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KingGrump

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Distracted pedestrians or cyclists don't kill people with any meaningful frequency. Distracted "I didn't see them" drivers kill pedestrians and cyclists every day.

True, distracted pedestrians and cyclist don't kill people. They get themselves kill. Still statistic. Just from the other side.
Unlike lots of drivers. I take driving very seriously. I hate distracted driver. They are as much a threat to other driver as other soft skin folks out there.

Here in NYC, I often get passed by bikes and unlicensed scooters. Mind you, I am not exactly what you would called a slow driver. I observe all (almost all) traffic laws and regulations. Most of the cyclist and scooter delivery guys don't. When they have an altercation with a auto. They come out on the short end and blame the auto. My opinion is if they observe the usual traffic regs like most decent drivers, they would still be whole.

Just like the crotch rocket crowd. I often get my door blown off by crotch rockets splitting lanes. Traffic is doing 65. They are doing traffic +45. I really don't have any sympathy for those guys when I find them splattered all over the pavement down the road.
 

jmeb

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Most of the cyclist and scooter delivery guys don't.

Published peer-reviewed studies out of UC Denver by professors of transport and mobility show this simply isn't true. Cyclists and drivers are equally likely to break traffic laws. What you are seeing is likely observational bias.

And when a cyclist breaks a traffic law, they are endangering themselves most often. When a driver breaks a traffic law--even one as simple as speeding--it is endangering others. Those are very different outcomes of an infraction.

My opinion is if they observe the usual traffic regs like most decent drivers, they would still be whole.

Tell that to the mother who was killed a week ago in my town. She was riding legally in a bike lane, observing all traffic regulations. In both cyclists death in my city this year, the driver has been cited--once for distracted driving the other for careless driving and speeding.
 

luliski

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Last summer, my car broke down and a CHP officer stayed with me until I got a tow time from AAA. We were chatting about distracted drivers and it turned out that his sergeant was the cyclist killed by a motorist who suddenly veered right on 89 in Truckee last summer. The officer said the driver had been texting when she veered. The officer also said he stops and cites several motorists a day on his way home from work.

In general, driving behavior seems lots worse in the past few years. I am selective about the roads I will ride on.
 

fatbob

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We will never fully prevent traffic related deaths. But pretending we can't do a helluva a lot better is nonsense.

Things we could do that would make traffic safer for everyone:

- Stop designing cars to focus only on the safety of the occupants. The SUV craze has made cars deadlier than ever for non-drivers.
- Reduce speed limits in urban areas.
- More importantly, design streets so it doesn't feel as safe to go over the speed limit. Narrower lanes. Tighter turning radii. Parking close to lanes.
- Stop calling traffic incidents "accidents". Occasionally they are, but far more often they are due to a failure of duties. Just because you don't intend to do something, doesn't make an an accident.
- Make penalties for speeding, distracted driving and the like much more severe. Speeding in urban areas kills people. The rate of fatalities go way up when a car is going over 20.
- Stop letting people off of manslaughter charges just because they killed the other person with their vehicle.
- Build real bike infrastructure.
- Stop subsidizing private car ownership and driving.

We have tools to stop many of these deaths. It's just that no one wants to use them.

.

And as with so many things it ends up being political and gets a kneejerk response. Imagine trying to pry truck/car keys from people with the "cold dead hands" attitude.

The real irony is that people do worry about the safety of their kids on the road. So they buy a huge SUV - which consequently decreases safety for every other road user : car, motorbike, pedestrian, cyclist (ever tried seeing over or around an SUV from an ordinary car?)

Please don't go down the narrower streets route - history means in the UK we have what we have and it really is dangerous for cyclists if anyone tries to pass within the lane on anything wider than a Fiat 500.
 

cantunamunch

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And as with so many things it ends up being political and gets a kneejerk response. Imagine trying to pry truck/car keys from people with the "cold dead hands" attitude..

This is why I wrote what I wrote about self driving cars. The natural consequence of self-driving adoption is that human driving becomes a choice - a jacked-up insurance premium choice and a prosecutable choice if incidents occur.
 

jmeb

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Please don't go down the narrower streets route - history means in the UK we have what we have and it really is dangerous for cyclists if anyone tries to pass within the lane on anything wider than a Fiat 500.

This is one of those where "it depends" in my experience. I spent about a two months total bike touring in Europe (and another year commuting in the UK) vs probably 4 months bike touring in the US. On the whole people in Europe were so much more generous about sharing even narrow roads that I would be ok with it.

But more commonly i'm just referring to the US fascination with having massively wide streets in residential neighborhoods that encourage speeding. For instance, I live 3 mi from the downtown of a major urban center and an "urban" neighborhood. The street in front of my house is 4.5 cars wide (2 parking, 2 passing plus penty of space). It means cars want to go 40 down it rather than if it was 10-15ft narrower where they would slow down considerably.
 

jmeb

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For anyone who really wants to dig into the problem of how legal systems subsidize car use and protect car drivers -- I highly recommend this article which will be published in the NYU Law Review. Full text is freely available -- and covers a number of different legal systems: traffic law, land use law, insurance law, tax law, environmental regulations, torts, contracts...the list goes on.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345366
 

James

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Published peer-reviewed studies out of UC Denver by professors of transport and mobility show this simply isn't true. Cyclists and drivers are equally likely to break traffic laws. What you are seeing is likely observational bias
I'll confirm the bias for nyc. We're not talking "cyclists", though the clueless on a Citibike is a whole different category. I take it you haven't spent much time there. A lot of those little food places exist almost outside the law normally.
The problem with cyclists breaking traffic laws in the city is the personal consequences can be more severe than an auto. Like getting run over by a cement truck.
 

scott43

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This is why I wrote what I wrote about self driving cars. The natural consequence of self-driving adoption is that human driving becomes a choice - a jacked-up insurance premium choice and a prosecutable choice if incidents occur.
We'll see how well self-driving works with regard to human safety...I think the jury is still out on that..
 

scott43

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For anyone who really wants to dig into the problem of how legal systems subsidize car use and protect car drivers -- I highly recommend this article which will be published in the NYU Law Review. Full text is freely available -- and covers a number of different legal systems: traffic law, land use law, insurance law, tax law, environmental regulations, torts, contracts...the list goes on.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345366
I would posit that the modification of the legal system arises from the public's desire to have cars.. We built whole cities around the car in the 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's and gave out awards for them like the planners were geniuses on the same level as Einstein. You can try to turn the legal system against them but politicians who do that may be inclined to leave things as they are lest they not get voted for again. I'm not really arguing..just saying it's not a conspiracy..
 

François Pugh

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I grew up in downtown Montreal, with 30 mph speed limits on residential streets, and 40 mph limits on major roads. Cars were much less safe than they are now. IMHO if you can't drive safely with those urban speed limits, you can't drive safely. Mind you, we didn't have cell phones back then.

As far as urban roads and highways, the speed limits are already way lower than they need to be; the speed limits are just a revenue generator, not a safety enhancer. :snowball:

The problem is that too many people don't give driving the attention and care it deserves.:(
 

slowrider

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The problem is that too many people don't give driving the attention and care it deserves.

Nailed it. Even when their family is in the car.
 

luliski

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And then there are the drivers who don't think they should have to share the road with cyclists.
 

tball

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And then there are the drivers who don't think they should have to share the road with cyclists.
Yep. Reading the online comment sections of the local papers when a cyclist is killed is part of led me to minimize my time on the road. It's scary what's going through some driver's heads, and you can feel it when they brush by you too closely. And this is in the Denver/Boulder area that is very bicycle-friendly.
 

James

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Well as cars have more and more “safety” features like lane sensing and side proximity sensing, the excuse will be “my car didn’t sense you”.
 
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Tricia

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Well as cars have more and more “safety” features like lane sensing and side proximity sensing, the excuse will be “my car didn’t sense you”.
I was recently talking to someone about this.
Because we have so much distracted driving, now the cars are warning us when we're distracted. What happens if the feature fails, or worse yet, what if we grow numb to the sensors and stop paying attention to them?
 

scott43

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I was recently talking to someone about this.
Because we have so much distracted driving, now the cars are warning us when we're distracted. What happens if the feature fails, or worse yet, what if we grow numb to the sensors and stop paying attention to them?
This is the danger of Tesla calling their driving aids "Autopilot" and making a huge deal about it, then telling people quietly "but you still have to pay attention..:" *nudge nudge* When you are told it's Autopilot, and you can drive some ways without paying attention, what makes anyone think people will actually pay attention?? I do not understand how this is allowed to happen.
 

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