- 8 months
I’ve been the car driver who nearly made jam out of the cyclist in the last panel. I’ve also been the cyclist hit by a car which was driving in the cycle lane.
Bad road users are everywhere and they use all sorts of transportation. Let’s stop with the division and generalisation.
- 8 months
one has a lot more power and uses a lot more space than the other
- 22 hours
Yeah, which should encourage more cyclists to be predictable and follow rules.
- 8 months
rules aren’t neutral or grown out of the void. people with biases and maybe even ambitions create them for specific purposes
EDIT: To quote Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
- FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish8 months
Rules governing bike traffic are generally quite reasonable though. It’s not like the enlightened traffic planners in the Netherlands went “you know what, cyclists don’t have to obey red lights” for example. So I’m not seeing the biases you’re talking about, at least in this example.
Comparing running red lights to sleeping under bridges or steal for survival seems, at best, hyperbolic. In any case I don’t think that quote supports the view that the law is intentionally biased
- MonkRome@lemmy.worldEnglish8 months
The lights often automatically changes to cyclists priority in many places in the Netherlands, and often provide underpasses to avoid conflict points in the first place. It is not a comparable situation. Traffic laws and infrastructure in the USA, for instance, are incredibly biased in favor of cars, so their comment is absolutely relevant.
When I bike in the USA often the safest time for me to cross an intersection is unrelated to whether I have a green light, but more related to if anyone else at the intersection does. The safest time for me to go is when no one else at the light has a green light, not when I do.
- 8 months
Ah yes because every driver obeys every law all the time. It’s only the cyclists that break laws! No driver would ever consider speeding, rolling through a stop sign, or being aggressive!
Won’t someone think of the poor drivers!!
- 8 months
Your point is well taken, but whataboutism aside, EVERYONE should be obeying ALL the traffic laws. I cycle on public roads myself and I do see other cyclists not stopping at red lights. A bicycle IS a vehicle - it doesn’t come with pedestrian rights.
Or we can just keep escalating finger pointing and law-breaking until the traffic laws are meaningless everyone is dead.
- 8 months
Laws are a social agreement, not divine. Breaking stupid laws is not bad, and does not imply that all laws should be broken.
- Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish8 months
Stupid laws like “stop at a red light even if you’re wearing lycra in public.”
- 8 months
Anyone who runs a red light is a stupid cunt.
Anecdotally, in my lived experience, there are more stupid cunts on bicycles than in cars.
That is all.
- 8 months
When a cyclist runs over a driver I’ll give a shit about bicycles running stop signs.
- 8 months
I don’t understand. You’re saying bikes should be allowed to run the red lights because when cars inevitable t-bone them they’ll die?
That seems pretty sick.
- 8 months
Whatabout, whatabout, whatabout.
The point is that while cyclists often get pissed off about the lack of safe driving by cars, there are many that similarly seem to ignore the rules of the road as applied to them. That may result in a collision with a vehicle whose driver is driving with proper care - with the cyclist tending to be on the losing end -but also other cyclists, pedestrians, etc.
Getting creamed by a cyclist (or scooter, or skateboarder) going at speed down the sidewalk - or one blowing through an intersection against the lights - is not going to be a minor injury, and I’ve narrowly avoided having myself, my kids, and once my dog get taken out in this manner.
Lately it’s been the battery-powered speakers scooters that are the worst culprits, but the cyclists who often bitch the most about cars are often the ones who seem to ride the least safely around here.
So yeah, not every driver obeys every lease every time, but similarly ignoring laws and being an assist is a good way to increase your own odds of having a bad encounter with one of those drivers, or one of the many others who share the streets and sidewalks.
8 monthsCar Brain meme. Cyclists dont do this because they get splattered by a totally-not-semi-truck that can’t see 12ft in front of it the minute they move into the intersection.
- fizzle@quokk.auEnglish8 months
Yeah, this is a really common complaint from people who dont ride.
“Ooh i saw a cyclist just blaze past a stop sign without stopping!”
Like really? Most cyclists stop, but not all. Most cars stop but not all. Some cyclists are assholes.
- 8 months
I live and grew up in an extremely popular biking area, not once have a seen a cyclist obey traffic lights or stop signs, literally not a single time in my 35 years. I’ve seen a cyclist slam directly into a woman and her dog though because he didn’t stop at a stop sign.
Without cars there would be no reason to have signal lights at intersections. Cars are clunky, slow to accelerate, sound dampening and huge, which is why they need all this wasteful infrastructure to make them feasible at all. People on bikes have much better vision and hearing so if you pay attention to the traffic situation, its not necessarily dangerous to run a red light.
- 8 months
That’s why I love my small electric car, all your complaints are invalid for it and I don’t have to freeze or get wet when I need to travel far up a giant hill.
Who can forget the time a cyclist ran a red light and killed sixteen people?
- 8 months
Fair but think about hitting and killing a cyclist who had run a stop sign or light. That doesn’t just go away. The person has to live with the trauma of killing another person potentially at no fault of their own.
- 8 months
ahhh going to the absurd. that’ll work. fuck. cars. fuck bikes who don’t follow the rules, too.
- 8 months
Personally I think it’s absolutely batshit insane that people ride their bicycles on the roads with cars, if I ride a bike I’m doing it on the fucking sidewalk.
- 24 days
I work for the dot as a rest stop maintenance worker. I’ve seen it all when it comes to stupid oblivious drivers. That includes truck drivers, people who do it professionally. I’m not saying that bikers aren’t morons too. What I’m saying is that we don’t have a bike problem. We don’t have a car problem either. We have an idiot problem. And it’s terminal.
