[mns]

I’m living in one of the most cyclist friendly cities in Europe (according to the city officials :) ). I used to ride to work for almost 5 years until I moved too close to work so now I just walk. I love my city, I love how you can cycle, use public transport or just walk and a car is more of a nuisance here. Having said all this, the only group of people that I can’t stand and I almost hate is cyclists. They are the most entitled and loud group, even here, and for me, even as I still almost cycle everywhere when the weather allows me, I am more scared of other cyclists than I am of cars.

It is amazing how the majority of cyclists ignore all possible rules, traffic lights, traffic signs, bike paths (and we have them EVERYWHERE). You will always have some asshole on a bike grunting at a pedestrian, another cyclist or at a car, while riding with no lights on the wrong side of the street on the walkway, when there is a proper bike path right next to him. Just this winter the cycling community was outraged that after an ice rain the city didn’t clean the paths, which was almost impossible to do, all while they were riding in the winter on ice with no special tires and then complaining that while it was not even recommended to go outside, it is dangerous for them to ride their bikes.

In the end I think there is a lot left to go, especially in educating people, because as e-bikes becomes more popular, more people get access to bikes that run faster than they could ever do (and we now have more accidents because of this), it will get worse before it gets better when it comes to cycling.

[Beltalowda]

I'm a careful cyclists, purely out of self-preservation, and also because traffic in general is already stressful enough without me adding to it. Plus, I care about less cars in cities and not adding to the perception of "asshole cyclist" is helpinig, a teeny tiny bit.

Still, you will get a lot of hate. Twice people have tried to run me off the cycle path followed by some unhinged diatribe about how the cycle path should not be there and that it's all a waste of taxpayer money and a bunch of nonsense. People are free to have that opinion, and I don't even especially mind of they go off on some rant about it, but they're not free to to consciously drive their fucking cars in my direction.

Then, of course, there's all the places where there aren't cycle paths. I've lost count of the number of provocations. Minding your business, cycling how you should be, and someone overtakes you – no way they didn't know you were there – and just veers in to you because "toot toot I'm a car motherfucker imma driving here now".

Then there's the pedestrians who will complain if you cycle on the cycle path because they don't realize it's a cycle path, or because they don't care. Or the cycle paths just ends with nowhere to go and you will get complaints if you go over the footpath because that's literally the only way to go other than the 80mph road (and not doing that).

Basically, you will get hate no matter what you do. Plus everything tends to be extremely car-centric anyway, so if you're not careful it's not that hard to go to "I get abuse from entitled assholes no matter what I do so fuck you all then".

No saying this as a justification, but there's some pretty bad feedback loops going on here.

[hourago]

> I almost hate is cyclists

Then you definitively will hate car drivers. For each cyclist that has bothered me as a pedestrian there are ten cars doing something crazy dangerous. And in my city there are a lot of bikes, as much as cars.

But I see that pedestrians are expected to deal with car behaviour, even dangerous one, without complaining. The fault is always on pedestrians or cyclist even that are car drivers the ones that kill many people or send them to a wheelchair for life.

[hooverd]

There's just not good cycling infrastructure in most of the US. Until then, cyclists will complain about cars and pedestrians, pedestrians will complain about cars and cyclists, and so on. For every pedestrian not paying attention on a MUP infrastructure there's a Cat 6 racer.