Urban Cycling Institute - Posts | Facebook - "Greater power shouldn't give more RIGHTS.
Greater power should bring greater RESPONSIBILITY!"
This must be why cyclists are so self-entitled. Yet, they're nasty to pedestrians too. Maybe looking at this through the lens of the tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood is instructive
Chinese sharing services in Japan stunted by stiff regulations - Nikkei Asia - "Mobike, a Chinese bicycle-sharing service, also hit a regulatory wall in Japan, despite its obvious appeal. The startup entered the Japanese market in 2017 in Sapporo and Fukuoka. It even had Line, a Tokyo-based mobile app and internet service company, investing in its Japanese subsidiary. But Japan's onerous laws banning bicycle parking on public roads derailed the startup, which had attracted many users in China with its easy ride-it-and-leave-it policy. Mobike was forced into time-consuming negotiations with convenience stores, local governments and others to alleviate concerns about where bikes could be left."
Comment: "Alternative headline: "How Japan got it right by not letting 'Disruptive Tech' cause actual disruptions". I sound like a broken record when I complain that "disruptive tech" was never meant to disrupt people's lives. The disruption referred to traditional business models, not become a nuisance to others. In the end, governments decided to regulate bec citizens were all up in arms."
Manchester’s bike-share scheme isn't working – because people don't know how to share - "Two weeks on and I fear that a dream is all it was. There are Mobikes in the canal, Mobikes in bins and I am fed up with following the app to a residential street where there is clearly a Mobike stashed in someone’s garden. On launch day, the Chinese designer told me the bikes were basically indestructible and should last four years without maintenance. It took a matter of hours before local scallies worked out how to disable the GPS trackers and smash off the back wheel locks"
Bicycle sharing - a menace everywhere
Bike route on Euston Road will be removed - prompting calls for OTHER lanes to be axed - "A cycle lane brought in as lockdown measures eased to try and reduce car numbers in London is being removed after causing traffic chaos.Less than six months after Transport for London announced a series of measures to cut traffic in the Capital, the Euston Road bike lane is set to be removed... When Mayor of London Sadiq Khan announced the new Streetspace measures - designed to widen pedestrian and cycle lanes at the expense of carriageways - his office boasted cycling could increase '10-fold,'Pictures taken last month showed how many of London's cycle lanes remain empty, with adjacent roads packed with motorists.On Monday morning TomTom data revealed there were 527 miles of traffic jams across the capital as of 9am with 1,340 jams in total - and congestion levels at 66 per cent. This figure was up ten percentage points from 56 per cent at the same point last week, and up from an average of 43 per cent from the same time last year."
The cost-effectiveness of bike lanes in New York City - "We conclude that investments in bicycle lanes come with an exceptionally good value because they simultaneously address multiple public health problems. Investments in bike lanes are more cost-effective than the majority of preventive approaches used today.
The conclusion is not surprising, since the authors never even mention the costs of bike lanes in the form of increased congestion / travel time for motorised traffic, taking implementation and annual maintenance costs as the only costs if cyclists are not injured
The authors also attempt to generalise from NYC to other places, when NYC is uniquely suited to bike lanes (for similar reasons to why public transit makes more sense there - it is the US city with the lowest rate of car ownership and the highest population density).
COST-BENEFIT ANALYSIS OF BUILDING BICYCLE LANES IN TRURO, NOVA SCOTIA - "Results show that when only commuters are taken into account, costs of building a bicycle lane network exceed benefits."
“I bike everywhere!” brags cyclist who can afford living downtown - "Brian McFarlen, a local cyclist who can afford to live less than five minutes from the heart of downtown, has bragged about biking everywhere.“It’s a great way to get around while also staying in shape,” said McFarlen as he biked through a red light. “From tattoo shops to my job at VICE to even the best Banh Mi in the city – I just hop on my bike and I’m there. Why does anyone drive ever? Gross!” McFarlen, whose parents paid for him to go to film school and has no mortgage, kids, or debt, condemns people who drive in the city. “I hate cars – we should just get rid of all roads and replace them with bike lanes. Isn’t everyone able to live downtown and spend hours of their day biking around the city hitting up all the best micro breweries?”... “After spending a semester abroad, biking through Jakarta, I’ve been obsessed with living sustainability and unlearning my colonial way of living.” McFarlen added from his converted studio apartment in a very gentrified area of the city. ”There is no excuse. Bike.”At press time, owners of electric cars were cited bragging “what do you mean you can’t afford a vehicle that’s three times the price of a regular car?”"
Strange but True: Helmets Attract Cars to Cyclists - "when Walker wore a helmet drivers typically drove an average of 3.35 inches closer to his bike than when his noggin wasn't covered. But, if he wore a wig of long, brown locks—appearing to be a woman from behind—he was granted 2.2 inches more room to ride."The implication," Walker says, "is that any protection helmets give is canceled out by other mechanisms, such as riders possibly taking more risks and/or changes in how other road users behave towards cyclists." The extra leeway granted to him when he pretended to be a woman, he explains, could result from several factors, including drivers' perceptions that members of the fairer sex are less capable riders, more frail or just less frequent bikers than men... Dorothy Robinson, a patron of the Bicycle Helmet Research Foundation and a senior statistician at the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, published a 2006 review article in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) about regions in Australia, New Zealand and Canada that introduced legislation that spurred an over 40 percent increase in bicycle helmet use among their populaces. The newly instituted laws, she found, did not have a significant effect on bicycle accidents resulting in head injuries, the primary purpose of the gear. Her conclusion was "helmets are not designed for forces often encountered in collisions with motor vehicles" as well as that they "may encourage cyclists to take more risks or motorists to take less care when they encounter cyclists." Coincidentally, around the same time as Walker announced his results, New York City released a report on bicycle deaths and injuries: 225 cyclists died between 1996 and 2005 on New York streets; 97 percent of them were not wearing helmets. Of these deaths, 58 percent are known to involve head injury, but the actual number could be as high as 80 percent. Comparing the helmet to a seat belt in a car, Swart of the BHSI says, "When you do have that crash, you better have it on.""
I like how motorists being nicer to women can be chalked up to misogyny
This is a good example of how laboratory results may not generalise to the real world - risk compensation on the part of others (as well as the subjects)
Maybe this is why cyclists claim that helmets are useless - they are getting the causality wrong
Things that are not aesthetic - Posts | Facebook - "Cyclist: "I'm going to be weaving in and out of traffic and running every stop sign but if I get hit, it's your fault""
This is what makes bicyclists blow through red lights - The Washington Post - "In America, about 865,000 cyclists commuted to work each day. Forty percent of them charge across a red light intersection, according to one recent study.* (Other informal studies put this number much higher). Why do we feel so emboldened to disregard the rules, putting our lives on the line in the process? While there are no national statistics on whether motorists or cyclists cause more deaths, an Arizona study found that 44 percent of deaths in bike/car crashes were the cyclist’s fault. A Minnesota study faulted cyclists in 49 percent of all accidents, with failure to yield the most common cause... One study out of SUNY Buffalo recorded the behavior of 451 cyclists with video cameras at three intersections in Beijing. Fifty-six percent of the commuters ran red lights. According to the researchers, young and middle-aged riders were the primary culprits. “The probability of a rider running a red light was higher when he or she was alone, when there were fewer riders waiting and there were already riders crossing on the red,” co-author Changxu Wu explained. In short — people are more likely to break a law if they see other people already doing so.And for a determined subset of cyclists, such violations are a form of payback for the way they feel marginalized by a transportation system created for and dominated by motorized vehicles. For them, running a red light is an injudicious act of defiance, like back country snowboarding in the shadow of an unstable cornice.That feeling of defiance is amplified by the adrenaline rush even the tweediest of cyclists get as they weave through cars to buy a carton of milk or go to work."
So much for always blaming motorists
Bicyclists are welcome in D.C., but they, too, should obey the law - The Washington Post - "A 2004 city report on crashes showed cyclists were slightly more likely than motorists to be at fault in a crash, spotlighting factors such as failure to yield right of way or cyclist inattention."
A Quarter Of NYC Cyclists Don't Stop At Red Lights, Study Finds - "Roughly a quarter of New York City cyclists blow through red lights at intersections — and even more only pause before continuing their rides, a new study shows.Some 18 percent of 1,076 cyclists observed at red lights this spring rode straight through an intersection without stopping or pausing, and another 6 percent made turns while the signal was still red... Another 25 percent of those bikers paused at the signal but still turned or rode through the intersection while the light was red, researchers found. The remaining 51 percent stopped fully at the red light... In 2014, reporters at the New York Post observed 796 of 1,006 cyclists — or 79 percent — go through red lights at three intersections... Nearly 57 percent of bikers don't wear helmets, and more than 30 percent were spotted wearing an electronic device while riding"
Social Influence and Different Types of Red-Light Behaviors among Cyclists - "Accident analysis and studies on traffic revealed that cyclists’ violation of red-light regulation is one typical infringement committed by cyclists. Furthermore, an association between cyclists’ crash involvement and red-light violations has been found across different countries... Two researchers at a time registered unobtrusively at four different intersections during morning and late afternoon peak hour traffic, 1381 cyclists approaching the traffic light during the red phase. The 62.9% violated the traffic control."
Motorists angered by cyclists seen 'all over the road' in Woodlands - "six cyclists were spread out across three of the road's four lanes. One of the cyclists, dressed in red and yellow, appeared to change lanes abruptly, causing an approaching car on the right lane to brake."
Cyclist cuts across 3 lanes at Seletar West Link, hits motorcyclist & falls down
Red light running - "A study conducted during several months at five busy intersections in Fairfax, Va., prior to the use of red light cameras, found that, on average, a motorist ran a red light every 20 minutes at each intersection (Retting et al., 1999). During peak travel times, red light running was more frequent.An analysis of red light violation data from 19 intersections without red light cameras in four states found a violation rate of 3.2 per hour per intersection (Hill & Lindly, 2003). In a 2018 national telephone survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 85 percent of drivers said it's very or extremely dangerous to speed through a red light, but 31 percent reported doing so in the past 30 days (AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, 2019)."
It's pretty clear that cyclists run red lights a lot more than motorists
From the first 2 studies we know that there's about 3 motorists running red lights per hour. For motorists to run red lights as or more often than cyclists, there can be at most 12 motorists passing through the intersection every hour. Given that the first study mentioned "busy" intersections, there had to be more than 12 motorists passing through every hour. And since traffic lights are only recommended when there're at least 500 per hour on the major street and 150 on the minor, we know that even the second study had a lot more than 12 motorist passing through every hour. Using red light running as a proxy for compliance to traffic rules, we can conclude that cyclists are a menace on the roads
‘Completely unprovoked attack.’ Police release video of 75-year-old runner assaulted by cyclist | The Star - "Marion Raycheba’s run-ins with sidewalk cyclists made for a good story. It was such a good story, in fact, that the 75-year-old marathon runner and freelance writer was able to get them published in a Globe and Mail newspaper column detailing the many times that cyclists had brushed by, clipped and even confronted her as she made her way along sidewalks through downtown Toronto... Raycheba survived another encounter with a cyclist that transformed her life — for now at least making it impossible for her to walk unassisted, let alone run."
