this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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Fuck Cars

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When I take my bike to school, there are those "School Crossing Guards." One of them guards a 2 line drive in.

This man uses his STOP sign on pedestrians. Here I am cycling, this guy holds his STOP sign up high so I am like "ok, I can go right across at full speed without breaking or slowing down." turns out no, what he actually meant was that all pedestrians (up to 5 people sometimes) should stop and the car should drive. 50% of the time in the car is a friend of his who stops in the middle of the crosswalk and starts chatting. I look and this and go like "my classes start in 10 minutes, so I am crossing." They both, he and his friend look at me like I am some self harm guy jumping under a car, and start shouting at me like why I am going when the STOP sign is up.

This is seriously getting out of hand.

PS: I drive my bike on the sidewalk.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's backwards from how it is here. Our crossing guards stop vehicular traffic, and give incredibly high priority to pedestrians. There's one at the school by my house who patrols an intersection that includes a traffic light. He will routinely make lines of cars miss an entire green light to allow pedestrians to cross. If you fail to stop, they can ticket you. You'll probably also get the shit whacked out of your car with an aluminum stop sign.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

Someone is employing him, complain to them that he isn't actually doing his job

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

The chatting crosswalk monitor is really a good smartphone picture moment if you have one.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Cyclists are more likely to die for each km of sidewalk ridden than each km of road.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm interested to see a source for that

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Here's an 8 year old reddit thread with links to a bunch of studies: https://www.reddit.com/r/cycling/comments/3eosnz/compilation_of_cycling_safety_studies_with_focus/

Tldr: When you ride on a sidewalk, the risk of a driver hitting you at a driveway or intersection goes up substantially. That outweighs most of the other risks of being on the road itself in those studies.

Although it's also worth pointing out that context and road design matter too. Speeds, the number of trees and shrubs by the sidewalk, and urban streets vs suburban stroads matters a lot.

There's a reason that protected bike lanes aren't just a sidewalk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Cool thanks

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago
  1. Source please.

  2. bicilists drive way faster on the roads, so this metric should be deaths per km/h. And there are a few more stistical biases that might be at play here.