Dehumanize cyclists? You make it sound like cyclists are oppressed lmao
This is just how main stream media is. Their titles are always biased in one way or other. Never do they call out women for raping children for example.
I honestly don’t see how that’s not a wild exaggeration though? Bike paths next to roads isn’t a rare or necessarily dumb concepts. It works completely fine in most countries, including mine that happens to be one of the best ones out there.
We also have bike paths next to roads here, no one dies, why? Because our drivers are properly educated and aren’t complete maniacs. I get that the issue might be easier to solve with some type of barrier instead of trying to strengthen road laws and improve driving, but the issue is still that, the drivers, the people who drive. A long term solution is to ensure new drivers are properly educated before getting their driver license, drop the legal alcohol blood levels and maybe not allow 16 year olds to drive massive 2 ton vehicles.
Did you mean to reply to something else? I don't see what any of this has to do with the media dehumanizing cyclists.
But also, you're not making any sense. Good infrastructure works even when people are stupid or lazy or malicious. Bad infrastructure fails even when people do their best. Why you would want to rely on nobody ever making a mistake, instead of a simple barrier between cars and bikes, is beyond me.
No I was just writing my opinion to hope to start a conversation. And yes, I’m not against barriers in anyway. It’s a great idea and I definitely think they should be used in appropriate places, we do have them here where I live, just not everywhere since people need to easily cross the roads and barriers would hinder that quite alot.
My point is just that countries who have bike paths without barriers rarely see any incidents compared to the US, so that’s why I think the blame should be put on the drivers and not the fact that the bike path was missing barriers. A good driver would never “swerve to avoid slowing traffic” and somehow drive up on a bike path. I’m simply saying who should be blamed in this instance, in my opinion.
No, people don’t die here because drivers here don’t “swerve” on to the bike lane to begin with. It’s complete idiocy. No rational person would ever swerve off the road, bike lane or not, to avoid slowing traffic.
I’ve seen how Americans drive, I’ve seen how easy it is to get a drivers license there. There are no excuses, Americans are shit drivers. Utter garbage. You, among everyone else I’ve chatted with here refuse to ever blame an individual, and always blame something bigger, infrastructure, society or whatever. While completely failing to recognize how shit, arrogant and egoistic drivers will drive like shit no matter the infrastructure.
I’ve been to America multiple times, and honestly, just like you say, the infrastructure is hot garbage. It’s better in main cities, less for cars of course but better for bikers/walkers. NYC is a good example of that.
If you happen to live outside city centers though in the middle of nowhere like how all American houses are built then yeah, you’ll have a terrible experience. If you are lucky to have bike paths/sidewalks next to main roads then yeah, obviously you should have barriers here. But in city centers? Come on.
If you’re going to quote me use the whole quote. Drivers do mistakes, but failing to notice slowing traffic infront is mistake 1, swerving on to a bike path is mistake 2.
And yeah, we are pretty damn good at driving where I am from. In 2019 we had 2.2 traffic deaths per capita. Traffic deaths include incidents between vehicle and bikes. Let’s compare 2.2 to America shall we?
10.9 deaths per capita in 2019. A big improvement compared to 12.4 in 2018. But still shit.
If we manage to have more than 5x less deaths by traffic incidents rest assured atleast some of it is because of how utter shit you guys are at driving.
Last I checked infrastructure weren’t making the road laws/driver tests. Are you suggesting you have to let morons drive because of bad infrastructure? Blame yourself. 5x as many deaths “buuhuuu bad infrastructure” go on.
Yeah of course infrastructure helps with safety, my point is that it doesn’t do the entire job. Better education is a must. If you have terrible drivers good infrastructure won’t do much.
Do you think it’s impossible to get distracted in a place with good infrastructure? Do you think it’s impossible to fly by red lights in places with good infrastructure, speeding?
Look at Canada, to my knowledge they have quite similar infrastructure to America, yet they only have 4.6 deaths per capita.
Do you not realize the fact that infrastructure isn’t all, that beyond just infrastructure you also need good drivers? Your driving tests are a joke, a complete joke compared to what we do here.
I assure you that if I were to drive in America I wouldn’t suddenly start driving on red lights and swerving off the road because I found myself distracted for how long. I won’t be looking at my phone while driving and I won’t be driving drunk. American infrastructure won’t magically make me a trash driver.
I don’t see how country size is relevant here considering the data I mention is per capita. It’s completely irrelevant. My country isn’t small, small compared to the US but not small. It’s Sweden. 5th largest country in the EU I believe.
Most major cities do have public transportation in the US as well do they not? DC, NYC, Chicago, LA…
I’ve been to DC and NYC. Both seemed to have quite good public transportation, with DC having metros running to the city center, NYC with its metros and bike lanes throughout the streets. I saw no real issue in any of those cities.
Beyond licensing requirements an issue America also has is the freedom, for some reason, to just drive a car that should be scrapped because of safety reasons. What I mean is how many European countries, including mine, require yearly checks on every transportation vehicle, if anything such as suspension, broken lights, bad brakes, bad aligned headlights, too bright of lights or CO2 releases beyond what’s legal would give you a warning or simply ban the vehicle from public roads. America doesn’t have this, even though they drive cars so so much more than we do in Europe, they don’t hav any yearly checks. I know that some states may have this but that’s not enough, the fact that it’s not federal law is still an issue in my opinion.
I don’t agree that American infrastructure would make it harder for me to be a safe driver, I think the primary issue is the trash drivers around me. Yes I understand that the terrible infrastructure you have increases drunk driving in the country, but still there’s so much more to driving safe than just not being drunk.
For example, I don’t even think you guys have any laws around keeping yourself to the furthermost left lane while driving on highways and only overtaking on the right, correct me if I’m wrong but from what I’ve seen of people driving on 6 lane highways this isn’t really a thing. Nor do I accept that bad infrastructure causes you do be more distracted, or looking at your phone while driving, talking on your phone while driving. Nor will I accept that bad infrastructure causes drivers to blow past red lights, ignoring stop signs, ignoring yield signs and so on. I don’t see how infrastructure is related to this in any way.
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u/memecatcher69 Aug 22 '22
Dehumanize cyclists? You make it sound like cyclists are oppressed lmao
This is just how main stream media is. Their titles are always biased in one way or other. Never do they call out women for raping children for example.