Weird that some people have all these experiences being hit by bikes, which I never have, and no experience with car drivers going out of their way to be aggressive, which I certainly have on many occasions. It makes wonder if maybe…just maybe…the behavior of motorists and cyclists are not actually constant across the world. 
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Yep. It’s less a vehicle or mode of transport thing and more of a people thing. Come to think of it most things of this nature tend to be people things.
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Cyclists are people, and many of us (people) find the impersonal pronoun “it” pretty insulting.
This is one of two variations on a very common method of making a left turn, the other being to proceed into the intersection on green, then pull to the right and stop in front of the cars waiting on the cross street to wait for the light to change, which is often taught in cycling classes and encouraged with painted waiting boxes for left-turning cyclists:
I do both forms of two stage left quite often, as merging through several lanes of car traffic to reach the left turn lane is often quite dangerous, especially on streets with trolley tracks. When done properly and with respect for pedestrians, they are safer and save time for everyone involved.
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Fair question. In the city I don’t recall, every having any issues with aggressive drivers. If there was anything it wasn’t memorable. But on the Interstate aggressive driving is so common I couldn’t begin to count all the times. It’s one of the reasons I was so happy to get rid of my car a couple years ago. That concrete strip of hell is inaccessible to me and I don’t miss it one bit.
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Or the rider. Almost all of the “accidents” I have had have been due to my own over-confidence/stupidity/lack of attention.
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I fully agree once bicycling on roads is safe. While roads are designed for the exclusive use of cars with maybe a splash of paint designating a “bicycle lane” on only one side of the street with no consideration for turning I have no problem at all with bikes jumping onto the sidewalk when they feel unsafe in the road if only because a bike hitting a person is less likely to kill someone than a car hitting a bike.
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The strange all-too-common psychological phenomenon…
Another therefore:
- At no point does any amount of data ever flip a fundamental attribution error to actual fact.
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Reading this it occurs to me that at least part of the disagreement here is driven by different places having different driving cultures. Slow moving left-hand-turners driving into a red light a few feet behind another left-hand-turner I see all the time. But gunning it towards a yellow, missing it by several seconds and going through anyway when the pedestrians in the other direction have a walk signal? If I saw someone do what you’re describing I’d take a picture of their license plate and call the police. There are definitely places where driving like a murderer isn’t generally accepted.
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Well, I don’t had any personal empirical data on what will happen if a car hits me. Theoretically, of course, the car has vastly more potential, but a car has never put me in the hospital twice, bike impacts have.
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A cyclist is safe, like a pillar or a wall!
No, a cyclist is dangerous, like a snake or a spear!
And so on forever.
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It’s important to remember that the 5-7-5 pattern is meant to be followed in Japanese, and great haiku don’t necessarily follow the pattern in English.
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As a Pedestrian, this does not sound like a great trade-off for me.
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Nor to me as a cyclist. Cycling on the sidewalk is probably less safe than in the road, at least in places with street parking and many cross streets and driveways. You’re hidden behind parked cars and moving faster than a pedestrian, and drivers making turns into streets or driveways aren’t expecting you and won’t see you until it’s too late.
If there’s not a good bike lane, wide enough, swept clean, and free from parked cars and the door zone, I’ll take the rightmost traffic lane for my own safety. Sorry, impatient drivers, you’ll just have to wait until I can safely move over or you can change lanes to pass.
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And as a cyclist I’ve been hit by three cars and another three as a driver, never by a cyclist. Perhaps we should look at actual stats, New York both has some of the best stats on the issue and is known for amazingly aggressive cyclists. Cyclists killing three pedestrians in 2019 was enough to garner NY Post headlines about unchecked cyclist killings in the city. There have been 5 killed by cars this week. Direct trip comparisons are tough, but we have data on commutes. About 1% of New Yorkers commute by bike and 29% by car. There were 181 pedestrians killed by drivers, as well as 66 drivers in 2019. Even accounting for share of trips cars are more dangerous.
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I call that crime “jaywalking on a bicycle”.
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I think at least one other factor applies.
When someone in a car does something stupid and dangerous, he and I are both protected by metal and airbags, reducing the chance of death.
When a cyclist does something stupid in front of me, it is TERRIFYING, because of how easily my car might have killed the cyclist.
I don’t want to have the guilt of killing someone, even if it is ultimately his fault.
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But I, on foot or on my bike, am not. And drivers do dangerous shit all the time. The danger in that situation only exists because one of the parties involved is in a massive steel box moving at 30+mph. And the data show that even as cars get ever safer for their occupants, they are becoming more and more deadly to people who are not in cars, as @noahdjango pointed out above.
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Thing is that this isn’t that likely to kill you. Everyone else adjusts around drivers who are the most likely to kill and least likely to be killed when different kinds of road users run into each other. So road death rates have plummeted over the last few decades because:
Cars are much safer for the occupants when you crash them
They are more deadly when they crash into another kind of road user so most roads (most roads are rural) don’t have pedestrians or cyclists on them.
During the strict lockdown last year road deaths rose despite traffic being around 30% of normal as people started walking and cycling for exercise, much more, and cars normally constrained by the speed of congested traffic sped up. Had to cycle to work a couple of times and it was crazy out there.
Cars still were parked illegally everywhere too. All over the pavements as usual.
Being an arsehole at red lights in the city doesn’t kill people, it’s drunken driving and speeding that does that. Drinking and driving is, fortunately, no longer acceptable. Though it seems to be in some places I’ve been (Italy, Thailand stand out).
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