Some interesting stuff here, including links to more studies showing similar results in different countries.
The summary is that the reason motorists break more laws is that speeding is so common.
I don’t think this is because motorists are all evil and cyclists are all saints. Probably, the reason motorists break speed limits is that it can be relatively difficult to keep cars below the speed limit. It’s all too easy to absentmindedly speed up. It’s also, perhaps becuase of this, widely seen as socially acceptable to break the speed limit (speaking anecdotally).
One interesting thing here, which may not surprise regular readers of Fuck Cars, is that better cycling infrastructure leads to less lawbreaking by cyclists. As is often the case, it’s the design of roads and cities that changes behaviour, not abstract appeals to road users to be sensible!
So, it appears that when giving everyone equal infrastructure, motorists are still awful at getting around.
The reason Dutch cyclists don’t break laws is that there’s little reason to. Their traffic signals work for cyclists, their paths work for cyclists, there’s no reason to speed, etc.
Compare that to most cities in North America, and “breaking the law” for a cyclist means not wanting to wait 10 minutes at the same red light because there aren’t any cars to trigger a change to green. Or riding on sidewalks because nobody feels safe on roads with semi-trucks and pickup trucks refusing to give them any space.
When motorists break the law, it’s because they are impatient or just don’t know how to drive. When cyclists do it, it’s to either be safe or because the infrastructure is so poor that it makes normal cycling behaviour seem like a crime.
There’s also a level of absurdity to cycling laws. E.g., in the UK if I:
- Approach a red light
- Dismount
- Wheel my bike just over the stop line
- Remount and cycle away
That’s legal. But! If I:
- Approach a red light
- Stay on my bike
- Cycle very slowly over the stop line
- Continue to cycle away
That’s a crime.
The ‘Stop on red’ rule was obviously designed for cars and then slapped onto bicycles, a category of vehicle for which it makes very little sense.
it can be relatively difficult to keep your car under the speed limit
Hard disagree. This is like saying it’s difficult to stay off you phone while driving — it’s just a shitty habit that can be corrected.
@[email protected] One interesting thing here is that it seems that cyclists, whether breaking the law or sticking to it, are often doing so out of self-preservation. If you’re turning left at a busy junction with a bike lane, jumping the red might actually be safer than waiting for it to change. A good example of a perverse incentive!
Granted it’s not all the time, but I do agree that a lot of the time, the rule breaking is incentivized by cars’ problematic driving and not sharing the road well. If cars were on a whole more friendly with cyclists and knew the proper rules as well, it probably wouldn’t happen as often.
@pjhenry1216 I think the key thing is better cycling infrastructure. Most people would do almost anything to avoid hitting someone with their car, but it still happens all too often because of poorly designed roads
Is that a dare?
I broke the speed limit on my bicycle once. For literally seconds before the speed limit was increased in the next road section XD
I’ve broken it a few times in my younger years when I could flex hard on my fixie in steep gearing.
I stopped trying after a motorist pulled out from a side street in front of me and I slammed into the side of his car at 60+kph. Completely destroyed the custom forks I had commissioned for the bike so I could run a disc brake specifically to avoid that happening :(
It’s nice to hear your exquisite taste in bikes. Sorry it went that way.
🙄 fuck cars!
Eh, I use it as a learning experience to try be a better driver. Because I agree with the premise of this sub :)
I wonder which motor vehicle breaks more rules, motorcycles or buses. Far and away those are the two vehicles I always assume will ignore traffic rules and I am seldom proved wrong, but I wonder which of the two is best-in-show.
Buses are actually the safest form of road transport. Granted, I’ve had a couple of bus drivers nearly hit me on my bike, but that’s not representative!
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Citibikes are just bike share bikes that anyone can use.
I doubt it’s any different anywhere else.
I don’t know about local laws regarding bike helmets in NYC, but the reason they’re not mandatory in most places is that they don’t save lives. In fact, wearing a helmet in a car is statistically more likely to prevent you from getting a head injury than it is on a bike. Most cycling fatalities and serious injuries are a result of being crushed, not hit in the head, whereas, in the UK, anyway, most head injuries happen inside cars.
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@gowan @frankPodmore Why aren’t helmets mandatory in cars? If it saves just one life surely it would be worth it?
I once read an article about a kid who was killed by falling masonry while sitting on a bench. Clearly, we should require bench-sitters to wear helmets in case of falling masonry!
Bikes dont have airbags, restraints, or a large cage of structural metal surrounding them. If you are on a bike, your only protection is what you are wearing. With that in mind, wouldn’t you want to wear something to protect yourself when moving at higher speeds? Even a speed of 10mph can be fatal if you fall off and hit your head on the ground. You cannot fall off or out of a car if you are properly wearing your seatbelt, and the airbags and structure of the vehicle are your immediate protections.
Basically, helmets in cars aren’t mandatory and don’t make sense to make mandatory, because there are already safety precautions in cars. Bikes, whether manual or motorized, do not offer these or any protections.
But the safety precautions in cars are clearly inadequte, because many people still die. We didn’t look at cars and say, ‘No need for airbags, we already have a safety precaution in the form of seatbelts’.
Please tell me what exactly a helmet in a car will do for you, unless you are travelling well over 200 miles per hour? Seatbelts already hold the torso in place, preventing one from slamming their head into the steering wheel, dashboard, or windshield, and the airbags already absorb the energy and arrest the unrestrained body parts, such as the head.
You would have to be travelling fast enough to outpace the airbags, which typically deploy at around 200 miles per hour. You wanna know why professional race car drivers wear helmets? Because they don’t have airbags.
Because all those safety features don’t prevent cars from being the place you’re most likely to get a traumatic brain injury.
It’s quite illustrative how furious you are about this. If you read what I’m saying properly, you’d see that I don’t think people in cars should wear helmets. My point is that the arguments for doing so are just as good as they are for cyclists, i.e., not at all.
bikers need a driving license
edit: kinda offtopic, but cyclists are as annoying
I find distracted drivers annoying. Also the 10s of thousands of people vehicles kill every year annoying. The cars that drift into my bike lane and nearly kill me are annoying. Your stupid comment is annoying. Just fucking deal with your pathetic annoyance and let’s focus on the ones that actually harm people.
I find distracted drivers annoying.
This. Almost got hit by one the other night who swerved away at the last second (no sidewalk for me to bail to sadly). Having bright lights, wearing reflective clothing and riding cautiously can’t save you from drivers not paying attention
Over here in germany you can lose your drivers license if you violate traffic laws while riding your bike and that is probably sufficient.
So, your comments here are kind of confusing. If I understand you right, you’re making a distinction between motorbikes (which as the name suggests have a motor) and pushbikes (AKA bicycles - the kind of thing you pedal). This study is about bicycles, not motorbikes.
As to licences, most jurisdictions do require motorcyclists to have a licence, either a full driving licence or a specialist motorbike licence (sometimes both).
Cyclists do not require a licence. While of course they do have the capacity to be ‘annoying’ (because they’re human beings), bicycles are both much simpler to pilot and much safer than either motorbikes or cars. In other words, while cyclists are annoying, motorists are dangerous. There’s a qualitative difference.
if cyclists dont have dedicated lanes somewhere, they need to have a license of some sort, ‘specialist’ cyclist, driving bicycle license, anything, to keep traffic in order
I don’t think you’ve really engaged with this post properly at all.
Cyclists don’t need a licence ‘to keep traffic in order’, because it isn’t cyclists that cause the problems.
@zoe @frankPodmore Driving licences and traffic lights were invented because car drivers were too dangerous to safely mix with existing road traffic and we needed to restrain them. Bicycles have never been a significant danger to other road traffic. We don’t require licences for people to ride bicycles for the same reason we don’t require licences for pedestrians, it’s a ridiculous idea that would do nothing useful.
A common argument raised around here, is how will kids cycle to school if licenses are needed? Their parents are likely to drive them instead, creating more traffic, and the kids lose out on that exercise and freedom of mobility.
If their parents can’t drive them or afford to own a car it’s tough luck, that kid loses out on an education 🤷♂️
.
insurance won’t be happy to hear that a cyclist has broken ur expensive audi side mirror, just because he decided to stroll between cars waiting at traffic
How so?
It seems rather obvious. Bicycle laws are less strict, so it’s “harder” to break them.
edit: what a bunch of dumb ass replies. no I won’t respond to any of them
edit: what a bunch of dumb ass replies. no I won’t respond to any of them
You seem lovely.
Hmm, I don’t know about that. Cycling over a pavement or through a red light is much easier on a bike than in a car!
Explain how bicycle laws are less strict in Denmark, please?
Cyclists adhere to the same rules of the road.
source: trust me bro
Says the troll who didn’t even read the headline of the post before posting just because they saw a car and cycle in the same picture.
Beyond that, I responded to each of their points. If you want a source, ask them to provide them and I will give a rebuttal. I responded to the amount of information they provided. I didn’t see you asking them for a source, but you already have shown you’re obviously biased and don’t actually care about real discussion. Otherwise you wouldn’t just interject an opinion into a topic without even knowing what’s being discussed.
In my experience, there are plenty of cyclists out there (and I’m sure it’s not the majority, but enough for me to notice) who are “traffic” when it suits them, and also “pedestrians” when it suits them.
Mostly, bike messengers in Boston are dicks. 😅
That’s just describing the cyclists who break rules though. It doesn’t mean they are required to follow fewer laws.
