McSweeney’s bringing some hard truths with this one. We could all be doing better.
You forgot to go back in time and tell people that subsidizing the oil industry might be a bad idea.
When the oil and auto industries teamed up to bend public policy to their will, making a system of roads and parking lots that now function as a continuous subsidy and magnificent symbol of the normalization of injury and pollution, you had a lot of options. You could have objected. You could have shifted public opinion. Instead, you weren’t even born yet. And, rather than go back in time, all you’ve been doing is riding to get groceries and occasionally saying, “Please stop killing us.” On the effort scale? 1/10.
I was hit on my bike while heading to college. Simply crossing a crosswalk with a stop sign and someone decided they didn’t feel like stopping while I was already crossing. I now live with back pain. Drivers can’t be trusted to follow traffic signs.
In most states, riding a bicycle in a crosswalk is not legal, and you are not considered a pedestrian that cars are obligated to yield to. I was taught at a young age to dismount the bike and walk it across for this reason.
Holy shit, your country is deranged
I will say that, especially in college towns, this does not always hold up legally. My buddy got hit by a car on a crosswalk (they rolled down the window and told him to watch where he was going, while he was on the ground); and even though he was on his bike, the cops took his side.
Courts have also ruled that cops don’t have to know the laws, and they are given broad discretion to ticket/arrest on any pretense that seemed reasonable to them at the time. It doesn’t mean the law allows cycling in a crosswalk. Everywhere I’ve lived treats bicycles as non-pedestrians and doesn’t afford the same considerations to them as someone on foot. Bikes are considered a type of vehicle.
I don’t think that’s totally ridiculous, but there are some effects that are: running a stop sign on a bike can be a moving violation that counts against your driver’s license, and cycling while drunk can and has been charged as DUI. I think that’s absurd.
Hmm… Have we tried painting lines?.. we should paint lines… let’s paint lines. Problem. Solved.
That’s ridiculous. LINES WONT STOP CARS! Only if they paint the ground near the edge a different colour will it be safe to cycle on roads.
Yes, but I once saw a cyclist run a stop sign. These two things are obviously exactly equal, and bicycles are just as dangerous as cars. I am very smart.
In 20 years of commuting by bike I’ve been hit twice. Both times were from cars exiting driveway without looking. Times cars driving recklessly and nearly merging into me have happened too many times to count. Sure bikes cause accidents but it’s got to be 99 cars to 1 bike.
Auto and oil created a country where you pretty much have to be upper income to live in a few high income cities where no car life is possible but you got to pay top dollar for it.
lmao McSweeney’s consistently knocks it out of the park.
When I was riding, I actually found by night it was better to make myself as invisible as possible and assume cars could not see me, since when I went out bright and shiny they were unpredictable and more dangerous.
As a daily cyclist - and as a motorist, please don’t do this. Being invisible at night on a bike is a bad idea.
Well the alternative is to be lit up and at the mercy of motorists who don’t know how to share the street. As I said, it was more typical they’d drive erratically near me when I had lights and reflectors up than when I was shrouded.
Maybe when we automate our cars so they’re not dependent on human beings, it might be safe to be near them.
I don’t know where you live, but cycling in London on a daily basis for a commute, I don’t commonly see the kind of driver aggression you describe.
I absolutely do come across cyclists with no lights/reflectors, wearing dark clothes that aren’t visible until the last moment- and it is all to imaginable how they could be part of an accident with car - or pedestrian.
The most common threat is someone ‘dooring’ you as they get out of a parked car, or coming out of side turn without noticing you. Both threats are magnified my invisibility
I lived in San Francisco until 2015. (I got pushed out due to gentrification, and ceased biking at all after the epidemic lockdown of 2020.) It’s possible I just bicycled quieter routes. Here in California, those exiting vehicles into traffic know to open their doors slowly, lest they lose doors and limbs to high-speed motor traffic. I’ve never hit someone – or near-missed, for that matter – exiting a vehicle.
I have been run off the road from lingering in blind spots but my reflectors weren’t a factor in those cases. San Franciscans are not great at consistent turn signaling.
I’m in Sacramento, now, and yes, the drivers are less aggressive here, but I haven’t been cycling at all, yet, let alone cycling in traffic. I can’t speak for London drivers, and would probably adjust my cycling habits accordingly if I were to move there. But in San Francisco, cyclists are infamously not well liked, either by motorists, law enforcement or city hall, though there are now more bike lanes, and The Wiggle is now a recognized route.
Well,
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SF cyclists are entitled douchebag tech bros. Just unlikeable as people. Cycling (or at least, being vocal about your cycling) seems to attract the worst kinds of people.
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No one is targeting cyclists. That’s not a thing. It’s a persecution complex dreamed up because: see above.
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SF Bay drivers are some of the worst in the country. No, you’re not being targeted by the person running you off the road. They just do that. All the time. To everyone.
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Thank goodness this reads, at least to me, as largely satire. But then again Poe’s Law is certainly a thing.
I have been hit twice by motorists/cars while road cycling, and will die on the hill that US motorists are entitled asses, too self-absorbed to care that, LEGALLY, on just about any roadway bicycles are allowed to take up one entire lane, as a full-fledged vehicle.
Drivers can piss off and cry, that the whole world isn’t cars like the auto manufacturer lobby and oil magnates/giants have tried to force us all to become dependent upon and addicted to.
If a car hits a pedestrian or cyclist, the car is always legally at fault. At least here in the Netherlands. Is this not the case everywhere?
Your mistake is assuming that places like the US are as rational, practical, just, and/or civilized as the Netherlands.
what matters most is who can afford expensive lawyers and if they cost enough; it doesn’t matter whose legally at fault.
In Iowa they just acquitted a man for driving into protesters blocking traffic.
Was that the one that posted ahead of time that they were going to do so?
Different guy.
This guy used his wife and child as eye witness testimony to prove he did nothing wrong when he drove into the crowd.
How long before they start selling pedestrian shields to drivers so they don’t dent their vehicles when running us over?
If you want a good sense of how bad it is in the states here are two episodes of Freakomomics that do a job of exposing the issue.
“The Perfect Crime”: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-perfect-crime/ (From 2014)
Then a follow-up episode: “Why Is the U.S. So Good at Killing Pedestrians?”: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-the-u-s-so-good-at-killing-pedestrians/ (from July 2023)
Oh lord, no. Drivers are rarely held accountable for murdering cyclists. The “accountability” usually caps out at weekends in jail, picking up some garbage on the highway, and being real real sorry.
Depends on how rich you are.
God I hope not, that would be really stupid.
Cyclists and pedestrians are more vulnerable, the law is there because drivers have a duty to be extra careful around them.
Yeah the part I have a problem is, is where you’re automatially at fault even when you were careful and did nothing wrong.
It’s a concept called “strict liability,” which is well-established in U.S. law, we just don’t apply it to cars. The idea is that when you knowingly engage in an activity which is inherently dangerous, you have to accept liability for any consequences, even if you did nothing wrong. The example that sticks with me from an ag law class was the organic farm that sued a crop-dusting company when an unexpected wind caused pesticide to drift onto their land. The organic farm won. The court found no negligence by the crop-duster, but held that it was a case of strict liability. The act of putting pesticide in the air simply carries that risk, and liability with it.
The Netherlands is just saying that hitting a vulnerable road user is a risk of driving, even if it’s not your fault. It is your responsibility to factor that in when making the decision to drive. Framed that way, I think it makes more sense: Don’t blame the person hit for the driver’s decision to drive a car.
In most places in the US we have pedestrians, vehicles, and bicycles all mashed together in close proximity. Statistically, there will be people killed by drivers who did nothing wrong.
Hell, there will be people killed by drivers because the pedestrian/cyclist did something stupid like run into traffic.
This law would cause a lot of harm to innocent people and I’m glad we don’t have it.
Oh man, this is old, but it didn’t pop up as a notification in my app.
Anyway, I think we should apply strict liability standards to driving, like the Netherlands does, and here’s why:
First, it’s a concept that applies to torts in civil courts, not criminal courts. Nobody would be going to jail for something not their fault. The remedy in tort law is usually monetary damages, so briefly, it would at worst cause insurance rates to go up.
The higher insurance rates would apply more to bigger, heavier, taller vehicles which do more damage to vulnerable road users. That would put a downward pressure on the size of vehicles, which protects everybody.
And, as I see it, nobody is blameless in a collision. Wisconsin (and many other states) has a “modified comparative negligence” system, which assigns damages in court based on each party’s percentage of fault. It assigns a certain, low percentage of blame to each party in a collision just for being on the road. So, by that same principal, choosing to drive a vehicle per se assigns fault to the driver. In the case of hitting a vulnerable road user, that decision is almost solely responsible for the severity of the other person’s injuries. It might’ve been their fault, but crushed bones is not a fair and just consequence for a moment of inattention by a kid.
To avoid rambling on longer, the upshot is that I’d trade higher insurance rates for saving children’s lives.
Seems pretty unlikely. If yours actually being a reasonable driver, even if someone suddenly steps out into the road without warning right in front of you, you won’t hit them. The only exception would be if they were doing something like hiding behind a sign at night and jumped out in front of you. Almost anything else and you actually weren’t driving carefully.
If you’re going at a slow speed maybe. A lot of cyclist infrastructure is next to roads with speeds of 40, 50, 60 mph.
Conveniently misses out “you ran the red light and cycled straight into fast traffic because you don’t think the rules apply to you.”
I saw that happen once. Literately only once. I seen THOUSANDS of cars blow through light and stop signs. In fact just a few weeks ago a cop car ran past the stop sign and almost hit me. And, no, his light we’re not on, he just wasn’t paying attention.
You mileage may vary. In my area, I see very few motorists run red lights or stop signs, but at least half of all cyclists do it.
Fun fact, the vast majority of people on bikes do not actually have a death wish. Take apart that strawman and go outside
I’m outside all the time, which is where I see cyclists behaving like dumbasses
Man, where are people seeing all these cyclists? I have never seen a cyclist run a red light in my entire life but I have seen well over a hundred cars do the same thing.
Personally:
I live in the SF Bay Area, home of (imo) the 2nd worst drivers in the US (after Dallas-Ft Worth).
There’s also loads of cyclists. We have a lot of cyclist infrastructure (though not nearly enough).
Guess what, the ones doing the cycling are the same people as the ones doing the driving.
Bad driver in 4 wheels = bad driver in 2 wheels.
I think I’m the only cyclist that does stop at red lights. Everyone else goes through at full speed or goes flying up onto the pavement and forces all the pedestrians to get out their way.
Wild. I don’t live where there are too many bikers, and I see bikes blow through red lights and stop signs frequently. I’ve had bikes fly past me through intersections while I was stopped at a red light on my bike.
I also haven’t gone a day without seeing cars doing dumber shit. Cars are definitely more consistently stupid, but there’s plenty to go around for everyone.
Do your light systems detect bikes? Does your law allow bikes to treat lights as stops? I know a lot of lights here do not change unless they detect a car, so you are forced to run the light.
Fair point. But even in that case, they should stop before proceeding. Most bikes I see run lights don’t bother stopping, and it looks like they barely slow down if they can avoid it.
Fair. Depending on the field of view and traffic conditions, stopping may be more dangerous though. But definitely have seen people pull some ridiculous running on red lights before (mostly cars), so I do not doubt that people have seen cyclists doing things they should not. I just know that people get mad even when cyclists do the safest option because either they don’t understand the risks involved or they just don’t like cyclists existing at all.
Cities. I used to commute to work by bike every day and I would routinely see other cyclists fly through intersections without so much as looking let alone stopping. Both stop signs and traffic lights.
That said the Idaho/Oregon stop (making sure there is no conflicting traffic, and then proceeding through a stop sign without stopping, which is legal in Idaho/Oregon.) is much safer and more efficient for cyclists. But obviously you still need to make sure the intersection is clear before doing so and you can’t just blindly fly though.
@cobra89 @BandoCalrissian when you build infrastructure so only the bravest and most reckless people will cycle then you’re more likely to see a higher amount of reckless behaviour.
A parent with 2 kids in the front of their cargo bike isn’t running through red lights.
