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!
- Showroom7561 ( @Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ) 49•1 year ago
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.
- EinfachUnersetzlich ( @EinfachUnersetzlich@lemm.ee ) 3•1 year ago
As a UK cyclist I can see that stopping at a red light definitely does make sense. I don’t want to hit pedestrians and other road users who have been given a green light to cross my path.
You’re no more dangerous cycling at 3kph than you are wheeling your bike at 3kph, but one of those things is illegal if you do it over a stop line, regardless of anything else you do once you’re over the stop line. That’s the absurdity.
- EinfachUnersetzlich ( @EinfachUnersetzlich@lemm.ee ) 4•1 year ago
Yeah, I say make them both illegal so the rules are more predictable and easy to understand.
Also, make it illegal to be outside. Too much mad shit going on out there.
The difference is that one will force you to actually stop, if even for just a moment. That can give you enough time to actually see oncoming traffic.
- IWantToFuckSpez ( @IWantToFuckSpez@kbin.social ) 5•1 year ago
The study in the article is from Denmark though. They never mentioned Dutch cyclists.
- Showroom7561 ( @Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
Fair point. I don’t think it matters in this context.
The Dutch and Danes both have excellent cycling infrastructure, so it doesn’t matter what place we’re talking about, since the behaviour of cyclists (and motorists) is the same when given appropriate infrastructure.
- potpotato ( @potpotato@artemis.camp ) 33•1 year ago
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.
Perhaps. In fairness, I drive very little and haven’t done so for years, so I’m probably not the best witness!
- Frank Podmore 🌹✊ ( @frankpodmore@social.coop ) 17•1 year ago
@frankPodmore@slrpnk.net 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!
- pjhenry1216 ( @pjhenry1216@kbin.social ) 9•1 year ago
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.
- Frank Podmore 🌹✊ ( @frankpodmore@social.coop ) 8•1 year ago
@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
- pjhenry1216 ( @pjhenry1216@kbin.social ) 2•1 year ago
That would cause the biggest impact, but in the meantime I wish car drivers were just better educated about the rules of the road when a bicycle is present. I’m not even sure which is the easier goal honestly. Maybe better infrastructure is easier even if more expensive. Easier to change a road than it is to change people.
(Yes, this is me replying to this post on Mastodon. Didn’t realise that it would show up like this!)
- Franzia ( @Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 3•1 year ago
Interesting!
- acockworkorange ( @acockworkorange@mander.xyz ) 2•1 year ago
Chuckle.
- oo1 ( @oo1@kbin.social ) 9•1 year ago
we’ve got a new cycle lane with dedicated lights near me - though only activated by a beg-button.
except you can press the button sall you want ant it’ll stay on red all the time.unfortunately due to the concrete separator i can’t nip over into the main lane and use that lane on green.
so i just have to run the red. almost every bike trip i make is lawbreaking for me.- Hawk ( @Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) English5•1 year ago
I break laws cycling almost daily. While infrastructure is fairly good in my country, there still are a lot of dangerous points. Breaking the law is necessary to get to your destination safely.
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 6•1 year ago
bikers need a driving license
edit: kinda offtopic, but cyclists are as annoying
- unexposedhazard ( @unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de ) 11•1 year ago
Over here in germany you can lose your drivers license if you violate traffic laws while riding your bike and that is probably sufficient.
- Destide ( @sirico@feddit.uk ) English4•1 year ago
Same for cyclists in the UK op comment would only work if we all carried citizen cards, they think licenses are the only way to identify people committing offences.
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 2•1 year ago
also i hate bikers with modded akrapovic exhausts, thats just stupid (straight piped bikes also)…the whole brand and concept is stupid
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 2•1 year ago
exactly that was my point. some bikers dont handle their bikes as cars, they just keep slipping between lanes and hitting pedestrations covered by blind angles. that needs to stop
- pjhenry1216 ( @pjhenry1216@kbin.social ) 6•1 year ago
No one disagrees that rule breakers need to stop. But licensing doesn’t look like it’d help, considering drivers are licensed and break more rules than cyclists.
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 2•1 year ago
considering drivers are licensed and break more rules than cyclists.
says who ?
- pjhenry1216 ( @pjhenry1216@kbin.social ) 10•1 year ago
Are you posting on this without even being remotely aware of what the article says?
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 1•1 year ago
i know i am talking about bikes,which are motorists, not cyclists…but as long as cyclists share the road with motorists, they could also use a driving license, and so e-bikers do and so forth…until there are enough cyclist lanes
- pjhenry1216 ( @pjhenry1216@kbin.social ) 6•1 year ago
It’s clear you’re just posting on this site to troll since you weren’t even aware of the basic concept of the post. I don’t need to reply to trolls.
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 1•1 year ago
didnt pay enough attention to article ngl, but cyclists are as annoying (if they dont have cyclist lanes) and u were right
- pjhenry1216 ( @pjhenry1216@kbin.social ) 6•1 year ago
It’s the damn headline. You literally didn’t read anything. You clicked on a fuck_cars post and just made a comment based on nothing in the post at all. That’s literally trolling. You made a random comment purely to get a rise out of people.
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 1•1 year ago
bikers aren’t fined enough. once there are enough cameras to spot their illegal driving and get issued fines that would help lower bike accidents. driving’s license and fines are barriers to discourage wreckless behaviour
- Blackout ( @Blackout@kbin.social ) 5•1 year ago
Dude cameras don’t even get a fraction of the cars breaking driving laws, why do you hate people who prefer to bike so much?
- Blackout ( @Blackout@kbin.social ) 10•1 year ago
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.
- 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏 ( @lemann@lemmy.one ) 3•1 year ago
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
How so?
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.
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 2•1 year ago
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
- Jesse ( @jessta@aus.social ) 6•1 year ago
@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.
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.
- 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏 ( @lemann@lemmy.one ) 5•1 year ago
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 🤷♂️
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 1•1 year ago
.
- 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏 ( @lemann@lemmy.one ) 1•1 year ago
I didn’t get to read your response before the edit ☹️
Possible to repost it pls?
- unfnknblvbl ( @unfnknblvbl@beehaw.org ) 4•1 year ago
Lemme just check my state road rules.
Hmmmm… Now this is interesting!
It says right here in Article VI, Section 3, Paragraph 14 that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Amazing!
- zoe ( @zoe@infosec.pub ) 1•1 year ago
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
- Sharkwellington ( @Sharkwellington@lemmy.one ) 4•1 year ago
bikers need a driving license
driv·er’s li·cense
noun
a document permitting a person to drive a motor vehicle.
- quindraco ( @quindraco@lemm.ee ) 4•1 year ago
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!
- quindraco ( @quindraco@lemm.ee ) 5•1 year ago
For sure! When a bus violates traffic rules, everyone else gets out of the damn way because it’s a bus. You don’t want to try driving aggressively against one of those. When a bus decides to be in 2 lanes at once without using a turn signal, you just do your best not to be near it.
- Showroom7561 ( @Showroom7561@lemmy.ca ) 1•1 year ago
Buses are actually the safest form of road transport.
Yeah, but not because they are inherently safe, but because they are often driving much slower than regular traffic and in stop and go situations, often in places built around bus infrastructure.
Put them on high-speed roads or outside that tailored infrastructure, and you end up with multi-casualty crashes. Like this, or this, or this, or this.
But to the comment you were replying to, many of the bus drivers around here drive as though they were in a pickup truck. Poorly!
- Franzia ( @Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 4•1 year ago
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
- unfnknblvbl ( @unfnknblvbl@beehaw.org ) 5•1 year ago
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 :(
- Franzia ( @Franzia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 3•1 year ago
It’s nice to hear your exquisite taste in bikes. Sorry it went that way.
🙄 fuck cars!
- unfnknblvbl ( @unfnknblvbl@beehaw.org ) 2•1 year ago
Eh, I use it as a learning experience to try be a better driver. Because I agree with the premise of this sub :)
- gowan ( @gowan@reddthat.com ) 1•1 year ago
I wonder how true this is in NYC as when I lived there the folks riding CitiBikes (bikes for Citi bank customers) nobody had helmets and many did not know or follow the rules of the roads.
- mondoman712 ( @mondoman712@lemmy.ml ) 3•1 year ago
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.
- gowan ( @gowan@reddthat.com ) 3•1 year ago
Death isn’t the only problem that helmets prevent. The fact that head injuries happen more often in cars is not a logically sound reason to not wear one on a bicycle.
- kim_harding ✅ ( @kim_harding@mastodon.scot ) 3•1 year ago
@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!
- kim_harding ✅ ( @kim_harding@mastodon.scot ) 1•1 year ago
@frankPodmore That rather depends on whether your objective is to deter beach sitting or not. Of course, if the real objective is to protect life and health, the place to start is removing the source of harm 😉
You’re right! Time to ban masonry!
- CheezyWeezle ( @CheezyWeezle@lemm.ee ) 2•1 year ago
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’.
- CheezyWeezle ( @CheezyWeezle@lemm.ee ) 1•1 year ago
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.
- gowan ( @gowan@reddthat.com ) 1•1 year ago
Because we don’t have a massive amount of data showing they would prevent injury vs being the cause of other injuries.
- kim_harding ✅ ( @kim_harding@mastodon.scot ) 0•1 year ago
@gowan Really? Or has it just been misinterpreted?
- gowan ( @gowan@reddthat.com ) 1•1 year ago
Try finding a bunch of data on people driving with helmets on who are not racing the car.
The data isn’t there because no one has been gathering it.
But it is a logically sound reason to ask, if they’re required for cyclists, why not in cars?
And hey, why stop at transportation? I’m sure wearing a bike helmet makes it less likely that I’ll suffer a serious head injury if I fall down the stairs at home, so I’d better start wearing one inside, too. It’s the socially responsible thing to do.
- Eoghan Murray ( @eoghanmurray@mastodon.green ) 1•1 year ago
@frankPodmore @gowan
“Promoting the use of bicycle helmets runs counter to … policies that are aimed at the primary prevention of crashes (as opposed to secondary prevention [of injuries])”
“Attempts to promote bicycle helmets should not have the negative effect of incorrectly linking cycling and danger.”
https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/eu-road-safety-policy/priorities/safe-road-use/cyclists/pros-and-cons-regarding-bicycle-helmet-legislation_en- gowan ( @gowan@reddthat.com ) 1•1 year ago
Try reading your own source next time as they continually talk about how helmets work to reduce harm. The problem with this specific case was the promotion of helmet wearing decreased the number of people riding bikes.
Your source in no way counters the idea that helmets are a good safety precaution for cyclists.
- Eoghan Murray ( @eoghanmurray@mastodon.green ) 1•1 year ago
@frankPodmore @gowan I guess the idea is that if you mandate helmets it will reduce bicycle use (which may be part of the reason you’ll seeess deaths). Less cyclists in an area raises the risks for those cyclists that remain. Drivers feel more comfortable with helmeted cyclists, and studies show they drive closer to those cyclists that wear helmets compared with those that don’t (see ‘risk compensation’)
I wear a helmet cycling kids to school fwiw.