I don't like that the article implies cyclists are breaking the rules, but then they list behaviors that are legal in most places and make sense:
> overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside.
It also blames bikes for both moving too fast and too slow, and ignores that drivers'd be way more pissed if bikes took the entire lane (like they're entitled to in most places).
The article is explaining why many drivers dislike cyclists. This accurately describes some of the complaints I've heard from non-cyclists:
Then along come cyclists, innocently following what they see are the rules of the road, but doing things that drivers aren't allowed to: overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside.
Whether or not the cyclists are actually following the law is irrelevant, there's still the perception that they are not. I've had a motorist pull up beside me at a stop sign and yell at me to get off the road and ride on the sidewalk -- I pointed out the bike stencil on the bike lane I was in and pointed to the "No bicycles on sidewalks" sign, and he still told me to get off the road. Laws (even with clear evidence that I was following them) didn't matter to him.
We usually say that the only thing that angers motorists more than cyclists breaking the rules of the road is cyclists following the rules of the road :)
The implication is that while they get angered by cyclists running reds, doing illegal turns, or lane splitting (assuming it's illegal), they also get angered if by following the rules the cyclists slow them down.
I am a daily cyclist and I started strictly following the rules after being scared by an accident I had. I realized eventually that I don't feel safer by following the rules. In fact there are a lot of days when I feel even more in danger than before (namely: rain days and friday nights).
I used to think that was because of the shock from the accident.
I'd like some material on that if you happen to know about it.
I'm a four season bike commuter too (boosted board when it's hot out). I'm done following the rules of the road just because— I'll do what's safest for me. If the police want people outside of cars to follow the rules "for our safety", they need to make the first move and actually enforce the car-side rules that would help make us safer as well.
The big one in Ontario is yielding to crosswalks. As of September last year, failing to yield to a crosswalk is supposed to be $1000 (!) fine. But as far as I know, there hasn't been one single instance of that ticket being handed out in my city, yet I witness pedestrians cut off by vehicles literally daily. I've even posted helmet cam videos of it happening to Facebook and YouTube and tagged my local politicians. Nothing happens.
The "Idaho stop" [1] is the best example I know of, with some studies showing that it's safer than the alternative. It's where cyclists are allowed to treat stop signs as yields (as opposed to coming to a full stop at each one).
Yes I've heard of that through the Paris experiment cited in this article. Although when I talked about it with Parisian friends :
* Cyclists have not heard of it and keep getting insulted daily for behaviors allowed by this experiment
* Motorist had the typical knee-jerk reaction along the lines of "This is crazy! Cyclists are madmen! Actual dangers to pedestrians and to themselves, ..." yadda yadda
Of course I don't assume that every cyclist I talked with is respectful of the actual crossroads where this is enforced so my little biased survey is worth nothing.
But I guess if it's not backed up with proper propaganda this kind of new road rules are doomed to create new tensions between cyclists and motorist.
Or just give cyclists proper protected bike lanes, like there have in the Netherlands. But I kind of have lost hope on the French Government and Community Governments for that.
The reason these behaviors are frustrating to drivers is that bicycles are hard to overtake. They’re unpredictable and fragile compared to a car, and so the driver has to give them a wide berth, often having to wait behind them for a long time until there’s a break in oncoming traffic to get around them.
That’s not so much of a problem, as that’s the same with every slow-moving vehicle. Bicycles, however, are the only ones that will re-overtake while the car is standing in a queue, forcing the driver to do all of that work again instead of just relaxing into the normal flow of traffic.
When they overtake a standing queue, Bicyclists, from the point of view of drivers, are acting against the common interest of smoothly flowing traffic for their own gain and taking advantage of a temporary situation to screw up the natural order of faster vehicles at the front of the line and slower ones at the back.
The obvious solution here is separate infrastructure for cars and bicycles as they have such different acceleration profiles that there will inevitably be problems putting them in the same space. But as long as bicyclists don’t extend the common courtesy of remaining overtaken in shared situations, they will be viewed as more worthy of punishment than appeasement.
> When they overtake a standing queue, Bicyclists, from the point of view of drivers, are acting against the common interest of smoothly flowing traffic for their own gain and taking advantage of a temporary situation to screw up the natural order of faster vehicles at the front of the line and slower ones at the back.
Now compare that behaviour with motorists, who are acting against the common interest of society and the environment by using a 2 tonne metal box to move around, leaving air and noise pollution, death, destruction and congestion in their wake.
I realize you're only explaining the behaviours, but we've built a society that chooses convenience at the cost of over a million road deaths per year, envelops cities in smog, and is responsible for a huge chunk of CO₂ emissions.
So, queue jumping is a moral act as long as the people you’re jumping in front of are bad people? Even if so, they’re most of the population and making someone angry is rarely a good tactic to convince them to help you.
It’s possible to disagree with everything someone stands for and still treat them with civility. Many people on both sides of this debate that are concerned primarily with their own convenience, and this should be a rational policy discussion instead of a holy war.
> So, queue jumping is a moral act as long as the people you’re jumping in front of are bad people?
I see it as more like a "10 items or less" queue: if you're taking up less (checkout/road) space then you get to go in a shorter queue that moves faster than the queues of the people who are taking up more space. That's fair, isn't it?
That would be fair, if the infrastructure reflected that. It doesn’t, however: often there’s only one lane downstream from the traffic light that can’t be effectively shared, so there’s only one resource to queue for. That’s why we should get some proper bicycle infrastructure built already, but bicyclists angering drivers with their behavior isn’t going to help.
In my experience whether there's a painted bicycle lane or not makes little difference to how angry drivers get about it. Filtering past them is still the safest course of action either way; I'm not going to compromise that for the sake of their unreasonable anger.
> The reason these behaviors are frustrating to drivers is that bicycles are hard to overtake.
It's a lot easier to see around a bicycle compared to other slower vehicles with bigger profiles. Also, since you're driving at a lower speed before and during the overtake, you're going to require less distance overall to complete the maneuver.
> They’re unpredictable
If they're following the rules of the road, then they're not unpredictable.
> and fragile compared to a car,
So are motorcyclists, for example.
> so the driver has to give them a wide berth
Four (or more) wheeled vehicles, by their nature, make it difficult to judge their precise extent from the driver's seat (the passenger side going more difficult compared to the driver's side). Roads typically have lines that help drivers laterally position their vehicles such that they have sufficient distance between the edge of the road and other vehicles traveling in the same direction.
Commonly, when overtaking another vehicle, one will completely change lanes before doing so (regardless of the vehicle type). The same rule should also apply to overtaking a cyclist.
> Bicycles, however, are the only ones that will re-overtake while the car is standing in a queue
I've seen people on motorcycles and other motor driven two wheel vehicles do the same.
> The obvious solution here is separate infrastructure for cars and bicycles as they have such different acceleration profiles that there will inevitably be problems putting them in the same space.
The same could argued for HGVs, but we do drive on the same roads they do without any issues despite the fact that their acceleration is much less compared to a typical car.
Unless the separate infrastructure is truly separate (i.e. grade separated), then these types of facilities cause more problems at intersections where they put cyclists on the wrong side of turning vehicles or even on the wrong side of the road relative to the direction of traffic).
> overtaking queues of cars, moving at well below the speed limit or undertaking on the inside.
It also blames bikes for both moving too fast and too slow, and ignores that drivers'd be way more pissed if bikes took the entire lane (like they're entitled to in most places).