I completely agree with the article. Car drivers have to have a lot more responsibility for their actions. They are already the worst part of every city, with their excessive honking, stinky exhaust and lack of awareness of their surroundings. So far, while riding on the side of a road, I've had a pickup truck driver trying to kill me in the US; numerous buses and trucks trying to hit me or run me off the road, SUV drivers and passengers trying to hit me with garbage and multiple people threatening me with violence (and a bus who had actually succeeded in hitting me) in Lithuania. Just over several years of commuting. In addition, I closely follow traffic rules, and always do the hand signals for turns. Basically, ride the bike the same way as I would drive a car. I also refuse to ever ride a bicycle on the sidewalk.
In contrast, in Denmark, the drivers were very aware of every bicycle and pedestrian and much more relaxed towards them. It felt like utopia there, and according to the locals, the strict liability laws are a large part of it. Another significant reason is that Danes in general are much more calm and relaxed than anyone else I've seen so far.
Us cyclists are responsible for our safety too. All too often I see cyclists:
- running reds and stop signs
- riding without helmets (it's all fun and games until you fly through someone's rear windshield and die because helmets are too ugly and bulky for you)
- riding on the wrong side of the road
Helmets actually have two effects that increase fatalities:
1) Psychological: motorists give less safety margin to helmeted cyclists.
2) Cyclist reduction: locales which require helmets have sharply fewer cyclists on the road, which is is strongly correlated with less empathy from drivers and more cyclist fatalities.
Helmet laws are one of the worst possible ideas if you want cycling to be safe.
There are strong arguments for either case, but I think it comes down to this: Helmet laws make intuitive sense in situations/jurisdictions where cyclists and cars share the road directly -- i.e., places without dedicated infrastructure to separate the two.
Cyclists riding on roads with cars (even with painted bike lanes, but especially without them) are presumably at much greater risk of experiencing a fatal conflict, although statistics about this are less available than one would hope. Cyclists on dedicated cycle paths are at scarcely greater risk than pedestrians, who would probably object to being made to wear a helmet.
Given the above, I would support a compromise law that mandated helmet use on public (car) roads, but not in residential areas or dedicated bike paths.
I live in NZ we've had helmet laws for a long time. As a teen I had a bad crash. I felt the thud as my helmet hit the concrete then the grind as it slid across the rough road surface. If I'd not been wearing that helmet it would have been my skull left to deal with that initial thud and my face to deal with the friction while sliding along the road. I was pretty banged up but not as badly as I could have been. I was a teen no way I'd have worn a helmet if I wasn't required too.
It's a situation where what's best for one person isn't always the same as what's good for everyone.
If they weren't required, there would have been more cyclists, possibly a better separated lane for you and the driver (assuming one was involved) would have been more used to and aware of the importance of sharing the road with those like you.
If you're planning on mountain biking or doing certain commutes, it absolutely makes sense to wear a helmet and yet, that doesn't mean that helmet laws are good for the safety of the populace as a whole (and this isn't even getting into 3rd order effects like heart disease in the sedentary, pollution related diseases, etc).
Folks who post on Hacker News rely on their mind almost exclusively for their income. And yet, when bicycling comes up, there are always advocates for doing away with helmets and for attempting to up the penalties for cars. Few, if any, appear to realize that cars are always going to have the "right of weight" on the road.
If you want to tighten up the laws for car drivers, that's fine - but it's still going to be the bicyclist who suffers the most in such an accident. Penalties won't help them when they are dead, a vegetable, or otherwise critically injured. Penalties won't stop a hit from the head from damaging the brain. Penalties won't stop cars from hitting bikers.
Look at the drunk driving penalties in the US. They are some of the harshest driving related penalties on our books; yet some people still drive drunk (and that's not counting those who drive (or ride) at a few percentage points below the legal limits).
And here's where I start getting into preachy territory: it's ultimately up to the biker to keep themselves alive; car drivers aren't going to magically become perfect drivers, and accidents will still happen. If you want to ride a bicycle on the same road as cars which weigh thousands of pounds that can move at speeds more than double your own, the only thing that will ultimately keep you alive is you.
Well yes, but the article explicitly says that in 87% of accidents, the car driver was at fault, not the cyclist, so obviously it's not the cyclist's fault.
The study doesn't differentiate between blowing through a stop sign and a rolling stop. You're drawing the conclusion you want, not what the data says.
Everyone kicks down. I've seen drivers treat cyclists like shit, and seen cyclists treat pedestrians like shit. In my hometown there have been a couple of deaths of pedestrians because cyclists are too busy being macho on their morning commute. As a pedestrian, I've been buzzed and verbally abused by cyclists riding where they're not supposed to.
Yes, the cars:cyclists thing is more dangerous to life and limb, but cyclists:pedestrians has the same proportion of arseholes. I'm not sure who pedestrians 'kick down' to, but no doubt they'd be the same if they do.
My city had 47 pedestrians killed by cars in 2016, and back in 2010 we had the first and last known pedstrian-cyclist collision fatality, it was an 80 year old man.
How many cars do you have driving and how many bicycles? If the number of cars is greater than 47x the number of bikes, might completely flip that outcome.
I just read the article about statistics errors including base rate fallacy on HN today, worth a read:
Another caveat would be how many are sharing the same space. In a lot of places cyclist and pedestrians are sharing a footpath or some sort of shared cycle path. There aren't nearly as many shared spaces between cars and people.
I'm not sure why the focus is so much on the death rate. To me, my comment reads more about the arsehole behaviour of various groups. I even literally state that at the start of the second paragraph. The GP is talking about drivers acting like arseholes, and I'm responding that cyclists act like arseholes too, and so would pedestrians if they had someone to 'kick down' to.
Interesting, though, that you seek to 'excuse' the death of the pedestrian in your city 'because he's old', but don't bother to note the age spread of the vehicular deaths.
I don't know where they get this statistic from. Is it provable? In Sweden they separate cars and bikes and there are much fewer accidents as a result. I heard a cyclist had thrown their bike at a horse because they felt the track was 'bikes-only' (it wasn't and an incredibly stupid thing to do even if it was). Everyone will say cyclists do this, motorists do that, stupid jaywalking pedestrians... blah blah. People are dicks whatever mode of transportation they use and the law should reflect that.
That is precisely the reason why I refuse to ride on sidewalks and always stop at zebra crossings to let people pass. I tend to think that the person in a higher momentum vehicle has much more liability for his actions, i.e. baby < kid < adult < bicycle < car < SUV < bus.
I commute by bicycle. Cars are generally something I don't have to worry about because my commute is mainly not on roads and where it is there are generous bike lanes (although I have been almost hit by cars, deliberately, before). The non-road portions of my commute are on paths that are marked at regular intervals with words and symbols noting that the paths are shared between pedestrians and cyclists.
Every "close encounter" with a pedestrian I've ever had has been because the pedestrian, usually with his face buried deeply into his phone, starts swerving to the side or, worse, abruptly turns. Responsibility is on all parties in spaces where there is shared traffic, not just cyclists or cars or pedestrians.
I cycle a lot myself but I would agree that a lot of cyclists ride like idiots. They are irresponsible around cars and irresponsible around pedestrians. It always bothers me when I see them ride around at night without lights at high speed. That's just asking for trouble.
In my hometown I regularly see pedestrians walking/jogging in the bike lanes, even though the sidewalks are clear. I just think every group has its assholes.
In my hometown, runners use the bike lanes and cyclists use the sidewalks. Not quite that extreme, but true in many cases.
I run in bike lanes to avoid the dip and rise at every driveway and to make myself more visible to drivers at intersections. I will hop on the sidewalk if a cyclist is approaching.
I've seldom had a cyclist stop for me at a crosswalk (when crossing), when they either have a stop sign, or I had the green but there were no cars in the opposite direction. It seems as though they felt I "got in their way" meanwhile as a pedestrian I have the right of way and I should not have to tie my crossing to avoid their path.
Comments
I completely agree with the article. Car drivers have to have a lot more responsibility for their actions. They are already the worst part of every city, with their excessive honking, stinky exhaust and lack of awareness of their surroundings. So far, while riding on the side of a road, I've had a pickup truck driver trying to kill me in the US; numerous buses and trucks trying to hit me or run me off the road, SUV drivers and passengers trying to hit me with garbage and multiple people threatening me with violence (and a bus who had actually succeeded in hitting me) in Lithuania. Just over several years of commuting. In addition, I closely follow traffic rules, and always do the hand signals for turns. Basically, ride the bike the same way as I would drive a car. I also refuse to ever ride a bicycle on the sidewalk.
In contrast, in Denmark, the drivers were very aware of every bicycle and pedestrian and much more relaxed towards them. It felt like utopia there, and according to the locals, the strict liability laws are a large part of it. Another significant reason is that Danes in general are much more calm and relaxed than anyone else I've seen so far.
Us cyclists are responsible for our safety too. All too often I see cyclists:
- running reds and stop signs - riding without helmets (it's all fun and games until you fly through someone's rear windshield and die because helmets are too ugly and bulky for you) - riding on the wrong side of the road
We should be treated just like slower cars
Helmets actually have two effects that increase fatalities:
1) Psychological: motorists give less safety margin to helmeted cyclists.
2) Cyclist reduction: locales which require helmets have sharply fewer cyclists on the road, which is is strongly correlated with less empathy from drivers and more cyclist fatalities.
Helmet laws are one of the worst possible ideas if you want cycling to be safe.
There are strong arguments for either case, but I think it comes down to this: Helmet laws make intuitive sense in situations/jurisdictions where cyclists and cars share the road directly -- i.e., places without dedicated infrastructure to separate the two.
Cyclists riding on roads with cars (even with painted bike lanes, but especially without them) are presumably at much greater risk of experiencing a fatal conflict, although statistics about this are less available than one would hope. Cyclists on dedicated cycle paths are at scarcely greater risk than pedestrians, who would probably object to being made to wear a helmet.
Given the above, I would support a compromise law that mandated helmet use on public (car) roads, but not in residential areas or dedicated bike paths.
I live in NZ we've had helmet laws for a long time. As a teen I had a bad crash. I felt the thud as my helmet hit the concrete then the grind as it slid across the rough road surface. If I'd not been wearing that helmet it would have been my skull left to deal with that initial thud and my face to deal with the friction while sliding along the road. I was pretty banged up but not as badly as I could have been. I was a teen no way I'd have worn a helmet if I wasn't required too.
It's a situation where what's best for one person isn't always the same as what's good for everyone.
If they weren't required, there would have been more cyclists, possibly a better separated lane for you and the driver (assuming one was involved) would have been more used to and aware of the importance of sharing the road with those like you.
If you're planning on mountain biking or doing certain commutes, it absolutely makes sense to wear a helmet and yet, that doesn't mean that helmet laws are good for the safety of the populace as a whole (and this isn't even getting into 3rd order effects like heart disease in the sedentary, pollution related diseases, etc).
Agreed. No car was involved, I hit another cyclist.
I've added one data point to the discussion, that's about it.
But mandating helmets aside, I'd highly recommend wearing one.
I don't understand this stance, personally.
Folks who post on Hacker News rely on their mind almost exclusively for their income. And yet, when bicycling comes up, there are always advocates for doing away with helmets and for attempting to up the penalties for cars. Few, if any, appear to realize that cars are always going to have the "right of weight" on the road.
If you want to tighten up the laws for car drivers, that's fine - but it's still going to be the bicyclist who suffers the most in such an accident. Penalties won't help them when they are dead, a vegetable, or otherwise critically injured. Penalties won't stop a hit from the head from damaging the brain. Penalties won't stop cars from hitting bikers.
Look at the drunk driving penalties in the US. They are some of the harshest driving related penalties on our books; yet some people still drive drunk (and that's not counting those who drive (or ride) at a few percentage points below the legal limits).
And here's where I start getting into preachy territory: it's ultimately up to the biker to keep themselves alive; car drivers aren't going to magically become perfect drivers, and accidents will still happen. If you want to ride a bicycle on the same road as cars which weigh thousands of pounds that can move at speeds more than double your own, the only thing that will ultimately keep you alive is you.
Amen!
Well yes, but the article explicitly says that in 87% of accidents, the car driver was at fault, not the cyclist, so obviously it's not the cyclist's fault.
denmark has few bike fatalaties per capita and nobody wears helmets.
cars all roll stop signs too, its normal and fine usually.
Rolling stop signs is empirically one of the most dangerous things you can do on the road.
Have any data to back that up?
70% of accidents near stop sign intersections are from stop sign violations: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14733981
Other sources will show 3000+ deaths per year from stop sign violations.
The study doesn't differentiate between blowing through a stop sign and a rolling stop. You're drawing the conclusion you want, not what the data says.
"70% of accidents near stop sign intersections are from stop sign violations"
Wow, who would have thought?
On a bicycle or in a car?
I ignore stop signs (and red lights) on a bike. I ignore certain stop signs (not all!) in a car.
Never felt unsafe doing either one.
Everyone kicks down. I've seen drivers treat cyclists like shit, and seen cyclists treat pedestrians like shit. In my hometown there have been a couple of deaths of pedestrians because cyclists are too busy being macho on their morning commute. As a pedestrian, I've been buzzed and verbally abused by cyclists riding where they're not supposed to.
Yes, the cars:cyclists thing is more dangerous to life and limb, but cyclists:pedestrians has the same proportion of arseholes. I'm not sure who pedestrians 'kick down' to, but no doubt they'd be the same if they do.
My city had 47 pedestrians killed by cars in 2016, and back in 2010 we had the first and last known pedstrian-cyclist collision fatality, it was an 80 year old man.
How many cars do you have driving and how many bicycles? If the number of cars is greater than 47x the number of bikes, might completely flip that outcome.
I just read the article about statistics errors including base rate fallacy on HN today, worth a read:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14545089
Another caveat would be how many are sharing the same space. In a lot of places cyclist and pedestrians are sharing a footpath or some sort of shared cycle path. There aren't nearly as many shared spaces between cars and people.
I'm not sure why the focus is so much on the death rate. To me, my comment reads more about the arsehole behaviour of various groups. I even literally state that at the start of the second paragraph. The GP is talking about drivers acting like arseholes, and I'm responding that cyclists act like arseholes too, and so would pedestrians if they had someone to 'kick down' to.
Interesting, though, that you seek to 'excuse' the death of the pedestrian in your city 'because he's old', but don't bother to note the age spread of the vehicular deaths.
I don't know where they get this statistic from. Is it provable? In Sweden they separate cars and bikes and there are much fewer accidents as a result. I heard a cyclist had thrown their bike at a horse because they felt the track was 'bikes-only' (it wasn't and an incredibly stupid thing to do even if it was). Everyone will say cyclists do this, motorists do that, stupid jaywalking pedestrians... blah blah. People are dicks whatever mode of transportation they use and the law should reflect that.
That is precisely the reason why I refuse to ride on sidewalks and always stop at zebra crossings to let people pass. I tend to think that the person in a higher momentum vehicle has much more liability for his actions, i.e. baby < kid < adult < bicycle < car < SUV < bus.
I commute by bicycle. Cars are generally something I don't have to worry about because my commute is mainly not on roads and where it is there are generous bike lanes (although I have been almost hit by cars, deliberately, before). The non-road portions of my commute are on paths that are marked at regular intervals with words and symbols noting that the paths are shared between pedestrians and cyclists.
Every "close encounter" with a pedestrian I've ever had has been because the pedestrian, usually with his face buried deeply into his phone, starts swerving to the side or, worse, abruptly turns. Responsibility is on all parties in spaces where there is shared traffic, not just cyclists or cars or pedestrians.
I cycle a lot myself but I would agree that a lot of cyclists ride like idiots. They are irresponsible around cars and irresponsible around pedestrians. It always bothers me when I see them ride around at night without lights at high speed. That's just asking for trouble.
You probably don't notice the 99% of cyclists who are actually behaving themselves, clowns tend to stand out like that.
Probably true.
"In my hometown there have been a couple of deaths of pedestrians because cyclists are too busy being macho on their morning commute"
Over what time frame? Can you cite sources? This would be an unusually high death rate unless you mean over many years.
In my hometown I regularly see pedestrians walking/jogging in the bike lanes, even though the sidewalks are clear. I just think every group has its assholes.
In my hometown, runners use the bike lanes and cyclists use the sidewalks. Not quite that extreme, but true in many cases.
I run in bike lanes to avoid the dip and rise at every driveway and to make myself more visible to drivers at intersections. I will hop on the sidewalk if a cyclist is approaching.
I've seldom had a cyclist stop for me at a crosswalk (when crossing), when they either have a stop sign, or I had the green but there were no cars in the opposite direction. It seems as though they felt I "got in their way" meanwhile as a pedestrian I have the right of way and I should not have to tie my crossing to avoid their path.
This is your argument in favor of the status quo? Or are you just expressing some feelings?