MSNBC reports this morning.
07-18-08, 05:10 AM
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07-18-08, 05:29 AM
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07-18-08, 05:35 AM
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Bikes or cars — who rules the road?
Rise in gas-shocked cyclists raises tension during America’s daily commutegetCSS("3053751")
By Alex Johnson
<snip>
Goes on to talk about a rise in deaths, cyclists not sharing the road, etc.
Rise in gas-shocked cyclists raises tension during America’s daily commutegetCSS("3053751")
By Alex Johnson
<snip>
Goes on to talk about a rise in deaths, cyclists not sharing the road, etc.
07-18-08, 05:52 AM
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Also talks about drivers needing to learn the rules about bikes and sharing the road. It is at least a sort of balanced report.
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07-18-08, 06:16 AM
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and of course, the very first comment from the story:
"I don't mind sharing the road with cyclist -- I am one from time to time. What I do mind are the bike riders that think they don't have to follow the same traffic rules a driver does. Red lights and stop signs both mean stop. I don't know how many times I've had to slam on the brakes when I had a green arrow as a cyclist rode through a red light from the opposite direction, neither obeying the traffic rules nor looking for traffic that had the right-of-way."
*sigh*
I really don't understand this mentality. Just this morning coming into work, I saw one motorist cut across two lanes of traffic to make an exit ramp, and the two cars behind that car failed to signal to make the same exit ramp. There seems to be a gigantic chasm wide disconnect where auto drivers are forgiven for their multiple sins while cyclists are expected to be road saints 100% of the time.
I need to stop reading the comments at the end of these stories.
"I don't mind sharing the road with cyclist -- I am one from time to time. What I do mind are the bike riders that think they don't have to follow the same traffic rules a driver does. Red lights and stop signs both mean stop. I don't know how many times I've had to slam on the brakes when I had a green arrow as a cyclist rode through a red light from the opposite direction, neither obeying the traffic rules nor looking for traffic that had the right-of-way."
*sigh*
I really don't understand this mentality. Just this morning coming into work, I saw one motorist cut across two lanes of traffic to make an exit ramp, and the two cars behind that car failed to signal to make the same exit ramp. There seems to be a gigantic chasm wide disconnect where auto drivers are forgiven for their multiple sins while cyclists are expected to be road saints 100% of the time.
I need to stop reading the comments at the end of these stories.
07-18-08, 08:56 AM
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the lead for this story is that some cyclists don't follow all the rules of the road and that this can be dangerous for them (the cyclists). then, buried waaaay down past the fold we get this:
In the same video survey that found dangerous biking, Seminole County deputies also recorded a shocking level of rude and aggressive behavior by drivers.
“It’s not their right to assault a cyclist or to run a cyclist off the road because they get impatient,” sheriff’s Lt. Pete Kelting said.
Regardless, said cyclist Keri Caffrey, “they see a cyclist and they target them, in many cases.”
so, to msnbc news is cyclists yielding rather than stopping at stop signs. what is not news is motorists deliberately assaulting and running cyclists off the road because they are impatient.
bet the author drives to work.
07-18-08, 10:12 AM
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True story. I was riding along a somewhat busy street and there was a lady who was tailing me hard, now i was over as far as i could be without riding through broken glass bottles and other stuff that would be exceptionally dangerous to ride over. And after about 50 feet she slams the horn, almost clips me and yells "Get on the side walk you f**kin a**hole!" and takes off. She had a 5 year old in the backseat. Of course she had to stop at the traffic light ahead of us and I caught up to her and simply said "Wow, you speak like that in front of your child? That'll certainly teach him to respect the laws of the road." I made the turn (in the turn lane) and rode away. The lady didn't even know how to respond.
Drivers assume their sins are forgiven on the road because they don't kill anyone. But those minor sins don't kill people when the people who are in cars. We are cyclists, we don't have a ton and a half of steel around us with safety belts to protect us. Minor sins for the motorist can be death for a cyclist. They should do more work with cyclists rights other than the mere handful of sentences that state "cyclists have to abide by the same laws as motorists" They make no issue that by that consequence, motorists need to treat bicyclists like vehicles. Maybe someday that'll change. But I wouldn't count on it.
07-18-08, 11:08 AM
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I thought this was particularly interesting:
Gee I wonder what the deputies plan to do with all that video evidence?
New riders also aren’t fully prepared for the inconveniences they can face — the worst one, experienced riders say, being drivers who also don’t know the rules or are too frustrated to observe them.
Bikers said they often struggled to blend safely with traffic. In the same video survey that found dangerous biking, Seminole County deputies also recorded a shocking level of rude and aggressive behavior by drivers.
Bikers said they often struggled to blend safely with traffic. In the same video survey that found dangerous biking, Seminole County deputies also recorded a shocking level of rude and aggressive behavior by drivers.
07-18-08, 11:16 AM
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07-18-08, 01:17 PM
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07-20-08, 11:59 AM
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It was interesting to note that 6% of Portland's population bicycle commutes. That is impressive.
It is also interesting to note from the newsreel that about 1,000,000 Americans bicycle commute to work.
07-20-08, 12:17 PM
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Sadly, this all started in Portland with our local paper, and the wire services have picked up on it. Our local paper, The Oregonian, hasn't stopped, either. Every day, they come up with something new. Predictably, they downplay anything where the motorist is at fault and hype up incidents where the cyclist is at fault. We have a local email list dedicated to Bike Fun, but for the last 2 weeks, this is the only topic being discussed. This morning, a very levelheaded person posted some wise words, and I think they're worth sharing. (I've edited the expletives that would not be ok on this forum.)
it's obvious that the O has decided to prioritize coverage of bike-car conflicts. i can't charitably think of too many respectable reasons for them to do so, but they'll definitely sell lots of ads. the changing nature of traffic is a really interesting and important story, so trust the O to exploit it for all the hysteria it's good for.
When two a-holes in cars have an argument, and one drives into the other one ... it sucks, but the O doesn't cover it.
When two a-holes have an argument, and one is on a bike while the other is on a car, and the car driver hits the bike driver with his car ... it also sucks, and it's rather common, but it's not front page news.
BUT, what if two a-holes have an argument, one is on a bike and the other is in a car, and the bike rider hits the car driver with his bike? STOP THE PRESSES! CRIME WAVE! BICYCLE ROAD RAGE! HYPE HYPE HYPE! OMG! because that fits the O's new agenda: fanning the flames of bike/car discontent.
what's really sad is that we give the O the power to set our agenda -- they've certainly shown that on this list. they've told us what to talk about for the last two weeks, and we've gladly gone along with it. they hand us an incomplete and suggestive set of facts, and we obediently bicker over those scraps of information, while also delivering thousands of page views to their website.
we really shouldn't listen to the O. it's the major news media's job to feed hype and build anxiety, getting everyone more worried and confused so they turn to the news media for help. the informative, educational and healthy alternative is to ignore the Oregonian entirely.
Originally Posted by A Guy in Portland
it's obvious that the O has decided to prioritize coverage of bike-car conflicts. i can't charitably think of too many respectable reasons for them to do so, but they'll definitely sell lots of ads. the changing nature of traffic is a really interesting and important story, so trust the O to exploit it for all the hysteria it's good for.
When two a-holes in cars have an argument, and one drives into the other one ... it sucks, but the O doesn't cover it.
When two a-holes have an argument, and one is on a bike while the other is on a car, and the car driver hits the bike driver with his car ... it also sucks, and it's rather common, but it's not front page news.
BUT, what if two a-holes have an argument, one is on a bike and the other is in a car, and the bike rider hits the car driver with his bike? STOP THE PRESSES! CRIME WAVE! BICYCLE ROAD RAGE! HYPE HYPE HYPE! OMG! because that fits the O's new agenda: fanning the flames of bike/car discontent.
what's really sad is that we give the O the power to set our agenda -- they've certainly shown that on this list. they've told us what to talk about for the last two weeks, and we've gladly gone along with it. they hand us an incomplete and suggestive set of facts, and we obediently bicker over those scraps of information, while also delivering thousands of page views to their website.
we really shouldn't listen to the O. it's the major news media's job to feed hype and build anxiety, getting everyone more worried and confused so they turn to the news media for help. the informative, educational and healthy alternative is to ignore the Oregonian entirely.
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"Real wars of words are harder to win. They require thought, insight, precision, articulation, knowledge, and experience. They require the humility to admit when you are wrong. They recognize that the dialectic is not about making us look at you, but about us all looking together for the truth."
"Real wars of words are harder to win. They require thought, insight, precision, articulation, knowledge, and experience. They require the humility to admit when you are wrong. They recognize that the dialectic is not about making us look at you, but about us all looking together for the truth."
07-20-08, 01:08 PM
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Aye yi yi!
Get a load of this f'n crap:
Ya... like actually being on the road.
Get a load of this f'n crap:
Fischer said that “in almost every case, the bicycle was doing something that put them at significant risk.”
07-20-08, 11:05 PM
#15
----
Why, oh, why is the behavior such a small number of road users such a big deal? Even if every cyclist was a rampaging fool it could not compare to the vast numbers of dangerous maneuvers done by auto drivers on a regular basis on roads all over the world.
07-21-08, 12:23 AM
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Tom Vanderbilt Ponders Motorist Sociopathy
by Aaron Naparstek
Yesterday, at the end of our piece about the recent road rage incidents in usually-polite Portland and Seattle, we posed a question to Tom Vanderbilt, author of the forthcoming book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us. We asked: What is it about automobility that often seems to turn nice, normal people into impulsive, remorseless sociopaths -- blasting their horns, flying into fits of rage and wielding their vehicles like weapons in a crowded, pedestrian-dominated city.
Tom, whose book, I believe, most Streetsbloggers will find to be a must-read, took the time to write the following answer and to pose a question of his own...
This is a good and complicated question -- it's also an enduring one. Bad behavior was present the year I was born (1968, when Congress was holding hearings on violence on the road), but it really almost seemed built into the invention of the car -- the town of Chatham, New Jersey, for example, installed speed bumps in the early 20th century to combat what were then known as "scorchers," or speeders. Actually, though, it predates the car. There's a great painting, by the 18th century French artist Claude Gillot, called "The Scene of the Two Carriages," that shows two carriage drivers yelling at each at an intersection as they "contest for the way," as it used to be known. It's almost as if there's something about being inside a vehicle of any kind, removed from the normal pace and experience of walking -- the only thing we were actually born to do, after all -- that evokes its own special behaviors, its own convulsive social physics, and problems -- traffic fatalities, it should be noted, were ranked as the leading cause of fatalities in London in the early 18th century.
Another inherent problem, I believe, is conflicting modes, at least psychologically. The New York Times, circa the late 19th century, was filled with all sorts of hue and cry about the arrival of the bicycle. It was banned from parks, pedestrians hated it, horse-drivers thought it spooked their horses. People thought it could give you special ailments.
The only people who didn't seem to hate it were bicyclists themselves. We just seem resistant to seeing the world beyond our reference point, be that windshield or handlebars -- it's what Aaron Naparstek has aptly called "modal bias." Whatever you're in at the moment just seems the reigning mode of transport. Humans in general have trouble looking outside ourselves, we fall victim to something call the "actor-observer effect." When we see someone else do something, we might attribute their action to something about their personality or nature. When we do something, we attribute it to "situational" factors -- we had to do it because of something external. This has been shown in studies -- car drivers think "bikers" do something because they're, well, "bikers," whereas they as car drivers are merely reacting to events, being affected by others. "You fell, I was pushed," is how it's been described. How many times have you seen someone honk at someone who was waiting for pedestrians to cross while making a turn; they'll call them an "idiot" as if there wasn't a perfectly normal reason they were waiting to make the turn. George Carlin got at this a bit when he said anyone moving faster than you was a maniac and anyone slower was an idiot. We have ignition interlocks now in cars, so it won't start if you've been boozing it up -- I'd like to see a "blood flow to the brain" interlock, where the car shuts down if it detects you've actually stopped cogitating, as so often seems the case.
There's all sorts of other things underlying bad road behavior. Anonymity is a huge issue -- I compare traffic to being online. You can act nastily, veiled behind a pseudonym, then leave in a hurry, with no consequences; you'll do things you'd never do in a normal social setting. Your commenter is right -- studies have shown less aggressive behavior from people in convertibles with the top down versus convertibles with the top up. The thought is they're less protected, less anonymous, more "human." It could also just be they're in a better mood because they've got the top down. All kinds of psychological studies have shown how one's chances of gaining cooperation increase when we can make eye contact. We only get this occasionally in traffic, when we look at someone to try to get "waved in" -- unless we're getting what Seinfeld called the "stare ahead." One of your commenters mentioned frustrated speed as a cause of hostility, and I think that's right; most times we're in transport it's because we want to get somewhere after all, and in any mode we can get annoyed at delay -- we've probably all seen the nasty altercations on the Brooklyn Bridge between cyclists who get really annoyed when they have to slow for wayward tourists who don't observe the rule/norm. But speed is linked as well to anonymity, nowhere more so in a car; the faster you go, the more divorced you become, in a sensorial and practical way, from the environment around you. It doesn't help that we tend to engineer our roads to seem as if they were designed for nothing more than the fast movement of vehicles.
Another reason people might be acting like criminals on the road is that they might actually be criminals on the road. Studies in the U.K. that looked at a pool of driving records found that people who committed non-motoring offenses were much more likely to commit motoring offenses. Then there's the issue of driver's actual grasp of the traffic law. Police in Chicago recently posed as pedestrians to nab drivers acting badly in intersections. In many cases drivers, and sometimes pedestrians, seemed clueless as to the actual right of way laws. Studies by David Ragland and Meghan Mitman at UC-Berkeley have confirmed this, and the implications of their studies were that pedestrians, in many cases, were better off in unmarked than marked crosswalks because there was less certainty over who had right of way, and thus more caution.
That's sort of the unfortunate aspect of clinging to traffic laws as a way to try assure good behavior -- we're not even sure who's aware of the laws, perhaps not a surprise given how complex the traffic environment can be. We need, in the end, to rely more on just basic precepts of polite behavior and social cooperation -- there's so many things that can't be readily enforced, so many roads where police can't be present. I really have no clue how to get there, though -- any suggestions?
by Aaron Naparstek
Yesterday, at the end of our piece about the recent road rage incidents in usually-polite Portland and Seattle, we posed a question to Tom Vanderbilt, author of the forthcoming book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do and What It Says About Us. We asked: What is it about automobility that often seems to turn nice, normal people into impulsive, remorseless sociopaths -- blasting their horns, flying into fits of rage and wielding their vehicles like weapons in a crowded, pedestrian-dominated city.
Tom, whose book, I believe, most Streetsbloggers will find to be a must-read, took the time to write the following answer and to pose a question of his own...
This is a good and complicated question -- it's also an enduring one. Bad behavior was present the year I was born (1968, when Congress was holding hearings on violence on the road), but it really almost seemed built into the invention of the car -- the town of Chatham, New Jersey, for example, installed speed bumps in the early 20th century to combat what were then known as "scorchers," or speeders. Actually, though, it predates the car. There's a great painting, by the 18th century French artist Claude Gillot, called "The Scene of the Two Carriages," that shows two carriage drivers yelling at each at an intersection as they "contest for the way," as it used to be known. It's almost as if there's something about being inside a vehicle of any kind, removed from the normal pace and experience of walking -- the only thing we were actually born to do, after all -- that evokes its own special behaviors, its own convulsive social physics, and problems -- traffic fatalities, it should be noted, were ranked as the leading cause of fatalities in London in the early 18th century.
Another inherent problem, I believe, is conflicting modes, at least psychologically. The New York Times, circa the late 19th century, was filled with all sorts of hue and cry about the arrival of the bicycle. It was banned from parks, pedestrians hated it, horse-drivers thought it spooked their horses. People thought it could give you special ailments.
The only people who didn't seem to hate it were bicyclists themselves. We just seem resistant to seeing the world beyond our reference point, be that windshield or handlebars -- it's what Aaron Naparstek has aptly called "modal bias." Whatever you're in at the moment just seems the reigning mode of transport. Humans in general have trouble looking outside ourselves, we fall victim to something call the "actor-observer effect." When we see someone else do something, we might attribute their action to something about their personality or nature. When we do something, we attribute it to "situational" factors -- we had to do it because of something external. This has been shown in studies -- car drivers think "bikers" do something because they're, well, "bikers," whereas they as car drivers are merely reacting to events, being affected by others. "You fell, I was pushed," is how it's been described. How many times have you seen someone honk at someone who was waiting for pedestrians to cross while making a turn; they'll call them an "idiot" as if there wasn't a perfectly normal reason they were waiting to make the turn. George Carlin got at this a bit when he said anyone moving faster than you was a maniac and anyone slower was an idiot. We have ignition interlocks now in cars, so it won't start if you've been boozing it up -- I'd like to see a "blood flow to the brain" interlock, where the car shuts down if it detects you've actually stopped cogitating, as so often seems the case.
There's all sorts of other things underlying bad road behavior. Anonymity is a huge issue -- I compare traffic to being online. You can act nastily, veiled behind a pseudonym, then leave in a hurry, with no consequences; you'll do things you'd never do in a normal social setting. Your commenter is right -- studies have shown less aggressive behavior from people in convertibles with the top down versus convertibles with the top up. The thought is they're less protected, less anonymous, more "human." It could also just be they're in a better mood because they've got the top down. All kinds of psychological studies have shown how one's chances of gaining cooperation increase when we can make eye contact. We only get this occasionally in traffic, when we look at someone to try to get "waved in" -- unless we're getting what Seinfeld called the "stare ahead." One of your commenters mentioned frustrated speed as a cause of hostility, and I think that's right; most times we're in transport it's because we want to get somewhere after all, and in any mode we can get annoyed at delay -- we've probably all seen the nasty altercations on the Brooklyn Bridge between cyclists who get really annoyed when they have to slow for wayward tourists who don't observe the rule/norm. But speed is linked as well to anonymity, nowhere more so in a car; the faster you go, the more divorced you become, in a sensorial and practical way, from the environment around you. It doesn't help that we tend to engineer our roads to seem as if they were designed for nothing more than the fast movement of vehicles.
Another reason people might be acting like criminals on the road is that they might actually be criminals on the road. Studies in the U.K. that looked at a pool of driving records found that people who committed non-motoring offenses were much more likely to commit motoring offenses. Then there's the issue of driver's actual grasp of the traffic law. Police in Chicago recently posed as pedestrians to nab drivers acting badly in intersections. In many cases drivers, and sometimes pedestrians, seemed clueless as to the actual right of way laws. Studies by David Ragland and Meghan Mitman at UC-Berkeley have confirmed this, and the implications of their studies were that pedestrians, in many cases, were better off in unmarked than marked crosswalks because there was less certainty over who had right of way, and thus more caution.
That's sort of the unfortunate aspect of clinging to traffic laws as a way to try assure good behavior -- we're not even sure who's aware of the laws, perhaps not a surprise given how complex the traffic environment can be. We need, in the end, to rely more on just basic precepts of polite behavior and social cooperation -- there's so many things that can't be readily enforced, so many roads where police can't be present. I really have no clue how to get there, though -- any suggestions?
__________________
"Real wars of words are harder to win. They require thought, insight, precision, articulation, knowledge, and experience. They require the humility to admit when you are wrong. They recognize that the dialectic is not about making us look at you, but about us all looking together for the truth."
"Real wars of words are harder to win. They require thought, insight, precision, articulation, knowledge, and experience. They require the humility to admit when you are wrong. They recognize that the dialectic is not about making us look at you, but about us all looking together for the truth."
07-21-08, 03:39 AM
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Even the Mapes article in the Oregonian has this little gem, which if true, means Sam is sending the wrong message, IMO...
Originally Posted by jeff mapes
Adams is trying to pitch his plan (*for more bike boulevards*) as a benefit to drivers by shifting much of the bike traffic off major arterials.
There's also lots of places you can't go in Portland without getting on an arterial street, and certainly not without crossing multiple arterials.
Sam's pandering to the motorists is at best a weak short term strategy, and certainly isn't a viable long term strategy; given the current climate on Portland's streets, I don't think it's all that wise for Sam to promise something to motorists he can't deliver... or worse, to leave cyclists hanging when it comes to arterial safety. But perhaps what a lot of this boils down to is Sam getting bad advice from his people in PDOT, or the fact that this op-ed piece is in the Oregonian...
Last edited by randya; 07-21-08 at 03:47 AM.
07-21-08, 07:00 AM
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I didn't know Portland was up to 6% now. Maybe that's a different figure than the 4.5% of trips figure? It seems to me that if 6% commute to work by bike the number of trips would be a bit higher than 4.5%.
07-22-08, 01:44 AM
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It's interesting when biking gets press, but I don't find this article very interesting otherwise. It really doesn't say anything.
Naturally there will be more bike accidents with more bikes on the road. But how many more? Are accidents per cyclist capita increasing, decreasing, or what? No information there...
Anecdotes about driver abuse are entertaining, but not the real picture either.
Naturally there will be more bike accidents with more bikes on the road. But how many more? Are accidents per cyclist capita increasing, decreasing, or what? No information there...
Anecdotes about driver abuse are entertaining, but not the real picture either.
07-22-08, 05:26 PM
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Absurd.
Drivers are mainly just saying, "Do as I say, not as I do." Uuuuhhh,...I don't think so, mommy and daddy stupidest.
