Comment by zuminator | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zuminator | Hacker News Reader

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I know it's completely illusory considering the vastly different fatality rate, but as a pedestrian I often feel more at risk dodging cyclists, who completely disregard traffic signals, ride on sidewalks, and make frequently unpredictable movements, than cars, which follow traffic signals 95% of the time, don't generally operate on sidewalks, and tend to be more predictable, although the results can be catastrophically worse when they are negligently operated.

The number of fatalities caused by cyclists is very small, but still non-zero. Here's some stats for New York City:

> In 2022 (the last full year for which there is data), three pedestrians were killed by cyclists, while 131 pedestrians and cyclists were killed by car and truck drivers. In that same year, 313 pedestrians were injured by cyclists, while 13,190 cyclists and pedestrians were injured by car and truck drivers.[0]

I've also seen numbers that there are about 600K cycling "trips" taken each day in NYC[1], versus 4 million cars per day driving in or through the city[2].

While those stats aren't measuring exactly the same thing, it appears that there's basically a 10x order of magnitude difference between the two forms of transportation. With that in mind, looking at the previous fatality numbers, bikes are still admittedly 4-5x safer than cars given equal use.

Even so, if we managed to get rid of 80-90% of motor vehicles, we would reach a point where in raw numbers people would be more likely to be injured or killed by bicycles than cars. At that point, I wonder if insurance would be required?

[0] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2023/09/16/senior-struck-by-citi...

[1] https://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/cyclinginthecit...

[2] https://www.nydailynews.com/2019/03/21/why-not-charge-cars-t...

Your stats are backwards. Motorists do not follow the law 95% of the time, it's more like 34% of the time. It's cyclists who follow the law 95% of the time.

> A new study from the Danish Road Directorate shows that less than 5% of cyclists break traffic laws while riding yet 66% of motorists do so when driving.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2019/05/10/cyclists...

Cyclists break the law to avoid being killed by law-breaking motorists who think they're the only people who belong on the road and refuse to share it. Oh and if you want to talk just traffic signals, 84% of cyclists stop at red lights. It's nowhere near your made up 95% figure and there's no data to support that number. It's just a myth drivers tell themselves to hate cyclists.

> “The popular press portrays bicyclists as reckless and a pervasive problem with potentially dire consequences,” said the trio, noting that other studies have shown that the “red-light running bicyclist angers drivers more than any other road user behavior.”

> (A Transport For London camera study of 7,500 cyclists at five junctions found in 2007 that, contrary to popular perception, most cyclists do not run reds: 84% of the cyclists stopped at red traffic lights.)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2020/09/18/motorist...

All true. But one should also consider the cyclist's view, which is that once the cars are gone, people walk wherever and however they want, bike lane or not.

That's not to say that "it's their own fault for getting hit", of course.

The proper comparison should be cars there vs no cars there. Once the cars are gone everything changes. No longer do bikes need to swerve around cars. Suddenly there's room for them. So that could reduce the risk of them hitting a pedestrian.

Very often a car can block an entire intersection, because they gambled that they'd get through, but then got stuck. A bike will never block things like that. And I'd wager those cases are much more dangerous for all kinds of accidents. The car may be blocking visibility, so that the cyclist and the pedestrian can no longer see each other.

But my comment was actually not about safety. It was about quality of life. It just happens that it ALSO improves safety.

Cyclists can never be at fault, they can only be faulted. It's always the responsibility of drivers, transit, pedestrians to watch out. If you are a cyclist, you have the divine right to scream obscenities at anyone who dares interrupt your path.

Although, if two cyclists collide in an intersection, that's the unstoppable force vs immovable object scenario of assigning blame.

I am a bike commuter, but guys like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dFimQobFGo) give us a bad reputation.

I do see many cyclists blatantly violating traffic rules. But I'm not even sure cyclists are more prone to do so than drivers.

Stand at an intersection and count how many times light turning red does not have a car sneak right after. Or stop with half the car over the stop line. Or motorcycles being in front, in the bike-only area. Or drivers who treat bike lanes as "oh I'll just stop here 10 minutes, who cares?".

My experience with cycling in cities is that you quickly discover that basically nobody obeys any traffic rules. Cyclists are just the ones doing it the most blatantly, because honestly when they do it it's not actually that unsafe.

> I do see many cyclists blatantly violating traffic rules. But I'm not even sure cyclists are more prone to do so than drivers

I think it's likely that many cyclists blatantly violate traffic rules because they aren't even required to remotely know traffic rules before riding

There is no training or licensing required to cycle

Car drivers are required to be both licensed and insured

I would guess some percentage of cyclists, the very serious cyclists, will know the traffic rules better than almost anyone on the road. The rest will be on par or worse than your average driver

No, it's because roads are designed with cars in mind and bicycles are not cars. It does not make sense to have the same exact set of rules apply to such different vehicles.

Somehow we understand motorcycles aren't cars so we allow them to lane split but a cyclist rolling through a red light is the end of the world even though they pose minimal danger to others.

Not that this matters; we're discussing a local maxima of vehicular cycling. These issues largely disappear once you build separated cycling infrastructure.

> cyclist rolling through a red light is the end of the world even though they pose minimal danger to others.

Much like a deer running in front of traffic, cyclists behaving unexpectedly is a danger of causing other people to wreck in reaction to their behavior

> It does not make sense to have the same exact set of rules apply to such different vehicles.

It actually does because the rules define how we use the space not how we drive our vehicles

I think most cyclists who ignore rules do so because they feel unnecessary: the cyclist has an excellent view (compared to a car), and can easily see there's very little danger in turning right past a red light, or crossing a side street with no other traffic.

Exactly the same reasons in some countries it's common for pedestrians to walk against a red light.

Bike licensing has never and will never work. Plenty of cities have tried it and it doesn't make a difference.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-29/why-bicyc...

Actually, studies have shown that motorists are the biggest traffic rules offenders.

The thing is cyclists who are running the lights are more visible because it triggers the jealousy of other users having to wait who thus ignore the majority of cyclists who are actually abiding to the rules and waiting, and the huge amount of motorists who floor the accelerator and run the light after it changes (and is only a small fraction of all the rules they don't follow).

The other reasons some motorists feel cyclists obey less to the rules is because motorists feel more entitled to bend them at their wishes than other, the worse at that being the one driving as part of their professional duties.

I cycle and drive and break the traffic rules far more often on the bicycle, mostly because there is no enforcement. Also you can do less harm on the bike.

I am not surprised. Sounds like you're saying studies support exactly what I was saying.

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