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The problem isn’t the cyclists or the pedestrians, it’s that they are both combined to less than 2m of space on the side of the road, the rest being reserved for the almighty automobile.

"Sidewalks are for pedestrians."

Of course they are. If you cycle on them in the Netherlands, you'll get yelled at very fast. I don't think anyone anywhere claims that people should cycle on sidewalks. Still, in many bicycle-hostile areas, cyclists choose to do that over, you know, dying - but that doesn't take away from the fact that it's dangerous to cycle on sidewalks.

When cities don’t prioritize dedicated bike infrastructure, the sidewalk is the de-facto bike lane. Sure, cyclists are supposed to ride in traffic but that’s also super dangerous in a city like NYC.

The failure here is on the part of city planners, not the cyclists. And enforcing traffic laws against an even moderately skilled cyclist is difficult: I remember easily outrunning the bike cops when I was younger because I was simply in much better shape than them and could handle a bike a lot better in an urban environment.

> The failure here is on the part of city planners

Yeah, no, when there is a perfectly fine one way road with enough space plus a speed limit of 25 mph, having to constantly be aware of people on bicycles come at you from behind or around corners at full speed is the fault of the person who chooses to do that.

The fact that this happens every day, multiple times is because 1) the targets (e.g., moms with a stroller) are powerless in a one-on-one confrontation with these bullies; 2) the police will never enforce existing laws.

In Denmark and the Netherlands, at least when I got to bike in those places, the police would routinely ticket bicyclists. I know, I got tickets and paid fines.

You’re seriously mistaken if you think a one way road with a 25mph speed limit is “perfectly fine”.

In countries with decent infrastructure you don’t need to look out for bicyclists “coming from behind”.

I also find it interesting that the guy protected by a ton of steel is afraid of 200 pounds of mostly flesh coming from behind on a one way road and is unable to imagine how that 180 pounds of flesh on 20 pounds of metal might feel about the ton of steel coming from behind them on that “perfectly fine” 25 mph one way road.

> the guy protected by a ton of steel is afraid

This is either an example of a perfect propagandist misdirection or the best illustration of the blind spot people on bicycles and powered-bicycles have when it comes to pedestrians.

I was referring to pedestrians having to constantly have 360 degrees situational awareness because of faster traveling bicycles presenting a danger to them, to their babies or toddlers etc. The person who's riding full speed on sidewalks is already signaling the fact that they are a bully. All a parent pushing a stroller or walking their toddler can do is to try to avoid being slammed into at full speed.

As for the person driving a car, the fact is bicyclists rarely consider the momentum of those vehicles when they decide to run a red light and ram through a bunch of pedestrians crossing the street and zip through cross-traffic in through daredevil fashion. 99/100 that works out not because the bicyclist is not a complete nitwit but because everyone else is constantly looking out for them.

Lol what lies. Pedestrians don’t need to have 360 degree awareness of bikes relative to cars because they are afraid of what bikes might do to them. There has been 1 pedestrian killed by a bike in NYC over the past decade. Whereas cars kill a pedestrian nearly every other day in NYC.

Rather, pedestrians pretend to be ok with cars because they’re socialized to believe car lanes belong to cars so if they get run over to death by them (which they do all the time) they blame it on the pedestrian, whereas if they receive even the slightest scratch from a bike while stepping onto the bike lane, they blame it on the biker.

And that’s before considering the fact that bike lanes in MUC are right along the sidewalks, whereas car lanes have several buffers between them and the sidewalks.

There are no trillion dollar bike companies telling pedestrians that they are at fault for any accident and that they are responsible for not walking near bikes. There are no bike companies that invented a new crime out of whole cloth (jaywalking) that tells people that if they enter 80% of the public street space and get killed by a bike, they are legally responsible (jaywalking).

How many tickets do you think have been given for “jaywalking” on a bike lane.

The reality is your entire complaint confuses the actual solution for pedestrians, which is more bike lanes (bike lanes save pedestrian lives since they create a buffer between sidewalks and car lanes through the bike lane, and I don’t think there’s been a bike lane death of a pedestrian in the US in the last decade at least), with your socialization which basically says cars own the road and any injury caused by a car is the pedestrians responsibility, whereas bicyclists are interlopers and any injuries by them, no matter how minor, is far worse than a car killing a pedestrian.

I'm from the Netherlands originally, but also lived and cycled in England, Ireland, and New Zealand.

All the cities I lived in had comparatively decent cycling infrastructure, far from what it's like in NL, but still decent enough.

Now, I've never been to NYC but the problem there was that some people seem to hate cyclists no matter what you do. You can behave 100% correct and with care but you will still get people who feel you ought not to be on the road at all and will still try and drive you off the road no matter what you do, or they will pass you as close as possible just to annoy you, or where there's really no space at all. I've had people stop their cars just to hurl abuse at me, God know why. Things like that.

99.9% of drivers can be perfectly fine and just 0.1% are these kind of people, then you're going to run in to one of them every few days or weeks depending on how much you cycle, simple because you'll easily encounter over a hundred cars in a journey (And in reality, it seems to be far more than 0.1% unfortunately).

It's this kind of aggression, harassment, and violent assault that makes cyclists cycle on pavements. No matter what you do you're going to get shit, and at least on the pavement it's not dangerous.

Hell, on multiple occasions I've received shit for cycling on the cycle path.

You need to be an exceptionally cheerful and positive person to not become somewhat jaded by all of this.

Or let me put it in this way: if a large group of normal people are doing something wrong while performing in just one activity, then there's probably something wrong with the system surrounding that activity and not all of those people.

Cars routinely kill people unlike bicycles.

The only reason you’re more afraid of bikes than cars is because you’re socialized to accept cars.

I've personally been hit by more bikes than cars, even suffering long-term injury in once case.

Well, that’s not surprising.

Bike lanes usually adjoin sidewalks, as opposed to car lanes, which usually have some buffer.

But also because if you were hit by a car the likelihood of you being around to write a comment about it would be extremely low.