[Phemist]

The real problem is that cyclists and pedestrians apparently in some countries share space commonly enough that this is necessary?

In the Netherlands, bicycle utopia, I cannot remember the last time I used my bell to alert a pedestrian of my existence. Granted, I never cycle in Amsterdam, but that is a special location where high-powered ship horns are probably required.

Regarding ANC, I naturally turn it off while cycling on my Bose Quiet Comfort II, as the ANC will try (and fail) to cancel the noise from the wind. I don't think this is a solved problem? So for bicycle-to-bicycle alerting, this also seems overkill.

[mirpa]

Yes, company Škoda is from Czech Republic where we have shared-use paths for cyclists and pedestrians. It is not "necessary". You should not be wearing noise canceling headphones while being in traffic - it makes you more liable in case of accidents.

[djtango]

In Singapore, cyclists are generally expected to use the pavement and share it with pedestrians.

[Phemist]

Which, seems to me, is the actual problem that should be solved.

[djtango]

I've thought about it before and I think part of it is that the average cyclist here moves a lot slower because of the temperature and humidity.

When I put even an ounce of effort into my cycle I become a sweaty mess which can be a little antisocial depending on the situation

[joe_mamba]

I dislike the smug condescending tone of your comment. Not everyone lives in the "cycle utopia" Netherlands. For some of those that don't live there, this could be a game changer and life saver since its easier to buy a bell than wait for your city to build you segregated cycle lanes.

Personally, I see no use for this bell since in Austria bicycles share the road space with cars, trucks and trams rather than pedestrians, which could be more dangerous, and what I would need is a bicycle bell that could penetrate car enclosures so that drivers would get off their phones and pay attention to the stuff around them.

Yes, I know, ideally there should be dedicated cycle lanes only for bicycles but nothing in life is ever ideal, and the city isn't gonna do that anytime soon since that would mean completely eliminating car traffic on the narrow streets, witch would be political suicide, so a bell would be an instant life saver.

[Phemist]

I don't mean to disagree that there are situations where this is useful. I'm just trying to offer the perspective from a situation where the root cause as I see it has been fixed (to a high degree).

The OP seemed to suggest that people wearing ANC headgear should stop doing so, but both the bell and the ANC-wearing pedestrians are a non-issue in my lived experience.

It would be a shame if these "cyclist-pedestrian ANC-wars" distract from the real issue, that cyclists are not, but should be, a fully emancipated participant in traffic and infrastructure should be designed with cars (to a degree), bicyclists AND pedestrians in mind.

[joe_mamba]

> I'm just trying to offer the perspective from a situation where the root cause as I see it has been fixed (to a high degree).

Your argument was not a solution. You just said, "NL fixd this, why haven't other countries?" which doesn't add any value.

Have you considered that other cities/countries can't just add infrastructure that hasn't been designed from the start to accommodate bikes the same way NL has without taking space away from pedestrians or cars as the roads have stayed as narrow as back in the 1800s?

And that fixing it is not a switch you can just turn on on a whim, but requires decades of political and societal change around repurposing infrastructure, plus capital, before consensus is achieved? Democracies are complicated, even moreson in times like these.

What do you do until then, when a bell is an instant improvement?

You're commenting off the sidelines without realizing why most countries can't flip a switch and become NL overnight.

>It would be a shame if these "cyclist-pedestrian ANC-wars" distract from the real issue, that cyclists are not, but should be, a fully emancipated participant in traffic and infrastructure should be designed with cars (to a degree), bicyclists AND pedestrians in mind.

Yeah but what do you do if they are? There's no ANC wars here, Skoda just made a better bell. Are you also against the development of better bicycle helmets, because where you live you don't need them? Like yes sure, infrastructure is the real solution, but what do you do until that arrives?

[Phemist]

I was not trying to offer a solution, as this will be highly specific to the situation in your locality and pretty pointless for me to spend time on. I am merely identifying this as a root cause, which for some reason strikes a nerve.

Why does Skoda, a car manufacturer, care so much about interactions between cyclists and pedestrians? As you say, a bell that penetrates the car enclosures would be much more useful. I suspect a similar reason why pro-safety helmet lobby groups in NL received a lot of funding from these same car manufacturers. I digress..

For your information, post-WWII infrastructure developments in NL were initially highly car-friendly. This only started to change in the 70s and 80s, when the government started to actually create bicycle-related traffic policy, after collective protests (e.g. popular pro-bicycle protest songs were written, children refused to go to schools unless bicycle paths were laid, etc.) also helped by the oil crisis of the time.

So, no it can't be fixed overnight, but it can be fixed in reasonable time (and not an unspecified amount of decades, political capital and funding). We are even living through a repeated history right now.

[joe_mamba]

>This only started to change in the 70s and 80s

Which was my entire point. City wide infrastructure rehauls were massively easier and cheaper back then than today. The amount of nimbyism and red tape has ballooned exponentially in that time span, let alone the cost. Even NL wouldn't be able to do that today if they wanted to had it not done that in the 70s.

[Phemist]

It's a big stretch to say that the 70s and 80s was "from the start", when the preceding 30-40 years had seen increasingly car-friendly infrastructure policy and development.

[lxgr]

These things take both time and massive political will.

As somebody living in a city that's quite bike friendly, all things concerned, but still not close to Dutch or Danish levels of biking safety, I'll take any "technical solutions that try to solve social/political problems" I can get to make my commute safer.

Also, anything that makes biking feel safer will make more people try commuting by bike, which in turn increases the political will to change traffic laws and space use. Nothing exists in a vacuum.

[Phemist]

I agree you need to get more people commuting by bike. This is in itself creates a virtuous circle of safety. More cyclists means everyone pays more attention to them, meaning it becomes safer to cycle, meaning more people will cycle, repeat. (And ofcourse more political will etc.)

This is btw also why cyclist's rights organizations (e.g. fietsersbond in NL) should be _against_ mandatory use of helmets. Helmets make it less convenient to cycle and reduces perceived safety, in turn reducing the amount of cyclists and as a result _actually_ making cycling less safe (and the vicious circle ensues).

Even only suggesting that it would be beneficial to use a helmet has this effect apparently, hence the organizations are only willing to state that they are "not against the use of helmets".

Just an interesting second order effect I think. You want to always be careful to optimize for the absolute number of safe rides, and not solely for the relative number of safe rides that might significantly reduce the absolute number of safe rides.

[joe_mamba]

>should be _against_ mandatory use of helmets. Helmets make it less convenient to cycle and reduces perceived safety, in turn reducing the amount of cyclists and as a result _actually_ making cycling less safe (and the vicious circle ensues).

Not mandatory and at your own risk IMO, but as a simple thought exercise on your argument, answer me this: if a car hits you on your bike or another cyclists knocks you off your bike and your head hits the concrete/kerb, are you gonna escape better off from the accident with or without wearing a helmet?

Spoiler alert from my GFs sister who works at an ER in Austria: helmeted patients walk away without permanent brain injury which she can't say the same for those involved in accidents without helmets. Helmets saving lives isn't a lobby issue, it's a medical fact.

People telling you to not wear a helmet because it somehow reduces safety through some convoluted spaghetti argument, must be off their rockers, when they clearly save lives at impacts. That's like saying governments should be against mandatory seatbelts and airbags in cars because their added safety encourages a cycle of unsafe driving leading to more accidents, and that without them divers would be forced to drive more carefully and lead to more safety.

It's perfectly fine to militate for the utopia of building of safe cycling infrastructure everywhere for everyone, but please let's not unnecessarily put people's lives at risk by promoting this FUD that helmets don't increase safety, just so people can literally die on this hill.

By all means, each individual should do of course as they see fit according to their desired risk profile of where they live and how they want to live their lives, just don't ask others to put their lives in danger in order to emulate the lifestyle where you live where the risks for not wearing a helmet are much smaller.

[lxgr]

> People telling you to not wear a helmet because it somehow reduces safety through some convoluted spaghetti argument, must be off their rockers, when they clearly save lives at impacts.

No, they simply have different ethical frameworks/moral philosophies (consequentialist vs deontologist).

I’d mostly agree with you in that I find it unethical to not promote bike helmets at all, even if this were to somehow increase aggregate safety, especially if that increase is delayed and hard to measure.

But I do see the point against making them mandatory if that makes people take their car instead of a bike.

It’s not like not wearing a bike helmet is a dangerous, addictive substance that people are somehow defenselessly exposed to and that they need protection from, and it’s ultimately their own decision if they value their hairdo more than their brain.

[Phemist]

> Not mandatory and at your own risk IMO

In the basis we seem to agree. Note that I am not trying to discourage helmet wearing (nor for governments to do it), just arguing against making it mandatory or even officially advised (for healthy adults) to wear them. Actual cycling safety is in numbers, more than in individually taken measures. This is all discussed in way more depth on reddit btw [0].

> but as a simple thought exercise on your argument

I realize could have written the sentence you respond to better, I should have written "and [mandatory helmet wearing] reduces perceived safety", also I said "should" in the sentence preceding the one you quoted, but I should've said that the NL ones ARE against making helmets mandatory for exactly the reasons I specify (and that my opinion is that other rights' organizations SHOULD be against it). Quoted directly from tbe website of the, quite well-regarded and not off their rocker, Fietsersbond [1] (under the header "Veilig gevoel?", translated by kagi):

    The Fietsersbond (Cyclists' Union) isn't against wearing a bike helmet. If you feel confident, you cycle more safely. It can be wise to wear a helmet in high-risk situations, for example, for seniors on e-bikes. Unfortunately, it has been proven multiple times that forcing people to wear a helmet actually backfires. People start cycling less.
    A helmet mandate makes cycling feel more like a dangerous activity—something you should be afraid of. Getting around by bike also becomes more complicated. After all, what do you do with that helmet when you're not wearing it? And what happens if you forget the helmet or if it gets stolen? These are all factors—whether justified or not—that make choosing a bike less convenient.

So yes, given that you got into an accident, it is very obviously better if you had worn a helmet (and knee, elbow and wrist pads). However, we don't want only to reduce mortality rates on accidents, we actually want to reduce the amount of accidents wholesale. The above point (and the point in my previous post) is that given mandatory or officially encouraged helmet wearing, you are more likely to get into an accident in the first place, further reducing the number of people willing to cycle, and thus safety for all those who still are willing.

I wanted to react to your car/seatbelt point, but I realize now you are the same person arguing about what constitutes starting points in the sibling thread. I don't mean to spread FUD and I also disagree that this is indeed FUD. I'm sorry that Austria is not as nice a place for cyclists as you would like it to be. I hope with this oil crisis you will find a way to foment some change re the emancipation of cyclists in your locality or even country.

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/fuckcars/comments/ut5fcx/why_is_thi...

[1] https://www.fietsersbond.nl/helmplicht/

[lxgr]

If you know of a simple technical solution to transform the entire world into the Netherlands, I'm all ears!

[Phemist]

https://translate.kagi.com/nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschiedeni...

This could serve as the blueprint I guess, skip to the part about the 70s and 80s protests. Collective and popular protests helped by an oil crisis, recognizing vested interests in other modes of transportation (cars) that might want to work against your efforts.

[lxgr]

> Collective and popular protests helped by an oil crisis

Sounds neither simple nor technical.

[Phemist]

Nope, but now the worldwide geopolitical situation is such that it might at least be feasible?

[lxgr]

Yes, but again, what's your problem with additionally taking steps to make things safer? Unless you somehow see technologies such as this distracting from creating a safer environment. But this was developed by Skoda, so I doubt that if they hadn't done this, they would have lobbied for more bike lanes instead.

[Phemist]

I dont have issues with taking additional steps to make things safer, I have an issue with this solution serving as a vehicle for the marketing of the inevitability of the problem (of cyclists and pedestrians sharing space) by a car manufacturer obviously interested in this problem continuing to exist.

[jeroenhd]

I don't know why, but sometimes this is done intentionally.

In my (Dutch) city, there is this infuriating piece of road where the bicycle path suddenly gets routed onto the kerb, intentionally mixing bikes and pedestrians. I believe the theory is that bikes will go slower so pedestrians don't need to worry about crossing the road as much or something.

Predictably, lots bikes are taken by surprise, either brake hard and suddenly or fly through pedestrians (who the biker thinks are in their bike lane, because they would be two meters earlier).

In my experience, when bikes and pedestrians meet, one of the two groups is in the wrong place and should be watching out/slowing down and waiting.

The example video shows various instances of pedestrians walking in bike lanes (and seemingly being surprised at the sudden appearance of a bike there). You can't fix stupid, but at least you can tell them to get off the bike path.

[xx_ns]

I wish my city only had a single case like that. Unfortunately, in Tallinn, it is extremely common that a bike path is suddenly routed onto the curb, and that's when you're lucky. For some paths, the path just... ends, and you suddenly find yourself right in the middle of car traffic. Unfortunately, the city leadership is anti-bike and pro-car, and it shows in the infrastructure.

Paths where pedestrians and bikers (and other light transportation vehicles) are mixed are overwhelmingly common.

[Phemist]

> In my (Dutch) city, there is this infuriating piece of road where the bicycle path suddenly gets routed onto the kerb, intentionally mixing bikes and pedestrians. I believe the theory is that bikes will go slower so pedestrians don't need to worry about crossing the road as much or something.

That is an unfortunate, probably experimental?, traffic design choice...