I think the hypocrisy and self righteousness of some movements like fanatical cycling particularly gets people worked up online.
(Complaining about car drivers being unsafe but then constantly running red lights themselves.)
(Complaining about car drivers being unsafe but then constantly running red lights themselves.)
I do agree that cyclists should follow rules. But the magnitutde of danger caused by rule breaking is massively lower and that should be acknowledged. A dangerous driver is committing a worse crime than a careless cyclist.
Also, cyclists are not some homogeneous group. The person complaining about dangerous drivers is not neccessarily the person going through a red light.
Rubbish. Having cyclists stop at red lights when people are crossing the road does not restrict their freedom "to an unacceptable degree". And even though I'm not likely to be killed by a cyclist running into me, I'd still much rather that they didn't.
I say this as someone who doesn't have a driving license, so I'm not "pro car". I'm just anti getting whomped out of nowhere by a bike.
Now don't get me wrong, it's frustrating, but I'm also a cyclist. I appreciate Oxford's bike-friendliness. I cycle more than I drive. In fact, I've encountered more of the 3-abreast problem when I'm riding - groups having a chat at a slow speed while I'm trying to get to work. I stop at lights for my own safety while others completely ignore them. I never ride without a helmet. And when I'm on the road, I try to keep as close to the kerb as I can without hitting drains.
It's frustrating, for sure, but the internet breeds hatred from frustration. There's a nice little graphic showing it as a distillation process. Facebook is phenomenally bad at this, by design, since it groups and sorts these kinds of people together. This DFROC group has one advantage though - it could be turned into a private group and then this pool of cess would never need to leak out to the rest of the internet. So long as it stays there, this hatred can continue to fester without hurting anyone, but as we know by now, it always leaks back into real life. The minority may give the majority a bad name, but the boiling hatred from these echo chambers eventually convinces somebody that their feelings are justified and go do something they will regret.
The internet is not a healthy place, but it does have its distant basis in facts.
So if a cyclist runs a red light and nearly knocks me over, it's not the cyclist causing that, even if they could easily have just stopped at the light?
Sounds like it's the light that's causing it, given how much you're focusing on the light in your comments. Take the light out of the picture (which probably requires taking cars off of that road) and what would happen?
You seemed to imply that safety at intersections between cyclists and pedestrians needed or was helped by traffic lights. I don't think that's true.
> Regardless, it's pretty eccentric to suggest that traffic lights are responsible for collisions caused by people who ignore them. However safe a particular intersection currently is, removing traffic lights from it will make it less safe than that.
There's an increasingly mainstream view that just the opposite is true, see e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/04/remova...
Safety is helped in London, in the real world, when people don't run red lights. You seemed to be saying that this wouldn't be the case if there were no cars, which is totally irrelevant.
>There's an increasingly mainstream view that just the opposite is true
Try crossing a busy road which doesn't have any lights. I have one of those on my walk back from work, and it's by far the most dangerous crossing.
Maybe. If stricter enforcement of red lights leads to fewer people cycling, it might lead to more deaths overall.
> You seemed to be saying that this wouldn't be the case if there were no cars, which is totally irrelevant.
You asked about who or what was "causing" the issue.
> Try crossing a busy road which doesn't have any lights. I have one of those on my walk back from work, and it's by far the most dangerous crossing.
It's dangerous if cars are driving fast. Other changes (e.g. narrower streets, speed limits) can make it very safe. Look at the article's example: crossing Exhibition Road, without lights, feels safer than light-based crossings IME.
I did not call for stricter enforcement. Cyclists could choose to stop running red lights without any changes in the law or how it is enforced.
>You asked about who or what was "causing" the issue.
You seem in effect to be saying that we can’t blame cyclists for running red lights here in the real world because you can imagine some kind of cycletopia where lights wouldn’t necessary. If a cyclist runs a red light and consequently crashes into me while I'm crossing the road, the cause of that accident is, obviously, the cyclist and not the light. Removing the light isn't going to make bikes any easier to see, or cyclists any more careful. (Those of a careful disposition wouldn't be running red lights at pedestrian crossings in the first place.)
Cyclists are free to argue for different traffic regulations and infrastructure, but in the mean time, they should follow the rules and stop endangering others.
True, but that would carry a similar risk of leading them to cycle less.
> After all, the accident would have happened just the same if the light wasn't there.
Disagree; you would likely have acted differently if the light wasn't there. If you were right, we'd see cyclists colliding with pedestrians at no-motor-traffic junctions all the time, since none of them have lights. But we don't.
Nonsense.
>you would likely have acted differently if the light wasn't there.
I don't act differently when there are no lights, since I know that most cyclists ignore the lights anyway!
>If you were right, we'd see cyclists colliding with pedestrians at no-motor-traffic junctions all the time, since none of them have lights. But we don't.
Cyclists are harder to see when there are cars on the road, so that's an irrelevant comparison.
In any case, cyclists do collide with pedestrians in the absence of motor vehicles. The canal tow paths in London are particularly bad for this, for example:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/oct/03/transport.cycling...
Then it sounds like cyclists ignoring the lights aren't putting you in any real danger, and that "cyclists choosing to stop running red lights" as you suggest would do you very little good.
> In any case, cyclists do collide with pedestrians in the absence of motor vehicles.
They do, occasionally. But notice how no-one in that article even mentions the possibility of introducing traffic lights, because they're so obviously not a solution to anything.
That is simply a non sequitur.
>"cyclists choosing to stop running red lights" as you suggest would do you very little good.
It would stop them frequently nearly crashing into me, which would certainly be good from my perspective.
>But notice how no-one in that article even mentions the possibility of introducing traffic lights
Erm, because it wouldn't be possible to add traffic lights on a canal tow path. The point is that ignoring traffic lights is dangerous, not that traffic lights should be put everywhere.
https://www.gasholder.london/2017/02/09/cyclists-vs-pedestri...
I don't advocate crashing into pedestrians. But the best way to avoid crashing into pedestrians is to pay attention to pedestrians, not to lights.
> Erm, because it wouldn't be possible to add traffic lights on a canal tow path. The point is that ignoring traffic lights is dangerous
None of your articles seems to think that traffic lights are helpful.
FWIW cyclists are allowed to ride 2 abreast in the UK (occupying the full lane), the correct procedure as with any slow moving traffic in front of you is to be patient and wait for a safe place to pass.
A cyclist riding close to the kerb increases danger, you invite cars to pass at higher speed and you leave no margin for error then - one wiggle and you're toast.
More generally we should design urban communities so that things like pedestrian crossings are not even neccessary.
I don't know... cars stay on the road where I live. Cyclists will happily ride on the pavement and justify it with 'the road's too dangerous to cycle on'. They seem to consciously be happy with endangering people more vulnerable than themselves in order to keep themselves safe... which is what they criticise car drivers with.
I'm more concerned in practice about my three-year old daughter being hit by a cyclist on the pavement, than by a car on the road.
The city seems happy with endangering people. Parents seems happy with endangering babies there. No one has ever been charged with endangering of children, and I have never seen anyone stopping a parent with a stroller and telling them that they are endangering their child by walking on a bike road. If anything I also see an increase of strollers during the time when the road is full of ice. The order in which the city clear out snow and ice is roads > bike roads > pavement, and parents with strollers do not want to walk in snow. Given the alternative most seems to pick the bike road.
Other fun participants I have seen on exclusive bike roads is 4-5 year olds learning to bike with training wheels. Just like with strollers I always give them a bit extra distance when passing them, which might explain why there has been zero deaths or injuries from bike hitting strollers or young children even through those are common sights on bike roads. If one wonder the cause of that I think one just need to check the average speed of bikes in a city and the reaction and braking speed.
I am sure if a parent would take a stroller and walk on the road against car traffic then social service would have a very strong opinion about it. That would actually be unsafe behavior and traffic records support in every way that bikes are safe and cars are not. Being more concerned about a three-year old being hit by a cyclist on the pavement than by a car on the road is flying against statistics, and I would say actual behavior. Would you honestly say that your reaction to a parent walking with a stroller on a bike road would be identical to a parent walking with a stroller against car traffic on the road?
A lot of tensions and unnecessary fear would be resolved if we just applied common sense and speed limits to roads. Have pavement and most bike roads like today but put a speed limit to that of a running person (around 15km/h (9mph)). At those speed and lower there is no safety concerns and tolerance between cyclists and pedestrians should be encourage. Then we have fast bike lanes with a max speed of 30km/h (18mph) and city car roads with the more common 40km/h (24mph) and 50km/h (31mph), both which pedestrian use should be discouraged because of the danger from increased reaction, braking and stopping time. If two roads of different speed cross then the lower speed limit should be used and who ever is faster should yield, and if accidents still happens then traffic lights, speed bumps, cameras and other methods to reduce speed should be applied.
By focusing on reaction, braking and stopping time you get a fairly decent prediction model of accident rates. This is what our assessment about what is dangerous should be based on.
The dream for cyclists is a dedicated lane with clear separation from the road. This is almost utopia atm.
That sounds bad. I would not do that and would not support any cyclist who did. It's not something I see happening where I live.
> I'm more concerned in practice about my three-year old daughter being hit by a cyclist on the pavement, than by a car on the road.
Have you looked at the statistics for how often those things actually happen, and how bad the consequences are when they do?
A bike can do a lot of damage and harm once it goes beyond walking speed and even at walking speed it can be quite dangerous.
I get that not every cyclists runs the red lights but those that do are a clear danger to traffic safety.
I am not suggesting that bad behaviour should be legal. Merely that it is not morally comparable to dangerous driving.
They often aren't severe, more so police are able to remove extremely intoxicated people from a public location.
The difference is that pedestrian and cyclists don't weigh tons but can still severely endanger others and themselves.
Why a driving ban rather than a walking ban? Doesn't the same logic suggest giving cyclists a driving ban rather than a cycling ban?
You don't get a cyclist ban, to my knowledge, since it isn't licensed. This is mostly about deriving how responsible you are with a car from how responsible you behave in traffic when you're not a car.
The road is supposed to be used responsibly, driving or cycling drunk shows you don't care about that. Everyone here uses Taxi, public transport or friends for transport if drunk.
The pedestrian absolutely notices whether they were hit by a tonne of metal going 40mph or 20kg going at 20mph. Regulation should be proportionate to how much risk you impose on others. Given how many more people get killed by car drivers than by cyclists, we should be looking to make driving tests much stricter before we even begin to worry about regulating cycling.
I've met plenty of people that do not use the internet have irrational hatred for cyclists in the UK.
It seems like it's a car culture thing. And whenever a driver sees a cyclist doing something wrong it confirms the idea to them.
Regardless of whether there's any merit to it.
To my knowledge, speed and braking distance is the biggest factor for accident rates and injuries. The average bike speed in a flat city was last time I checked around 12km/h (7mph), which has a very short braking distance. Unsurprising the accident rate of bike hitting pedestrians is extremely rare for a flat city, where the top listed accident rate for bikers here in Sweden is 1) person falling off the bike with no other person involved, 2) car hitting bike in a crossing where the car is running a speed usually above the speed limit.
A typical car driving at 50km/h (30mph) has a reaction distance of 21m, braking distance of 14m and total stopping distance of 35m. This is why efforts to reduce high accident rates for crossing involving cars is done by reducing the speed through speed bumps, cameras that publicly display the speed, and additional traffic lights. In the cases where those efforts are not enough there is usually talk about separating the traffic since the lowest speed limit is 30km/h and that still produce a risky braking distance for highly trafficked crossings.
A motorist runs a red light, it's one stupid motorist. A pedestrian crosses a road dangerously, it's one stupid pedestrian. A cyclist runs a red light, it's all cyclists. I have no idea how that works.