I’m not going to say where I live, but just know that the government is trying hard to outplayed cars (period, not just fuel powered cars) and make most of the bigger cities more of “cycling citites” (public transport won’t be outphased as that’s a necessity for infrastructure) but the way they are handling it is absolutely abysmal.
Take this area of the city, there’s a part of the city that connects to a railroad and a big shopping mall, and their plan is to make the bridge cycling-only by like 2030, however every analyst that took a look at that plan could tell you that it was a fucking bad idea as it meant that the amount of cars needing to travel along the others roads to the mall or going further, would see the roads have at least a million more cars per year, now, a million cars per year is roughly the same as 2740 cars per day using those roads (and they cab already be pretty trafficked), that’s just one part I find bad about an aggressive approach to removing cars, they aren’t even doing it properly, it’s just putting the problem somewhere else as a stop gap measure *that dosnt even work)
But my real gripe about getting more bicycles on the road is that in this country, whether you drive a car, ride a cycle or motorcycle, people are generally selfish drivers, for them it’s all about getting from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time and cyclists in particular does not give a fuck about the traffic laws as long as they can get where they need to be ASAP.
Examples of traffic laws that are the same gør cars and bicycles
-drive in the direction the traffic goes, and yes, the biking lane also follows that, and yes, ghostdriving applies to any form of transport going in the opposite direction of the traffic, even bicycles.
-driving/riding on the pedestrian sidewalk, when do you ever see a car pull up and drive there? Not a lot I assume, but cyclists just do it every time, and while I don’t know about other countries, it’s illegal here, the same applies to the pedestrian crossing, get off your bike and pull it over, again, not hard to do but that would lose them precious seconds so they don’t.
The worst time of the year is the season of Tour de France, just last year I personally witnessed no less than 3 people (two young adults and 1 older lady) getting hit by a wanna-bee cyclist that didn’t speed down for people getting off the bus, the bus is funded by the government, so it has priority in public areas but the wanna-bees ain’t give a fuck about that.
Honestly, I genuinely believe that while kids shouldn’t have to do this, once people become at least 16-18 they should take a riding course for bicycles and if they fail than that’s too fucking bad.
TL; DR bicycles should be subjected to the same rules, standards, driving tests and consequences of breaking them (depending on severity) as cars if we want less cars and more bikes on the road in the next 10+ years
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As a cyclist I largely agree, though I’d take an idiot on a bike over an idiot in a car any day
I’m all for cars, but not if they can’t stay below the speed limit and stop at red lights.
I’d argue this is probably most people: people hate cyclists because the individual cyclist is terrible at following rules, or they themselves are terrible drivers who don’t follow rules and blame it on the biker when they almost hit them.
But having good drivers AND cyclists is a utopian society where everyone respects the laws of the road, so no chance that ever happens
while it isnt a big a issue where i live, but thats also because i live pretty rural and less city-like compact, i get the frustration about people not following traffic laws/rules, i mean, lets be real, cycling *is* def more healthy, but cyclists (from my experience) tend to act like they are morally superior just because of that, and acting morally superior when often breaking more traffic rules than a car driver just makes them into pricks.
it also comes down to ”neccesity vs luxury”
if you NEED a car/bicycle then thats a neccesity (work related or living to far away with no consistent public transport) but if you live in a area with consistent public transport than bike/car is a luxury, obviously a bike is not the same price as a car, and while the car per KM is actually cheaper than public transport (here at least) you also have to remember that cars have added things like taxes and insurances, that was bit of a tangent but i digress
This isn’t an unpopular opinion… Cyclists are supposed to follow most traffic laws. It’s just not enforced.