Comment by californical | Hacker News Reader

Comment by californical | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, in sane countries the rules are attempted to be defined in a fair way, and you can follow them. Not perfectly of course, but with that goal.

Like the Netherlands, it is (A) not possible to park in bike paths without going intentionally out of your way, and (B) there are reasonable alternatives, such as specific “loading zones” for passengers on nearly every block, on major roads. On minor neighborhood roads, you can just block the road for a few seconds and it doesn’t matter

The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced. It makes it so everyone always must break the law to exist in society, but will only face repercussions at the discretion of a police officer.

It means that there are effectively no laws, because everyone has slightly different definitions of when something is “right” or not, and the police only enforce the most egregious cases, but they can also target you specifically for some other reason (discrimination, bias, etc) with no repercussions, since you were breaking the law after all.

It's because the bike lanes are great PR but bad for votes, at least in the short term. City leaders love the greenwashing effect, but in the short term the percentage of people actually biking everywhere is very low, so it doesn't make sense for them to spend a ton of time and money to do it right.

In a few years they'll get to put together a committee to discuss "learnings" and maybe they'll fix it if there are enough complaints, or maybe they'll just spend their time elsewhere as usual.

I would bike more if the infrastructure was better and police aggressively dealt with our local bike theft problem (Seattle), as it stands it doesn’t make much sense to invest in it, not like when I was a college student.

America suffers from a severe execution problem in the last couple of decades. We just can’t implement and follow through with real solutions anymore.

Slightly long-term thinking is required. Every year, the city I live in, Dublin, does a survey where people crossing the canals (rough proxy for entering/exiting the city centre) are counted for a day. Twenty years ago, 50% of crossings were by public transport, 37% by car, 2% by bike (most of the remainder was talking). In 2024 (the last year for which figures are available; for whatever reason publishing this data takes _ages_), 58% was by public transport, 25% by car, 6% by bike. Cycling's definitely on the rise, and congestion would be worse without it, but it does take time for people to change their habits.

The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced.

Do you consider this insane? Your assertions that "everyone always must break the law" and "there are effectively no laws" seem a bit extreme. Ultimately, with any messy human affair, there is always going to be discretion involved, and I don't think implicitly codifying that is a bad thing. It does tend to work by and large. I've personally had much worse experiences with officials following the letter of the law than with them using discretion, but I admit I am not in any class that is often discriminated against.

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