Karen Memes

0rion said

The education also needs to go both ways. Couple years ago we were driving in downtown Cinci. My brother was driving and went to pull to the curb to park. Dude on a bike almost got squashed and was raising hell. What was he doing passing a truck on the right where there wasn't even a lane? If they're going to be on the road they need to obey the same traffic laws. Totally his fault but he was preaching about watching for bicyclists.

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i'll meet you about 1/3rd of the way on this
obviously people riding bikes should...collaborate with car drivers
but
riding a bike in traffic is VERY different than driving a car (you can be way more passive driving a car for one thing) and the consequences for mistakes/accidents are orders of magnitude worse for cyclists (whether it's the cyclist making the mistake or the driver the physical danger falls almost exclusively on the cyclist, so it really falls on drivers to be more responsible for their metal behemoths with limited sightlines)

when i lived in NYC there weren't really bike lanes per se, but there were a lot of bike messengers so there was a critical mass of cyclists as part of traffic that caused drivers to anticipate bike actions - most all traffic is on the same wavelength in NY - everyone is aggressively moving forward (if you see an opening in traffic, you knew someone was going to try to move into that space

biking in north carolina and/or texas was a wholly different experience - going with the flow/obeying traffic laws like a car actually increased the danger for 2 oddly different reasons. Sometimes drivers just didn't see you bc they're not used to cyclists; but then sometimes drivers get weirdly angry that bikes are on the road
in both situations it's better for a cyclist to be aggressive and seen