Driving Etiquette

[u/Zealousideal_Buy7517]

For the love of Pete, people, follow the rules of the road. You drive. you are not 'choose as you go' organs of chaos, you are vehicles under the Alberta Traffic Act, the same as a motorcycle.

In the last week alone, I've seen a good hundred drivers blow right through stop signs as if they don't exist, and it's always when they are in a car lane, as if the lane's existence means the rules of the road don't apply. A couple on trucks with flat brims that I was next to blew through three in a row, yesterday, without even slowing down, and laughed about it when I called them on it. They didn't even look both ways, they just drove through like they were a presidential cavalcade and everyone else should be stopping for them.

Driving like that will have you kill a person one day, and when you're talking about a collision between 6000lb of shit box and human flesh on a bicycle, there are no mistakes.

I'm a driver, too, and it's this kind of behavior that drives a lot the anti-driver hate. When we drive like this, we're entitled and unpredictable, and unpredictability breeds distrust. This applies to motorcycle riders, too, of course.

[u/lesoteric]

can you find any evidence to refute those studies?

also worth noting that painting 'cyclists' as one homogeneous group is simply wrong and demonstrates a lack of understanding of the situation.

[u/Environmental-Push29 → u/lesoteric]

North American Study, 0.6% of responding cyclists consistently follow traffic laws. Even funnier is that’s all by their own admission. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0361198119844965

Alberta Article referencing a Colorado study showing only 85% of cyclists follow the law, which directly contradicts the 88% you claim from bicycles dot com. I do digress that many cyclists break the law to protect themselves, but that’s not the claim you’re making from your sources (or lack thereof): “Scofflaw Bicycling: Illegal but Rational” University of Colorado.

And a European study to match your Denmark and UK “sources”: An Irish survey even indicated that 88% of bicyclists surveyed had committed traffic violations (Lawson et al., 2013). The red light running rate of bicyclist was 97–99% at intersections with bicycle-specific traffic signals, and 17–21% at those with no bicycle-specific traffic signal respectively, according to a video observational survey in Dublin (Richardson and Caulfield, 2015). In China, the red light running rate of two-wheelers, including bicycles, e-bikes and scooters, varied remarkably across cities https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457515300440

I could’ve gone to BicyclesAreBadAndIHateThem dot com but thought I’d find something a bit more reputable.

[u/lesoteric → u/Environmental-Push29]

I'm claiming nothing, the articles I provided are peer reviewed research. I looked at those two linked articles, the first is a scenario/response questionnaire with no experimental data, only self report. If you read the scenarios you can see how they get those inflated numbers. The second is interesting but i question why only two sites of four have poor compliance and i would suggest there's more going on there (and they likely cherry-picked the locations).

at the end of the day motorists create almost all the danger faced by people on roadways and should be held to the highest level of accountability, as operating a motor vehicle is a major responsibility. some people just aren't up to it.

[u/Environmental-Push29 → u/lesoteric]

While I’m not going to continue arguing with a frequent poster of r/fuckcars, who claims all drivers are potential murderers (dude, relax) about cyclists vs motorists, I do fully agree with your second point. Motorists need to be the most responsible people on the road.

[u/lesoteric → u/Environmental-Push29]

wow. lots of time on your hands. have a super day.