this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2025
-15 points (34.0% liked)

Fuck Cars

12581 readers
1713 users here now

A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

Rules

1. Be CivilYou may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.

2. No hate speechDon't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.

3. Don't harass peopleDon't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.

4. Stay on topicThis community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.

5. No repostsDo not repost content that has already been posted in this community.

Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.

Posting Guidelines

In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:

Recommended communities:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Can someone explain this to me?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] -2 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

That makes sense, so why aren't bikes allowed on the side walk? Based on your argument.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I mean... they sometimes are (if the sidewalk is designed for it), look at multi-use trails. A city near me allows bikes (coming from the trail) on wide sidewalks to the main street.

It depends on the flow of pedestrians (too many people would be difficult to navigate with a bicycle anyway) and it can be a visibility issue with doors of storefronts (especially as people leaving likely aren't expecting/looking-for someone passing on a bike).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

Yea I guess it comes to the infrastructure, I'm in Chicago and we seriously need more REAL bike lanes, not something just painted on the road. I see drivers doing crazy shit all the time swerving into bike lanes almost hitting cyclists. I'm just really still confused about the logic of forcing cyclists to ride on the road where there are no bike lanes while the side walks are wide enough for them.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago)

A lot of issues like this are how things are designed. Taking a page from NotJustBikes (look them up if you haven't heard of them), lots of things are car-centric (cities, housing, zoning, parking-lots, lack of public transportation) even when it comes as a detriment to everyone not in a car (and sometimes even those in large vehicles, because congestion).

It's also another culture-war thing and not even just in the US, look how in Canada Doug Ford wants to remove even the painted bike lane.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

They should not be allowed in the sidewalk because they’re a hazard to pedestrians.

Bicycles are to pedestrians like cars are to bicycles. Every argument you can make about cars endangering cyclists also applies to cyclists endangering pedestrians.

Bicycles belong in the road because their speed is more similar to cars than pedestrians, their (lack of) maneuverability is more similar to cars than pedestrians.

Clearly three separate protected rights of way would be better than the current two

[–] [email protected] 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

This seems demonstrably false. Bicycles can go about 10mph. Cars on a busy road will go 55 or faster. Cars weigh 1000lbs. Bicycles weigh like 10 lbs, maybe. A pedestrian getting hit by a bicycle might get some nasty scrapes. A cyclist getting hit my a car becomes a pancake. Cyclists are far more comparable to pedestrians than cars

[–] [email protected] 7 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Bicycles can go about 10mph

I’ve bicycled over 50 mph. Granted down a steep hill with a death wish. (Imagine bombing down a hill at insane speeds on a 45 mph road zooming past the cars).

Realistically people can and do maintain double that speed, and even faster for short distances or on an e-bike. That’s close to typical in town speed limits of 25-30 mph

Pedestrians include kids, who may not be predictable enough for cyclists to avoid and the huge difference in inertia between a kid and an adult travelling 20 mph is more than enough to cause serious injuries

[–] [email protected] 2 points 18 hours ago
  1. We're talking about bicycles, not ebikes
  2. So that same child should ride their bicycle on a street with pickups going 65mph while texting and driving?
[–] [email protected] 4 points 21 hours ago

They're allowed in some places.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Depends on the location. In some states bikes HAVE to be on the sidewalk if it exists.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago

In japan they don't but they all do anyways. Imo they should just be allowed on sidewalks