When I was a kid and early teen i was all over my small city on my bike without any issue at all. Be respectful of cars and they have the right of way and there shouldn’t be any issues.
Cyclists riding in 2 or 3 wide tandems taking up the entire freaking road and acting put out when they have to move over has really done damage to cyclists and drivers co-existing.
That and people seem to just generally be bigger assholes these days.
I have a lot of friends that live in bigger cities than I do, who have tried being way more bicycle heavy for their commute and daily lives, and almost all of them have said they either ride like this in packs or not at all now, because riding solo is just too dangerous. Drivers don’t pay attention, or get too close, or purposefully try to get close to scare you. Several have told me they don’t even try to use bike lanes anymore because cars are frequently parked in them, and drivers just use them for turn lanes or room for them to drift over while being on their phones.
The idea that the person driving the 2000lb killing machine has less of a responsibility to pay attention and be safe on the road than the person on a bicycle is a very american thing, in every possible pejorative way
5 days a week I watch people in 4500lb cars speed through the school zone reading their phones as they drive, right where my kids go to elementary school, and it is radicalizing me.
The entitlement of car drivers never ceases to blow my mind. A broken system has created a country of broken brains.
Definitely not the point I was trying to make and if that’s how it came across my apologies.
No, sorry, I didn’t mean to aim that specifically at you. More of a general comment toward some of the attitudes here and abroad.
relatedly, we need to shame (or maybe legislate away) people who drive giant cars they have no need for. There’s a guy near me who drives one of these Japanese K trucks - and he looks so much cooler than everyone who drives one of those giant stupid vanity trucks
I live in the UK and have from time to time commuted to work via bicycle but I haven’t for quite a while. I still like to get out on my bike and run errands, go for a ride on weekend, bike to the local driving range with a pencil bag on my back and, generally, I feel pretty safe doing it even on busy roads in central London.
It does seem like things differ massively by country. I went on holiday in Copenhagen last spring and we hired bikes and went everywhere. It was amazing. In London, I feel less safe than I would in Copenhagen but feels like the UK is way ahead of the US and Canada?
This is actually kind of funny but… April Fool’s day is a dumb “holiday” and it should just go away. Yeah it’s fun for kids but do we really need companies using the full marketing teams for gimmicks on social media?
I sound like old guy yells at cloud but don’t think I’m alone on this.
Agreed. Saw someone post that there is no longer a need for April Fools given that people will now believe dumb shit 365 days a year. I’m on board with that.
The normalization of large trucks and SUVs is probably a top-10 pet peeve for me. So many of them should be illegal for the risk they pose to the public and the fact that they’ve become so common today is a disgrace. Roll it back.
Easiest solution is requiring a CDL to drive a vehicle over a certain size, as they’re intended for commercial use, not daily driving.
I wonder if adjusting the safety ratings/requirements to include the safety of the people you hit with your car would help a lot.
Also, shrink the size of the roads.
Ok, now you’ve lost me. Oversized passenger vehicles aren’t the only large vehicles that need accessible city streets
I always take things too far
EPA rule changes have helped drive this trend on the manufacturing end
In writing its new tailpipe emissions standards, finalized last week, the Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged that shift and its own role in supersizing America’s cars.
While the new emissions rules have been praised in most coverage for tightening standards and thus speeding the transition to electric vehicles, they also preserve long-standing special treatment for big trucks and SUVs, which exempt larger cars from more stringent emissions standards.
When corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards were first implemented in 1975, trucks and SUVs were predominately used by farmers, construction workers, and others who needed features like big towing capacities or off-road capabilities to do their jobs. The larger vehicles with those features tended to be less efficient. Trucks and SUVs were thus carved out of the more stringent rules applied to passenger vehicles. Carmakers spotted an opportunity, though: If they could classify their cars as non-passenger vehicles, they’d be subject to less stringent regulations. All they had to do was upsell consumers for features they didn’t need and—as a sweetener for shareholders—that they could charge more for.
And so they did. Thanks in no small part to automaker lobbying, that bifurcated system has held for the last half-century; the broad outlines of a passenger and non-passenger distinction are mandated by Congress. In some ways, that special treatment was supercharged via a shift over the last 20-plus years to so-called “attribute-based” standards, which not only treated cars differently based on their size (footprint) but allowed companies to meet boutique standards based on the selection of cars they sold.
A decade after “attribute-based” standards were codified in 2011’s CAFE standard updates, the EPA reports that the percentage of new vehicle sales classified as cars and trucks virtually flipped. As of 2021, 63 percent of new cars were classified as light-duty trucks, including SUVs, up from 36 percent in 2012. The Big Three U.S. automakers (Stellantis, Ford, and GM) have largely stopped making sedans, leaning into heavyweight bestsellers like the Chevy Silverado.
100%. I biked all over London on previous visits and didn’t think twice. I have very specific areas of KC I feel comfortable biking and even those are pretty much always on weekends and outside rush hour.
This is exactly it - riding on your own it’s far easier to have someone go “oh there’s enough room for them I don’t need to move over at all” whereas if there’s a dozen riding in a 2-3 wide pack, they’re far more likely to actually force drivers to acknowledge their presence and give the room they need. This is also true of distracted drivers noticing a pack vs a single person I think. I always felt far better riding in a pack and had far fewer incidents than I ever did on my own.
This might get more pushback than guns. You think the NRA is bad, watch out for Big Oil.
I go to Houston for work a few times a year and every single one of them prides themselves on the size of their truck. My co-workers are wonderful people, their trucks are obnoxious and dumb. Every time I get in one I can’t help myself and ask how much they spend a week on gas (this is before they drive me to dinner where they proceed to get shitfaced and drive home)
Tbf the distance to Pappadeaux is never far.