cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16133154
Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
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Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
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Id say option 3. Both of the above.
People suck driving. They also suck at riding.
Frankly just like driving needs a better training/licensing system - so does bike riding.
Especially any sort of self propelled bike.
I realize this is fuck cars, but let's not pretend the biggest issues don't boil down to stupidity of people.
I keep encountering cyclists riding against traffic, on roads with no shoulder and around blind turns. It's just about the most insane thing you can do on a bike, second only to sailing through red lights without looking. And it's people of all ages doing it, not just young people like I would expect.
Those three scenarios you mentioned are all only dangerous because of cars.
Actually, the closest I've come to colliding with someone doing this shit is when I was riding my bike - on the correct side of the road - and suddenly encountered a cyclist (a mom towing her two kids on a trailer, no less) head-on coming the wrong way around a blind turn. I was barely able to avoid hitting her; if I'd been in a car going 25 mph I almost certainly would have hit her.
It's just fucking stupid because it's contrary to other drivers' (and cyclists') expectations and gives them virtually no chance of avoiding the situation or reacting correctly, and it also happens to be straight-up illegal.
And yet had you collided, it's very unlikely that anyone would have died.
Unsafe behavior isn't made okay just because the risk of death is minimal. The mother could have been concussed or had a broken bone, for all we know. If things go pear shaped and the trailer tips over, you could have the kids dumped out into traffic on one side, or down a ditch on the other, for all we know. This line of thinking, that it's okay as long as it's not equally dangerous as it would be in a car, makes no sense.
There will always be people who do not act with regard to the safety of others. I would rather those people be on bikes than in cars.
I'm not discussing the morality of this action in a vacuum. I'm discussing it in comparison to the same person behaving equally as unsafely in a car.
Sure, all other factors being equal, it would be less severe with everyone on bikes, but your initial post read rather dismissively to me. Rather than, "Well at least it wasn't a car and they didn't die," it came across to me like "Nobody was in a car and it was unlikely to kill them, so it's not a problem." Perhaps that wasn't your intent, but it's certainly how I interpreted it. We can advocate for a safer mode of transit while also calling out dangerous behavior by people using our preferred mode.
Bikes can be lethal. See my other comment here.
An old lady at the hospital I used to work at was killed by a bike rider crashing into her at a high rate of speed. She hit her head on the pavement & fell unconscious - person on the bike bailed, when she was found after a few minutes it was too late.
It is far easier to protect pedestrians from 4-wheeled vehicles with simple measures such as concrete bollards and fences, but a 2-wheeled vehicle can go basically anywhere a pedestrian can, and now with EVs they can do it way faster without much effort.
Momentum is the biggest factor in the severity of the crash, and an ebike is never going to have as much momentum as a car. Severe incidents can happen with bikes and they should be sensibly regulated, but it is far less common than crashes involving cars.
Going against traffic is actually the safe option in some situations. Being able to see oncoming traffic is a good thing.
Personally, I prefer a helmet mirror. Riding against traffic means that you reduce the reaction time for drivers. If you're going 15 mph and the driver is going 30 mph, you are approaching at 45 mph. If you are both going the same way, the driver is approaching at 15 mph, giving three times more time to react. It also tends to place you in spots on the road where you are not expected. A helmet mirror isn't as good as a straight-on view, but the tradeoffs are worth it.
Agreed. It's definitely situational.
Yeah, some of the e-bike circlejerk sounds like it's from people who have never been in a major city where they get used by people with no regard for others. I've nearly been run down by app delivery drivers on ebikes and mopeds turning onto the sidewalk going the wrong way down one way streets at 30+ mph, people riding both acting crazy in the bike lanes, running red lights and cutting through traffic with no regard for their own safety or anyone else's. You'll have to excuse me when I lack sympathy for the guys on souped-up ebikes doing 30mph over a blind hill with no lights or helmet that get mad and start threatening me because they had to swerve to dodge since they were riding in the wrong lane.
Some of it could be app delivery drivers struggling to make ends meet while being subject to unreasonable and dangerous metrics, along with unlivable pay. I feel for them, but their struggle to earn a living doesn't give them carte blanche to put other people's lives at risk. On the other hand, a lot of people I see riding these tricked out ebikes and mopeds are the same people I know that were riding dirt bikes on NYC streets a few years back and moaning about how misunderstood they were and how the cops are picking on them just because they want to ride 40 deep down Third Ave and do wheelies while the streets and sidewalks are full of other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians.
I'm all for encouraging people to use other modes of transportation, but people are being assholes and demonstrating why there's going to be a need to regulate the ebike and moped industry more rigorously, and probably introduce some sort of licensing requirement to enable tracking dangerous riders and enforcing safety rules. You have people riding devices rigged up to go at highway speeds, being careless while riding and disregarding pedestrians, riding the wrong way, and just generally being reckless and putting other people at risk. This is also ignoring the issue of people being cheap and buying aftermarket batteries that cause some nasty fires.
If you're on an ebike, scooter or moped that exceeds 25mph, I don't think you have any business being in the bike lane. Yes, it's riskier for those riders to be in vehicular traffic, but even ignoring the mass of the bike, just a person's body hitting you at 30mph or more can do some serious damage. If you're riding at a massively higher speed than those around you in the same lane, you're a safety hazard to others in your lane, whether you're on a moped doing 40mph in a 15-20mph zone, or in a car doing 70mph in a 45mph zone. People still need to be held accountable for putting others at risk with dangerous behavior, too, whether it's a car driving erratically, ebikes going down one way streets the wrong way, cyclists taking blind corners at speeds that don't let them stop for pedestrians, or even just pedestrians doing stupid shit like insisting on walking in the bike lane, rather than using a perfectly good sidewalk or pedestrian path right next to them. That said, they need to be enforced across the board, not just singling out people on ebikes or cyclists, while ignoring others.
There is no regulation for ebikes in the US?
Here if the ebike goes >15mph it is like any other vehicle (must have insurance and plate) and is not allowed on bike lanes.
Of course uber drivers and many others people use home made set-up on their bike which exceed legal regulations and drive recklessly but heh that's an other problem.
There isn't a federal standard, but there is a common state-level standard in the US with class 1, 2, and 3. Class 1 cuts out at 20 mph and must be assist-only. Class 2 also cuts out at 20 mph, but may also have a throttle that works without peddling. Class 3 cuts out at 28 mph and may or may not have a throttle. Technically there are laws around not taking class 3 e-bikes in some spots, but I have found with mine as long as I ride it like a class 1 (15-20 mph max), no one bothers me. However, none of them require a license or insurance.