Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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There's always an excuse for drivers.
If a driver isn't paying attention, it doesn't matter what colour a cyclist's clothing are, or that they had a helmet on, or insanely bright lights.
And if excuses are being shifted onto cyclists, what about pedestrians and buildings that drivers smash into on a regular basis? What excuse do you have then?
As someone living in Sweden, I have seen pedestrians and bicyclists wearing dark coloured clothing during autumn nights, they just disappear in the background and VASTLY reduce the distance I can see them at, they just pops out from the background only when you are close to them.
This is not a simple driver issue, these are people who seems to deliberately dress in camo, and then complain that drivers don't pay enough attention.
I am not asking everyone to wear a high-viz vest all the time, but please get a reflector and show that you have some self preservation instinct
Riders should wear adequate gear to protect themselves, but drivers also must drive safely. If you aren't able to avoid dark object, you're driving above the safe limit for current visibility. What if there was a fallen tree on the road? Those don't wear hi-vis
I can avoid dark objects just fine, what is difficult to deal with is people who wear what could the equivalent of camo, and getting pissed that I didn't see them until late.
A tree is much larger than a human, making it more visually distinct.
Lets take an extreme scenario, just to try and find the limits of what is the responsibility of a driver and a bicyclist, I know it is a ridiculous scenario, but it is interesting to see were people feel the limits should be.
A person wears a ghillie suit, and lies down next to the road, he is playing a game of extreme hide and seek with a few friends, well the game day just ended, and he stands up just as a car is 50 meters away, the speed limit is 50kmh, it is dusk, the driver of the car swerves to avoid potentially hitting the person, and hits a light pole on the other side of the road.
Who would you say is responsible for the accident?
A tree is too large? What about a trashcan then. A person who has passed out and fallen from the sidewalk onto the street? Whatever.
If you need to build fantastical scenarios to justify your reasoning, maybe your position isn't as valid as you think. Luckily we have rules and judges for this, someone jumping in front of your car is usually classified as insurance fraud or attempted suicide. If he was on a crosswalk, your fault for not slowing down accordingly.
And anyway, at 50kmh, stopping the average car takes 14, 20 meters maximum, reaction time is 1s usually, let's say you're 90 years old and it takes you 2 seconds, you'll start braking after 28 meters... So essentially in the worst case scenario you'll maybe just touch the guy with your license plate.
Which is totally beside the point by the way, because I was talking about YOUR OWN safety, forget about responsibility, imagine a sinkhole had opened on the road, if you fell in it wouldn't be your fault, right? Yet it's still preferable NOT TO DO THAT!
When going 50km/h the average distance needed to come to a comfortable stop including taking a whole second to figure out what's happening and react is 40 meters.
For an emergency stop (still taking the 1 second reaction time) it's 28 meters.
So if you can't stop with 50 meters you are absolutely unfit to get behind the wheel.