“privileges” lmfao. You’re showing you’re a**
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This premise that if bicyclists just behaved themselves the roads would be some sort of lovefest is total crap. Most people on the roads are in a giant rush to get somewhere. It doesn’t matter where, but they have to get there fast. They’re in such a rush that they need to multitask while driving: talking on the phone, texting, reading, applying make-up, etc.
The prevailing attitude is that anyone who does not conform to their standards of normal, does not deserve to share the road and does not warrant respect. Our whole crazy world is reflected in our complete inability to integrate different ways of moving from one place to another. It is sad, and all of the well-behaved bicyclists in the world will not change it.
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You don’t have a problem with the whole premise of this thread? It treats an entire group of people (police officers) as “anti-cyclist” based on the limited experience of a few cyclists.
If you really think that’s the entire premise of this thread (or even the premise at all), then you need to use far more critical thinking here at boingboing. I suspect you may be used to mass media which has to always include a knee-jerk, false “balance” and/or false equivalency in order to appease those who lack critical thinking skills.
Show me anywhere in Cory’s post where he states that ALL police officers are anti-cyclist? Otherwise, you’re just arguing to hear yourself argue.
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I have and you you’re full of it. What a tragic life to feel so much rage about, and to be so frightened by the “majority” of people riding BICYCLES, which is a shitload of people of all different ages, races, classes and backgrounds.
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I recommend that mods prelock any post dealing with this topic. The conversation is NEVER productive.
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Here in Vancouver the percentage of road users who stop at stop signs unless to actually avoid an impending collision is zero. No-one, not car nor bike voluntarily stops at stop signs. Ever. I deliberatley look for it every day on my bike commute, where I pass through maybe 15 stop-sign controlled intersections each direction. In 5 years, the number of voluntary complete stops by anyone, bike or car, that I have witnessed is exactly zero.
Motorists seem to believe that their continuous law breaking behaviour (speeding pretty much 100% of the time unless slowed by corners or other cars, as well as ALWAYS rolling through stop signs, frequently failing to indicate, passing dangerously close to cyclists, texting while driving etc) is safe, but rolling through stop signs or riding on sidewalks by cyclists is unconscionably dangerous. Cyclists think the opposite. Drivers killing each other to the tune of 30,000+ deaths each year in the USA alone would seem to support the cyclists’ position.
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Stopping at lights/stop signs is law put in place to keep everyone (including cyclists) from getting hit by automobiles.
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I agree, that is why I’m surprised that people characterize cyclists as speeding through stop signs without even looking. That seems… suicidal. What I suspect actually happens is they slow down, look a bit, then go through, without ever coming to a complete stop. That would be consistent with the “slow down and yield” laws that @dragonfrog described.
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I think of myself as someone who stands up for individual rights and whose basic reflex is to question and distrust the system. I want to stand up for bicyclists, but I can’t bring myself to. I’m a frequent pedestrian and occassional driver in a major (million+) city in the Western US and I am sick and tired of reckless bicyclists continually flouting both traffic regulations and common sense. I cannot take a journey of any length around my city without watching bicyclists wantonly run red lights, ignore stop signs, cut off other vehicles, wander from sidewallk to street whenever they please, etc.
Since the start of fall semester, I’ve had to slam on my brakes to avoid hitting a cyclist who ran a stop sign in front of me (with no reflectors, after dark. I saw him coming and assumed he was going to run the sign, otherwise there would have been an accident), I’ve almost been run over while walking (in a crosswalk, with the signal) by a bicyclist who didn’t seem to think red lights applied to him, I’ve been in two buses where the driver had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a cyclist cutting the bus off, I’ve seen a car forced to choose between cutting off other vehicles in heavy traffic or hitting the cyclist who cut in front of it (the car was nearly hit by another vehicle while the cyclist pedaled away), I’ve watched a seven cyclists in row (I counted - of course, not a single one waited for the light) blow off a red-light to cut across a busy street at seven AM, I’ve watched a cyclist ride the wrong way down a one-way street into oncoming traffic rather than go a few blocks out of his way to actually follow the (legal) flow of traffic, and I have yet to see a single cyclist dismount before crossing the one-block long “no cycling” zone on campus.
And that’s just what pops to mind from the last two months. I think I ought to feel sympathy for the cyclists, but I don’t and I can’t. My bike sits gathering dust in my garage because I’d rather walk, bus, and drive than have everyone assume I’m an asshole because I’m riding a bike. So the cyclists can take their complaints and shove it. I don’t care if the cops are right or wrong - the cycling community has burned all their goodwill. I’ll take my schadenfreude and like it.
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I can see that this is a trigger topic for some folks.
You don’t need a license (or a minimum age) to drive a bicycle, so there’s no guarantee of the skill and competence of any given bicycle operator… but then again, who is a cyclist really going to hurt? I mean, are the actual bicycle injury and fatality numbers even close to what our zillion pound automobiles regularly generate? Not to mention the crushing expense of automobiles, harm to the environment of automobiles, etcetera.
(not that the automobile licensing is all that effective at producing competent drivers, mostly it is fear of death and massive accident expense that keeps drivers in line.)
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Story: Police unfairly treat members of group, harassing those who have done nothing wrong based solely on prejudice assuming people like them are petty criminals.
Response: Yeah, but have you seen members of group? My personal experience, which can’t possibly suffer from selection bias, is that they are all horrible! I don’t care if police are “fair” to them - just being in group means you deserve whatever you get!
Are you at least self-aware enough to understand why people have been bringing up attitudes to black people as a parallel?
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I agree with you, but the unions will never allow it. if the city starts firing cops, or even just giving them leave without pay, the cops’ll all go on strike and the public will capitulate.
I’m perfectly fine with arresting them, charging them with anything related to perjury, obstruction/perversion of justice, etc. and then firing them because imprisoned felons are clearly unfit for police employment, if only because of attendance issues. (And yes, this would presumably require bringing in an outside state or federal police presence, since getting officers to arrest their colleagues will probably be an uphill battle; but, y’know, if you have a problem your people can’t handle, sometimes you bring in the contractors.)
This sort of thing isn’t just a ‘gosh, that sure isn’t in the company handbook!’ problem, so there is no need to confine oneself to internal disciplinary procedures, especially if those are badly regulatory-captured.
There are few crimes more urgent than those committed under the color of law, or by those who exercise state power, so a zealous excision, by any constitutional means, would seem to be the highest priority.
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Oh most of them slow down a bit to see if anyone is coming and then speed on through. Unfortunately there are plenty of blind intersections in San Francisco as well as more than a few 2-way stops. I’ve had to slam on my breaks a few times to avoid hitting cyclists at an intersection.
If the law was that cyclists had right of way and didn’t need to yield to cars, then I’d be ok with them blowing through stop signs, but traffic laws were made to make people predictable. A good contingent of cyclists aren’t predictable.
You may think, well what’s the harm? Well, one of those times I nearly hit a cyclist because he blew through a light at a blind intersection, I nearly slammed into a pole because I was too close to him to break effectively (it was night and he was dressed in all black).
That said, I ride in San Francisco and I understand the urge to blow through stop signs. It isn’t the hills that kill you here, it is the wind and stopping and starting hugely slows you down and burns energy. I just wish there was a better solution.
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again, I’m with you. Fund it.
Well there’s your problem right there. Another nearly suicidal thing I will never understand. Riding at night with no lights, no reflectors? Do these people have a death wish?
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I find that argument absurd. The attitudes against cyclists have been well earned, they do not equate with racism.
I see. And cyclists like me, who stop at lights and obey traffic laws and light ourselves up like Christmas trees—because you don’t notice us, we don’t exist? And the drivers who I see, every day, staring down at their crotches because they’re texting while driving, or who blow through posted crosswalks at 40mph—I shouldn’t generalize from them to all drivers, right?
Unlike you, I can only speak about one city (Boston). We certainly do have some asshole cyclists, but the stereotypical Lycra-bound road warrior, weaving in and out of cars, is something I see maybe once a month—and I’m on the road for at least an hour, most days. (I remember them because I shout “Asshole!” when I see them.) Most violations I see are cyclists coming to a stop or near-stop at red lights, then opting to run them when they see no cars are coming. I’m not thrilled about that, but it’s nothing like what you’re describing as universal cyclist behavior, and the culture here is slowly changing. I see clumps of cyclists stopped at red lights every day.
If you want a catalog of poor driver behavior, I can give you one: double-parking everywhere, texting while driving, running red lights (I nearly got hit three days ago), rolling stops at stop signs, turning on red when a posted sign forbids it (I see this a lot), opening doors into bike lanes without looking, passing with insufficient clearance, honking 'cos its funny, turning right or pulling over just ahead of me, yelling insults out the window (“I hope you die” was one), and, a couple of weeks ago, hucking a power bar at me from the window of their fat-tail pickup truck.
Unlike the cyclists’, many of these behaviors run a real risk of injuring or killing me. Even so, unlike you, I don’t generalize to say all drivers are irresponsible assholes who deserve to be harassed. Instead, I went ahead and married one.
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Sweetie, “It’s nice that there are some good guy cyclists out there, but they happen to be a tiny minority” is a generalization. You are generalizing from the sample size you have witnessed with those eyeballs of yours to make a claim about the set of all cyclists.
I have never, in years of cycling in Boston and upstate New York, never seen a cyclist intentionally dent a car, with a bike lock or otherwise. Perhaps we can start with “Bike culture may be different in different cities, and I only have personal experience with some cities” and work from there?
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Again, my experience isn’t invalid because it doesn’t encompass all of time and space.
Yes, actually, it is, if you want to talk about what percentage of all cyclists obey the rules of the road. If I lived in Australia, I might go around shouting that the vast majority of mammal species have pouches, and I would not be correct.
However much personal experience you have (and leaving selection bias—the fact that rule-flouting cyclists get more of your attention—out of it), you simply cannot make the claim that “good” cyclists are “a tiny minority” of all cyclists based on a sample of even a dozen cities, and not only because I’ve offered counter-evidence of my own. If you want to make a claim like that, show me a decent national sample size, across urban and rural populations and various demographic groups; otherwise, you are conflating anecdote with data—and, yes, you are generalizing.
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Unfortunately, as a San Francisco resident, I have to say that most cyclists in San Francisco do not obey the laws. Example: We have a law that only children under twelve are allowed to ride on sidewalks. Yet most cyclists totally ignore this law, putting pedestrians at risk of injury or death, and putting themselves at risk of being sued back into the stone age or facing criminal charges. When I confront cyclists on sidewalks, they always say “I didn’t know that.” I can take you to any part of the city, including sections of Market Street, where there are dedicated bike lanes, and point out people on bicycles riding on the sidewalks, even yelling at tourists to get out of the way. In my own neighborhood, it’s an epidemic. If the San Francisco Bike Coalition really wants to do help on this matter, then they need to do much more than just publish a page on their website: http://www.sfbike.org/?sidewalks
While I have no doubt that most of the accusations of the cyclists are true, it is also true that through riding aggressively and being rude, ignoring the laws, and not even educating themselves as to what the laws are, they have a huge public relations problem with pedestrians and drivers. The problem isn’t that pedestrians and drivers in this city aren’t used to cyclists, it’s that we know our local breed too well. And don’t get me started on what Critical Mass has turned into.
Does this apply to all cyclists in the city? Of course not. In my own personal experience, I find that the more “gear” you wear and have, the more likely you are to follow the laws and behave decently. I rarely see someone wearing Lycra and a good helmet on the sidewalks. But I don’t hear them chastising the riders on the sidewalks either.
Edited to add: Hell, even the police do it: http://mpetrelis.blogspot.com/2013/07/sf-cop-rides-bike-on-sidewalk-breaks.html
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