| I wonder if you are German? Spending some time in Germany from Holland I notice there is a significant difference in cycling etiquette :) Especially regarding “passing a cyclist” which also touches on the essential difficulty with having only one “ring” sound. Always when Germans pass me on the bike and they ring I get slightly annoyed because I interpret it as a “get out of the way” ring, and I feel like there is enough space. But perhaps it’s just the cautious “don’t do anything unexpected” ring. A Dutch person would rarely ring at another cyclist in the former way. But they also might be less safety focused while cycling (see also: helmet usage). Or we have safer infrastructure already. On a road bike, however, I too ring at pedestrians “preemptively”. For sure GPs remark of “if you need to ring you’re going too fast” applies here but that’s the essence of road cycling. Ironically I’m also annoyed when road cyclists ring at me for the same reason. Just shows the case for having 2 clearly different types of rings. (Also for cars to have a “thank you” horn, haha) |
Of course, ringing my bell will often cause people to veer into the way, too. But then if you ring at a sufficient distance, you risk them not hearing it. Except there's no way to tell if they're not hearing it, or just consciously not veering into the way, and in the latter case, you don't want to ring again, because that will sound even more impatient.
Etiquette is hard.
(And yes, I want cars to have a bicycle bell too, so they can greet people without jump-scaring me.)