true. but as a bike rider I know that 50% of my accidents don't involve another car, bike, or peds. They come from my own spills that involve only me and no other driver, cyclist, or pedestrian. I misjudge a road hazard or I hesitate while at low speed or I don't clip out fast enough or I wipe out on a wet road or I get my tired stuck in lighrail tracks or a grate: I fall.
This, according to Tom Vanderbilt, is why bike riders have a different perspective. it's because you are more fully aware of the danger as you ride. Car drivers live in a world that militates against this awareness.
You see this in areas where they've installed traffic calming devices. Vanderbilt shows how drivers are actually worse --- they drive faster - through areas where they've installed traffic calming strategies and devices: curvy lanes to force people to slow, speed bumps/humps, those speed bubbles along the edge of the road, etc. They are a bit more successful with strategies that calm people down emotionally: different colored pavement, narrower roads, removing the center line, etc.
What I don't want to see is situation where I am forced to use separate paths, etc. This is what happens in the suburbs here, when the subdivisions put in multi-use paths - most of which are awful for cyclists because they are full of tree roots, too narrow to share with peds, full of debris, etc -- the people in the area become even less tolerate of road riders. They expect you to get into your bike paths and stay out of their way. They roads, they say, belong to them.
But we'll never have separate paths or lanes in the city where I live because the streets are old and far too narrow. The speed limit is already 25 mph on most streets. It would be absurd to even try. But my guess is that drivers will continue to think we shouldn't be on the streets, once they come to believe that we should be on separate bike facilities.
fuck that noise.
fuck that shit.
>I do not hate cars either. What I hate is that the oil-automobile
>industrial complex and the government that they have in their pockets
>push their use on everyone, which puts a lot of stress on a lot of
>people, drivers and non-drivers. Driving demands full attention all
>the time, and that demand is simply unrealistic - most people simply
>cannot do it all the time due to other demands on their time, stress,
>exhaustion, etc. So they are forced to cut corners and play games
>with their safety. Sometimes they get away with it, sometimes they do
>not. Sometimes they pay the price for their lapses, sometimes others
>do. But those who almost never pay that price is those who profit
>from car sales and the government that they have in their pockets.
>
>So if everyone is forced to drive, it is not unreasonable to expect
>that driving is made as safe as possible to everyone, drivers and
>non-drivers alike. That means not just separate bike lanes but also
>under ground or above the grade pedestrian crossing, no undivided
>roads, fewer intersections, fences keeping animals off the road, and
>many other safety measures. But this cost money and takes away
>profits, so hey, let's shift the cost on the users and make them work
>harder and bear the cost of mishaps.
>
>
>--
>Wojtek
>
>"Modern conservatism is just a neoliberal gloss on medieval domination."
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-- http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)