Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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As someone who always hated to get stuck behind a bike while driving, I like bike lanes because it means the bikes never get in my way.
I'm opposed to a vehicle that maxes out at 20mph riding in a lane that's 35mph or above. For safety reasons as well as the inconvenience. I always felt nervous passing bikes on the road, and often the cyclist would look at me like I'm an asshole for it, but ain't no way I'm going all the way to where I'm going doing half the speed limit, and it's selfish for someone to think I should just because they chose to take a slower vehicle.
Bike lanes solve this problem. Bikes and cars go different speeds, and each has their own lane so they don't get in each other's ways and there are no close calls.
I don't understand why car people are opposed to bike lanes.
If I'm correct, roads were for everyone, then they decided to make it only for cars and the rest has to fight to have small strips dedicated for them because they supposedly get in the way.
And about the cyclists. They might be assholes, or you might be passing too close or too fast.
Or roads are too narrow for the guy who can't even hit half the speed limit to be safely passed and is now blocking all traffic...
Different classes of vehicle that have significantly different speed capabilities should have separate lanes. Bikes, tractors, horse-drawn buggies; it's a safety hazard to force them to share a lane with automobiles.
I try to minimize the amount of time I'm in the wrong lane of traffic. If a car comes around the next corner while I'm passing, the cyclist is gonna be a lot more upset when I have to suddenly swerve back into the right lane. So I pass as quickly as possible. If he wants me to crawl past only doing a couple mph faster than he's doing, well, that's not gonna happen.
Also, if my car doesn't accelerate very fast, I need to get up to speed in order to pass. It's not just a quick little blip when I'm starting from 15 or 20 mph. So if it makes him nervous when my engine revs, maybe he shouldn't be riding a bike in traffic?
I can go slower if I stay in the correct lane, but that gives the bike less space. I can give the bike more space by going into the other lane, but then I'll have to go faster. Pick your poison. I'd be a jerk if I passed both close and fast. But either close or fast is a practical necessity, and if you get upset that I didn't do neither then you're the jerk.
Just to clarify. You go slower or you stay away. Your don't have to do both. The ideia is to be far enough that the bike toppling to the side doesn't result in a cyclist under your car, or that hitting the cyclist is at a relative low speed.
And I honestly see more drivers overreacting to things that would just dent or scratch their cars than cyclists losing control when they have their lives endangered.
That's what I said, one or the other but not neither or both.
Some cyclists seem to expect you to do both, but that's also unsafe, and the entire point of my argument was to illustrate why that is.
And going back to my original point, dedicated bike lanes would solve this issue entirely, so I don't know why car people are against them.
It seems you've made an art out of latching onto the wrong details, removing all context, and arguing against a distortion of the argument that I actually made...
Or you could just wait until it's safe to pass.
Except... the same thing still applies when it's safe to pass.
Besides, what is "safe to pass"? It's a spectrum, and different people have different thresholds.
As a driver, my threshold might be "I can pass this cyclist without hitting him." For the cyclist, it might be "the driver can pass me without making me nervous."
Well, guess who gets to decide when it's safe to pass? (It's not the cyclist).
And when roads are long, flat, and straight, it's pretty easy to determine. You can clearly see when there's oncoming traffic anywhere close. But not all roads are like that. In many places, most aren't.
So when you have hilly, curvy roads, it can be more dangerous to pass. You have to wait until you get a long enough straightaway when you can see far enough ahead. And when that comes, there still might be oncoming traffic. So when you get a decent straightaway with no oncoming traffic, you have to take the opportunity because you don't know when the next one will come. And you can't dawdle, so if the cyclist expects you to pass slowly, they're kinda stupid.
Lastly, your argument is kinda weak as a counter to "cyclists and drivers should have separate lanes because they move at different speeds."
Lmao, wtf dude. You pass a bicycle at a place where you can't see the road ahead of you, and when a CSR comes your response is to run the bicycle over? You shouldnt have a drivers license. You are a danger to those around you.
No, you have to severely distort what I said to arrive at that conclusion. I said I don't do those things.
I depicted the various possible scenarios to explain why bike lanes are a good thing. If your solution is to just take away people's licenses because they passed a bike on the road just so you don't have to build bike lanes, then you might want to do some introspecting because you're part of the problem.
You literally said you would have to swerve into a bike if there was a car coming when you were passing at a curve bruh, there's no scenario where you should be passing at that time period. Its a dumbass argument.
The taking licenses away isn't because you passed someone, its because your idea of a valid response to you fucking up in this hypothetical scenario is to murder someone.
I said that might be a possibility if I pass too slowly while giving them too much space. I don't personally pass in scenarios where that is likely to happen.
The point of that argument wasn't to say "It's okay to swerve into the cyclist," so you acting like that's what I'm saying is a strawman. The point of the argument was to say "Cyclists shouldn't be upset and act self-righteous every time someone doesn't crawl past them completely in the other lane of traffic."
I can go slow, but I'd have to give you less space. Or I can give you more space, but I'd have to go faster. If I go both fast and close, I'd be a jerk, but it's not going to be neither. It's going to be one or the other.
The talk of swerving was an explanation of why it would be dangerous to pass slowly in the wrong lane of traffic. To portray it as anything else is extremely disingenuous.