askchapo

As a biker the main reason that anyone should not bike is if they live in the US and value their life. Biking in the US is TERRIFYING and I know zero people who bike regularly who have not been injured by a car. I still do it and others should too but it's basically one of only 2 valid excuses as far as I am concerned

I am a bike guy. I don't own a car. Haven't for over a decade. But I've been hit by cars a couple times (only one major one that luckily only put my bike out of commission and not me) and had close calls way more than that. I live in a city with decent, for America, infrastructure with 100 miles of protected bikes lanes. And I get why safety wise, people aren't ready to do it. I am taking my life into my own hands in a way every time I get on my bike and try to share the road with motorists, who are insane.

Like, I think the term 'carbrain' has gotten over used a bit by urbanists and anti-car folks because it is such a tantalizing term. But it's certainly not without its use. Something happens to people when they drive cars. They become impatient and entitled on a way that borders on psychological transformation. I've never seen an average American more entitled to break the law than when they are a motorist. The speed limit is a suggestion, if you're not going at least five miles over it, you're not really driving. There is almost no other activity in American culture I can think of where people suddenly become rule breakers like this (and there should be many times where it would actually be good to break the law and they don't!), but they suddenly think the most important thing in the world is for them to get where they are going and literally fuck everyone else.

How many times have any of us seen people double park or otherwise put their car in everyone's way and just throw on their flashers as if 'fuck everyone else, my shit is more important' than we do with motorists? I can't really think of any other situation where this happens so publicly, so nakedly as it does when people drive.

And the anger driving causes in folks, I think mostly comes from the cognitive dissonance of their behavior in their car and knowing, deep down, that it is wrong. That they shouldn't be doing a lot of things they do in their vehicles. Stuff like pedestrians and bikers, who they literally have license to kill (look at the average criminal punishment for murdering someone with a vehicle versus literally any other way one can kill another human being and notice how little consequence there is for ending a human life while driving), remind them of the fact that their decisions are bad. Similar to how certain people get so angry about vegans/vegetarians. It's the guilty that drives fear and turns it into rage. And that rage, in turn, makes them even more deadly.

Driving is hard. It's demanding. And honestly it should have a much higher bar for who can do it because it is so dangerous. But, we've completely destroyed people's ability to get to most places in our society without cars. So, until we make it safe and easy for folks not to drive, we're stuck in this hellish predicament.

Rambling today, I guess.

im into bicycles but i cant use them outside of recreation in very specific areas like parks. like i would need to drive my bike somewhere in a car to ride it.

because i would be dead right now if i were a bicycle commuter

edit: to clarify, like i literally cant even illegally ride my bicycle on the sidewalks to a safe place to ride bicycles, because the sidewalks leading from my neighborhood abruptly end in the middle of nowhere after a few minutes' ride

bc if i rode a bike around town i'd get run over by one of the thousands of psychotic, homocidal cagers in my city

Death to America

Theft rates where I live. You can have all the expensive locks you want, if you leave your bike out of eyeshot for more than a few minutes you'll never see it again.

It’s 98 degrees outside today

Also I live on a 45mph stroad with terrifying bicycle gutters and no shade

Live in a part of my city where there's been a lot of hit and run deaths from cars. Wish they'd redesign the roads here to make them less deadly :(

Honestly never really thought of it. I've used public transit my entire life and occasionally ride bikes.

When I was a kid I always dreamed of having a car, but the older I got and more I dealt with cars as a pedestrian (including being struck by one in a low velocity collision), the more I grew to dislike them in a city environment.

Then I always hear what a pain in the ass it can be to own one and that more or less solidified my car-free life.

As for bikes specifically, I usually rent out a bike when the weather is nice. I've been doing a lot of walking/running this year so I haven't ridden as much as I have in recent years but I'll probably get back to it later this summer.

I am uncomfortable with the fact that "bike" is not short for "Bichael."

everyone i know who bikes regularly has been run over at least twice and i hit the tolerable limit on health issues a while back

Cars

I used to be an exclusive bike commuter when I was younger, in rural parts of a state where that was a pretty fucking dangerous thing to be. Close safety calls and a series of moves got me off the bike and I never really got back on. Now where I live the state of the infrastructure makes cycling straight up suicidal, way worse even than anywhere I lived in the States, and I've got more to lose.

The older I got the farther I wound up living from places that I needed to go.

When I need to go to places (beyond work) I need to be able to carry about 100 pounds of stuff (minimum) and 700 pounds (maximum). Pretty much the only time I leave the house is to go to work or get groceries/farm supplies where the closest we can get some stuff is around 25 miles away (50 mile round trip).

I actually live really close to where I work now, I think the shortest route is about 10 miles. Which should be totally doable by bike, distance wise. But its almost all on a dirt road and past several CAFO style chicken farms. And that makes it dangerous to bike as lots of semi's and overly large pickup trucks like to fly along the road, the road is in terrible condition often made worse when limestone gravel is spread on it, and during the 1/3 of the year that is now "Summer" the smell from the chicken houses can be overwhelming (and can cling to clothes), and the heat index will regularly be close to 100 degrees F so I'd get to work looking like I walk in from a rainstorm.

I didn't get to bike as much as I liked growing up because my parents lived on a mountain and climbing 500 vertical feet in a mile gets old fairly fast.

I am extraordinarily large and have had difficulty finding. Acomfortable bike, plus i've been sick for a very long time.

Because theres like 1 thing of note in biking distance but not walking distance.

Because the bike lane isnt separated so id be doing it on the sidewalk

Because i never learned how to maintain them, so they literally fall apart after a year

This might sound silly but I tried it as a little kid and it was sooooo hard to push the pedals for whatever reason that it completely turned me off from the whole idea. And I was also only allowed to basically ride around in tiny circles in our driveway because all we have in our area is narrow roads with no sidewalks where people drive their dodge rams at 50mph around corners. And it's still like that where I live now so yeah.

it was 40 C today

I think most people in the US don't think about it and go with the flow of "I'm an adult with a job of course I need a car", and if prompted why not try biking they just go "that seems like a pain in the ass/unsafe/not going to work in X weather". Even for ones that like biking recreationally. And I do empathize with not particularly wanting to bike commute every day in rain or snow or whatever. A lot of people have very inflexible work environments/schedules that wouldn't allow any exception for bad weather, so why take the chance (and it will be viewed especially negatively by bosses if they see it as "you're late because you choose to ride that stupid bike in instead of driving like a normal person")

And genuinely, not having a car in most US cities does limit your options geographically, economically, and socially.

• One of my friends just got denied a job (that had nothing to do with driving), for not having a car actually. It was just on the application like "Must have valid drivers license and proof of car insurance" or something like that. He did have one for a couple years but he hates driving and wants to move long distance soon so he sold it and bikes/walks everywhere (he also can still borrow a car from his housemates when needed which helps).
• I often have issues getting to things like poorly planned social events on time ("surprise! we decided to go somewhere 10 miles further away at the last minute, see you over there in 10-15 mins right?") This is just inherent to living anywhere that is saturated with cars. People literally feel bad for me and offer me rides whenever we plan something, and I have to tell them no, I'm not a helpless child (and children aren't helpless either, except that we make them so), I just need a tiny bit more notice in order to get across town on time. I enjoy getting around without a car, its one of the primary benefits of living in a city, but my social circle is 90% not on the same page. At best they think its cool in theory but never hop on a bike themselves.

I actually was a car guy from like age 16-21. I owned multiple cars, maintained them mostly myself, drove almost everywhere I went, gave people rides, etc. But day to day all that gave me was poor health, exposure to dangerous situations on the road, and a residence too far from the city center to reasonably visit any other way. It sucked. The only thing it was really good for was long distance travel, but when everyone you know still has cars that isn't as much of a factor. I wasn't doing a ton of solo road trips anyhow. I moved back into the city and kept my cars, but consciously tried to get around more and more with walking, transit, and eventually biking (due to the aforementioned poor health biking wasn't a primary way of getting around again for me until I got an ebike). I just enjoy those modes more, I feel more "in the world" that way. Eventually I realized I didn't need or particularly want the cars.

there are no sidewalks let alone bike paths, and i'm just not going to keep the traffic going 5mph behind me on the 50mph road my house is on, the trump flag trucks will kill me and even if its survivable its not worth the anxiety. unlimited nonexistence upon amerikkkan suburbs

I've been biking to work all spring and summer. The only reason I stopped was because I bought a motorcycle so I've been taking that instead. I just love being on 2 wheels

-7deadlybicycles

I like bikes but riding a bike is dangerous in the city. Ive been hit twice, never again. I hate rich white people who do the cross country biking thing on busy streets. Its so uncool and so annoying

I take the bus. I'll bike again when it's not winter - I don't want the wheels to slip over and get my chest gouged again like what happened last year.

Bus. I can walk to the store and the bus takes me anywhere else I need be. Really, if I get a bike it would be just so I can get more exercise in. My place of living also has completely satisfactory cycle infrastructure, so it's just that I have my needs covered already.

I live in a really good bike city, but I don't know how to buy a bike. I need a irl bike friend to hold my hand to the bike store and make sure I get a okay bike. That is my biggest barrier.

I have disliked the steering geometry of every bicycle I have ridden in my adult life. Is a reasonable amount of rake too much to ask.

Flat tires. Constant flat tires. The final straw was getting one 12 km out from destination and having to walk home. Also, I prefer riding on footpaths because I'm paranoid about being swiped by a car, but people don't like that either.

i used to ride my bicycle every day but during the winter i decided not to get squashed by trucks and started walking instead (the sidewalks didn't get cleared, so i couldn't bike on them and i absolutely wont share an icy road with cars).

but come spring and summertime, i just preferred to keep walking. i think it's mainly because it's more leisurely, which makes it easier to transition between work brain and leisure brain during the commute.

on my bike i still mainly stuck to the sidewalks (which is somehow fucking illegal here btw) since at least half of all american drivers want to either maim or murder bicyclists on the road, but i have to carefully move to the road if there is a pedestrian on the sidewalk or whatever ahead of me. so even though while walking i still have to be on fairly high alert for the red-blooded american patriots who think the stop signs in residential areas are suggestions, walking is just a more pleasant experience.

i feel incredibly lucky that i live close enough to walk and bike to my job, especially so considering how deeply carfucked my city is, so my heart goes out to everyone who is forced to endure commuting by car or playing chicken with your life against american motorists as a bicyclist. wear a helmet.