Cars are getting out of Hand
Cars are getting out of Hand
When I take my bike to school, there are those "School Crossing Guards." One of them guards a 2 line drive in.
This man uses his STOP sign on pedestrians. Here I am cycling, this guy holds his STOP sign up high so I am like "ok, I can go right across at full speed without breaking or slowing down." turns out no, what he actually meant was that all pedestrians (up to 5 people sometimes) should stop and the car should drive. 50% of the time in the car is a friend of his who stops in the middle of the crosswalk and starts chatting. I look and this and go like "my classes start in 10 minutes, so I am crossing." They both, he and his friend look at me like I am some self harm guy jumping under a car, and start shouting at me like why I am going when the STOP sign is up.
This is seriously getting out of hand.
PS: I drive my bike on the sidewalk.
That's backwards from how it is here. Our crossing guards stop vehicular traffic, and give incredibly high priority to pedestrians. There's one at the school by my house who patrols an intersection that includes a traffic light. He will routinely make lines of cars miss an entire green light to allow pedestrians to cross. If you fail to stop, they can ticket you. You'll probably also get the shit whacked out of your car with an aluminum stop sign.
Someone is employing him, complain to them that he isn't actually doing his job
STOP blocking traffic in the crosswalk, car!
STOP your social chit-chat that is inconveniencing everybody else!
STOP being an irresponsible cross guard!
The chatting crosswalk monitor is really a good smartphone picture moment if you have one.
Cyclists are more likely to die for each km of sidewalk ridden than each km of road.
I'm interested to see a source for that
Here's an 8 year old reddit thread with links to a bunch of studies: https://www.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/3eosnz/compilation_of_cycling_safety_studies_with_focus/
Tldr: When you ride on a sidewalk, the risk of a driver hitting you at a driveway or intersection goes up substantially. That outweighs most of the other risks of being on the road itself in those studies.
Although it's also worth pointing out that context and road design matter too. Speeds, the number of trees and shrubs by the sidewalk, and urban streets vs suburban stroads matters a lot.
There's a reason that protected bike lanes aren't just a sidewalk.
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Source please.
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bicilists drive way faster on the roads, so this metric should be deaths per km/h. And there are a few more stistical biases that might be at play here.
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Last line really tells everything I need to know
Honestly cycling on the road is tantamount to deliberate suicide in a lot of places.
So, are you upset that bicycles are being held to the traffic code sections that explicitly apply to them? Because it sounds like youâre one of those people who gives bike riders who know how to operate in pedestrian areas a bad name.
The way they described the stop sign isn't how stop signs are meant to work
You know OPâs behavior is allowed in many areas, right? Donât assume your local laws are universal.
I often ride my bicycle on the sidewalk around here, but I do so carefully and always give priority to pedestrians (of which there are few where I am to begin with, but I'll get off the sidewalk for them). Legality be damned; this is the only way to not be flatted by some asshat in an SUV in some places. For instance, overpasses here have no shoulder at all but sometimes there is a sidewalk, and if you're lucky there may even be a guard rail separating it from the car lanes where everyone is doing 60+ in a 35 zone with impunity.
I drive on the sidewalk and behave like a pedestrian. I probably should have known about the traffic codes you are talking about, but this has nothing to do with bikes, he shows it to everybody including other people who are trying to cross. What concerns me them most, is that those traffic guards, break the habit of actually seeing if there are cars around, meaning I am actually less safe when they aren't there.
Fair enough, I guess I'll just buy a car