The amount of ignorance and pure aggression against road cyclists in America is rising to the level of a hate crime, IMHO. Mostly male, it seems, drivers are not willing to accept that not only must they share the road with cyclists, they must do so in a safe manner. The number of memes and comments promoting violence against cyclists must seem to only come from the most ignorant of society.
I experience this frequently when riding my electric longboard down the side of a particular block of 25mph road downtown. It isn't just men either, I've had quite a few women yell obscenities or throw me off my board by cutting me off and brake checking me. Nothing about this particular block of road seems inappropriate to ride down compared to others, but people fucking rage when they see someone on a board. Not a big city either and just a block away is a thriving area that is designed to have cars frequently stop for walkers.
The number of cyclists I see on a daily basis completely IGNORE traffic signs, lights, signals, and no-turn-on-red leads me to believe the cyclists must hate themselves more than any driver possibly could.
Ah yes, just throw things at all cyclists. Run them off the road.
Every thread about cyclists being abused includes someone like you mentioning that some cyclists ignore stops with the implication that they started the whole fight or that the fight is justified.
In NYC, 90% of the times I see cyclists - typically because I'm using a crosswalk - they are violating the rules of the road. They don't yield to pedestrians, they don't stay in a lane, they don't signal turns, they don't stop for red lights even to check for cross-traffic.
Sometimes I don't have to be in the crosswalk to notice them, because they'll take an electric-powered cycle onto the sidewalk.
I am not exaggerating. I pay attention when I see a bicyclist actually stopping so I can cross in the crosswalk when I have the light, or otherwise following the rules of the road. I wish I had the presence of mine to thank those cyclists. But they are rare.
> Ah yes, just throw things at all cyclists. Run them off the road.
That doesn't seem fair, that is not what I said. You're misrepresenting me. I do not know if you intended to or not.
A group is generally regarded based on the behavior of a very small minority of its membership, usually the very worst or the very best. This seems like general human nature. There are many examples of this if you care to look for them. I have a few examples in mind, but they are unfortunately politically-charged examples and I have no desire to bring politics into this more than I just did.
Used to cycle 10km to work. I daily saw motorists ignore all sorts of things too. Every large group has a certain percentage of assholes, on account of the human race just having a certain percentage of them. That's not an excuse for anything, especially when we're talking about pretty dangerous behaviour.
Here's the thing: people WILL literally try to run you off the road, even when you're the most careful law-abiding cyclists that exists. I've had people try to run me off the road even though it was a dedicated cycle path, only to proceed to rant at me that it was all a waste of money. Even standing still at a traffic light will have people drive up way close up to your rear wheel and you look back and they shout "piss off you cunt". The amount of aggression from some is unhinged beyond proportions.
So when people come back with "yeah, but some cyclists break rules" ... Well sure, but that kind of misses the point. You get aggression even when following the rules not doing anything.
I mean you could say "Ah yes, just throw things at all drivers" as well.
Agreed that cars are way more dangerous than bikes, but here in California I do see a lot of aggressive recreational cyclists that act like they have a chip on their shoulder. While they may not be a danger by crashing into things like cars do, their behavior does cause sometimes dangerous issues for other people on the road.
If every time you walked down the street the people wearing blue shirts spat in your face or sucker punched you a third of the time as they walked past, it wouldn't take long before you had a strong reaction to seeing someone in a blue shirt walking your way, even if they personally did nothing to you. That's human nature.
No one should be throwing things or trying to hurt anyone, but it absolutely is past and repeated negative experiences with cyclists acting irresponsibly that make drivers resent them, just like careless assholes in cars can make cyclists resent drivers.
Your equating of interacting with a cyclist while in a car to being sucker punched and spat upon is a clue that your premise is irrational. Being delayed by a few seconds generally only results in aggression from car drivers if and only if the cause is a cyclist.
My belief is that the worst offending car drivers are simply psychopath bullies who know they can safely abuse, threaten, harass, assault, etc. those pansy spandex wearing cyclists. They do it because they enjoy it.
Some people are simply not fit to be a part of society.
> Your equating of interacting with a cyclist while in a car to being sucker punched and spat upon is a clue that your premise is irrational.
I never equated the two. I used them as an example of how people come to blame all members of a certain class for the consistently harmful actions of a few members of that class. It's not fair, but it's common.
> Being delayed by a few seconds generally only results in aggression from car drivers if and only if the cause is a cyclist.
"Being delayed by a few seconds" is annoying for everyone no matter what the cause. That's not really the problem drivers have with cyclists though. It's having to slam on their breaks because someone on a bike ran a red light or having to swerve to avoid a cyclist who suddenly and illegally darted into their lane that makes drivers upset.
> My belief is that the worst offending car drivers are simply psychopath bullies
Maybe a number of the most extreme offenders actually are? The majority of people who have problems with cyclists on the road however are certainly not. I'd agree that people abusing cyclists for "fun" really are a problem and that they shouldn't be on the road.
Nothing to do with cars. I commute via bicycle and actively hate road cyclist, too. Once a person starts donning spandex they seem to lose their personhood. They become something else. Angrier. Impatient. Self important. Impervious to the rules of the road.
Drivers "hate" cyclists because the lives and safety of both themselves and their passengers depend on everyone else on the road behaving in ways that are safe and predictable. It doesn't matter if the other person is on a bike or in a car, if they're not following the flow of traffic, if they're not following the rules of the road, and if they're acting in unpredictable/unsafe ways they will be seen as a threat, as being irresponsible, and as being rude. That's where the hostility comes from. Many people are going to be hostile to other people who threaten the lives/safety of themselves and their loved ones.
When I sit in my wife's SUV and find that I can no longer see over the hoods of most trucks on the road, I really struggle to see how a single human body on a bike becomes such a threat. Maybe all those guys in trucks are more vulnerable than I realize, but it's just lost on me how that is.
A single human body on a bike becomes a threat when they blow through stop signs and light controlled intersections, don't signal turns, don't yield or follow signs, or when they ride against traffic. Studies have shown that when accidents involving bikes and cars happen bikers are found to have been responsible about as often as drivers (https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2011/05/20/1364622...). Other data suggests that cyclists are more likely to be at fault when an accident results in death or serious injury and drivers are more likely to be at fault when there's little damage (https://fullfact.org/news/are-cyclists-blame-road-accidents/).
Not counted in that kind of data are all the times drives are forced to swerve or slam on their brakes to avoid accidents. The fact that cyclists are harder to see than trucks and SUVs make them even more of a danger to drivers because they can come out of nowhere from directions drivers would never expect traffic to come from and by the time they are visible it may be too late.
I can't say if bikes are more of a danger than trucks but I can absolutely say that they are often a danger to drivers.
"At fault" is moving the goal posts. If a cyclist gets hit they likely die. If a truck gets hit there might not even be any damage. "Forced to swerve" is kind of a silly bar that ignores all the times that cyclists are forced to dodge multi-ton vehicles, again for fear of death, not scratched paint. Look at the painted lines on the roads next time you're driving and note how many tire tracks cross them.
The very assertion that they "come out of nowhere" speaks to the visibility problems inherent to driving a veritable locomotive down a city street. Yesterday, I witnessed a truck going around a curve on hop up on the curb and drive down the sidewalk briefly. This was at ~55 mph, and upon swerving and dropping the wheel back down into the road the truck wobbled and barely managed to miss the other cars in the road; a bike nearby, even on the sidewalk, would not have had a chance. Imagine being on that sidewalk; how's that for coming out of nowhere?
If there is any world in which a cyclist poses more danger to a truck, we're certainly not living in it.
