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Comment by leipert | Hacker News Reader

Ha. The traffic curb example is actually a good one. I don’t think it’s an excuse to build a potentially dangerous ramp because you aren’t a cyclist yourself. People who design ramps should be capable to do it properly.

Imagine it were a ramp for wheelchairs and they would have decided that a 20 degree slope is doable.

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This may be intentional.

Road to sidewalk is a speed transition point. The transition from street to sidewalk via a tight turn here is an effective traffic-calming component to slow down bikes from road speed to walking speed. That's done on freeway off-ramps, where there's a curved section or two of decreasing radii to force vehicle speeds down before they reach a stop sign or traffic light. Same problem.

This is the most likely reason. They should have put a sign, but the ramp looks right to me if you want them to match pedestrian speed when merging into a pedestrian space.

Yes, this is most likely the reason.

Which means that the author didn't "care" enough to think through what the reason might have been or didn't "care" enough for the pedestrians.

Yeah, that's why we have raised crosswalks and stop signs everywhere that a pedestrian has to interact with a car.

Or that we have safe and separated bike lanes instead of paint to keep cyclists safe, right?

Do you really think a pedestrian feels safe here with this design?

Its the same reason many dont walk places. Too many half passed attempts by people who don't care designing crosswalks and intersections for cars and not pedestrians.

I don't get what you're getting at here. But, yes, I feel safer with a cyclist going slow on a shared sidewalk rather than going at full speed.

For some reason, cyclists like to close their eyes when their fellow cyclists run stop lights, cut people off, hit pedestrians. Oh but cars are more dangerous! Yeah, no shit, but that doesn't excuse cyclists not caring about pedestrians.

This reminds me of Tempest in a Pothole, an episode of The Paper Chase TV show from 1984:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wEFBX4M5LCQ&t=2896s

The thrust is that standards of accountability are (or should be) higher for a professional than for a random reasonable person.

I agree people should be able to design things property, but I'm not sure this ramp is actually a good example. It might be! But no one is talking about an obvious issue for any ramp that would exist in that photo: it is merging bikes in to pedestrian traffic. So I'd think that you specifically want a ramp that forces the bike to slow down.

I don't disagree with you that people who design these things should be capable. That isn't what the post is about though, it's about whether or not they care.

Yeah, not doing one's job well because they don't know how to (and won't bother to figure out) is an example of not caring, fundamentally.

People who aren't competent to do a job also generally aren't competent to teach themselves the job. That's why we the whole idea of qualification, competency testing, supervision, training, etc., exists.

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