Street view from Google Maps:
this post was submitted on 24 Aug 2024
298 points (97.2% liked)
Fuck Cars
9777 readers
5 users here now
This community exists as a sister community/copycat community to the r/fuckcars subreddit.
This community exists for the following reasons:
- to raise awareness around the dangers, inefficiencies and injustice that can come from car dependence.
- to allow a place to discuss and promote more healthy transport methods and ways of living.
You can find the Matrix chat room for this community here.
Rules
-
Be nice to each other. Being aggressive or inflammatory towards other users will get you banned. Name calling or obvious trolling falls under that. Hate cars, hate the system, but not people. While some drivers definitely deserve some hate, most of them didn't choose car-centric life out of free will.
-
No bigotry or hate. Racism, transphobia, misogyny, ableism, homophobia, chauvinism, fat-shaming, body-shaming, stigmatization of people experiencing homeless or substance users, etc. are not tolerated. Don't use slurs. You can laugh at someone's fragile masculinity without associating it with their body. The correlation between car-culture and body weight is not an excuse for fat-shaming.
-
Stay on-topic. Submissions should be on-topic to the externalities of car culture in urban development and communities globally. Posting about alternatives to cars and car culture is fine. Don't post literal car fucking.
-
No traffic violence. Do not post depictions of traffic violence. NSFW or NSFL posts are not allowed. Gawking at crashes is not allowed. Be respectful to people who are a victim of traffic violence or otherwise traumatized by it. News articles about crashes and statistics about traffic violence are allowed. Glorifying traffic violence will get you banned.
-
No reposts. Before sharing, check if your post isn't a repost. Reposts that add something new are fine. Reposts that are sharing content from somewhere else are fine too.
-
No misinformation. Masks and vaccines save lives during a pandemic, climate change is real and anthropogenic - and denial of these and other established facts will get you banned. False or highly speculative titles will get your post deleted.
-
No harassment. Posts that (may) cause harassment, dogpiling or brigading, intentionally or not, will be removed. Please do not post screenshots containing uncensored usernames. Actual harassment, dogpiling or brigading is a bannable offence.
Please report posts and comments that violate our rules.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Better explain why pedestrian crossings are stretched so much instead of being on shortest trajectory to other side
I hate shortened crossings. Pedestrian crossings should follow the flow of pedestrians. Bikes shouldn't have to slow down to make sharp turns just to cross the street. There should be crossings that go in a sensible line.
Crossings should be safe for humans and bikes. Meaning, they should be short and bikes should not be ridden across intersections if no bike lane
If there's no bike lane, and bikes can't ride across intersections, how on earth are bikes supposed to get around at all?
Get off the bike and push it.
I know, it's not a great solution but think about it - if you're on a bike you're faster than a pedestrian and there's a high chance a car won't see you if they aren't already stopped (assuming there's no traffic light to regulate traffic).
Doesn't matter if the car sees me, I'll see the car. I'm always careful. Any time my attention is compromised, I do get off. When I'm healthy and cautious, I ride.
I also thought it was a bit of a wild request for bikes to only cross where bike infra exists. If we can't make progress in driver behavior, we should build more mode separation to contain the thousand pound death machines in their own physically isolated section of the street. At no point should we be compromising bicycle or pedestrian mobility. We have a right to the street also, and it's the cars who have trouble co-existing with the other modes of transportation without murdering a bunch of people.
Bikes belong in the road.
If you're in a pedestrian path with a bicycle, you should be dismounted
Given that's not the law in my country, I have to assume that it's your personal opinion. And your personal opinion that I should risk my life just to get to the grocery store is fucked.
Your personal opinion is that you should risk the lives of pedestrians by riding a vehicle in their path?
Its not about laws, its about morality.
Weird thing is that you can ride slowly and safely while passing pedestrians.
Making a general statement like this is just completely ignorant of the reality of living in cities where car drivers HATE bikes and will absolutely kill you if you try riding in the road.
Yes. I also think doctors should risk the lives of patients by prescribing antibiotics for bacterial infections. This is a risk because some patients have undiagnosed penicillin allergies. There is always a level of acceptable risk. Given that nobody has ever been killed by a bicycle they weren't riding in my country, I find the risk acceptable. The pedestrians on the route I take have a higher chance of dying from lung cancer due to car pollution, PER CAR, than from me killing them.
I mean, getting hit by a bike hurts, but it doesn't kill you. Still, I'm not a fan of people endangering and inconveniencing others so they themselves can be safer either. But that's what people are like. That's one of the reasons everyone should be pro bike lane, even if they don't cycle.
I've been in cities where the "bike lane" was a "Parked car door zone"
Some of these cities literally made it illegal to not ride in the bike lanes. Not everyone should be pro bike lane, especially when they're death lanes
I meant that as in 'everyone should be pro creating safe bike lanes'. Sorry I wasn't clear
In my area, bikes are allowed on all sidewalks except for a street-bounded square around the downtown core where we must ride in the street. When on the sidewalk, we are expected to yield to pedestrians. This works in practice, mostly due to low volume of bikes and pedestrians, and in some places 12 food wide sidewalks specifically designated as class 1 urban trails that even allow some ebikes. In practice, this works okay but you are definitely forced to have little micro interactions with people to negotiate sidewalk space or signal your intentions. Cyclists go to the sidewalk as a last resort because it's often not a comfortable place for us to ride, just less likely to get us killed. I will never understand cyclists who don't ring. It's a bad look for our ability to share space. Unlike cars, bicycles and pedestrians are close enough in speed to occasionally mix.
I do agree that in city centers and high traffic areas, riders should dismount.
It seems to be a 4-way intersection.
To optimize the intersection for car traffic. Or maybe rather to minimize signal wait times.
If pedestrians could take the shortest path, it would roughly double the size of the intersection in both width and height. Which then requires clearing times on each signal pass to be longer. Which ultimately makes everybody wait longer at the intersection, including pedestrians.
So, that is one possible explanation. I guess you didn't really ask for one, and maybe I should also add that it's just that; an explanation, not a justification.