| I'm a low-lander cyclist who moved across the ocean. For the most part, you're right. A couple of observations though... The "right on red" seems to be a hack to address the fact that there are too many traffic lights. Indeed roundabouts would be better, those narrow Euro city centers are often faster. They also like their ridiculous 4-way stops instead of just yields. Right on red is indeed dangerous for cyclists, and when there's a bike lane, it is sometimes disallowed with a sign. Many drivers ignore them, and you always have to double check or risk getting creamed. The "taking it too seriously" part is I think because biking in traffic here is an adrenaline rush. I do things here that I would never do at home, yet they are often the safer option. I sometimes bike into the third lane to make a left turn, I sometimes sneak a block on the sidewalk if it lets me use a safer crossing. Every single trip involves careful planning of your route. Often there is no bike lane, and you just have to share the road with traffic, while avoiding the swerving doors of parked cars. Even worse is when they put a suicide bike lane between the first lane and the second/third lanes. The idea is that the first lane is a mix of parking, bus-stops and right hand turns. So you have all of those crossing through the bike lane, often cutting it short at the light, and hating you for being in their way. The streets I rode on as a child to primary school were safer than the stuff being constructed here today. Pretty mind-blowing. They are slowly learning, but the entitlement from drivers (to whom 80-90% of the paved road is dedicated to) is insane. To make it worse, pedestrians here just don't seem to understand cycling is a third mode, and they will obliviously wander into any bike lane even though there's literally a sign every 10 meters telling them to go onto the other path. A "shared bike/pedestrian path" is pretty much a shit show of people having 0 spatial awareness. |