Dreaded cyclists

[Spectre]

Forgot to post this earlier. This may be the first topic I actually agree with Mayor de Blasio on.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-yor...0190904-kxb62vi3y5hfnag2y7vbpr4zze-story.html

Mayor de Blasio says bicycle licenses should be considered, promises to sic cops on cyclists

Mayor Bill De Blasio said today that one way to make the city safer for cyclists is to pass laws that discourage people from riding bikes in the first place. (Luiz C. Ribeiro/for New York Daily News)



Mayor de Blasio on Wednesday said he was considering requiring bike riders to be licensed, and even pitched the idea of forcing Citi Bike renters to wear helmets.

“We have to think about what’s going to be safe for people first, but also what’s going to work,” the mayor said of the helmet requirement. “Is it something we could actually enforce effectively? Would it discourage people from riding bikes? I care first and foremost about safety.”

De Blasio added that he thinks the idea to force cyclists to have licenses and registration is a “valid discussion.”

Whether or not he moves forward with the license requirement, the mayor said he plans to crack down on cyclists who break traffic laws, despite little evidence suggesting that bikes are a menace to public safety.

“We are going to keep expanding enforcement on bicycles as well, because we still have a lot of bike riders who have to remember they have to follow the rules,” said de Blasio.

[More New York] New Jersey PATH adds locked barrier to wheelchair entrance at Newark station to combat fare evasion »
UOne pedestrian has been killed by a bicyclist this year, while 20 cyclists have been killed in car crashes.

The mayor’s promise to sic cops on bike riders disturbed street safety advocates, who said his ideas would make streets more dangerous.

“It’s pretty clear that the difference between a cyclist running a red light or a pedestrian crossing against the signal doesn’t wreak havoc like a multi ton motorized vehicle disobeying a traffic signal,” said Joe Cutrufo, spokesman for advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.. “The two are not same.”

[More New York] Two off-duty school safety agents busted for beating their children in separate incidents »

Council Speaker Corey Johnson also thought the comments were misguided.

“I’m all about safety, but we need to be encouraging cycling, not creating obstacles,” Johnson tweeted Wednesday. “These ideas won’t help us increase bike riding in NYC.”



De Blasio in July announced a $58.4 million plan to rapidly expand the city’s network of protected bike lanes — the city Department of Transportation will hire 80 new staffers to help implement the plan.

[More New York] SEE IT: Free wheeling motorcyclists surround lone cop after he pulls biker over in the Bronx »
Still, Cutrufo argued that new regulations on bikes would lead to fewer cyclists in the city, regardless of the mayor’s plans for more bike lanes.

“Requiring helmets and bicycle licensing is counterproductive to Vision Zero because they’re a deterrent to cycling,” said Joe Cutrufo, spokesman for advocacy group Transportation Alternatives. "When you discourage people from riding a bike, fewer people will do it, and the safest cities in the world for riding a bike are the cities where there are the most cyclists.

“Requiring helmets and bicycle licensing is counterproductive to Vision Zero because they’re a deterrent to cycling,” Hmm - but requiring helmets and licensing for motorcycles isn't counterproductive to Vision Zero? Hypocritical much, Mister Cutrufo?

Be fair, Mister Mayor. Require licenses, insurance and helmets for bicycles if you require them for motorcycles. So far this year, NYC bicyclists have killed at least two pedestrians and injured at least 127, but motorcyclists have killed and injured zero (as best I can find.)


Related:

 

[prizrak]

Dumbest shit from the article:

“It’s pretty clear that the difference between a cyclist running a red light or a pedestrian crossing against the signal doesn’t wreak havoc like a multi ton motorized vehicle disobeying a traffic signal,” said Joe Cutrufo, spokesman for advocacy group Transportation Alternatives.. “The two are not same.”

Yeah unless you have to fucking emergency stop cuz some pedaling retard decided to go wrong way and dart onto the crosswalk (both illegal) while you are making a left, causing an entire line of cars going straight to have to jam on their brakes with varied results. Sure a bicycle hitting someone doesn't have same impact as the car but it has impact on the rest of the traffic.

 

[ScarFace88]

Karma. anyone?
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/new...0200209-eved5jjlargjvkooziko27evqy-story.html

 

[Hok]

Karma. anyone?
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/new...0200209-eved5jjlargjvkooziko27evqy-story.html

Unavailable in Europe.

 

[prizrak]

An 18-year-old Orlando cyclist was arrested Saturday morning in Oviedo during a group ride, prompting outrage from the Central Florida cycling community.
A Seminole County deputy witnessed Javier López and an unidentified male run a stop sign on their bicycles near the intersection of Florida Avenue and Van Arsdale Street, according to the arrest report. The deputy said in the report that he yelled three times for López and the other cyclist to stop, but they looked at him and ignored his commands.
The deputy caught up with them by driving his patrol truck with emergency lights and siren on and pulled ahead of the two cyclists before stopping in their path on the road, the report said.
López and the other cyclist stopped riding but only López was arrested, the report said, without elaborating on the reason.

The deputy wrote in the report that López “pulled his arms away from me, attempting to defeat my efforts to handcuff him.”
Another Seminole deputy responded to the scene as a “large crowd of cyclists began to show signs of hostility and unruliness,” the report said.
Javier’s parents on Sunday afternoon told the Sentinel their lawyer asked them not to comment, but that they want to clear their son’s name.
Parents Annette Ayala and Javier López, who moved here from Puerto Rico four years ago, say their son has been cycling in groups since he was 6.
“We recognize the laws on the street between cyclists and motorized vehicles and we always try to comply with them," the father said.
Richard Genaro Perpinan, who said his son was the cyclist riding next to López, started a GoFundMe to help pay López’s legal fees.
“I understand enforcing the law, however, I do not understand the actions these sheriff’s carried out today,” Perpinan wrote. “Why ruin the life of a good kid, who is in essence a child, with a criminal record? This should have been, worse case scenario, a traffic violation.”
The GoFundMe page has been posted in multiple Facebook groups for cycling communities, with many angry cyclists leaving comments. “When aggressive policing replaces protecting and serving, we can only be happy this kid was not alone with this cop,” one person commented.
López is charged with fleeing a law enforcement officer and obstruction without violence. He was released from Seminole County Jail on a $8,500 bond.

 

[jack_christie]

Jezza on a Lotus ?

 

[bone]

He should try to recreate that pic...

...better prepare a crane to get him off again

 

[Hiro11]

I'm a lifelong road cycling, mountain biking and cyclocross (look it up) racer now approaching fifty, after reading this thread I reeally want to get some of you out of a bike. Maybe give a little balance to this thread by allowing some of you to witness the dumbassery we cyclists see every day: the people actively trying to kill us, the bottles thrown at us, the morons who pass you and then immediately right hook you when you're doing 27 mph, the idiots passing you at 65mph in a 30 mph zone inches from your left elbow because they think it's funny, the drivers who have zero spacial sense or ability to gauge closing speeds, the endless entitlement, the geniuses who eye-rollingly try to lecture you with incomprehensible complaints.

Cycling safely on the road requires nuanced, complex knowledge and skills. After 25 years of doing it, I know how to ride safely and defensively on the road in a way that doesn't annoy drivers. Believe me, I have great respect for the danger riding on the road poses and I do everything in my power to minimize that danger. With my experience, nothing bothers me more than other cyclists who have zero idea what they're doing on the road doing stupid things. Blowing stop signs, weaving down the road, riding unpredictably, riding on busy roads, needlessly getting in the way... etc. Like you, I've seen it all and all of that drives me nuts... especially since I know it's all avoidable. I can empathize with a lot of what you're saying, but don't lump us all together.

Why ride on the road? Because it's ridiculously fun and rewarding. Because it's a way to spend time with friends while going into eye-bleeding oxygen debt. Because every ride is an exciting adventure. Mainly, because it can be done safely and conscientiously by obeying the rules, carefully picking the roads you ride on, carefully picking when you ride, carefully picking the people you ride with, maintaining concentrated situational awareness, having good bike handling skills and knowing where to be on the road.

More absurdly, my pea brain also wants to see how long some of you would last in my group. I held a Category 1 racing license at one point (that means I was pretty damned good). A lot of the guys I ride with are national-caliber athletes. I'll bet you guys would be dropped in the first mile, on an easy day. Maybe give some of the more macho of you a little respect.

Lastly, I want to see how long you ride on a hot day without reaching for some lycra. Believe me, we are not wearing lycra because we think it looks cool.

 

[Blind_Io]

The above post is what happens when someone never grows out of being the fastest kid in second-grade,

Enough with the dick waggling; I know I am not going to cycle at a competitive racing level, literally no one in here has claimed to be the next Lance Armstrong and no one aside from you is trying. Your "x% faster" is trumped by my "100% not-giving-a-shit." No one is arguing that cycling is athletic and takes skill or training - this thread is about the cyclists who ride around with a superiority complex and enjoy lording it over others -- just like what you are doing right now. I could not give less of a shit if you decide to ride on the road or not, I don't care how you get your jollies off - do it by sticking your own dick in your ear for all I care. Where things become a problem is when anyone starts being a disruption to others.

I've lost count of how many times cyclists have run a stop sign or light in front of my 5,400# off road vehicle with a Deer Juicer 9000 armored front end, causing me to panic-brake to avoid turning them into finely ground meat-waffles -- and then cussed me out for protecting them from their own stupidity. My city spent tens of millions of dollars creating an entirely separate infrastructure for cyclists to enjoy the mountain foothills. We're talking a scale-model highway system, complete with it's own bridges, roadways, and access points. Of course some dick-in-ear cyclists refuse to use it, or the 14-foot wide shoulder on the state highway and insist on riding three-abreast in the highway lanes. Then they bitch and moan about someone passing them within a furlong.

We paid additional hundreds of millions to completely revamp major sections of downtown and feeder streets to promote cycle safety. Cycle lanes are now between parked cars and the curb, so it's not possible to pass them closely, even if you wanted to. We reduced travel lanes, cut 60% of parking, and increased parking rates to make this happen. You know where I still see cyclists riding? In the now single traffic lane rather than on their very expensive and dedicated infrastructure.

I don't care how fast you are on a cycle, or if the only way you get hard is by riding in traffic. If you want to play in traffic when there is dedicated cycle infrastructure available you will be treated as if you don't belong there. If you ignore traffic signals and signs, you are taking your life in your own hands - to paraphrase Douglas Adams, "Do you know how much damage my car will suffer if it were to roll right over you? .... None at all." I'm not "out to get" cyclists, but a whole lot of cyclists seem dead set on throwing themselves in front of tons of moving steel; I don't know of they were cross-bred with lemmings at some point, have no sense of fear, or are just too stupid to recognize danger.

Thank you for your post - it perfectly illustrates the dick-in-ear holier-than-thou cyclist attitude that brings pedestrians and drivers together in the universally shared opinions that cyclists are pedaling sentient bags of extra-glutenous dicks.

 

[DanRoM]

I do agree about the obnoxiousness of many cyclists.

But I have to correct your misconception here.

We paid additional hundreds of millions to completely revamp major sections of downtown and feeder streets to promote cycle safety. Cycle lanes are now between parked cars and the curb, so it's not possible to pass them closely, even if you wanted to.

Cycle lanes are not built to promote cycling safety. They are built to get cyclists out of the way of cars. Problem is, the part I marked in bold does exactly the opposite of what most people think: It actively decreases safety. Cyclists are not only out of the way, but also out of sight - and at every driveway, every intersection they "come out of nowhere" and then accidents happen.
When riding on the road, the danger comes practically only from people who want to actively scare (or really kill) you - the kind of motorist who shouldn't hold a licence because they are not fit to be casually handed a potential murder weapon. When riding on a bike path hidden behind parked cars - or, frankly, just so far to the right that it is out of the line of sight from a car driver's perspective that is naturally focussed on the road - the danger comes from practically everyone, at every crossing point with a driveway or side road.

This might vary from country to country, but my experience in over 30 years of cycling is the same that is said by accident statistics: The road is safest. Better to annoy some motorists than be flattened by one. And regarding the annoyance: I've also been driving a car for over 20 years now. The amount of time I've lost due to not being able to overtake a cycling amounts to at most ten minutes in total. Probably way less, but I want to guess on the safe side.

 

[Blind_Io]

I can only tell you how the project was marketed to the public. At the time, it was believed that putting a wall of cars between cycles and traffic would improve safety, as well as keeping cycles out of the area behind cars reversing out of angled street parking. It sounds like this design has since been found to be flawed; it doesn't change the fact that we invested millions of dollars and negatively impacted traffic and parking in the interest of serving the needs of a small minority of people who mostly ride their bikes in a 5-month seasonal window.

 

[eizbaer]

it doesn't change the fact that we invested millions of dollars and negatively impacted traffic and parking in the interest of serving the needs of a small minority of people who mostly ride their bikes in a 5-month seasonal window.

Thing is, your attitude here seems very much to imply (please correct me if I get that wrong...), that you're now salty at said minority (which is only a minority because it was planned that way). However, the ones you should be mad at about this shitshow, is the incompetent people who planned this mess (and who, as stated before, over years and years, caused cyclists to be a minority), arguably wasting a lot of money and urban space all the while increasing the animosity between drivers and cyclists (because both are mad about the result and - example above - will blame the other).

Because that's exactly the issue that Dan put up earlier: they re-plan infrastructure (at least pretending to be well-meaning), emphasizing how they're spending millions and taking away space from cars. but it's being done by people who have for the largest part of their professional lives been in charge of creating the "car-centered-city". It may not even be a conscious decision on their part, they're just doing what's been hammered into their (and a lot of other people's) brains by years and years of car privilege...

Also, if you're getting mad at Hiro here: who's assuming bikes are only ridden inside a 5 month seasonal window? If so, that's a direct result of the fucked up infrastructure (and admittedly in part the sort of winters you get - but that goes right back to infrastructure: are the bike paths being cleared of ice and snow same as the streets, or not?). And no, the argument "but we're not Amsterdam" doesn't count, at all. Amsterdam wasn't Amsterdam back in the 70s for crying out loud, very much the typical car-centric city - Infrastructure takes time and work, but it has to be done right. And no, Amsterdam is not magic either, look at the cities with a non-minority cycling modal share and you'll find enough examples that are neither blessed with mild winters, nor flat pancakes.

Ugh, rant over.

TL;DR: well-meaning doesn't count for shit, if the result is bad. be mad at your crap planners, not the cyclists.

edit: also don't anyone say "but well-meaning but not quite right is better than nothing, right?". No. as Dan said above it oftentimes makes things worse for the cyclists, because the safest place for them is still in the street and people who are not cyclists then get mad and annoyed at them. While in Germany we oftentimes have cycle paths that are marked as compulsory to use, the actual law makes about 70% (iirc) of them not so, because they're not deemed adequate or even unsafe, making it perfectly legal for the cyclist to ride in the road (in the middle of the lane to avoid the dooring-zone, many times not allowed to be overtaken because of 1,5m/5ft required passing distance). Thing is: even most cyclists don't know this, non-cyclists never do.

 

[Perc]

 

[Redliner]

View attachment 3559525

Ah yes, cherry-picking. My favorite flavor of fallacy.

 

[eizbaer]

Well clearly on that admittedly superb bike path nobody would get to see those frankly FIRE socks leg warmers* the guy spent so long choosing that morning...

* ffs there's bare ankle showing underneath those, wtf kind of garment is that i don't even?

 

[Cowboy]

Today I got to yell at a cyclist for not using the bike path (obligatory here) and got the finger back, today is also my birthday, today is a good day.

 

[93Flareside]

Today I got to yell at a cyclist for not using the bike path (obligatory here) and got the finger back, today is also my birthday, today is a good day.

Awesome! Happy birthday!

 

[Blind_Io]

Contrary to what many think, I don't hate cyclists. I hate assholes.

I go out of my way to give them space and I don't "buzz" them with close passes. What pisses me off are the ones like Hiro11 who come in, flop their dick out and think they are a better breed of human because they ride a bike. These are the ones who ride straight through traffic lights and signs, forcing everyone else to swerve or slam on the brakes. The photo above is a good example of the type of project my city invested in, a parallel road system with its own earthworks, bridges, etc.

Most cyclists use it, but a subset refuse and will not only ride out in the travel lane of a multilane state highway, they won't use the equally wide shoulder. I regularly see them riding two, or three wide, cussing at cars and trying to start fights because they decided to play in traffic.

These are assholes.

I have no problem with most cyclists, I've said that repeatedly in this thread, and elsewhere. It's the dreaded asshole cyclist that's the problem. The one who runs lights, disrupts traffic, rages at drivers for problems they caused themselves, and who shows up with his dick in his ear to say, "I'm a faster cyclist than you, I bet you wouldn't last 10 minutes trying to keep up with me" as if anyone else gives a diuretic shit.

 

[93Flareside]

Contrary to what many think, I don't hate cyclists. I hate assholes.

I go out of my way to give them space and I don't "buzz" them with close passes. What pisses me off are the ones like Hiro11 who come in, flop their dick out and think they are a better breed of human because they ride a bike. These are the ones who ride straight through traffic lights and signs, forcing everyone else to swerve or slam on the brakes. The photo above is a good example of the type of project my city invested in, a parallel road system with its own earthworks, bridges, etc.

Most cyclists use it, but a subset refuse and will not only ride out in the travel lane of a multilane state highway, they won't use the equally wide shoulder. I regularly see them riding two, or three wide, cussing at cars and trying to start fights because they decided to play in traffic.

These are assholes.

I have no problem with most cyclists, I've said that repeatedly in this thread, and elsewhere. It's the dreaded asshole cyclist that's the problem. The one who runs lights, disrupts traffic, rages at drivers for problems they caused themselves, and who shows up with his dick in his ear to say, "I'm a faster cyclist than you, I bet you wouldn't last 10 minutes trying to keep up with me" as if anyone else gives a diuretic shit.

There's a group of dads in my neighborhood that get all dressed up and go 4 wide down the road talking about whatever.... Do they move out of the way for cars? Nope...

 

[CraigB]

As an amateur cyclist and amateur driver, I can see it from all sides (I swear I have made this same post in this same thread before, but here we go).

I'm with Blind_Io that I don't care who you are, if you are a asshole, you are a asshole. Doesn't matter if you are on a bicycle, a 2.5 ton SUV or on foot. Follow the rules, be good to others. It's not difficult.

I did more road riding than I ever have this year (still wasn't much compared to some), but I didn't have any problems. All that passed me on country roads gave me plenty of room and I would wave at them as they passed as a sign of friendliness. Now, did I stop at every stop sign? No, but I did slow down and make sure it was clear before I went. In some states this is all that is required. A cyclist doesn't have to come to a complete stop, if it's clear for them to go. How this plays out if there's an accident, I do not know.

There's a group of dads in my neighborhood that get all dressed up and go 4 wide down the road talking about whatever.... Do they move out of the way for cars? Nope...

Again, I see both sides here. I assume it's safer to ride in a pack like this and it's really no different than if you got behind an 80 year old in their Cadillac that's going 15 mph down the road.

Is it technically legal? Probably. Is it safe? Probably not.