Cycling in the city is scary because going with a bike in the traffic is straight-up insanity.
Hating someone and unnecessarily acting in ways that might cause their death because they are moving slowly due to being on a bike is, to put it mildly, psychotic.
That said, bikes are dangerous for everyone involved. If you encounter a bike you slow down all traffic (because you can't overtake safely, and that's difficult on busy roads), you have to keep distance and account to the fact that you could run over the biker AT ANY TIME because bikes are NOT reliable when roads are not 100% correctly maintained. They can stop at any time on the road for some reason without even a warning, and as soon as you touch them they're pretty much dead. That's enough to give any driver a 500% stress increase. And I'm sure for the biker is the same.
I know I sound like an asshole but if drivers hate cyclists, and pedestrians hate cyclists, and motorbikers hate cyclists, and public transport drivers hate cyclists, and truck drivers hate cyclists, and politicians hate cyclists... I'm not saying they're right, but for sure there is a recurring reason that's worth investigating.
Going slower isn't unsafe, it's safer.
You're confusing inconvenience for lack of safety. Going slower and driving as if the vehicle in front of you may stop at any time is safe, responsible driving.
That's only stress and useless danger for everyone involved.
If we use that logic we can make all kinds of arguments about a car being the wrong vehicle for the wrong roads.
For example, is an SUV in the city the right vehicle for the right road? or is that causing useless stress and danger for everyone involved?
Yes, SUVs are stupid and totally the wrong type of vehicle for a city, but for a different set of reasons.
You should overtake the cyclist the same way you overtake a car, in my country there is a fine if you're doing it wrong.
Do you have the same problems when you need to stay behind a digger or horse drawn carriages? All of this is traffic in the sense of getting from A to point B and are totally valid to use the streets payed by their tax dollars.
But you don't see people complaining about such traffic. It's always only the cycling specific traffic that is the "wrong vehicle for the road".
And it would also be the very same people who would complain about a cycle path beside the road as it's a waste of tax dollars in their mind if it's not used by thousands of cyclists a day.
I don't get it. If you just hate people that power their transportation themselves say it, but don't use such excuses.
With a bike in front of you, you are always 0.8 seconds away from committing a murder.
Again, I'm 100% in favour of totally abolishing cars in every city, I look forward to that actually. But having bikes and cars together is a glaring design failure and, quite honestly, nothing more than pure insanity.
You chose the 800 millisecond value by choosing to follow too closely.
You can make it whatever interval is most convenient for you.
In my country you need to pass cyclists with minimum 1.5m distance to the side within city/village (usually 50 kph speed limits) or 2m outside of the city/village.
That minimum distance is there especially for such situations where the cyclist needs to dodge Potholes, Glass, ...
That minimum distance is also required if the cyclist is riding on the shoulder. Some paint on between you and the cyclist doesn't keep anyone of you safe on it's own.
Yes. And this doesn't just take into account cyclists, it also takes into account car doors suddenly opening or pedestrians suddenly walking into the road.
If traffic with cars+cars have thousands lethal accidents, cars+cyclists have lots of lethal accidents, but cyclists+cyclists have almost no lethal accidents, isn't it worth investigating? Maybe the problem here is the cars on the road. Hmm, removing them is probably a good idea.
I totally and completely agree. I'm OK with car-free cities. But having both on the same road is wrong and insane.
But that's cobblers, isn't it? The roads are there for everyone. People get to use them because they're members of our society and following the law, not because they happen to use one particular type of vehicle.
Because cyclists need their own dedicated cycleways which at least in the UK there aren't many of. Cyclists are going too slow for motorised vehicles and too fast for pedestrians.
No-one should break the rules or the law. I'm curious why you think cyclists are more likely to do so. It's easy to find many examples of drivers breaking both. https://www.youtube.com/user/CyclingMikey
I actually disagree with this. You should not break the spirit of the law, and as citizens we have the moral responsibility to ensure we challenge the law where it is inappropriate or misguided by breaking it. The law is fallible and laws change over time, they often put in place for reasons that no longer apply (or are completely false premises in the first place). A great example is jaywalking - which if enforced is completely ridiculous.
Regarding cycling, the highway code wasn't really written for cycling safety. Some red lights are actually safer for a cyclist to jump, it's often safer to mount the pavement and cycle in places - sometimes there's badly designed cycle lanes that end in the middle of nowhere with no option to cycle safely, one-way streets and low traffic areas can force rule abiding cyclists down unsafe busy roads etc. etc.