I would love to be on what amounts to a group ride to and from work safely. That has to do wonders for all kinds of things both physical and mental. If it were safe I would do it year round.
As a pedestrian I would hope that those cyclists remember when they’re pedestrians too. Both can kill you easily. But cars don’t sneak up on you silent from behind when you’re on a sidewalk.
Have you looked at any actual data about the rate at which drivers and cyclists kill people in your area? Can you even find news about the last time a cyclist killed a pedestrian in your city?
Because I keep an eye on the official Police stats in Toronto and it is eye-opening. Statistically, drivers kill people, and cyclists don't. It is not even remotely close.
Just a single anecdote, but one death made the papers here last year because it was an e-bike that hit and elderly gentleman. The e-bike had been modded and the media was suggesting the cyclist faced jail time as a result. (if I remember correctly)
I don’t care about your stats. The fact is: cars move in their dedicated space. Most of them obey most of the traffic rules. Bicycles and scooters zoom past me on the sidewalk and it doesn’t make me feel safe. Neither having to jump over them on a sidewalk. I’m young, I can, but my mother cannot and it’s a problem for her. So take your stats and read them alone. Thanks, I take a car. I’m from the generation who doesn’t have their noses glued to mobile phone 24/7.
while i don't agree with your general sentiment you're right that bicycles should have their own dedicated cycle lanes. too often drivers get their dedicated lanes while pedestrians and cyclists are forced to "share space and just take care of each other".
What a ridiculous statement. Motorized vehicles are involved in the vast majority of road casualties. You are much, much more likely to die from a car accident than a bike accident.
as a former pedestrian only and bike rider for the last 5 years, we really do have to admit that bike riders can be real assholes. whether or not the level of injury is the same, it definitely feels an unwarranted physical threat to have a biker shoot past you from behind or run you down in the crosswalk.
Do we have to admit that in this sub-thread? Your sentiment is better placed where we are not currently deriding the absurd take that "both can kill you easily". There is no recovery to be had here.
Of course there is. The world isn’t black and white. I said “could”, there are many shades of grey in between. Don’t be such an absolutist, like your truth is the truest one.
sorry, I just really don't like this glib response that while I might be unnecessarily aggressive and threaten you, its not really not a problem since the likelihood that I'll actually _kill_ you is much lower than if I were the same idiot driving a car.
Ugh... You know perfectly well from context that by "bikes" I meant "bicycles". I am making the effort of speaking in your language, please don't use these linguistic gotchas against me.
I don't know any difference between bikes and bicycles. I am also not a native English speaker. This wasn't supposed to be a linguistic gotcha, but a semantic one.
You are not making a good faith argument when you refute this person by saying this “doesn’t fit your narrative” two comments removed from you telling another person that you have no interest in their statistics because of how you feel.
You're using biased language there, which to be fair is common when people discuss RTCs.
A collision between a pedestrian and a cyclist going at around 15mph is more likely to lead to the cyclist getting more hurt and the blame is slightly more likely (something like 60%/40%) to be attributed to the pedestrian.
Whilst a lot of people are fearful of cyclists and pedestrians sharing space (often due to cyclists being quiet and passing very close), the statistics show that the actual danger comes from car drivers, even just looking at incidents on the pavement.
The thing is that cyclists have "skin in the game" and so have a disincentive to collide with anything. There are certainly idiots on bikes, but it's far better to get as many idiots as possible out of cars and onto bikes (or ideally walking) for the purpose of harm minimisation. Every idiot on a bike could be an idiot that drives.
Most collisions between cyclists and pedestrians end up with the cyclist getting more hurt. Also, the blame for collisions is slightly more attributed to pedestrians (e.g. walking across a cycle lane without looking).
As I recall, pedestrians are more likely to be killed by a driver whilst on the pavement, so whilst collisions may be more frequent with cyclists, they are extremely unlikely to lead to a KSI.
Two of my neighbors were hit and killed by a car while walking on the sidewalk. The car was going in excess of 150km/h, hit the median, and swerved back, out of control into the sidewalk.
Right. I am in that bucket described by parent comment but also live literally at the edge of the district boundary our second child will eventually attend that I intentionally took up residence in a few years ago when we split. All kinds of motivation as to why a SD would do this but I don't need that decision influenced by a company that has no presence in the state let alone the district I live.
The inequality of school districts is probably one of the biggest systemic barriers in our society.
That being said, school choice isn’t that helpful. The most segregated school district in the US is NYC, which has had citywide school choice for a long time.
> In 2018 in New York, 90% of black students attended predominantly nonwhite schools, while Latino student enrollment in predominantly nonwhite schools has remained roughly stable (84%). Almost two out of three black students and over half of Latino students attend intensely segregated schools, where less than 10% of student enrollment is white.
Just because they are there statistically doesn’t mean there isn’t an underlying reason.
Maybe the “best” districts do what was done to me when I was growing up and purposefully test me harder, then get upset when I passed. Trying to justify that I didn’t belong but I ended up scoring a 99.9% on their stupid aptitude tests.
There’s a whole host of reasons why someone with choice still chooses shitty…
The white population of NYC is only about 30%. If every school in the city had exactly the same racial demographics as the city as a whole, every single school would be a predominantly nonwhite school.
Yeah well aware after ~17 years in public/higher ed in multiple states and what crossed my mind first when I read the parent's name in the article though trying not to generalize as I know nothing of the district mentioned.
13 mini here too and last iPhone/smartphone I will buy.
Settings > Accessibility > Motion > Reduce motion and Settings > Accessibility > Display and text size > Reduce transparency make it usable-ish. There is hundreds of ms lag at times inexplicably w/touch and upwards of a second plus when connected to CarPlay. But I can't blame iOS 26. I have to reboot this thing sometimes weekly, sometimes less frequent than that since iOS 18. I can no longer justify spending hundreds of dollars on things that don't meet my standard of "works" even if it's 2025.
I'm in US and I've had a single one. It was sedation which induces twilight sleep but I was definitely conscious. I've known many that have had them (ex-partner had stage 3 colon cancer and had/has them on the regular) and it was always sedation.
Former bike messenger in large eastern US cities in late 90's/early 2000's here, just started commuting by bike this summer again after having not done so since probably late 2000's. I have mostly MTB'd the last decade or so.
It is a totally different world on US roads these days. There is so much dumb shit I've done on a bike in my 20's that I refuse to tell my kids about and that makes me cringe thinking how lucky I have been and after about 2 weeks of commuting this summer I have abandoned that dream and instead choose to ride where the cars can't go. I am fortunate to have access to a massive trail system outside my front door but will avoid as much vehicle interaction as I can here on out. Aside from the crazy, impatient drivers there are so many other ways you can get destroyed by a massively oversized car or truck that the distracted driver can barely see out of. Not to mention the erosion of trust that people are going to actually behave on the roads, as illustrated in the above article. Riding on city streets was always something that put my faith in other humans to the test and since I already know the answer, the safest thing one could do is to simply remove yourself from the equation.
For real. Biking for a commute in the United States should come with hazard pay. So many drivers just absolutely, from the word go, hate cyclists with a burning passion. And the best you can hope for outside of that, is benign neglect, and since you don't pose the same threat a 3-ton suburban does to their suburban, they just don't look for you and don't give a shit where you are. I've been nearly hit so many times, and not in the way you think: it's low-speed stuff where someone is trying to make a turn out of a driveway, or backing out of their own, or waiting to go left across busy traffic, and they're so focused on looking for cars that pedestrians and bikes just fade into the background.
And I know I'll probably get some dickhead typing an angry reply about how one time a cyclist didn't obey a stop sign or something and therefore we're the scum of the road fit only to coat the tread of his tires, but just like, this is not the same goddamn situation. I'm moving about a hundred pounds of light metal and rubber, and you're moving between 2 and 4 tons of machinery. Fuck off with this ridiculous equivalence.
Couldn't agree more. Not going to get into philosophical/cultural differences between life in your country and America but it cannot be ignored the gap between a cyclist's mentality and the right-to-road mentality of the average car driver, even in supposed bike friendly cities, in the US. This fundamental difference in thought is reinforced by infrastructure and the type and size of vehicles that are pervasive on American roads. Just had another white bike memorial erected on my route to work some 2 months ago that stamps out any idea of either being able to commute to work safely again myself or that this gap in thought could/is shrink/ing.
That said, I have seen and still see some questionable cyclist practices on these roads from type of bike, lane of travel, footwear (or gear in general), lack of helmet (or misfitting/unfastened helmet) and route choice though I understand, at least where I live now, there sometimes isn't a choice. In larger cities there was an unspoken agreement _most_ of the time between myself and vehicles in the road that we were "aware" of one another. I find sometimes cyclists being far too aggressive to assert that awareness on drivers here (or today?) where it could be an honest misconception that the person behind the wheel knows how to interact with a cyclist for any number of reasons.
Full disclosure; former bike messenger in Boston, Philly & Portland OR, long-time commuter when not riding for work.
