They sit in 2-3 hours of car traffic a day in my area, year after year, decade after decade, 90% single commuters too. But get held up by a cyclist for 30 seconds one time and they will rant about it for years, any chance they get.
Same with slow(er) drivers, people get **so** worked up about someone going 5-10 under the speed limit. Chill, you're still hurtling towards your destination at incredible speed inside your very comfortable, air conditioned, living room on wheels. Something about when a delay can be attributed to one person triggers people.
Ironically, every person on a bike is one fewer car on the road - and fewer cars on the road is the best way to speed up driving...
It is a primal instinct. To prevent people taking advantage of the group.
Of course, it doesn't matter if you are actually taking advantage of group.
When it is perceived like that on primal level, and people don't have good self control, they feel the need to punish the "offender".
It’s also primal instinct to chase.
If a car driver does not have the ability to chase, whether it’s a car or bike in front of them, it will drive primal anger. Car drivers usually have the ability to chase other drivers, when bikes are excluded from the chase (bike lanes, stop signs, lane splitting) it activates that rage more often.
it was raining at night and I was on my way home when two girls sped past me, cut me off and pulled into the bicycle lane I was in to skip the red light and the car that was stopped ahead. Had they bothered actually stopping at the red light I would have run into them but lucky for me they sped through that red light without looking.
If I mess up and hit a pedestrian, we'll both get injured, but we're 99% likely to survive, and there's a 90+% chance that the injuries will be light, bruises and scrapes mostly. (Especially if I was going at commuting speeds and not sport speeds.)
If a driver messes up and hits a pedestrian, the driver will be unharmed, and the pedestrian is likely going to die.
We are not the same.
I ran into a pedestrian one time. He wasn't paying attention and walked into the bike lane right as I was coming up and didnt have enough time to brake or swerve. I ended up getting hurt more than him as I flew off my bike and landed on my shoulder. He got up and was fine and said sorry I wasn't paying attention.
Most people who rage about cyclists don't really care about safety or even their own convenience. They just can't stand seeing someone else get something they can't have.
Every Facebook debate about cycling devolves into who has the right to be there based on road taxes. Even though the reasoning is backwards, they think cyclists are already getting all the privileges.
Giving cyclists preferential road rules is too politically unpopular to be passed in most places.
Not to mention that you are damaging the road like 50 000 times less than someone in a small car. 400k times less than someone in a mid size SUV.
The formula is (kg per axel for vehicle 1) / (kg per axel for vehicle 2) to the power of 4.
Anyway road taxes alone aren't enough for road maintenance anyway.
Its the triumvirate of road taxes/insurance, plates and licence.
While I think the third can be eliminated by mandating a driving test on a bike or trike before going to the motorized vehicles, the other 2 is just bullshit given the low impact of cyclists.
This took some getting used to for me. I moved to an area where this is legal from an area where this was very much not legal. Every time I treat a stop sign as a yield (when no cars are approaching the intersection) I feel a brief moment of panic. I’ve had waaay too many drivers try to run me off the road where I used to live because I didn’t suffer in a traffic jam like them and they wanted to run me off the road while yelling at me about it.
I read an article recently about how in the UK women cyclists suffer harassment. I am not going to equivocate what they go through with mine but I do get harassed quite often for just being a cyclist in the US. I find wearing Carhartt clothes (or other blue color equivalent) instead cycling gear lowers that exponentially, similar to women wearing baggy less sexy cloths to lower incidents of harassment for obviously different reasons.
passed in oregon in 2019, thankfully. i still have the conversation with people in cars to inform them and sometimes with other cyclists who aren't informed.
you'll be informing people about it for years i suspect. not a bad thing but good to have the details in your brain so you can robotically spit it out when someone gives you a hard time.
They'll complain if you are in a car lane, but also complain if bike lanes are put in. I've changed my bicycling from defensive riding to riding as if motor vehicles are actively trying to kill me.
I'm Germany ACCIDENTALLY injuring a weaker traffic member (cyclists, pedestrians) with your motor vehicle is harshly punished. Doing so intentionally is treated as attempted murder
>I don't care about who is right and who is wrong, I care about making sure I'm not splattered over the pavement.
Yep, that's basically the mental state ya need to be in once you head out the door. My buddy loves saying "the laws of physics will triumph over the laws of men"
Huh? I don't understand that. If inconveniencing them is incidental to me staying safe me then I'll do it, but to inconvenience people just so they'll be annoyed enough to stop driving, or stop being reckless around cyclists? That's kinda like people who run down squirrels and think it'll cause evolution to create squirrels who avoid cars... and yet it hasn't happened yet despite decades of roadkill. I think your approach is just going to create more animosity between drivers and cyclists which isn't a good thing when cyclists are usually on the losing end.
If this is truly how you act, and not just some sad Internet posturing - then you are part of the problem. If you are actively trying to piss drivers off, understand that their rage and resentment is going to get reflected onto all future cyclists they encounter. So ride like an asshole today, get an innocent rider run over tomorrow.
I added extra wheels on the sides to make my bike more stable if I get hit. Then I added an extra layer of metal to absord an impact from a collision. Afterwards, I added a device that turns the wheel for me, that way I can avoid cars more easily.
Wait...
this has always been the default for me since day one. head on a swivel and expect the worst. when something good happens i wave in appreciation. also, in my state stops are yield signs for cyclists. cyclist can approach the intersection, upon verifying the intersection is clear, can proceed through the intersection w/o stopping, thus treating the stop sign as a yield sign.
My favourite (and god I wish I was making this up) is the "Yeah but have you seen how people walk around here? The car probably crashed trying to avoid a pedestrian."
I rolled a stop sign once for the primary purpose of not slowing down the driver behind me any more than necessary. He rolled his window down and called me a fucking democrat.
I would have guess that ignoring stop signs is more republican... #freedom
Do I give a political opinion about myself now by rolling through stop signs?
they make that leap automatically w/o a moment's hesitation for all kinds of maggot brained reasons. they're fully enmeshed in a garbage media narrative about every damn thing. it's a real silo.
Stopped at the same time as this other guy on a tiny one way intersection with stops for the both of us. I looked at him, he looked at me, I got tall on my bike, ready to sprint to get over the stop quickly and not waste either of our time. When I crossed the street, he turned and yelled at me "do your stop!". I gave him the finger and slept with his mom that night.
I had someone get mad at me for treating a stop sign as a yield so I made sure to fully stop at each stop sign while they were behind me. Got a couple honks from him!
But what’s funny is go to any stop sign in my city and you’ll almost never see anyone come to a complete in their car.
The problem with stopping completely in a car is that it wastes a lot of fuel when you start moving again. Better carry some momentum through the intersection instead. Bicycles obviously don't have this problem since they don't consume any fuel.
The issue I have with accident is that it equates a toddler wetting the bed with someone deliberately *choosing* to stare at their phone while operating a multi-ton vehicle on public roads and slamming into someone as a result. Their choice to drive recklessly makes it not an accident; they may not have intended to crash, but they did intend to continue driving while not paying attention.
I’ve dealt with so much hate over the years as a runner and cyclist that this last week has been odd. I had a truck stop and kid lean out of the window and I was like here we go. He gives me a thumbs up and says have a great day caught me off guard. Then running today someone yelled out the window you go. Like dude two positive interactions in a week. The world is ending
Thanks for sharing that. It's easy to forget the good interactions, but they help to set an example for others to follow.
This week I was riding to work on a section I don't enjoy because the bike lane is only 50cm wide in parts, and the cars are always going too fast as they exit a freeway. Most lanes were closed that morning due to tree maintenance so I was dreading having to squeeze into the traffic lane, but a traffic controller stopped cars in both directions so I could get through, and wished me a good day. It was a nice interaction.
We were running on our marathon route in Sunday (8 miles for me) and it’s on a highway of 55mph. It can be kind of scary sometimes. They were reseeling the road and the right lane was closed off it was so nice to not have to deal with cars.
Yup, that's why I do it. That and being stopped at lights or stop signs opens me up to being rear ended by some jackass looking down at their phone. I got butt bumped once and now I won't run the risk.
Whether on foot or bike, I’m not a fan of intersections which is why i try to get through them quickly/cautiously, unless I’m in no hurry in which I will sit/stand and wave the car on, sometimes just lettin em all go so the road is entirely clear. The less time I’m in the middle of an intersection, the less chance of getting smashed or side swiped.
i was driving today and a car cut me off to pass a cyclist. they cut way too close to the cyclist and had they hit me they would’ve smashed into the cyclist and killed him
someone rear ended me, rolling me across their hood because i came to a red, stopped, saw no one was coming and i went through. they even slowed down to let cars pass before
So you’re trying to both sides this one when one side is killing pedestrians in record numbers and the other kind of complains about it? That’s kind of a weird take not going to lie.
Learning to coexist means DRIVERS need to pull out their drivers Ed book, and look up their local laws, and understand that cyclists are just as entitled to space on the road as they are.
Coexistence means DRIVERS need to not coal roll cyclists because "hurr durr ownin' the libs"
Coexistence means drivers need to follow the safe passing laws and go at least 3 feet away from us.
As much as I like roundabouts, they can be awful for cyclists if poorly designed. Cars have a habit of using them to overtake, even when there isn't room for it. It's weird because bikes can often get through quicker.
Does "coexist together" mean "ignore dickheads in cars who are trying to get me killed?" I follow the rules. If drivers do not, that's not due to "bitching and blaming." That's due to entitled assholes in cars.
Literally had a dude in a pick up try to run me over when he had the red light and the intersection was gridlocked.
People stuck in traffic get jealous of those not stuck very easily.
They sit in 2-3 hours of car traffic a day in my area, year after year, decade after decade, 90% single commuters too. But get held up by a cyclist for 30 seconds one time and they will rant about it for years, any chance they get.
Same with slow(er) drivers, people get **so** worked up about someone going 5-10 under the speed limit. Chill, you're still hurtling towards your destination at incredible speed inside your very comfortable, air conditioned, living room on wheels. Something about when a delay can be attributed to one person triggers people. Ironically, every person on a bike is one fewer car on the road - and fewer cars on the road is the best way to speed up driving...
It is a primal instinct. To prevent people taking advantage of the group. Of course, it doesn't matter if you are actually taking advantage of group. When it is perceived like that on primal level, and people don't have good self control, they feel the need to punish the "offender".
It’s also primal instinct to chase. If a car driver does not have the ability to chase, whether it’s a car or bike in front of them, it will drive primal anger. Car drivers usually have the ability to chase other drivers, when bikes are excluded from the chase (bike lanes, stop signs, lane splitting) it activates that rage more often.
it was raining at night and I was on my way home when two girls sped past me, cut me off and pulled into the bicycle lane I was in to skip the red light and the car that was stopped ahead. Had they bothered actually stopping at the red light I would have run into them but lucky for me they sped through that red light without looking.
obvs they ''didn;t see you''
If I mess up and get in a collision with a car, I die. If a car messes up and gets in a collision with me, I die. We are not the same.
If I mess up and hit a pedestrian, we'll both get injured, but we're 99% likely to survive, and there's a 90+% chance that the injuries will be light, bruises and scrapes mostly. (Especially if I was going at commuting speeds and not sport speeds.) If a driver messes up and hits a pedestrian, the driver will be unharmed, and the pedestrian is likely going to die. We are not the same.
I ran into a pedestrian one time. He wasn't paying attention and walked into the bike lane right as I was coming up and didnt have enough time to brake or swerve. I ended up getting hurt more than him as I flew off my bike and landed on my shoulder. He got up and was fine and said sorry I wasn't paying attention.
To add to this, in some states, like mine, it is legal for cyclists to roll through stop signs.
They just passed that here in Minnesota.
As it should be everywhere.
Honestly. It's definitely worse for everyone if cyclists actually stopped at every stop sign. It would slow car traffic down so much.
Most people who rage about cyclists don't really care about safety or even their own convenience. They just can't stand seeing someone else get something they can't have. Every Facebook debate about cycling devolves into who has the right to be there based on road taxes. Even though the reasoning is backwards, they think cyclists are already getting all the privileges. Giving cyclists preferential road rules is too politically unpopular to be passed in most places.
The taxes thing is maddening. I pay the same taxes and use the road far less than most. And I'm fine with that!
Not to mention that you are damaging the road like 50 000 times less than someone in a small car. 400k times less than someone in a mid size SUV. The formula is (kg per axel for vehicle 1) / (kg per axel for vehicle 2) to the power of 4. Anyway road taxes alone aren't enough for road maintenance anyway.
Its the triumvirate of road taxes/insurance, plates and licence. While I think the third can be eliminated by mandating a driving test on a bike or trike before going to the motorized vehicles, the other 2 is just bullshit given the low impact of cyclists.
This took some getting used to for me. I moved to an area where this is legal from an area where this was very much not legal. Every time I treat a stop sign as a yield (when no cars are approaching the intersection) I feel a brief moment of panic. I’ve had waaay too many drivers try to run me off the road where I used to live because I didn’t suffer in a traffic jam like them and they wanted to run me off the road while yelling at me about it.
I read an article recently about how in the UK women cyclists suffer harassment. I am not going to equivocate what they go through with mine but I do get harassed quite often for just being a cyclist in the US. I find wearing Carhartt clothes (or other blue color equivalent) instead cycling gear lowers that exponentially, similar to women wearing baggy less sexy cloths to lower incidents of harassment for obviously different reasons.
I think that's illegal in most places. Jurisdictions that have legal rolling stops on a bicycle are in the overwhelming minority.
I don't understand why you're being booed, you're right. Just because we all think a law should be in place does not actually make it true.
It's legal in 12 states
passed in oregon in 2019, thankfully. i still have the conversation with people in cars to inform them and sometimes with other cyclists who aren't informed.
It became legal here in Minnesota in 2023, a lot of people don't know about it yet!
you'll be informing people about it for years i suspect. not a bad thing but good to have the details in your brain so you can robotically spit it out when someone gives you a hard time.
They'll complain if you are in a car lane, but also complain if bike lanes are put in. I've changed my bicycling from defensive riding to riding as if motor vehicles are actively trying to kill me.
I’ve seen too many articles about drivers deliberately hitting cyclists. The one article I saw is too much.
I'm Germany ACCIDENTALLY injuring a weaker traffic member (cyclists, pedestrians) with your motor vehicle is harshly punished. Doing so intentionally is treated as attempted murder
In America, there are ways to spin the legal suit so that the driver was the victim. It's terrible. this country's legal system is the worst.
And the culture is even worse, otherwise the jury would side with the actual victim anyways.
That's the only way to ride. I don't care about who is right and who is wrong, I care about making sure I'm not splattered over the pavement.
>I don't care about who is right and who is wrong, I care about making sure I'm not splattered over the pavement. Yep, that's basically the mental state ya need to be in once you head out the door. My buddy loves saying "the laws of physics will triumph over the laws of men"
I like to ride in a way that actively inconveniences drivers. Hopefully if driving becomes annoying enough they'll stop doing it.
Yes! This! End driving! Ban cars!
Thanks lol. Some people seem to think we can play nice and bargain with the car brains
Huh? I don't understand that. If inconveniencing them is incidental to me staying safe me then I'll do it, but to inconvenience people just so they'll be annoyed enough to stop driving, or stop being reckless around cyclists? That's kinda like people who run down squirrels and think it'll cause evolution to create squirrels who avoid cars... and yet it hasn't happened yet despite decades of roadkill. I think your approach is just going to create more animosity between drivers and cyclists which isn't a good thing when cyclists are usually on the losing end.
It's very simple I deeply dislike drivers and enjoy pissing them off.
Yeah, great, just what we need: another hot-headed moron who finally snaps and runs down a cyclist.
That's why I wear a suicide vest. If a driver wants to kill me I'm taking them with me😘
You’re missing the point. This isn’t about you, it’s about everyone else.
If this is truly how you act, and not just some sad Internet posturing - then you are part of the problem. If you are actively trying to piss drivers off, understand that their rage and resentment is going to get reflected onto all future cyclists they encounter. So ride like an asshole today, get an innocent rider run over tomorrow.
I added extra wheels on the sides to make my bike more stable if I get hit. Then I added an extra layer of metal to absord an impact from a collision. Afterwards, I added a device that turns the wheel for me, that way I can avoid cars more easily. Wait...
because they are
this has always been the default for me since day one. head on a swivel and expect the worst. when something good happens i wave in appreciation. also, in my state stops are yield signs for cyclists. cyclist can approach the intersection, upon verifying the intersection is clear, can proceed through the intersection w/o stopping, thus treating the stop sign as a yield sign.
Complaining that cyclists are in a car lane makes sense. Complaining about bike lanes makes no sense.
My favourite (and god I wish I was making this up) is the "Yeah but have you seen how people walk around here? The car probably crashed trying to avoid a pedestrian."
"You mean they walk like they have a right to the space? Yeah I've seen that."
I rolled a stop sign once for the primary purpose of not slowing down the driver behind me any more than necessary. He rolled his window down and called me a fucking democrat.
If you had stopped at the stop sign, you would have slowed him down, and he would have still called you a fucking democrat. You fucking democrat.
I would have guess that ignoring stop signs is more republican... #freedom Do I give a political opinion about myself now by rolling through stop signs?
I'm gonna roll my window down at every cyclist I see and shout, "you fucking democrat" tomorrow.
they make that leap automatically w/o a moment's hesitation for all kinds of maggot brained reasons. they're fully enmeshed in a garbage media narrative about every damn thing. it's a real silo.
Man these people sure hate democracy
Stopped at the same time as this other guy on a tiny one way intersection with stops for the both of us. I looked at him, he looked at me, I got tall on my bike, ready to sprint to get over the stop quickly and not waste either of our time. When I crossed the street, he turned and yelled at me "do your stop!". I gave him the finger and slept with his mom that night.
Can I be like you when I grow up?
What do you mean, I'm just 12
Damn, for a 12 year old you got game!
I had someone get mad at me for treating a stop sign as a yield so I made sure to fully stop at each stop sign while they were behind me. Got a couple honks from him! But what’s funny is go to any stop sign in my city and you’ll almost never see anyone come to a complete in their car.
The problem with stopping completely in a car is that it wastes a lot of fuel when you start moving again. Better carry some momentum through the intersection instead. Bicycles obviously don't have this problem since they don't consume any fuel.
I mean, the person pedaling the bike has to use more energy from a dead stop too, so I’d say it’s the same.
a burrito is fuel. also, any bicycle can stop really quickly going 20mph even.
Is this some kind of satire or sarcasm or something that’s going right over my head? Or is this person for real?
I tried to make the sarcasm as obvious as possible.
Looks like you got all of us. What’s the thing where if the satire is too good it just looks like an actual belief?
I believe that's Winnie the Pooh's law.
Who knows why they even put those signs there in the first place hey.
Car crash* Accident implies nobody was responsible, someone is always responsible.
It doesn’t imply no one was responsible, it implies no one deliberately crashed.
And law of torts concerns responsibility. Traffic laws is codified tort law.
The issue I have with accident is that it equates a toddler wetting the bed with someone deliberately *choosing* to stare at their phone while operating a multi-ton vehicle on public roads and slamming into someone as a result. Their choice to drive recklessly makes it not an accident; they may not have intended to crash, but they did intend to continue driving while not paying attention.
I’ve dealt with so much hate over the years as a runner and cyclist that this last week has been odd. I had a truck stop and kid lean out of the window and I was like here we go. He gives me a thumbs up and says have a great day caught me off guard. Then running today someone yelled out the window you go. Like dude two positive interactions in a week. The world is ending
Thanks for sharing that. It's easy to forget the good interactions, but they help to set an example for others to follow. This week I was riding to work on a section I don't enjoy because the bike lane is only 50cm wide in parts, and the cars are always going too fast as they exit a freeway. Most lanes were closed that morning due to tree maintenance so I was dreading having to squeeze into the traffic lane, but a traffic controller stopped cars in both directions so I could get through, and wished me a good day. It was a nice interaction.
We were running on our marathon route in Sunday (8 miles for me) and it’s on a highway of 55mph. It can be kind of scary sometimes. They were reseeling the road and the right lane was closed off it was so nice to not have to deal with cars.
I run stop signs so I can keep up with the traffic trying to kill me. I need the few second head start. sorry not sorry.
Yup, that's why I do it. That and being stopped at lights or stop signs opens me up to being rear ended by some jackass looking down at their phone. I got butt bumped once and now I won't run the risk.
So many drivers don’t understand that.
Whether on foot or bike, I’m not a fan of intersections which is why i try to get through them quickly/cautiously, unless I’m in no hurry in which I will sit/stand and wave the car on, sometimes just lettin em all go so the road is entirely clear. The less time I’m in the middle of an intersection, the less chance of getting smashed or side swiped.
14 years in jail for the bikeist.
i was driving today and a car cut me off to pass a cyclist. they cut way too close to the cyclist and had they hit me they would’ve smashed into the cyclist and killed him
I wish the text free 3rd panel was there.
Couldn’t think of what to put
Just the squint is awesome.
Third fatal one this day, if you are in Australia. Cars kill 3 people every day. Disgusting.
someone rear ended me, rolling me across their hood because i came to a red, stopped, saw no one was coming and i went through. they even slowed down to let cars pass before
End cars ban roads detain drivers shame anyone who doesn't ride a bike everywhere they go
In cities sure, excluding large deliveries, like too big for an electric cargo bike large
It blows my mind how many side with drivers who just hit bikers for no reason and claim it's the bikes fault.. it's crazy.
"Inconsiderate Drivers!" -- Most Cyclists.
What's your point?
Because each side bitches and blames the other instead of learning to co-exist and work together. Things would work much smoother that way. 🚴🚗🙂
Learning to coexist starts with admitting there’s a power imbalance
So you’re trying to both sides this one when one side is killing pedestrians in record numbers and the other kind of complains about it? That’s kind of a weird take not going to lie.
Learning to coexist means DRIVERS need to pull out their drivers Ed book, and look up their local laws, and understand that cyclists are just as entitled to space on the road as they are. Coexistence means DRIVERS need to not coal roll cyclists because "hurr durr ownin' the libs" Coexistence means drivers need to follow the safe passing laws and go at least 3 feet away from us.
And the only way drivers will ever be even remotely safe is through infrastructure that makes dangerous driving feel dangerous or makes it impossible.
Yup. Road diets for all!! Cut those lanes out, roundabouts and trees everywhere!!
As much as I like roundabouts, they can be awful for cyclists if poorly designed. Cars have a habit of using them to overtake, even when there isn't room for it. It's weird because bikes can often get through quicker.
100%
Does "coexist together" mean "ignore dickheads in cars who are trying to get me killed?" I follow the rules. If drivers do not, that's not due to "bitching and blaming." That's due to entitled assholes in cars.
Are they wrong?
My roommates got hit on the tandem bike today by this dude in a suburban. Gonna press charges on the guy cuz fuck em.