As a cyclist, two people cycling side by side while other vehicles are waiting to pass is a bit of a dick move tbh.
Not illegal, and nothing compared to the shit that drivers do to cyclists, but still a bit of a dick move.
Cycling two abreast is better for the driver, since they can overtake much quicker.
Great image, but you see people really don't want to use their steering wheels. And if possible they'd like pedestrian crossings removed as well. In ideal world there would be a race track from their home to exactly where they need to go and everyone else in traffic is a dick. Including other car drivers. Learning traffic laws and rules is too much of an effort anyway.
I disagree since overtaking a cyclist in the same lane is unsafe anyway. In the city I always cycle in the middle of the lane because it prevents unsafe takeovers and dooring.
So it's a bit of a conundrum. Because there are pros and cons in riding abreast.
On one hand, cyclists are more compact and more visible. On the other filling whole lane would mean drivers behind them would have to time their overtaking. However, car drivers almost never leave enough space when overtaking cyclists and 100% never think about wind that might push them or that cyclist might need more space to avoid potholes and stuff. So being a dick driver is not exclusive to cyclists.
Traffic law, at least where I live, states when overtaking cyclists driver must leave enough space between him and the cyclist so as to not inconvenience cyclist. Which is vague and not helping one bit. However I think it's far better to be forced to slow down and time overtaking than not slowing down and flying next to a single lane of cyclists. Because if and when there's a car coming from opposite direction, car driver won't care or look twice to move closer to the edge of the road and push others out.
Where do you see another vehicle "waiting to pass"? There's absolutely nothing in this picture telling you how much traffic there is, how wide the road is, etc. Nothing.
What can be seen in the picture, however, is a car that, no matter the speed, is tailgating way too close. Which is a misdemeanor in some countries.
Yes illegal, depending on the country.
If cyclists can use the whole lane (common situation in the United States for example), it is (almost always) illegal for a driver to leave their drivable portion of the road to pass someone, bicyclist or otherwise. That includes crossing any lines, going to the opposite side of the road, being on the shoulder or sidewalk, etc.
Without a separate bicycle lane, it is not permitted to pass a bicyclist.
I'm not sure I'm understanding... as a driver you can legally pass by going into the opposing lane momentarily, as long as the line in the center is dashed (not solid) on your side and there is no oncoming traffic. That's kind of the whole reason the center line is painted like that, combined with those signs that say "do not pass" and "pass with caution" when the line goes solid and back to dashed.
Wrong, it's easier and safer to overtake two cyclists abreast because you don't have to be in the oncoming lane for as long
And just so we’re clear, the reason it’s a dick move is the car can move faster than the bike so blocking the car robs the people in the car if its full utility. They’re now forced to go your speed, which is probably less than the speed limit.
While we’re at it let’s just block emergency vehicles cuz they are even bigger taking up more space. Boo them for not all just havin bycycles and saving on emissions
Great image, however slightly wrong. In some countries car pictured should be a huge fucking truck which people use to go and buy Starbucks because of deadly combination of ego issues and laziness.
I wish the diagram would have put little fart clouds labeled 'Methane' behind the bicyclists.
What I'm trying to say is that I crop dust a lot when I bike.
Fun fact, humans actually produce only trace amounts on methane in our farts because we're not ruminants. Most of our farts are nitrogen swallowed from the air and CO2 produced by gut bacteria. The bad smelling chemicals are in even lower concentrations and barely make up a rounding error by volume, we simply evolved to be really sensitive to them because it's beneficial to our survival to avoid poop.
You left out the part where the ones on the bikes are going the fraction of the speed
And they left out that emergency vehicles and transit take up more room but really shouldn’t be blocked on speed just on argument of size and space alone. Not even cars would block based on ‘me smaller than them and take up less room’. So it’s a shit attitude and argument here all the way through about size and space as somehow more entitled.
So people saying the bikes side by side are a dick move are implying that you have more right to the road because you're driving a car?
Generally speaking, to do an overtake, a car needs to leave the lane completely, so it doesn't matter whether it's one or two bikes.
You are assuming drivers respect the safety distance from a lone biker...
It does matter. It's safer for everyone if cyclists travel side by side in one lane because then the car driver has to spend less time in the oncoming lane to complete the overtake. A long string of bikes takes more time to safely pass.
It's especially safer for the cyclists who risk getting side swiped and crushed by drivers trying to avoid going into the adjacent lane, and since cyclists have no steel box surrounding them, it's a one sided battle that the car initiated in the first place. Riding side by side forces the car to do a normal, legal overtake by moving into the next lane.
Most of the streets around here were built when the idea that every house could have a car would be viewed as a fantasy.
So you've got cars parked up and down each side of the road, and if two cars want to pass each other, then you have to hope that there's space for one of you to pull over.
If you want to overtake even one bike, forget it. It's probably got some balaclava wearing kid on it, weaving none-handed up the middle of the road.
Those kinds of streets are actually the safest for everyone because they enforce lower speeds and more attentive driving than any posted speed limit ever can. People don't give two shits about speed laws and will drive as fast as they feel they can, so when the road is not conducive to driving fast, surprise surprise people don't drive fast and collisions are rarely deadly.
More info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbqNUqdZlwM
Gurl, what's with the spooky bike fanfic
If my vehicle had the ability to change its width when I needed to, I'd agree with you, but my car does not have that option, the two bikes do, it wouldn't take much effort for one to slide behind the other to let the vehicle behind pass, it's a give and take with society, I'll actively make sure to keep you safe from my vehicle, while bikes should actively try to allow larger or faster vehicles to pass safely instead of putting themselves at risk over something that takes no effort to do.
I’ll actively make sure to keep you safe from my vehicle
As someone who cycles on the road, I don't trust you. Not in the slightest. Far too many close calls with cars trying to "sneak" by me because "oh I'm sure there's plenty of room to the right" even in a bike-oriented city. I ride alone the vast majority of the time but having someone ride beside would actually make me feel safer because it means you actually have to perform a legal overtake which involves moving into the passing lane. Also, drivers are distracted all the time and I absolutely do not trust that every driver will actually notice a bike that's off to their side when drivers are prone to straight up miss traffic lights that are right in front of their eyeline.
Would it be less of a dick move if it was a faster cyclist or a motorcyclist needing to pass by? No, it might actually be worse.
The point is that we need to do our best to respect other road users, regardless of their method of transportation. Pedestrians, cyclist, motorcyclists, cars, lorries and even animals (perhaps especially animals)
Any side-by-side vehicles increases the amount of space taken on the road, which means it should be avoided when other travellers need to pass by. It's the same reason that lorries or cars travelling side-by-side at the same speed on the highway is often frowned upon.
I really don't get people who want to wage a constant social war over our shared infrastructure by being assholes to each other. Being decent and considerate is safer and more pleasant for everybody involved.
A car takes up at least the width of two bikes by default. Why do they have the right to do that while bikes don't?
Maybe we should focus more on overall efficiency and sustainability of our transport systems, and by that metric, cars shouldn't even exist. A four lane road takes up the same width as a two track rail corridor and mixed use pedesterian/bike paths on either side, but can transport far more people per hour than private cars while being both cheaper in the long run and more environmentally friendly.
If those cyclists were blocking an ambulance or transit which even take up more room, those cyclists are the biggest assholes on the planet. Size really isn’t the best argument here.
So, you realize that the expected action from everyone on the road almost everywhere, regardless of the type of vehicle you're using, is to pull to the side and stop as soon as you hear sirens specifically to prevent people from blocking emergency vehicles right? And since bikes are smaller and more nimble, they can do that much more effectively than a car.
Regardless, real world data shows that there are far more cases of cars blocking emergency vehicles than bikes, so you're demonizing the wrong mode of transport on behalf of the ambulances here.
Why state a car's length in millimeters? Why state any length over a meter in millimeters?
Why doesn't the world use the decimeter? I don't think I've ever seen it used anywhere.
In countries that aren't America, we use centimetres and metres. But it was suggested that yanks are a bit thick and might be happier using woodworkers units of millimetres and metres.
No one uses deci anything, in my experience.
Builders, carpenters, plumbers etc all state any length up to 10m in mm
I'm curious to see how the arguments for using mm instead of dm varies from the argument for using imperial vs metric. You're right that there's way better units to use here, but I think mm is used out of convention. Which is the exact same reason that feet and miles are used, because everyone is used to it.
My decimeters be decimating
Its quite common around here to see height restrictions signed in mm. For example a car park entrance might have a sign labeled 1800mm max height
Because too many people don't understand sig figs
How I wish I lived in a part lf the world built and designed for bycicles or proper public transit.
Lemme tell you, that place does not exist in America 😂
Why must you hurt me like this?
Missed the part where the people in the car are obese.
I'm obese and I ride a bike. I just like to break the stereotype.
It also works fine with just one person in the car.
Yeah, that's the most unrealistic part of that. Almost every car here has only one person in it.
I love this sub so much. It's as if confidently incorrect had a weird little clone with just the right mix of sass, poorly thought out arguments, and environmental awareness to vex both cyclists and drivers in equal amounts.
Oh gosh, metric that is too confusing. Can you convert it into units we can all understand like yards, feet, inches
/s
yeah, a global standard like imperial units 🙏
As a usual biker, i say bikers riding like this why others want to overtake them (even other bikers), are jerks. Same for pedestrians, and everyone...
i was like, why is an ostrich riding a bike? and why are the people at the back not happier with it?
Drafting an ostrich on a bike sounds easier than drafting a human on a bike. Why haven't we invested more in this technology?
please, it clearly not an issue when the cyclists are sharing one lane.
if two cars were driving in tandem then it would be a better example.
Where have you ever heard car drivers say something like this? Do you guys just make up fake arguments to have with yourselves?
I heave heard this many times before, yes.
I've seen people say this here and on Reddit. I guarantee you the dickheads doing close passes and yelling at me to get off the road would say this.
EDIT: There's literally people in this thread saying this...
The issue isn't with cyclists being on the road, it's with them blocking the road while going significantly slower than traffic. Motorbikes aren't a similar problem because they're quick enough not to disrupt everyone else on the road.
Edit: For the benefit of the downvoters - I'm a cyclist, you dopey fucks - I'm just honest about the issue drivers have with us. Making up this bullshit just makes us look like liars that don't understand the people we're sharing the road with, and our reality-based arguments work perfectly well. Be better.
Maybe you should visit Britain, you will hear it there
That car must have failed its smog check
it looks like a Chrysler Sebring, so, yeah, by default.
I just get anxious that one of us would make a sudden turn and we both will fall down. I just choose to bike in a straight line.
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What is the point of this post? What is it trying to tell?
I won't lie, I'm split on this one. If I'm in a city and the speed limit is 25 and they are going 15, I'm patient behind them. The next traffic light is going to slow me down more than a pair of bikes. If I'm somewhere rural, the speed limit is over 50, and im on a road that sees about 10 cars an hour, yes you have the right of way, but it feels really inconsiderate not to move over for a couple seconds to let someone pass.
Only assholes drive white cars.
As much as I hate cars...
Cars these days mostly spew carbon dioxide and water vapour, two items conspicuously missing from that list.
What "fact" is this trying to show?
The amount of time the square area of a car occupies a given square area of road for the distance travelled and people carried is a fraction of that used by cyclists.
I'm all for this com making good arguments, I do truly believe change is needed with regards to many issues, social and environmental.
By the arguments that come up here do nothing but show this place to be a circle jerk for some truly gifted morons.
Serious question... Are you lot taking the piss or do you really believe the rubbish that gets pushed here?
This sub is pointless until it can provide a solution to having to get somewhere 30 miles from here when it's 10 below outside for most of the winter.
Dont give me that it's not always 10 below excuse. It is often 10 below or lower for long stretches in the north. Biking is simply not viable or practical.
Look at this example. Looks like it's 80 and sunny with the top down on a convertible and everyone in summer clothes.
Everyone doesn't live in Arizona, kar Karen.
Public transport? Or cars. Some people on here may be militant about getting rid of all cars, but most of us aren't that extreme. We simply want to have the option to not use cars, which is currently not the case in many regions of the world.
Chill. We are working on the temperature. It just takes time, but I think we got one or two degrees already
Dont give me that it's not always 10 below excuse. It is often 10 below or lower for long stretches in the north. Biking is simply not viable or practical.
"It's sometimes cold, therefore you can never bike"
Solid take there.
This sub is pointless until it can provide a solution to having to get somewhere 30 miles from here when it's 10 below outside for most of the winter.
-10F or -10C?
-10C really isn't very cold. The average low in Oulu, Finland in February is -12C, and ~10% of all trips there in the winter are via bike because they have an extensive network of well-plowed bike paths.
Biking in -10C is really just a matter of having appropriate gear to block the wind - similar to what you'd wear skiing like a jacket, mittens and a neck gator/ski mask. -10C isn't warm, but people do outdoor winter sports literally all the time in -10C. It's fine.
-10F needs better cold gear, and is probably going to be pretty uncomfortable for most people. You definitely have to worry about preventing frostbite, and I definitely know skiers who would stay inside.
But most places don't really stay -10F. That's like Fargo or Fairbanks cold, not Buffalo or Boston cold. Chicago has only gotten down to -10F in three years in the past decade. Relatively few people live in places that regularly stay -10F.
Although there's a standard solution for 30 mile trips that works in basically all temperatures: a bus or train. Which isn't really practical in American style suburban sprawl, but is very practical in denser walkable European towns and cities.
If we assume there isn't another solution to that, why does it matter? Why does your need for a car for your specific use negate any use of alternatives anywhere? We can still advocate for better transportation and land use in cities, even if the proposed solution doesn't work for your journey between Plunkett and Blucher.
Right cuz cyclists are totally paying the road fees to use keep the road maintained just as much as the motorists do. What was it called? Ah yes. Registration
Right cuz cyclists are totally paying the road fees to keep the road maintained even they don't cause any damages at all. What was it called? Ah yes. Taxes
Didn’t argue that it requires more for a car hence why Registration is a lot more. If it was taxes in general and only for bikes it would not be built for cars to use either. You have to share it. Just like you expect them to share with bikes.
And speaking of taxes : Just like you expect transit such as buses to also exist for people moving. Which is also paid by taxes and bikes should also have to share with them. if you put a bus or any emergency vehicle in place of that car in that cartoon, those cyclists are the bigger asshole in the equation.
I’m all for cutting down emissions but putting people in danger or doubling down inconsideration is a foolish, abusive and negligent stance to be taking.
Depends on your country. Here in the UK roads are maintained using funds from the general tax pool, so the cyclists are actually subsidising the motorists, who proportionally do a lot more damage to the road surface.
If they are subsidizing they are paying a portion. If they are then they should be but they should also not be acting like it was entirely built entirely by cyclists for cyclists who have equal use of the road as if they are the same as a car with the same intentions as a car or transit or emergency vehicle. Yes they can have their lane but acting like they can act as wide as a car for an argument to act like an entitled asshole on the road even on a ‘subsidy’ is an inane comparison.
Ha. As a cyclist I hear this all the fucking time. Road tax is based on emissions. Regular tax pays for road maintenance. People also forget that the majority of cyclists are also car owners themselves.
No shit Im one of them. But doesn’t mean I agree that you can act like an entitled ass regardless of vehicle you drive. Fuel tax also pays for road maintenance that benefits cyclists. Maybe don’t demonize while using it then. By the by I agree with a bike lane. I disagree that you have to make bullshit arguments about size to make that point. You all want to fuck cars but really you are benefiting from them.
Roads are maintained with taxpayer dollars because car registration is insignificant. Potholes form due to weight/usage of the road and cars are much much harder on roads than bicycles. So in reality, people riding bikes are subsidizing all the damage caused by cars using the roads. Not to mention that many people on bikes also own cars and pay for registration....
Right, and I don't have kids so why am I paying for kids to go to public school? And I have never had to call the fire department, my taxes should not go to them!
The argument that taxes should only be used for things you use is wrong. The whole point of taxes is to benefit society as whole. Roads are used for many purposes and for different reasons. No one owns the roads! They're public!
Actually Much of those repairs are from fuel taxes and cyclists don’t use fuel. But they are certainly benefitting from it. You can’t have it both ways.
It would make sense that the ones doing the majority of the damage to the roads (cars) should be the ones paying for it.
Also, cyclists taxes pay for things like public parking even though we never use it.
I do. I have both vehicles. So do many cyclists also own cars. And most people may need an ambulance or may take transit .
Just cuz you personally think you don’t use something doesn’t absolve that you could still benefit from it just cuz there’s a majority who made it possible. you benefit from vehicles paying a fuel tax. You could also benefit from emergency and transit vehicles having a road to drive on if you had to ever have to be in one. That fuel moving your body is paying for the road.
Yes they are, roads are mostly build and maintained with taxpayer dollars.
So cyclist only use a portion of the road, don't generate any wear unlike the other 2 tons vehicles they are sharing the road with but still pay the same amount than car users.
You are right that it is quite unfair.
Registration fees just fund the DMV... Not road repairs
Some are fees. Some are Fuel taxes for roads. Cyclists don’t use fuel. But if it’s road space they believe they are entitled to then from that picture they benefit from fuel and they don’t want that to stop. Fuel pays for those bike lanes.
Fuck both groups
exactly.
both groups abuse their power to deny pedestrians their domain over the roads.
