Thanks,
doubingt, for demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt that you're incapable of putting yourself in someone else's shoes for even a minute. QED.
1 in 10 cyclists stopping at stop signs is overly generous toward cyclists. Just this morning, in the 1/2 mile that I was driving on surface streets I saw 2 bicyclists and 1 ran a stop sign and the other ran a red light. In contrast, I've seen maybe 1-2 cars blow through stop signs and lights in the past year (I'm not talking racing to beat the yellow, I am talking just looking to see if there is traffic moving on the cross street and acting light the sign or light is not even there).
But there's a big difference: a reckless cyclist is at most times a minor nuisance to drivers while a reckless driver (and even a driver who isn't at all wantonly reckless, just insufficiently aware of the needs of cyclists) is a potentially lethal threat to cyclists.
Wrong. A reckless cyclist is a lethal threat to themselves, and they put themselves in at least as much danger as car drivers do.
That is not a contradiction to what I said. A reckless cyclist can be a lethal threat to themselves and yet a minor nuisance to drivers - and it would still be true that reckless drivers (including drivers that would never consider themselves as reckless) are also a lethal threat to cyclists. In other words, a reckless cyclist may well be the greatest danger to himself, and yet drivers (even drivers who consider themselves reasonable) are a much greater danger to the most reasonable cyclist than even the most reckless cyclist will ever be to drivers.
The main issue is that the greatest threat to most cyclists in urban areas is themselves. In addition, they do poser serious threats to drivers all the time. 3 times in just the past 2 days I witnessed cars have to react in dangerous ways to reckless selfish asshole behavior by cyclists. 2 of them blew through 4 way stops and then went diagonally through the intersection, such that they cut off cars in both directions then went the wrong way down one-way streets. There were cars already starting into the intersection that had to stop suddenly and could have been rear-ended. Also, just yesterday, I was passing two bikes that were in a nice safe bike lane, and just as I was passing one bike sped up into the car lane inches in front of me to pass the other bike forcing me to veer into the oncoming lane to avoid hitting them. Had a car been coming the other way at that moment, I could have been killed. I guess I need to try and train my instincts to not veer to avoid bikes coming into my lane and just hit them.
Oh, and that doesn't count the two other bikers I saw today speed right through red lights, timing it so they went between the cars coming on the cross street.
Given this thread, I made an effort the past two days to attend to every biker approaching a 4 way intersection with a stop sign or a red light. This situation occurred 4 times in the 1 mile of non-highway driving I did in the past 2 days. All 4 bikers blew the sign or light, despite cars coming on the cross road or already stopped at the sign an starting to enter the intersection. I didn't see 1 biker actually stop at a stop sign or light.
I have directly witnessed 3 serious bike wrecks in the past year, and all were blatantly the fault of reckless, law-breaking cyclist behavior, such as riding the wrong way down a one-way street, and weaving around cars then abruptly turning left without warning/signaling. Also, this is a threat to car drivers too, who are often forced to suddenly break to avoid hitting reckless cyclists, of even to veer into an oncoming lane because one cyclist illegally passes another by veering into the car lane as cars are passing (which I had to do just last night).
To pick one of your complaints:
Why pick one?
Because, unlike some people, I have no intention to make two-page essays out of my posts.
IOW, you have no intention of providing any evidence or detailed explanation and are incapable of even pretending to counter most of my points, so you pick the one where you can make up some bullshit.
I don't know whether your city's one-way streets have exceptions for cyclists (in my city, many though not all do).
It is illegal in my city, and the fact that such an inherently dangerous special exemption is given to bicyclists is some cities only goes against the overall argument of whining victimization (in addition to the fact that they are almost never cited for their constant violations of traffic laws). One way streets are generally narrow with minimal room for passing and usually slow max speeds. When a cyclist is going in the same direction, the passing speed average around 10 mph and it is easy to wait to pass the cyclist when its safest (e.g., when the road widens, or at the next stop sign in the rare change the cyclist stops).
That's a joke, right? I don't count the number of times cars overtake me in narrow lanes
literally ten meters away from a red trafic light! If they can't even refrain from doing it when it's obvious they don't gain anything from it (I'll easily catch up with them as they wait for the trafic lights), why should I trust them to wait for a safe opportunity? In certain kinds there's of streets, I've taken to the habit of riding in the middle of the lane - and that's not being reckless, it's being self-preserving. If the street widens, or if a couple of empty parking lots in a row, I'll pull to the side to let any cars pass me. I might even wait to let several cars pass. But I want to be in control of when they overtake me because it's an empirical fact that drivers cannot be trusted to wait for a safe opportunity.
Its an empirical fact that bikers cannot be trusted to obey any traffic law. I don't consider riding in the road when there is no bike lane to be reckless, but riding the wrong way down a one street is.
When the cyclist is coming in the opposite direction, you now have two vehicles coming at each other on a narrow road at a speed = the sum of each of their speeds, which would typically be 40 mph on a 25mph one-way road. That means a bike coming the wrong way quadruples the passing speed, which not only exponentially increases harm when an accident occurs, but greatly increases the odds of a collision in part by reducing the reaction times and reduces the odds that both parties have time to see each other before they pass.
Bullshit. The fact that I see the car, and can determine whether the driver has seen me, gives me a chance to pull out that I don't have with a car coming from behind. It's true that the harm
when an accident occurs is greater, but the chances are orders of magnitude smaller, not larger.
So, according to you, two vehicles negotiating the room needed to pass in a narrow space are much less likely to collide at a passing speed of 40 mph than 10 mph? Every ounce of logic says otherwise. Also, if there are cars parked on the side of the road as is often the case, then there is little you can do to avoid them. The safest thing is to ensure they see you, which is more likely when they have 4 times as much time to notice you because the passing speed is 1/4 what it is when you are coming at them.
The two are forced to pass each other without having the option of waiting for an safer moment, and to do so at much higher speeds with less time to see and react to each other. Also, when a reasonable cyclist is already riding the correct way down the one-way street, then the wrong-way cyclists creates a situation where 3 vehicles are trying to pass each other on a narrow one-way road.
Didn't you just say drivers wait for a safe spot to pass? Are you retracting that ridiculous claim now?
First, no, I did not say that. That is your poor comprehension skills are at work. I said if they are travelling in the same direction, then they
can wait for a safer place to pass, if it is not possible to pass safely. I didn't say they always do this, but they certainly often do. I do it on a regular basis as does every driver I ride with. They constantly slow down and ride behind a biker, a delay passing until they feel they can better negotiate it. Most importantly, when you are riding the opposite direction, this is largely impossible to do. Apparently you don't grasp basic principles of objects in motion, but when they are moving in opposite directions, they have no choice but to pass each other, and given the passing speed, its going to be rather quick and without much of any choice as to where. If I come around a turn and see 100 feet in front of me, and see that there is no good spot to pass right now, I can slow down a bit so by the time I reach you, there is a better spot. But if you are coming at me, that is not an option, we are forced to pass each other at some point within that 100 feet between us when I first see you, which at 40mph combined speed will happen in less than 2 seconds. Maybe a basic test of physics understanding should be required to get a bike riding permit.
Not to mention, the danger it poses when any vehicle (car or bike) are pulling out onto a one-way street. The safest way to pull onto a street is to look in the direction from which traffic is coming as you pull into the lane from which the traffic is coming. When making a left turn on a two-way street, that means you focus on looking left as you pull into the road, then shift focus to the right as you enter that lane of traffic. With a one-way street, there is only a single lane, which is not a problem if traffic can only come from a single direction. But when it can come from both directions but within a single lane, they you are fucked. You are forced to pull into the lane while focussed on one direction. Sure, you can and should look first in the other direction, but that is not the same and not as safe. The fact that you would put forth the idea that cycling the wrong way down narrow city streets can be made legal and blindly dismiss the inherent increase in danger this causes whether legal or not, shows that your baseless accusation of confirmation bias was pure hypocritical projection.
You will be glad to hear that cyclists are very much aware that they can easily be overseen
And yet they intentionally do things like go the wrong way that exponentially increase the odds that they will be overseen and hit, so they are either mentally disabled or lack value for their own well-being.
