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I’m not sure. It’s one thing to hate cyclists. It’s a slightly different thing to believe that if two vehicles come to the same stop sign at an intersection and one of them is driving a car and one a bicycle, that the car is statistically more likely to stop. If you then look at a random cyclist on the road who isn’t at a stop sign, and think “Oh that is one of those vehicles that that is statistically less likely to stop at an intersection” is this an “Attribution Error”? Does the “Attribution Error” only happen if you somehow go from “The car is statistically more likely to stop than the bicycle” to “bicycles are unlikely to stop”? In this case, is it an attribution error to conclude something like “Vaccine B is ineffective” from learning “Vaccine A is more effective than Vaccine B”?
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I’ve often thought about this when I’ve been using bike infrastructure. Motorists don’t want to share the road with cyclists. Cyclists advocate for purpose-built cycling infrastructure. And when they suceed in getting some purpose-built cycling infrastructure put in place, it fills up with skateboarders, joggers, people on hoverboards - basically anyone who is going slightly faster than a regular pedestrian. And when cyclists complain, they are told “well, you have to share”.
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I do this all the time, and used to do it quite a bit in cars even (when I knew I was coming up on a very long light with not that much cross traffic); make a right on red, turn left into next driveway and flip around, proceed straight or make a right. Perfectly safe depending on exact circumstances.
I do think it’s remarkable how few there are. It’s anarchy in action. People focus on the high raw number of fatalities, while missing the fact that millions of people everyday are whizzing around in deadly projectiles at 75mph, often with merely a foot between them. Give people the right incentives, and self-regulation is very possible.
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Except it’s not. The number of cars I see blow through lights on a regular basis is zero. The number of cyclists I see do it is >0, even though there are far fewer cyclists than cars in my city. And a car blowing through a red light is a significant enough event that it would be notable and I would remember it. So I’m pretty sure this isn’t a case of selective recall biasing me against cyclists.
That doesn’t mean that all cyclists are law red light runners, but it does, I think, mean the number of cyclists that are red light runners is vastly greater than the number of car drivers who are, at least in my city. I have no idea how that applies to law breaking in other contexts, if at all.
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The headline seems to imply that bicyclists are not really people.
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Not just bad, actively hostile urban planning. The privilege that car drivers are afforded is unexamined and assumed. It’s not an accident, it is a result of industry lobbying.
Just yesterday I was with my children and we encountered a “kissing gate” this is an anti-bike measure (one that we had to get through to get to the bike parking stands). My children wanted to know why anyone would put that there and I explained that it was there to show that the car was the default mode of transport and that anything else was there on sufferance. So pushing a pram or using a wheelchair was not an option. Good citizens use cars. They pay more taxes (and externalise more costs like good capitalists). A bit of snow and the cleared roads piled into bike lanes and the pavements dangerous for all the old people who need to walk to the local shop for basic provisions tells you more about the priorities capitalism has: snow in an urban environment isn’t dangerous for cars, you get the odd very slow speed crash, but is for cyclists and pedestrians, particularly elderly ones. But the municipal priority will be the cars.
Also: insurance companies are the very scum of the earth.
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Statistically, I see dozens if not hundreds of more cars than I do bicyclists every day, yet I easily see many more bicyclists running stop signs/lights than cars in any given week, which weighs strongly against an observational bias in favor of motorists. (Yes, I do notice when a car runs a stopsign/stoplight, as my life and safety depends upon recognizing the frequency of such events. That’s the whole basis of what used to be called defensive driving.) Beyond that, justify how running a stop sign in any vehicle is not a deliberate rejection of traffic laws for the sake of their own convenience.
The assumption that all bicyclists are dicks is unwarranted, but their proportionate illegal behavior justifies the conclusion that a higher proportion of cyclists drive like dicks. At the end of the day, I don’t care much about what others believe, but I care how they behave.
Attribution bias plays no part in this determination. We can only make determinations based upon the evidence provided. Otherwise, we are left with indecision on all sides, which makes idiots inexplicably yield when they clearly have the right of way, believing they are being ‘polite’.
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The number I see is dependent on the number of red lights I see. It’s that multiplied by at least one, but regularly by three. Cars blow through them so late the pedestrian crossing light can be green. This is so common that my children have always known not to assume a car will stop just because the light is red and the pedestrian has a green light. They’ve been taught by the arrogance of car drivers to wait until they stop to cross as they are unlikely to accelerate from stop into you, but all bets are off when they are doing 50 KMH on a suburban road.
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I’ve got plenty of personal anecdotes just like the rest of this thread, but here are some useful facts:
automobile-related deaths are the highest death cause that isn’t disease in the world:
pedestrian deaths in the US caused by automobiles have increased over 45% over the past decade:
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That is a fair point, showing that I do have some unconscious bias. I was thinking of vehicles, be they bikes or cars, blowing through lights during the middle of the cycle. But I didn’t consider all the people running red lights at the end of the green/yellow cycle, or all of those who ignore pedestrian right of way for crossing at corners (I like the new leading pedestrian interval settings that turn the walk light on first before turning on the green for vehicles.)
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As a pedestrian, I have never been hit by a car. I have, however, been hit by bicycles eight times; four times on the sidewalk and four times while crossing the street. With all of the street crossings, I was crossing with the light.
I now never expect a cyclist to follow the law, and try to always stay well away from them. They have proven to be far more dangerous to me than any car.
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as a pedestrian, I have been hit by a car.
as a pedestrian, I have never been hit by a bicycle.
as a cyclist, I have been hit by six cars.
as a driver, I have never hit anyone.
as a driver, I have never been hit by another driver.
so, anecdotally, this means that motorists protect their own and target non-motorized individuals.
or we could both be statistical outliers.
good thing there is plenty of research to cut through the bullshit. see my above post for links.
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When I lived in Brampton, Ontario, I was positive the cabs were trying to kill me. Near daily episodes, and I was driving a car! Never have been in an accident of any kind but plenty of close calls there.
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Hey, no fair: I’m here to do exactly that (well except I didn’t read the article) and your dang comment made me stop.
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In some states, municipal and school bus drivers have immunity from certain lawsuits, which can make a bad situation even worse. I’ve seen people forced to handle losses when bus drivers were clearly at fault for accidents and damage. Not sure what the insurance companies do about it, either.
Even if the victim sues, some states/towns/districts place limits on damages when suing school bus drivers*. As you mentioned earlier, the results for the cyclist and/or their families can be devastating.
ETA: *or municipalities that employ them
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bikes have proven to be far more dangerous to me than any car
Hang on there a second. 1/2 m v^2 says that their lower mass makes them less dangerous to you, and the fact that they are usually lower velocity than a car makes them (less dangerous)^2 to you.
I think we can all agree that getting hit by anything sucks, but I’m pretty sure we would not be reading your comment if you had been hit by cars 8 times because one of those 8 would have been your last.
Physics works.
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Thanks for the info. You will never see me tangle with a bus for sure.
Reminds me of an incident in NYC when a friend of mine, standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross and a muni bus made the turn around the corner but came up too short and over the curb a bit and clocked my fiend with the mirror. The bus took off and metro PD didn’t give a rats ass because he wasn’t “bleeding”. He went to the hospital and the doc told him he had a concussion. He missed a couple of days work and in the end didn’t feel like fighting the battle with the bus line.Seems like it truly was a futile fight.
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The cabs in NYC are known to have issues with bikers in general, but if you’re also a messenger… forget about it. It’s all out war between cabbies and bike messengers.
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I have about 10 years of accumulative time commuting by bike in city traffic.
I have years of commuting by walking, bus, and car as well.
I am considering moving and if I can, to start commuting by bike again. I think it is the ideal mode provided a city provides safe ways to get from A to B.
So just to be clear I like bikes and cyclists .
With all of that said there is a subset of cyclists that have a FUCK YOU attitude. If I am walking they will run me over. If I am riding they will aggressively pass me as close as possible because I am not fast enough. If I’m driving they will cut in front of me and expecting I can alter the rules of physics and momentum.
I think this group is a minority. But they are an aggressive minority that seems bent on pissing off everyone that isn’t in the cool clique. Like the no-mask assholes having melt downs in Starbucks, encounters with them are emotional and hard to forget. And then this memory gets applied to every cyclist.
Have I ever had a bad incident with an unaware pedestrian or driver of a car. Yes. Do I recall the details? No because typically their response is “Oh shit I’m so sorry I wasn’t watching”. Which sucks especially, if the person is driving a big metal box. I get that. I agree drivers have a greater responsibility to pay attention because they pose a greater threat to others. But its not as memorable as someone intentionally being an aggressive dick because FUCK YOU.
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