Man, I wish my city would make it possible to report drivers breaking the law. My big issue is cars parking in the cycle lanes. 1830 cars got fined for that in my city in total in 2024. Aka 5 a day. As a single cyclist I see more cars parked in cycle lanes every day on my commute than all those hundred officers give tickets to in total..
What I’d like to see is hard separation of roads and bike lanes. As a cyclist, nothing but a line painted on the road makes me feel unsafe, as a driver it’s difficult to not get nervous when passing a cyclist in the lane, and culturally drivers are generally favored over cyclists which results in things like parking in bike lanes not being adequately enforced. All these things would be solved by bike lanes being fully independent from the road.
Why? I don't get this "gotcha". Is there any actual rational reason for making such rules, or is it stemming from some annoyance from seeing cyclists in the road?
There already exists roads where cyclists can't be: Highways/motorways. If the problem is cyclists in the road, that solves itself by building better infrastructure. Where there's adequate cycling infrastructure, cyclists prefer to use it. Where there's lacking or none, one should of course be able to use the road. Otherwise it would be a de facto ban on cycling, which I'm sure was your point?
> Is there any actual rational reason for making such rules, or is it stemming from some annoyance from seeing cyclists in the road?
It's from a combination of getting stuck behind cyclists going really slowly and with no opportunity to pass them, and from so much blatantly illegal behavior by them like running red lights without even slowing down.
What about blatantly ignoring traffic laws by parking illegally in the cycle lanes, forcing cyclists to use the road and be an annoyance to you? I think lots of drivers have a blind spot for their own traffic violations, because all statistics I've ever seen points to drivers breaking the law more often. And when they do, the consequences are also much greater.
I think that's the base rate fallacy, and that you only see more drivers break the law because there's so many more drivers in general. My estimate would be that I see about 100 good drivers for every driver breaking the law, but only about 5 good cyclists for every cyclist breaking the law. And another part of what makes it unfair is the disparity of enforcement. I see illegally parked cars with tickets under their wipers a lot, and it's fairly common to see drivers pulled over by the police for moving violations, but literally every single cyclist I've seen breaking the law has gotten away with it.
The fallacy here is probably your confirmation bias. Due to motonormativity and you being in the in-group, you notice cyclist mistakes and ignore driver mistakes.
For instance, a Danish study showing that 14 % of cyclists violate traffic laws when there is lacking infrastructure, but only 5 % when it's present. Compared to 66 % of motorists breaking some law. (Yes, if you ever go above the speed limit you have broken the traffic law just as much as the cyclists that grinds your gears. How many drivers speed in the highway each day, I wonder)
Doable, but would probably require bike paths to be wider than they currently are and split into two lanes: one for road bikers and one for everybody else.
