Dreaded cyclists

CraigB;n3543230 said:
Quite the opposite here. It's going to be lower income (or even no income) that ride bikes for transport. Though there are some more affluent people in town that commute by bike, not many though. Mass transit is very limited, but oddly enough the trolleys (buses really) do have bicycle racks on the front.

Well like I said it's peculiar to NYC, also like I said I'd be fine with free registration for people under certain amount of income, and obviously insurance would be pretty cheap seeing as how you can't do much damage with a bicycle.
 
prizrak;n3543301 said:
Well like I said it's peculiar to NYC, also like I said I'd be fine with free registration for people under certain amount of income, and obviously insurance would be pretty cheap seeing as how you can't do much damage with a bicycle.

You can cause moderate or worse financial damage to a car and you can kill people (not just the fragile or elderly, either). Insurance should be priced accordingly.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...n-central-park
http://gothamist.com/2014/09/23/cycl...in_central.php
https://nypost.com/2014/09/22/new-yorks-cycles-of-death-our-arrogant-biker-nightmare/

And, of course, since there was no license to suspend, no registration or plates to suspend, he continues to do stupid shit even after killing someone.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...potted-blowing-red-lights-son-handlebars.html
 
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Spectre;n3543306 said:
You can cause moderate or worse financial damage to a car and you can kill people (not just the fragile or elderly, either). Insurance should be priced accordingly.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-...n-central-park
http://gothamist.com/2014/09/23/cycl...in_central.php
https://nypost.com/2014/09/22/new-yo...ker-nightmare/

And, of course, since there was no license to suspend, no registration or plates to suspend, he continues to do stupid shit even after killing someone.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...andlebars.html

Well yeah insurance will be priced according to actuary tables, but I don't foresee it being that expensive since deaths are rare. Just looking at faster and heavier motorcycles rates are way lower than they are for cars (at least here) so I doubt bicycles will be even at that level.

There was also an article some time ago from the UK about pedestrian injuries going up as a result of cyclists, but I'm too lazy to look that up.
 
Some levity for the thread:
TheOnion said:
WASHINGTON—Saying it was a simple but effective measure to reduce potentially deadly incidents, a study published Monday by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that 90 percent of bike accidents could be prevented by buying a car like a normal person. “Our data confirm that the vast majority of cyclist injuries can be avoided simply by driving an automobile instead of biking around like some weirdo,” said lead researcher Dr. Laura Gafferty, adding that while bicycle riding was perfectly acceptable for children under 12, it was not recommended for any actual grown-up who wasn’t competing in the Tour de France or similar event where it wasn’t completely ridiculous. “Regular people drive cars because it’s the normal and not the abnormal thing to do. If every cyclist purchased and operated a car like you’re supposed to as an adult, bike fatalities would drop an estimated 40 percent within six months alone.” Gafferty went on to say that people who biked for exercise should consider driving to a gym and using a stationary bike facing a wall of televisions like everyone else.
 
[url="http://www.businessinsider.com/google-has-30-employees-whose-only-job-is-to-retrieve-stolen-gbikes-2018-1']Google has hired 30 employees to try and stop people from stealing their bicycles.[/url]

Google changed Silicon Valley with its free company bikes that help employees get across its giant corporate campus.
But locals in Mountain View, California — where Google is based — reportedly view the bikes as their own and end up displacing 100 to 250 bikes on a weekly basis. Now Google is trying to cut its losses. It's hired a team of 30 contractors to retrieve bikes from around the city, and it is testing other solutions like GPS trackers and bike locks, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Google changed corporate America and Silicon Valley with company perks, like free bikes for employees to get across sprawling office parks.

But the community of Mountain View, California — where Google is headquartered — has caught on, forcing Google to rethink just how "free" its bikes really are, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The company estimates that between 100 and 250 of its 1,100 multi-colored "Gbikes" disappear on a weekly basis, and it's started to take actions to reduce those numbers.

Among the solutions, the company hired a team of 30 contractors and five designated vans whose only job is to retrieve Gbikes from around the community, according to The Journal.

Google is also testing GPS trackers on some of its bikes, and locks that only Google employees can open using their cell phones, according to the report.

Google first launched its bike program in 2007, and switch over to its iconic, multicolored two-wheelers in 2009.

By 2015, bike sharing switched from a company-wide initiative to an opportunity for Google to change the world. The company launched a $5 million grant to develop more bike-friendly cities, and worked closely with Mountain View to make its local streets as bikable as the city of Copenhagen.

So it's no wonder that the people of Mountain View see the bikes as a "friendly gesture" from the company to residents of the city.

Mountain View Mayor Ken Rosenberg told The Journal that he used one of the bikes after a meeting on the Google campus, and Sharon Veach, a 68-year-old Mountain View resident, said she sometimes borrows one on her commute to work at Oracle, a Google competitor.

Veach told The Journal that the bikes are “a reward for having to deal with the buses,” referencing the hundreds of so-called Google Buses that employees living in San Francisco and surrounding cities use to get to work.

“I ride a bicycle…to balance it out,” Veach told The Journal.

Mmmm... 'entitled' bicyclists. How unsurprising.
 
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So, bicyclists, you want to try to justify this or claim that "car drivers do this all the time too"? Video at link. http://abc7ny.com/mob-of-cyclists-go...ivers/3030363/
Mob of cyclists go wrong way, attack drivers in Manhattan

CHELSEA, Manhattan --
A mob of cyclists went the wrong way up a Manhattan street to reportedly attack drivers along the way.

The cyclists pounded the car of an Uber driver at the very least five times, popping wheelies and cutting off moving cars.

Eyewitness News spoke to a driver, 'Tim,' who has a mess to clean up after the mob targeted his car. He says if he had been stuck in traffic and was not able to gun it, he is certain the violence would have escalated.

"As he was coming towards me, I honked the horn, because he was looking in a different direction, so I want him to be able to know I was there, so he didn't hit the car. So then when I told him that, he got belligerent," Tim said.

Four cyclists are seen in dash cam video, but the NYPD says there must have been more than a dozen cyclists breaking every traffic law imaginable in Chelsea on Saturday afternoon around 4 p.m.

"So then another dude came and I was talking to him - he kicked the side of the car, but I rolled the window down and talked to him. The other guy came, he punched me in the face from outside while I was sitting in the car," added Tim.

The driver of a Chevy said they smashed his car, and another car got trashed - a black Honda Accord. The owner of the Accord is an Uber driver who was able to flag down a patrol officer.

Police say it was when the driver flagged down the officer that those cyclists went northbound on 7th Avenue - obviously the traffic flow is southbound.

The NYPD is taking the incident very seriously. Anyone who knows anyone involved is asked to call police.

Yeah... bicycles and bicyclists need to be licensed, registered and insured, just like motorcycles - or this is going to continue to happen.
 
Nope, of course things like these can't be justified, neither from a cyclist's nor from a car driver's or a pedestrian's standpoint, those people/cyclists are assholes, period.





That said, demanding licensing, registering and insuring bicycles because of those incidents won't prevent those incidents since assholes stay assholes. :dunno:
 
Except that it’s easier to track down said assholes and hold them responsible or even seize their vehicles if they’re displaying a trackable license number. That tends to cut down considerably on the number of assholes.

If bicyclists don’t have to have or display license plates, my motorcycle shouldn’t be either.
 
Spectre;n3545446 said:
Except that it’s easier to track down said assholes and hold them responsible or even seize their vehicles if they’re displaying a trackable license number. That tends to cut down considerably on the number of assholes.
Yeah, works very well for asshole car drivers and asshole motorcyclists, you don't see any of these kinds on youtube videos...

Spectre;n3545446 said:
If bicyclists don’t have to have or display license plates, my motorcycle shouldn’t be either.
The current legislation requires license plates only for motor powered vehicles, bicycles without electric motors clearly aren't, they provide a much lower risk than motorcycles. Of course the risk isn't zero, but the legislation sees it so low that licensing, registering and insuring a bicycle isn't worth the benefits of assholes being identifiable.

Additionally, at least in Germany there are certain E-Bikes which have to have license plates, namely the ones which don't just provide assistance up to 25 kph but over that speed as well, and for those you have to have a driver's license for a moped (or a driver's license for a car which includes mopeds).
 
Eye-Q;n3545448 said:
Yeah, works very well for asshole car drivers and asshole motorcyclists, you don't see any of these kinds on youtube videos...
When was the last time a mob of cars went up wrong way on a street destroying pearled bicycles?

The current legislation requires license plates only for motor powered vehicles, bicycles without electric motors clearly aren't, they provide a much lower risk than motorcycles. Of course the risk isn't zero, but the legislation sees it so low that licensing, registering and insuring a bicycle isn't worth the benefits of assholes being identifiable.

Additionally, at least in Germany there are certain E-Bikes which have to have license plates, namely the ones which don't just provide assistance up to 25 kph but over that speed as well, and for those you have to have a driver's license for a moped (or a driver's license for a car which includes mopeds).
Current legislation is wrong, what’s your point?
 
A mob on bicycles is something outlandish and uncommon? Ok.

This happens, though:

http://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/incidente-stradale/donna-investita-bicicletta-viale-ercolani.html

http://www.ilpiacenza.it/cronaca/in...fa-jogging-donna-in-eliambulanza-a-parma.html

http://www.milanotoday.it/cronaca/incidente-stradale/via-comasina-via-merloni-donna-investita.html

http://www.ilrestodelcarlino.it/bologna/cronaca/ciclista-ubriaco-incidente-1.3688720

The first three are bicycles running over people and then running away without stopping. The last is a cyclist running over an old lady because he run a red light.

They are not as many as the cases involving cars, but it really took me less than 5 minutes to find those 4, and I kept it to the italian ones (I discarded a case in London from 6 months ago, for example).

Maybe -it is- time to think about identification and insurance for bicycles.
 
SirEdward;n3545487 said:
A mob on bicycles is something outlandish and uncommon? Ok.

This happens, though:

http://www.bolognatoday.it/cronaca/incidente-stradale/donna-investita-bicicletta-viale-ercolani.html

http://www.ilpiacenza.it/cronaca/in...fa-jogging-donna-in-eliambulanza-a-parma.html

http://www.milanotoday.it/cronaca/incidente-stradale/via-comasina-via-merloni-donna-investita.html

http://www.ilrestodelcarlino.it/bologna/cronaca/ciclista-ubriaco-incidente-1.3688720

The first three are bicycles running over people and then running away without stopping. The last is a cyclist running over an old lady because he run a red light.

They are not as many as the cases involving cars, but it really took me less than 5 minutes to find those 4, and I kept it to the italian ones (I discarded a case in London from 6 months ago, for example).

Maybe -it is- time to think about identification and insurance for bicycles.

How many reports of violent critical mass events have there been?
 
prizrak;n3545464 said:
When was the last time a mob of cars went up wrong way on a street destroying pearled bicycles?
[...]
[IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","height":"333","width":"468","src":"http:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2008\/06\/03\/article-0-0176954200000578-486_468x333.jpg"}[/IMG2]

Oh no, sorry. That's a funny meme to be shared and laughed about. Sry about that. This has nothing to do with anything here. I'll go post it in the funny picture thread with a whitty caption ... somthing funny about all cyclists deserving to die or something like that ... I'll get right on it.
 
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Interrobang;n3545875 said:
[IMG2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","height":"333","width":"468","src":"http:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/i\/pix\/2008\/06\/03\/article-0-0176954200000578-486_468x333.jpg"}[/IMG2]

Oh no, sorry. That's a funny meme to be shared and laughed about. Sry about that. This has nothing to do with anything here. I'll go post it in the funny picture thread with a whitty caption ... somthing funny about all cyclists deserving to die or something like that ... I'll get right on it.

I understand that English is not your first language but a "mob" means more than one... Also it's funny you could only find ONE picture of a driver crashing into cyclists and one that is like a decade old. Totally disproved my point!
 
It's too bad both those drivers escaped without consequences.

Oh wait, thanks to number plates they were both held accountable and one is in prison.
 
prizrak;n3545917 said:
OMFG a whole one more car! Yeah totally same as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confli..._Critical_Mass

This one must have had a numberplate on the bicycle, how else would the police have made the arrest for public drinking? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confli...Bridgeport.jpg
WTF is public drinking anyway? :dunno: Something drivers of cars never do, I guess.

Also this, same page:

On March 28, 2013, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a taxi driver ran over a group of Critical Mass riders, injuring 2 cyclists, before fleeing from the scene.[SUP][88][/SUP]

In Walnut Creek, California, on June 20, 2008, a car bumped into the rear wheel of a Critical Mass rider. An argument ensued among the driver and passenger of the car and the cyclist involved, after which the passenger and driver of the car assaulted the cyclist. The police arrived and arrested the passenger and driver of the automobile involved in the assault.[SUP][84][/SUP]

On February 25, 2011, an automobile driver deliberately collided with around 20 cyclists that were participating in a Critical Mass event in Rua José do Patrocinio in Porto Alegre, southern Brazil.

People gonna people :dunno: mode of transportation doesn't appear to matter much.
 
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