Originally Posted by
Hoopdriver
I’ll just muddy the waters a bit more. There, I “fixed” your post for you. Two can play this game.
When sailing we use port and starboard to eliminate the ambiguity of right and left. Port and starboard are linked by definition to the orientation of the vessel while left and right are relative to the orientation of the viewer. Telling a crew member to move toward starboard will assure the desired result regardless of which direction he or she is facing.
You also refer to the bow and stern or front and rear. It doesn’t matter what you call the left or right side of a boat or a bike or a car because they are all directional. They all have a left and right side that is unambiguous without any other designation. “Port” and “starboard” are just conventions used like putting the drive side on the right for bicycles.
Yes you would be correct that most people (including me) will, under most circumstances, understand what you mean by the right side of a bike. Your argument seems to be that "all" people, under "all" circumstances, will understand and that simply is not completely reliable. It's not splitting hairs when commenting on the difference between 95% reliable vs. 100%.
If 5% of bicycles had left hand drives you
might have a point. But the number of bicycles with left hand drives is vanishingly small. I work at my local co-op and see roughly 1500 bikes per year. Over the 10 years I’ve volunteered there, I’ve put hands on 15,000 bicycles. At a 5% rate, I should have seen 750 bicycles with left hand drives or 7.5 per year. I have yet to see a
single left hand drive. Until you posted the above picture, I didn’t even know that any were made. And that one is relatively new and, from what I can see in other photos of track events, a rarity.
I would put the rate of left hand drive bicycles that anyone might encounter at far less than 0.0000001% of bicycles. That’s low enough that I’m on very firm ground saying that “all” bicycles have right hand drive.