Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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I have to deal with similar issues in my neighbourhood; any service vehicle will have to block the bike lane because that houses driveway is already full of vehicle.
Service vehicle never "have" to block the bike lane. They could simply block the general purpose lane instead.
In other words, they are making a deliberate choice to fuck cyclists' safety in order to prioritize convenience for car drivers.
Well...yes, in most areas that inconveniences 3 people vs 300. Bicyclists, despite their entire personality being geared around it, are not by default better or more valuable than people driving cars.
But are people driving cars better and more valuable than cyclists?
Have you ever been to China? Holland?
Nowhere did I say that, I do wish people would stop making irrelevant comments.
I know. I asked you a question - I didn’t make a statement.
If cycling wasn't so dangerous and given lower priority there would be many more cyclists and fewer cars. We see this wherever town planners make this change.
Less car traffic in general is better for everyone, even the drivers. It doesn't matter if you think that cyclists are annoying or holier than thou. It doesn't matter what kind of people they are at all. They could all be assholes, that doesn't change the fact that cars are bad actually.
Cool story. Not really relevant to anything I said but cool nonetheless.
I can see how you'd think that if you didn't read it or pay attention to any of the pertinent details.
Blocked and reported
What cyclists are more of, compared to people driving cars, is vulnerable, which means they're more important to protect -- by not blocking bike lanes and forcing them to mix with car traffic, for example!
But that's an irrelevant point if you live, as most Americans do, in an area where nobody is biking to begin with.
I think you're attributing malice to laziness.
I cant think of a single courier or delivery driver that would actively think "let me take an extra 20 seconds to reverse into this driveway just to fuck with bikes". They just want to get it done and get to the next
I think the word "deliberate" might be a little strong, because it's not one person's choice alone. It probably is laziness, but the way the road is made makes the lazy choice the one that screws over everyone else to prioritise cars. They could leave the van in the middle of the road, but drivers would get angry, so they make a subconscious choice.
Cars are large, cumbersome, dangerous objects with horns on them, and the road's design centers them. If you park in the middle of the road, cars are so space-inefficient that you cause a traffic jam and people get upset and honk, but nobody's in much more danger. If you block a pathway for pedestrians and cyclists, they can get around, but it's much more dangerous, especially for children and the disabled, but most of the time the delivery driver isn't forced to deal with that fact. Those people are much less visible.
So the result is that the mode of transport which causes the most problems for the people around it is also prioritised above all others. Decisions were made at the city planning level that put cycle paths together with cars. There are much better ways of doing things, for instance separate paths, with bollards so cars can't just leave the road. You could make delivery vehicles smaller and lighter, with dedicated delivery bays. You could narrow roads and slow them down to disincentivise inner-city traffic, and encourage the use of bypasses, and subtly teach drivers to expect frequent stops in town.
it would be far easier to simply stop in the lane they are already in. No, they go out of their way to park in the bike lane.
Curious how it never occurs to them to block the driving lane, or you know, park around the corner.