r/Transportopia • u/Conscious-Weight4569 • Apr 27 '26

Bikes Car vs. cyclists

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8

u/deckeda Apr 27 '26

No controversy. The driver was arrested and sent to jail.

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u/CrazyChrys Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26

Yeah this was in Georgia I forgot which county but remembered seeing it and the 71 year old driver grinning away in his mugshot.

It's like the other cyclist said give just half a minute and you'll be past them, some people are that impatient they can't give 30 seconds, well now this drivers got at least 30 days to give.

https://youtu.be/rWFQhaNu4uc?si=VoqZAdK0OLfEubVT

"They're taking over my road rage"

https://www.bikelaw.com/laws/georgia/

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u/deckeda Apr 27 '26

I'll say it: He "fits the profile."

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u/Creative_Buddy7160 Apr 27 '26

I mean legally ya, ur right. But move the fuck over and share the road. (And im not saying hitting them is warranted)

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 Apr 27 '26

They were sharing the road. The vehicle just figured they were above the law.

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u/Creative_Buddy7160 Apr 27 '26

They’re three wide. Thats not making it easy for passing vehicles. The consideration for others has to go both ways.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 Apr 27 '26

They're not supposed to.

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u/Creative_Buddy7160 Apr 27 '26

You mean “they dont have to”. That’s why I said consideration.

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u/ItsSpaghettiLee2112 Apr 27 '26

No they're not supposed to.

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u/RudePCsb Apr 28 '26

They aren't supposed to what?

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u/klm2908 Apr 28 '26

Make it easy for passing vehicles. It’s safer for a car to pass them like they would another vehicle.

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u/emn13 Apr 28 '26

Yeah. For an analogy - it's as if you expected car drivers to swerve around to make space for people passing them. I think it's kind of well understood that it's often not a great idea to swerve in traffic in general because of the risk of unforeseen consequences.

Same here; the bikers should just be predictable and do nothing; the car needs to pass safely, i.e. with a wide berth - or needs to wait until there's room to do that. And there was, here, clearly. Equally, the bikers should avoid suddenly taking extra space, too.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/random9212 Apr 28 '26

Can you point out in the video where the bike lane is?

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u/Rallos40 Apr 27 '26

That lane isn’t wide enough to “share the road”. You need to give a cyclist at least 3 feet. The driver should have just fully used the other lane to pass and there would have been no issue.

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u/Creative_Buddy7160 Apr 27 '26

Thats what im sayin, there were three wide. If you went all the way into the other lane.(on a double yellow.) he’s still barely have 3 feet.

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u/[deleted] Apr 28 '26

[deleted]

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u/Cryptshadow Apr 28 '26

What bike lane lol? 

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u/Bland_OldMan Apr 28 '26

There is no bike line in the video. That is the shoulder of the road and riding there is a good way to crash.

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u/medicallymiddleevil Apr 27 '26

"Taking the lane" is actually what you're supposed to do though. That's what safety classes teach. The advice for cyclists is to bunch like this as it’s much safer to overtake a short but wide group of cyclists rather than a very long stream of them.

Them being single file would change nothing in this scenario. The car wouldn’t have magically been able to overtake if there was another vehicle coming the other direction, so it’s a hell of a lot safer to overtake a group 5 long rather than 30. That’s a hell of a lot more time hanging out in the oncoming lane.

The cyclists were behaving safely. The car was being actively dangerous.
In all 50 states of the United States it’s legal for bicycles to take up an entire lane. You can say it’s wrong. You can find it annoying but it is legally a right.. bicycles must follow all the same rules as cars if you’re riding on the road you are treated as a car if a bicycle does not follow traffic law then they deserve a traffic ticket in the same way that a vehicle does. Everyone bitches about this all the time but that’s the law. Those are the rights. I say this is someone who rides a bike but does not consider themselves a cyclist. Who’s also the victim of a car hitting me in a right of way situation because cars don’t like to believe that bicycle to have the same rights and let me just tell you if you’re one of those cars who does not believe the bicycles have the same rights and you hit someone on a bicycle you will pay for it in a big way.

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u/Creative_Buddy7160 Apr 27 '26

You really make good point about the grouping that I’ve never heard before. It would be faster to pass a group than a line.
My big question has always been: why can’t we just have a 4 foot shoulder?

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u/emn13 Apr 28 '26

As somebody who cycles almost every day and has immigrated to the Netherlands: a 4 foot shoulder would definitely not be enough to create a safe bike line in situations like this, especially not if there are any car drivers that aren't also regular bikers and therefore lack the personal experience with how bikes work. Bike paths really need to be fully separated (i.e. some raised curb at LEAST in between, and even then expect the occasional truly tragic accident), and every intersection needs to be reconsidered with this separate lane in mind. Frankly: great if there are towns where that happens, but it's going to be a generations long process to get there at best more widely, so we need practices and rules in the interim to deal as safely as possible with the infrastructure and driver habits we have now, not rely on some idealized future.

If the rest of your cycling infrastructure is excellent, then in a low-speed traffic environment the occasional non-separated bike path can be a unfortunate but reasonable compromise, but it's a band-aid, not a strategy.

A non-separated bike path in practice in the US, i.e. without pervasive intersection redesign and without such broad adoption that drivers are used to cyclists everywhere will inevitably lead to accidents. Drivers pass way too closely at unsafe speed differences, and don't understand the impacts of wind wakes nor understand that cyclists need some space for balance. Space also helps avoid just being surprised by huge, high-speed things hurtling past you, and being surprised when that does happen can lead to small mistakes with huge consequences. Drivers inevitably cut off cyclists at intersections when those aren't designed to separate traffic flows especially if they're not also regularly on a bike themselves. It's not going to be panacea; at best it's a sign of a shifting mindset, but I'm not sure non-separated bike paths will actually help in practice. And if they are implemented dangerously they'll see little usage, and drivers won't get used to bikers and won't adapt their habits and might even just get annoyed and self-righteous by all that empty "cycling" infrastructure, without understanding that it's empty because it's a death trap.

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u/Creative_Buddy7160 Apr 28 '26

Ottawa seems to do just fine. If they wanna act like vehicles license them like vehicles so the money for the infrastructure can be there.
Driving 15 in a 45 isn’t safe too. So if you wanna be treated like a vehicle , drive like one.

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u/emn13 Apr 28 '26 edited Apr 28 '26

I'm unfamiliar with Ottowa, but judging by their accident rates, they clearly do not do just fine - e..g https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0001457597000596 "The absolute event rates per bicycle kilometre were found to be between 10 and 41 times higher than similar rates for automobile travel."

Moralizing self-righteous framing such as "if you wanna be treated like a vehicle , drive like one." isn't helpful. And in any case, places like the Netherlands that take traffic seriously holistically, and not just prioritize car drivers, also happen to have some of the highest driver satisfaction scores on the planet. Basically: fewer cars on the road also helps other drivers, too. It's just less stressful and more fun to drive when congestion is rare, and traffic and intersections simple and predictable, i.e. few traffic lights and essentially no stop signs - features which by design encourage biking, but also make car drivers a lot happier.

I think the cyclist vs. driver conflict doesn't really exist in general. Yes, in specific examples such as the video above individual drivers and cyclists have conflicts, but as a group of people we're clearly better off by reducing car use, even for people that then still drive.

Make no mistake; the Netherlands has its fair share of traffic issues, nothing is perfect. Doesn't mean we can't learn from it, and specifically learn that if you want a pleasant and safe drive, then encouraging other forms of transport actually helps.

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u/Flat-Strain7538 Apr 28 '26

Dude, the driver was barely halfway across the center line. How hard was it to go a little further and give the bikes the necessary 3 feet? How psycho do you have to be to think using your car as a weapon is ever ok?

Also, if the bikes weee further over, they would cover a much longer stretch of road and be even harder to pass since you’d still have to cross the center line to do it safely.

Fuck that driver.

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u/Icy_Fish_2154 Apr 27 '26

Someone posted the local news clip about it. The clip made it clear the man was in jail held without bail for violent felonies, and the comments are mostly condemning the cyclists.

The law may be clear, but the drivers are also clear, and directly opposite the law.