Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault.
Given that human drivers stop in bike lanes, Waymo then has a tradeoff:
1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic.
2) Follow the most common expectation, even if wrong, and incrementally add to the problem.
IMO, cyclists shouldn't lobby Waymo directly, but should lobby cities to actually enforce the rules on everyone. Then Waymo would fall in line naturally. And if they're inclined to take direct action against Waymo's they should also act against Uber and DoorDash drivers who are a far bigger problem by volume (and wait time for deliveries).
Cities who want to keep cars out of bike lanes should stop offering “mom says we have bike lanes at home” repainting of streets. Create a curb and raise the bike lanes. It’s the only safe solution. I understand this is not realistic in a lot of scenarios but it is basically the only way you can achieve actual safety short of cement separators at the road level, which is basically a curb anyway. There’s just no reality where a bicycle can share the road unimpeded with a motor vehicle safely. No, plastic bollards are not enough. It needs to be either raised or a barrier enough that a car sideswiping it won’t cause the barrier to fail
My experience cycling regularly in NYC: bike lanes separated by curb, stoppers, or poles are more dangerous as cars stop at their entrances/exits and I am literally trapped or cannot enter them before/after an intersection.
I'm not against them in principle, but without extremely strict enforcent of laws (let's say a ticket 5% of someone's annual income and a loss of DL on a repeated offense - this stuff endangers people's lives), they are sadly counterproductive. :(
This is why bike lanes should be some non-integer multiple of a car width. 1.5 car widths allows the continuation of bike traffic despite an emergency vehicle in the lane unless someone blocks it intentionally.
People undoubtedly said this was not realistic in many car-clogged European cities before some actually did it. “Realism” here is just a measure of the current number of votes you have for making things better.
It helps to replace ‘realistic’ with ‘palatable’, which at least conveys the issue more precisely as one of desirability rather than capability. Most U.S. voters for someone who interferes with drivers on behalf of non-drivers.
The thing which I think would really help with bike lanes would be to standardize on placing underground utilities beneath them --- they'd be less expensive to dig up than a roadway structured for cars, and when maintenance is necessary, a cyclist can easily be diverted either onto the roadway (if staying on the bike) or to the sidewalk (if temporarily dismounting).
The width of a bike lane and its margins is not nearly enough space to safely trench deep enough with the equipment they already have to reach most things they need to tear roads up for. Even modest water mains can be 4ft in diameter, drainage and sewage twice that (in flood prone areas)
All the fines in the world won’t save you from getting mowed down by a distracted driver on their phone. Drinking and driving has heavy fine deterrents, yet people still do it anyway. You know what stops a drunk or distracted driver from killing someone? A cement barrier
That's the wrong way to look at it. People still drink and drive because the deterrents aren't heavy. It's a bit tautological but if they were heavy enough then by definition they would be deterrents, but they aren't, so they aren't.
The correct solution to this kind of problems and others is to fix the obviously broken fine system. The first fine for anything should sting and it should make anyone who gets it think twice about doing the thing that they did to get the fine. subsequent reoffenses should make it uneconomical for anyone to reoffend.
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
Waymos don’t get distracted. Grade separation, ticketing and increasingly favoring AVs in cities is a simpler solution than erecting physical barriers, which have the downside of making cities less walkable.
That would be relevant if we had mass adoption of autonomous vehicles. Unfortunately last I checked actual autonomy was still stuck in the perpetual R&D phase.
> last I checked actual autonomy was still stuck in the perpetual R&D phase
I know plenty of people in Phoenix for whom it’s their main mode of transport. When I’m there or in San Francisco, it’s certainly mine. (And now, increasingly, in Miami, too.)
Waymo is here and it’s real and it’s so much better than Uber or taxis.
Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout. It's certainly not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it. There's perhaps a small handful of companies globally that are currently prototyping the technology in a process that's shaping up to take a decade or longer to play out.
Even once things reach that point reworking an existing place would be a massive undertaking.
> not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it
Sure. Neither is Phoenix's light-rail system, for the most part. These things take time to play out and gain buy-in.
Americans take about 34 million public-transit trips a day [1]. Assuming 25 rides per day, that's about 1.4 million self-driving cars to rival public transport's impact. Waymo has "about 3,000 robotaxis deployed nationwide" [2]. Doubling fleet size annually–Waymos and non-Waymos, though currently they have no peers–would get us to parity in less than 10 years. (A more-realistic 35% growth rate puts us around 20 years.)
The point of that excercise is to say that within 10 to 20 years, less time e.g. California's HSR or New York's Second Avenue Subway took to get online, we could see as many trips in AVs in America as we do on public transit of all types. That's close enough to start looking ahead to.
> Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout
By city and ODD, but if you are in the area and your source and destination for the route are both within the ODD they are just as available as an Uber.
ive also seen cyclists having to squeeze by, and are forced to offer up against the side of the blocking vehicle to avoid being hit, leaving pinstripes bumper to bumper.
Seems like they need to fenced off. Would also prevent jaywalking so in general increase safety of pedestrians forcing them to cross only at intersections.
Bike lanes on a curb are significantly more dangerous due to turning car drivers often not seeing them (due to parked cars in the way) or interpreting them as “just a sidewalk” and not properly looking for cyclists.
The global consensus on which type is safer is not nearly as clear as you confidently make it out to be.
A lot of things need to be true for a curbside bike path to be safer than a roadside one, most importantly protection against dooring and ensuring visibility at intersections. If these measures are not taken, the result is often less safe.
It definitely is a real problem, although I cannot say with certainty whether it's a significant enough problem to make curbside lanes worse than roadway lanes.
Curbed bike lanes create a huge hazard when cars going the same direction turn right. Neither the bike nor the car has good visibility of the other, very likely the car turns into the bike or the bike doesn’t stop and rides into the turning car.
What's wrong with lane separators¹? Bollards are dangerous for cyclists.
Rised bike lanes are also parked onto. I had the displasure of sliding on reentry when a car was blocking the raised bike lane. Next time I'd rather stop and argue with the driver. Also you get to enjoy going up and fown ramps all of the time.
>There’s just no reality where a bicycle can share the road unimpeded with a motor vehicle safely.
that was among the promises of self-driving cars. Because of ultimately superior sensor suite and reaction time they can be safer than humans, in particular they would never "not see a bicyclist", they wouldn't cut impatiently, etc. . Instead that superiority is used these days to drive more "efficiently", to beat/cut the human drivers in a way not every regular human would be capable of. At least that is my anecdotal observation during the last several months (and these several months experience totally differs from the more than 15 years of having Waymo cars around in MV when they were i'd say among the safest to be around)
From the more recent - saw again a Waymo cutting like a ninja into a left turn lane at the same intersection as before, and at the other intersection a Waymo car missing the point to get in line for the right turn behind several cars already waiting in line in the bike lane, drives forward on green and makes the right turn as the second layer of the cake in parallel with those cars from the bike lane.
I think all that aggressiveness/"efficiency" comes as a result of the push to increase the customer satisfaction. All these years before driving actual passengers, Waymo (and i guess others) could allow themselves to be the safest, most courteous drivers on the road. Not anymore as such "inefficient" granma-style driving obviously would conflict with the passengers satisfaction.
Maybe in 40 years or so everyone will use self driving vehicles that work perfectly and this will be a solved problem. We should probably do something about the problem in the meantime though
Bike lanes with curbs aren’t great. On garbage days trash cans often get parked in the bike lane and cyclists have no way of going around since the curb block their way. I’m perfectly comfortable with just lines for bike lanes.
I’ll take my chances with the trash can over the SUV that can’t even see me because it’s so lifted and that will kill me instantly if the driver isn’t paying attention. At least with the trash can I have a chance
You might be, but cycling adoption is strongly linked to safer riding conditions. Protected bike lanes are demonstrably safer. So perhaps you should be more concerned about people blocking roadways with their garbage?
I’m pretty sure it went something like “so where are we allowed to pickup and drop off riders” and the city couldn’t answer. The problem isn’t really enforcement, the problem is that there are simply no alternatives, and the city shies away from enforcement because they know that. If they started enforcing the rules strictly, people would again ask questions that they aren’t prepared to answer.
If you compare that to a country like the Netherlands, which is not only strict, but provides “solutions” so breaking the law isn’t necessary in the first place (they use explicit drop off and pickup locations instead of American chaos).
Yes, in sane countries the rules are attempted to be defined in a fair way, and you can follow them. Not perfectly of course, but with that goal.
Like the Netherlands, it is (A) not possible to park in bike paths without going intentionally out of your way, and (B) there are reasonable alternatives, such as specific “loading zones” for passengers on nearly every block, on major roads. On minor neighborhood roads, you can just block the road for a few seconds and it doesn’t matter
The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced. It makes it so everyone always must break the law to exist in society, but will only face repercussions at the discretion of a police officer.
It means that there are effectively no laws, because everyone has slightly different definitions of when something is “right” or not, and the police only enforce the most egregious cases, but they can also target you specifically for some other reason (discrimination, bias, etc) with no repercussions, since you were breaking the law after all.
It's because the bike lanes are great PR but bad for votes, at least in the short term. City leaders love the greenwashing effect, but in the short term the percentage of people actually biking everywhere is very low, so it doesn't make sense for them to spend a ton of time and money to do it right.
In a few years they'll get to put together a committee to discuss "learnings" and maybe they'll fix it if there are enough complaints, or maybe they'll just spend their time elsewhere as usual.
Slightly long-term thinking is required. Every year, the city I live in, Dublin, does a survey where people crossing the canals (rough proxy for entering/exiting the city centre) are counted for a day. Twenty years ago, 50% of crossings were by public transport, 37% by car, 2% by bike (most of the remainder was talking). In 2024 (the last year for which figures are available; for whatever reason publishing this data takes _ages_), 58% was by public transport, 25% by car, 6% by bike. Cycling's definitely on the rise, and congestion would be worse without it, but it does take time for people to change their habits.
I would bike more if the infrastructure was better and police aggressively dealt with our local bike theft problem (Seattle), as it stands it doesn’t make much sense to invest in it, not like when I was a college student.
America suffers from a severe execution problem in the last couple of decades. We just can’t implement and follow through with real solutions anymore.
The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced.
Do you consider this insane? Your assertions that "everyone always must break the law" and "there are effectively no laws" seem a bit extreme. Ultimately, with any messy human affair, there is always going to be discretion involved, and I don't think implicitly codifying that is a bad thing. It does tend to work by and large. I've personally had much worse experiences with officials following the letter of the law than with them using discretion, but I admit I am not in any class that is often discriminated against.
Blocking the right car lane for a drop off is perfectly legal outside of No Stopping zones. This is how taxis have always worked.
It's just that other drivers get pissed off if you block a car lane when there's a bike lane next to it. That needs to be trained away by enforcing the rules.
That needs to be trained away by physically separating bike lanes from car lanes. Drivers (at least human ones) cannot safely coexist with cyclists or pedestrians unless there are actual physical obstacles between moving traffic and everyone else.
> Blocking the right car lane for a drop off is perfectly legal outside of No Stopping zones.
In which municipality?
In most cities and states in the US, it is illegal to obstruct a roadway. Taxis may get some carve-outs for loading and unloading disabled people, but usually, even taxis are supposed to pull over before stopping for a passenger.
No. Cars entering the bike lane is dangerous. Bicycles being encouraged to enter the car lane to avoid the car illegally blocking it is dangerous.
The car stopping in car lane, far enough from the bike lane that its doors won't enter it, and letting the passengers out into the road, is by far the safest. Yes, that means now-pedestrians end up crossing the bike lane. That's a lot better than a car. They move slower, and more predictably, while simultaneously not blocking it for long enough that anyone is motivated to deke (my spellchecker doesn't like that? Is that a word outside Canada?) out into traffic.
It's a canadian term from hockey, derived from decoy. I'm mildly-but-darkly amused at the notion of a cyclist needing to fake out a car trying to check them though :)
That’s not even close to how dense cities work. Even if you have street parking, it’s often saturated, this is like saying delivery drivers should just deliver in the middle of the night or something. Or really should go with small delivery drones.
Or delivery drivers should ride bikes. And larger deliveries should be scheduled around low traffic times, or else the city should reserve parking for delivery trucks.
In dense cities deliveries to front doors shouldn't be done by cars, yes. They take up too much space and cause too much inconvenience. For dense-deliveries (e.g. mail) park legally and walk some sort of cart along the sidewalk for blocks. For sparse-deliveries (e.g. food) ebikes work great. For medium density (e.g. puroloator) cargo-ebikes at least greatly increase the number of out of the way spots you can park.
Larger scale deliveries (e.g. to malls, grocery store, factories) should have a privately owned off-road, built into the structure place for trucks to park and drop things off. Though things like factories often simply don't belong in the dense part of the city.
This is pretty idealistic. What winds up happening around me is the amazon guy parks their car in the middle of the road AND also has a cart to hit multiple houses at the same time in that region. Furniture deliveries or even moving trucks can block our street for 30 minutes at a time. It is almost as bad as garbage day (ya, you aren't getting through our street on Tuesday morning if you time it wrong).
This would all be solved if we just had delivery parking spaces and got rid of on street parking for everyone else. Really, just that part is just where everything falls apart quickly. This is why traffic seems so much better in Europe (at least where I've lived, like in Switzerland), deliveries work, cars are not parked on the street except at a few very expensive parking spaces.
I was basically describing how most deliveries happen where I live. Not all, and we could do with forcing the remainder to less disruptive means, but the significant majority.
> if we just had delivery parking spaces and got rid of on street parking for everyone else.
The complaint I keep seeing is one of public subsidy. So you're suggesting we subsidize deliveries but not general parking? (To be clear I think it's all just anti-car absurdity.)
Of course merely repurposing a few spots to "commercial deliveries only" every few blocks would probably work. I've seen that done in a few places. I think it comes down to a planning and administration failure.
I am claiming we should subsidize short term drop off/pick up use of limited street front space (not just deliveries, but ride share/taxi pickup/dropoff also) rather than waste it on someone parking their car for 72 hours because they can't be bothered to pay for a parking space.
But ya, if you want to roll back car use, you can do that fastest by restricting free parking. Your community better be prepared for that with adequate public transit investments. Better to just roll back free parking slowly while ramping up public transit investments, but America always messes it up one way or the other.
I'd actually agree that they ought to deliver in the middle of the night but indeed that's just not how the world currently works. Far worse than bike lanes I've regularly seen large box trucks driven up onto particularly wide stretches of sidewalk in areas with skyscrapers. Law enforcement doesn't seem to care, presumably because how else are they supposed to get packages to where they need to be?
NYC used to (or still?) enforced strictly parking violations by delivery companies. But they did it so evenly the companies just considered it a cost of doing business, and raised their rates accordingly. Not violating the law and still being in the business wasn’t an option, so no competitor could undercut the other by following the rules and not paying the fine.
Sounds like a scenario where something other than fines should be applied. Revoke plates fleetwide, tow any delivery trucks caught on the street with a mandatory 72 hour minimum impound time, with no access to the contents of the vehicle. And so on.
I don't think NYC wanted to basically ban the delivery companies like that, then the public would complain, so it was convenient fiction to have them fined and pass on the costs. Again, this is more of a "you can't do that but we don't have an actual solution so do it anyways" situation, not a "we aren't enforcing our rules strictly enough" problem.
If Amazon then started marking packages as delayed with a video of the truck being towed I imagine the voters would quickly "fix" the enforcement "problem" in the delivery companies' favor.
Bicycles have bells and brakes, you know. And cycling commuters have eyes to see opening car doors. It's also more difficult to use your phone on a bike and Japan has new laws regarding that.
One question the city probably can't answer is what disabled persons in the taxi are supposed to do. If you strictly enforce bike lanes the result is probably the rider needing to walk a few blocks. If the rider is disabled, that could actually be a huge burden. Since I've got an 80+ year old disabled parent with a walker this is an issue for me that does compete pretty aggressively with my support for bikes.
First of all, the walk would rarely be more than half a block. Bike lanes go down a small number of streets, so one can usually unload on an intersecting street. Not ideal, but ...
... bike lanes are not the only thing that creates this issue. Any road that lacks parking, with or without bike lanes, will have the same problem. Even when there is parking, all of the parking spots may be occupied. In both cases, people may have to walk a few blocks. While they may be grouchy about the lack of (sufficient) parking, you don't see many people blaming motorists for placing a burden on the elderly.
Finally, it is always possible to make accommodations. Having a carve-out for loading and unloading taxis will do far more for safety of everybody than letting people stop anywhere in bike lanes. It is also possible to have exceptions for people with disabilities, as long as non-disabled people don't abuse it.
Designated drop off points with disabled person priority is the answer. How do you dropp off a disabled person in a lane with clogged street side paking? Shouldn't you be against street side parking by the same logic?
> Designated drop off points with disabled person priority is the answer.
You have to actually put those drop off points on every street corner, though, and is the lowest priority for city planners, and gets rolled out at a glacial pace over decades--while disabled people have needs today. Having been forced to confront how well designed our infrastructure is for disabled access and put it to the test, I can tell you that a lot of existing ADA infrastructure can best be described as "performative" and a lot of it is entirely missing.
In the UK (which the article seems to be about, although it keeps talking about other cities too), it depends on the specific road markings. If it's a solid white line between the bike line and the road, absolutely no vehicles are allowed into the cycle line except bikes. If it's a dashed line, they can enter it as long as it's not being used by cyclists.
In general though, special affordances for parking and dropping off disabled passengers is only given to those with a blue badge. AFAIK in general taxis carrying disabled passengers without a blue badge have no more rights than any other vehicle. Only companies that specifically care for disabled passengers can get their own company blue-badge rather than relying on their passengers having one.
Right, but in general, what is a car driver supposed to do when he needs to stop and unload (anything) in a place where there isn't a special provision for that? Here in Slovakia they can stop in the car lane, blocking it, as long as that's not explicitly forbidden by a sign there.
Because we also have streets with a car lane and a bike lane with a solid line where it's forbidden for any other vehicle to enter or stop there, so of course I had to explain to a few drivers what are the rules they should alrady know and follow.
It depends on the road markings and signage. In general double yellow lines mean no waiting or parking, but there is generally a special exemption for loading/unloading or letting passengers in or out. However, there is frequently additional signage that will restrict hours when loading is permissible, or state no loading.
Double yellow lines (waiting / parking) are different to bike lines however. If a bike line is separated from the road by a solid white lines, motorised vehicles are forbidden from entering at all. If you want to load/unload or drop off passengers, you need to do that somewhere else. If the highways agency considered it safe for vehicles to block the cycle route in that place, they'd use dashed lines instead.
Street side parking is fine. You can move the parking out a few feet and put the bike lane between the ordering and curb. Works well where I've seen it.
It’s a massive subsidy that takes up space. If you have the space to move it and still permit e.g. delivery trucks from blocking the road, great. Many cities don’t have that space and yet cede it to parking.
Charging for street parking is a good step, but American neighborhoods still don’t have great transit and most people still have cars even if they are living in a house/apartment without parking. We aren’t like Japan where car owners have to prove that they have ample parking for their cars.
You would be very wrong, but I live in Seattle so my experience differs from yours. Definitely here in Ballard I’d say 50% of the residents are parking on the street.
(statistically, you are probably right if you are talking about the entire population of America, but we are really only concerned with a few dense cities and parking minimums have been on the out for a couple of decades now)
I agree with you in priniciple but cities no longer have the money to enforce this and everyone knows it. What they do have is the ability to demand that Waymo give them video of every stop and use AI to detect if it obeyed the laws.
I've had waymo drop me off in dangerous no-stopping zones with red painted curbs. I've had waymo pick wait for me to get in blocking apartment complex garage entrances.
I've seen waymo pass 10 cars in the right lane waiting to turn right and then at the last moment make an illegal right turn left of the right turning cars.
I like the idea of Waymo but they need to fix their shit, no excuses.
Per discussions elsewhere on the internet about this story, it appears that “the letter of the law” in London, where is article is about, is that all drivers are allowed to enter the bike lane to drop off passengers.
As much as I might disagree with that, it’s crazy to expect Waymo to obey a law that doesn’t even exist.
> Cycle lanes. These are shown by road markings and signs. You MUST NOT drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a solid white line during its times of operation. Do not drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a broken white line unless it is unavoidable. You MUST NOT park in any cycle lane whilst waiting restrictions apply. Law: Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984: Sections 5 & 8
You've quoted the rules which forbid parking and driving in the bike lane and then went on to confidently make up the part about stopping and dropping people off.
There are the general laws - the highway code. Transport for London has made special exceptions for black cabs (which are one kind of taxi), and for private hire vehicles (a different kind of taxi - this is what Uber, Lyft and Waymo are), in London.
The GP said "all drivers are allowed" - no, they are not. You're saying it's "legal for cabs" - yes it is.
- No cars can drive along a cycle lane.
- A normal car cannot enter, stop, wait or park in a cycle lane with an unbroken line, per the highway code.
- A normal car can enter a cycle lane with a broken line and may be able to stop, wait or park in it depending on the restrictions posted at the side of the road.
- Black cabs and PHVs in London can, and in fact have to pull over to the kerb to pick-up and drop-off, including into cycle lanes with an unbroken line. They can even do this on double-red lines, which mean "no stopping at any time" to everyone else. But they cannot do it for any longer than to pick-up and drop-off. They cannot wait or park there.
They can also pick-up and drop-off in some bus stops (which again, is an offence for normal cars). The main difference between black cabs and PHVs is that black cabs can drive in bus lanes, enter taxi ranks, and be hailed from the street, while PHVs can't.
I commuted by bike 70 miles a week for a few years. Bike line obstruction was far down my list of concerns, behind: drivers looking at phones while driving, drivers looking at phones while stopped, drivers running stop signs without even noticing (probably looking at phone), driver speeding, cars belching smoke, etc.
In Tokyo many bicycle lanes are pretty useless for this reason. Cars are parking every 20m making them absolutely inaccessible. Then there is the bicycle lane between Asakusa and Ueno, which is separated from the street, but made like some sort of obstacle course. There are some good ones too though. Pretty random.
Hmm the problem is many cities don’t treat bike lanes for exclusive bike use. It’s “suggestive” at best. Though I don’t know enough about SF rules to weigh in on this specific issue.
At times I dont know if I prefer a car blocking the lane than someone parked next to it and surprising me with a door that opens into the lane.
For SF people: the bike lane next to the panhandle going west for example.
> 1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic
Yes, they should do that. The fact that others don't follow it is completely irrelevant.
I'm sorry if it doesn't help them meet their quarterly targets, but I don't think it's unreasonable for a Company to follow the fucking law when it comes to human safety.
And if they can't, they should be dissolved and the directors prosecuted.
If they truly can't grow without compromising people's safety and breaking the laws put in place to prevent them, then they shouldn't exist. End of.
> The fact that others don't follow it is completely irrelevant.
This shouldn't even be a discussion. Because someone kills a person, everyone else now needs to kill someone otherwise it breaks expectations? Madness...
The fact that both our comments are being downvoted is dumb.
Over the last year, the vibe on site has become... concerning.
Yeah, it's always leaned right wing capitalist. That's fine by itself—I like the contrast to my own views at times. I'm a lefty—very left compared to US "left"—but still have some right wing economic sympathies at times and in certain areas. There's actual discussion to be had there!
But recently it seems like this site has gone off the fucking deep end in delusion when it comes to everything. The misogyny and transphobia has started becoming less and less hidden too. This is the first time I've logged in here in over a month, and I've seen my comments today getting flagged for arguing against a person saying that bicyclists have more fatalities on the road—just asking them to cite a fucking source.
What you are saying is not controversial. You're not crazy. This site is just full of fucking idiots who haven't realised they're the next serfs in the reality they're bringing about.
Waymo and other taxi services are inherently bad for cyclists compared to increasing transit utilization and providing more ways to walk and cycle that feel and are safe.
They’re even bad for drivers as they are more detrimental to traffic than personal car ownership. They take up space on the road even when they aren’t being used to transport anyone.
I think we should spend less time worrying about ride share policy and spend more time working on the root cause of the need to drive so often.
Achieving this goal is not something that necessitates giving up single family homes, or suburbs, or small towns, or the ability to own a personal car, or anything like that.
Being around a Waymo makes me feel WAY safer than being around a human driver. If more cars were replaced, I would probably bike even more.
Seriously, Waymos follow at a respectful distance and overtake me safely. They stop at stop signs. Sometimes they even stop and wait for me to make a decision about which way I'm heading.
No, it's the human driver vs the Waymo. I'm not going to entertain fantasies where all the cars magically disappear from the road; there's no political will for that and no politician is dumb enough to try.
To be perfectly clear, the difference between an empty road and a Waymo is mostly academic if you're on a bike. The Waymo is just that good at respecting space.
I’m not talking about cars magically disappear from the road, I’m specifically talking about taxis and rideshares versus using another way to get around, which even includes personal car ownership.
Studies have shown repeatedly that rideshares lower transit usage and don’t reduce personal car ownership.
Improving transit and allowing Google to blow $100B on making cars drive themselves are not mutually exclusive.
In the US, in particular, last mile transportation is mostly done by car. Transit cannot economically serve low-density suburbs.
In a city? It depends on price versus convenience. As more and more cars drive themselves, the city can get away with taking back more and more space for transit and cyclists. People should choose mass transit because it's convenient, not because there's no way to call a car.
> Waymo and other taxi services are inherently bad for cyclists compared to increasing transit utilization
Anecdote: I take transit way more in San Francisco with Waymo. Because booking is deterministic (it says 20 minutes, it will be there in 20 minutes, even if it’s a short ride), I can connect with the loose network of city and regional rail systems in a way that was tedious with human drivers.
(I lived in New York for 10 years, and eagerly take the subway there.)
Maybe. American suburbs are already spread out. It doesn’t make sense to run subways to every corner the way we do in urban centers. Doing last mile with shared transport—versus cars which park idle for most of the day around train stations—makes sense.
Meanwhile, Arlington, Texas has over 200,000 people with no bus system.
And before you say “oh it’s Europe it’s old” I will point out that the Netherlands had a huge car dependency problem in the mid-century and deliberately moved away from it during/after the oil crisis.
You can see multiple single family home developments that would be right at home in a US suburb in this video. The author even reaches a rural farm without a car.
What about if American transit authorities just did basic stuff like work together and perform actual regional planning rather than working in silos and having conflicts with each other?
For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders.
Instead, they’re forced to do things like sell $100 World Cup train tickets because they haven’t been empowered to reap the rewards of the economic development they enable.
> For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders.
This is something that I found pretty bizarre visiting the US. The transport is _so_ regionalised. San Francisco has a separate bus system to South San Francisco (which is as far as I can see just a suburb for practical purposes), for instance.
It doesn't generally make sense to split transport authorities strictly across administrative geographical lines, particularly where the administrative regions are small. For instance, London basically gets away with TFL occupying the same general geographic area as Greater London, but only because Greater London is _vast_. If you tried this with Dublin, it would never work, because the Dublin City administrative area is tiny (Dublin Bus operates in _seven_ local authorities, and its commuter rail lines all cross at least three).
> Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence
I’ll watch in detail-thank you.
An important caveat, though, and it’s not about age but density. The Netherlands ex Amsterdam has just under 1,400 people per square mile. That’s still denser than every single U.S. state. (New Jersey and Rhode Island are the only two that break 1,000, and only the former if we exclude each state’s largest city.) The tenth-densest state, Pennsylvania, is still almost 5x less dense than the Netherlands, and again, I’m doing this for the Netherlands ex Amsterdam.
We can absolutely build more transit in our metropolitan centers. But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe.
> there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority
Same reason the Dutch and German authorities are separate.
I'm not sure why you would compare states to cities?
And while The Netherlands as a country is dense, the cities are not, partially due to the massive amount of urban sprawl that The Netherlands has (compared to other European countries).
Amsterdam has a density of just under 5,000 people per square kilometer. That is way less than New York City, and less than any of the Burroughs except Staten Island. Manhattan comes in at 28,000, so over 5 times more. Amsterdam Metropole has only 950 people per square kilometer.
NYC, San Francisco and Boston are massively more dense than Amsterdam. Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami are about the same. Washington D.C. and LA are only slightly less dense.
> But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe.
It’s worth pointing out here that,
1. Again, this is an ongoing choice and not an inevitability.
2. A large amount of America was built during the railroad era and a lot of urban fabric was actually just removed/demolished and could be replaced. A lot of it sits empty waiting to be rehabilitated (and to many cities’ credit, a lot of it has been rehabilitated).
3. When you watch the video you’ll see it’s not all about density, it’s also about road and street design. It’s about making spaces that feel safe to exist in as a pedestrian or cyclist. Many suburban Americans don’t actually travel that far to get around, they just can’t get places without getting in a car (e.g., a typical big box store area is a dense shopping area just like a typical high street but traversing it on foot is hostile).
To add, The Netherlands in the 1970s was going full-on towards suburbanization and urban sprawl. Even today it has one of the lowest amounts of apartments in Europe and the most urban sprawl. So if they didn't go for bicycles, it would have been America 2.0. Just look at Ireland.
In other countries bicycles aren't really needed because you can just walk everywhere.
We actually don’t have to work with what exists. We actively chose and continue to choose what exists. Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change.
Here’s a nice video about how rural towns can be configured to not be car dependent:
You’ll notice that this isn’t some ancient European pre-automobile city stuff, you’ll see many single family home tract houses in the suburbs and small towns of the Netherlands that would be at home in any American suburb. The Netherlands did struggle with post-war car-oriented development that it has successfully pushed back against.
If you live in Arlington, Texas, you live in a city of over 200,000 people that doesn’t even have bus service.
> We actually don’t have to work with what exists.
Sure we do, by definition.
We can work to change things, sure. But for many places in the US (especially established cities) this is a monumental effort. For example, I live in San Francisco. I wish we had more subways. Our bus system isn't bad, and they've converted/added many bus-only lanes over the past several years, but buses are still at the mercy of traffic (as well as traffic lights). Our light rail has large above-ground portions, some of which has to deal with traffic, some not (but all have to deal with stop signs and traffic lights).
I live a block away from 3rd Street, where the T line runs up and down the eastern side of the city. However, nearly all of it is above-ground. There's an express bus that runs between where I live and Market street, similar to the T's path. The bus is usually significantly faster than the train. If the train was entirely underground, I'd expect it to be as fast as the express bus (at the very least, it would be more consistent than the bus).
How would I, personally, go about changing this? You say "we" actively choose, but what is "we"? I don't have control or even influence over the collective consciousness. I feel entirely powerless to change the status quo. Even if I could get the ball rolling on this, it would likely be 15+ years before the project is completed. Will I even be living here then? I'm not sure.
From your comment, it sounds like your suggestion might be to move to a small town, and work to change things there, where it might be easier for individuals to make a difference. While that's not completely unreasonable... I don't want to live in a small town in a rural area. I grew up in suburbs and semi-rural areas, and while I had a perfectly fine childhood, I much prefer an urban environment. Yes, I'm restricting my options this way, and perhaps missing opportunities to live in a place where I can change things. But I have a finite amount of time left in my life, and I need to be selective in how I spend it.
> Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change
This is a great argument. Retrofitting America is one discussion. But building new developments such that they don't require a car–at least within themselves–should be doable.
I still think it’s worth observing the Netherlands as an example because they also had mid-century car-oriented development that they successfully retrofitted.
And of course, also, this doesn’t mean “nobody owns a car in the Netherlands.”
Personal cars also take up space on the road when they aren't being used. It would be much easier to build physically separated, safe biking lanes and drop off areas if we could use all the space we currently dedicate exclusively to personal vehicle parking on public streets.
Taxis (and Uber etc) also take up space on the road when they only have their driver and no fare paying passenger on board, so I don't see that a Waymo is any worse than that.
Both human-driven and robo-driven taxis are financially incentivised to spend as much time as possible carrying fare paying passengers and as little as possible driving empty to pick someone up.
Anyway, I agree that walking, cycling, and public transit, are all IMHO preferable to any form of taxi.
>> Waymo and other taxi services are inherently bad for cyclists compared to increasing transit utilisation and providing more ways to walk and cycle that feel and are safe.
This is nonsense. Even in places with great public transport a lot of people own cars because taxi's and Uber's are unreliable or unavailable. Given Waymo should be available at any time of day and not pick + choose rides as randomly a lot of car owners should be able to give them up.
>>Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault.
So to flip it around.....it's not Waymo's fault that they stop in bike lanes, but the fault of traffic enforcement? Is anyone forcing waymos to stop in bike lanes?
Many cities would stop functioning if everyone followed traffic laws — the whole system is built around drivers ignoring many rules. Businesses need deliveries to be unloaded and delivered. Customers need to get where they are going. And many cities do not actually leave space for loading and unloading.
There’s a related issue that will become apparent as more cars drive themselves and take responsibility for their actions: speed limits. If traffic engineers want cars to drive 75mph, they should set a speed limit of 75mph.
Yes, but I hope we can both agree that if Waymo stops where it's not allowed, it's waymo's fault, not anyone elses, and definitely not the fault of traffic enforcement or lack of.
Like you said - if traffic engineers wanted people to stop there they wouldn't have made it a bike lane.
> Yes, but I hope we can both agree that if Waymo stops where it's not allowed, it's waymo's fault, not anyone elses
I don’t really agree, at least not in a broad sense. If Waymo refused to stop and circled the block many times instead, and if Amazon trucks did the same thing, and taxis and such did the same thing, and the big trucks that deliver restaurant supplies did the same thing, etc, then bikes would be able to use their lanes freely but no one else would get much done.
We live in a world where many useful things require people to break rules. Is it the fault of the rule breakers or of the rules?
You're comparing the actions of individuals with the actions of a for-profit company. These are not compatible.
The expectations are that if you are driving for profit then you are held to a higher standard. Waymo wants to publicly excuse it's way out of this expectation for their own convenience. The way any common sociopath or selfish child would.
...I don't know why you think that a majority of drivers respect bike lanes. They don't. Nearly every driver has parked a car in a bike lane at some point. At least in the US it's uncontroversial - the bike lanes tend to be so poorly designed and thought out that it's much easier for cars to use them than cyclists.
I think majority respect them, because I drive bike in a city that is not exactly friendly to that. The situation is, some people break into them regularly, most dont.
Humans are flawed and need punishment to correct their behaviour. Waymos are autonomous and can have their behaviour corrected with a software update. These are not the same.
It can't be so uneven. The other drivers will react irrationally if only a few cars obey those rules. Try doing your own drop offs in the car lane, when there's a bike late there, with traffic behind you. They'll often react dangerously.
One party to this is a high-inertia, potentially high-velocity metal box that, in an impact with the other party, typically results in an property insurance claim.
The other is a low-inertia flesh bag that, in an impact with the other party, results in a medical insurance claim, and possibly a funeral.
All the more reason to be aware of who you’re sharing the road with.
I spent a decade cycling for commute in a capital city in Australia. I’m also a tradesman, so I’m well aware that some people actually work on the road.
By being a pedestrian or cyclist, you’re literally in other people’s workplace.
Delivery drivers, construction workers, breakdown services, road maintenance, electricians, crane operators, cars for hire, emergency services, light rail operators.
As a pedestrian or cyclists, or motorbike rider, you’re particularly vulnerable.
Working on the road does not give you priority on the roads. If anything, if you’re making money off it, maybe you should be more mindful of the commons you’re using for your profession.
> By being a pedestrian or cyclist, you’re literally in other people’s workplace.
Are you actually serious right now? If I'm walking/cycling to work, which I usually am, then what? Is your job more important than mine? How can you possibly tell where I work or where I'm going? Ridiculous.
I agree with your analysis but I just want to point out that, as a general rule, cyclists do not follow traffic laws. They don't stop at stop signs/red lights. They weave in and out of traffic. They often bike the wrong way down one-way bike paths.
Drivers generally don't follow traffic laws. They text on their phone while they drive. They routinely go over the speed limit. They go through red lights. They go into or park in bike lanes. They tailgate other drivers. They don't signal before turning or changing lanes.
Drivers generally follow the rules. It's considered bad form when they don't, and they're occasionally ticketed. This doesn't apply to bikers. No one even expects them to follow the rules.
I'm not anti-bike. I bike a bit and I got hit by a car last year. Some crackhead turned left across the opposite lane right into me.
I'm just reporting what I see -- bikers do not generally follow the rules, and I find this interesting. Maybe they're being rational. Or maybe they're not. Either way it's interesting.
No, they don't. They break the rules all the goddamn time. Have you ever been on an American freeway? Most people are going above the speed limit, myself included.
Do you think most drivers give the legally required amount of space in front of their car while driving, especially on the freeway? It's not even close. Do people signal for the legally required amount of time before changing lanes? Again, not close for most drivers.
> I'm just reporting what I see
What you're actually experiencing is that you implicitly accept the status quo of certain rules being ignored for driving, because driving itself is more common (both for you and in general). But biking is different, it's more obscure, so the rule breaking stands out more.
This is very typical of cultures anywhere that driving is more common than biking, which is...well, most places really.
I feel like this is personal for you and you can't discuss it objectively.
Drivers are...not great. But as a general rule they follow the laws (albeit with frequent lapses). Cyclists do not follow the rules to the point where no one expects them to. It's genuinely weird for me to imagine a cyclist stopping at a stop sign.
I bike for 90% of my traveling. The examples you give for when cars break the rules vs what bikes do is telling. Yes, everyone breaks the rules, but cars (mostly) do it in safe and predictable manners. Most urban cyclists(including me tbh) break rules in very unsafe ways. Bikes routinely completely ignore stop signs even when there are cars waiting. The ignore red lights which cars never do. They swerve around in traffic, they ride on the sidewalk. Many refuse to use lights when biking at night. Urban biking behavior in the US is on average much more reckless than driving behavior.
Cars are more dangerous due to size and speed but if we’re just talking about who acts more recklessly and ignores more rules it’s easily bikes, at least in Chicago.
Going over the speed limit is not even close to as reckless as completely ignoring stoplights which I see bikes do every day. I see bikers texting weekly even though you need 2 hands to confidently steer a bicycle. Drivers texting is dangerous because theyre controlling heavy machinery, but at least you only need one hand to steer a car in an emergency. A significant portion of bicyclists seem to have a death wish which I can only say for maybe 10% of drivers at most.
I know more people who have gotten tickets for running stop signs on their bikes than in cars (even though getting hit by a car at 10mph is much more dangerous to a pedestrian than a bike!). Hopefully Newsom listens to reason and gives up veto-ing commense sense traffic laws next cycle
Well, if you genuinely find it interesting, I can explain why they don't:
1. Cyclists live and die by inertia. Getting up to speed on a bike requires a lot of effort and every application of brakes erases that spent effort, which feels really bad.
In a car, it doesn't matter — you stop and accelerate with exactly the same trivial effort of pressing a pedal.
So all the grandstanding that cars stop at stop signs (since when, but ok), and cyclists don't is like bragging that you beat a disabled person in a 100m sprint. Good job, I guess.
2. Stop signs and traffic lights are made for cars, because of their speed, how dangerous they are, and how bad their visibility is. Cyclists are like pedestrians in that they do not need traffic lights, they can navigate just fine with just body language.
Telling whether running a red light would be safe in a car is essentially impossible, you're going too fast and can't see much, can't hear anything either. But on a bike you have perfect visibility, there's no box of metal all around you. You can hear quite well too.
Stop signs are an even better example. Literally the only reason for their use instead of yield signs is that the visibility at the intersection is bad enough that you need to stop to be able to yield. But that is only the case because your visibility is so bad in the first place.
Stop signs literally never make sense for bikes — there's no "hood", so your head is basically where the vehicle starts and you can lean forward to make that literally true if really needed, and you've got perfect visibility all around, no blind spots.
Hence why in a lot of places cyclists can legally treat red lights like stop signs and stop signs like yield signs.
I regularly see more motorists run red lights in a given day than I have seen cyclists run red lights in a decade. Cycling is sufficiently common in my area to state outright that, proportionally speaking, more motorists run red lights than cyclists.
The same thing can be said for cyclists weaving in and out of traffic, and for good reason: if traffic is moving, it's a good way to kill yourself; if traffic is not moving, there is no need for it. (There is usually enough space on the right to pass. If there isn't enough space on the right to pass, it is unsafe.)
I have seen more motorists barrel the wrong way down a one way street, in reverse, than I have seen cyclists riding down one way streets the wrong way. Proportionally speaking, more cyclists may be breaking the law. In terms of safety, what motorists are doing is far more dangerous.
As for stop signs: other cyclists tend to get the hint when I stop at them on my bike. :) The ones who don't stop tend to do the same as motorists, by doing a "rolling stop". Doing anything less would be a good way to get killed.
So no, I don't agree that cyclists do not follow traffic laws as a general rule. In many cases, motorists are worse. I am not going to pretend that cyclists are better for altruistic reasons. The reality is that cyclists are much more vulnerable than motorists. Cars are made to handle collisions, bikes are not. Motorists pay more attention to cars than bikes, in the most part because other cars are more dangerous to them.
First, in many states cyclists explicitly do not have to stop at stop signs, it’s called an “Idaho stop” and it’s legal in my state. This is much safer for cyclists since most crashes occur in intersections and allowing cyclists to move thru faster is much much safer.
You’re also assuming equity of consequence. Someone not obeying the law on a bike is significantly different than not obeying the law when operating a multi-ton vehicle.
Finally, every single group of people breaks the law. There is no demographic of reasonable size that does not break the law. This argument is silly and pointless. What is your goal with pointing this out? Literally everyone breaks the law, this grandstanding is stupid.
Have you tried driving the speed limit recently? You know, the maximum speed you are legally allowed to drive? Do you always come to a full stop at every stop sign?
Cars don't follow traffic laws. Cars roll through stop signs and run red lights. Cars speed and weave through traffic. They go the wrong way down one-way streets. Since cars are much bigger, this is much more dangerous.
How is that when car drivers decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when bicycle drivers decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone on the street, car or not), it's somehow A-ok?
How come that when people handling uranium decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when people handling bananas decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone with radioactive materials), it's somehow A-ok?
Hmm well, we have some "smart traffic lights" where I live that are always red unless a vehicle goes over a metal detecting loop under the road in front of them. Guess how well that works for any vehicle that's not a car.
Rules of the road are generally designed in the same way — for cars. Nobody cares about carving out obvious exceptions for bikes, like the Idaho stop.
I used to agree with that (as a pedestrian and driver only), but as I've started cycling, I've begun to realize that many rules of the road, intended for cars, just don't make much sense for bicycles.
Like what? I hear people claim that not stopping at STOP sign is somehow making it safer than stopping but when asked about the mechanism of the safety in such a maneuver they either disappear or proclaim that Idaho where this is allowed is in top half of safest states for cyclists so it must work somehow.
I cycle myself and see no rules that somehow don't make sense for bikes. In fact, since bikes are much less maneuverable and much more vulnerable, they need to obey all the rules that are there to protect the cars from other cars with more vigilance than cars.
I didn't say anything about safety; I said "don't make much sense".
Fully stopping at a stop sign just isn't necessary for bicycles. And forcing bicycles to stop can create inefficient or even unsafe situations. It takes a bit longer for a bicycle to stop and start again than for a car, and requiring cyclists to fully stop will absolutely destroy throughput at a stop sign. On top of that, cars lining up behind bicycles at a stop sign can get impatient and try to go around the cyclist (I've seen this happen); this actually is a safety issue.
(Now, I've seen cyclists blow through stop signs and traffic lights without even slowing down. I'm not saying that's ok.)
> In fact, since bikes are much less maneuverable and much more vulnerable, they need to obey all the rules that are there to protect the cars from other cars with more vigilance than cars.
I don't think this statement is obviously true. Cars and bicycles are very different types of vehicles, and there's no reason to believe that every car-related safety rule has the same safety-related effect when applied to a bicycle.
No road rule is necessary for anyone, all of them are for safety only.
>It takes a bit longer for a bicycle to stop and start again than for a car, and requiring cyclists to fully stop will absolutely destroy throughput at a stop sign.
Having cyclist colliding with each other or other cars in the intersection will improve throughput? Do you ride a bike or drive at all? Stop signs are not just some Big Government ploy to annoy you. Stop signs allow two traffic streams to cross each other without collisions. Without stop sings and people stopping at them you would get cars colliding all the time.
I live in California so YMMV depending on the laws where you live and the temperament of drivers.
If I do a "proper" stop at a stop sign (0mph, place foot on ground, fortunately I don't clip in), cars will see me stopping and try to blast thru the stop sign when it isn't their turn. So I end up stopping while the first car goes thru the intersection, and while I'm getting resituated on the pedals a second car enters instead of waiting their turn, making my situation more dangerous.
One nice law we have in California is that the "walk" sign applies to pedestrians and bikes. This gives me a chance to assert myself in the intersection before the car across from me tries to sneak in a left turn. It also protects me from cars trying to turn across the bike lane.
Yes, slow down to 2-5 mph but not coming to a complete stops solves this problem. I usually try to time it so that I slow down alongside a car and we can run the stop sign at the same speed.
If you assert your right to use the road, cars won't try to take advantage of your size/acceleration as much, especially if you have another car run interference for you.
YMMV if you live somewhere where it's common for cars to actually stop at a stop sign.
This sounds like a survivorship bias, you imagine that people who blow stops won't do that if you don't stop but, people who did the same on a bike and were t-boned by a car might not be in a good condition to post about their experience anymore.
Anyways, even if you are 100% right and not stopping at stop on a bike will prevent people blowing stop completely (and people who have the right of way will also yield to your bike because they will see you 100%) how is it safer than to stop and proceed when there is no traffic across?
Behavior by cyclists certainly has a bias towards survivorship. Every other vehicle on the road represents a potentially lethal threat at any time.
Inadequate dedicated infrastructure for cyclists leads to behavior like "Idaho stops" that look counterintuitive to drivers, but improves safety for cyclists at intersections.
>how is it safer than to stop and proceed when there is no traffic across?
Generally, on a bike you want to be predictable. If you do something weird, like not going when it's your turn, you're increasing your risk. And in many situations if you wait for there to be no cars at a stop sign, you're going to end up holding up cars behind you and be on the receiving end of road rage, or drivers behaving recklessly to get around you. Plus you may be waiting literally hours for all the traffic to dissipate, and I prefer to be home before sunset because riding at night introduces other safety issues.
Anecdotally I've never felt at risk of being t-boned when doing an Idaho stop, but it happens regularly when I do a complete stop (in part because it's unpredictable - drivers don't come to a complete stop at the line so they misbehave and don't know how to respond when they see a cyclist stop).
Beyond my anecdata, there's plenty of more rigorous studies showing the benefits of the Idaho stop.
>Generally, on a bike you want to be predictable. If you do something weird, like not going when it's your turn, you're increasing your risk.
Absolutely agree. As same as going when it's not your turn. But, first and foremost, you should not be going across a moving vehicle. Even another bike. Just falling off your bike can cause pretty serious trauma. Why do this?
>Plus you may be waiting literally hours for all the traffic to dissipate, and I prefer to be home before sunset because riding at night introduces other safety issues.
I don't know where in California you live that nobody stops at the stop signs, but I lived in LA and cars generally stop at those. You literally need to wait few seconds for the cars to to stop and proceed in most cities in the US.
>Anecdotally I've never felt at risk of being t-boned when doing an Idaho stop, but it happens regularly when I do a complete stop (in part because it's unpredictable - drivers don't come to a complete stop at the line so they misbehave and don't know how to respond when they see a cyclist stop).
I know that feeling. Like people riding against traffic feel safer because they see approaching cars yet regularly get t-boned by the cars not expecting anything coming at them against traffic.
>Beyond my anecdata, there's plenty of more rigorous studies showing the benefits of the Idaho stop
Like what? I tried to search again and found this [1] apparently Idaho is not even in top half of the states in cyclist safety (or "friendliness" whatever that means).
Yes, it absolutely helps, because when the cyclist doesn't stop, the driver doesn't get as impatient, and won't try to get around and blow by the cyclist.
I've seen people blowing stops with zero bikes stopped at the intersection, people blow stops regardless if there is a bike present and its state of motion. With bikes not being able to break as fast as cars and not having side airbags you might want to consider what's going to happen when you enter the intersection in front of such a driver before finding that empirically.
It's weird to have the same rules when there are several orders of magnitude difference in manueverability, maximum damage possible, and visibility between the two modes. Imagine if pedestrians had to follow all the same rules as cars. Or everyone in an electric wheelchair. It wouldn't make sense.
I think the point is they have to follow the rules of the road because they are allowed in the road. Pedestrians, wheelchairs, etc can go on the sidewalk and be safe from traffic (one hopes).
Though it depends on the state and in my experience there are typically some differences, such as bikes are required to share the lane.
In Washington State, they're required to follow most car rules when in a lane, but not all (i.e. all stop signs are yield for cyclists). They also have a set of rules allowing for sidewalk usage when mounted; when dismounted, they follow pedestrian rules (obviously).
As a general rule, the the frequency illusion[1] and the negativity bias[2] are a thing and combined make shallow, single-datapoint arguments like yours instantly invalid.
[1]: "The frequency illusion is a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it."
[2]: "The negativity bias, is a cognitive bias that human cognition is relatively more affected by a negative affect than an equally potent positive affect."
I won't comment on the pick up / drop off situation, but another important scenario is right turns. In California, drivers are legally required to merge into the bike lane when making a right turn. This is for the safety of the bicyclists, to avoid the dreaded "right hook" collision.
Dylan Taylor, a beloved Menlo-Atherton High School football coach, was killed last year in one of these collisions:
(Scroll down to the comment by "T R" which describes better than the article itself what likely happened.)
Unfortunately, I've almost never seen a driver follow this law. Everyone studiously avoids the bike lane and then cuts across it.
The bike lane marker changes from a solid white stripe to a dashed line as you approach an intersection. This is supposed to be a hint to merge into the bike lane. It isn't working.
I post a reminder on Nextdoor once or twice a year about this. I'm taking the opportunity to also post it here for my California neighbors.
It would be interesting to see if the Waymo Driver follows this law. My bet is that it does.
The San Francisco Bike Coalition has an excellent page on this topic:
Bike lane or not, the majority of drivers make illegal right turns.
If you're in SF, watch on Gough or Franklin that people don't pull in the far right or left lane to make a turn, they illegally turn from one lane over. Literally 9 of 10 cars do this.
It happens all over. My guess is they don't perceive it as a right lane because 100-200 feet back there were cars parked in it but it's clearly marked as a lane and the law makes it clearly illegal to make right turn if you're not in the right lane.
There's lots of other less illegal? but dangerous things 95% of drivers do. 2 left turn lanes, curved line drawn through intersection to guide the lanes. 95% of cars in the 2nd left turn lane cut the guide line effectively cutting off the people in the #1 left turn lane.
In the nearest fairly large city, there's a (sometimes separated) bike lane, a bus lane, traffic lane, and turning lane which all intersect to various degrees. It's all clear as mud especially after dark when both bicycles and pedestrians are frequently darting into traffic from behind cars without lights. I'm just surprised there aren't more accidents.
As soon as I saw that headline I knew it had to be on Middlefield... lo and behold. I've been aalmost hit there twice and actually hit there once. once with a car taking a left. another with a car taking a right
People will do this to cut past people stopped at the light, but yes: at least in non-SF Bay Area, they will right hook unless otherwise compelled to put their car over the line. Some areas have started making those lanes dashed-striped but adherence is pitiful and enforcement is zero.
huh i didn't know about a specific bike lane law. but i do know the law that right turns must be taken as "close as practicable" to the right side of the roadway. plus there's the hint of the dashed line. Sneaking into the extra space to the right isn't a shortcut -- it's required by law, ie even without a bike lane.
in california, which is where the incident in TFA occurred.
Given the sheer amount of cyclist who think that cars should be banned with no consideration for anything else, I think that this is a common observation.
Where I live, the pro-cyclist mayor (whose husband owns a bike rental shop, by pure coincidence) closed a road for cars without consultation, now the firemen along with residents are protesting because emergency and delivery vehicles can't access a large part of the city (car parked can't get out!). This is the average behavior you can expect from militant cyclists, from my experience.
Riga. Of course, all of the cyclist absolutely LOVE it, and now want to remove cobblestones, which could lead to a removal of the city from the UNESCO World Heritage list. But they don't care.
Based on the photo, it looks like it’s pretty easily rectified by emergency bollards that can be lifted / lowered by emergency crews, though those may be expensive to procure.
Thank you! I've seen this all over the place the last few days. It's clickbait from a cycling group and very few people have actually bothered to read it.
Putting words in their mouths makes it harder to get the actual statements, which seems counter to getting actual information about (or from) these companies.
As a cyclist and a driver it’s not immediately apparent which Waymo behavior I prefer for passenger dropoffs/pickups.
While it’s annoying in the moment to pedal around a parked car, I’m fine with it. However, having a Waymo dropping off clear of the bike lane sounds good, until the exiting passenger accidentally doors a cyclist who isn’t prepared for that possibility.
I suppose I’d rather suffer the inconvenience of going around a parked car than risk the devastation of being doored.
One thing we should be happy about: Waymo's next gen Zeekr cars have sliding doors, eliminating the traditional risk of dooring. Passengers might still jump out without paying attention, but my expectation is that they'll be more cautious than opening the door; cyclists will have more forewarning than an opening door; and even if they do get hit, it will be a less catastrophic accident if a collision does occur. (The tradeoff, as there are always tradeoffs, is that the passenger having more skin in the game means that they'll likely be physically hit more often.)
You can get doored on either side of the car, and when you are forced to pass, you have to enter the traffic lane, which pressures you to maintain speed.
Whereas in the bike lane, you can slow down a bit anticipating that a door may open.
Waymo does at least warn the occupants if there's a vehicle or bicycle approaching.
Cyclists, other than motorists (1) build that momentum up with their legmuscles and (2) speed is required for stability on two-wheeled vehicles, meaning stopping with a bicycle is more exhausting and annoying than, say with a car.
I am not saying stopping isn't the right option in many situations, what I am saying is that a good bicycle infrastructure is planned in a way that understands that a person on a bicycle having to stop is not the same as a person in a car having to stop (unless you use a car where you have to pedal with your legs).
Building traffic infrastructure in a way that avoids (potentially dangerous and thus costly to society) conflicts between different participants should be a no-brainer. It is not secret knowledge how to do that, you just put a barrier and space inbetween each mode of transportation: Road, curbstone up, small pedestrian platform, curbstone down, bicycle path, curbstone up, actual pedestrian area. This way the waymo can stop on the road, where cars belong, guests can exit safely and without pressure into a pedestrian area and have s curb-shaped reminder they enter a bicycle path when they cross over. Additionally both pedestrians and motorists can be reasonably sure cyclists won't suffenly cross over into their domain.
Why is this not the norm? One of the main reasons is space. In most existing infrastructure this would likely mean one or two car lanes have to get either narrower or be sacrificed. It would also mean taking bicycling (and other vehicles using that infrastructure) as a mode of transportation seriously, which a certain group of people appears to be deeply allergic to. You know, the type of person who nearly commits vehicular manslaughter and then does as if the cyclist had it coming by merely existing.
In the end everybody would profit from better infrastructure, especially since good bicycle infrastructure is also usable for children and older people. And that is the test good bicycle infrastructure needs to pass: Would you send your 9 year old kid down that path. If not, than it has been done incorrectly at the cost of cyclists.
Yes, cycling is a sport. Should we also flatten hills as they have the inconvenience of requiring to push harder on pedals?
If the physical aspect of cycling (involving stopping for taxis, pregnant women, children, or distracted pedestrian plebs) is too hard, solutions exist: public transports, walking, or electric bikes (whose riders seem equally annoyed to slow down, for some reason).
The problem with "building infrastructure" is that plebs' money is not infinite, so public works to please the high lords of the pedal may not be possible.
Space is also not infinite in cities, so you can't change the infra without sacrificing other users, be they pedestrians, delivery vehicles, or car users.
Last, cycling is mostly for a specific type of people, who are alone, fit and with a small cargo. It excludes older and younger ones, disabled plebs, and families. Those people are better served with quality public transport - which could be improved with the money used to make costly bicycle road arrangements. Public transport is also always convenient, not just when it's sunny. I live in a city with temperatures under 0 celsius for 4 months of the year, including some days at -20. I'm glad I can use my car in winter to take my children to school. Apparently, other cyclists seem to think the same since no one uses a bike in winter (the new urban equestrian class seems a bit shy when it's cold?).
Helsinki is a city I like, because while there are mostly non-invasive bike lanes on large arteries, it's easy to go around by car and by walk. The secret is that the public transport system is top-notch, so a pregnant woman can use it to go to the maternity ward - something that you can't do by cycling (but who is stupid enough to have kids nowadays in city centers, right?).
> The problem with "building infrastructure" is that plebs' money is not infinite, so public works to please the high lords of the pedal may not be possible.
That was my point, thanks for making it: There is money for building and maintaining 6 lanes of sophisticated road surface that needs to withstand trucks¹ we surely have the money to replace part of it with a cheaper to maintain bicycle path that sees next to no road wear aside from weather effects. I'd argue that we cannot afford to not have bicycle infrastructure.
You appear to be propping up public transportation against cycling, when in reality they are a match made in heaven. Why not both?
¹: weight factors into road wear by power of four. Double weight equals 16 times the road wear
Because taxis and cyclists are road users like others, car drivers also have to stop if a taxi has to drop off someone as long as it's quick. Same with buses, also. Or trams.
It's the same with pedestrians : if an old person walks on a small sidewalk, I will stop or slow down. Or if I see two guys carrying a washing machine.
As a pedestrian, I don't see cyclists stopping often when they ride on the sidewalk, though.
It depends how lively/busy the street is, but in towns like Paris, every day I would have to accommodate fellow pedestrians unloading trucks or doing deliveries in the street. The macha lattes doesn't appear magically in your favorite coffee shop.
Going around a parked car is not merely an inconvenience, it introduces an extra risk of being hit from behind (obviously you should check over your shoulder before moving into the lane, but this is the imperfect real world, and even the act of checking over your shoulder is a small risk) or by a vehicle pulling out of a cross street which didn't see you through the stopped car.
However I agree that there isn't an obvious solution without making major improvements to infrastructure - right now where the bike lane is just paint everyone parks in it (Uber, taxis, delivery drivers, etc.).
It's also possible to use a feature that is present on the bikes, even if rarely or never used by urban cyclists: braking and waiting for the passenger to drop off, before continuing for your destination.
Something car drivers and pedestrians do, usually.
Not in my city. Taxis and ride shares tell you to get out on the right hand side so that you don’t get swept by cars passing you on the left.
Also often difficult to tell as a bicyclist how long that car will be sitting there. Sometimes it’s a delivery or pickup or something inane that will have you looking like a doofus for waiting.
No. Going around a parked car is a basic ability you need to have as a cyclist.
If you can't do that safely, then you have no business riding in the first place.
Looking behind you is not optional, as you seem to suggest it is. And if it is actually a "small risk", then you are going way too fast.
Again -- if you don't have the environmental awareness to go around a parked car, then you shouldn't be riding a bicycle in the first place. Full stop.
This comment assumes a high mix of cars and bikes in an environment of unseparated traffic.
With literal decades of near daily bike riding behind me I've rarely had to maneuver a bike or a car around a parked car in regular (not US) traffic flow.
It doesn't matter how often you have to do it. It's still a basic ability you need to possess.
And yes, my own experience comes from Manhattan, where that's something pretty much everyone has to do on a daily basis. You've got double-parking everywhere.
But even if you don't need to often (lucky you), the idea that this is somehow something unusually unsafe just doesn't hold any water. If it's unsafe for you, you have no business being on the road. You are a danger to others if you are unable to look behind you when changing lanes.
I agree here that it can depend on the infrastructure which option is better. But one way to look at it is that if a car is parked in the bike lane then the bike will be in the car lane == more risk for the bike. The bike is also at risk for being doored from either side when passing the taxi.
The best option would actually be to have some indicators on the taxi which shows which doors are "hot" and expected to open. A taxi with closed doors is always a huge risk and will always need to be passed outside the dooring range.
> While it’s annoying in the moment to pedal around a parked car, I’m fine with it.
Personally, I'm fine with it too. Problem is, a lot of motorists are not fine with that. Whether I get stuck on the road because the bike lane is curb separated or because there is an excessive number of cars parked in the bike lane, motorists start screaming at me. A few months back, I had one aggressively pass me. I checked to ensure the road was clear before entering it, the only way they could have passed me in that manner is if they accelerated (i.e. they created an issue out of something that shouldn't have impacted them).
The sense of entitlement of some motorists is dangerous. They are willing to behave in a manner that puts people's lives at risk.
Just had someone speed up and blow a stop sign on a right turn in a residential area (known for being walkable with young children) to cut in front of me my bike to make sure they wouldn’t have to wait for me to pass them at the stop sign. Full-sized SUV whose grill was at my chest height. Fairly routine and simultaneously completely unhinged behavior.
I also enjoy playing chicken on runs with the SUVs in another rather entitled urban neighborhood where if they begin accelerating into the intersection after a rolling stop while I’m still in the crosswalk (to “anticipate” me getting across the road and save 2-5 seconds), I’ll simply stop running and force them to actually come to a complete stop.
> having a Waymo dropping off clear of the bike lane sounds good, until the exiting passenger accidentally doors a cyclist who isn’t prepared for that possibility.
Note that Waymos will alert you if a cyclist is approaching so you don't door them. Not saying it's perfect, you can still open the door if you want, but they are very consistent about this.
In San Francisco, the vehicles often pull into bike lanes to pick up and drop off passengers — because that’s what they’re programmed to do, according to advocates who’ve asked the company for an explanation.
Waymo has told advocates that expecting it to respect bike lanes is “too high a bar” because customers expect to be dropped off in them, said Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition.
“People always point out that unlike human driven cars, the AVs stop at lights and obey the speed limit. However, they are really only as good and effective and safe as they are programmed to be,” White said. “Waymos pull over into bike lanes all the time for pickups and drop-offs and that’s neither legal nor safe but the companies say that is a normal practice and that’s what customers expect.”
Can't find a Waymo article about this, but Lyft and Uber (let alone trad taxis) also do this. I'm not sure that this is a particularly autonomous-car-shaped sin.
I think the main context of the article is that this is in London though, where the rule is that you don't do that, and Waymo somehow seem to think that it should be OK anyways:
> The Google-owned company, which officially launched its self-driving fleet in London earlier this month, has told cycling campaigners that it is “normal practice” for their taxis to veer into and block cycle lanes
> According to the Highway Code, motorists “must not drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a solid white line during its times of operation” or block a bike lane marked by a broken white line “unless it is unavoidable”.
Better would be for Waymo to adapt themselves to the locale and instead program it to find safer pickup/dropoff points, rather than blocking and endangering bike traffic.
Yes but if you read the article closely, what it's saying is that Waymo, which launched in London earlier this month, told cycling campaigners in San Francisco that it is normal practice (and this is according to the campaigners, not a direct statement from Waymo). The article has a lot of useful information and context, but the headline framing is misleading IMO. The article at least does not suggest any data on whether this is actually happening in London. The closest it gets is "remains to be seen":
> “Waymo claims they’re far safer in the US than traditional taxi services. But whether that is still the case on London’s infamously complex, congested and contested streets, remains to be seen.”
Well, there are a lot of non-ADA-compliant bathrooms out there, for one reason or another. But that's up to inspectors to enforce. If they're letting it slide in human-built businesses then AI-built businesses will hew to that.
It's also a lot different with a permanent installation that is verified once than this kind of tragedy-of-the-commons temporary minor abuse of public space.
The ADA is enforced by lawsuits — not inspectors — exactly because businesses can’t be trusted to follow the rules that most of their customers don’t like.
I mean, if it comes to a lawsuit, sure, but the system is designed so that permitting and inspectors catch most of it. If you're trying to build your bathroom under the radar without a permit that's an entirely different analogy.
But either way, it is the responsibility of the regulatory body to enforce. As other people have noted, this is not a Waymo problem, they're just following the status quo.
Exactly the case with the ADA. Since GOOGL is responsible for Waymo behavior, they will be liable in a class action suit where they willfully violated the law, putting others in danger, in selling their product.
There is not any way around it. You can avoid this issue like Lyft does, by having divers make that decision and by them being not worth suing, but GOOGL is worth suing, and you can’t intentionally violate the law and put folks in danger without it giving you massive amounts of liability.
Maybe, or, as we saw with ridesharing already, maybe they will change the laws. When push comes to shove, I don't believe there is enough will to overturn current practices to preserve the sanctity of the bike lane at the expense of car traffic.
huh? I work in construction (electrical drafter) and I've been called out for my installs not being ADA (after the designer gave me a non-ADA compliant design).
The difference is that Uber/Lyft use external contractors who are liable for their driving. Waymo is directly liable for the driving as they directly own and operate the cars and the driver.
Seems like a mistake. I wonder if they could farm out liability to homeless people under a financially engineered IC contract 'leasing' a locked down car or similar financial vehicle.
> the vehicles often pull into bike lanes to pick up and drop off passengers
FWIW after ~150 Waymo rides I don't think I've had a car pick me up or drop me off in a bike lane. This must depend highly on exactly where you ride to/from.
> Can't find a Waymo article about this, but Lyft and Uber (let alone trad taxis) also do this. I'm not sure that this is a particularly autonomous-car-shaped sin.
Yeah I think it'd probably actually be easier to prevent Waymo from doing this. Once you change the programming, they all stop doing it.
What that means is that Waymo is intentionally choosing illegal behavior, at a corporate level. Uber/Lyft are merely turning a blind eye to the illegal behavior of their employees... er, "contractors".
> Can't find a Waymo article about this, but Lyft and Uber (let alone trad taxis) also do this. I'm not sure that this is a particularly autonomous-car-shaped sin.
It depends on expectations. If the pitch is (and, let's face it - it is) that automs will be less violent, then this is a problem. If we're OK with them just adopting the existing levels of misery and death visited upon our communities by cars, then the upside is far less than we've been sold.
Pulling into the bike lane for 30 seconds causes bikers to have to unsafely pull around the car, possibly causing accidents. In some cities and lanes you may be endangering dozens of bikers during the 30 seconds.
I had to commute by foot for two years into a city, and I have to say I understand the rage. Cars nearly killed me a dozen times and I was always more safe than the law required of me as a pedestrian. Most drivers don’t understand their power with today’s massive cars.
> Waymos pull over into bike lanes all the time for pickups and drop-offs and that’s neither legal nor safe.
While perhaps drop-offs are often relatively quick (though perhaps more risky; see the dooring accident description in the article), I'm also really annoyed by Waymos waiting and blocking for pick-ups, which can be multiple minutes.
> I want to hear how you equate "misery and death" with "unloading a passenger in the bike lane for 30 seconds".
I didn't say that.
I'm saying that the toll of traffic violence is unacceptable - tens of thousands of unanticipated and often gruesome fatalities, along with much larger numbers of injuries and traumatic experiences. So we look to autonomous vehicles to be better-behaved - particularly in terms of speed and attention, but also in the little things, like lawful/traditional engagement with lanes for smaller conveyances.
I'm an avid cyclist and I kinda hate bike lanes; I don't blame cars for not knowing how to treat them. I much prefer either a shared lane with a slow pace or a totally separated trail for bikes.
But at the end of the day, the standard for autonomous vehicles isn't parity with the negligence and aggression that cars currently foist upon society, it's much higher.
The source article describes an incident where a cyclist was seriously injured after Waymo's cyclist detection system failed while it was parked in a bike lane, allowing the passenger to hit her with the door. I don't think this represents some terrible sin where Waymo executives should all go to prison, but I do think we can reasonably expect and if necessary demand that Waymo take action to prevent similar incidents in the future.
If the cyclist was doored by an exiting passenger, would t that imply it should further block the bike lane to increase safety as it is not safe for a bike to pass while a passenger is exiting? If the car door opening is what injuries the cyclist it wasn't really in the bike line very far.
It’s easy to skew perception with anecdotes when you don’t include anecdotes about the accepted status who.
What I’m hearing is that the system that creates a higher safety bar failed and the result was the same as you’d get with a human driver. It’s fun to lie with anecdotes when you don’t include stories and statistics of uber passengers dooring bicyclists. See how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusion?
It’s a big enough problem that personal injury industry actively seeks plaintiffs because there’s so many:
> As ride share vehicles have skyrocketed in popularity, we are increasingly seeing bicycle crashes involving ride share vehicles
The conclusion itself is biased and wrong claiming that uber lacks the markings of cabs without actually presenting any evidence that cabs are involved in fewer such incidents per passenger driven. They’re also doing the same thing you’re doing but at least it’s likely a website by cab drivers looking to actively paint Uber in a bad light. Oh, and Waymo taxis are actually branded clearly as taxis thus by that argument already they outperform ride shares.
I did a quick search on this, but was nothing but PR articles about how they lower cyclist/pedestrian collisions. Are you suggesting the Waymo car sees oncoming cyclists and somehow prevents the rider from opening the door? This would be interesting in how it could be done. Does it indicate in any way that the door will not be able to be opened until the cyclist clears, or is the rider left wondering why the damn car won't let them out?
From my experience, a tiny alarm sounds, a voice says cyclist approaching and the door clicks to locked. At least I believe it did, I heard a sound. I didn't check the handle.
I don't believe the car was specifically in a bike lane at this time but I'm new to the city and may have missed the markings.
It sees oncoming cyclists but only warns the passengers inside via visual cue on the displays and an audible cue through the speakers. Apparently external cues to the cyclist are also given that a door may open (blinking lights?)?
In general, Waymo keeps track of all nearby vehicles and pedestrians and shows them on the car's nav system. I've been in one before when it detected a cyclist coming from behind, and it gave clear warnings both audibly and visually, although I don't know whether it actually locked the door.
We can keep autonomous cars out of bike lanes like we keep normal drivers, keep fining them for every incident. It’s not like they don’t keep the video evidence.
Are you proposing or saying this is how it already works? Because in my experience, it doesn’t work like this at all. The countries that have good bike infrastructure like the Netherlands seem to focus on actual physical separation. They do fines also, they just don’t rely on fines (and lawsuits) like Americans seem to.
Do they get 1 point per infraction and have license suspend after so many points?(like human rivers)? If so, it'd be rather quick for the full fleet suspension.
And base the fines on the companies valuation, otherwise it'll just be written off as an operating expense. Normal fines and penalty points work as deterrents for everyday people, not multi-billion dollar companies. I also would not count on the availability of video evidence - see Tesla's withholding of evidence from investigators and courts.
If I was struck by an autonomous vehicle while riding in the bike lane I would sue and sue like I was taking aim at a corporation rather than an individual driver. I -or my partner, assuming I died- would retire very early on that money.
I'm not sure how this works in the UK, but over here in the Netherlands we have cyclists everywhere and a lot less drama. Here it's OK to stop on a bike lane and to merge onto it when turning right, but not to park on it. Merging means you give way to bikes first, then drive between them. And the other way around, if the bike lane is blocked, bikes merge into the car lane and cars drive behind them.
Consider it a two lane road, where you give way when you merge into the other lane and you slow down behind slower traffic that's in your lane. Except that when both lanes are available each type of traffic prefers "their" lane due to the speed difference.
That speed difference is decreasing in the bigger cities recently. Ebikes drive 25 km/h and many shared streets are reducing from 50 to 30 km/h for cars. It probably helps that a lot of the bigger streets aren't shared, there are many separated bike lanes here.
The “cars stopping in random places everywhere in any remotely urban area” thing has become a huge problem in general. It’s probably our clearest sign of the fundamental scalability problems of car-centric design.
Assuming we can’t significantly reduce car usage (and noting that you can still prioritize bike/pedestrian-friendliness and assume this), we really need regular car equivalents to bus stops. For Waymo or human rideshare drivers, or just non-transactional human families, say, dropping grandma off at a brunch restaurant. And significant fines + license points for anyone who stops anywhere outside them, like they do now, once established. The idea is no different than frequent trash cans and significant littering fines, really.
(I’m just spitballing here and am open to being wrong, just putting the idea out there as someone who’s noticed how much worse driving in cities has become over time.)
In France, especially in Paris, you have large "delivery" parking places where you are allowed to stop but not to park.
Unfortunately, with the rise of bike lanes, those spots are not quite dangerous, as the delivery person has to cross the lane to access the sidewalk and bicycles refuse to slow down, as usual.
I can't wait to carry a set of orange cones on me at all times so that I can put any misbehaving autonomous cars in Road Jail. After all, expecting cyclists not to resort to vigilantism to keep themselves safe from billion-dollar companies is unrealistic.
Seems easier to just toss a sheet over the roof camera. (Or spraypaint it, since both the sheet and cones are trivial for someone to come along and remove.)
I don't really see this as a Waymo story(although they are a bad actor) because this kind of blockage is mostly a combination of urban design, infrastructure and norms. Traffic is experienced individually as "that guy cut me off" or "you parked in the bike lane" or "stop riding on the sidewalk" but the accidents and delays are about the times when two people both end up taking the same risk at a conflict point. Those are things that have to be addressed long before the incident, and some countries have done so, while others have not and prefer to displace it onto "individual responsibility", which doesn't change how people drive, it just favors being the biggest on the road and relying on insurance to cover the rest.
The principal thing that changes in this story is that Waymo centralizes the responsibility for the risk-taking, and therefore is easier to hold accountable than a horde of interchangable gig workers, impulsive teenagers, etc. When a Waymo car actually does damage, they don't enjoy the same cost structure as the rest of us. The probability is high that they reached a utilitarian conclusion on the bike lane issue favoring their current approach as "the best across all key metrics". Those metrics can be changed by enforcement, or by fixing the streets. They can use words like "unrealistic" but they are mostly speaking within a particular legislative and infrastructural reality. That reality can change if we expect it to, but it means going back on the individual-responsibility outlook.
As a bicyclist I kinda agree with Waymo. Unless there is a strong separation (physical barrier) between the car lane and the bike lane, the rules of the road is that one always overtakes on the left; this implies that if a car is stopped, one has to overtake on the left. If the car is stopped within the bike lane, I can bike into the car lane and overtake. If the car is stopped in the car lane, well then I have to merge across two car lanes in order to overtake. I don’t stay in the bike lane because I could be doored, and my expectation is that the car could decide to drive into the bike lane to make room for overtaking traffic.
So the solution is either make it impossible for a car to drive into the bike lane through barriers, or just allow cars into the bike lanes anyways.
Kind of weird article. If you want cars to stay out of bike lanes, make them protected like in here in the Netherlands. But also why do people expect to be taken to a bike lane rather than a parking space?
Also seeing a lot of ignorance about cycling here in the comments. Would recommend some people to watch some Not Just Bikes videos. Building better cycle infrastructure is better for everyone, cars and cyclists included. Less people die, and cars don't have to deal with cyclists on the road. Ex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
This is basically the same argument as a drug dealer saying "we can't not sell drugs because some of our customers expect drugs".
The law is the law. Passengers should be dropped off somewhere where the car can legally pull over and let them out. The law doesn't allow any other car to stop in a bike lane to drop off passengers, why should a robo-taxi be given an exemption to do so?
We know how to keep cars out of bike lanes (curbs, barriers), and we already know that bike lanes co-located with on street parking is dangerous. We (well Americans) also don’t believe in creating pick up and drop off spots on our roads.
At least here in SF the ideal thing would be that any vehicle dropping off in the bike lane gets fined or ticketed. This includes Waymo, Uber, cabs, personal cars, whatever. In practice it's very rare to get a ticket for this, which is why customers expect it from both Waymo and Uber.
As a bicyclist who hates cars, I'm totally fine with this. I've been riding alongside Waymos in San Francisco for seven years now, and they are the most polite and protective drivers ever. If I'm merging into traffic and I can get in front of a Waymo, it's the best feeling in the world. Waymo will see you from any direction with lasers and always yield to you. It's better they block the whole bike lane momentarily so I can pass them on the left, rather than have their passenger surprise swing their door into the bike lane.
I have a fuzzy memory of lanes being shared in the UK. Overlapping bike, parking, bus stops, etc. Not claiming that's better, only that's what I recall.
I don't recall what Amsterdam does, but the bike lanes were mostly separated, so I imagine they have dedicated short-term parking. They also have a good light rail system in the city, so much less need for taxis.
Other countries have public transit that works, such that taxis are only needed in specific situations warranting an expensive private chauffeur, autonomous or meatbag.
In Finland bike lanes are on the sidewalk and cyclists have to respect pedestrian traffic signals. Its the safest solution for everyone, in my opinion.
does it matter? we already gave cars unnecessary leeway in designing cities; should we continue bowing to the least efficient mode of transport because a technology cant actually replace thw already extravagent allowances it is afforded?
A simple yet almost hard to imemt solution (given the view of an outsider on most U. S. cities respect for bicycles) is to "just" provide actual, hard seperation for the bike lane.
This can done with carve outs/ gaps for public service buses, a somewhat cheap implementation are Pop-Up bikelanes but concrete barriers of 10-15 cm also do the job well.
This statement should be grounds for immediately banning Waymo from operating. If a driver says they can’t follow traffic rules they should lose their driver’s license until they’ve proven they’re fit to drive again. I can’t think of any reason why it should be any different for autonomous systems. If they can’t follow traffic rules they shouldn’t be allowed to drive.
I wonder if cities would want to create even more short term pick up and drop off points on the road for USPS, UPS, FedEx, DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, Waymo and other similar short term parking needs, this would mean removing some long term street parking options and potentially conflict with some bike lanes in some areas.
Would cities be willing to give up on the parking fines revenue they are generating right now? How should cities be incentivized to change with the changing mobilities needs of the people living inside dense cities?
As a London cyclist I don't really mind the odd taxi / Waymo dropping off in the bike lane. It's an annoyance but I guess they have to drop off somewhere.
There's no way to judge this without looking at any particular street.
I live in a city with bike lanes. But some of them are one-lane (well, one vehicle lane, one bike lane), one-way streets. If a car or taxi or delivery vehicle or anything at all is going to pull over, it's necessarily going to be in the bike lane. (It's either that, or stop literally all traffic on the street.)
As a cyclist, I quickly stopped getting mad at it. I just, you know, go around it. Most streets don't have bike lanes. So turning into the regular lane is not a problem. Even when I drive a car, sometimes I'll have to drive around a car stopped in a regular lane. Such is life.
Obviously if Waymo is pulling over into a bike lane when there's no other place to pull over, it's fine. The highway code in the article literally says it's allowed when it is "unavoidable".
Without seeing examples of where Waymo is actually pulling over, and if there are safer alternatives it should be using instead, I can't judge whether it's misbehaving or not.
A lot of streets simply don't have separate shoulders to pull over on. Or if they do, they're 100% occupied by on-street parking. The bike lane is effectively doing double-duty as the shoulder. Is Waymo supposed to drop you off 5 blocks away after circling for 20 minutes looking for an available parking spot, just to stop for 30 seconds to let you out?
I think this is a bigger factor for Lyft/uber where the passenger rating impacts the driver directly. Passengers are annoyed anytime their pickup isn’t directly in front of them on the street. They will down rate a driver that pulls into a legal spot farther away then a spot blocking a bike lane directly in front of them.
This is less of an issue for Waymo, because the passenger rating doesn’t mean as much except customer satisfaction with the service as a whole.
This article is about London, but it's a problem in SF too. The problem is that cities aren't made for ride sharing, robo or otherwise. If the cities actually wanted to make ride sharing less annoying they'd have designated drop off zones on streets and make an effort to build truly separate bike lanes. That requires actual work though, so very cities will proactively do this.
Why can't Waymo's sense a blind spot issue or an incoming cyclist and prevent the door from being unlocked and opened when the car comes to a stop. Just when it comes to dooring cyclists.
if this is the case, they should say “won’t” rather than “can’t”
“Waymo won’t avoid bike lanes…” would be much more accurate.
obviously the can’t part would be nonsense. they can avoid lanes where traffic flows the opposite direction so obviously they can.
to me this means we should take their license away. if they said “we won’t avoid oncoming traffic, we would take their license away. just like one way streets are for cars traveling in one direction, bike lanes are for bikes.
if you or i drove the wrong way down a one way repeatedly we would rightfully be in trouble. why do these companies keep behaving like they don’t have to follow the same rules you and i do?
This is the same Waymo that outright refuses to honor No Thru Traffic and No U-Turns signs in favor of “I was ticketed at coordinates xyz” reports. I assume eventually one’s going to get crushed by an oncoming train after willfully ignoring a No Turn On Red sign. Not only are they saying that unenforced laws are void, they’re also having people do ticketable things in order to collect enforcement data for others.
Weirdly, the U.S.-nationwide enemy behind the curtain here is AAA, the driver’s association that’s spent member fees for decades lobbying against automated ticketing systems that would force everyone, not just Waymo, to start honoring the traffic laws it avoids. How crass of Waymo to so brazenly exploit that, but certainly their argument lacks fault from a corporate non-person’s “you can’t hurt me in any way that matters” viewpoint.
I think the actually problem is incredibly poorly thought out cycling infrastructure. There are long stretches of cycle lanes in some cities at least where you'd need to get out a significant distance from your destination. It's not feasible for lots of reasons. If they're completely segregated it would be better for everyone.
Google gives out a massive amount of data from many of their parts for free, so not sure why you would think they wouldn't do so here. They don't give out all of it but large parts, they are very research friendly.
This is ridiculous - passengers want to be dropped off in the zig zag lines either side of pedestrian crossing too, but that's illegal. Just because sneaky minicab drivers do it should not be justification for self driving cars - they need to be designed to obey the laws of the road.
I want Waymo to succeed but you don't do that by bending over to the passengers' whim!
People need to understand that this is a corporate-friendly variation of, “there are no incentives for us to stop that outweigh the profits we make from the harm caused, and so we won’t.” A “fuck you and fuck off”, in other words.
Asking companies nicely to stop being dickbags is never going to work. You have to regulate them - directly via new and targeted laws, or indirectly via accountability for existing laws. If Waymo started getting tickets for obstructing bike lanes every time it happened, they’d stop immediately.
This is why I’m generally in favor of citizen reward schemes like NYC does for some violations. Give citizens a slice of the fine, and you’ll both reduce bad behavior and improve civic engagement, all without creating creepy mass surveillance systems like Flock.
This is kind of silly. If you can pull over "into" a bike lane, it's a half assed bike lane. Bike lanes should be protected. If you can't, as a city, put any physical barrier between cars and bikes at all, you're really not doing anything to benefit cyclists. Splashing some green paint on a strip of road is just an excuse to pat yourself on the back and call yourself a "bike-friendly city".
What the actual fuck? Customers' expectations shouldn't matter at all if the things they expect is illegal.
And this is already a solved problem.
The city I live in (Bratislava, Slovakia) has some pedestrian-only zones in the "old town", and if you're in one of them, calling an Uber/Bolt forces you to pick a pickup spot where cars can go...
(arguably this still has issues with Uber/Bolt allowing you to choose bus stops as pickup spots, which is explicitly illegal - only buses can stop on bus stops, but it's still better than driving onto a road which does not allow cars in the first place).
EDIT: i mistakenly thought this was about driving on dedicated bike paths, idk why, but this is still a solved problem, the applications already allow to designate some roads as places which can't be picked as pickup/dropoff points...
Completely fair, since city buses and nearly every other vehicle does the same.
The YouTube Channel "Not Just Bikes" calls these abominations 'Painted Bicycle Gutters'. They should be completely abolished in favor of multiuse pathways.
bit of an absolutist argument in california. can't speak to the UK.
it's obviously safer (for cyclists) for taxis or even carpools to drop off and pick up at the far right, ie into the bike lane. i think we can generally consider it to be "parking" not "driving" and thus within the letter of the law as well. (parking is explicitly allowed.)
we know this very well, and that's why there are curb-separated lanes and they tried a center lane on van ness for awhile.
it just generally sucks to share bikes and cars and we have to live with compromises.
I don't believe there is a country in the world, where parking on bike lanes is explicitly allowed. Merging before turns and stops for drop/pickup/load/unload sure. But not parking.
As a cyclist, I'm sure you're tolerant and polite to people walking in the middle of the multi-use paths, right? /s
For a long time I thought cyclists were hypocrites because they play the victim when they're on roads while being complete jerks on walking paths. But really, it's not hypocrisy - it's self-entitlement in both cases. It's honestly very consistent behavior.
I don't find cyclists especially obnoxious on the rail-trails I often walk on. But I have walked on rail-trails with a lot of bicycles where various people got pretty pissy because I wouldn't step off the trail every minute.
No, I'm saying most cyclists are reasonable but I've been on crowded trails with elevation changes where they haven't been and have acted as if they had the right of way and have sometimes gotten pissy if I didn't get out of the way quickly enough.
Fucking ridiclous. Police, Waymo and everybody else need to keep out of the bike lanes. Bike lanes are vital transportarion infrastructure that if used correctly can have more threwput then car lanes by far whipe being cheaper and better in literally every way for a city.
Most of driving is being predictable to other drivers and pedestrians and cyclists. Waymos do that very well in their respective cities, and by programmed they mean the training set of drivers in that city
If waymos are dropping off in bike lanes, it’s because that’s the behavior in that city
It’s far better that the robots aren’t literal pedants. They act far smarter than a neurodivergent savant trying to do everything literally legal because being unadaptable is not intelligence
Eh. Just start removing bike lanes. They're destroying businesses and making life worse for everyone.
And yes, I have numbers. In Seattle, the business receipts from areas with bike lanes declined faster than receipts from areas nearby that do NOT have bike lanes.
Correlation shmorellation.... I bet you were going to cite studies that were showing how bike lanes improved the business and how proprietors were surprised at the percentage of customers on bikes, right?
Yep, I have friends who ran small businesses who sold in cities (Seattle, Portland, SF) specifically because of how bike lanes destroyed their business.
People who are busy need to get around quickly and aren’t going to tolerate biking around. And it’s especially impractical with kids - not that this stops bike activists from trying to gaslight everyone into saying it’s totally possible and exactly the same effort. The bikes lanes almost always either displace traffic lanes or parking, so driving gets worse. And customers realize they have better things to do and alternative choices on where they spend money.
The bike lanes themselves are of course, often very poorly utilized. So traffic gets worse, businesses suffer, and it’s all for nothing. Now all these cities have left is intentionally crippling driving with low speed limits, speed bumps, and other hostile designs. It’s a way to try and claim that driving is no faster, even though it is trivial to keep driving fast and efficient.
Expecting bike riders to follow traffic laws is also unrealistic. This is why they often have a massively higher rate of fatalities, including in localities with good bike infrastructure.
> Expecting bike riders to follow traffic laws is also unrealistic.
Can you cite the research to back up your claim? Because I have the research claiming the opposite the cyclists are more compliant with traffic rules than cars [0]. Including in US [1]
Victims are not the ones running red lights, cutting across pedestrian sidewalks/pavements at 20+ mph, going down one-way-streets the wrong way, screaming at pedestrians to get out the way so they don't have to slow down when pedestrians are crossing on a green man etc etc etc.
At least in London the cyclists are absolutely lawless. Yes a lot are injured and some sadly die, but many many many totally ignore the rules (assuming they've even bothered to find out what the rules actually are).
It's only got worse with ebike hire (Lime at al) as people will hop on after drinking, or have never even got a driving license etc so have no actual idea on the rules that car drivers have to prove etc before they're let behind the wheel at all. And when they're done with their lime bike they literally just dump them wherever they're done with it, blocking sidewalks/pavements for everyone.
This antisocial cycling social-ill is very much at a "scourge" stage in London and is getting a lot of press.
As a pedestrian, I fear cyclists the most. Please do block the bike lane while I am getting in and out so cyclists won't hit me. I have been almost killed by cyclists many more times than cars. My office building hires someone with a sign to stand in the crosswalk in front of the building where cyclists almost never respect the crosswalk.
Cyclists here regularly ignore red lights and also go the wrong way on streets and even in bike lanes.
You are either very paranoid or very bad at math. The odds of a pedestrian getting killed by a cyclist are minuscule. The best data I could find making an apples-to-apples comparison showed that pedestrians are *160 times* more likely to be killed by a car than a bicyclist.
As a father, I think that the odds are quite high that a 3 years old child will get hit by a cyclist, especially if they ride on the sidewalk. I have had several stressful close calls with my son, and my pregnant wife was hit by a cyclist who didn't respect the red light (as it is the custom among the high lords of the road).
> I think that the odds are quite high that a 3 years old child will get hit by a cyclist
You should see the odds of a child being hit by a car! Here in the US, about 6 children a day are hit and killed by a motor vehicle. And yet the number of children hit and killed by bicycles is unavailable -- perhaps because it is close to 0?
I understand that "as a father" you may become paranoid about things that are objectively unlikely. But if you are more worried about getting killed by a bicycle than by a car -- something 160 times more likely to kill you! -- then perhaps you need to recalibrate.
Thankfully, cars don't ride on the sidewalk. Every cyclist, where I live (Latvia), rides their bike on the sidewalk. Including e-bikes that are really electric mopeds (you don't need to pedal). Will the Indian food delivery rider, late and tired after a long shift, notice my son, who jumped to scare a pigeon? Let's find out!
So, your statistics are worthless if you don't take the context into account. And even if "there is no risk" (virtually), I'm allowed to say that cyclists going at 25km/h have no business on the sidewalk where I walk at 5km/h.
Cyclists think just like car drivers, and find it totally fine, since they themselves "feel unsafe from cars who go too fast". Of course the feelings of the pedestrian plebeians don't count for the new noble equestrian and morally righteous class.
If you're making a right-hand turn in the US as a driver and there's a protected bike lane you're crossing through that lane to turn. And, when I sit outside in the summer at one of my usual restaurants with sidewalk seating, there are any number of horrifying combinations of bicycles, ebikes, escooters, and things that look like electric motorcycles routinely blowing through the red light at the adjacent intersection--cause they're in a bike lane I guess.
You cross through the intersection. You don't treat it like an extra lane to pass traffic on the left which some drivers like to do when there is sufficient space or no curb.
Bike lanes exist to protect cyclists from drivers and to limit how cyclists affect the flow of traffic. Cars stopping in the bike lane shit all over that, just like they would if they parked on the sidewalk.
I wish drivers (and now leaders of a company) would have more empathy toward people on the road that can be squashed like a bug.
Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault.
Given that human drivers stop in bike lanes, Waymo then has a tradeoff:
1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic.
2) Follow the most common expectation, even if wrong, and incrementally add to the problem.
IMO, cyclists shouldn't lobby Waymo directly, but should lobby cities to actually enforce the rules on everyone. Then Waymo would fall in line naturally. And if they're inclined to take direct action against Waymo's they should also act against Uber and DoorDash drivers who are a far bigger problem by volume (and wait time for deliveries).
Cities who want to keep cars out of bike lanes should stop offering “mom says we have bike lanes at home” repainting of streets. Create a curb and raise the bike lanes. It’s the only safe solution. I understand this is not realistic in a lot of scenarios but it is basically the only way you can achieve actual safety short of cement separators at the road level, which is basically a curb anyway. There’s just no reality where a bicycle can share the road unimpeded with a motor vehicle safely. No, plastic bollards are not enough. It needs to be either raised or a barrier enough that a car sideswiping it won’t cause the barrier to fail
My experience cycling regularly in NYC: bike lanes separated by curb, stoppers, or poles are more dangerous as cars stop at their entrances/exits and I am literally trapped or cannot enter them before/after an intersection. I'm not against them in principle, but without extremely strict enforcent of laws (let's say a ticket 5% of someone's annual income and a loss of DL on a repeated offense - this stuff endangers people's lives), they are sadly counterproductive. :(
I semi regularly see big cop SUVs parked here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MydRmrTkiJMxt3Pi7?g_st=ac
On the bike lane, which is physically separated from the road.
The cop car takes the whole width of the lanes.
It also means the cop had to get on the bike lane here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/frGXL1NpcCW18iRN9?g_st=ac and then drive for a couple of blocks _on the physically separated bike lane_.
This is why bike lanes should be some non-integer multiple of a car width. 1.5 car widths allows the continuation of bike traffic despite an emergency vehicle in the lane unless someone blocks it intentionally.
People undoubtedly said this was not realistic in many car-clogged European cities before some actually did it. “Realism” here is just a measure of the current number of votes you have for making things better.
It helps to replace ‘realistic’ with ‘palatable’, which at least conveys the issue more precisely as one of desirability rather than capability. Most U.S. voters for someone who interferes with drivers on behalf of non-drivers.
Streets are narrower in Europe. It should be easier in the US.
The thing which I think would really help with bike lanes would be to standardize on placing underground utilities beneath them --- they'd be less expensive to dig up than a roadway structured for cars, and when maintenance is necessary, a cyclist can easily be diverted either onto the roadway (if staying on the bike) or to the sidewalk (if temporarily dismounting).
The width of a bike lane and its margins is not nearly enough space to safely trench deep enough with the equipment they already have to reach most things they need to tear roads up for. Even modest water mains can be 4ft in diameter, drainage and sewage twice that (in flood prone areas)
Okay then, such utilities as would comfortably fit then.
4 ft is great for a one way bike lane.
Or, even partially under the bike lane with the balance under the parallel road --- that way, only part of the road needs to be dug up.
Or they could fine them. And increase fine for each repetition so rich can't just pay to be jerks.
All the fines in the world won’t save you from getting mowed down by a distracted driver on their phone. Drinking and driving has heavy fine deterrents, yet people still do it anyway. You know what stops a drunk or distracted driver from killing someone? A cement barrier
add to that, a class of drivers that believe two wheel vehicles have no place on public thoroughfares, openly hostile to non cars.
And police that is sympathetic to those drivers.
That's the wrong way to look at it. People still drink and drive because the deterrents aren't heavy. It's a bit tautological but if they were heavy enough then by definition they would be deterrents, but they aren't, so they aren't.
The correct solution to this kind of problems and others is to fix the obviously broken fine system. The first fine for anything should sting and it should make anyone who gets it think twice about doing the thing that they did to get the fine. subsequent reoffenses should make it uneconomical for anyone to reoffend.
Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.
> a distracted driver on their phone
Waymos don’t get distracted. Grade separation, ticketing and increasingly favoring AVs in cities is a simpler solution than erecting physical barriers, which have the downside of making cities less walkable.
That would be relevant if we had mass adoption of autonomous vehicles. Unfortunately last I checked actual autonomy was still stuck in the perpetual R&D phase.
> last I checked actual autonomy was still stuck in the perpetual R&D phase
I know plenty of people in Phoenix for whom it’s their main mode of transport. When I’m there or in San Francisco, it’s certainly mine. (And now, increasingly, in Miami, too.)
Waymo is here and it’s real and it’s so much better than Uber or taxis.
Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout. It's certainly not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it. There's perhaps a small handful of companies globally that are currently prototyping the technology in a process that's shaping up to take a decade or longer to play out.
Even once things reach that point reworking an existing place would be a massive undertaking.
> not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it
Sure. Neither is Phoenix's light-rail system, for the most part. These things take time to play out and gain buy-in.
Americans take about 34 million public-transit trips a day [1]. Assuming 25 rides per day, that's about 1.4 million self-driving cars to rival public transport's impact. Waymo has "about 3,000 robotaxis deployed nationwide" [2]. Doubling fleet size annually–Waymos and non-Waymos, though currently they have no peers–would get us to parity in less than 10 years. (A more-realistic 35% growth rate puts us around 20 years.)
The point of that excercise is to say that within 10 to 20 years, less time e.g. California's HSR or New York's Second Avenue Subway took to get online, we could see as many trips in AVs in America as we do on public transit of all types. That's close enough to start looking ahead to.
[1] https://www.apta.com/news-research/about-the-industry/public...
[2] https://www.axios.com/local/san-diego/2026/03/30/waymo-speed...
> Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout
By city and ODD, but if you are in the area and your source and destination for the route are both within the ODD they are just as available as an Uber.
Grade separation IS building physical barriers lmao what are you even saying
Agree with this.
The concrete barriers being added in Seattle help a lot.
I've seen people park in these curbed bike lanes too, completely blocking it off.
Clamping is a useful deterrent there.
ive also seen cyclists having to squeeze by, and are forced to offer up against the side of the blocking vehicle to avoid being hit, leaving pinstripes bumper to bumper.
Seems like they need to fenced off. Would also prevent jaywalking so in general increase safety of pedestrians forcing them to cross only at intersections.
Great, now how are we going to force bicyclists to open red lights and stop signs?
Bike lanes on a curb are significantly more dangerous due to turning car drivers often not seeing them (due to parked cars in the way) or interpreting them as “just a sidewalk” and not properly looking for cyclists.
Not a real problem, as proven by many countries where cycling is encouraged and supported
The global consensus on which type is safer is not nearly as clear as you confidently make it out to be.
A lot of things need to be true for a curbside bike path to be safer than a roadside one, most importantly protection against dooring and ensuring visibility at intersections. If these measures are not taken, the result is often less safe.
It’s a real problem, just not an unsolvable one. But it will take a lot of awareness campaigns and time.
It definitely is a real problem, although I cannot say with certainty whether it's a significant enough problem to make curbside lanes worse than roadway lanes.
I bike in Chicago and curbed bike lanes recently installed are a big problem
Really? I use them all the time without issue, unless someone has decided to park themselves in the intersection
Yes! Concrete please!
Curbed bike lanes create a huge hazard when cars going the same direction turn right. Neither the bike nor the car has good visibility of the other, very likely the car turns into the bike or the bike doesn’t stop and rides into the turning car.
What's wrong with lane separators¹? Bollards are dangerous for cyclists.
Rised bike lanes are also parked onto. I had the displasure of sliding on reentry when a car was blocking the raised bike lane. Next time I'd rather stop and argue with the driver. Also you get to enjoy going up and fown ramps all of the time.
1. https://orcacivil.com.au/products/traffic-management-product...
>There’s just no reality where a bicycle can share the road unimpeded with a motor vehicle safely.
that was among the promises of self-driving cars. Because of ultimately superior sensor suite and reaction time they can be safer than humans, in particular they would never "not see a bicyclist", they wouldn't cut impatiently, etc. . Instead that superiority is used these days to drive more "efficiently", to beat/cut the human drivers in a way not every regular human would be capable of. At least that is my anecdotal observation during the last several months (and these several months experience totally differs from the more than 15 years of having Waymo cars around in MV when they were i'd say among the safest to be around)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46199294
From the more recent - saw again a Waymo cutting like a ninja into a left turn lane at the same intersection as before, and at the other intersection a Waymo car missing the point to get in line for the right turn behind several cars already waiting in line in the bike lane, drives forward on green and makes the right turn as the second layer of the cake in parallel with those cars from the bike lane.
I think all that aggressiveness/"efficiency" comes as a result of the push to increase the customer satisfaction. All these years before driving actual passengers, Waymo (and i guess others) could allow themselves to be the safest, most courteous drivers on the road. Not anymore as such "inefficient" granma-style driving obviously would conflict with the passengers satisfaction.
Maybe in 40 years or so everyone will use self driving vehicles that work perfectly and this will be a solved problem. We should probably do something about the problem in the meantime though
> There’s just no reality where a bicycle can share the road unimpeded with a motor vehicle safely.
Logically equivalent:
> There’s just no reality where a motor vehicle can share the road unimpeded with a bicycle safely.
... or a pedestrian. Those motor vehicles sure are a menace!
Bike lanes with curbs aren’t great. On garbage days trash cans often get parked in the bike lane and cyclists have no way of going around since the curb block their way. I’m perfectly comfortable with just lines for bike lanes.
I’ll take my chances with the trash can over the SUV that can’t even see me because it’s so lifted and that will kill me instantly if the driver isn’t paying attention. At least with the trash can I have a chance
You might be, but cycling adoption is strongly linked to safer riding conditions. Protected bike lanes are demonstrably safer. So perhaps you should be more concerned about people blocking roadways with their garbage?
Only in dysfunctional societies.
I’m pretty sure it went something like “so where are we allowed to pickup and drop off riders” and the city couldn’t answer. The problem isn’t really enforcement, the problem is that there are simply no alternatives, and the city shies away from enforcement because they know that. If they started enforcing the rules strictly, people would again ask questions that they aren’t prepared to answer.
If you compare that to a country like the Netherlands, which is not only strict, but provides “solutions” so breaking the law isn’t necessary in the first place (they use explicit drop off and pickup locations instead of American chaos).
Yes, in sane countries the rules are attempted to be defined in a fair way, and you can follow them. Not perfectly of course, but with that goal.
Like the Netherlands, it is (A) not possible to park in bike paths without going intentionally out of your way, and (B) there are reasonable alternatives, such as specific “loading zones” for passengers on nearly every block, on major roads. On minor neighborhood roads, you can just block the road for a few seconds and it doesn’t matter
The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced. It makes it so everyone always must break the law to exist in society, but will only face repercussions at the discretion of a police officer.
It means that there are effectively no laws, because everyone has slightly different definitions of when something is “right” or not, and the police only enforce the most egregious cases, but they can also target you specifically for some other reason (discrimination, bias, etc) with no repercussions, since you were breaking the law after all.
It's because the bike lanes are great PR but bad for votes, at least in the short term. City leaders love the greenwashing effect, but in the short term the percentage of people actually biking everywhere is very low, so it doesn't make sense for them to spend a ton of time and money to do it right.
In a few years they'll get to put together a committee to discuss "learnings" and maybe they'll fix it if there are enough complaints, or maybe they'll just spend their time elsewhere as usual.
Slightly long-term thinking is required. Every year, the city I live in, Dublin, does a survey where people crossing the canals (rough proxy for entering/exiting the city centre) are counted for a day. Twenty years ago, 50% of crossings were by public transport, 37% by car, 2% by bike (most of the remainder was talking). In 2024 (the last year for which figures are available; for whatever reason publishing this data takes _ages_), 58% was by public transport, 25% by car, 6% by bike. Cycling's definitely on the rise, and congestion would be worse without it, but it does take time for people to change their habits.
I would bike more if the infrastructure was better and police aggressively dealt with our local bike theft problem (Seattle), as it stands it doesn’t make much sense to invest in it, not like when I was a college student.
America suffers from a severe execution problem in the last couple of decades. We just can’t implement and follow through with real solutions anymore.
The US is happy creating laws for everything that are impossible to follow, but only selectively enforced.
Do you consider this insane? Your assertions that "everyone always must break the law" and "there are effectively no laws" seem a bit extreme. Ultimately, with any messy human affair, there is always going to be discretion involved, and I don't think implicitly codifying that is a bad thing. It does tend to work by and large. I've personally had much worse experiences with officials following the letter of the law than with them using discretion, but I admit I am not in any class that is often discriminated against.
Blocking the right car lane for a drop off is perfectly legal outside of No Stopping zones. This is how taxis have always worked.
It's just that other drivers get pissed off if you block a car lane when there's a bike lane next to it. That needs to be trained away by enforcing the rules.
That needs to be trained away by physically separating bike lanes from car lanes. Drivers (at least human ones) cannot safely coexist with cyclists or pedestrians unless there are actual physical obstacles between moving traffic and everyone else.
> Blocking the right car lane for a drop off is perfectly legal outside of No Stopping zones.
In which municipality? In most cities and states in the US, it is illegal to obstruct a roadway. Taxis may get some carve-outs for loading and unloading disabled people, but usually, even taxis are supposed to pull over before stopping for a passenger.
Wouldn't it be safer for the bikers and people exiting on the bike lane side of the car if the bike lane was blocked?
No. Cars entering the bike lane is dangerous. Bicycles being encouraged to enter the car lane to avoid the car illegally blocking it is dangerous.
The car stopping in car lane, far enough from the bike lane that its doors won't enter it, and letting the passengers out into the road, is by far the safest. Yes, that means now-pedestrians end up crossing the bike lane. That's a lot better than a car. They move slower, and more predictably, while simultaneously not blocking it for long enough that anyone is motivated to deke (my spellchecker doesn't like that? Is that a word outside Canada?) out into traffic.
It's a canadian term from hockey, derived from decoy. I'm mildly-but-darkly amused at the notion of a cyclist needing to fake out a car trying to check them though :)
Waymo consistently stops in No Stopping zones.
That works for taxis but not for deliveries.
Delivery drivers should find parking. They should be fined heavily for parking in traffic, including bike lanes.
That’s not even close to how dense cities work. Even if you have street parking, it’s often saturated, this is like saying delivery drivers should just deliver in the middle of the night or something. Or really should go with small delivery drones.
Or delivery drivers should ride bikes. And larger deliveries should be scheduled around low traffic times, or else the city should reserve parking for delivery trucks.
In dense cities deliveries to front doors shouldn't be done by cars, yes. They take up too much space and cause too much inconvenience. For dense-deliveries (e.g. mail) park legally and walk some sort of cart along the sidewalk for blocks. For sparse-deliveries (e.g. food) ebikes work great. For medium density (e.g. puroloator) cargo-ebikes at least greatly increase the number of out of the way spots you can park.
Larger scale deliveries (e.g. to malls, grocery store, factories) should have a privately owned off-road, built into the structure place for trucks to park and drop things off. Though things like factories often simply don't belong in the dense part of the city.
This is pretty idealistic. What winds up happening around me is the amazon guy parks their car in the middle of the road AND also has a cart to hit multiple houses at the same time in that region. Furniture deliveries or even moving trucks can block our street for 30 minutes at a time. It is almost as bad as garbage day (ya, you aren't getting through our street on Tuesday morning if you time it wrong).
This would all be solved if we just had delivery parking spaces and got rid of on street parking for everyone else. Really, just that part is just where everything falls apart quickly. This is why traffic seems so much better in Europe (at least where I've lived, like in Switzerland), deliveries work, cars are not parked on the street except at a few very expensive parking spaces.
I was basically describing how most deliveries happen where I live. Not all, and we could do with forcing the remainder to less disruptive means, but the significant majority.
> if we just had delivery parking spaces and got rid of on street parking for everyone else.
The complaint I keep seeing is one of public subsidy. So you're suggesting we subsidize deliveries but not general parking? (To be clear I think it's all just anti-car absurdity.)
Of course merely repurposing a few spots to "commercial deliveries only" every few blocks would probably work. I've seen that done in a few places. I think it comes down to a planning and administration failure.
I am claiming we should subsidize short term drop off/pick up use of limited street front space (not just deliveries, but ride share/taxi pickup/dropoff also) rather than waste it on someone parking their car for 72 hours because they can't be bothered to pay for a parking space.
But ya, if you want to roll back car use, you can do that fastest by restricting free parking. Your community better be prepared for that with adequate public transit investments. Better to just roll back free parking slowly while ramping up public transit investments, but America always messes it up one way or the other.
I'd actually agree that they ought to deliver in the middle of the night but indeed that's just not how the world currently works. Far worse than bike lanes I've regularly seen large box trucks driven up onto particularly wide stretches of sidewalk in areas with skyscrapers. Law enforcement doesn't seem to care, presumably because how else are they supposed to get packages to where they need to be?
NYC used to (or still?) enforced strictly parking violations by delivery companies. But they did it so evenly the companies just considered it a cost of doing business, and raised their rates accordingly. Not violating the law and still being in the business wasn’t an option, so no competitor could undercut the other by following the rules and not paying the fine.
Sounds like a scenario where something other than fines should be applied. Revoke plates fleetwide, tow any delivery trucks caught on the street with a mandatory 72 hour minimum impound time, with no access to the contents of the vehicle. And so on.
I don't think NYC wanted to basically ban the delivery companies like that, then the public would complain, so it was convenient fiction to have them fined and pass on the costs. Again, this is more of a "you can't do that but we don't have an actual solution so do it anyways" situation, not a "we aren't enforcing our rules strictly enough" problem.
If Amazon then started marking packages as delayed with a video of the truck being towed I imagine the voters would quickly "fix" the enforcement "problem" in the delivery companies' favor.
And then bicyclists will hit the people crossing to the side walk.
Bicycles have bells and brakes, you know. And cycling commuters have eyes to see opening car doors. It's also more difficult to use your phone on a bike and Japan has new laws regarding that.
I’m definitely aware they have bells. Evidence for breaks is much thinner on the ground.
One question the city probably can't answer is what disabled persons in the taxi are supposed to do. If you strictly enforce bike lanes the result is probably the rider needing to walk a few blocks. If the rider is disabled, that could actually be a huge burden. Since I've got an 80+ year old disabled parent with a walker this is an issue for me that does compete pretty aggressively with my support for bikes.
First of all, the walk would rarely be more than half a block. Bike lanes go down a small number of streets, so one can usually unload on an intersecting street. Not ideal, but ...
... bike lanes are not the only thing that creates this issue. Any road that lacks parking, with or without bike lanes, will have the same problem. Even when there is parking, all of the parking spots may be occupied. In both cases, people may have to walk a few blocks. While they may be grouchy about the lack of (sufficient) parking, you don't see many people blaming motorists for placing a burden on the elderly.
Finally, it is always possible to make accommodations. Having a carve-out for loading and unloading taxis will do far more for safety of everybody than letting people stop anywhere in bike lanes. It is also possible to have exceptions for people with disabilities, as long as non-disabled people don't abuse it.
Designated drop off points with disabled person priority is the answer. How do you dropp off a disabled person in a lane with clogged street side paking? Shouldn't you be against street side parking by the same logic?
> Designated drop off points with disabled person priority is the answer.
You have to actually put those drop off points on every street corner, though, and is the lowest priority for city planners, and gets rolled out at a glacial pace over decades--while disabled people have needs today. Having been forced to confront how well designed our infrastructure is for disabled access and put it to the test, I can tell you that a lot of existing ADA infrastructure can best be described as "performative" and a lot of it is entirely missing.
Would that be like LA where all the on street parking near UCLA is taken up by Luxury vehicles with handicapped placards?
Drop off/pickup points are the answer, disabled drop off/pickup might be redundant but could make sense in certain high capacity situations.
The car can stop in the car lane to drop off. Especially with a disabled person on board. Is that not legal in your city?
In the UK (which the article seems to be about, although it keeps talking about other cities too), it depends on the specific road markings. If it's a solid white line between the bike line and the road, absolutely no vehicles are allowed into the cycle line except bikes. If it's a dashed line, they can enter it as long as it's not being used by cyclists.
In general though, special affordances for parking and dropping off disabled passengers is only given to those with a blue badge. AFAIK in general taxis carrying disabled passengers without a blue badge have no more rights than any other vehicle. Only companies that specifically care for disabled passengers can get their own company blue-badge rather than relying on their passengers having one.
Right, but in general, what is a car driver supposed to do when he needs to stop and unload (anything) in a place where there isn't a special provision for that? Here in Slovakia they can stop in the car lane, blocking it, as long as that's not explicitly forbidden by a sign there.
Because we also have streets with a car lane and a bike lane with a solid line where it's forbidden for any other vehicle to enter or stop there, so of course I had to explain to a few drivers what are the rules they should alrady know and follow.
It depends on the road markings and signage. In general double yellow lines mean no waiting or parking, but there is generally a special exemption for loading/unloading or letting passengers in or out. However, there is frequently additional signage that will restrict hours when loading is permissible, or state no loading.
Double yellow lines (waiting / parking) are different to bike lines however. If a bike line is separated from the road by a solid white lines, motorised vehicles are forbidden from entering at all. If you want to load/unload or drop off passengers, you need to do that somewhere else. If the highways agency considered it safe for vehicles to block the cycle route in that place, they'd use dashed lines instead.
> The problem isn’t really enforcement
The problem is street-side parking.
Street side parking is fine. You can move the parking out a few feet and put the bike lane between the ordering and curb. Works well where I've seen it.
> Street side parking is fine
It’s a massive subsidy that takes up space. If you have the space to move it and still permit e.g. delivery trucks from blocking the road, great. Many cities don’t have that space and yet cede it to parking.
Nothing's stopping you from charging for street parking. If it's a subsidy, that's a political decision, not an inherent flaw in street parking.
Charging for street parking is a good step, but American neighborhoods still don’t have great transit and most people still have cars even if they are living in a house/apartment without parking. We aren’t like Japan where car owners have to prove that they have ample parking for their cars.
I would guess that there are very few houses and apartments without parking in the US.
You would be very wrong, but I live in Seattle so my experience differs from yours. Definitely here in Ballard I’d say 50% of the residents are parking on the street.
(statistically, you are probably right if you are talking about the entire population of America, but we are really only concerned with a few dense cities and parking minimums have been on the out for a couple of decades now)
I believe Stroup showed a long time ago that the best solution is to price parking so that there is an average of one empty parking spot per block.
I agree with you in priniciple but cities no longer have the money to enforce this and everyone knows it. What they do have is the ability to demand that Waymo give them video of every stop and use AI to detect if it obeyed the laws.
I've had waymo drop me off in dangerous no-stopping zones with red painted curbs. I've had waymo pick wait for me to get in blocking apartment complex garage entrances. I've seen waymo pass 10 cars in the right lane waiting to turn right and then at the last moment make an illegal right turn left of the right turning cars.
I like the idea of Waymo but they need to fix their shit, no excuses.
Witting tickets is revenue positive, “they don’t have the money” doesn’t make any sense
You’d think so but apparently that’s not the case
https://qz.com/15-u-s-cities-making-the-most-money-from-park...
Per discussions elsewhere on the internet about this story, it appears that “the letter of the law” in London, where is article is about, is that all drivers are allowed to enter the bike lane to drop off passengers.
As much as I might disagree with that, it’s crazy to expect Waymo to obey a law that doesn’t even exist.
This is not the case. As you just read in the article:
https://highwaycode.org.uk/rule-140/
> Cycle lanes. These are shown by road markings and signs. You MUST NOT drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a solid white line during its times of operation. Do not drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a broken white line unless it is unavoidable. You MUST NOT park in any cycle lane whilst waiting restrictions apply. Law: Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984: Sections 5 & 8
Here's a cycle lane with a broken white line: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5159626,-0.1020373,3a,75y,17...
You shouldn't enter, stop or park here unless it is "unavoidable". You're a taxi driver dropping off a passenger? That's not "unavoidable".
Here's a cycle lane with an unbroken line: https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5162184,-0.1047894,3a,75y,15...
The latter, no you CAN'T enter it to drop people off, no matter who you are. It is literally illegal to do so.
You've quoted the rules which forbid parking and driving in the bike lane and then went on to confidently make up the part about stopping and dropping people off.
In UK highway terminology, you're "driving" in the bike lane if your vehicle enters it.
If that was the case they wouldn't need to forbid "parking" since it would not be possible to "park" without "driving" first.
It's explicitly legal for cabs to drop off passengers cycle lanes in London https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/walking-and-cycling-changes-o...
Let's get this straight.
There are the general laws - the highway code. Transport for London has made special exceptions for black cabs (which are one kind of taxi), and for private hire vehicles (a different kind of taxi - this is what Uber, Lyft and Waymo are), in London.
The GP said "all drivers are allowed" - no, they are not. You're saying it's "legal for cabs" - yes it is.
- No cars can drive along a cycle lane.
- A normal car cannot enter, stop, wait or park in a cycle lane with an unbroken line, per the highway code.
- A normal car can enter a cycle lane with a broken line and may be able to stop, wait or park in it depending on the restrictions posted at the side of the road.
- Black cabs and PHVs in London can, and in fact have to pull over to the kerb to pick-up and drop-off, including into cycle lanes with an unbroken line. They can even do this on double-red lines, which mean "no stopping at any time" to everyone else. But they cannot do it for any longer than to pick-up and drop-off. They cannot wait or park there.
They can also pick-up and drop-off in some bus stops (which again, is an offence for normal cars). The main difference between black cabs and PHVs is that black cabs can drive in bus lanes, enter taxi ranks, and be hailed from the street, while PHVs can't.
https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/taxis-and-private-hire/parking-i...
You cannot stop in a cycle lane to drop people off without first driving into the cycle lane.
That is technically correct but not how the language works.
"Advisory and mandatory cycle lanes, marked by a painted line, can be entered into by taxis and PHVs for pick-up and drop-off at the kerb edge"
You are allowed to drop off people in a lot of places you aren't allowed to drive or park.
The driving is the part before and after the stopping, which is the parking.
I commuted by bike 70 miles a week for a few years. Bike line obstruction was far down my list of concerns, behind: drivers looking at phones while driving, drivers looking at phones while stopped, drivers running stop signs without even noticing (probably looking at phone), driver speeding, cars belching smoke, etc.
In Tokyo many bicycle lanes are pretty useless for this reason. Cars are parking every 20m making them absolutely inaccessible. Then there is the bicycle lane between Asakusa and Ueno, which is separated from the street, but made like some sort of obstacle course. There are some good ones too though. Pretty random.
Hmm the problem is many cities don’t treat bike lanes for exclusive bike use. It’s “suggestive” at best. Though I don’t know enough about SF rules to weigh in on this specific issue.
At times I dont know if I prefer a car blocking the lane than someone parked next to it and surprising me with a door that opens into the lane. For SF people: the bike lane next to the panhandle going west for example.
Tickets are a discouragement. But physical barriers actually work.
> 1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic
Yes, they should do that. The fact that others don't follow it is completely irrelevant.
I'm sorry if it doesn't help them meet their quarterly targets, but I don't think it's unreasonable for a Company to follow the fucking law when it comes to human safety.
And if they can't, they should be dissolved and the directors prosecuted.
If they truly can't grow without compromising people's safety and breaking the laws put in place to prevent them, then they shouldn't exist. End of.
> The fact that others don't follow it is completely irrelevant.
This shouldn't even be a discussion. Because someone kills a person, everyone else now needs to kill someone otherwise it breaks expectations? Madness...
The fact that both our comments are being downvoted is dumb.
Over the last year, the vibe on site has become... concerning.
Yeah, it's always leaned right wing capitalist. That's fine by itself—I like the contrast to my own views at times. I'm a lefty—very left compared to US "left"—but still have some right wing economic sympathies at times and in certain areas. There's actual discussion to be had there!
But recently it seems like this site has gone off the fucking deep end in delusion when it comes to everything. The misogyny and transphobia has started becoming less and less hidden too. This is the first time I've logged in here in over a month, and I've seen my comments today getting flagged for arguing against a person saying that bicyclists have more fatalities on the road—just asking them to cite a fucking source.
What you are saying is not controversial. You're not crazy. This site is just full of fucking idiots who haven't realised they're the next serfs in the reality they're bringing about.
Waymo and other taxi services are inherently bad for cyclists compared to increasing transit utilization and providing more ways to walk and cycle that feel and are safe.
They’re even bad for drivers as they are more detrimental to traffic than personal car ownership. They take up space on the road even when they aren’t being used to transport anyone.
I think we should spend less time worrying about ride share policy and spend more time working on the root cause of the need to drive so often.
Achieving this goal is not something that necessitates giving up single family homes, or suburbs, or small towns, or the ability to own a personal car, or anything like that.
Being around a Waymo makes me feel WAY safer than being around a human driver. If more cars were replaced, I would probably bike even more.
Seriously, Waymos follow at a respectful distance and overtake me safely. They stop at stop signs. Sometimes they even stop and wait for me to make a decision about which way I'm heading.
It's not "human driver versus waymo driver," it's "car versus no car" or "10 cars versus 2 cars" or "fast cars versus slow cars."
No, it's the human driver vs the Waymo. I'm not going to entertain fantasies where all the cars magically disappear from the road; there's no political will for that and no politician is dumb enough to try.
To be perfectly clear, the difference between an empty road and a Waymo is mostly academic if you're on a bike. The Waymo is just that good at respecting space.
I’m not talking about cars magically disappear from the road, I’m specifically talking about taxis and rideshares versus using another way to get around, which even includes personal car ownership.
Studies have shown repeatedly that rideshares lower transit usage and don’t reduce personal car ownership.
Improving transit and allowing Google to blow $100B on making cars drive themselves are not mutually exclusive.
In the US, in particular, last mile transportation is mostly done by car. Transit cannot economically serve low-density suburbs.
In a city? It depends on price versus convenience. As more and more cars drive themselves, the city can get away with taking back more and more space for transit and cyclists. People should choose mass transit because it's convenient, not because there's no way to call a car.
> Waymo and other taxi services are inherently bad for cyclists compared to increasing transit utilization
Anecdote: I take transit way more in San Francisco with Waymo. Because booking is deterministic (it says 20 minutes, it will be there in 20 minutes, even if it’s a short ride), I can connect with the loose network of city and regional rail systems in a way that was tedious with human drivers.
(I lived in New York for 10 years, and eagerly take the subway there.)
Which, again, is a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity.
> a band-aid to bad regional transit connectivity
Maybe. American suburbs are already spread out. It doesn’t make sense to run subways to every corner the way we do in urban centers. Doing last mile with shared transport—versus cars which park idle for most of the day around train stations—makes sense.
Did I say we should run subways to every corner?
Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg
Meanwhile, Arlington, Texas has over 200,000 people with no bus system.
And before you say “oh it’s Europe it’s old” I will point out that the Netherlands had a huge car dependency problem in the mid-century and deliberately moved away from it during/after the oil crisis.
You can see multiple single family home developments that would be right at home in a US suburb in this video. The author even reaches a rural farm without a car.
What about if American transit authorities just did basic stuff like work together and perform actual regional planning rather than working in silos and having conflicts with each other?
For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders.
Instead, they’re forced to do things like sell $100 World Cup train tickets because they haven’t been empowered to reap the rewards of the economic development they enable.
> For example, there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority. They should be the same agency that works toward a comprehensive regional transit system focused on the metropolitan area rather than arbitrary state borders.
This is something that I found pretty bizarre visiting the US. The transport is _so_ regionalised. San Francisco has a separate bus system to South San Francisco (which is as far as I can see just a suburb for practical purposes), for instance.
It doesn't generally make sense to split transport authorities strictly across administrative geographical lines, particularly where the administrative regions are small. For instance, London basically gets away with TFL occupying the same general geographic area as Greater London, but only because Greater London is _vast_. If you tried this with Dublin, it would never work, because the Dublin City administrative area is tiny (Dublin Bus operates in _seven_ local authorities, and its commuter rail lines all cross at least three).
> Here’s a nice video about how small suburbs and even farms don’t need to involve deep car dependence
I’ll watch in detail-thank you.
An important caveat, though, and it’s not about age but density. The Netherlands ex Amsterdam has just under 1,400 people per square mile. That’s still denser than every single U.S. state. (New Jersey and Rhode Island are the only two that break 1,000, and only the former if we exclude each state’s largest city.) The tenth-densest state, Pennsylvania, is still almost 5x less dense than the Netherlands, and again, I’m doing this for the Netherlands ex Amsterdam.
We can absolutely build more transit in our metropolitan centers. But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe.
> there’s zero reason why NJ transit should be a different agency than NYC’s transit authority
Same reason the Dutch and German authorities are separate.
I'm not sure why you would compare states to cities?
And while The Netherlands as a country is dense, the cities are not, partially due to the massive amount of urban sprawl that The Netherlands has (compared to other European countries).
Amsterdam has a density of just under 5,000 people per square kilometer. That is way less than New York City, and less than any of the Burroughs except Staten Island. Manhattan comes in at 28,000, so over 5 times more. Amsterdam Metropole has only 950 people per square kilometer.
NYC, San Francisco and Boston are massively more dense than Amsterdam. Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami are about the same. Washington D.C. and LA are only slightly less dense.
> But the layout of America, in part driven by history, in part by our embrace of car culture, forces fundamentally different transport optima than almost anywhere in Western Europe.
It’s worth pointing out here that,
1. Again, this is an ongoing choice and not an inevitability.
2. A large amount of America was built during the railroad era and a lot of urban fabric was actually just removed/demolished and could be replaced. A lot of it sits empty waiting to be rehabilitated (and to many cities’ credit, a lot of it has been rehabilitated).
3. When you watch the video you’ll see it’s not all about density, it’s also about road and street design. It’s about making spaces that feel safe to exist in as a pedestrian or cyclist. Many suburban Americans don’t actually travel that far to get around, they just can’t get places without getting in a car (e.g., a typical big box store area is a dense shopping area just like a typical high street but traversing it on foot is hostile).
To add, The Netherlands in the 1970s was going full-on towards suburbanization and urban sprawl. Even today it has one of the lowest amounts of apartments in Europe and the most urban sprawl. So if they didn't go for bicycles, it would have been America 2.0. Just look at Ireland.
In other countries bicycles aren't really needed because you can just walk everywhere.
We live in the real would and have to work with what actually exists. I'd love it if my city had Tokyo's rail system, but it doesn't, and won't.
We actually don’t have to work with what exists. We actively chose and continue to choose what exists. Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change.
Here’s a nice video about how rural towns can be configured to not be car dependent:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ztpcWUqVpIg
You’ll notice that this isn’t some ancient European pre-automobile city stuff, you’ll see many single family home tract houses in the suburbs and small towns of the Netherlands that would be at home in any American suburb. The Netherlands did struggle with post-war car-oriented development that it has successfully pushed back against.
If you live in Arlington, Texas, you live in a city of over 200,000 people that doesn’t even have bus service.
> We actually don’t have to work with what exists.
Sure we do, by definition.
We can work to change things, sure. But for many places in the US (especially established cities) this is a monumental effort. For example, I live in San Francisco. I wish we had more subways. Our bus system isn't bad, and they've converted/added many bus-only lanes over the past several years, but buses are still at the mercy of traffic (as well as traffic lights). Our light rail has large above-ground portions, some of which has to deal with traffic, some not (but all have to deal with stop signs and traffic lights).
I live a block away from 3rd Street, where the T line runs up and down the eastern side of the city. However, nearly all of it is above-ground. There's an express bus that runs between where I live and Market street, similar to the T's path. The bus is usually significantly faster than the train. If the train was entirely underground, I'd expect it to be as fast as the express bus (at the very least, it would be more consistent than the bus).
How would I, personally, go about changing this? You say "we" actively choose, but what is "we"? I don't have control or even influence over the collective consciousness. I feel entirely powerless to change the status quo. Even if I could get the ball rolling on this, it would likely be 15+ years before the project is completed. Will I even be living here then? I'm not sure.
From your comment, it sounds like your suggestion might be to move to a small town, and work to change things there, where it might be easier for individuals to make a difference. While that's not completely unreasonable... I don't want to live in a small town in a rural area. I grew up in suburbs and semi-rural areas, and while I had a perfectly fine childhood, I much prefer an urban environment. Yes, I'm restricting my options this way, and perhaps missing opportunities to live in a place where I can change things. But I have a finite amount of time left in my life, and I need to be selective in how I spend it.
> Every day new land is developed that perpetuates these choices. Every day we decide to keep things the same or implement change
This is a great argument. Retrofitting America is one discussion. But building new developments such that they don't require a car–at least within themselves–should be doable.
I still think it’s worth observing the Netherlands as an example because they also had mid-century car-oriented development that they successfully retrofitted.
And of course, also, this doesn’t mean “nobody owns a car in the Netherlands.”
Do you have a good source on that retrofit?
Personal cars also take up space on the road when they aren't being used. It would be much easier to build physically separated, safe biking lanes and drop off areas if we could use all the space we currently dedicate exclusively to personal vehicle parking on public streets.
Not usually, and not in the same way. They are usually parked in a parking spot or garage.
Taxis and Waymos stop in areas that are explicitly marked not to stop or park.
Taxis (and Uber etc) also take up space on the road when they only have their driver and no fare paying passenger on board, so I don't see that a Waymo is any worse than that.
Both human-driven and robo-driven taxis are financially incentivised to spend as much time as possible carrying fare paying passengers and as little as possible driving empty to pick someone up.
Anyway, I agree that walking, cycling, and public transit, are all IMHO preferable to any form of taxi.
>> Waymo and other taxi services are inherently bad for cyclists compared to increasing transit utilisation and providing more ways to walk and cycle that feel and are safe.
This is nonsense. Even in places with great public transport a lot of people own cars because taxi's and Uber's are unreliable or unavailable. Given Waymo should be available at any time of day and not pick + choose rides as randomly a lot of car owners should be able to give them up.
Studies have proven over and over that rideshare/taxi is bad for traffic, reduces transit utilization, and doesn't reduce personal car ownership.
Example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00678-z#Sec8
>>Cities that want to keep cars out of bike lanes should keep all cars out of them, autonomous or not, by ticketing them. But they don't, so taxis and delivery drivers stop in them. That's traffic enforcement's fault.
So to flip it around.....it's not Waymo's fault that they stop in bike lanes, but the fault of traffic enforcement? Is anyone forcing waymos to stop in bike lanes?
Many cities would stop functioning if everyone followed traffic laws — the whole system is built around drivers ignoring many rules. Businesses need deliveries to be unloaded and delivered. Customers need to get where they are going. And many cities do not actually leave space for loading and unloading.
There’s a related issue that will become apparent as more cars drive themselves and take responsibility for their actions: speed limits. If traffic engineers want cars to drive 75mph, they should set a speed limit of 75mph.
Yes, but I hope we can both agree that if Waymo stops where it's not allowed, it's waymo's fault, not anyone elses, and definitely not the fault of traffic enforcement or lack of.
Like you said - if traffic engineers wanted people to stop there they wouldn't have made it a bike lane.
> Yes, but I hope we can both agree that if Waymo stops where it's not allowed, it's waymo's fault, not anyone elses
I don’t really agree, at least not in a broad sense. If Waymo refused to stop and circled the block many times instead, and if Amazon trucks did the same thing, and taxis and such did the same thing, and the big trucks that deliver restaurant supplies did the same thing, etc, then bikes would be able to use their lanes freely but no one else would get much done.
We live in a world where many useful things require people to break rules. Is it the fault of the rule breakers or of the rules?
The rule breakers are responsible for breaking the rules. I thought that's a very simple uncontroversial statement.
You're comparing the actions of individuals with the actions of a for-profit company. These are not compatible.
The expectations are that if you are driving for profit then you are held to a higher standard. Waymo wants to publicly excuse it's way out of this expectation for their own convenience. The way any common sociopath or selfish child would.
Slow down and stop breaking things.
> 1) Be the only ones to follow the letter of the law, break a lot of people's expectations, and catch backlash for disrupting traffic.
Plenty of drives dont use bike lanes. So, no, this is false issue. Waymo can simply act like literal majority of the drivers.
...I don't know why you think that a majority of drivers respect bike lanes. They don't. Nearly every driver has parked a car in a bike lane at some point. At least in the US it's uncontroversial - the bike lanes tend to be so poorly designed and thought out that it's much easier for cars to use them than cyclists.
I think majority respect them, because I drive bike in a city that is not exactly friendly to that. The situation is, some people break into them regularly, most dont.
Humans are flawed and need punishment to correct their behaviour. Waymos are autonomous and can have their behaviour corrected with a software update. These are not the same.
It can't be so uneven. The other drivers will react irrationally if only a few cars obey those rules. Try doing your own drop offs in the car lane, when there's a bike late there, with traffic behind you. They'll often react dangerously.
Dang maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to drive then
But AI apologists told me that we should allow driverless cars because they are safer...
Go to any city with driverless service and ask cyclists how they feel about Waymo vs humans.
Or just keep hating on AI. Why let the truth stop you from having a good time?
Share the road.
It works both ways.
It does not work both ways.
One party to this is a high-inertia, potentially high-velocity metal box that, in an impact with the other party, typically results in an property insurance claim.
The other is a low-inertia flesh bag that, in an impact with the other party, results in a medical insurance claim, and possibly a funeral.
All the more reason to be aware of who you’re sharing the road with.
I spent a decade cycling for commute in a capital city in Australia. I’m also a tradesman, so I’m well aware that some people actually work on the road.
By being a pedestrian or cyclist, you’re literally in other people’s workplace.
Delivery drivers, construction workers, breakdown services, road maintenance, electricians, crane operators, cars for hire, emergency services, light rail operators.
As a pedestrian or cyclists, or motorbike rider, you’re particularly vulnerable.
Sometimes you need to get out of the way.
Share the road.
Working on the road does not give you priority on the roads. If anything, if you’re making money off it, maybe you should be more mindful of the commons you’re using for your profession.
Didn’t your mumma teach you to share.
Didn’t yours teach you to put some more thought into how you engage with other people?
> By being a pedestrian or cyclist, you’re literally in other people’s workplace.
Are you actually serious right now? If I'm walking/cycling to work, which I usually am, then what? Is your job more important than mine? How can you possibly tell where I work or where I'm going? Ridiculous.
That's why a lot of these signs are being replaced with "cyclists use full lane".
It’s a bike lane not a road. It’s mine as a cyclist gtfo.
I agree with your analysis but I just want to point out that, as a general rule, cyclists do not follow traffic laws. They don't stop at stop signs/red lights. They weave in and out of traffic. They often bike the wrong way down one-way bike paths.
Drivers generally don't follow traffic laws. They text on their phone while they drive. They routinely go over the speed limit. They go through red lights. They go into or park in bike lanes. They tailgate other drivers. They don't signal before turning or changing lanes.
Drivers generally follow the rules. It's considered bad form when they don't, and they're occasionally ticketed. This doesn't apply to bikers. No one even expects them to follow the rules.
I'm not anti-bike. I bike a bit and I got hit by a car last year. Some crackhead turned left across the opposite lane right into me.
I'm just reporting what I see -- bikers do not generally follow the rules, and I find this interesting. Maybe they're being rational. Or maybe they're not. Either way it's interesting.
> Drivers generally follow the rules.
No, they don't. They break the rules all the goddamn time. Have you ever been on an American freeway? Most people are going above the speed limit, myself included.
Do you think most drivers give the legally required amount of space in front of their car while driving, especially on the freeway? It's not even close. Do people signal for the legally required amount of time before changing lanes? Again, not close for most drivers.
> I'm just reporting what I see
What you're actually experiencing is that you implicitly accept the status quo of certain rules being ignored for driving, because driving itself is more common (both for you and in general). But biking is different, it's more obscure, so the rule breaking stands out more.
This is very typical of cultures anywhere that driving is more common than biking, which is...well, most places really.
I feel like this is personal for you and you can't discuss it objectively.
Drivers are...not great. But as a general rule they follow the laws (albeit with frequent lapses). Cyclists do not follow the rules to the point where no one expects them to. It's genuinely weird for me to imagine a cyclist stopping at a stop sign.
I bike for 90% of my traveling. The examples you give for when cars break the rules vs what bikes do is telling. Yes, everyone breaks the rules, but cars (mostly) do it in safe and predictable manners. Most urban cyclists(including me tbh) break rules in very unsafe ways. Bikes routinely completely ignore stop signs even when there are cars waiting. The ignore red lights which cars never do. They swerve around in traffic, they ride on the sidewalk. Many refuse to use lights when biking at night. Urban biking behavior in the US is on average much more reckless than driving behavior.
Cars are more dangerous due to size and speed but if we’re just talking about who acts more recklessly and ignores more rules it’s easily bikes, at least in Chicago.
> Yes, everyone breaks the rules, but cars (mostly) do it in safe and predictable manners.
???
How is texting while driving safe? How is going over the speed limit safe? How is driving too close to other cars to stop in time safe?
Going over the speed limit is not even close to as reckless as completely ignoring stoplights which I see bikes do every day. I see bikers texting weekly even though you need 2 hands to confidently steer a bicycle. Drivers texting is dangerous because theyre controlling heavy machinery, but at least you only need one hand to steer a car in an emergency. A significant portion of bicyclists seem to have a death wish which I can only say for maybe 10% of drivers at most.
I know more people who have gotten tickets for running stop signs on their bikes than in cars (even though getting hit by a car at 10mph is much more dangerous to a pedestrian than a bike!). Hopefully Newsom listens to reason and gives up veto-ing commense sense traffic laws next cycle
Well, if you genuinely find it interesting, I can explain why they don't:
1. Cyclists live and die by inertia. Getting up to speed on a bike requires a lot of effort and every application of brakes erases that spent effort, which feels really bad.
In a car, it doesn't matter — you stop and accelerate with exactly the same trivial effort of pressing a pedal.
So all the grandstanding that cars stop at stop signs (since when, but ok), and cyclists don't is like bragging that you beat a disabled person in a 100m sprint. Good job, I guess.
2. Stop signs and traffic lights are made for cars, because of their speed, how dangerous they are, and how bad their visibility is. Cyclists are like pedestrians in that they do not need traffic lights, they can navigate just fine with just body language.
Telling whether running a red light would be safe in a car is essentially impossible, you're going too fast and can't see much, can't hear anything either. But on a bike you have perfect visibility, there's no box of metal all around you. You can hear quite well too.
Stop signs are an even better example. Literally the only reason for their use instead of yield signs is that the visibility at the intersection is bad enough that you need to stop to be able to yield. But that is only the case because your visibility is so bad in the first place.
Stop signs literally never make sense for bikes — there's no "hood", so your head is basically where the vehicle starts and you can lean forward to make that literally true if really needed, and you've got perfect visibility all around, no blind spots.
Hence why in a lot of places cyclists can legally treat red lights like stop signs and stop signs like yield signs.
I regularly see more motorists run red lights in a given day than I have seen cyclists run red lights in a decade. Cycling is sufficiently common in my area to state outright that, proportionally speaking, more motorists run red lights than cyclists.
The same thing can be said for cyclists weaving in and out of traffic, and for good reason: if traffic is moving, it's a good way to kill yourself; if traffic is not moving, there is no need for it. (There is usually enough space on the right to pass. If there isn't enough space on the right to pass, it is unsafe.)
I have seen more motorists barrel the wrong way down a one way street, in reverse, than I have seen cyclists riding down one way streets the wrong way. Proportionally speaking, more cyclists may be breaking the law. In terms of safety, what motorists are doing is far more dangerous.
As for stop signs: other cyclists tend to get the hint when I stop at them on my bike. :) The ones who don't stop tend to do the same as motorists, by doing a "rolling stop". Doing anything less would be a good way to get killed.
So no, I don't agree that cyclists do not follow traffic laws as a general rule. In many cases, motorists are worse. I am not going to pretend that cyclists are better for altruistic reasons. The reality is that cyclists are much more vulnerable than motorists. Cars are made to handle collisions, bikes are not. Motorists pay more attention to cars than bikes, in the most part because other cars are more dangerous to them.
First, in many states cyclists explicitly do not have to stop at stop signs, it’s called an “Idaho stop” and it’s legal in my state. This is much safer for cyclists since most crashes occur in intersections and allowing cyclists to move thru faster is much much safer.
You’re also assuming equity of consequence. Someone not obeying the law on a bike is significantly different than not obeying the law when operating a multi-ton vehicle.
Finally, every single group of people breaks the law. There is no demographic of reasonable size that does not break the law. This argument is silly and pointless. What is your goal with pointing this out? Literally everyone breaks the law, this grandstanding is stupid.
Have you tried driving the speed limit recently? You know, the maximum speed you are legally allowed to drive? Do you always come to a full stop at every stop sign?
Cars don't follow traffic laws. Cars roll through stop signs and run red lights. Cars speed and weave through traffic. They go the wrong way down one-way streets. Since cars are much bigger, this is much more dangerous.
That seems irrelevant, we’re talking about cars.
Also, of course bikers don’t follow car rules. Those rules are nonsensical for cyclists.
Bikes are largely supposed to follow the same rules, with a handful of exceptions.
We’re talking about bike lanes, it seemed completely relevant to me?
How is that when car drivers decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when bicycle drivers decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone on the street, car or not), it's somehow A-ok?
How come that when people handling uranium decide the rules are nonsensical it's bad, but when people handling bananas decide the rules (that, please note, apply to everyone with radioactive materials), it's somehow A-ok?
When I go to buy banana I always bring my Geiger counter. I also aways get kicked out of the supermarket, I wonder what they're trying to cover up...
Hmm well, we have some "smart traffic lights" where I live that are always red unless a vehicle goes over a metal detecting loop under the road in front of them. Guess how well that works for any vehicle that's not a car.
Rules of the road are generally designed in the same way — for cars. Nobody cares about carving out obvious exceptions for bikes, like the Idaho stop.
In the US, bikes == cars. They are required to follow the same rules. I don’t find them nonsensical.
I used to agree with that (as a pedestrian and driver only), but as I've started cycling, I've begun to realize that many rules of the road, intended for cars, just don't make much sense for bicycles.
Like what? I hear people claim that not stopping at STOP sign is somehow making it safer than stopping but when asked about the mechanism of the safety in such a maneuver they either disappear or proclaim that Idaho where this is allowed is in top half of safest states for cyclists so it must work somehow.
I cycle myself and see no rules that somehow don't make sense for bikes. In fact, since bikes are much less maneuverable and much more vulnerable, they need to obey all the rules that are there to protect the cars from other cars with more vigilance than cars.
I didn't say anything about safety; I said "don't make much sense".
Fully stopping at a stop sign just isn't necessary for bicycles. And forcing bicycles to stop can create inefficient or even unsafe situations. It takes a bit longer for a bicycle to stop and start again than for a car, and requiring cyclists to fully stop will absolutely destroy throughput at a stop sign. On top of that, cars lining up behind bicycles at a stop sign can get impatient and try to go around the cyclist (I've seen this happen); this actually is a safety issue.
(Now, I've seen cyclists blow through stop signs and traffic lights without even slowing down. I'm not saying that's ok.)
> In fact, since bikes are much less maneuverable and much more vulnerable, they need to obey all the rules that are there to protect the cars from other cars with more vigilance than cars.
I don't think this statement is obviously true. Cars and bicycles are very different types of vehicles, and there's no reason to believe that every car-related safety rule has the same safety-related effect when applied to a bicycle.
No road rule is necessary for anyone, all of them are for safety only.
>It takes a bit longer for a bicycle to stop and start again than for a car, and requiring cyclists to fully stop will absolutely destroy throughput at a stop sign.
Having cyclist colliding with each other or other cars in the intersection will improve throughput? Do you ride a bike or drive at all? Stop signs are not just some Big Government ploy to annoy you. Stop signs allow two traffic streams to cross each other without collisions. Without stop sings and people stopping at them you would get cars colliding all the time.
I live in California so YMMV depending on the laws where you live and the temperament of drivers.
If I do a "proper" stop at a stop sign (0mph, place foot on ground, fortunately I don't clip in), cars will see me stopping and try to blast thru the stop sign when it isn't their turn. So I end up stopping while the first car goes thru the intersection, and while I'm getting resituated on the pedals a second car enters instead of waiting their turn, making my situation more dangerous.
One nice law we have in California is that the "walk" sign applies to pedestrians and bikes. This gives me a chance to assert myself in the intersection before the car across from me tries to sneak in a left turn. It also protects me from cars trying to turn across the bike lane.
You described cars violating rules, but what is your remedy for that, not to stop? How is it going to help with the cars blowing their stops?
Yes, slow down to 2-5 mph but not coming to a complete stops solves this problem. I usually try to time it so that I slow down alongside a car and we can run the stop sign at the same speed.
If you assert your right to use the road, cars won't try to take advantage of your size/acceleration as much, especially if you have another car run interference for you.
YMMV if you live somewhere where it's common for cars to actually stop at a stop sign.
This sounds like a survivorship bias, you imagine that people who blow stops won't do that if you don't stop but, people who did the same on a bike and were t-boned by a car might not be in a good condition to post about their experience anymore.
Anyways, even if you are 100% right and not stopping at stop on a bike will prevent people blowing stop completely (and people who have the right of way will also yield to your bike because they will see you 100%) how is it safer than to stop and proceed when there is no traffic across?
Behavior by cyclists certainly has a bias towards survivorship. Every other vehicle on the road represents a potentially lethal threat at any time.
Inadequate dedicated infrastructure for cyclists leads to behavior like "Idaho stops" that look counterintuitive to drivers, but improves safety for cyclists at intersections.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop
You did not read the thread did you? I have asked how is this supposed to improve safety, this is what is this thread about.
>how is it safer than to stop and proceed when there is no traffic across?
Generally, on a bike you want to be predictable. If you do something weird, like not going when it's your turn, you're increasing your risk. And in many situations if you wait for there to be no cars at a stop sign, you're going to end up holding up cars behind you and be on the receiving end of road rage, or drivers behaving recklessly to get around you. Plus you may be waiting literally hours for all the traffic to dissipate, and I prefer to be home before sunset because riding at night introduces other safety issues.
Anecdotally I've never felt at risk of being t-boned when doing an Idaho stop, but it happens regularly when I do a complete stop (in part because it's unpredictable - drivers don't come to a complete stop at the line so they misbehave and don't know how to respond when they see a cyclist stop).
Beyond my anecdata, there's plenty of more rigorous studies showing the benefits of the Idaho stop.
>Generally, on a bike you want to be predictable. If you do something weird, like not going when it's your turn, you're increasing your risk.
Absolutely agree. As same as going when it's not your turn. But, first and foremost, you should not be going across a moving vehicle. Even another bike. Just falling off your bike can cause pretty serious trauma. Why do this?
>Plus you may be waiting literally hours for all the traffic to dissipate, and I prefer to be home before sunset because riding at night introduces other safety issues.
I don't know where in California you live that nobody stops at the stop signs, but I lived in LA and cars generally stop at those. You literally need to wait few seconds for the cars to to stop and proceed in most cities in the US.
>Anecdotally I've never felt at risk of being t-boned when doing an Idaho stop, but it happens regularly when I do a complete stop (in part because it's unpredictable - drivers don't come to a complete stop at the line so they misbehave and don't know how to respond when they see a cyclist stop).
I know that feeling. Like people riding against traffic feel safer because they see approaching cars yet regularly get t-boned by the cars not expecting anything coming at them against traffic.
>Beyond my anecdata, there's plenty of more rigorous studies showing the benefits of the Idaho stop
Like what? I tried to search again and found this [1] apparently Idaho is not even in top half of the states in cyclist safety (or "friendliness" whatever that means).
1. https://bikeleague.org/bfa/states/state-report-cards/
Yes, it absolutely helps, because when the cyclist doesn't stop, the driver doesn't get as impatient, and won't try to get around and blow by the cyclist.
I've seen people blowing stops with zero bikes stopped at the intersection, people blow stops regardless if there is a bike present and its state of motion. With bikes not being able to break as fast as cars and not having side airbags you might want to consider what's going to happen when you enter the intersection in front of such a driver before finding that empirically.
Idaho stops are legal for cyclists in some form in a dozen states.
There are tons of cycling specific laws that are separate or different from cars.
It's weird to have the same rules when there are several orders of magnitude difference in manueverability, maximum damage possible, and visibility between the two modes. Imagine if pedestrians had to follow all the same rules as cars. Or everyone in an electric wheelchair. It wouldn't make sense.
I think the point is they have to follow the rules of the road because they are allowed in the road. Pedestrians, wheelchairs, etc can go on the sidewalk and be safe from traffic (one hopes).
Though it depends on the state and in my experience there are typically some differences, such as bikes are required to share the lane.
Everyone using the road following the same set of rules makes their actions more predictable and thus safer (in theory)
In Washington State, they're required to follow most car rules when in a lane, but not all (i.e. all stop signs are yield for cyclists). They also have a set of rules allowing for sidewalk usage when mounted; when dismounted, they follow pedestrian rules (obviously).
Yet cyclists rarely kill others. Car drivers on the other hand are one of the most prolific unnatural causes of death.
As a general rule, the the frequency illusion[1] and the negativity bias[2] are a thing and combined make shallow, single-datapoint arguments like yours instantly invalid.
[1]: "The frequency illusion is a cognitive bias in which a person notices a specific concept, word, or product more frequently after recently becoming aware of it."
[2]: "The negativity bias, is a cognitive bias that human cognition is relatively more affected by a negative affect than an equally potent positive affect."
Seems like something else worth working on.
You should see scooterists then. Especially those on the scooter sharing networks.
I won't comment on the pick up / drop off situation, but another important scenario is right turns. In California, drivers are legally required to merge into the bike lane when making a right turn. This is for the safety of the bicyclists, to avoid the dreaded "right hook" collision.
Dylan Taylor, a beloved Menlo-Atherton High School football coach, was killed last year in one of these collisions:
https://www.almanacnews.com/atherton/2025/05/08/m-a-athletic...
(Scroll down to the comment by "T R" which describes better than the article itself what likely happened.)
Unfortunately, I've almost never seen a driver follow this law. Everyone studiously avoids the bike lane and then cuts across it.
The bike lane marker changes from a solid white stripe to a dashed line as you approach an intersection. This is supposed to be a hint to merge into the bike lane. It isn't working.
I post a reminder on Nextdoor once or twice a year about this. I'm taking the opportunity to also post it here for my California neighbors.
It would be interesting to see if the Waymo Driver follows this law. My bet is that it does.
The San Francisco Bike Coalition has an excellent page on this topic:
https://sfbike.org/news/bike-lanes-and-right-turns/
Bike lane or not, the majority of drivers make illegal right turns.
If you're in SF, watch on Gough or Franklin that people don't pull in the far right or left lane to make a turn, they illegally turn from one lane over. Literally 9 of 10 cars do this.
It happens all over. My guess is they don't perceive it as a right lane because 100-200 feet back there were cars parked in it but it's clearly marked as a lane and the law makes it clearly illegal to make right turn if you're not in the right lane.
There's lots of other less illegal? but dangerous things 95% of drivers do. 2 left turn lanes, curved line drawn through intersection to guide the lanes. 95% of cars in the 2nd left turn lane cut the guide line effectively cutting off the people in the #1 left turn lane.
In the nearest fairly large city, there's a (sometimes separated) bike lane, a bus lane, traffic lane, and turning lane which all intersect to various degrees. It's all clear as mud especially after dark when both bicycles and pedestrians are frequently darting into traffic from behind cars without lights. I'm just surprised there aren't more accidents.
As soon as I saw that headline I knew it had to be on Middlefield... lo and behold. I've been aalmost hit there twice and actually hit there once. once with a car taking a left. another with a car taking a right
I don’t live there, but for what it’s worth, this seems to be followed fairly consistently in the San Diego area whenever I’ve visited.
People will do this to cut past people stopped at the light, but yes: at least in non-SF Bay Area, they will right hook unless otherwise compelled to put their car over the line. Some areas have started making those lanes dashed-striped but adherence is pitiful and enforcement is zero.
huh i didn't know about a specific bike lane law. but i do know the law that right turns must be taken as "close as practicable" to the right side of the roadway. plus there's the hint of the dashed line. Sneaking into the extra space to the right isn't a shortcut -- it's required by law, ie even without a bike lane.
in california, which is where the incident in TFA occurred.
And when you do that, (most) cyclists behind you get angry. (Most) cyclists are rude and act like they own the road.
> (Most) cyclists are rude and act like they own the road.
I would bet you an arbitrary sum of money that 51% of cyclists are not rude and don't act like they own the road. (Same for drivers.)
https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/salience-bias
Given the sheer amount of cyclist who think that cars should be banned with no consideration for anything else, I think that this is a common observation.
Where I live, the pro-cyclist mayor (whose husband owns a bike rental shop, by pure coincidence) closed a road for cars without consultation, now the firemen along with residents are protesting because emergency and delivery vehicles can't access a large part of the city (car parked can't get out!). This is the average behavior you can expect from militant cyclists, from my experience.
The pro cyclist mayor in the city I live in didn’t do that. I guess our personal anecdotes cancel out.
Which town is this? I find it hard to believe that the mayor did not add an exception for emergency and commercial vehicles.
Riga. Of course, all of the cyclist absolutely LOVE it, and now want to remove cobblestones, which could lead to a removal of the city from the UNESCO World Heritage list. But they don't care.
You can see a picture of the genius arrangement here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HGpgA1pXEAEuFLn?format=jpg&name=...
Based on the photo, it looks like it’s pretty easily rectified by emergency bollards that can be lifted / lowered by emergency crews, though those may be expensive to procure.
Yes, but why wait and do the things the right way when you can just block a street with concrete and call it a "modal filter"?
Waymo didn’t “say” this. Or at least the article this article references doesn’t claim they did.
It’s a now third-hand paraphrase from an SF bike advocate who says he heard it from some unnamed representative of Waymo.
If someone has something more direct, happy to read it, since this seems to be clickbait napalm at the moment.
Thank you! I've seen this all over the place the last few days. It's clickbait from a cycling group and very few people have actually bothered to read it.
Well we have to take whatever scraps of info we can get from these secretive PR managed companies with huge public impact.
Putting words in their mouths makes it harder to get the actual statements, which seems counter to getting actual information about (or from) these companies.
As a cyclist and a driver it’s not immediately apparent which Waymo behavior I prefer for passenger dropoffs/pickups.
While it’s annoying in the moment to pedal around a parked car, I’m fine with it. However, having a Waymo dropping off clear of the bike lane sounds good, until the exiting passenger accidentally doors a cyclist who isn’t prepared for that possibility.
I suppose I’d rather suffer the inconvenience of going around a parked car than risk the devastation of being doored.
One thing we should be happy about: Waymo's next gen Zeekr cars have sliding doors, eliminating the traditional risk of dooring. Passengers might still jump out without paying attention, but my expectation is that they'll be more cautious than opening the door; cyclists will have more forewarning than an opening door; and even if they do get hit, it will be a less catastrophic accident if a collision does occur. (The tradeoff, as there are always tradeoffs, is that the passenger having more skin in the game means that they'll likely be physically hit more often.)
You can get doored on either side of the car, and when you are forced to pass, you have to enter the traffic lane, which pressures you to maintain speed.
Whereas in the bike lane, you can slow down a bit anticipating that a door may open.
Waymo does at least warn the occupants if there's a vehicle or bicycle approaching.
It is well known that by stopping, the cyclist will burn and be consumed in flammes in mere seconds.
Cyclists, other than motorists (1) build that momentum up with their legmuscles and (2) speed is required for stability on two-wheeled vehicles, meaning stopping with a bicycle is more exhausting and annoying than, say with a car.
I am not saying stopping isn't the right option in many situations, what I am saying is that a good bicycle infrastructure is planned in a way that understands that a person on a bicycle having to stop is not the same as a person in a car having to stop (unless you use a car where you have to pedal with your legs).
Building traffic infrastructure in a way that avoids (potentially dangerous and thus costly to society) conflicts between different participants should be a no-brainer. It is not secret knowledge how to do that, you just put a barrier and space inbetween each mode of transportation: Road, curbstone up, small pedestrian platform, curbstone down, bicycle path, curbstone up, actual pedestrian area. This way the waymo can stop on the road, where cars belong, guests can exit safely and without pressure into a pedestrian area and have s curb-shaped reminder they enter a bicycle path when they cross over. Additionally both pedestrians and motorists can be reasonably sure cyclists won't suffenly cross over into their domain.
Why is this not the norm? One of the main reasons is space. In most existing infrastructure this would likely mean one or two car lanes have to get either narrower or be sacrificed. It would also mean taking bicycling (and other vehicles using that infrastructure) as a mode of transportation seriously, which a certain group of people appears to be deeply allergic to. You know, the type of person who nearly commits vehicular manslaughter and then does as if the cyclist had it coming by merely existing.
In the end everybody would profit from better infrastructure, especially since good bicycle infrastructure is also usable for children and older people. And that is the test good bicycle infrastructure needs to pass: Would you send your 9 year old kid down that path. If not, than it has been done incorrectly at the cost of cyclists.
Yes, cycling is a sport. Should we also flatten hills as they have the inconvenience of requiring to push harder on pedals?
If the physical aspect of cycling (involving stopping for taxis, pregnant women, children, or distracted pedestrian plebs) is too hard, solutions exist: public transports, walking, or electric bikes (whose riders seem equally annoyed to slow down, for some reason).
The problem with "building infrastructure" is that plebs' money is not infinite, so public works to please the high lords of the pedal may not be possible.
Space is also not infinite in cities, so you can't change the infra without sacrificing other users, be they pedestrians, delivery vehicles, or car users.
Last, cycling is mostly for a specific type of people, who are alone, fit and with a small cargo. It excludes older and younger ones, disabled plebs, and families. Those people are better served with quality public transport - which could be improved with the money used to make costly bicycle road arrangements. Public transport is also always convenient, not just when it's sunny. I live in a city with temperatures under 0 celsius for 4 months of the year, including some days at -20. I'm glad I can use my car in winter to take my children to school. Apparently, other cyclists seem to think the same since no one uses a bike in winter (the new urban equestrian class seems a bit shy when it's cold?).
Helsinki is a city I like, because while there are mostly non-invasive bike lanes on large arteries, it's easy to go around by car and by walk. The secret is that the public transport system is top-notch, so a pregnant woman can use it to go to the maternity ward - something that you can't do by cycling (but who is stupid enough to have kids nowadays in city centers, right?).
> The problem with "building infrastructure" is that plebs' money is not infinite, so public works to please the high lords of the pedal may not be possible.
That was my point, thanks for making it: There is money for building and maintaining 6 lanes of sophisticated road surface that needs to withstand trucks¹ we surely have the money to replace part of it with a cheaper to maintain bicycle path that sees next to no road wear aside from weather effects. I'd argue that we cannot afford to not have bicycle infrastructure.
You appear to be propping up public transportation against cycling, when in reality they are a match made in heaven. Why not both?
¹: weight factors into road wear by power of four. Double weight equals 16 times the road wear
Why should cyclists be inconvenienced by taxis? They have just as much right to get to their destination.
Because taxis and cyclists are road users like others, car drivers also have to stop if a taxi has to drop off someone as long as it's quick. Same with buses, also. Or trams.
It's the same with pedestrians : if an old person walks on a small sidewalk, I will stop or slow down. Or if I see two guys carrying a washing machine.
As a pedestrian, I don't see cyclists stopping often when they ride on the sidewalk, though.
How often do you see two guys carrying a washing machine?
It depends how lively/busy the street is, but in towns like Paris, every day I would have to accommodate fellow pedestrians unloading trucks or doing deliveries in the street. The macha lattes doesn't appear magically in your favorite coffee shop.
Going around a parked car is not merely an inconvenience, it introduces an extra risk of being hit from behind (obviously you should check over your shoulder before moving into the lane, but this is the imperfect real world, and even the act of checking over your shoulder is a small risk) or by a vehicle pulling out of a cross street which didn't see you through the stopped car.
However I agree that there isn't an obvious solution without making major improvements to infrastructure - right now where the bike lane is just paint everyone parks in it (Uber, taxis, delivery drivers, etc.).
It's also possible to use a feature that is present on the bikes, even if rarely or never used by urban cyclists: braking and waiting for the passenger to drop off, before continuing for your destination.
Something car drivers and pedestrians do, usually.
Not in my city. Taxis and ride shares tell you to get out on the right hand side so that you don’t get swept by cars passing you on the left.
Also often difficult to tell as a bicyclist how long that car will be sitting there. Sometimes it’s a delivery or pickup or something inane that will have you looking like a doofus for waiting.
No. Going around a parked car is a basic ability you need to have as a cyclist.
If you can't do that safely, then you have no business riding in the first place.
Looking behind you is not optional, as you seem to suggest it is. And if it is actually a "small risk", then you are going way too fast.
Again -- if you don't have the environmental awareness to go around a parked car, then you shouldn't be riding a bicycle in the first place. Full stop.
This comment assumes a high mix of cars and bikes in an environment of unseparated traffic.
With literal decades of near daily bike riding behind me I've rarely had to maneuver a bike or a car around a parked car in regular (not US) traffic flow.
It doesn't matter how often you have to do it. It's still a basic ability you need to possess.
And yes, my own experience comes from Manhattan, where that's something pretty much everyone has to do on a daily basis. You've got double-parking everywhere.
But even if you don't need to often (lucky you), the idea that this is somehow something unusually unsafe just doesn't hold any water. If it's unsafe for you, you have no business being on the road. You are a danger to others if you are unable to look behind you when changing lanes.
I agree here that it can depend on the infrastructure which option is better. But one way to look at it is that if a car is parked in the bike lane then the bike will be in the car lane == more risk for the bike. The bike is also at risk for being doored from either side when passing the taxi.
The best option would actually be to have some indicators on the taxi which shows which doors are "hot" and expected to open. A taxi with closed doors is always a huge risk and will always need to be passed outside the dooring range.
> While it’s annoying in the moment to pedal around a parked car, I’m fine with it.
Personally, I'm fine with it too. Problem is, a lot of motorists are not fine with that. Whether I get stuck on the road because the bike lane is curb separated or because there is an excessive number of cars parked in the bike lane, motorists start screaming at me. A few months back, I had one aggressively pass me. I checked to ensure the road was clear before entering it, the only way they could have passed me in that manner is if they accelerated (i.e. they created an issue out of something that shouldn't have impacted them).
The sense of entitlement of some motorists is dangerous. They are willing to behave in a manner that puts people's lives at risk.
Just had someone speed up and blow a stop sign on a right turn in a residential area (known for being walkable with young children) to cut in front of me my bike to make sure they wouldn’t have to wait for me to pass them at the stop sign. Full-sized SUV whose grill was at my chest height. Fairly routine and simultaneously completely unhinged behavior.
I also enjoy playing chicken on runs with the SUVs in another rather entitled urban neighborhood where if they begin accelerating into the intersection after a rolling stop while I’m still in the crosswalk (to “anticipate” me getting across the road and save 2-5 seconds), I’ll simply stop running and force them to actually come to a complete stop.
> having a Waymo dropping off clear of the bike lane sounds good, until the exiting passenger accidentally doors a cyclist who isn’t prepared for that possibility.
Note that Waymos will alert you if a cyclist is approaching so you don't door them. Not saying it's perfect, you can still open the door if you want, but they are very consistent about this.
Except for the example in the article where the warning failed and an exiting passenger doored a cyclist resulting in brain injury.
For a Waymo unloading passengers, it seems like stopping and waiting would be safest?
Even if you go around the parked car, you still risk getting doored on the other side.
this is a pointer to https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/04/22/waymo-is-not-in-the-v...
In San Francisco, the vehicles often pull into bike lanes to pick up and drop off passengers — because that’s what they’re programmed to do, according to advocates who’ve asked the company for an explanation.
Waymo has told advocates that expecting it to respect bike lanes is “too high a bar” because customers expect to be dropped off in them, said Christopher White, executive director of the San Francisco Bike Coalition.
“People always point out that unlike human driven cars, the AVs stop at lights and obey the speed limit. However, they are really only as good and effective and safe as they are programmed to be,” White said. “Waymos pull over into bike lanes all the time for pickups and drop-offs and that’s neither legal nor safe but the companies say that is a normal practice and that’s what customers expect.”
Can't find a Waymo article about this, but Lyft and Uber (let alone trad taxis) also do this. I'm not sure that this is a particularly autonomous-car-shaped sin.
I think the main context of the article is that this is in London though, where the rule is that you don't do that, and Waymo somehow seem to think that it should be OK anyways:
> The Google-owned company, which officially launched its self-driving fleet in London earlier this month, has told cycling campaigners that it is “normal practice” for their taxis to veer into and block cycle lanes
> According to the Highway Code, motorists “must not drive or park in a cycle lane marked by a solid white line during its times of operation” or block a bike lane marked by a broken white line “unless it is unavoidable”.
Better would be for Waymo to adapt themselves to the locale and instead program it to find safer pickup/dropoff points, rather than blocking and endangering bike traffic.
Yes but if you read the article closely, what it's saying is that Waymo, which launched in London earlier this month, told cycling campaigners in San Francisco that it is normal practice (and this is according to the campaigners, not a direct statement from Waymo). The article has a lot of useful information and context, but the headline framing is misleading IMO. The article at least does not suggest any data on whether this is actually happening in London. The closest it gets is "remains to be seen":
> “Waymo claims they’re far safer in the US than traditional taxi services. But whether that is still the case on London’s infamously complex, congested and contested streets, remains to be seen.”
It says that you are allowed to drop off passengers in bike lanes.
"Advisory and mandatory cycle lanes, marked by a painted line, can be entered into by taxis and PHVs for pick-up and drop-off at the kerb edge"
https://haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk/walking-and-cycling-changes-o...
"it's too hard" should never be an excuse to break the law
The argument is that "our customers expect this behavior because everyone else does it." Not that they tried to change it and failed.
This is as unacceptable as telling people in wheelchairs “you don’t matter, our other customers prefer a bathroom you can’t fit in.”
Well, there are a lot of non-ADA-compliant bathrooms out there, for one reason or another. But that's up to inspectors to enforce. If they're letting it slide in human-built businesses then AI-built businesses will hew to that.
It's also a lot different with a permanent installation that is verified once than this kind of tragedy-of-the-commons temporary minor abuse of public space.
The ADA is enforced by lawsuits — not inspectors — exactly because businesses can’t be trusted to follow the rules that most of their customers don’t like.
I mean, if it comes to a lawsuit, sure, but the system is designed so that permitting and inspectors catch most of it. If you're trying to build your bathroom under the radar without a permit that's an entirely different analogy.
But either way, it is the responsibility of the regulatory body to enforce. As other people have noted, this is not a Waymo problem, they're just following the status quo.
Again… it most definitely is a Waymo problem.
Exactly the case with the ADA. Since GOOGL is responsible for Waymo behavior, they will be liable in a class action suit where they willfully violated the law, putting others in danger, in selling their product.
There is not any way around it. You can avoid this issue like Lyft does, by having divers make that decision and by them being not worth suing, but GOOGL is worth suing, and you can’t intentionally violate the law and put folks in danger without it giving you massive amounts of liability.
Maybe, or, as we saw with ridesharing already, maybe they will change the laws. When push comes to shove, I don't believe there is enough will to overturn current practices to preserve the sanctity of the bike lane at the expense of car traffic.
huh? I work in construction (electrical drafter) and I've been called out for my installs not being ADA (after the designer gave me a non-ADA compliant design).
The difference is that Uber/Lyft use external contractors who are liable for their driving. Waymo is directly liable for the driving as they directly own and operate the cars and the driver.
Seems like a mistake. I wonder if they could farm out liability to homeless people under a financially engineered IC contract 'leasing' a locked down car or similar financial vehicle.
> the vehicles often pull into bike lanes to pick up and drop off passengers
FWIW after ~150 Waymo rides I don't think I've had a car pick me up or drop me off in a bike lane. This must depend highly on exactly where you ride to/from.
> Can't find a Waymo article about this, but Lyft and Uber (let alone trad taxis) also do this. I'm not sure that this is a particularly autonomous-car-shaped sin.
Yeah I think it'd probably actually be easier to prevent Waymo from doing this. Once you change the programming, they all stop doing it.
What that means is that Waymo is intentionally choosing illegal behavior, at a corporate level. Uber/Lyft are merely turning a blind eye to the illegal behavior of their employees... er, "contractors".
> Can't find a Waymo article about this, but Lyft and Uber (let alone trad taxis) also do this. I'm not sure that this is a particularly autonomous-car-shaped sin.
It depends on expectations. If the pitch is (and, let's face it - it is) that automs will be less violent, then this is a problem. If we're OK with them just adopting the existing levels of misery and death visited upon our communities by cars, then the upside is far less than we've been sold.
I want to hear how you equate "misery and death" with "unloading a passenger in the bike lane for 30 seconds".
I can't tell if you intend this a real analogy or if you are overcome with rage when thinking about motor vehicles
Pulling into the bike lane for 30 seconds causes bikers to have to unsafely pull around the car, possibly causing accidents. In some cities and lanes you may be endangering dozens of bikers during the 30 seconds.
I had to commute by foot for two years into a city, and I have to say I understand the rage. Cars nearly killed me a dozen times and I was always more safe than the law required of me as a pedestrian. Most drivers don’t understand their power with today’s massive cars.
>Pulling into the bike lane for 30 seconds causes bikers to have to unsafely pull around the car
Or, hear me out, they could stop if passing the car is unsafe.
Victim blaming right there. They have as right to the lane, cars don’t.
Cars in London apparently have a right to pull over to drop and pick up passengers.
> Waymos pull over into bike lanes all the time for pickups and drop-offs and that’s neither legal nor safe.
While perhaps drop-offs are often relatively quick (though perhaps more risky; see the dooring accident description in the article), I'm also really annoyed by Waymos waiting and blocking for pick-ups, which can be multiple minutes.
I could give you dozens of examples of 30 seconds in a bike lane leading to cyclist life altering injuries and deaths.
Cars pulling into cycling lanes injure and kill cyclists. Simple as.
> I want to hear how you equate "misery and death" with "unloading a passenger in the bike lane for 30 seconds".
I didn't say that.
I'm saying that the toll of traffic violence is unacceptable - tens of thousands of unanticipated and often gruesome fatalities, along with much larger numbers of injuries and traumatic experiences. So we look to autonomous vehicles to be better-behaved - particularly in terms of speed and attention, but also in the little things, like lawful/traditional engagement with lanes for smaller conveyances.
I'm an avid cyclist and I kinda hate bike lanes; I don't blame cars for not knowing how to treat them. I much prefer either a shared lane with a slow pace or a totally separated trail for bikes.
But at the end of the day, the standard for autonomous vehicles isn't parity with the negligence and aggression that cars currently foist upon society, it's much higher.
How do you know it’s “violent?” It might not technically be allowed but that doesn’t mean they’re doing it unsafely.
There’s quite a difference between violent and illegal and they shouldn’t be confused.
A) I see no evidence this is creating death or misery. Autonomous still seems safer.
B) even if in this one aspect they remain status quo, overall it would still be an improvement.
The source article describes an incident where a cyclist was seriously injured after Waymo's cyclist detection system failed while it was parked in a bike lane, allowing the passenger to hit her with the door. I don't think this represents some terrible sin where Waymo executives should all go to prison, but I do think we can reasonably expect and if necessary demand that Waymo take action to prevent similar incidents in the future.
If the cyclist was doored by an exiting passenger, would t that imply it should further block the bike lane to increase safety as it is not safe for a bike to pass while a passenger is exiting? If the car door opening is what injuries the cyclist it wasn't really in the bike line very far.
It’s easy to skew perception with anecdotes when you don’t include anecdotes about the accepted status who.
What I’m hearing is that the system that creates a higher safety bar failed and the result was the same as you’d get with a human driver. It’s fun to lie with anecdotes when you don’t include stories and statistics of uber passengers dooring bicyclists. See how easy it is to draw the wrong conclusion?
It’s a big enough problem that personal injury industry actively seeks plaintiffs because there’s so many:
https://www.personalinjurysandiego.org/practice-areas/ridesh...
https://saslawgroup.com/hit-by-an-uber-pedestrian-and-cyclis...
https://www.bicyclelaw.com/about-bicycle-accidents-involving...
From the last one:
> As ride share vehicles have skyrocketed in popularity, we are increasingly seeing bicycle crashes involving ride share vehicles
The conclusion itself is biased and wrong claiming that uber lacks the markings of cabs without actually presenting any evidence that cabs are involved in fewer such incidents per passenger driven. They’re also doing the same thing you’re doing but at least it’s likely a website by cab drivers looking to actively paint Uber in a bad light. Oh, and Waymo taxis are actually branded clearly as taxis thus by that argument already they outperform ride shares.
> Waymo's cyclist detection system failed
I did a quick search on this, but was nothing but PR articles about how they lower cyclist/pedestrian collisions. Are you suggesting the Waymo car sees oncoming cyclists and somehow prevents the rider from opening the door? This would be interesting in how it could be done. Does it indicate in any way that the door will not be able to be opened until the cyclist clears, or is the rider left wondering why the damn car won't let them out?
From my experience, a tiny alarm sounds, a voice says cyclist approaching and the door clicks to locked. At least I believe it did, I heard a sound. I didn't check the handle.
I don't believe the car was specifically in a bike lane at this time but I'm new to the city and may have missed the markings.
It sees oncoming cyclists but only warns the passengers inside via visual cue on the displays and an audible cue through the speakers. Apparently external cues to the cyclist are also given that a door may open (blinking lights?)?
https://waymo.com/community/articles/advocacy-meets-innovati...
In general, Waymo keeps track of all nearby vehicles and pedestrians and shows them on the car's nav system. I've been in one before when it detected a cyclist coming from behind, and it gave clear warnings both audibly and visually, although I don't know whether it actually locked the door.
>allowing the passenger to hit her with the door.
the bar is absurdly high if we're blaming the car manufacturer for mistakes human make after the car stops
Cars are violence now.
What next?
We can keep autonomous cars out of bike lanes like we keep normal drivers, keep fining them for every incident. It’s not like they don’t keep the video evidence.
Are you proposing or saying this is how it already works? Because in my experience, it doesn’t work like this at all. The countries that have good bike infrastructure like the Netherlands seem to focus on actual physical separation. They do fines also, they just don’t rely on fines (and lawsuits) like Americans seem to.
Do they get 1 point per infraction and have license suspend after so many points?(like human rivers)? If so, it'd be rather quick for the full fleet suspension.
And base the fines on the companies valuation, otherwise it'll just be written off as an operating expense. Normal fines and penalty points work as deterrents for everyday people, not multi-billion dollar companies. I also would not count on the availability of video evidence - see Tesla's withholding of evidence from investigators and courts.
https://electrek.co/2025/08/04/tesla-withheld-data-lied-misd...
If I was struck by an autonomous vehicle while riding in the bike lane I would sue and sue like I was taking aim at a corporation rather than an individual driver. I -or my partner, assuming I died- would retire very early on that money.
I'm not sure how this works in the UK, but over here in the Netherlands we have cyclists everywhere and a lot less drama. Here it's OK to stop on a bike lane and to merge onto it when turning right, but not to park on it. Merging means you give way to bikes first, then drive between them. And the other way around, if the bike lane is blocked, bikes merge into the car lane and cars drive behind them.
Consider it a two lane road, where you give way when you merge into the other lane and you slow down behind slower traffic that's in your lane. Except that when both lanes are available each type of traffic prefers "their" lane due to the speed difference.
That speed difference is decreasing in the bigger cities recently. Ebikes drive 25 km/h and many shared streets are reducing from 50 to 30 km/h for cars. It probably helps that a lot of the bigger streets aren't shared, there are many separated bike lanes here.
The “cars stopping in random places everywhere in any remotely urban area” thing has become a huge problem in general. It’s probably our clearest sign of the fundamental scalability problems of car-centric design.
Assuming we can’t significantly reduce car usage (and noting that you can still prioritize bike/pedestrian-friendliness and assume this), we really need regular car equivalents to bus stops. For Waymo or human rideshare drivers, or just non-transactional human families, say, dropping grandma off at a brunch restaurant. And significant fines + license points for anyone who stops anywhere outside them, like they do now, once established. The idea is no different than frequent trash cans and significant littering fines, really.
(I’m just spitballing here and am open to being wrong, just putting the idea out there as someone who’s noticed how much worse driving in cities has become over time.)
In France, especially in Paris, you have large "delivery" parking places where you are allowed to stop but not to park.
Unfortunately, with the rise of bike lanes, those spots are not quite dangerous, as the delivery person has to cross the lane to access the sidewalk and bicycles refuse to slow down, as usual.
I can't wait to carry a set of orange cones on me at all times so that I can put any misbehaving autonomous cars in Road Jail. After all, expecting cyclists not to resort to vigilantism to keep themselves safe from billion-dollar companies is unrealistic.
That, and wear a sweater with a stop sign on it.
Are you going to cone the Uber drivers too?
If only Uber drivers parked in the bike lanes were as easy to pacify.
Seems easier to just toss a sheet over the roof camera. (Or spraypaint it, since both the sheet and cones are trivial for someone to come along and remove.)
I'm going to put an orange cone on the back seat of my bicycle.
I don't really see this as a Waymo story(although they are a bad actor) because this kind of blockage is mostly a combination of urban design, infrastructure and norms. Traffic is experienced individually as "that guy cut me off" or "you parked in the bike lane" or "stop riding on the sidewalk" but the accidents and delays are about the times when two people both end up taking the same risk at a conflict point. Those are things that have to be addressed long before the incident, and some countries have done so, while others have not and prefer to displace it onto "individual responsibility", which doesn't change how people drive, it just favors being the biggest on the road and relying on insurance to cover the rest.
The principal thing that changes in this story is that Waymo centralizes the responsibility for the risk-taking, and therefore is easier to hold accountable than a horde of interchangable gig workers, impulsive teenagers, etc. When a Waymo car actually does damage, they don't enjoy the same cost structure as the rest of us. The probability is high that they reached a utilitarian conclusion on the bike lane issue favoring their current approach as "the best across all key metrics". Those metrics can be changed by enforcement, or by fixing the streets. They can use words like "unrealistic" but they are mostly speaking within a particular legislative and infrastructural reality. That reality can change if we expect it to, but it means going back on the individual-responsibility outlook.
As a bicyclist I kinda agree with Waymo. Unless there is a strong separation (physical barrier) between the car lane and the bike lane, the rules of the road is that one always overtakes on the left; this implies that if a car is stopped, one has to overtake on the left. If the car is stopped within the bike lane, I can bike into the car lane and overtake. If the car is stopped in the car lane, well then I have to merge across two car lanes in order to overtake. I don’t stay in the bike lane because I could be doored, and my expectation is that the car could decide to drive into the bike lane to make room for overtaking traffic.
So the solution is either make it impossible for a car to drive into the bike lane through barriers, or just allow cars into the bike lanes anyways.
>respect cycle lanes is “too high a bar”
Maybe just run over cyclists & pedestrians too while you're at it because it makes the code simpler?
Kinda had it with these shitty big tech companies that feel they don't need to respect local laws when they're not convenient.
I thought the point of driverless cars is that they are supposed to be better than humans.
This should be excepted fork that goal. If this is accepted, what would be the next thing to be deemed unrealistic?
Kind of weird article. If you want cars to stay out of bike lanes, make them protected like in here in the Netherlands. But also why do people expect to be taken to a bike lane rather than a parking space?
Also seeing a lot of ignorance about cycling here in the comments. Would recommend some people to watch some Not Just Bikes videos. Building better cycle infrastructure is better for everyone, cars and cyclists included. Less people die, and cars don't have to deal with cyclists on the road. Ex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
This is basically the same argument as a drug dealer saying "we can't not sell drugs because some of our customers expect drugs".
The law is the law. Passengers should be dropped off somewhere where the car can legally pull over and let them out. The law doesn't allow any other car to stop in a bike lane to drop off passengers, why should a robo-taxi be given an exemption to do so?
We know how to keep cars out of bike lanes (curbs, barriers), and we already know that bike lanes co-located with on street parking is dangerous. We (well Americans) also don’t believe in creating pick up and drop off spots on our roads.
Otherwise, you'd be doored during passenger drop-off.
At least here in SF the ideal thing would be that any vehicle dropping off in the bike lane gets fined or ticketed. This includes Waymo, Uber, cabs, personal cars, whatever. In practice it's very rare to get a ticket for this, which is why customers expect it from both Waymo and Uber.
I think Waymo expecting people to avoid flipping Waymo cars and burning them is unrealistic.
As a bicyclist who hates cars, I'm totally fine with this. I've been riding alongside Waymos in San Francisco for seven years now, and they are the most polite and protective drivers ever. If I'm merging into traffic and I can get in front of a Waymo, it's the best feeling in the world. Waymo will see you from any direction with lasers and always yield to you. It's better they block the whole bike lane momentarily so I can pass them on the left, rather than have their passenger surprise swing their door into the bike lane.
How do other countries solve this?
I have a fuzzy memory of lanes being shared in the UK. Overlapping bike, parking, bus stops, etc. Not claiming that's better, only that's what I recall.
I don't recall what Amsterdam does, but the bike lanes were mostly separated, so I imagine they have dedicated short-term parking. They also have a good light rail system in the city, so much less need for taxis.
The uk has both, so it depends.
There is going to be more of this though.
In London you really have to force your way out at junctions. This is not legal, but without it a waymon might never make progress.
I don’t see this being solved.
It relies on human eye contact to work.
Other countries have public transit that works, such that taxis are only needed in specific situations warranting an expensive private chauffeur, autonomous or meatbag.
In Finland bike lanes are on the sidewalk and cyclists have to respect pedestrian traffic signals. Its the safest solution for everyone, in my opinion.
It really depends, in Helsinki many are on the road. Helsinki also has an excellent public transport system, meaning that taxis are not so necessary.
does it matter? we already gave cars unnecessary leeway in designing cities; should we continue bowing to the least efficient mode of transport because a technology cant actually replace thw already extravagent allowances it is afforded?
Assuming they've solved the problem, fully or partially, then of course it matters.
A simple yet almost hard to imemt solution (given the view of an outsider on most U. S. cities respect for bicycles) is to "just" provide actual, hard seperation for the bike lane.
This can done with carve outs/ gaps for public service buses, a somewhat cheap implementation are Pop-Up bikelanes but concrete barriers of 10-15 cm also do the job well.
I've taken a clumsy crack at condensing the title into HN's 80 char limit. Better alternatives are welcome!
(Submitted title was "Waymo says expecting driverless taxis to stay out of bike lanes is unrealistic", but this leaves out the reason they give.)
This statement should be grounds for immediately banning Waymo from operating. If a driver says they can’t follow traffic rules they should lose their driver’s license until they’ve proven they’re fit to drive again. I can’t think of any reason why it should be any different for autonomous systems. If they can’t follow traffic rules they shouldn’t be allowed to drive.
I wonder if cities would want to create even more short term pick up and drop off points on the road for USPS, UPS, FedEx, DoorDash, Uber, Lyft, Waymo and other similar short term parking needs, this would mean removing some long term street parking options and potentially conflict with some bike lanes in some areas.
Would cities be willing to give up on the parking fines revenue they are generating right now? How should cities be incentivized to change with the changing mobilities needs of the people living inside dense cities?
As a London cyclist I don't really mind the odd taxi / Waymo dropping off in the bike lane. It's an annoyance but I guess they have to drop off somewhere.
There's no way to judge this without looking at any particular street.
I live in a city with bike lanes. But some of them are one-lane (well, one vehicle lane, one bike lane), one-way streets. If a car or taxi or delivery vehicle or anything at all is going to pull over, it's necessarily going to be in the bike lane. (It's either that, or stop literally all traffic on the street.)
As a cyclist, I quickly stopped getting mad at it. I just, you know, go around it. Most streets don't have bike lanes. So turning into the regular lane is not a problem. Even when I drive a car, sometimes I'll have to drive around a car stopped in a regular lane. Such is life.
Obviously if Waymo is pulling over into a bike lane when there's no other place to pull over, it's fine. The highway code in the article literally says it's allowed when it is "unavoidable".
Without seeing examples of where Waymo is actually pulling over, and if there are safer alternatives it should be using instead, I can't judge whether it's misbehaving or not.
Or you know, stop somewhere else ?
OK, where?
A lot of streets simply don't have separate shoulders to pull over on. Or if they do, they're 100% occupied by on-street parking. The bike lane is effectively doing double-duty as the shoulder. Is Waymo supposed to drop you off 5 blocks away after circling for 20 minutes looking for an available parking spot, just to stop for 30 seconds to let you out?
I think this is a bigger factor for Lyft/uber where the passenger rating impacts the driver directly. Passengers are annoyed anytime their pickup isn’t directly in front of them on the street. They will down rate a driver that pulls into a legal spot farther away then a spot blocking a bike lane directly in front of them.
This is less of an issue for Waymo, because the passenger rating doesn’t mean as much except customer satisfaction with the service as a whole.
CAN you always avoid a bike lane? I don't think so. There's lots of shared bike lanes/right turn lanes, bike lanes that terminate unexpectedly, etc.
This article is about London, but it's a problem in SF too. The problem is that cities aren't made for ride sharing, robo or otherwise. If the cities actually wanted to make ride sharing less annoying they'd have designated drop off zones on streets and make an effort to build truly separate bike lanes. That requires actual work though, so very cities will proactively do this.
Why can't Waymo's sense a blind spot issue or an incoming cyclist and prevent the door from being unlocked and opened when the car comes to a stop. Just when it comes to dooring cyclists.
if this is the case, they should say “won’t” rather than “can’t”
“Waymo won’t avoid bike lanes…” would be much more accurate.
obviously the can’t part would be nonsense. they can avoid lanes where traffic flows the opposite direction so obviously they can.
to me this means we should take their license away. if they said “we won’t avoid oncoming traffic, we would take their license away. just like one way streets are for cars traveling in one direction, bike lanes are for bikes.
if you or i drove the wrong way down a one way repeatedly we would rightfully be in trouble. why do these companies keep behaving like they don’t have to follow the same rules you and i do?
This is the same Waymo that outright refuses to honor No Thru Traffic and No U-Turns signs in favor of “I was ticketed at coordinates xyz” reports. I assume eventually one’s going to get crushed by an oncoming train after willfully ignoring a No Turn On Red sign. Not only are they saying that unenforced laws are void, they’re also having people do ticketable things in order to collect enforcement data for others.
Weirdly, the U.S.-nationwide enemy behind the curtain here is AAA, the driver’s association that’s spent member fees for decades lobbying against automated ticketing systems that would force everyone, not just Waymo, to start honoring the traffic laws it avoids. How crass of Waymo to so brazenly exploit that, but certainly their argument lacks fault from a corporate non-person’s “you can’t hurt me in any way that matters” viewpoint.
Looks like busy times ahead for Cycling Mikey [0]!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyclingMikey
Why is it when they can't make software solve a problem, they then basically blame the problem.
I think the actually problem is incredibly poorly thought out cycling infrastructure. There are long stretches of cycle lanes in some cities at least where you'd need to get out a significant distance from your destination. It's not feasible for lots of reasons. If they're completely segregated it would be better for everyone.
To what extent is the data of these driverless vehicle companies available to external researchers?
I’m pretty sure to zero extent.
> I’m pretty sure to zero extent.
There is a lot, waymo gives out a bunch of data.
https://waymo.com/open/
You can see people testing it in videos like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNwCDacDE2g
Google gives out a massive amount of data from many of their parts for free, so not sure why you would think they wouldn't do so here. They don't give out all of it but large parts, they are very research friendly.
Bicycles and automobiles should not share the same roads at all.
Not an entirely unreasonable goal.
But also not present reality.
Share the road.
It works both ways.
Yes the bikes belong on the sidewalk, restricted to walking speeds for safety.
Which isn't unusual in Japan. You see bicycles sometimes trying to force themselves through swarms of people going at maybe 1 mile per hour.
This is ridiculous - passengers want to be dropped off in the zig zag lines either side of pedestrian crossing too, but that's illegal. Just because sneaky minicab drivers do it should not be justification for self driving cars - they need to be designed to obey the laws of the road.
I want Waymo to succeed but you don't do that by bending over to the passengers' whim!
People need to understand that this is a corporate-friendly variation of, “there are no incentives for us to stop that outweigh the profits we make from the harm caused, and so we won’t.” A “fuck you and fuck off”, in other words.
Asking companies nicely to stop being dickbags is never going to work. You have to regulate them - directly via new and targeted laws, or indirectly via accountability for existing laws. If Waymo started getting tickets for obstructing bike lanes every time it happened, they’d stop immediately.
This is why I’m generally in favor of citizen reward schemes like NYC does for some violations. Give citizens a slice of the fine, and you’ll both reduce bad behavior and improve civic engagement, all without creating creepy mass surveillance systems like Flock.
This is kind of silly. If you can pull over "into" a bike lane, it's a half assed bike lane. Bike lanes should be protected. If you can't, as a city, put any physical barrier between cars and bikes at all, you're really not doing anything to benefit cyclists. Splashing some green paint on a strip of road is just an excuse to pat yourself on the back and call yourself a "bike-friendly city".
Separated bike lanes. It is time.
This is absurd. Will they have per-jurisdiction settings? Because while this may not be enforced in SF, it very much is enforced in some places.
> if(scofflaw) { .. }
What the actual fuck? Customers' expectations shouldn't matter at all if the things they expect is illegal.
And this is already a solved problem.
The city I live in (Bratislava, Slovakia) has some pedestrian-only zones in the "old town", and if you're in one of them, calling an Uber/Bolt forces you to pick a pickup spot where cars can go...
(arguably this still has issues with Uber/Bolt allowing you to choose bus stops as pickup spots, which is explicitly illegal - only buses can stop on bus stops, but it's still better than driving onto a road which does not allow cars in the first place).
EDIT: i mistakenly thought this was about driving on dedicated bike paths, idk why, but this is still a solved problem, the applications already allow to designate some roads as places which can't be picked as pickup/dropoff points...
Isn't it illegal?
I'm sure they just get away with it because of the low chance of 'getting caught', getting a ticket.
But in fact the evidence is in the GPS logs, so they should be either required to stop doing something illegal, or prosecuted using that data.
Completely fair, since city buses and nearly every other vehicle does the same.
The YouTube Channel "Not Just Bikes" calls these abominations 'Painted Bicycle Gutters'. They should be completely abolished in favor of multiuse pathways.
Yeah screw them. Respect the rules of the road or GTFO.
And the AI peddlers are amazed why people seem to hate them. That right here is the answer.
This really makes me angry and more sympathetic towards the tyre extinguishers
bit of an absolutist argument in california. can't speak to the UK.
it's obviously safer (for cyclists) for taxis or even carpools to drop off and pick up at the far right, ie into the bike lane. i think we can generally consider it to be "parking" not "driving" and thus within the letter of the law as well. (parking is explicitly allowed.)
we know this very well, and that's why there are curb-separated lanes and they tried a center lane on van ness for awhile.
it just generally sucks to share bikes and cars and we have to live with compromises.
I don't believe there is a country in the world, where parking on bike lanes is explicitly allowed. Merging before turns and stops for drop/pickup/load/unload sure. But not parking.
CVC 21209.a.1
So the real statement is "Following the law is unrealistic".
Well if waymo was in my city, I will make sure I ride my bike in the middle of the lane in front of a waymo vehicle. Doing that is legal were I am.
Sharing a lane with a car is a recipe for disaster.
If there isn’t space to overtake, take the middle of the lane or get off the road. It’s 30,0000km since I was last hit by a car, it’s working for me.
People who can’t judge the width of their own vehicle are common, and they commonly buy huge vehicle.
Also, buy a bike radar like a Garmin Varia or similar. They vastly improve your awareness in traffic.
As a cyclist, I'm sure you're tolerant and polite to people walking in the middle of the multi-use paths, right? /s
For a long time I thought cyclists were hypocrites because they play the victim when they're on roads while being complete jerks on walking paths. But really, it's not hypocrisy - it's self-entitlement in both cases. It's honestly very consistent behavior.
I don't find cyclists especially obnoxious on the rail-trails I often walk on. But I have walked on rail-trails with a lot of bicycles where various people got pretty pissy because I wouldn't step off the trail every minute.
I don't understand: They get pissy, but you don't find that obnoxious?
If cyclists got off the roads every time a car comes by, that would be consistent with their expectations for walking paths.
No, I'm saying most cyclists are reasonable but I've been on crowded trails with elevation changes where they haven't been and have acted as if they had the right of way and have sometimes gotten pissy if I didn't get out of the way quickly enough.
Fucking ridiclous. Police, Waymo and everybody else need to keep out of the bike lanes. Bike lanes are vital transportarion infrastructure that if used correctly can have more threwput then car lanes by far whipe being cheaper and better in literally every way for a city.
Most of driving is being predictable to other drivers and pedestrians and cyclists. Waymos do that very well in their respective cities, and by programmed they mean the training set of drivers in that city
If waymos are dropping off in bike lanes, it’s because that’s the behavior in that city
It’s far better that the robots aren’t literal pedants. They act far smarter than a neurodivergent savant trying to do everything literally legal because being unadaptable is not intelligence
Eh. Just start removing bike lanes. They're destroying businesses and making life worse for everyone.
And yes, I have numbers. In Seattle, the business receipts from areas with bike lanes declined faster than receipts from areas nearby that do NOT have bike lanes.
Correlation shmorellation.... I bet you were going to cite studies that were showing how bike lanes improved the business and how proprietors were surprised at the percentage of customers on bikes, right?
Yep, I have friends who ran small businesses who sold in cities (Seattle, Portland, SF) specifically because of how bike lanes destroyed their business.
People who are busy need to get around quickly and aren’t going to tolerate biking around. And it’s especially impractical with kids - not that this stops bike activists from trying to gaslight everyone into saying it’s totally possible and exactly the same effort. The bikes lanes almost always either displace traffic lanes or parking, so driving gets worse. And customers realize they have better things to do and alternative choices on where they spend money.
The bike lanes themselves are of course, often very poorly utilized. So traffic gets worse, businesses suffer, and it’s all for nothing. Now all these cities have left is intentionally crippling driving with low speed limits, speed bumps, and other hostile designs. It’s a way to try and claim that driving is no faster, even though it is trivial to keep driving fast and efficient.
Expecting bike riders to follow traffic laws is also unrealistic. This is why they often have a massively higher rate of fatalities, including in localities with good bike infrastructure.
> Expecting bike riders to follow traffic laws is also unrealistic.
Can you cite the research to back up your claim? Because I have the research claiming the opposite the cyclists are more compliant with traffic rules than cars [0]. Including in US [1]
[0] https://www.bicycling.com/news/a46443761/science-proves-moto...
[1] https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/cycli...
> This is why they often have a massively higher rate of fatalities
It wouldn't perhaps be because they're (a) forced to share a space with cars and (b) cars have crumple zones, unlike cyclists?
Apart from the obvious whataboutism:
> [...] they often have a massively higher rate of fatalities
Higher than what?
> Expecting bike riders to follow traffic laws is also unrealistic. This is why they often have a massively higher rate of fatalities,
This is an unconscionable degree of victim-blaming. Psychotic-level.
Victims are not the ones running red lights, cutting across pedestrian sidewalks/pavements at 20+ mph, going down one-way-streets the wrong way, screaming at pedestrians to get out the way so they don't have to slow down when pedestrians are crossing on a green man etc etc etc.
At least in London the cyclists are absolutely lawless. Yes a lot are injured and some sadly die, but many many many totally ignore the rules (assuming they've even bothered to find out what the rules actually are).
It's only got worse with ebike hire (Lime at al) as people will hop on after drinking, or have never even got a driving license etc so have no actual idea on the rules that car drivers have to prove etc before they're let behind the wheel at all. And when they're done with their lime bike they literally just dump them wherever they're done with it, blocking sidewalks/pavements for everyone.
This antisocial cycling social-ill is very much at a "scourge" stage in London and is getting a lot of press.
As a pedestrian, I fear cyclists the most. Please do block the bike lane while I am getting in and out so cyclists won't hit me. I have been almost killed by cyclists many more times than cars. My office building hires someone with a sign to stand in the crosswalk in front of the building where cyclists almost never respect the crosswalk.
Cyclists here regularly ignore red lights and also go the wrong way on streets and even in bike lanes.
You are either very paranoid or very bad at math. The odds of a pedestrian getting killed by a cyclist are minuscule. The best data I could find making an apples-to-apples comparison showed that pedestrians are *160 times* more likely to be killed by a car than a bicyclist.
https://transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-11/collisio...
Odds are conditional though.
As a father, I think that the odds are quite high that a 3 years old child will get hit by a cyclist, especially if they ride on the sidewalk. I have had several stressful close calls with my son, and my pregnant wife was hit by a cyclist who didn't respect the red light (as it is the custom among the high lords of the road).
> I think that the odds are quite high that a 3 years old child will get hit by a cyclist
You should see the odds of a child being hit by a car! Here in the US, about 6 children a day are hit and killed by a motor vehicle. And yet the number of children hit and killed by bicycles is unavailable -- perhaps because it is close to 0?
I understand that "as a father" you may become paranoid about things that are objectively unlikely. But if you are more worried about getting killed by a bicycle than by a car -- something 160 times more likely to kill you! -- then perhaps you need to recalibrate.
Thankfully, cars don't ride on the sidewalk. Every cyclist, where I live (Latvia), rides their bike on the sidewalk. Including e-bikes that are really electric mopeds (you don't need to pedal). Will the Indian food delivery rider, late and tired after a long shift, notice my son, who jumped to scare a pigeon? Let's find out!
So, your statistics are worthless if you don't take the context into account. And even if "there is no risk" (virtually), I'm allowed to say that cyclists going at 25km/h have no business on the sidewalk where I walk at 5km/h.
Cyclists think just like car drivers, and find it totally fine, since they themselves "feel unsafe from cars who go too fast". Of course the feelings of the pedestrian plebeians don't count for the new noble equestrian and morally righteous class.
Periodic reminder to the Americans..
Self driving cars are only safer than regular cars in the US because your standards of driving are so bad.
It’s very unlikely to be the case in the UK.
You really don’t believe that software is or can become safer than human drivers?
I’m dying that the bar of being safer may be met in the US, because it is a low bar.
These kind of comments do not belong here
They absolutely do. Tech and business are sensitive to culture.
Some business just don’t translate.
Where is my factual error?
US driving is objectively appalling.
I live in the U.S.
road.cc seems to be a cycling news site primarily for U.K.
When I am driving a car or use a rideshare I expect to share the bike lane when turning or getting off.
I wish the title had included these additional words "In some situations..."
I live in the US and bike lanes are not shared lanes for turning or stopping where I live.
If you're making a right-hand turn in the US as a driver and there's a protected bike lane you're crossing through that lane to turn. And, when I sit outside in the summer at one of my usual restaurants with sidewalk seating, there are any number of horrifying combinations of bicycles, ebikes, escooters, and things that look like electric motorcycles routinely blowing through the red light at the adjacent intersection--cause they're in a bike lane I guess.
You cross through the intersection. You don't treat it like an extra lane to pass traffic on the left which some drivers like to do when there is sufficient space or no curb.
The road signage even says to get in the right lane after the bus stop where the bike lane temporarily ends.
They are where I live
Bike lanes exist to protect cyclists from drivers and to limit how cyclists affect the flow of traffic. Cars stopping in the bike lane shit all over that, just like they would if they parked on the sidewalk.
I wish drivers (and now leaders of a company) would have more empathy toward people on the road that can be squashed like a bug.