Miele Man

I've posted about my experiences using a bell on our local rail-trails. It doesn't work. I ring the bell and, I kid you not, most times people stop and look UP. What do they think? That ET is coming in for a landing? I'm seriously considering getting a loud horn.

Cheers

Miele Man

Around here bicycles and E-bikes etc. are NOT a good mix and that's because far too many E-bike riders have very poor handling skills and are totally ignorant of safe passing procedures. On far too many occasions I been very nearly hit by E-bike riders.

Cheers

hroark

Agreed. It’s more of a get around versus exercise.

SimicRecluse

So many strong opinions. I think e bikes are great. you still have to cycle and get exercise out of it. The greater problem is that there is little to no infrastructure for cycling, ebikes or otherwise, esp in the U.S. when they could be a complete replacement for cars in urban settings. Just think, no gas emissions, compact form, fast and easy way to get around for $1500 as opposed to spending $15000+ on a car, cycling lanes for the people that just want to pedal. The future is electric, man.

SimicRecluse

Why though. Isn't "on your left" pretty much a standard.

rydabent

And I have been drive off bike trails by head down "real cyclist" staring at their front wheel on their DF bikes, at least twice. Share the trail.

rydabent

I find moving to the far left and yelling passing works far better.

hroark

My standard too.

livedarklions

Funny, I yell "passing on your left", so I got you both covered.

I find that "on your left" and just "left" confuse people because some think you're telling them to move left.

I've worked on being loud but not threatening, and it seems to work rather well for me. Throwing in a few "good evenings" and the like seems to be appreciated.

livedarklions

Always the possibility that this is just regional variation, but I haven't found that to be the case around my area, even when I ride in the Boston area.

SpeedyBlueBiker

I'm not really a fan of e-bikes but I also see where they have their place. I could see people wanting to commute into work riding one if they don't want to arrive all wet and sweaty. Or the parking situation is very tight, non existent, or very expensive. I don't know if I'll ever ride an e-bike. I'm hoping that I can ride a regular bike for as long as possible.

wolfchild

On your left isn't a standard...Ringing a bell is a standard and has been for a long time.

wolfchild

I see you're in Ontario. I have ridden Cambridge to Paris to Brantford rail trail many times, I have also ridden Hamilton to Brantford rail trail and also Georgian Bay rail trail from Collingwood to Meaford. I have used my bell many times and it has never failed to alert walkers or slower cyclists which I was passing, no confusion at all. Most people recognize that the sound of a bell means a bicycle is approaching.

indyfabz

You don’t have to pedal throttle-equipped e-bikes. You can, but you don’t have to.

Airfehr

I was starting to wonder if I was the only one here who uses a bell.

As far a close calls I have more with cyclists who must always two abreast when on coming on a bike path. Some E-bikers are a bit aloof to their environment. I see the same people driving their cars or being brain dead with a shopping cart at the market. You need to watch out for everyone on the bike path.

A friend with COPD found an E-bike life changing.

rsbob 

aloof or clueless? Most are relatively inexperienced.

livedarklions

BS.

This idea that a sound carries more information than actual words is absurd. Talking to people is always a standard.

I don't think it makes a huge difference either way, but I can tell you from personal observation that a lot of people have no idea what they are supposed to do when they hear the bell.

Trakhak

If you correctly start ringing the bell from far enough behind, the person in front eventually looks around and (usually) moves out of the way. People usually do the preemptory "On Your Left!" yell only once, when they're practically on top of the person in front, startling (and sometimes angering) the person and giving little time to react.

And then there's the fact that "On your left" is understood among many (but not all) cyclists but not by most pedestrians, who are just as likely to move left as right, given the usual two or three seconds available to react before the bike is on top of them (figuratively or literally).

There'd be far fewer moronic "People on MUPs are morons!!!!" threads here if people used bells, starting at a distance, instead of relying on yelling.

Trakhak

The use of bells has been standard practice for many decades in countries where bike travel is more common than it is in the U.S.

Herzlos

Except it does, that single half-second ding tells you that there's a vehicle coming and you need to react to it. It'll also carry much further and stand out more from the background noise.
A person yelling words is easier to get lost under conversation, and will take longer to parse and understand even before accounting for accent and language or confusion about left/right.
I doubt many people blindly move to the right when they hear someone yell "on your left" unless they are expecting it.

That's why bells are so popular and in many places a compulsory part of bicycle equipment.

livedarklions

I ride in the U.S. The use of bells is, by my observation, less common than voice announcement or doing nothing in the U.S. Frankly, in the places I ride (and that includes the Minuteman in the Boston area) bells are relatively rare. There's no "standard" here where people are trained as to what a bell means and what they're supposed to do when they hear one. As far as I'm concerned, you might as well be saying that Pavlov established that the function of the bell is to make dogs drool.

The advantage of the voice is obvious as I can get out whole sentences explaining what I'm going to do whereas a bell can only ding. If you confine yourself to a routine "on your left" and don't allow for situational modification, you aren't using the potential of language to its fullest. Bells have no such capacity unless understanding of Morse Code becomes standard knowledge.

A lot of people have individual reasons for not wanting to use their voice in this matter, and I'm in no position to judge whether these reasons are good or bad at the individual level, but when you make obviously false claims about the comparative amount of information that CAN be conveyed by voices or bells generally, I'm going to feel free to argue with that.

BTW, I absolutely find it much easier to figure out how far behind me and where they are in relation to me when people talk at me than when they ring a bell. Bells vary wildly in volume, tone, and length of tone, and a couple of abrupt ding dings don't really tell me much. "I'm passing on your left" is explicit and clear. That's what I tell people. It works and I'm really tired of people on BF telling me I should be ringing a little bell instead. No one has ever said anything of the kind to me IRL, and I've been thanked very frequently for the way I announce my passes.

I really have no problem with other people thinking bells are better for them, just stop trying to convince people who announce your way is better. My real beef is with people who neither announce or use a bell. Those people create real hazards, and, in practice, it's probably more the rule in the US than the exception.

BTW, if we're making up scenarios about yelling getting lost in the conversation, how about the confusion caused by more than one bell ringing at the same time? No method of audio communication is immune from noise interference except maybe sirens, but those are illegal. The time to parse nonsense is ridiculous, if all that is conveyed is someone is there, that's precisely what the bell is communicating.

Nachoman

That's because a lot of people are just clueless. The same people that can't figure out what they are supposed to do when they hear a bell, also have no idea what to do when they hear 'on your left' .

livedarklions

Again, I say "passing on your left". It definitely works for me better than 99% of the time. I agree that clueless people are a problem for any form of communication. Also, most times I announce, it's preemptive--people are walking exactly where I want them to be. It's really primarily to prevent them from suddenly stepping to their left without looking which happens with surprising frequency if you don't announce. The biggest "problem" I have is usually that people occasionally think I'm trying to drive them off the right side of the path.

To kind of bring this back to the OP topic, I will say that I haven't noticed people on ebikes either being better or worse about announcing or using bells than fast cyclists.

Herzlos

I've never used a bicycle in the US, but it seems to be a relatively rare thing. In (as far as I understand it), most of the rest of the world, the bell is the standard "caution I'm here" noise.


The tone of bells are usually pretty good for allowing people to judge direction and distance, that's why emergency services use sirens which are essentially variable tone bells.
There are different powers and tones of bells, but there are also different tones and powers of voice too. But it's also much less likely that anyone is going to be walking along a MUP ringing a bell or listing to bells on their headphones, than they are to be listening to voices.

Multiple bells can be a problem, but even with 2 or 3 bells you can still tell where they are coming from, and anywhere that busy is going to be hell with people shouting "on your left".


You may not like bells, and maybe they are rare in the US, but they are better solution in most situations.

SpedFast

I think the reason bells haven't caught on here like they have in other parts of the world is because of the stigma attached to them. It used to be that only little kid's bikes came with bells. Oh, and tassels. Capiche?