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Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

> 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 iker AT ANY TIME because bikes are NOT reliable when roads are not 100% correctly maintained.

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.

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That's not true when you're forced to do 10km/h for prolonged periods of time (that's hindrance to traffic and you can usually get a fine for that) because you can't safely overtake a bycicle that's going in a zig-zag way on the lane to avoid a myriad of potholes, or because it's an uphill road and it's too physically taxing for the biker, sice he choose the wrong vehicle for the wrong road.

That's only stress and useless danger for everyone involved.

> sice he choose the wrong vehicle for the wrong road

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?

> 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.

Yeah, more like 20km/h, the horror. And any young cyclist will take it to 30kmh which happen to be the limit in crowded city center. And with electric bikes, i think even elderly could make it. Idc anyway, my 2nd gear lowest speed is 18km/h and i am slower than most cyclists.

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.

What people like you don't get is that 90+% of the roads are open for all kinds of traffic.

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.

A digger, a horse, a motorbike, a roman chariot or a cow are all preferable alternatives to cyclists on road, for the simple fact that, with all other means of transport, you get a lot more leeway if something goes awry for whatever reason (e.g. a pothole).

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.

> With a bike in front of you, you are always 0.8 seconds away from committing a murder.

You chose the 800 millisecond value by choosing to follow too closely.

You can make it whatever interval is most convenient for you.

If you are going to hit a cyclist because the cyclist dodged a pothole then you are not leaving enough safety distance.

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.

And what's the danger here? If having to drive slowly makes you so angry you can't drive safely, you shouldn't be driving at all.

> 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.

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.

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