The tables on the road were only there for the inauguration day, but bike lane is here to stay.
I don’t see the immigrants in the second picture
Lady in pink would be killed if she came to Amsterdam
I damn nearly got murdered by an angry speeding cyclist in Paris, near a canal. I crossed the lane without realizing, not being used to their presence. Bike lanes are simply nonexistent where I live, and I was only staying in Paris for a couple weeks. The dude got super mad at me, like super super mad. To this day I still fantasize about throwing him and his fucking bike in the canal. I really should have done it… why do I have to second-guess everything
Learn how to cry on command. That would probably have taken the wind out of his sails. I’m not a car freak. If I could get by in my suburban hell without one I would. That being said, if cars have to be aware of cyclists then cyclists need to be aware of pedestrians.
Yea, exactly my point. I’m not denying that I should have been aware of the presence of the bike lane but it falls on the guy on a vehicle to be acutely aware of his surroundings and wary of potential collisions. I say this as a driver and a bicycler
Let me get this straight: You walked into a bicycle path because you weren’t aware of your surroundings. The bicycle stopped because the cyclist was aware of their surroundings.
Getting reamed out in public must have sucked, and was probably overkill. But this sounds like someone safely avoided an accident when you made a mistake.
I say this as a cyclist who uses my Big Girl voice on dedicated bike paths and someone who’s accidentally walked onto a bike path.
When I first started cycling in a heavy bike-commuter city I got yelled at, a lot, because there isn’t a lot of public education on safely navigating bike lanes. Embarassing, yeah, but I learned fast.
So if a pedestrian walked onto the road without looking or anything, you’d say the driver is at fault?
A cycle lane is to a bike as a road is to a car. A pedestrian is allowed to cross it after looking and checking that no vehicle is coming, and the pedestrian has to give right of way.
Cars have to be aware of cyclists when cyclists are driving on the road, since both have equal rights to be there. Same as a car has to be aware of another car or a cyclists of another cyclist. Both are allowed to use the road, so both need to be aware of each other.
That’s what the law says in France, at least. People are supposed to cross on crosswalks, but if they don’t and a car hits them the driver is at fault regardless. I can try to find a source in english if that’s important to you.
Anyway, context is king here and what I didn’t specify in my post above is that the space where it happened was quite crowded and ambiguous (especially for an alien like me who had seldom seen a bike lane at the time)
The whole concept of “being at fault” only applies to accidents. If you see someone breaking the law (e.g. walking across the road where it’s not allowed) and you then purposely ram them with your vehicle, then it’s not an accident and of course you are at fault then. If someone else breaks the law you would have to be an utter idiot to think that this gives you the right to legally murder that person.
I repeat: you’d have to be seriously braindead and messed up to belive that you can legally kill someone over a minor traffic violation.
If it’s an actual accident though, e.g. if the pedestrian darts out between parked cars so fast that the driver can’t stop in time, then it’s clearly the pedestrian’s fault (even in France) and the driver will not get in trouble.
Again, all of that is super basic.
A bike lane is not ambiguous. If you don’t inform yourself of laws and customs in a country you travel to, then it’s still your fault if you are too ignorant to understand basic traffic situations, and neither does ignorance excuse you from following the law nor does it make your wrong actions and lawbreaking right, nor does it give you any moral high ground.
If a car driver is expected to be aware of pedestrians, then a cyclist is to be expected to be aware of pedestrians. You can’t have it both ways. A cyclist can easily cause serious injury to a pedestrian.
Is a pedestrian expected to be aware of car drivers on the side walk?
Is a car driver expected to be aware of pedestrians on the highway?
Yes, and also yes. personal responsibility for your own safety doesn’t magically disappear because of paint on the ground.
Responsibility for the machine you’re operating that can harm others doesn’t magically disappear when it weighs less.
To be honest, it’s a wrong argument anyways. The cyclist was aware of the pedestrian on the bike lane and he stopped in time. So the whole argument doesn’t matter.
The actual point is whether the pedestrian was in the right to wander onto the bike lane, completely oblivious to his surroundings.
It’s by momentum. The greater the momentum the greater the responsibility.
Edit: To actually respond to your examples:
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No. It is the responsibility of the high mv cars not to enter the sidewalk, or to be incredibly cautious if they must.
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Yes. It is the responsibility of the high mv car to look far enough ahead to respond to low mv (or rather high delay v) obstacles ahead. If this sounds impractical, the design of highways and the illegality of a pedestrian entering one makes unavoidable incidents of car-hitting-pedestrian-on-highway low enough to be practical.
Ok, let’s put it differently: In the story we are talking about
- A cyclist was aware of the pedestrian walking on the cycling lane
- A pedestrian was unaware of the fact that he was on the biking lane
- The cyclist managed to stop safely before the pedestrian
- The cyclist got angry for the pedestrian not caring about whether he was allowed to walk where he did
- The pedestrian felt so justified in walking on the cycling lane that he considered throwing the bike off the river
So what’s your point? The cyclist shouldn’t have gotten angry and should have just been fine and dandy with the pedestrian walking on the cycling lane?
The equivalent would be a pedestrian walking on the road, and then drivers should be just fine with that. They aren’t and neither should they be.
If a driver shouldn’t need to be happy with a pedestrian wandering around on the road completely unaware of his surroundings, why should a cyclist be ok with the same circumstances?
You can’t have it both ways.
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I mean, honest mistake on your part, but still your mistake. Dude shouldn’t have raged at you for an honest mistake, but you should rage at them even less, as they didn’t even do anything wrong (except raging).
You’d be a somewhat justified if it happened in a pedestrian only zone or sidewalk, as it frequently does in my city but you were the one in the wrong area.
If the cyclist is anything like me, he was super mad because he almost killed the other guy.
I was being inconsiderate and dangerous in traffic, and it’s the other guy’s fault
No no I was on foot
Was it a cycle path or a foot path?
If it was a cycle path, then you are allowed to cross it on foot, but you aren’t allowed to walk on it.
If you blindly wandered onto a road and a driver got angry because he almost hit you because of that, would you also believe you had the right to throw his car off a bridge?
Neither (or both?), it was an overcrowded walkable canal bank in the height of summer with faint paint marks to delimit the path of the bike “lane”. I was in the wrong in any case, what I’m complaining about is the dude’s reaction. My point is you have to be able to share the space and safely navigate what is inevitably going to be a crowded area at that time of year, especially when riding a bicycle which can be dangerous in its own right.
So it was a bike lane that you were on. Being to dumb to understand what a bike lane is and that a bike lane is for, you know, bikes is not an excuse.
You complain about that dude’s reaction but wanted to commit theft/vandalism and think you are justified in that?
You are the idiot who actively made riding a bike dangerous in that situation and still believe you are justified?
Let me guess, you are American?
If you walk onto a freeway, on foot, you are being reckless. It’s the same for bike lanes. Look where you walk.
You’re still part of traffic when you’re on foot. And yes, it was 100% your fault and the cyclist was right to be pissed.
That literally doesn’t change what he said.
This is beautiful
I thought you were replying to the comment on top
I like everything except the road-style bidirectional bike lane. They should split the directions of the bike lane. Head on collisions are very bad. Splitting the lanes makes those essentially impossible. It also makes it much easier for pedestrians to cross since they only need to deal with one direction of traffic at a time.
Just put that plant boulevard between the directions of the bike lane and create pedestrian islands to stand on.
Also make accessing the shop on the other side possible without riding on the road, this kind of layout mean you’re forced to ride on the road for the whole stretch if you using a bakfiet.
But either way, it’s a one step forward.
My hard line opinion is that roads are dead spaces. There is no opportunity for anything to grow or flourish; this includes things like community. More roads = more dead space.
If you want to activate a space, i.e. bring community back, reduce road space. And, of course, with reduced road space you need to counter balance with better infrastructure for other modes of transport to get people moving to and from.
Basic town planning! Looking at you… Local council…
Don’t look up parking lot rules in america, dead space like it’s going out of style just so crowds can shop on black Friday and Christmas.
Ohoho… I have seen those rules and having visited both California and Texas last year, I can safely say that I don’t want any of that where I live. California was marginally better than Texas though but not by much.
It was insane to me that it was a 3hr public bus ride to NASA, and that included a 20 minute walk from where the bus drops you off.
…And those Stepford Wives-like suburban hellscapes with nothing but roads and freeways for miles.
Madness.
Madness? THIS IS AMERICA! ~Don’t catch you slippin’ now~
Get off the bike path grandma
In my experience cycling in London, it wouldn’t be a bike lane without some doofus walking on it 😅
We do a pedestrian mall in our downtown district from June to September. I absolutely love it and it has been a huge driver of local business. I would love to see some of our streets become pedestrian only but that would also mean my town acknowledging that pedestrians deserve a path at all in the winter.
The curb in the middle is totally unfriendly to disabled people.
It looks like there is a cut over built into the curb that you can see in the picture right above the head of the person in the blue shirt
I’m really not a fan of these “Bike lane and pavement are not the same hight and the kerb is a wedge so can’t see it very well”. We have them at se places where I live (and sometimes pavement and bikelane are the same height to make it even more confusing) and I’ve seen multiple cyclists (and pedestrians) having accidents because they did not realize there was a difference in height.
I can’t honestly believe that some people would rather have the hellscape in the top photo, rather than the paradise in the lower one.
Communities, and society as a whole, need more of the “after”, please!
Paradise is a stretch. Paradise to a non-cyclist like me would be a robust tram system with cheap monthly pass. This looks nicer I agree, but if you’re not a cyclist you’re still driving.
Paradise to a non-cyclist like me would be a robust tram system with cheap monthly pass. This looks nicer I agree, but if you’re not a cyclist you’re still driving.
Ironically, there’s a subway directly under where this photo is taken, so robust public transportation can still move people to these destinations. No need to drive to these shops now, since you can get there without needing a car.
Before this transformation, there was barely a sidewalk, and almost no people enjoying this public space.
Here’s another angle of that street, so you get a better idea:
Two things strike me the most.
The first is that in the “before”, there’s just all wasted space and no people.
Now you now see elderly and children enjoying that space, people talking, people sitting down to eat or rest. You don’t have to be a cyclist to appreciate that this is what streets should look like.
The added context of the underground subway system definitely helps. In pure terms of use of space i definitely agree that we allocate way too much space to cars and car infrastructure. It’d be nice to see these ideas implemented as a broad ideology. Where i live we are moving further and further away from public transportation infrastructure.
It’d be nice to see these ideas implemented as a broad ideology.
Attend every public consultation that your municipality makes available when it comes to new projects and development. It often only takes a few people to make or break certain plans (good or bad ones).
Where i live we are moving further and further away from public transportation infrastructure.
North America? Some cities seem to be moving forward (i.e. San Francisco), while others are going way backward (i.e. Toronto).
In Montreal, Quebec, they are making huge progress in the same way that France has. De-growing certain roads, and giving them back to the communities. It’s incredible to see!
Hopefully, as some cities adopt more people-centric design, it catches on. And it has to, because cities that keep pushing car dependency will bankrupt themselves.
Moving from a car to a bike is a choice, though. Become a cyclist :)
That bitch just walkin’ in the bike lane.
I can understand.
We have some new dedicated cycle lanes in our city (I mean, they are a few years old now. But fairly unique in our country).
I feel bad for the cyclists. They have a dedicated path, which pedestrians are super ignorant of (they are better marked than this picture).
My parents think they are a menace when they visit, because they are unaware of them and get menaced by cyclists.
Except, that’s literally what roads are. They just grew up with roads and (even faster) cars.So, I am understanding of the transition.
And everyone needs to call everyone out over it. It will make everyone saferI got pretty heated after an event bicycling home. Pedestrians all ignorant walking on the bike lane. That was fine so long as they moved but someone yelled at me and I very angrily yelled back.
People criticize cyclists in the road, they’d criticize you riding on the sidewalk (rightly so), but when we have a dedicated bike lane they walk all over it and act like you’re the asshole.
Bet there’s some kind of psychological trick you can play on cyclists, distracting them with pictures of people walking in bicycle paths.
Everyone else in that scene could be raw-fucking mid-sized Gumby sex dolls and I’d still be like “Get out the damn bike lane!”
I think many cyclists refuse to acknowledge how much they carry over from car brains. Minor inconveniences should be common and expected. Some bikers react to someone jogging on a bike path as if their life were threatened. Save the anger for legitimately dangerous situations like sprinting into the lane without looking or excessive speed.
I’m not sure if you ever used a bike lane, or watch the countless videos of people riding on them, but it’s very VERY rare to have unobstructed bike lanes. So… sure, one grandma who isn’t paying attention, who cares, ok a truck that has to do deliveries and forcing you to go on the car lane, not going to kill you… then again, and again, and 2 cars parked there, another delivery… usually before you finish your trip you even wonder if there was a bike lane in the first place.
The real bike lane was the detours we made along the way.
And each and every one of these obstructions forces you to waste energy into your breaks and you physically have to push to get the speed back up.
If you’d have to pedal cars, people would also drive very differently.
Great point. I mostly focused on the power that cars give to people, revving the engine isn’t a random gesture, it’s a show of power when most people usually have… pen, papers, keyboards… few have power tools but even then, it’s not very powerful. A car or a truck though that’s typically what the average human can exert the most raw power. Nothing psychological or economical. It’s not like having a fancy house that cost a lot of money or showing of, no it’s being in control of a powerful machine. I do assume it is rewiring the brain of drivers… but now that you mention it, it is also coupled with effortlessness. It’s not like being strong when you go to the gym, here it’s entirely decoupled from your strength. This must rewire drivers even more than I initially imagined. Thanks for the hindsight!
Totally on your side with your arguments, just wanted to add what annoys me most with these obstacles on bike lanes.
Being against people walking on the highway has nothing to do with “car brain”
It’s common sense
When I’m riding a bike fast and someone’s in the path, I have to brake, and then get back up to speed after them. In a car that’s just pressing a pedal, but on a bike it takes work. It makes me sweat and huff. Making me sweat and huff is mean.
Non shared bike paths are set up for everyone’s safety. People who ignore that don’t just put themselves in an unsafe situation, they do it to everyone else.
Or… just spitballing here, people could walk on the sidewalk. The one beside the bike lane. For walking.
Sure, inconvenience is a part of life, but common sense tells you not to shit in someone’s sink.
Sure, but if you choose to be reactionary rather than understanding you’ll often be in the wrong. My city has some new bike paths where it’s easy to accidentally wind up walking on the bike paths. We are still in a state where many conflicts are due to infrastructure. Are we trying to build better streets for everyone or are we just gonna shift from cars to cyclists owning the streets? When I bike my first thought after safety is being considerate and understanding, not demanding.
I get your point. People walking in bike lanes are annoying but they’re honestly the least of my problems while cycling in the city. And 90% of the time the crappy infrastructure is at fault. I’ve unintentionally walked in bike lanes before as well. It happens, people can be inattentive and make mistakes - I’d much rather have them make mistakes as pedestrians than as drivers.
The entire reason for doing things like this, is that everyone gets their own space for traveling. Cars have their space, bikes have their space and pedestrians have their space. In countries where this kind of city planning is a thing, people rely on their mode of transportation to get from a to b in time. If there’s some dick blocking the bicycle lane, then it is more than an inconvenience.
This. Biking is a form of commute, not a hobby. Every obstruction means you waste your speed and energy into your break pads and you have to physically push to get the speed back up.
We are trying to build a better infrastructure, where pedestrians enjoy safe and pleasant walk, cyclist enjoy safe and pleasant ride, commuters do commute, etc. In order to achieve that, it’s important that the spaces are predictable. If you’re in a shared space, you expect a bicycle, if you’re in a pedestrian area you shouldn’t be on a lookout for fast things. Same goes the other way, if you’re on a bike in a shared space, you should expect pedestrians be everywhere and should always be on a lookout, but if you’re riding a designated bike road, you should be able to enjoy the ride, not crawling with pedestrian speed dodging around.
If this rule doesn’t work, the infrastructure doesn’t work. You can’t expect people using cycling infrastructure for commute if they can’t be sure infrastructure is usable, so they wouldn’t, so everyone is riding cars and we’re back to square one.Yes, my comment about a Gumby orgy was a serious, reactionary statement about people walking in bike lanes. And somehow an argument for giving cyclists priority on all streets when cars are no more. And a disregard for poor infrastructure.
People should walk where it’s safe to walk. Sometimes they don’t, which is less safe. There should be safe places for people to walk.
I’m still gonna yell at people who walk in the damn bike lane.
People should walk where it’s safe to walk.
Not everyone’s experience is the same. We live off a shared use paved trail that runs for 5.8 miles through our city. It’s part of the 600 mile U.S. Bicycle Route (USBR) 45/45A and it’s not safe to walk because of cyclists.
Cyclists regularly come from the rear at high speeds without announcing their presence. Often while people are walking their dogs on the part of the path that deviates through the park and along the river.
The world would be a nicer place if people showed a little more tolerance and patience toward each other.
Edit- list of fragile brigaders:
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected]
Brother, you seem to be terminally online. Please go for one of those walks you are blathering on about.
If something I wrote is upsetting when taken out of context, you might want to put it back in. World might be a nicer place.
“There should be safe places for people to walk.”
Look at all the foot traffic for the shops. I have no idea why shops complain about this.
A study in my hometown found that shopkeepers are mostly concerned about their own commute, not decrease of patrons.
That’s interesting.
If I was a shopkeeper I would care more about my profits more than if I can park near my shop.
But I guess deliveries would also be more difficult… still I would care more about foot traffic.
I appreciate the info.
Hell, with a bike path in front of me, I’d bike myself to work. Why bother with a car if I have the infra right on my doorsteps
Oakland, California is redoing all the downtown roads. Going from four lanes to two lanes with physically separated bike lanes and tiny gardens. I welcome it.
All is bit of a stretch. Oakland’s budget is in rough shape right now. They’re doing a few roads here and there, and they usually start with some low cost experimentation in areas with plastic cones and paint to test first.
I both live and work in downtown Oakland. They appear to be working toward all downtown roads from my perspective. Two of the four sides of the building that I live in have been redone and they’re doing sections of the street that I walk to work and others that I see when I’m out and about. Traffic is gnarly by the lake where they’ve closed lanes.
Voilà la vie vrai
Lol before: civilized. Afte: just brainrotten. Pedestrians in street, Bike lane und sidewalk.
Found the pickup truck driver. How’s your gas mileage lol?
I’m sorry to disappoint you, I’m just a cyclist.
Then why are you complaining about bike lanes???
I think they were complaining about pedestrians on the bike lane
Exactly. Before they walk civilized on the sidewalk… Afterwards like brainrotten.
That’s just people not used to dedicated cycle paths.
You would likely have as many issues of a pedestrian trying to cross a road and not seeing a cyclist, as you would travelling on a dedicated cycle path with an ignorant pedestrian.It just needs everyone calling out people on cycle paths. They likely aren’t even aware they are on it.
But that’s a lot to read into a single picture. Maybe they have checked both ways, and know nobody is coming (like they would with cars on a road)
Edit:
The 2 people further down don’t look like they are crossing!Before: able to recognize sidewalk and use it After: cheap excuses… not used to bike lanes so from blocking… fully blocking the reduced road… Sidewalk is not used. Sry they are absolutely antisocial in the picture. As a cyclist I would definitely not slow down.
But I understand your hypocritical double standards… Me me me me me…
Lol But the mods also seem to be anti-bike and anti-everything-but-pedestrians.
