Just this morning on my bicycle ride to work, I was nearly run down by a taxi making a blind entry into a large road and doored by a 10-year-old. The fear of cars is not "old school" but very much real. This is not to mention the aggression that drivers go and build up in their small bubbles. I am always prepared to get off my bike and take them up on their threatening offers. I look forward to less aggressive, more responsive computer-controlled vehicles.
Looks like you're just as aggressive, waiting for someone to finally "offer" threats.
Cyclist are no angels, either. I always find it fascinating how they clamor for at least a meter space next to them when cars are passing, but when traffic is slow (not standing still – that's a different story), mere centimeters to my side mirrors are enough to pass cars themselves.
I think a drastic re-education of traffic participants would be necessary: de-emphasize small, inadvertant and temporary infractions and punish vindictive and deliberately dangerous behaviour much more aggressively.
> Cyclist are no angels, either. I always find it fascinating how they clamor for at least a meter space next to them when cars are passing, but when traffic is slow (not standing still – that's a different story), mere centimeters to my side mirrors are enough to pass cars themselves.
Right, this is because a car that's moving faster than a cyclist and traveling close can drag the cyclist off their bike. A cyclist that is moving faster than a car cannot drag a driver out of their car.
You're not understanding the point, which has been elaborated many times now in this subthread: Nobody is talking about the cyclist being dangerous to the car driver.
But if the cyclist touches the car, he can be dragged off. No matter who was passing the other and who was faster. Only the contact matters.
I think they understand the point quite well. You're just ignoring that there's a huge difference between causing danger to yourself vs causing danger to others.
Being hit by a car is invariably worse than hitting a car, because the car is carrying orders of magnitude more kinetic energy. It's simple classical mechanics - (1/2)mv^2. A car has 15-30x more mass and is travelling 2-4x faster than a cyclist.
If I'm filtering through slow traffic at 10mph and clip the side of a car, I'll have a minor tumble - scuffed handlebars, grazed palms, dented pride.
If a motorist clips me at 40mph, I'm almost certain to suffer serious injuries. I might be hit on the back of the head by a wing mirror, I might be dragged under the wheels, I might be launched over the hood, I might be bounced into some street furniture.
> I think a drastic re-education of traffic participants would be necessary: de-emphasize small, inadvertant and temporary infractions and punish vindictive and deliberately dangerous behaviour much more aggressively.
No, this is completely backwards. Small, inadvertant and temporary infractions kill people just as dead as vindictive and deliberately dangerous behaviour. And whether it's the driver's fault or the cyclist's fault, either way it's the cyclist who dies. What we need to do is start holding drivers responsible for deaths that are their fault, "accident" or not. If you don't have the skill or concentration to avoid causing a collision, you shouldn't be controling a ton of metal in a public space.
If a cyclist hits anyone, that person is unlikely to suffer serious injury, and extremely unlikely to die.
If a car traveling 40 mph or faster hits a pedestrian or cyclist, the person hit will almost certainly die.
The two are really not comparable.
If we replaced all the drivers on the road with still-fallible but conscientious/polite human drivers who always followed traffic laws, always drove the speed limit, were effective at looking for and stopping for obstructions in the road (e.g. pedestrians crossing the street), followed at a safe distance, and adjusted their speed and following distance to match road conditions, the death rate from traffic collisions would drop dramatically.
If we replaced all the cyclists with perfect riders, the death rate from traffic collisions would change only marginally.
That's fantasy land. You're just trying to absolve cyclists from any wrongdoing.
A cyclist that passes a slow car with, say, 30 km/h and brushes into the car may very well die.
It's exactly symmetrical to the situation of a car passing a slow cyclist with 30 km/h.
Furthermore, dying isn't everything that should be avoided. Injuries and material damage are also bad.
Further-furthermore, aggressive and careless cyclists can also kill a pedestrian. Not as easily as a car can, but still. As a pedestrian my number one danger are cyclists. Cars and pedestrians are quite predictable in their movements. Cars especially don't sneak up on you without any noise and then pass you on a random side, while you're walking around.
> As a pedestrian my number one danger are cyclists
Annual pedestrian deaths from collisions with motor vehicles in the US: a little under 5000.
Do you seriously believe 5000 pedestrians a year are being killed by bicycles? I would be surprised if there were as many as 500 pedestrian fatalities a year that had anything to do with bicycles.
Cyclists are not your number one danger. They are nowhere near to being your number one danger.
Kinetic energy doesn't kill cyclists in the usual circumstances.
You need very little kinetic energy to make a cyclist topple and fall. The fall itself can lead to injury and death, lying on a street in the midst of all the traffic is even more dangerous.
Any touching of car and cyclist is very, very dangerous. That's why I brought up the example of cyclists passing cars with practically no space between them. They feel it's safe, but it's incredibly dangerous.
Which "normal circumstances" are you referring to?
Suggesting that a fall itself might kill a cyclist is pretty far fetched.
Lying on a street - yes. Because cars might roll over you, cause of the kinetic energy.
Getting squished between cars - yes. Because of the huge mass of the car.
Banging your head against an opening car door - yes. This time it is because of your own kinetic energy that hits a small surface area which is immobile cause of the mass of the car.
So it is quite dangerous to get near to cars, yes. But almost always because of the huge mass of the cars, especially if they are moving. That was the point of ggp.
Total kinetic enegy has little to do with it, a car can kill someone at 1MPH by running them over. At 30+MPH a cyclist can easily kill themselves by hitting something head first even with a helmet. Simple truth is only an idiot goes 30MPH in a bike lane where they can easily hit someone.
My point was that the car's mass at the point of impact doesn't matter, because the cyclist doesn't die of an immediate trauma from the collision. He could be tipped over by a pedestrian, or bad street conditions.
He dies – as you put correctly – because of all the cars around him. Of course kinetic energy is relevant there, but it doesn't matter to the argument, because the claim was that being touched by a car is much more dangerous than being touched by a cyclist. And that's wrong.
As soon as the cyclist falls he's in mortal danger.
> A cyclist that passes a slow car with, say, 30 km/h
No casual cyclist can sustain 30kph on a level road. My average speed when I was in top shape and biking 20km every day was 15kph. I don't think you understand just how fucking terrifying 30kph is when you're on a bicycle. I don't want to ride at that speed, it's really way faster than I can react, and I feel it very well. When you're in a car, 50kph feels like nothing at all, but on a bicycle you're acutely aware how you're propelling your body sitting on a few thin tubes of metal and two flimsy wheels at a speed at which you have no control over. I've reached 50kph only once in my life on a downhill stretch of good asphalt road on a Sunday with no traffic as far as the eye could see and I don't ever want to do it again. 30kph is scary. 50kph is terrifying.
plus cars heavily respect red lights, something most cyclists don't give a fraction of a f__k about.
And on top of that - their brakes are useless, they in many cases drive as fast as they can, downhill or not. Yeah, for me as a driver, cyclists are the biggest threat in the cities and outside (effectively anywhere but highways). As a pedestrian, cyclists are again the biggest thread in the towns mostly on pedestrian crossings.
On an average day walking about London, I will probably see 5 cars an hour jump a blatant red and 10-15 accelerate on yellow to beat the red. And that's ignoring all the other dangerous things that cars do.
Cyclists have a tendency to disregard traffic lights (and I feel that urge myself when cycling), because it's so darn strenuous to get back to normal speed.
As a pedestrian stopping and going again is effortless. As a car driver the same. Only cyclists dread stopping.
Stopping and starting a car may not require physical effort but it does burn more fuel, gives you a less even ride, and makes traffic flow less smoothly. When I'm driving I try quite hard to avoid having to stop at lights. (By slowing gradually as I approach them, not by going through them when red.) I warmly commend this policy to other drivers.
Yes there are crazy cyclists out there. Once a year I meet one.
Do you know how many careless car drivers I meet? At least one each time I bike more than 3km. Not crazy (those I find every 100km), just careless. But thats enough to threaten my life.
Either way, the cyclist is on the receiving end of the risk (we're not talking about bike vs pedestrians here). So no Symmetry. Mass matters. A lot.
> Is it really important if it is 20 or 30 km/h? Is 20 km/h or 10 km/h not dangerous?
Yes, it is. At 10km/h it's really not dangerous; at 30km/h an open door may kill the cyclist, and a hitting pedestrian may be severely hurt them. Speed is that a relevant factor.
What about computer-controlled bicycles? They can probably react faster than humans, meaning less accidents! You only have to do the pedalling, and the computer will handle the rest.
Better to let the propulsion be handled by small electric motor and use the (optional) peddling to charge the batteries. This way the human doesn't get in the way of hitting the optimal speed and acceleration.
