat people, but they’re not going anywhere.

Yep. I'm lean and in the suburbs. I bike as a hobby and fun activity with my family. Good thing to do with kids on Saturday.

I certainly don't bike to work. I'm way too far away. I also need to drive my kid to private school. I'm not doing that on a bike.

It seems like you don't like cycling.

there's no need for this medium speed, low-safety, exhausting means of transport

How about

  1. Getting some default amount of exercise every day just from running errands and commuting. This is mainly a benefit to the cyclist, but in countries with more socialized medicine, it's a public good too.
  2. Saving money. For people who live in denser areas, much of the cost of a car is the capital expense and fixed maintenance.
  3. Saving time. For short trips in dense areas where it's hard to park, a bike beats driving.
  4. Combining all three. Even if cycling takes longer and doesn't save much money, the fact that it's combining exercise, travel, relaxation, and thrift makes it pretty good use of time for a lot of people.
  5. Reducing traffic. Where I live, due to traffic it takes about as long to commute 20 miles by bike as by car. Believe it or not most of the time a cyclist is on the road they are not in conflict with any cars; they're using shoulders or bike paths. A car on the freeway is taking up that much extra space the whole time.

This is all completely orthogonal to whether cyclists obey traffic laws. I'm all for ticketing cyclists and making their movements more legible to the law. I think this would go a long way towards cycling becoming more normalized so that people can have discussions based on tradeoffs rather than emotions.

Walking is better in most circumstances:

Much cheaper.

Also provides exercise. You can run if you want more.

Lets you think and go on autopilot, making up for lost speed.

Syncs with other forms of transport well, no restrictions on taking a non-existent bike with you.

Safer.

Can easily head into a shop without having to tie up a bike.

Can easily navigate stairs and get more direct routes.

I want to avoid the "lived experience" trap. That' said, both you and @hydroacetelyne are making some assertions about how cycling compares to other modes of transportation that are totally incorrect. They make it obvious you don't have firsthand experience and dislike it enough that you aren't believing other people when they explain the advantages it provides.

I'm not going to demand you hop on a bike and try and use it more for 6 months before you share an opinion. But try and assume we aren't all just a bunch of idiots who happened to like the worst form of transportation that's ever existed to fuck with other people.

Example: On Saturday mornings, I'll wake up before my wife and hook up a 2-kid trailer to my bike. I'll take a greenway for around 4 miles. The last half mile is a mix of sidewalk, crossing a 5-lane road, and parking lots. I would never even consider it during rush hour, but at 7:30 it's perfectly safe with long sightlines and low traffic etc.

My day starts with ~600 calories burned, quality time with my children, vitamin D, a delicious breakfast, and a rested/happy wife. That's a lot of birds knocked out with one stone.

Lets you think and go on autopilot, making up for lost speed.

You might be on to something here. We should replace all trans-atlantic flights with ships again. It's so simple, the passengers can just think and that will pass the additional time, they won't even notice!

Walking to my office is a 1hr 25 min walk, or 28 minute bike. I would vastly prefer to not wake up a full hour earlier, and no amount of extra "thinking" time will make up for that...

Syncs with other forms of transport well, no restrictions on taking a non-existent bike with you.

Solved by bike rental/bike share programs in most major cities.

Can easily head into a shop without having to tie up a bike.

This is significantly easier and faster (or equivalent, if there is ample parking) than parking a car. This takes 30 seconds? How is this a barrier?

Clearly I hit a nerve here, people are getting very emotional about an objectively minor issue. Dumb strawmans like 'cancel air travel' don't make the point you think they're making. Air travel exists for a good reason, because people demand it, because there are proper use cases and so the infrastructure is built up. Bicycle infrastructure doesn't exist in the same way for much the same reason. It doesn't make sense. If it actually made sense people would do it en masse. Even in the Netherlands, car travel is twice as popular as bicycle travel.

I personally don't like cars and don't own one. But I'm capable of looking beyond my own personal interests and can accept that car travel's popularity has good reasons behind it.

I am not asking people to walk 90 minutes to work. Simply use public transport or drive for long distances like almost everyone else.

It wasn't a strawman, it was a humorous example to point out that "it's fine if your travel time increases 3x, you can just think about stuff and you won't even notice" is a profoundly silly thing to say. Obviously we're not going to replace air travel with ocean liners.

I'm not sure why you think there isn't demand for bike travel? Do you think there is a conspiracy to make bike lanes against the will of the electorate? In Toronto, where I live, pro-bike lane politicians are quite popular, and we just had an election where a very notable anti-bike lane incumbent lost their seat in an election where their party dominated.

Toronto bike share use has increased like 20% YoY for 5 years and counting.

Again you say "biking doesn't make sense" but I don't understand where you get that. From my apartment to my office the options are:

Drive: 20-30 minutes (longer with accidents or road closures), parking is $30+ a day in the area.

Transit: 45 minutes, longer with (frequent) delays

Walk: 1.5 hours

Bike: 28 minutes

Biking makes the most sense here by far, because it's tied for fastest, it's the cheapest, and most importantly imo, it's by far the most consistent

And this pattern plays out constantly. Driving is fast, unless it's rush hour. Parking is very expensive. Transit basically always takes 30+ minutes due to walking, waiting, and transfers. Biking is incredibly fast and always the same amount of time per distance.

Note, I live in the downtown core of a major city. I don't give a shit about biking in a suburban hellscape and I agree it's probably not a very good mode of transportation out there. Although I find it pretty funny that "the land of the free" totally falls apart for "preference of form of travel". Similarly, I also find it funny you feel comfortable dictating people's travel options to them.

Last I checked, shipping is not 3x slower than air travel, more like 200x slower. It's a totally different line of thought.

Transit basically always takes 30+ minutes due to walking, waiting, and transfers.

North America cannot run public transport properly, that's the fundamental problem. That's what I've been saying from the start. Cycling shouldn't be needed at all.

Wouldn't it be ridiculous to see people hand-threshing grain? In what world is that rational? If they say 'oh fuel is too expensive and we can't get a harvester because the warlords will steal it', then that's the real problem. It's not that it's superior to do agriculture like you're in the bronze age, it's that there's a deficiency elsewhere. For cycling: too many people being crammed into crowded cities. Cars being too big. Public transport full of crazies and drug fiends, unpunished fare-dodging. Artificially expensive construction costs crippling infrastructure development.

Civilization is supposed to go up the energy ladder, not down.

Cycling is not worth banning. But people should not be commuting with this method, it should not be a rational choice for people in a rich country.

We agree on a lot, basically all of that

I just really push back on the biking is not rational piece. Even when streetcars are running flawlessly I can out bike them because they have to stop at every stop to offload/pick up, I don't.

I also never have to wait for my bike to arrive, although I guess you could spam so many vehicles headways were always <2 min but that's not economical or practical.

I also enjoy the fresh air and exercise in the morning, it's a great way to wake up.

Also transit doesn't run on residential side streets, so the 5-10 minute walk to get to transit (or get from transit to your destination) is a significant portion of overall trip time, which is totally skipped on a bike.

Even in the Netherlands, car travel is twice as popular as bicycle travel

for all travels or for travels where bicycles make sense?

cars are clearly better at long distance travel, this does not make them better at commuting 2 km

I am not asking people to walk 90 minutes to work. Simply use public transport or drive for long distances like almost everyone else.

at short distances cycling is typically faster, more pleasant, cheaper and healthier than public transport

From wikipedia: Around half of all trips in the Netherlands are made by car, 25% by bicycle, 20% walking, and 5% by public transport

2 km is easy walking distance anyway, I walked about that far getting to school as a child.

Contrary to all the people in this thread saying I have no experience of bikes, I have a friend used to be really keen on them and commuted by bike. However being out on the road with all the multi-tonne death machines and fumes was not his idea of a good time, so now he just takes public transport.

From wikipedia: Around half of all trips in the Netherlands are made by car, 25% by bicycle, 20% walking, and 5% by public transport

so for trips where cycling is actually a good idea (less than half of all) cycling is almost certainly more popular than cars

However being out on the road with all the multi-tonne death machines and fumes was not his idea of a good time

yes, cycling becomes better idea if there is infrastructure for it (the same as with driving, cycling, flying and public transport)

Walking 10km for errand is not reasonable, cycling 10km works fine if you are not an invalid or land whale.

Cycling is less expensive than walking if you value your time at more than Eastern European minimum wage. In European cities it is cheaper than cars, public transport or walking.

Cycling syncs with other forms of transport well (you can leave bicycle at bus station or train station or elsewhere and cycle back when you return).

Can easily head into a shop without having to tie up a bike.

really? is that supposed to be a real obstacle? This takes less than 30 seconds, maybe minute or two if they failed to set up a bicycle parking

Can easily navigate stairs and get more direct routes.

I guess it could be a problem in La Paz or other highly-vertical cities.

In the United States, the average person is a land whale in the suburbs with high rates of petty crime. These facts aren’t going anywhere.

"land whale in USA" is not "most circumstances"

If you value your time, buy whatever you need and get it delivered to you. Do you really want to be all sweaty from a bike ride when you're going out to lunch? Drive, get a taxi, an uber or public transport and do something else on the way.

you can leave bicycle at bus station or train station

If it's still there. Huge numbers of bikes are stolen in the US and elsewhere. They're innately easy to steal.

If you value your time

Note that humans need some exercise anyway, by cycling you also do this. So effectively time cost may be zero or extremely low, if you planned to exercise. I guess in theory you could drive/order deliveries and do some high-intensity-training and be more efficient with your time overall.

If I cycle somewhere I can spend less time on gym or similar (that I would probably not do anyway and would get diabetes already and be standard issue land-whale, cycling is for me the primary way of exercising at all)

If you value your time, buy whatever you need and get it delivered to you.

I am not able to deliver dentist to my apartment. The same goes for many services and products. For example best pastry shop in my area is not offering deliveries at all. And deliveries often require 20+ minutes waiting time, this is more than enough to get somewhere and be already eating. And sometimes you need to wait for hour or more and you get food that needs to be reheated.

Do you really want to be all sweaty from a bike ride when you're going out to lunch?

heavily depends on local climate I guess, I can imagine in some cases it could be unavoidable. I am probably not going to cycle in Dubai if I would have misfortune to be there.

If it's still there. Huge numbers of bikes are stolen in the US and elsewhere. They're innately easy to steal.

for commuting you do not luxurious bicycle worth stealing (if you live in hellhole where people will steal everything nailed down and then steal nails that may pose problems, but if you cannot leave low-end bicycle for two weeks at bus station then something went wrong)

Biking is a fairly pleasant way to travel if you have bike paths and your town has moderate year-round weather. I pretty much always take my kids that way in a cargo bike instead of driving. It typically only turns a 10 minute car ride around town into a 20 minute bike ride.

I definitely make sure the ride is mostly bike paths through parks though, since I'm too paranoid about cars.

My cargo bike has an e-assist, so it's not exhausting. I don't even think it gets my heart rate up (I get my exercise by running 6 days a week, instead). It's also capped at a fairly low speed, since crashing at 30mph with your kids is bad.

Also it's actually more expensive per mile than driving my car, so it's not even really an efficiency thing. It's just awesome to ride around on a sunny day with my kids. We can stop by the farmers market and then have a picnic in the park. And then hit the splash pad in another park. It's great.

I live in an unusually bike friendly US town and I'm having a hard time imagining moving because I don't want to give this up.

I'm not saying we need to radically redesign society to accommodate this, but it's also not the worst thing.

How do you feel about the Netherlands?

Every bike advocate brings them up, and for for good reason - they make all of these modes work, they all have a place in a modern city.

Obviously you can't copy paste their designs right away to current American cities, but you absolutely can move in that direction.

I don't know much about the Netherlands but it is quite flat there, advantaging bikes. What if your city has hills and slopes?

Depends on size. It will range from "minor annoyance/breaks monotony" to "cycling is not going to happen at all".

That does make them less useful, especially for the less athletic. Very hilly cities may see less ridership. E bikes of various assist levels can help a lot with this.

Also, even in hilly cities there are likely still recreational cyclists. In many cases they can be accommodated with infrastructure that doesn't appreciably slow down cars, or with infrastructure that benefits both cyclists and pedestrians (stuff like better mixed use paths, or better designed intersections). If the city is so hilly that very few people will cycle for practical purposes, that's definitely a reason to keep prioritizing cars in cases where there would be tradeoffs (narrow streets with no room for bike lanes, etc).

However many many cities, like the cited NYC, are quite flat, and this isn't an issue.

This is your brain on America.

If your city has hills and slopes, you use the pedals lol.

How steep are the hills around you? Some of the quieter roads in my not-flat American city are almost 20% (short) grades. I can bike up those, barely, but I suspect the median cyclist without an e-bikes will have to get off and walk. Honestly going down those by bike scares me.

This may be news to you but there is geography outside the USA. Some of us even live outside America. It is a pain to be constantly biking up and down hills.

Rich countries should have well-functioning public transport in urban centres which is apparently missing in America.

I don't think I've been to a city where public transit didn't have a last mile problem except the very densest parts of tier 1 cities like London, Paris, etc. Busses are almost always slower than cycling on the periphery, and it's cost-prohibitive to have metro stops every mile once you're out of the very center of town. And most people don't live in the very center of town.

Just walk? You can also use a bus, which is complicated if you're bringing a bike.

Walk? How much time do you think people have to dedicate to commuting every day?

It would take twice as long for me to walk to my local train station as it does for me to drive to work. Then, it would take me as long again to walk to work from the destination train station.

Taking a bus to the train station takes longer than just biking there.

how it solves

Busses are almost always slower than cycling on the periphery

?

Also, cycling in cities is faster than buses also in city centers.

I don't entirely disagree with your general point, but metro stops don't have to be the big stations we usually associate with them. This stop in suburban Pittsburgh (and within walking distance of the home of wannabe Trump assassin Thomas Crooks) is pretty common and not too expensive to build. A lot of the country streetcar stops used to be like this before they were removed in the 1960s. The only catch is that the train has to have an additional door in the front to accommodate the lower-level of the station, and as a consequence, people who intend on getting off at those stops need to make sure they ride in the front car.

That stop is what I would call "out in the sticks" rather than merely "suburban". The caltrain corridor in the SF bay area is primarily suburban and the lack of grade separation is a nightmare.

In any case, the major cost is not plopping down a station by the side of the road, it's laying the track and running the trains on spur lines that by their nature are going to be highly underutilized (due to the lack of density).

I don't even see this as a counterexample because (if Google maps is to be believed) there's no transit for miles around these lines.

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I was hoping for a reasonable discussion from this place, but nope, once again the cyclist hate is out in full force in the comments to this very reasonable and balanced top-level post. Not one actual statistic about the actual danger from cyclists to pedestrians (vs. cars), just anecdotes about the one time a cyclist was really reckless and dangerous on the road that really pissed the poster off. As you state, cars are 8x more deadly to pedestrians (and this is not including to other motorists). And cyclists are supposed to be the arrogant, crazy, and entitled ones?

And that's also missing the fact that the real problem seems to be E-bikes, as you suggest, not analog bikes. Ebikes/mopeds/etc. are fundamentally different from analog bikes because you can easily reach much higher top speeds (whereas this usual requires being pretty experienced on an analog bike), you don't have to expend enormous amounts of energy stopping and starting (because you have an electric throttle), and your vehicle weighs much more, meaning it represents a much bigger risk to pedestrians than a 10-20 pound analog bike. Lumping analog bikers in the same category as those electric motorbikes is insane.

I understand the appeal of cars. They are fast and convenient and give you a lot of independence. But as a national form of transportation, they are incredibly wasteful of resources and space, kill tons of people, and make our cities and communities dysfunctional. And in a future on the downslope of fossil fuels, they won't be possible at the scale that they are now. I wish we would consider how to reduce our car dependency when we still have the surplus energy to do so, but I don't think these kinds of issues are on many people's radars here or in the wider world, so I doubt that this will happen.

The good (?) news is I wasn't expecting anything different. The attitude is consistent everywhere (forums, reddit, instagram, meatspace) and with almost everyone. It's honestly funny to watch people just skip past reality. Even with the most insanely generous statistical twisting, cars are a whole order of magnitude more deadly to everyone (and in reality, at least 100x). Almost no other topic would disregard reality over feelings so quickly!

At least some folks are admitting it's irrational, and others have actually been on a bike before.

And in a future on the downslope of fossil fuels, they won't be possible at the scale that they are now

As another upside, the electrification/automation of cars is going to, 20 years from now, be a boon to people who want to cycle. Less variance in driver behavior, ambiguity over laws and standards, etc. There's always going to be a risk of being hit by someone manually driving, but there's a good chance technology will get us in a better place eventually.

Just sucks that my body's going to be in way worse shape by then.

I’m not seeing the hate. There are problems with e-bikes and mopeds, and I think the infrastructure simply isn’t set up properly to make biking safe for cyclists and the cars around them. Trying to put bikes on the same roads as cars doesn’t work because of the speed and size differences and when the acceleration is added in, it’s hardly shocking that bikers end up getting the short end.

If you're a cyclist and have some sense, you just stick to side roads or streets where there's few moving cars, the speeds and risks are low.

It's very unpleasant to be on the same road as a lot of cars and I always avoid it unless it's impossible. But 90% the time there's a side street, cycling path or an empty sidewalk to use..

Most of Manhattan has no "side streets" in the long uptown/downtown direction.

As others have stated the bad behavior by ill behaving cyclists is just so so bad.

The other day I watched a guy on a bike run a red light in a LARGE busy intersection and nearly get hit by a car no less than three times while doing so.

How this person remained so unfazed (and also alive) is a mystery to me.

Brainless degenerates seem to be a minority of people behind the wheel of a car, but a common occurrence on bikes (probably driven by things like delivery drivers who do an outsized amount of cycling but are more dangerous than most).

As others have stated the bad behavior by ill behaving cyclists is just so so bad.

Is it? Or their comparative novelty make one more sensitive to bad behavior from cyclists? A great many reckless, unsafe driving practices are so pervasive that they're functionally invisible (to the point where people will often act as if you are the asshole for not doing them).

I don't have statistics on the relative frequency of brainless degeneracy amongst drivers vs cyclists, but while we're sharing anecdotes, damn near every time I get in my car I can expect to see multiple of: speeding, tailgating, unsafe lane changes, and unsafe turns. People blowing through lights isn't quite an every day occurrence, but I've nearly been run over multiple times by people deciding to make an aggressive turn on red or who seem to think the far side of the crosswalk is where you're supposed to stop.

Brainless degenerates seem to be a minority of people behind the wheel of a car,

You lost me here man. Most people driving are brainless degenerates imo. They're just insulated from their mistakes, literally, by a ton of steel.

I mean, plenty of insane bad drivers out there, but the difference between those and some of the cyclists is something else.

Again, more anecdotes, not actual statistics. I don't doubt that you have had and continue to have these terrible interactions. But the statistics show that cars have at least 8x the rate of this behavior on average. Maybe we just don't notice because it's been so normalized, but the statistics don't show that ill behaving cyclists are any worse than the worst drivers.

Any time I walk in a city I see a cyclist do something brain dead and dangerous. Every time I see a cyclist I see someone running a red light or stop sign. I do not see someone do something brain dead and dangerous every time I drive a car. I do not see someone running a red light or stop sign every time I drive a car.

I am aware of the existence of catastrophically bad drivers, I've seen videos online. I've never seen one in real life.

I've seen catastrophically bad cyclists many times.

I see catastrophically bad drivers every time I drive. Running stale yellows, not understanding how stop signs work, literally every single highway merge at 70% the speed of highway traffic, a nice no signal jersey slide right in front of me, driving recklessly quickly through residential neighborhoods

Aren't personal anecdotes fun?

Catastrophically bad and regular bad are not the same thing.

You can't compare a half assed stop at a stop sign in a car to blowing through a stop sign or red light at full speed on a bike.

Yeah the former is common for cars, but the latter is common for bikes and not cars.

What about cutting me off on a highway?

I also meant cars not taking turns at stop signs, resulting in multiple cars entering the intersection simultaneously because people refuse to wait their turn or were not paying attention to who's turn it was.

Finally, the whole point of my comment was to point out that just listing your personal anecdotes about something as if they are demonstrable facts and not pure undiluted confirmation bias is silly and anyone can do it, hence why I started doing it too.

You need an argument stronger than "sometimes I see things that make me unhappy"

The reality of the situation is that operators of two wheeled vehicles demand the rights and privileges of both cars and pedestrians while refusing to exhibit the responsibilities of either.

While aggressive drivers do exist they are significant more predictable and are much less common than insane bicyclists. Anyone who has walked through a busy city or college town and is willing to notice things can see this. The exception is probably highway speeding which is a more complicated dance but is considered socially acceptable by most. Bicycle behavior is not.

Furthermore, poor behaving automobile drivers will eventually get tickets, fines, have their license taken away and maybe even get prosecuted. This rarely happens to bicycles and is not a big problem that one of the world's great progressive powerhouses is thinking of doing something about! Which is nuts and should exhibit how extensive the problem is.

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I don't know where you live that cyclists blow through red lights on the regular, but it sounds like the laws of physics should take care of that eventually. Unless you're talking about them doing it where there's clearly no traffic, in which case what's the problem? What's the danger? Are you just mad they get to and you don't?

Are you just mad they get to and you don't?

They don't "get to." They are required to stop, just as I am (at least where I live). Some cars chose to disobey this, most to all bikes do. One of the reasons we have this as a requirement is because people can't be trusted to determine when it is safe to blow through stuff.

It's not safe and it is illegal and bikes break the law at much higher rates than cars do (with the exception of highway speeding for the obvious reasons).

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No, statistics show that cars cause deaths 8x more. That doesn't tell you anything about cyclist behavior, because cyclists are unlikely to cause deaths. My experience has been that cyclists violate road laws much more frequently and egregiously than cars; I see bicyclists run red likes roughly 10x more often than I see cars do so, and I see a LOT more cars than bicycles on any given day.

You didn't read my statistics quite correctly. That's just pedestrian deaths.

###Deaths/Year

  • Car -> Car : 40,000
  • Car -> Pedestrian: 8,000
  • Car -> Cyclist: 1,000
  • Cyclist -> Pedestrian: 10
  • Cyclist -> Car: ~ 0

After that you can do your own normalizing based on capita or miles driven. The latter is most fair to cars, but given how much further they can go and how often cars kill riders despite their rarity, I think per-capita is a much better measure.

Roughly cars are at a minimum 10x more deadly, and realistically more like 100x

I don't see how that's relevant to my point at all, which is that that death rates don't tell you much about rates of bad behavior. Obviously cars are more likely to kill someone, ke=1/2mv^2 and cars have a lot more m and a lot more v. I think cyclists commit bad behaviors much more often.

As others have stated the bad behavior by ill behaving cyclists is just so so bad.

Funny how this mainly seems to be the case in cities that are extremely poorly designed for bicycles.

Brainless degenerates seem to be a minority of people behind the wheel of a car,

I see speeding cars and wrongly parked cars all the time.

#NotAllCyclists but I will say that as a non-driver I find the worst cyclists far more aggressive than the worst of anything else, both in terms of how they move and what they say (shout). And especially doing it in places that aren’t meant to be used as highways, like public parks.

I think it’s the combination of speed and vulnerability as people have suggested. Cars who act like that get a call from the Transport Authority, and pedestrians move slowly.

To put it another way, I get why non-car Americans are impatient at car-Americans but bicycles also seem to have inherent issues that cause aggressive behaviour regardless of how else the space is being used.

Personally I’m holding out for the return of the Segway. They look ridiculous but they’re wonderful to drive.

I wonder if it's because cyclists in general hate stopping. Decelerating and accelerating again on a bike is really annoying, and being forced to do repeatedly might be the source of the annoyance. Not that makes this acceptable behavior in a pedestrian space.

As a cyclist I think most of these interactions could be avoided if the roads were made safer for none cars. I'm not going to zoom through a public park if I can use a nearby road without feeling like I'm going to die.

And cars would get much better milage if they just never stopped, too (most of the fuel spent driving is spent accelerating in the city). If you hate stopping then take your bike to a velodrome where you have every right to never stop. In the city, you need to stop and start just like everyone else.

Re: acceleration I’d heard the theory but wondered if the rise of e-bikes had made acceleration less of a faff.

I'm not going to zoom through a public park if I can use a nearby road without feeling like I'm going to die.

The park in a question has exits on Road A and Road B. There’s a road that connects the two but it’s further down and has traffic lights, so the park path has become a highway for delivery people on bikes who act like the pizza drivers in Snow Crash. It’s not a safety issue per se.

acceleration I’d heard the theory but wondered if the rise of e-bikes had made acceleration less of a faff.

There’s a very simple trick to making acceleration less of a faff that was ubiquituous back in the 90s where I live: Drive slower.

It only takes a few pushes of the pedals to get back to speed that’s still much faster than walking.

Yes, of course. I’m a granny-bike person not a road warrior; I like having a basket and being able to get off easily just by swinging my legs, so I eschew high speeds by default.

But also: there is an obvious problem with some bicyclists thinking that stop signs, red lights and all other forms of traffic control don't apply to them. I'm glad to hear their terrible behavior is not killing many pedestrians. Which makes sense since I would not expect getting hit with a bike to be commonly lethal. This is unrelated to concern about food delivery scooter people.

This morning I saw a bicyclist veer into the street even though there was a dedicated empty bike lane and an empty sidewalk. He was in one of those bicyclists suits. He was going really fast, but not as fast as cars approaching him from behind. No idea what was going throughout this guy's brain. One of the many bicyclists who seem to think their bike has an integrated forcefield generator. See that kind of baffling behavior with some regularity. I rode my bike to school from 3rd grade to college. I never did stuff like that.

This morning I saw a bicyclist veer into the street even though there was a dedicated empty bike lane and an empty sidewalk

You know most places it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk right? And taking a lane is perfectly legal behavior, often done if the bike lane is not safe (you may not be able to see why from your vantage point in a car).

Just pass him safely at the next opportunity. It's his road too.

You know most places it's illegal to ride on the sidewalk right?

In my city it's legal almost everywhere except the central business district (conveniently the densest pedestrian area). There are specific places devoted in the law and I've seen signs marking them.

I mean *most, local laws do vary.

Even if it isn't illegal, it's usually also not illegal to not ride on the road, despite there being a sidewalk.

Somewhat more commonly laws mandate cycle path use, which in this case apparently there was. Though it could have been obstructed, or otherwise unsafe at his speed (certain paths are designed poorly enough that they're actually worse than no path).

I grant that in some areas, yes the cyclist could have been breaking the law. Still a minor infraction, not particularly dangerous (and what danger would be mostly on the cyclist), the biggest thing being a rather small annoyance to the drivers who had to wait to pass.

I've been told my whole life that riding on the sidewalk is illegal. But when a cop visited my school and a parent prompted him to tell us that, he said he's not aware of any such rule. Years later a cop yelled at me to get on the sidewalk when the bike lane was obstructed by cars. Let's say it is very hypothetically illegal.

If I was in that guy's situation I would ride in the bike lane or get on the sidewalk. Anything other than getting into the lane and hoping the driver behind you gets on the brakes on time. That's of course their legal obligation. I wouldn't bet my spine on it.

It's criminal (as in you could be sent to Rikers Island for it) to ride on the sidewalk in NYC, and (surprising many) both legal and occasionally required (e.g. to get onto the George Washington Bridge bike lane) right across the river. In some places it's legal for children but not for adults. It varies a lot by jurisdiction.

Googling a bit for the West Coast: I see California lacks a bikes on sidewalk law. So it is left up to local governments to regulate. Given how much I see kids on electric bikes on sidewalks: at least in practice they don't much bother regulating them.

While I may have been over confident about the illegality of the sidewalk rule in your area (definitely illegal most places I've lived/cycled, but not always the case) I think my point that at worst that kind of traffic infraction is as bad as going 20km/hr over.

He obviously has a higher risk tolerance than you, that doesn't mean it's a crazy unhinged decision to ride on the road.

I rode my bike to school from 3rd grade to college. I never did stuff like that.

Yes, because you're high conscientiousness and that's all you had. That's why the average kid on a bike tends to be safer than the average adult- the former know what they have to lose, tend to be more aware of the fact they're harder to see (and are more aware of that fact than accompanying adults are, too) and that population simply has a lower proportion of retards in it due to being more representative of the general population (actually, probably slightly better than average, since the parent has to be well off enough to buy their kid a bike in the first place).

Adults on bikes, on the other hand, are there because they either can't afford a car or it's been taken away from them (DUI, etc.). Those things tend to predict bad judgment, so the average adult is more likely to doing things like riding through red lights the wrong way. The raw cost of a car (and the cost of repairing damages thereto), the fact you have an indelible identifying mark mounted to it, and the fact that the infrastructure itself works against stupidity in a way it does not for bikes tends to keep adults in cars acting in ways that aren't so blatantly suicidal.

It's sad that this appears to be common behavior. As I've seen all of which you've mentioned, multiple times, and every time I'm astounded by it.

People try to claim that this experience was just 'one time'. If only.

I would take this argument more seriously if there weren't a similar set of traffic laws that most drivers assume don't apply to them. A friend of mine, who is a retired engineer from PennDOT, said of speed limits that "they aren't suggestions; they're requirements". I've since decided I wouldn't exceed the posted limit if I could help it, though I admittedly often can't. This often results in such behavior as tailgating, honking, flashing brights, and passing in a restricted area, all because I have the tenacity to comply with the law. How many vehicles actually come to a full stop at an intersection when they don't expect to be waiting a while? How many people run red lights because they automatically gun the accelerator every time they see a yellow light, even if they can easily stop in time?

I hear a lot of excuses for this behavior, from the practical ("9 you're fine") to the absurd ("speeding is actually safer because a vehicle that isn't keeping up with traffic causes more accidents when people try to pass'). But people keep doing this shit and then complain about a cyclist who doesn't stop and dismount at a lonely intersection. I don't ride in the city regularly, and when I do I'm not going to blow through a red light or switch from the road to the sidewalk depending on what's more convenient. But I'm also going to coast through intersections with stop signs if I'm going slowly enough to see that there isn't any traffic coming and I can easily stop if need be. There's a general social compact that we're willing to tolerate certain rule-bending when it comes to traffic laws, and if you're going to insist on strict enforcement for me then I expect the same of you.

I don’t expect bicyclists to dismount at lonely intersections. And I think rolling stops should be legalized in the absence of cross traffic. Maybe we can't legalize it because people can't be trusted to follow a conditional rule of only rolling through if there is no cross traffic. I wish we could. I'd say legalize it anyway see if accident rates increase.

When I say some bicyclists enjoy blowing through stop signs, I mean in the presence of other traffic. They could do whatever they wanted on lonely roads or empty intersections and I'd never care. Instead they defy traffic controls in ways that make drivers have to move out of their way or hit their brakes. That's my problem. People should drive and ride predictably. That means stopping if there is cross traffic with the right of way. That means not suddenly unexpectedly swerving into the street with much faster cars driving in that lane; like I saw this morning.

the absurd ("speeding is actually safer because a vehicle that isn't keeping up with traffic causes more accidents when people try to pass')

That's just true. If everyone is going 70mph except one person going 55mph, then the 55mph driver is being wildly dangerous by causing people to constantly pass him at 15mph speed difference. Speed differences are dangerous. Driving 60mph in a 60mph zone while everyone else is going 40mph would also be dangerous and I don't recommend it. Speed match the road for safety. Or at least get out of the leftmost lane if you insist on driving slower than everyone else.

And I think rolling stops should be legalized in the absence of cross traffic.

They are in some jurisdictions. The "Idaho stop" rule allows cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs.

to the absurd ("speeding is actually safer because a vehicle that isn't keeping up with traffic causes more accidents when people try to pass').

I have always assumed this is true. The famous graph of it is called the Solomon curve, showing that the lowest rate of accidents occurs slightly over the mean speed of traffic. It's from 1960, so take it with a larger grain of salt than most studies even, but I don't see why it's an "absurd" claim that this is true.

Doing some further research, what I'm seeing is that the rate of accidents is, as per Solomon, lowest at the speed of traffic. But, that the fatality risk and injury severity if you are in an accident increase with speed. This makes it a non-obvious EV-maximization problem to answer what speed to drive at.

It is absolutely plausible that accident rate varies with # of cars passing you (or that you pass). My mental model is that the safe thing is to go the same speed as the cars in your lane. In principle if that were faster than road conditions allow (rainy, curvy, but somehow left lane is still doing 85), it's an unsafe lane - but probably still safer to travel at the speed of those around you.

I'm open to the idea that going at the +10 found in slower lanes is safer than going at the +20 found in the faster lanes. But, I think "going the speed limit is safer, in any lane" is an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.

I'm curious, Mottizens: what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?

Well, if I'm in a hurry then 70, but if not then I'll happily sit in the left lane with the lorries, which are limited to 60. Definitely never knowingly faster than the posted limit, since I don't want a ticket and speed cameras are ubiquitous on the motorways here.

I'm curious, Mottizens: what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?

Minimal traffic, with lane discipline (and no legal speed limit)? 100-115mph. I had to do a big stretch of interstate on a Sunday morning in 2021 and that speed range isn't crazy, conditions allowing. But kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity, so I wouldn't want to regularly drive that much faster than the car was designed to be crashed at.

In realistic conditions? Flow of traffic, up to 85mph. Partly because 90mph irrationally feels wrong, even though 85mph doesn't; partly because the handful of times I've seen the flow of traffic be 90mph, the drivers going that fast were bad (perhaps these things are related?).

Partly because 90mph irrationally feels wrong, even though 85mph doesn't

89 vs. 90mph: The casual speeding enjoyer’s 5’11” vs. 6’0”.

Straw-Poll: Does anyone here ever set cruise-control to a non-multiple of 5?

Yes, almost every time I use it.

75-80. I want to be a bit slower than the faster traffic, so that they will draw the attention of speed enforcement. Also, much beyond that and the engine is noisier, and I'm consciously aware of the fact that thanks to the square power law I'm wasting a lot of fuel on creating wind without saving much time.

I lived in Montana when the speed limits were reasonable and prudent during daylight hours. Most people did about 85 in those conditions.

70-80. The cars I've driven weren't made to consistently go faster than ~65 meaning the engine has to run at higher than normal revs and they get increasingly noisy and uncomfortable at higher speeds for relatively little time saved.

I'm curious, Mottizens: what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?

I don't know what an interstate is, and 70 mph only makes sense to me after conversion to 112 km/h. So let's just call it 120 km/h, which is a common Autobahn speed limit.

If this is the legal speed limit, then let's be real, I'm a civilized contrarian who obviously spends every second at the wheel trying to bend the rules without needing to pay a fine, so I drive 130 km/h (around 80 mph).

If it's only a suggestion and there's no fine for speeding, only an elevated risk of fiery death, then I'll go faster under ideal conditions. I'm comfortable driving around 150 km/h (93 mph), but might briefly go faster only to see what my (very boring) car is capable of.

For reference, the fastest I've ever driven was around 200 km/h (124 mph) downhill, once.

I'm curious, Mottizens: what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?

70 mph.

Probably 90-95 mph. I don't have a great car though.

With my current pickup with its all-terrain tires? About 70 mph.

I'm curious, Mottizens: what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?

Assuming that I'm confident that there are no cops, and I'm driving a good sports car, and I'm in the mood? I'd probably touch 130mph, carry 95-100mph.

Summer of Covid, when I was driving back and forth on an empty PA turnpike in a drop top twin turbo A4 quattro, I would consistently take it up to a daily triple, and just zip through the handful of cars on the road like they were standing still. When you're going 120 and they're going 80, it's like dodging obstacles at 40, it's fun.

On the other hand, if I'm in a more quotidian car and I'm just trying to get somewhere, probably in the 80-85mph range? That's normally a pretty comfortable speed, and I'm not too worried about getting pulled over, and really you have to hold 100 for an hour or more to see much benefit on travel time on the highway, and at that point it's kinda stressful.

I find cyclists annoying, but the behavior you describe ctually makes me angry. You either have no idea of the panic response this can generate in slower drivers or you don't care. In either case, it's reckless and obnoxious.

I mean obviously I've been passed on the highway by someone else going 120 when I was going the speed limit so I know how it feels... Panic response? Lol. Lmao.

I think they're imagining it as if they were standing still, and you zip past at 120. People aren't good at imagining speeds compared to anything other than stopped.

Charitably I think I should have precisely specified traffic conditions. There are indeed times when it is inappropriate and antisocial to drive 120mph, I happen to think I choose appropriate ones. My interlocutors are picturing others.

Less charitably, I don't think they're used to driving like that and imagine it as more hazardous and less fun than it is.

Uncharitably, I think being this angry at people for speeding is a deeply effeminate behavior.

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When you're going 120 and they're going 80, it's like dodging obstacles at 40, it's fun.

are you aware that you are causing more danger than all cyclists being complained about in this thread taken together?

  1. when did I complain about cyclists?

  2. minimal traffic was specified, so we're looking at fairly minor danger, swerving around three other cars.

minimal traffic was specified, so we're looking at fairly minor danger, swerving around three other cars.

If you were swerving around other cars, I think your idea of "minimal traffic" is different than others'. Minimal traffic, to me, would be too few cars to accidentally get in each others' way.

by "cyclists being complained about in this thread taken together" I meant entire comment tree, not only specifically comments you authored

But that metric is meaningless. I didn't complain about bicycles because I respect bicycles on the road, I'm in more rural areas normally but when I see a bicycle I take care to slow down well behind him and wait for a LARGE open space in traffic to pass him in the opposing lane. Sometimes if I'm going to be behind him a while I put my flashers on to make sure people behind me know I'm going slower for a reason. I don't think bicycles are significantly inconvenient or dangerous.

Nor do I think responsible speeding at an appropriate time in an appropriate vehicle is significantly dangerous.

It's like @SecureSignals telling me "You went to law school? You're worse than all the Jews in this thread!"

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Weaving at 130MPH on the interstate when there's cars on the road is antisocial behavior and I sincerely hope you age out of this before you kill someone.

Right! Why do people rage at cyclists and just casually drop stuff like this and hardly anyone bats an eye.

(I also think speed limits should be higher, but there are safe ways to do that - see Germany)

If you're driving merely to get from point A to point B, taking less time is a win. If you're driving for pleasure, faster is more pleasurable. (And the same goes for cycling)

I'm curious, Mottizens: what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?

No cops? Somewhere around 120mph probably. Maybe more, I've never had my current car to the top speed.

Depends on the car’s stability and handling characteristics. 100 mph does not feel that fast in something like a BMW or a Lexus, generally I’d be worried more about getting pulled over than road safety in the conditions you describe

what speed would you drive at in perfect conditions (straight, flat, sunny, minimal traffic), in a 70 mph interstate?

75 mi/h (120 km/h)

Given the other answers, I just want you to know that you're not alone.

A friend of mine, who is a retired engineer from PennDOT, said of speed limits that "they aren't suggestions; they're requirements".

As a civil engineer: LOL.

  • If a road has a posted speed of X mi/h (Y km/h), its actual design speed on which the civil engineers base all their designs is (X + 5) mi/h ((Y + 10) km/h).

  • When a civil engineer designs a curve, he can't make the curve too tight, because the "side friction factor" between the pavement and a car's tires will be too small to provide the required centripetal force, resulting in skidding and loss of control. But the side friction factor that's used in design is based on poor weather conditions—ice, rain, et cetera. I don't have the AASHTO Policy on Design in front of me at the moment for the exact numbers, but friction obviously is a lot higher on a dry road than on a wet road, and therefore you can go a lot faster quite safely.

  • A hill, or a roadside forest on a curve, may block your view of an upcoming intersection or crosswalk. You probably learned in your high-school driving class that your "stopping sight distance" increases with the square of speed, so you do want to slow down at these locations. But these claustrophobia-inducing segments don't really have anything to do with your speed on segments of the road that have good visibility.

  • Obviously, at high speeds it's harder to keep your car going where you want it to go. I personally don't feel comfortable driving faster than 75 mi/h (120 km/h), or 80 mi/h (130 km/h) if I'm in the left lane of a three-lane freeway and there's somebody right behind me. But I don't bear much ill will toward people who flash past me at 90 mi/h (145 km/h) in the left lane when I'm in the middle lane (of three).

And if you can tell me where exactly in the Pennsylvania Vehicle Code it says that the posted limits are only suggestions and motorists are free to drive whatever speed they want provided it lies within the engineering design speed then I'd say you have a point. But you seem to have missed mine. I'm not arguing that we should ticket everyone who takes five or ten miles per hour, just that those people can't turn around and complain when a cyclist does something that's technically illegal but otherwise makes sense and isn't particularly unsafe.

I mean it's worth considering that there are times and places where going the speed limit is just unsafe. In much of the NE (so Philly more than Pittsburgh) you see highway speeds that are set at 50 or 55 but are "safe" at 70+. This means the average person (traffic permitting) is going 65-75. If you try and go the speed limit you are at high risk of causing an accident by causing too much delta.

Most people will choose safety and convenience (especially when they go together) over abstractly following the law.

I'm arguing not that we should ticket everyone who takes five or ten miles per hour, but just that those people can't turn around and complain when a cyclist does something that's technically illegal but otherwise makes sense and isn't particularly unsafe.

I think the commenters in this thread generally are complaining about cyclist behavior that doesn't make sense and is particularly unsafe. Most pertinently, the comment to which you replied stated:

There is an obvious problem with some bicyclists thinking that stop signs, red lights, and all other forms of traffic control don't apply to them [presumably even when the street is carrying non-negligible motorized traffic].

This morning I [presumably a motorist on a street with non-negligible motorized traffic] saw a bicyclist veer into the street even though there was a dedicated empty bike lane and an empty sidewalk.

(I personally do 95 percent of my driving on the freeway, so I almost never encounter bicyclists, and I don't have an opinion on whether the other commenters' observations are valid.)

For the red lights and stop signs the argument is that these are not unsafe behaviors for the most part, on par with going 20km/hr over. It's explicitly legal in some jurisdictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

And a cyclist taking the lane isn't even illegal! (In most places) He probably did that because it was safer at the time.

And a cyclist taking the lane isn't even illegal! (In most places)

In most cases, the law requires the cyclist ride as far to the right as practicable. I realize that there's a twisted cyclist-advocate logic that claims this allows taking the lane in pretty much any circumstance (e.g. if the cyclist feels it would be unsafe to pass them), but I don't buy it. I ride somewhat to the left of any debris and only take the lane in rare circumstance. Most often when traffic has slowed to the point that I'm keeping up, to avoid a car riding alongside. And I move back over when traffic speeds up again.

I think my caveat of "most places" was probably not strong enough. I'm many places you're correct, especially in bike-unfriendly areas.

But where I am at least the combination of "where practicable", minimum 1m passing distance, and lane widths means that it's virtually always legal to take the lane, as it's too narrow for a car to safely pass within it.

Drivers... Hate this, and tend to show little respect to cyclists asserting their right to the space, completely legally in the right.

I also try to avoid routes that require it, but unashamedly do so on sections where when the risk of a car clipping me in a narrow lane is too great.

More comments

As I understand it, AASHTO rules set design speeds based on worn-out 1950s bias ply tires in the rain, and assumes your sight distance is limited by pretty much the lowest driver position in the lowest sedan ever made (which means design speeds have been going DOWN as cars have been getting more capable). It's crazy conservative, which is why I once saw a curve speed I used to joke was appropriate for a dump truck in a blizzard greatly exceeded without any drama by a literal dump truck in a blizzard.

To be fair, a large part of stopping sight distance is the built-in full second of driver reaction time, which is independent of car technology.

Not anymore, emergency auto braking is becoming pretty common.

Yeah, if that was at all real the roads I've traveled on doing 65mph or more with sub-second following distances would have been demolition derbies instead of merely ridiculously stressful. (As you would expect, traffic goes from that unstable state to zero with not much warning). Designing based on my father's Oldsmobile with his late father driving doesn't result in reasonable speeds.

Well, as long as you can see multiple cars ahead it's a little safer.

The New York Police Department (NYPD) has started issuing criminal summonses for bike riders committing a slew of seemingly low-level fouls. Now, if caught running red lights, stopping in the pedestrian crossing or wearing headphones, wayward cyclists must appear before a judge, even if they are not contesting the fine. If they do not, they risk arrest.

I think this is counterproductive, because the operative phrase here is "if caught". Cyclists are terrible because their antisocial behavior doesn't quite rise up to the level of justifying sticking a rod between their spokes or arrest them, and they don't have license plates (that I know of), so it's hard to retroactively punish minor infractions. That's why they keep on annoying everyone around them.

One good thing about the potential future absolute surveillance state is that punishment for such behavior would (hopefully) be much more frequent and fine tuned.

It's NYC. The drivers are committing minor infractions all the time also. So are the pedestrians for that matter, though they're more limited by self-interest. Most of the bicyclists are no worse than most of the drivers, but there's probably a wider tail of the worst bicyclists -- you don't see cars using the sidewalk to get around traffic much.

I’m not sure all of the behavior is antisocial on purpose. Cyclists are in a difficult position— too fast to be considered pedestrian, but also much too slow to really safely ride with cars and certainly don’t have the same kind of rider protection that cars offer. Some of the bad behavior might well be because following the rules is sometimes worse than not.

I don't believe any of it is antisocial on purpose: stopping and starting again is a drag, particularly if you're in a high gear, so you (general you, not you in particular) just don't stop at the red light, the street you have to get to goes the other way, so instead of going all the way round you just hop onto the sidewalk, the pedestrian crossing has the best vantage point to see incoming cars (in order to cross a red light), so that's were you choose to stop. The call of the siren is strong, and I won't claim I'm a perfect citizen when I'm on the bike, but it's still kind of bullshit how "we" as a group behave, and I believe a big part of the reason is that there are basically no consequences to it.

There's a difference between aggressiveness and suicidality.

In my small college town, cyclists regularly jump off the sidewalk and cross two lanes of traffic with no indication that they are going to do so. They regularly run red lights, either by suddenly deciding that they're pedestrians and swerving into the crosswalk, or by ignoring the light all together. They regularly drive on the center line of a two lane one-way street, but lack the control to stay there, and end up clipping motorists' mirrors. This is all despite the area having extensive bike lanes that are usually more convenient and direct than the local roadways.

That's not even getting started on the narcissistic fuck-show that calls itself "critical mass".

I frequently debate whether they're really that stupid or it's just an insurance scam.

The difficult position goes beyond basic safety concerns. No one wants them on the road, but no one wants them off the road, either. When Peduto was mayor of Pittsburgh, he went on junkets to Europe to look at their bicycle infrastructure and spent a lot of money and political capital trying to build it out at home. This earned him the derisive nickname "Bike Lane Bill", followed by endless bitching about how the lanes and trail improvements were a waste of money and took away valuable street parking and travel lanes. Some of the more astute opponents make the argument that roads are paid for with fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, and that bicycles should have to be registered if they want to use the road. I usually respond by pointing out that 1. None of the cyclists you're complaining about are going to put their bikes away due to an annual fee that costs less than a tank of gas, and 2. If I'm paying for the whole road, I'm using the whole road.

The second one is a bit of a joke, but it underscores the fact that the whole argument is bogus. People complaining about cyclists aren't really concerned because they're causing wear and tear on the roads or are freeloading. If all the bicycles that regularly use urban roads paid $50/year for the privilege, these people wouldn't suddenly stop bitching.

the argument that roads are paid for with fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees

This probably won't be a popular sentiment here, but I believe that we ought to move more in the direction of funding roads out of general revenue.

I agree, since electric cars don't pay fuel taxes and they're becoming more common.

Right. I like to ride my bike for fun and exercise, so I have sympathy here, but the reality is that due to entirely-understandable factors having cyclists on the road generates a huge amount of unpredictability, which is one of the worst experiences as a driver and which raises the general level of danger.

People operating motor vehicles need to know what to expect! And with cyclists, one never does. Never mind that because of their combination of maneuverability and vulnerability one must always keep an eye on them, which means that one isn't free to watch the rest of the road nearly as well as one should.

We put up with this as a society because tradeoffs but let's not pretend that cyclists on the road aren't hazardous by nature. To themselves and everyone around them.

I mean nice separated bike lanes really help predictability! This should be something that drivers and cyclists should support as a win win (at least in sports where there is adequate space, which is often not quite the case).

One good thing about the potential future absolute surveillance state is that punishment for such behavior would (hopefully) be much more frequent and fine tuned.

Unless it's disproportionately non-whites doing it, in which case that's a non-starter.

My gut feel is that the one reason (akong many) the democrats lost in 2024 was that the main beneficiaries of their better policies were or would have ended up being white men, so it was forbidden to highlight those successes without finding a way to portray them as actually having benefitted BIPOC. Apply the same rule to the converse and you get the absolute paralysis of law enforcement and civic responsibility.

is that punishment for such behavior would (hopefully) be much more frequent and fine tuned.

Well, it will be if you do it.

To recap how insane this is:

The problem is 100% illegal immigrants on E-bikes and mopeds No solution to control this will be put forward out of sympathy for the illegal immigrants Punishment must be metered out, though, since it’s one of the biggest problems facing the city Therefore, the solution is to punish analog cyclists with social security numbers!

That's quite the assumption to just throw in there, just saying. You have presented zero proof that illegal immigrants make up a large number of hazardous DoorDashers on ebikes.

Honestly it sounds like the problem is that from a regulatory standpoint, ebikes and motorized two-wheeled vehicles are being lumped in with bicycles rather than being regulated as a separate thing.

  • While it'd be nice to have a scholarly article about who's delivering food, there's negative incentive for universities to do this sort of research, and I'm sorry: pretending like this isn't true is just too stupid to entertain. Step outside in any major western metro, look around, and then come back to the keyboard. I will concede that "100%" is high :) (EDIT: The fact that the authorities in NYC are specifically worried about hurting immigrants and therefore not acting to improve the situation with dangerous cyclists is another reason I can't take this seriously)
  • You're absolutely right on this point. Another point of regulatory skirting in NYC: Amazon has four wheeled delivery machines with vestigial pedals on them and huge batteries and motors. These seemed to be helmed by slightly more "professional" drivers but are obviously dangerous vehicles hanging out in lanes designed for human-powered transport. The problem is that all of these exist on a gradient, and nobody wants to make the first move of creating an onerous regulatory regime on what was, just a couple of years ago, a simple machine that some nerds started riding as a hobby.

I don't think @gafpromise was necessarily disputing the "immigrant" part, so much as the "illegal". You can certainly look around any major city and see that most DoorDashers are non-white and probably immigrants or descendants of recent immigrants. Bit harder to judge whether their papers are in order on sight. While the number may plausibly be high, I would be fairly surprised if >50% of immigrant DoorDashers were illegals, let alone 100%.

DD says they require SSNs and IDs. Account Sharing seems rampant - their own algorithms flag more than 100,000 accounts right now to have to "reverify identity* every shift, and they're incentivized to maladjust the algorithm in their favor.

You'll almost certainly never get the real data. Instead, I'd use someone's inability to understand English as a sufficient proxy for what I'm suggesting. It's a severe enough problem on Uber (for people driving cars under a regulatory regime) that I just can't reasonably play along with the theory that the problem is reduced or eliminated when it comes to bicycles. I'm going to believe my lying eyes and ears.

From Newsweek

Normally traditional hot "zones" of money-making became overly saturated with drivers out of nowhere, he added. He said he often chats in Spanish with foreign drivers, many of which tell him they are from Venezuela.

"[Us drivers] run into each other all day long at these various businesses and restaurants and so forth," he said. "We chat it up. I chat with the migrants, too. I'm a grandson of an immigrant. I'm sympathetic for them but I'm a rules guy first."

Preston said he personally met countless "unqualified" individuals—estimating that the senators' concerns about hundreds of unverified or illegal drivers could be understated on a national scale.

He alleged "fraudulent" accounts are commonly sold or shared via the dark web or openly in Facebook groups. In August, Preston said he hadn't been re-identified by the app in over two years.

Cycling through Manhattan will absolutely drive you nuts, even on an "analog" bike. I used to do it. Suppose you want to go downtown from Midtown on the West Side. You can take 9th avenue, which has a bike lane. It will be filled with garbage trucks, debris, police cars, groups of pedestrians, and various other obstacles, which you'll have to get around. Or you can take 7th, no bike lane, and mix it up with the cars, which is an absolutely insane experience -- and I speak as someone who regularly bikes in traffic on the NJ side. God help you if you somehow end up on Park.

There is not really any way to distinguish in the statistics between "illegal immigrant delivery drivers on E-bikes" from "ordinary people on e-bikes". The delivery drivers on e-bikes have been around for many years -- far longer than they've been legal -- so if the problem is new it isn't at all clear they're a particular problem. The mopeds are distinguishable (they're now tallied under "other motorized" rather than "bicycle"), but it turns out that while they're thoroughly hated, they cause fewer deaths than e-bikes -- at least in 2023, they caused no pedestrian deaths. Probably because there's a lot more e-bikes. It is definitely not true that only the delivery drivers ride them. You can rent them from CitiBike, and plenty of non-delivery drivers ride them.

It is definitely not true that only the delivery drivers ride them. You can rent them from CitiBike, and plenty of non-delivery drivers ride them.

Yes, I could have been more clear. Both types exist. My (obviously extremely limited) experience was that every time someone blew through a crosswalk it was a delivery driver, not a civilian on a rented bike. In terms of volume they were ~equal.

I was a long term road cyclist in NYC from 2000 to 2017. I also kept a car in Manhattan the entire time, so I have the experience of all the major interest groups being discussed. I lived through the progression from bike messengers weaving in traffic to the design and implementation of stupid and dangerous bike lanes to this e-bike situation.

Nowadays I have a hard time defending “cyclists” without lots of “no true Scotsman” style gatekeeping and I have kind of given up on making the cyclist case. I am a road rider, I know how to ride with cars and around people, but my breed are the minority.

The difference I think is the e-bikes. People riding e-bikes are not cyclists. They haven’t learned the skills that usually go along with being able to maintain those 20+ MPH speeds. They’re dangerous electric mopeds. Now when I visit, it’s terrifying.

the design and implementation of stupid and dangerous bike lanes

Why are NY bike lanes dangerous?

Good question. Frame of reference: I did the Lycra thing on weekends and early morning training, but I also commuted about 18mi each day in street clothes. Rode daily, weather permitting.

(adjusts jaunty cycling chapeau and assumes casually deliberate pose)

Before bike lanes, bikes rode with cars, between them, filtering up to the light at each stop. At lights, you’d safely be out in front of the cars, visible to all, front wheel just behind the crosswalk. Head start at the light so you’re seen, cars catch up, repeat. It was a thrill and required some guts but that kept tourists and entryists at bay. I can’t say whether fewer cyclists got hit by cars back then, but in any case all this stayed in the traveled lanes of the streets where wheeled vehicles belong.

(Aside: Food Delivery bikes were old mtn bikes back then and they just rode on the sidewalk (illegal but selectively enforced)).

Gradually the city added more and more bike infrastructure along with the (anti-car) street redesign / project zero in the 00s and teens. Cars got squeezed, and these new bike paths provided lots of space that might have been intended for bikes, but in reality just became multi-use space. Or more accurately no man’s land.

Litany of issues with trying to use a NYC bike lane: it’s the Wild West now. They’re laid out such that you have to cross 3-4-5 lanes of vehicles at opposite-way intersections; many but not all are between the sidewalk and the row of parked cars; all cyclist rightly fear getting “doored” by a parked vehicle; bike path use is not preserved for cyclists so inevitably there is a black SUV, a police car, a vending cart, an UBER, a yellow cab or three, and/or a hundred pedestrians using it as an extension of the sidewalk, driving you into the street unexpectedly; the aforementioned e-bikes are everywhere as are oblivious tourists on citibikes.

The worst part was that once these lanes showed up, expectations changed. It felt like a theft of the commons or eternal September or something like that. Bikes, formerly road users like cars, were in a weird place where the core users were squeezed out by all the above, but were no longer welcome or expected on the roads.

I would inevitably just take my chances in the streets. And if you’re quick enough you don’t really piss off the cars much.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bzE-IMaegzQ

I knew what video this was before I clicked on it. It's a classic.

I knew what video this was before I clicked on it. It's a classic.

Yep, and aside from the actual crashes, quite representative.

Having done a lot of cycling over the years, including as a commute for many years in undisclosed European country, 1 in 5 cyclists are normal human beings, and the other 4 are CYCLISTS.

I have a theory that I derive from a great philosopher of our era, that in a contest between a weak and a strong horse, observers will naturally back the strong horse. However, caveat, in WEIRD society, there is also some sympathy for the weak horse, sometimes misplaced, but definitely there.

The horse that is really out of luck is the middle horse, and cyclists are the middle horse.

Motor vehicles are strong, confident, fast, going wherever they please with an inherent “Be wary of my power” statement accompanying them every where they go.

Pedestrians are frail and slow, but humanly so, and they have an inherent “Be cautious of my frailties, I am easily hurt” statement accompanying them wherever they go.

Cyclists are inhumanly fast, but also vehicularly slow. They can cause serious injury and possible death to a pedestrian, but are also prone to serious injury and death from vehicles. They are neither strong nor weak, but in the mushy middle.

This isn’t an insurmountable problem, until you run into the 4 out of 5 CYCLISTS who really, really want the rules written in such a way that they can push around and get mad at pedestrians in a way that even the strong horse motor vehicle users usually don’t want to treat pedestrians. While at the same time wanting to be treated as a weak horse that gets to both ride with the strong horses and be babied and given extra privileges like designated lanes, lane filtering, and bike boxes.

1 in 5 cyclists are normal human beings, and the other 4 are CYCLISTS.

And those 4 CYCLISTS are basically Groundkeeper Willie from the meme. "You cyclists sure are a contentious people." "You just made an enemy for life!"

So I walk, cycle, and drive about equally whenever I’m going someplace, and I’d agree with you entirely.

As a driver, I get most annoyed with cyclists, then buses, then other cars, then pedestrians, in that order. Cyclists tend to weave in and out of traffic and go slowly enough to make it unsafe to be anywhere near them.

As a pedestrian, I get most annoyed by cyclists, then other pedestrians, then any vehicles. Cyclists jump up onto the sidewalk and speed by at what feels like breakneck speeds without giving me any space, and I’ve been struck by cyclists who don’t understand things like crosswalks numerous times.

As a cyclist, I am most annoyed by other cyclists, followed by vehicles, followed by pedestrians. Other cyclists will either be biking incredibly slowly (which is challenging to safely pass in a bike lane) or instead speed by me unsafely in said bike lane (I’ve actually been shoved over by a cyclist who forced me into the curb). I do recognize the irony in my complaints, to be fair.

When driving, I'm more frustrated by pedestrians than cyclists. Pedestrians cheat busy downtown intersections constantly, and this exacerbates congestion. The streets in my city are designed for timed flow patterns, and would work wonderfully if everyone would just respect the "stop crossing" signal. Pedestrians know they can get away with it (count on it, even) because it's the driver's responsibility not to hit them. Fine, I'd rather people not die, but this is pretty selfish. They also pay very little attention. The number of times I've been turning right into an alley with a pedestrian not looking up from their phone is too damn high. "I could have KILLED you! - you could have DIED! Don't you want to know about that? at least see it coming? At least shoulder-check!"

When cycling, again, pedestrians most of the time because despite having the clearest field of view and moving the slowest, they're paying the least attention. They are liable to step into my path without looking, then jump back like they've seen a bear and scowl like it's my fault.

When walking, cyclists and drivers in equal measure. It's not that they're doing anything wrong - it's that I don't want to have to be paying attention to them. I just want to have a chill walk and think about something other than road safety.

The number of times I've been turning right into an alley with a pedestrian not looking up from their phone is too damn high. "I could have KILLED you! - you could have DIED! Don't you want to know about that? at least see it coming? At least shoulder-check!"

Aren't you supposed to yield to pedestrians when turning into an alley?

Yes, absolutely, and I do, but a lot of drivers aren't paying as much attention.

It's a little counter-intuitive how cars are far more likely to kill us, but we get more angry at cyclists.

I think it is because most cars are relatively well-behaved and they respect my right-of-way at crosswalks and don't try to buzz me. It's just the 0.1% that is going to blow a stop sign or not yield that might kill me.

While with bikers it is a far greater number that don't respect the rules and will buzz dangerously close to myself and my kids on the sidewalk. They probably won't kill me, but they give me a sense of rule-breaking and fear.

Bikes are less predictable. They can weave, turn, and change speeds much more suddenly than a car. When I'm walking and I hear a car coming behind me, I glance back once to see its trajectory and adjust my path accordingly. When I hear a bike coming quickly towards me, I usually glance back several times to track it since I can't fully tell where the cyclists plans to go.

Or to put it another way, if someone drove a car like many Cyclists ride bikes, they’d get the cops called on them within moments and lose their license.

It's a little counter-intuitive how cars are far more likely to kill us, but we get more angry at cyclists.

Why is it counterintuitive? A car weights 175x the weight of a bicycle, of course it's more deadly.

That's not the counter intuitive part.

Yes, that's what is counterintuitive: of course a car is deadlier, but we get more angry at cyclists anyway.

What do you mean by "analog cyclists"?

Pennyfarthing.

Great visibility, terrible crumple zones.

Grandpa's bike.

Also known as "acoustic cyclists."

non-e bike

Muscle-powered/non-motorized, presumably.

People who bicycle because they’re young/poor are largely fine. The bad cyclists are the ones who are committed to cycling as a lifestyle- either for fitness or for environmental reasons. Like, rules apply to you.

I was a little prepared for a general cycling debate. I agree that rules apply... but do consider the different ways that "we" are pulled.

  • When in a group ride on the road, two wide, drivers complain that we aren't single file. The group is small enough to pass when 2x, but too long to do so when 1x.
  • We're asked why we can't ride on sidewalks. If you haven't pedaled on one recently, they're completely unpredictable and awful for bikes, not even mentioning how inconvenient it can be for pedestrians.
  • When we come to a stop sign, we always stop. But almost every time a motorist waves us through. To them, it seems polite - they understand we would sacrifice momentum much more than they would. But then we're holding up the whole intersection as we get started again...
  • Then if we're clearly going to make it to the stop sign well before anyone else, it's best just to blow through. Otherwise, the driver is going to be waiting far longer if we come to a complete stop.
  • Some (too many) drivers will never pass (regardless of margin), which blocks all of the cars behind them. The cyclist is the one who gets the blame for this.
  • Weaving through traffic at a stop light to maintain momentum so we don't block is hated by many, but if you've ridden for a bit you know it's the least damaging way to do it.

From a personal perspective, I can safely say that every time I've been a real asshole it's been by accident, but will not pretend like there aren't problems with 3 types of transportation competing for travel space in many places.

Then if we're clearly going to make it to the stop sign well before anyone else, it's best just to blow through. Otherwise, the driver is going to be waiting far longer if we come to a complete stop.

This is just a general rule for no one obeying traffic laws if they think it will inconvenience themselves or others a bit?

Maybe? A California Stop/Rhode Island Roll is an unofficial moniker for when cars do it, and an idaho stop is the practice being enshrined in actual law for cyclists across multiple states.

The bad cyclists are the ones who are committed to cycling as a lifestyle- either for fitness or for environmental reasons. Like, rules apply to you.

At least in my neck of the woods, the spandex-clad roadies and messenger-bag-toting commuters generally follow the rules of the road. Maybe they don't come to a complete stop at 4 way stops (frequently cars don't either!), but I rarely see them run red lights or disregard pedestrians (although there are relatively few of those here too). Large groups of roadies do sometimes run lights a bit (but so do cars), I suppose, but there aren't that many of those and they're pretty predictable altogether. Maybe it's different in more urban areas, but around here the biggest group of cyclists I'd complain about is when the local homeless decide to ride in the dark in dark clothes without lights and without a clear sense of self-preservation (the street one block over has a lower speed limit, less traffic, and a marked bike lane, maybe avoid the busy frontage road?).

Intetesting. I would call out the spandex-clad roadies as the worst of the worst. There's some hills with two lane roads by me. They like riding down hill in the street rather than the bike lane even though they are much slower than cars. I get stuck behind a line of cars following spandex man. I wish those guys were ticketed and had to go to traffic court.

Kids are mostly fine. Maybe ride too fast on sidewalks sometimes. Particularly recently with surprisingly fast electric bikes. But they generally don't suicidally shoot into traffic and they've avoided getting too close to me when walking. They slow down and carefully go around me and my family. Spandex man could learn a lot from middle schoolers how to navigate the world as though other people also occupy it.

Maybe this depends on your local demographics? Around here (historically known as a cycling-friendly locale), the average roadie is mid-20s to middle-aged, out for some exercise, and seems pretty interested in making it home safely. I've been one in the past, and the most dangerous stuff I've seen them do was (actual sanctioned and mock practice) races on open roads, where the biggest risks were clearly to each other, and the serious folks were pretty loudly insistent about actually yielding at yield signs where legally required and watching for cross traffic.

As an actual spandex-clad roadie, I don't get lines of cars behind me. They just pass, generally. Probably just NJ aggressiveness, but it works out fine. If they don't want to pass when there's plenty of room, that's their problem; if I could go faster I would and I'm not going to stop because they're timid. There's one hill with a 4-lane (2 each way) road where sometimes they'll get pissed instead of using the empty lane to their left; I'm not sure what about that road is special.

I'm on the West coast. The road I'm talking about is hilly and 2 lanes. It is not safe or practical to pass on it. Instead we get a line of cars following a bicyclist. Not that often really. Not a great burden on me. But that road has a proper bike lane. These people chose to obstruct traffic.

It is not safe or practical to pass on it.

It's not safe or practical to pass a bicycle on it, particularly when the bicyclist is going slow on the uphill parts? Or drivers are just too timid to do it?

The problem occurs downhill. Every now and then someone goes downhill really fast and partially blocking the road, but not as fast as the cars.

There is a bike lane here. If they kept to the middle or right side of that there would be no problem. But some ride at least part in the road. I don't see this behavior on other bike lanes. This hill has some deranging affect on some people.

Do you have any intuition as to why there are so my psychotic cyclists? It seems to select for aggressive narcissists, despite the fact that their phenotype is more of a skinny soy boy or scenester. It’s obviously not all of them, but it could easily be 50% of the cyclists on the road. Does a bicycle imbue some sort of power fantasy where otherwise meek people can easily flee if they run into the wrong type of person?

To start, note that there are subcultures in cycling. I think a lot of the negative traits you're thinking of are largely confined to roadies, which I don't consider myself a part of.

In an urban environment, it's hard to be a cyclist and not look down on everyone else. Cars are crawling along streets, burning gallons of gas to shift 4,000 pounds of steel and 200 pounds of human, moving at a speed similar to you. Meanwhile, pedestrians are moving even more slowly, having trouble carrying any weight at all. Quite simply: There's a best way to get around, and you're it.

Then, add the antagonistic nature of so many interactions. You have to be prepared to die for no reason at all. Everyone hates you, and wants to steal your mode of transportation the moment you come to a stop. When I am on the road, especially by myself, my nerves are shredded after being aggressively fucked with.

I think the people who are on the road a lot get into this mode. You have to be closer to the middle of the lane to avoid being driven into the curb, pedal away from danger, trust your instincts even if they violate traffic laws... etc.

Perhaps a much more sympathetic take than you were looking for.

To add more on the negative side, people who are on the road regularly are typically affluent. Bikes are expensive, you need to have the free time to use the equipment, and the mechanical know-how to maintain a (abiet simple) machine. It all circles around arrogance and elitism.

That shit’s all true, but the middle schoolers roaming my neighborhood on their bikes don’t seem to cause problems because they get the hell out of the way when there’s cars, ride on the shoulder if possible, etc.

Cyclists should believe the road is for cars, and they might behave as well as thirteen year olds.

Do you have any intuition as to why there are so my psychotic cyclists?

If you're not psychotic when you start cycling in Manhattan, it'll make you that way.

I live in a neighborhood where there are still young teenagers allowed to go wherever their bikes will take them; these are largely fine, and in neighborhoods where people are poor enough to ride bikes the cyclists seem fine too(the other denizens often aren’t). It’s the ideologues who make it suck.

Is your neighborhood in urban or suburban area. I should have clarified that I'm talking urban locations, even small cities.

More or less suburbia.

number of people killed by analog cyclists nationwide has been, for many years, single digits.

Cyclists need to understand that they can make pedestrian life much worse without actually killing pedestrians, which I agree is rare. I spend time in Amsterdam semi-regularly for work, and the Dutch are presumably the biggest cyclists in Europe. You cannot walk around without constantly being alert. Not because of crime, which at least in the wealthy city center (including the red light district, museum quarter, Jordaan, business district etc) seems rare, with the streets safe even at night, but because of the cyclists.

The Dutch seem to have a lot of marked and unmarked cycle lanes, but the problem with any dense city is that (of course) you constantly have to cross them most times you turn to a new street, change direction, cross the street, whatever. They cycle extremely fast and with minimal concern for their own safety. Even if you just miss them they ring their bells at you and sometimes shout at you. The whole experience of walking in Amsterdam - a city so pedestrianized that many of the non-arterial central streets mostly or fully ban cars, or so deter them that only the occasional taxi or delivery truck goes down them at 3 mph - is unpleasant as a result.

When road traffic does run alongside cycle paths, crossing the street is even more annoying, since even a small road becomes a multi lane stroad crossing when you first have to navigate the cycle lane, then the car lanes, then the cycle lane on the opposite side. The speed of the motor and bike traffic is also completely different so it’s much harder to judge whether you can jaywalk (which is necessary to get anywhere in a timely manner in most dense cities). It just sucks. Walkable cities only work if the experience of walking is low stress and chill - in other words if you can put your AirPods in and relax, or call your mom, or dictate an email, without worrying about getting mugged/assaulted by an addict/hit by a cyclist. This is a low bar and many cities have achieved it.

I love cycling. It’s fun, in the countryside, on nice bike lanes, with few pedestrians or cars nearby, seeing nature, stopping at a lake for a picnic and a swim, mountain biking in the summer, all good. In cities? No, it sucks. The combination of public transport and walking is good for navigation, with taxis for the lazy, elderly, disabled or rich. Cyclists make walkable cities less walkable.

I think you're very much in a minority here. I would take walking around Amsterdam vs literally any major north american city, and above most European ones as well.

I agree there's a tradeoff, but Amsterdam demonstrably works as a walkable city, even if it's not somewhere you can just zone out and walk.

I cycle through Amsterdam city center very regularly and any part of the city where you might visit as an outsider is totally not representative of a city with good cycling infrastructure (which is almost every Dutch urban area except center of Amsterdam). Narrow 17th century canals with uneven side-streets and rarely any sidewalks wider than 1.5 Americans. It is a city designed for boats and commerce, not for a million tourists strolling around unaware of their surroundings. Also the cars are blocked from the city not for pedestrians but for the bikes. The problems you describe arise because unlike many other old touristic European city centers, Amsterdam is not simply a tourist attraction and has a very dense population who live and work in it. These people go almost everywhere almost entirely by bike. Cyclists you come across aren't a separate breed of people, I have literally never met anyone in this country (except 2 American expats) who don't bike in their daily lives.

Also they shout at you because you are a tourist and they hate you.

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