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Not Just Bikes just did a video about one guy who was a major influence for how bikes are perceived in the US.
It’s pretty long but the tl;dw is one weirdo lobbied hard to treat bikes like cars - “vehicular cycling” - and looked down on bike paths, comfortable seats, and not being a jerk.
It was a good video and I knew nothing of that bit of history. That asshole cyclist reminded me so much of my Jr High environmental science teacher. The same kind of magnanimous attitude.
He sounds a lot like an internet troll, honestly
Less than 3 min in and he’s nailed the answer to OP and the reason cycling in USA sucks. The idiots who think they can keep up with and survive a bit from a 200 horsepower 2 ton block of steel.
Wait till you get to his recommendation for bicycle seat modification for women
Well, he has a point, genitals don’t like being crushed.
But the seat design he loves causes incontinence and ED in men so I rather suspect he’s not qualified in any way.
This fucking book is like a Reddit wiki, only somehow worse than most I’ve come across. Nearly 1000 pages gatekeeping cycling.
Also he’s arguably responsible for thousands of deaths, including one in my family and I’m amazed I haven’t heard of this guy before. He’s just about as effective as Thomas Midgely!
Because our road systems are designed around cars. This means that it's dangerous and impeding when a cyclist shares the road. Unfortunately, we just keep building bigger roads and removing bike lanes. This just serves to make it more of a pain in the ass for literally everyone because bikers have to use the car lanes instead of just paving an extra 6 feet of road.
TL;DR america will pave every natural surface for traffic, but won't mark any sliver of it for bikes.
And American “sidewalks” are narrower than my grandmas garden path and end just as abruptly
Don't forget: you need 6 feet and also a meridian to divide them from cars. Drivers will not see the squishy person but they will avoid trees and shrubs.
I'm in Europe now walking down streets that are wide enough for a single car seeing other hikers and bikers and cars stopping for each other. Agreed these roads aren't designed for cars hitting top speed with wide margins around them, but at least some of these comments are written in this thread are US is special / there needs to be an ideal design for bicycles or nothing is just aggregating to read
I think the problem is that roads not designed for bikes in Europe are also old enough to have not been originally designed for cars, so things usually end up working out to some degree.
In the US (especially for infrastructure built from scratch in the 1900s onward, i.e. most of the US except for some parts of the east coast) most roads and town layouts were designed specifically around cars and travelling at car speeds, and are explicitly hostile to anyone who isn't travelling in the biggest truck you've ever seen in your life. Blame oil/motor companies for bribing politicians throughout the 1900s (and honestly still today)
The monsterous cars more than most people choose only make those.problems worse and in many cases prevent retrofitting old roads to accomodate bikes too. America needs an urban planning and car design Renaissance and then maybe our bike infrastructure can be half as safe as a normal country.
My guess is that the amount of sprawl in America is a big contributor. It means there's a higher barrier to biking, which in turn means that fewer people do it, which then means that there's less effort put into biking infrastructure (and the sprawl also directly makes building infrastructure more expensive), and so then the people who do bike have to be more intrusive on other traffic. So then there's tension between the drivers who end up inconvenienced by bikers, and bikers who feel threatened by drivers.
Our roads are designed around cars, it's very often extremely frustrating and unsafe to have to share the road with bikes.
As an example, most of my commute is along a 2 lane road (1 lane each direction) that's winding, poorly lit, and has almost no shoulder. The speed limit is 35mph, which isn't a speed most cyclists can keep up for very long if they can reach it at all.
If there's traffic coming the opposite direction, it's often difficult or impossible to pass that cyclist safely so very often I've been stuck driving 10 under the speed limit around a cyclist I can't get around.
And again, it's a windy, poorly lit road, coming around a corner it would be very easy to hit a cyclist if I wasn't being careful (which I am, but many are not)
To add insult to injury in my particular case, there's actually a very nice bike path that runs directly parallel to the road, you can actually see it from the road for much of its length, and there's lots of places to get on and off of it, it's paved, it's actually almost as wide as the road itself.
There's also the issue that a lot of them don't always follow the rules of the road, you see a lot of the lane-splitting, running red lights, etc.
And there's good reasons for some of that behavior, I've heard them, I don't disagree with them, but the fact of the matter is that it makes them unpredictable, which is the last thing you want to be on the road.
Some also ride at night without proper lights and reflectors, which is really a problem with some idiots and shouldn't be generalized to bikes in general, but some people are going to do that
There's also Americans' love of big SUVs with big blindspots that makes bikes harder to see when they're around you in traffic.
As for ebikes, I have a love-hate relationship with them.
They can keep up with traffic a lot better, which helps my first point a lot.
They've also gotten a lot of people out on bikes who wouldn't have otherwise, which is great, but it also means that a lot of those people are going from not having ridden a bike since they were like 10 years old to feeling bold enough to be out in traffic because their bike can keep up but never really learned how to coexist with traffic on a bike, so we're doubling down on the unpredictability.
There's also the issue that out of traffic, in spaces where e bikes coexist with pedestrians and regular bikes on trails and such they're often zooming around at unsafe speeds.
And there's the usual patchwork of laws and regulations from one state to another, and a lot of shady imported brands selling bikes that don't meet those regulations. A lot of the e bikes on the road around me are overpowered and too fast for what the laws allow. And people also let their kids ride them which also isn't allowed.
I'm all for more people riding bikes in general , but the current situation with infrastructure, regulations, enforcement, and education here make it a really unsafe and frustrating to share the road with bikes.
Not taking away any of your points, as they're mostly valid. That's almost entirely an infrastructure problem.
Heavy pro-oil, anti-bike propaganda has got people all uppity about improving bike-related infrastructure, even when there are few or no consequences for drivers.
Oh yeah, it's absolutely primarily an infrastructure issue. Some proper bike lanes would go a very long way.
There's a good smattering of the usual things- some people are dumb, some parents suck at parenting, etc. also at play, but that's not particularly unique to bikes.
You really don't understand the depths of propaganda this country endures.
Most propagandized nation on earth and it's so sophisticated most of us don't notice. Some will even rabidly deny it and yell about some other country that spends fractions of a fraction of what the US does on information campaigns and warfare.
You can thank the vehicular cycling movement of the 1970s for selling the idea that bicycles should operate like cars on American roadways.
(To anyone at all interested in this topic, I highly recommend reading the linked article for more context. Or watching the Not Just Bikes video in Boomer Humor Doomergod's comment if that's more your speed.)
The only controversies I've seen regarding bikes I've seen as a city dwelling American, are bikes not following the rules of the road.
People get upset when bikes run red lights/stop signs, ride the wrong way on streets or paths, or go way too fast on shared pedestrian paths, especially if they don't have a bell or horn of some kind.
E bikes get hate because they allow people to do 25 to 40 mph on pedestrian paths (where the speed limit is half of that or less). Where I live, lane splitting for motorcyclists is not legal, but E bikes do it relatively frequently. Motorists are not expecting a tiny, silent vehicle to go flying past their door at 30 mph when they're stopped. And for some reason, most E bikes I've personally seen riding at night have no lights of any kind. I don't want to hit someone in my car, and I don't want to be hit by someone as a pedestrian, and it's a hell of a lot harder to prevent that when you can't see them.
I ride my bike on shared use paths and the street with lights and a bell. I follow the rules of the road, and I've never had any issues.
A lot of people hate anything that is different than what they prefer, especially if they believe it negatively impacts them in the slightest. They also really hate it when people point out they are wrong, and the thing they hate actually makes things better for them by reducing congestion or reducing their personal costs (single payer healthcare) if they don't feel like they have personal control over the situation.
These people tend to get into positions of power because they want control and trumpet their views which convinces some people who didn't even have an opinion in the first place. From there, repetition of blatant lies tends to sway the general population who don't have enough information to know better and who see a team they can root for.
People in general are selfish except in a crisis.
It's not just bicycles either. I had someone scream at me with mouth froth and all because I filtered on a motorcycle. I guess they perceived I cut the line or whatever even though they weren't even in the same lane as me.
I've had a lot of hostility as a pedestrian, too. FSM forbid I want to cross the street and it delays their trip by 10 seconds.
Car brained people are broken.
Ask GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil.
i don't get it either. i prefer road bikes. I used to commute 14 miles a day in Seattle and I loved the hell out of it. Motorists are usually the worst kind of bike haters.
I didn't notice much hate from other types of cyclists but one of my friends in Portland Oregon would call me lame for needing two wheels. he would unicycle everywhere. even mt biking! he once won some crazy competition from a unicycle mud race!
Beef between Portland and Seattle? No never (sent with much sarcasm and love)
The drivers in Seattle can be unhinged. There was one time I was going straight through an intersection, a guy jumped a median into incoming traffic to get past the car stopped in front of them so they could turn left through a red light; a couple feet difference and I would have been a road smear. Another time I had a truck stopped at a light yell at me for passing them in the bike lane and try to door me. Pretty much if I was ony bike I assumed I was going to get hit by a car. Still spent hours exploring the city on my bike though
I rarely bike at all.
Road bikers are usually assholes, probably because they have a chip on their shoulder about cars being impatient with them. Getting behind a road biker on a busy two-way street is really annoying.
I haven’t seen commuter cyclists get much crap but they’re probably pissed off at how motorists treat them.
Mountain bikers only hate e-bikers because they’re “cheating”, far as I can tell. Kids also ride e-bikes around here like morons and cause lots of accidents.
Anyway, most of the US just isn’t built to handle bikes and it causes tensions to flare, best as I can tell.
Most road bikers aren’t assholes, some are that give the rest a bad name.
As a mountain biker, those large E-bikes also sometimes rip up trails with monstrous torque and inexperienced riders who will do things like ride in muddy conditions.
Mountain bikers also get into arguments with atv, dirt bikers, horse riders, and gun enthusiasts
The atvs and dirt bikers rip up trails, horse riders get right of way and shit all over trails and gun enthusiasts sometimes shoot guns without a safe backdrop that involves bullets going through bike paths…
Dude, I've found car drivers far more aggravating than bicyclists. The most a bicyclist has ever annoyed me is when they don't make their presence known enough. I just happen to sometimes, find them near seconds of almost hitting them and I hate that. When I rode bikes, I tried having devices or things that make my bike have features a car would, even turn signaling.
But drivers? The level of entitlement and selfishness of a driver is off the charts.
I have been commuting by bicycle in the US (Sioux Falls, SD and Chicago, IL) for thirty years, from age twelve to forty-two. It has never been a point of conflict with anyone in my life, law enforcement, or employers. I really don't know what you mean by "controversial" here; it doesn't match my experience.
Car obsessed culture. Their brains rotted out with all the propaganda they're fed 24/7. Being raised by TV did not do any favours.
Much of the US is not dense, so many people have to drive to get places. In my experience, most areas don’t have the infrastructure for cars + pedestrians + cyclists, let alone just cars + pedestrians. The few places that do intermingle all three do so in a way which is very overwhelming for drivers. Cyclists also tend to travel either too slow for cars to maneuver around or too fast for cars to notice them coming. Like motorcycles, their small size also makes them hard to notice or keep track of while driving, and they don’t make the volume of noise that motorcycles do which helps with noticing them.
I commute on electric bike, literally work at a participation endurance sport company and have only gotten gentle teasing, no hate from the hardcore bikers. I tell them I literally hate riding a bike and that this one cost less than their racing bike, and I am comfortable on it, so use it for grocery shopping and stuff like that.
There is not enough infrastructure for bikes. I am careful and polite, if I have to take the sidewalk I get off and walk around pedestrians, walk it across intersections. If I'm in the road I wait for a big break in traffic or periodically get off the road so cars can pass (there is no bike lane going to work). I see bikers weaving through traffic and understand the frustration drivers have. And have had cars make illegal left turns almost into me and understand bikers being frustrated too.
I think part of it is that there are a lot of bike riders in US cities that are jerks, especially to pedestrians. When I'm crossing the street, bikes and scooters virtually never stop for me and just try to weave around me, and I once got hit by a scooter that was illegally riding on the sidewalk, which they constantly do here. I'm certainly not anti-bike because of that, but I can kind of understand why some people would be
The laws are weird. I've often been called a jerk, but when I check the laws they are on my side - or so ambiguous that nobody really knows what is right even though everyone thinks they do (whatever helps them against everyone else)
I mean I feel like if you're on any type of vehicle, no matter what the law says you need to yield to pedestrians
I think part of it is that there are a lot of bike riders in US cities that are jerks
A lot of the ones an average driver interacts with are...
Especially in a city most cyclists are only on public roads on their way to/from a trail and they prioritize avoiding cars.
It's just because of that, you never see them or don't notice them as you drive by.
What everyone notices is the selfish dicks clogging up traffic, and they're the ones who have made cycling a huge part of their identity, and they really want to pretend any criticism of them is a criticism of every bike rider, because it's the only chance to defend the problematic ones.
They're a tiny minority of cyclists, and most don't like them either.
You're acting as if normal people think about things before forming an opinion.
When you want to explain other people's actions, you should first imagine that they never think about anything, that they're incapable of reasoning, and that their opinions about others tend to be formed the first time that they notice those others, which is often the first time they are bothered by them.
If you cannot explain their behavior in that way, then you should start to explore the idea that they're intentionally doing things as assholes. This is essentially the same idea as the old saying, never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. Whether you agree with the underlying concept, I find it's an extremely useful tool to predict the actions of others.
