Comment by orbitingpluto | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orbitingpluto | Hacker News Reader

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Before I get all the hate I have to say of course cyclists should obey the laws. As a cyclist I can tell you it doesn't matter either way to many certifiably deranged motorists.

Caveat aside, I'm constantly amazed that this argument gets brought up over and over again.

Traffic laws exist to ensure public safety. So let's cut the bike/car bullshit about the laws being equal for both.

Let's take a simple offense like running a stop sign at 15 km/hr and suppose that a pedestrian gets hit. What's the difference between a car doing this and a bicycle? Both the bike and the car are going 4 m/s. But there's a huge difference between getting hit by a car that's 1500 kg plus passengers versus an 80 kg person plus a 9 kg bike. Simple thought experiment, you've just been hit by something. What outcome would be more favorable? Would you rather have a Honda Civic on your spleen or some asshat bike courier named Jack? Two tonnes versus nine kilograms?

The crime may be the same, but the outcome is far different. I've seen a van run a red light and the cyclist traveling orthogonally ride right into the side of it going 45 km/hour. Not pretty.

I think that's a pretty awful argument. Obviously different traffic violations in different vehicles carry different safety risks. But I would say that there are broad classes of traffic violations that are deserving of roughly equal social stigma, and I think running a stop sign in a populated area is one of them. A bicycle is absolutely capable of seriously injuring or killing a pedestrian, or causing a larger accident among other vehicles and automobiles. Yes, all else being equal, a car will do more damage than a bike, but it's not enough of a difference for me to react with noticeably different levels of disdain. Surely you don't tie your level of disdain linearly to the mass of the vehicle. Is an SUV running a stop sign twice as bad as a compact car running a stop sign?

> Is an SUV running a stop sign twice as bad as a compact car running a stop sign?

That's such a willfully stupid response. Compare these:

Bike:Compact:SUV to pelletgun:handgun:rifle

Morever, did you read the first thing that I said? "Before I get all the hate I have to say of course cyclists should obey the laws." Thank you for adding NOTHING to the conversation except for demonstrating the whacked out stupidity that is the core problem here.

Your kind argues that we have to obey the same laws as motorists while forcing us into the gutter. "Separate but equal?"

> Compare these:

Bike:Compact:SUV to pelletgun:handgun:rifle

Like I said, a bicycle is very capable of severely injuring or killing a pedestrian, which is why I group it together with automobiles. I'm not familiar with how powerful pellet guns are, so I don't know how that analogy applies. I suspect they are at least capable of causing severe eye injury, and I would encourage the exact same precautionary behavior with pellet guns as with handguns and rifles (trigger discipline, don't point at people, etc.).

I guess I'm a little confused by what point you're trying to make. If your preface was intended to invalidate everything you wrote after it, then it's my mistake for trying to do the same.

You managed to get my point.

A pellet could injure someone and damage an eye. What if a bullet hit the same spot? Those are very different outcomes. Conceivably a pellet could kill someone if was a David vs Goliath one in a million shot. Reckless endangerment takes into account the threat level created by the offender. Why not traffic laws? The threat level sort of tops out when you're a squishy human getting hit by a vehicle. Compact vs SUV don't matter much unless you want to get all Rorschach about the splatter pattern. Dead is dead.

Also, it appears that you group compact cars and SUVs together. So do I, and for the same reason, I also put bicycles into the same group. We both agree that vehicles with very different masses can be grouped together, but we apparently disagree about where to draw the line. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it could be based on our experiences. I haven't biked or driven routinely for many years, and never on streets with enough traffic to encounter many incidents or significant risks. I certainly don't agree with or even understand your comment about being forced into the gutter, but it sounds like a misrepresentation of my views.

I agree with you that bikes can be dangerous. I also agree that bikes should obey traffic rules.

That said, I've spent much of my life in cities crowded with bikes and pedestrians and the difference between a bike and a car, pretty much any kind of car, is huge.

There's the weight difference, but also the completely different posture, ability to see around you, ability to stop or even just drop your bike and jump off. Bikes are much easier to steer, as well as smaller in 'surface area' that can hit another person.

I've gone on daily commutes where I'd ride at relatively high speeds right through the tourist-infested center of Amsterdam, and while I'd not do that anymore (wiser and older), accidents were incredibly rare, despite the fact that most tourists don't understand the concept of a 'bike lane'.

In my opinion the average city biker is much more like a pedestrian than like a car driver. Obviously that doesn't mean bikers shouldn't respect the road, but putting bikers in the same category as drivers seems a bit silly to me.

(that said, high-speed cyclists are quite a bit more dangerous. but around here they usually avoid heavy-traffic areas. could be different for the US maybe)

> In my opinion the average city biker is much more like a pedestrian than like a car driver.

In my opinion the key attribute isn't the size, weight, or speed, but rather simply the path being used. To me, the key distinction of pedestrians is that they have their own "road," with very different rules and specific rules to handle encounters with the other type of road. Bicycles, on the other hand, use the same road as automobiles (and usually the same lanes), with only slightly different rules than automobiles.

I'd rather not be hit by either of them, period. Cars should not be running stop signs or lights, but neither should bicyclists, period. Full stop. Also, having a bike run the stop sign and fly into an intersection out of nowhere can easily cause cars to swerve, causing accidents, or even strike the bicyclist.

It's not difficult to drive, ride, or walk safely. Just do it and stop whining.

There is a compromise, the Idaho stop[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

The amount of times I see a cyclist blast through a stop sign at full speed is about the same as I see a car blatantly run a red light -- maybe once a month. The vast majority of cyclists rolling through stop signs seem to roll through them at about the same pace as cars do.

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