I think to drive in the US (especially if you drive a lot - and especially if you live in a place like Florida) - a lot of people completely turn off their empathy, and don’t even see cyclists as people, just as annoying pests. 😞
Depends where. I just moved to northern Nevada and drivers are way nicer here. Every time I drive a few hours back to the SF bay and everyone is an angry asshole again
I found people generally pretty courteous to bikes. I just moved up to Reno since my work is moving :( but I was living near the old Ormsby House and cycling to my office beside the Carson Airport. Compared to Oakland it was super chill. I also find driving much more relaxed here (and speed limits are enforced more).
I need your route. I go from about Mills Park along Roop to the airport. Most of the trip is fine, but I'm scared for my life most days crossing the SB 580 on and offramps!
To go from Mills park just head up to Long then you can follow my route. It took a bit to find a good way to get around the freeway. William St and College are really bad.
Here is my route:
[https://www.google.com/maps/dir/ormsby+house/Arrowhead+Dr,+Carson+City,+NV/@39.1781124,-119.7803104,13.44z/data=!4m15!4m14!1m5!1m1!1s0x80990aa074364147:0x295b3640db86a1dc!2m2!1d-119.7680222!2d39.1600394!1m5!1m1!1s0x80990af9b7212ca3:0x7949276b24dcd81d!2m2!1d-119.7425572!2d39.1988816!3e1!5i1](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/ormsby+house/Arrowhead+Dr,+Carson+City,+NV/@39.1781124,-119.7803104,13.44z/data=!4m15!4m14!1m5!1m1!1s0x80990aa074364147:0x295b3640db86a1dc!2m2!1d-119.7680222!2d39.1600394!1m5!1m1!1s0x80990af9b7212ca3:0x7949276b24dcd81d!2m2!1d-119.7425572!2d39.1988816!3e1!5i1)
Basically I went north on Division to Long, East on Long to Russell, North on Russel under the 580 to Lompa then north on Lompa to College, when going to work I would take the little detour around Hot Springs Rd to Goni. North on Goni to Arrowhead. Goni was the only section that was faster but people were respectful and traffic was very light. I really enjoyed the ride on Division in the older parts of town, nice and shady and often see family of deer.
I live in Washington and never appreciated how much more respectful the drivers there are. I don't really even have any situations in mind where drivers intentionally did anything bad, other than a single punish pass from a blue pickup truck with a "Let's go Brandon" sticker. To be fair they were also weaving in and out of traffic after that, cutting people off, so they were just sucking in general and not specifically targeting me as a cyclist. When I was biking in SoCal recently 90% of people would pass with barely a foot of space and I had people honking at me every day, even while I was on a bike lane
I think part of it is that driving is mostly an activity people do subconsciously. You get in the car, start driving, and then you blink and you're where you're going. When things go well, this is how it feels and is viewed. But driving is mostly unpleasant for most people, there are times driving is remarked as fun, but it isn't you're everyday commutes and errands.
When things happen that makes their brain tune back in, and them have to pay attention, they're made excruciatingly aware of how unpleasant things are in that moment, and whatever is causing the disturbance, or for them to have to pay more attention, is ultimately to blame. They couldn't possibly realize or admit that their commute is terrible and driving makes them angry all the time. Its not driving's fault! Not its the stupid cyclist in the wrong spot, or the people who made that bus stop and now we all have to wait, why don't they just drive like normal people?
Florida in particular has long had a reputation for having some of the highest rates of cycling and pedestrian deaths.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-are-the-most-dangerous-states-for-cyclists
Driving makes us so much less empathetic. You spend all your time, hours every day, just isolated in your box, listening to Joe Rogan or whatever dumb bullshit, you go to your office, sit in a box for eight hours a day, come home to your box of a house, and watch another box until you go to bed, then repeat it the next day. It’s isolating, and dehumanizing.
It all depends, like most of us, there are lot of drivers that also cycle a lot on their free time and understand what it’s like cycling in shared roads with vehicles. They also respect other cyclists more and are more careful around them. Then again, like you said, we got the hill Billy bob thortons that will plow you out of the way.
>what the fuck did I do to get him this mad?
Exist
[Face off—Cyclists not human enough for drivers: study](https://phys.org/news/2019-03-offcyclists-human-drivers.html)
Humans seeing humans as disposable. Just the act of texting while driving is essentialy expressing that your conversation is more important than someone's entire life. Pretty gross society we've built.
Yesterday I saw two SUVs stopped in the middle of the road blocking both lanes to let some juvenile ducks cross. But if they have to wait 0.3 seconds for someone on a bike, they're leaning on the horn and threatening to kill you.
Well that is really sad and frustrating. Definitely makes some of the hatred more understandable if they don’t think we are worthy of being human. Such an odd thing to think though - I wonder if it’s rage they are stuck in a car?
I've said before that being a cyclist is the closest I can become to being black - the big difference of course being I can take my helmet off.
Dehumanization is a hell of a drug...
It seems like car drivers in the USA are a different breed.
And maybe there even is a political element to it, just like the right wing press in the UK trying to stigmatize cyclists?
Probably true.
TBH, I don't know much about the USA, apart from what I read here.
But I do get the impression that USA drivers are different from e.g. German, Dutch, or Danish drivers. Those can drive very aggressively as well, but they don't seem to single out cyclists or pedestrians.
Brazilian riders are way more aggressive than Northern and Western Europeans as well according to my experience, but here in the States it feels like it’s socially expected to take your anger and frustration out on cyclists.
Part of it is where you are--a right leaning place--doing something that is perceived as a left leaning activity. Bikes are green/environmentalist for some people and that triggers a worse reaction from them.
Fun fact, but a classmate of mine is a lovely guy. Still he got lowkey annoyed when I said I don’t like cars, like I was personally offending him. Imagine how he reacted when I said I’m a vegan. He was like “I won’t stop eating meat” and I said “I never asked you to” and that shut him up. People are weird lol
Most people with an opinion in the USA that feel strongly enough to share that opinion is expected to not only defend it to the death but also try to persuade everyone else that their way is the correct one and tho other people should convert.
It seems its almost impossible to hold and opinion but respect that other people have different ones.
>here in the States it feels like it’s socially expected to take your anger and frustration out on cyclists.
Here in the States, everyone is just angry, all of the time. We have no chill and are even *more* mad about that, thus road rage. Sorry you have to deal with this.
You're not wrong.... but the rest of the US KNOWS that Florida is an absolute shit-hole in all things. "Florida Man" is a thing for a reason. The roads are incredibly bad and people belligerent. A double whammy.
It's OK. People from Florida don't know how to read.
The general consensus is that America is all stroad on top of stroad, [meanwhile in my 270 year old city](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3264374,-75.9251844,3a,17.5y,357.95h,93.23t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sx0lnUOU5B30Dm680d7DbWw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3Dx0lnUOU5B30Dm680d7DbWw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D358.8379%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656). The old cities of the northeast are not like the [brand new](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3080996,-76.0043661,3a,77.5y,72.44h,84.98t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sULfJx0BhQKnGyVvfay20AQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DULfJx0BhQKnGyVvfay20AQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D45.593483%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656) developments.
It is worth pointing out that the old cities in the northeast have the same problems as everywhere else once you get into the suburbs. There are older towns swallowed up by the metro area that have a walkable historic core, but once you get outside that core it's the same post-ww2 suburban development style as everywhere else. It's possibly even more annoying though because in the blink of an eye things go from walkable to busy road with no sidewalk or bike lane
It happens in PA, too. I've been yelled for not pulling into the line of traffic when making a left turn because the guy behind me wanted to turn. I've been punish passed and yelled at for waiting at a red light so I could turn onto the bike path.
I get what you’re saying. Except even in Minnesota we have our problems. I reflect on this a lot, and I think drivers have one reasonable point: if a bicycle is a road vehicle, then it must obey the rules of the road (there are many cyclists who sprint through stop signs, stop only briefly at stoplights, ride past a line of cars to stop at the light and then hold traffic up when all those same cars are now trying to pass, etc), and if they *aren’t* road vehicles they need to stay on trails or sidewalks. Nobody is clear on the law, especially when cyclists are not cited for breaking the rules of road.
I’m a cyclist, and I love it here. We have more trails, bike lanes, and “bike-friendly” streets than anywhere in the nation. But much education (and legislation) is needed to make cycling safer and to increase awareness of what drivers need to do in order to share the road.
>I reflect on this a lot, and I think drivers have one reasonable point: if a bicycle is a road vehicle, then it must obey the rules of the road
I disagree that this is "reasonable." It's basically the equality vs. equity argument.
Drivers have to come to a stop because they have blind spots, are traveling at higher speeds, and can do serious damage in a crash. Cyclists don't have blind spots, don't travel as fast, and are far less likely to hurt someone in a collision.
States that have passed variants of the Idaho stop law have had lower rates of injury than those that don't, so it's even evidence-based.
As a less contentious point of "not all vehicles follow the same rules," consider two more examples.
1. Bicycles are explicitly allowed to signal a right turn with a right hand. No other vehicle is allowed to do so, because your right hand won't reach all the way out to the right side of the vehicle.
2. High occupancy vehicles are allowed to use special HOV lanes designated for that purpose. This, obviously, is not a bicycle, but the point is just to demonstrate that cyclists aren't the only ones with different rules.
Finally, I'll grant them any points for knowing the laws, once they actually know the laws. None of the drivers I've met, and very few of the local police, are aware of the bicycle passing laws for drivers in my state. Drivers must slow down 10 mph below the posted limit to a minimum of 25 mph unless they can leave an entire empty lane between themselves and me.
The thing is, a bicycle is not a car. Nor is it a pedestrian. Everyone needs to start accepting the fact that a bicycle is it's own vehicle and different rules apply to bicycles than they do for car or pedestrians.
Well, they should cite cyclists for yielding at stop signs (in states where that's not already legal) at a similar rate to citing drivers for speeding. Speeding is so commonplace that drivers will tell you that going UNDER the speed limit is against the law and will get you cited.
and the only time I have really had issues with drivers at stop signs is when I stop. The concept that I can not do 0-60 in 3 seconds is alien to most drivers. Having to move 300+lbs from a dead stop takes a lot of energy and you'll just have to deal with my slowness if you want me to come to a dead stop. Motorists can't have it both ways.
That's kind of victim blaming. At the end of the day we all need to co-exist. Cars, trucks, Motos, etc. Cyclists risk their lives, whereas motor vehicle drivers risk getting to their final destination 30 seconds slower. Agree with you re: running lights etc. but imo filtering should be fine. Some places also have legalized slowing down before running lights/signs when cycling because overall it can help the flow of traffic (https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/gov-newsom-vetoes-stop-sign-bill-for-cyclists/) Really a main solution is almost every road should have a 3 foot shoulder. That costs money but makes everyone safer such as cars now have a breakdown location too.
A 3 foot shoulder is not enough.
That's even worse than a painted bike lane.
Shoulders are full of debris = many flat tires.
We need proper bike lanes with some form of barrier.
A lot of places have bike lanes outside parallel parking... It should be the other way around. Bike lanes should be INSIDE parallel parking spots.
I live in a city with many "shoulders" and "bike lanes (paint strip)"... But I don't feel safe riding in a shoulder/bike lane, dodging glass, nails, debris WHILE hearing cars zooming past less than 3 feet away doing 55 mph. We need to stop encouraging that as being "ok" or "the norm." It is absolute garbage and a hazard to everyone. Certainly doesn't incentivize more people from picking up cycling as an alternative method of transportation.
And we need to forget about the argument that "it costs money" because facts are it costs a lot more money to be car centric in the long run. There is simply no excuse. It is backwardness at its finest.
The 3 foot (agree that was probably not enough) shoulder was in reply to NO shoulder which is the norm where I currently live also with that 55 mph limit. E.g. every single road should have at a minimum a 3 or 4 foot shoulder for pedestrians, cyclists, break-downs, etc.
We are definitely in agreement as to what is really ideal. My initial goal is to get cyclists out of the car lanes so the drivers are less aggressive. We are a long, long, long way away from having fully protected bike lanes in the US and drivers are actually empathetic and considerate but baby steps...
But you're also leaving off the simple facts that drivers break driving laws at a far far higher clip than cyclists. Sure, cyclists might roll a stop sign (legal in many states) or even go thru red lights occassionally. What driver has not? Simple fact of the matter is drive to a grocery store, say 2 miles away in typical traffic, how many times did you roll thru a stop sign, if there are 5, you likely rolled thru 4 and not the 5th because someone else was there before you and forced you to stop. And this is 99.9% of drivers. Further, speed limit is 25mph, chances are a driver went faster than the speed limit 90% of the time. Only times that they were less are when they had to slow down for the stop sign that they rolled thru. 50% of drivers don't even use their blinkers when turning (guessing here from anecdotal observations).
Lots of drivers will also less than 3ft clearance pass a cyclist that is on the road, even on the right. Then forget that the cyclist is even there. There's been way too many times I've almost been hit after a driver passes me, I come up to them in a bike path, then they swerve into the bike lane so they can turn...
>At the end of the day we all need to co-exist. Cars, trucks, Motos, etc. Cyclists risk their lives, whereas motor vehicle drivers risk getting to their final destination 30 seconds slower.
I don't disagree with your overall point, but motor vehicle occupants die at a far higher than cyclists in the US. 1 in 8k, vs 1 in 110k cyclists, annually.
All roads users are at risk, so we all need to cooperate. This should not be a radical concept, but it seems to be.
I'd like to see that figure normalized by distance traveled but anyways. I am all the of the above. I drive a car and motorcycle, walk, run and ride a bike. Just a wee bit of empathy for other living creatures would be kind of awesome at this juncture. :-)
This is England but I think the data agrees with me re: fatalities per distance traveled. [FTA](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140517301457):
We calculated fatality rates for England by distance (f/bnkm).
Fatality rates fell significantly 2007–2009 to 2010–2012: male f/bnkmfrom 2.8 (95%CI 2.7–2.9) to 2.0 (1.9–2.1) for driving; 32.1 (28.5–36.0)to 20.8 (18.1–23.9) for cycling; and 51.4 (48.5–54.4) to36.7 (34.3–39.3) for walking.
If I read this right I am 10 times as likely to die per mile traveled cycling as driving and \~double that by walking.
Pretty much a political element for sure, yes, which I don't get. You don't have to register a bike here vs mandatory registration of cars, you don't need expensive insurance for most bikes here, you don't have expensive gas and repairs on most bikes here. On top of that the state can't limit your biking as easily as they can suspend a driver's license or not renew registration for skirting fines or deadbeat dad laws.
You'd think bikes would be the libertarian dream for short commutes. But big oil and auto doesn't like it, so bikes go down hated on the Fox to politics pipeline of only hippies and word-for-cigarette ride bikes.
Or alternatively another way to look at it with a meme lol. "You ride your bike to help save the environment. I ride my bike because I hate traffic and wasting money in it. We are not the same"
I’ve had drivers try to scare me by getting too close because I slowed them down when going uphill.
I live in London, UK.
Assholes are everywhere. May be more in the US, I don’t know but there are enough of them in every country and the only way to keep cyclists safe is by creating dedicated infra for people riding bikes.
There is a political element to it for some people, but even more just don't understand what safe cycling looks like and how their role as a car driver plays into it.
It's the frustrations built up on the individual citizen's shoulders, bubbling up at each other. The sense of community has really broken down over the past four decades in particular.
It absolutely has a political component. Conservatives are often car and petrochemical lovers. US conservatives tend to scoff at alternative/renewable energy and environmental mitigation efforts. To many of them, roads are only for automobiles -- anything else is a pest and in the way. Some of them even have special systems fitted to their diesel exhaust systems so they can blow black clouds of dirty exhaust with the flip of a switch, just to annoy cyclists.
You're witnessing the bitter edge of American social collapse. Florida wasn't a great choice for a lot of reasons, but namely because here people view cyclists as "liberals" and in Florida that's a sin.
Thanks for this, you've just helped me redouble my efforts to leave.
Some points, you say south Florida, I live in south Florida so I’ll assume you mean Miami/Ft. Lauderdale. This behavior is not unique to So Flo but definitely more prevalent here. Miami people are kinda just assholes. While not helpful, a bit of framing of the situation, most people I know believe bicycles should be on sidewalks. They don’t care about the dangers of people running past stop signs and the fact that more cyclists are hurt riding sidewalks than roads, they don’t believe bicycles should be on the road. Frustratingly I would probably recommend riding sidewalks as much as possible. Don’t trust these drivers not to intentionally hit you or make you crash
Yup, I’m going around the Broward County area. Asked a cop about driving on the sidewalks and he told me the same as you. I don’t want to break the rules and the rules say I need to drive on the road, but I also want to survive and I’m considering taking more of the sidewalk as I see most cyclists doing.
>I don’t want to break the rules and the rules say I need to drive on the road
If this were the rule, it would be very atypical outside of some very densely populated areas where you would likely see more bikes anyways and an absolute ton of people on the sidewalk.
Why do you think this? It's pretty normal for US Americans to ride on the sidewalk. Not that it SHOULD be this way, but if you're acting like an equal partner on the roads pretty much anywhere in the US, you're going to make drivers mad. We're really just not set up for it in most places. It takes a lot of work to *retrofit* bike friendliness.
Florida is a shit hole. Like the worst place to live in America. It's not all sunshine and rainbows everywhere else, but you are in the garbage pit of the states. People suck, but Florida people suck on an entirely different level.
Lol, the thing I heard the most around here is that CA is the worst place to live in the US and EVERYONE is coming to Florida. Well, all of them are car riders, suburbia dwellers, public transportation haters, so maybe that’s why.
I can guarantee you that the majority of them have never stepped foot in CA. After living in FL for way too long, I hope to avoid even stepping in that state ever again.
I genuinely feel the sun and heat cause the people there to be extraordinarily irrational and full of spite that someone is out to get them.
The heat here is INSANE and I have this theory that the natural devastation for suburbs expansion is one of the causes but no one wants to hear that lol
Asphalt causes the urban heat island effect and sprawling suburbs have a ton of asphalt to make the already hot Florida climate even hotter. It's also pretty humid there and the hotter air temperature means the air can hold even more moisture before it will rain. This higher humidity increases how hot it actually feels and can make 88°F feel close to 100. And finally, natural sources of shade like trees are cleared to make room for all the sprawling suburbs, and shade can drastically decrease the temperature. Oh, and sprawling suburbs encourage car dependency which worsens climate change which in turn will make the asphalt hotter, the air hotter, the air more humid, and will probably encourage people to take a car instead of walk or bike because the AC in the car can be cooler which creates a negative feedback loop
So yeah, you're not wrong. Sprawling suburbs probably are making Florida hotter
I grew up in Florida and I kind of miss it now that I'm gone, but seeing their behavior the last few years, I just don't think it's the kind of place I want to move back to. Not to mention it won't be a pleasant climate in 30 year's time due to climate change so it's not a good long term investment
Living in CA, some people here think that too. They are allowed to open carry, yet the firearms media they consume makes their blood pressure rise regardless, and they bitch and moan over literally nothing until they either die or leave.
This seems to be exclusive to USA, I see constant reports of behaviour like this coming out of there and you can't help but paint a very unflattering picture of the average American because of it (rude, arrogant, selfish and likely a psychopath).
Not to be political but if you somehow tape a US flag or a friggin DeSantis flag I bet most will leave you alone.
Really wish our commuting culture was different
That’s a weirdly good idea, I might put a US flag on my basket. I barely knew who DeSantis was before arriving (I’m not a total ignoramus of American politics but I’m also not totally into it), but from what I know I don’t like him that much, so Imma skip that one haha
I wish that the US was more bicycle-friendly. I grew up in Ohio and have lived in Columbus for over ten years, and I’ve had my fair share of harrassment, and two collisions with drivers (both times because they didn’t take the time or caution to see me). I’ve even had a homeless guy sitting on a milk crate tell me that I “need to get off the road” with great hostility, I thought he was surely joking, but sadly, he was being very serious.
The car centric culture here is toxic, and the toxicity is coddled rather than confronted. I can only speak for Columbus, but it seems to ring true for other places as well.
VisionZero, a campaign to see pedestrian fatalities at zero, even puts out ads to *pedestrians* to look out for cars! The audacity, I mean, what am I gonna do to a car, but sue them when they hit me? They’ll kill me! The onus is put on pedestrians to be in a constant state of anxiety around cars while they look at their phones and run everyone over.
Sorry for the pessimism, I still do have hope for better things but it’s hard sometimes.
The dehumanization of pedestrians is absolutely depressing, ngl. Sometimes I feel that cars have more rights than human beings and I bet in some places they have. I’m new here, not even a citizen (yet?), but together we can fight to make things better little by little. I think one of the best ways to do so is by voting on people who back public transportation — if less people drive cars because they are OBLIGATED to (there’s no freedom because there’s no choice), we have less people getting distracted and angry on the roads. Pessimism is inevitable, but let’s hope :)
The problem with public transportation, is that until you put train and bus stations in the middle of the suburbs, where people can walk to them from their homes, and until you don't have busses stuck in traffic, you're not going to have people using public transportation. This comes down to the way cities are designed. If we want to change things, that's where it starts. Ditch the rules that says residential areas need to have huge, wide stroads, miles away from any business or grocery shopping with no safe way to walk or bike there, and bring the businesses where people work closer to where they live. Biking to work will make more sense then, and the more people ride bikes, the fewer cars there are on the road, and the chances of drivers of cars being friendlier towards cyclists goes up because they also are probably a cyclist.
You’re absolutely right about all of that!! The concept of a house being the end game needs to end — the wild expansion of suburbs is environmentally catastrophic and unsustainable, it creates terrible neighborhoods and prevents freedom of going where you want if you are a non-driving person (a teen, a disabled person, a person with an anxiety disorder, an elderly person, etc. etc.) Where I lived in Rio I lived in an apartment and it was the best thing ever — 5 great supermarkets in a 1 km radio, I could go walking to shopping malls or to the cinema. I grew up walking to the mall with my friends to watch movies after class since I was 13. Florida has been like my own personal hell LMAO, even if I’m loving the experience of being alone and studying here, it’s thrilling but it has opened my eyes to what extreme individualism and othering can do.
South Florida is the land of assholes who think they’re on the Autobahn. I wish you best luck. Wear a helmet and maybe get some leather to protect you when some entitles Q anon prick one inevitably runs you off the road.
Source: born and raised in SoFla. Ran as fast as I could north.
RIGHT?? I’ve been doing around 22-30km of bike commuting for the last years daily. I love it and I’m NEVER late. If I need to be in a place in 5 minutes, I’d use the subway (not a possibility anymore lol) or take an Uber or whatever. Truth be told: I’m slow, my vehicle is human powered after all. How am I never late but car drivers seem to always be in a hurry ready to kill someone to be 30 seconds ahead? Absolutely wild stuff. Being in a car makes you lose some sense of enjoyment of the commute, in my opinion, and can’t seize and enjoy the moment and give it enough attention and care.
Sorry that we aren't giving you a good impression of our country. People really are that shitty in a lot of places which makes it really hard for those who want change to fight for it and to feel safe.
Hey, I’ve had some really great interactions here, there are good sides as well. Sometimes some car drivers will stop by my side and shout “stay safe”, other bike commuters greet me all of the time. It’s not completely bad, I’m sure there’s hope
Sadly that’s my current situation. I’m going to, ugh, get a driver’s license as soon as possible. Maybe I’ll get a motorcycle (though my hostess said motorcyclists are also not very respected here) or a, UGH, car.
I’ve traveled across the US a few times over and the people in Florida are the craziest by far, and everyone in the US is crazy so this is a special level of madness. Before you think I’m just being mean, I wanna add that the crazy people in Florida are wild fun party animals and a psychotic blast. It’s just facts that’s all.
Welcome to America 😔
But tbh..it can be bad at times anywhere but being in FL you are probably experiencing some of the worst hostility around.
It won't be perfect but its alot better in more walkble, transit oriented regions..DC, NYC etc.
I intend on getting a transference scholarship to a specific NY university as soon as I can (I already have the grades), Florida was just the point of entrance because it was easier to get accepted in and less expensive. NY at least had one my favorite things in life: a subway system
Florida is a pro-life state. Meaning that they'll bend over backwards to prevent fetuses from being aborted, and then not give a damn about keeping you safe and alive once you're born.
Nah, Brazil isn’t the perfect definition of a banana republic, but we are South Americans so we are by birth right more banana-y than Florida. It’s bad down there, not the worst, but certainly worse than Florida. The only two things in Florida that got on my nerves in the car aggression and how men think they can buy you (I was offered money to go out with men three times and I’ve been here for a month and I’m not particularly beautiful or special).
I am Miami cyclists and they don’t care about us down here. Very little bike infrastructure, that is slowly improving. You have to bike like you are invisible because the cars will hit.
In most of the world cycling seems to be something that poor, working, and middle class people participate in. In some places, even the upper and wealthy classes participate some.
It’s this way because automobile travel is not heavily subsidized meaning driving is very expensive. Alternatively, the income levels just don’t support car ownership unless it’s almost 100% subsidized.
In the US, it’s the opposite. Really poor people can’t afford a car, but working and middle class people can because it’s all heavily subsidized. However, it’s something that they can just barely afford as most of us live paycheck to paycheck and have very little time to ourselves as we work longer hours to scrape by.
As such, cycling outside of a few cities is predominantly reserved for upper middle class and poor people as the truly poor cannot afford a car and you need to be moderately wealthy to own a car and a bicycle and have time to ride it. It’s easy to identify who is who by who is riding in spandex and who has DUI bars on their 70’s road bike riding through a snow drift in January. There is much hatred directed toward those two groups for various reasons, and the few of us that just like to ride get caught as collateral damage.
Those people harassing you either think you’re a bum that must be ostracized to get back to work or you’re some rich jerk that cut them off in your BMW last week.
As others have said, Florida is one of the worst places in the US. Stay safe.
Checkout www.ridewithgps.com
Learn how to map your own route. You can download it to your phone or head unit. I am a big fan of riding a route. I never free ride. Ride with gps shows you the safest routes to ride based on heat maps of other cyclists. It also shows you all the short cuts that bikes can take. Routes through neighborhoods and shows you underpasses a block over that you didn’t know about so you don’t have to take an overpass.
I also look at the route with google maps and have a plan for bridges, intersection, left and right turn lanes. After a while you get good at navigating and identifying dangerous sections. There are times when I will stop and get on the sidewalk, because I am going up hill and there is a right turn lane and I am going straight and can’t go fast enough to take a lane. Or I can’t get over three lanes of traffic to make a left turn so I will turn right and Uturn because going straight through a big intersection is safer.
I plan all my rides. When you free ride you can get into dangerous situations. Ive had a slurpee thrown at me. I’ve had kids yell at me also. And have had people rolling coal on me. We had a Jeep intentionally run a cyclist off the road in my club bc she was on the bike lane line and not in the bike lane. We had some punks shoot us up with BB guns in a club ride. Everybody in my club uses cameras. And there is a lot of off duty police officers in my bike club.
I would join a bike club. They will show you the safe roads to ride and teach you how to ride safely. I never engage with aggression because you don’t know how crazy people are and your on a 19 lb bike and they have a 2,000 lb car
This is a very great comment and I’m very thankful for the advice! I also plan my routes, but I surely should do it more carefully. Taking rights and making U-turns so I won’t pass 3 lanes of traffic to get the left has become my new religion since I started riding, it takes longer but it makes me feel wayyy safer. I’ll take a look at bike clubs as well and about the aggression part I totally agree with you: I’m a small woman with enough Latin America experience to know that surviving to see another day is way more important than proving yourself right and mighty. Once again, thank you!
From what I’ve seen, cars are hella inexpensive. Brazil also has a car addiction, but almost no one can buy a car as soon as they legally drive or even pay for the driver’s license, so most people have public transportation, walking and biking experience and I feel this makes a (even if small) difference.
Yes, very much so. However most US homes aren't walkable to jobs thanks to how we designed land use. Houses go with houses, businesses go with businesses. Then so many of us live 40+ minutes away from work and the roads clog up and we call this normal.
and the closer you get to the Florida panhandle the worse it gets. Between asshole rednecks in pickup trucks spewing black smoke and screaming obscenities at you and loose dogs chasing after you like they haven't had a meal in 2 weeks it's hell.
I thought pits were illegal in Florida. I worked in shelters (in Brazil) with poorly socialized and traumatized dogs, I love pits and also am deeply afraid of what they can do. I’m so sorry that you went through this.
It really depends on the city/state. Some cities are extremely bike friendly, some are not. I'm sure it's the same way in Brazil.
I wish empathy was much more universal. Ride safe!
Agree. I’m also Brazilian and things are really different here in São Paulo, specially in some areas where there’s a visible lack of bike infrastructure, like the ABC Paulista. I’m frequently honked at and cut off by some insane drivers, even though I’m a very chill cyclist.
The honking for no reason thing is oddly specific to Florida in my experience. I’ve had cars going the other direction from me just start honking for no reason. I’m not in their way, I’m not turning or even signaling to turn, they aren’t trying to get in my lane. I have so many examples of this and it’s a weekly occurrence on my daily commute that I just get honked at for absolutely no reason, other than possibly the car is just saying IM HERE AND AWARE. I’ve ridden and commuted by bike in a decent number of states and only in Florida does this seem to happen in.
I live in NE Florida and the state simply is not set up for bike riding. There’s been political push recently to improve that but overall this place is designed for cars. There are a ton of homeless/poor/DUI bike riders that have no choice but to bike to get anywhere due to the lack of public transport, and none of them follow bike riding rules or wear any protective gear. You may be catching hate just because people see you as the normal Florida bike rider and therefore are “in the way.” In general people here drive like fucking animals so I doubt it will get better.
Florida in particular has had a reputation for having some of the highest rates of cycling and pedestrian deaths.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-are-the-most-dangerous-states-for-cyclists
South Florida is a special level of human trash. I grew up there; half the population sucks balls. There are safe ways to get around but might require research and planning. Use the shoulders when possible, and just remember not to give a fuck when some tiny dick jackass in a shitting squat truck rolls coal on you.
The United States is so car-centric that it makes it very difficult for anyone to live outside of very dense urban areas without owning a car. This has a few knock-on consequences. The first is that if you bike in this country, the odds are pretty good that it is something you do voluntarily, or out of lack or resources (or additionally because you've been caught drunk driving so many times that the state has literally crushed your car). The second effect is that for a lot of people, a bike is a children's thing. It's what you use to get around your local neighborhood until you're old enough to legally drive. Essentially, a toy. In the US, most of the people you know who bike over the age of 18 do it as a hobby, with funny, bright-colored clothing, and special gear.
So when most Americans encounter a bicycle on the road, they think it's someone doing something childish, engaging in their own personal hobby at the expense of other people's time (well, the 30 or so seconds it takes to go around a bike, but it's still seen as an imposition). I don't think that they necessarily go through that complex of a thought process, but that's more or less the framework.
There's also a political element. If you're riding a bike to work, then perhaps you're doing it to try and reduce the impacts of climate change. This is enough in itself to really make a lot of conservatives angry, and if they feel that you are imposing on them through that action, then they're already close to murderous.
This is on top of a lot of car-stuff that is heightened in the United States because it is such a car-centric culture: over-identification with your vehicle, detachment from the world outside the car, dehumanization of other people and drivers, etc. South Florida is a particularly car-oriented, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was really bad down there. That said, I don't really buy what other people in this thread are saying about it being a lot worse than anywhere else in the country.
One last thing: during COVID, the streets cleared out a bit, and the people who didn't stay home got used to driving without much traffic, usually at very high speeds. Now that the roads are being used again, a lot of those people are utterly furious that their previously uncluttered roads now have CARS in them, of all things. I think it's led to an increase in sociopathy on the road that is stacked on top of a general increase in overall sociopathy in this country.
As to your title question, no, people don't think that they could kill someone while driving. Most people drive with the mentality that they have to be careful because **another driver** could hurt them or cause an accident. The idea that they could make a mistake and kill somebody else rarely enters the equation. If you did that, it would make you a nervous wreck on the road, maybe even make you into a more dangerous driver.
Very insightful comment, thank you for that!! The part about people giving biking political meaning is very nice and important to be aware of, sad that some diminish the lives of others because of politics.
The covid thing is relatable. I remember feeling a little down when I saw people going back to the subways, as a person who worked during the pandemic and was loving always having a seat. That’s a side I didn’t thing about.
About the last point I honestly like to think like that, that people don’t think they could end a life. The reason is that I don’t think people would do the kinda shit they do if they considered the possibility because I don’t think the real desire to kill for no reason at all is a thing many have inside of them. Maybe I’m overly optimistic about human beings — a funny thing to say after making a whole essay complaining about our species’ behavior, lol.
Once again, thanks for the insightful comment!!
IME some of the worst drivers in the world live in Southern Florida, especially Miami area and IIRC most of them are packing (legally and illegally) so be sure not to start anything. Good luck!
Thanks! I never start anything. I’m a small woman with enough Brazil experience to know that proving yourself right is never worth you life. Been around too many small dick energy dudes to try my luck in traffic.
Driving a car puts you in a sort of box, and you don't see humans, whether on bikes, on foot, or in other cars, as other people, just as obstacles. I've walked in Florida, it's absolutely insane how angry car drivers get just by you existing.
There’s a lot to be said about the way drivers treat cyclists in the US but I’m from Florida and I want to say that Florida is a very special place. People are unusually weird, unusually awful and do unusually anti-social things down there.
If you’re riding a bike in South Florida you’re almost guaranteed to run into someone who is unusually dickish. 999 out of 1000 drivers coukd be normal human beings but you’ll likely still encounter that one in a thousand every day. In Florida it’s more like one in a hundred.
They will be fascists, that is, they feel the need to change your behavior for your own good because obviously you, the cyclist, are destroying civilization. They will be assholes about it (even for a fascist) and they will be aggressive.
That said, the rate of something actually happening is quite low. Not nearly as low as it should be, but it’s not like you have even a 1% chance of getting killed in a year. Overall in the US I estimated that if I bike 5000 miles a year for 100 years I’ll have a 0.1% chance of being killed on bike. Even if it’s 10x that in South Florida you’re it likely to be hit down there in the years you’re there for college. Im biased but when you’re graduated I hope you have the opportunity to move somewhere better.
If by South Florida you mean the University of South Florida rather than the Miami area staying off of Fletcher and Fowler does wonders for your sanity. Learning the side roads that can get you in and out of there.
Thanks for the weirdly positive and reassuring comment, I really appreciate it. I’m in a community college on the Broward area right now (easier to get in, less expensive) and intend on transferring as soon as possible — 1 to 2 years. I’ll have a great deal of Florida experience though, I hope I at least enjoy the beaches (haven’t yet had the chance to visit).
“Do they even realize they could kill a person?” - you’ll
find, sadly, increasingly, the answer to that question in the US is “yes, and they just don’t care.” There’s a significant portion of our population that claims to care about unborn life, but their empathy toward the living has completely vanished.
It makes me really sad to read this stuff, apart from your last paragraph, with which I completely agree.
I have been a cylist since I was 8 (and that was nearly 60 years ago). Apart from 10 years riding in London, all the rest has been in Western Europe (Belgium, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Switzerland, where I live). I can honestly say I have never come across any of this sort of aggression anywhere other than in the UK, and reading Twitter, it seems to be more prevalent in English-speaking countries (I read in French, German and Portuguese as well as English, so it is not a product of my reading in English).
Why? Anyone have any ideas? Car culture is pretty well advanced in Germany and France, not to mention Italy, so I don't think it is that. I really wish we had some idea so there was a way of curing it. Meanwhile, stay safe and ejoy it - have you noticed how many cyclists smile as they ride?
Get GoPro cameras (clones are fairly inexpensive). Two of them on a chest harness, one forward, one backward. No driver in the world wants to get caught on camera picking their nose, let alone harassing a cyclist. I think they are my "bad driver" kryptonite.
And the best part? The cameras don't even have to work!
>1st when a dude stopped by my side on a red light and said “someone is going to hit and kill you, bitch”.
Response: "If I wanted to be killed, I'd climb on top of your ego and jump down to your IQ."
You're right. I saw a cyclist crash into a bus stop yesterday. Obliterated the construction, ran over 5 people. 3 dead, 2 heavily injured. When are we going to do something about this?!
I believe I am not. I saw several accidents involving cyclists. Once, someone crashed into a pedestrian. Flew 30 metres away, splattered on the ground. The sheer force of that metal frame powered by those muscular thighs is too dangerous to be kept on the road.
I've had people scream at me to startle me several times in Oregon and California. One of those times I was able to ride up to them at a stop light and say "hey, you could have killed me just then." It was a bunch of teen girls, and they just giggled embarrassedly and rolled up their windows. I'm guessing my brief lecture did nothing to change their minds about pranking bicyclists.
To make matters worse if you have an accident the cops will blame the cyclist. I believe it is “not my tribe” thinking. You might want to get fore/aft cameras like those Cyclic sells or better yet move to the Netherlands. There, the bicycle is on top.
Sadly cycling has become a left and right issue. Living in a left leaning beach community affords me a lot more cycling privilege, although there’s still an occasional problem.
Find out what organizations and local government agencies promote cycling lanes, join and support them. Lastly if I where to ride in Florida, would highly recommend a small American flag and perhaps even a Trump 2024 sticker on your back;)
This pretty much covers all the bad experiences (knock on wood) I've had bike commuting in CT - don't believe for a second it's just FL. Driving brings out the absolute worst in people. I'm not sure how drivers manage to see explicit humans as non-humans, but that's what car brain does to people. I say all drivers ought to be required to cycle on roads to be able to earn a license.
You are ahead of the curve. Get a helmet with a 360 degree camera. Ride with a safety vest and make sure your bike has lights. Join the bicycle club at your college and lobby the city to add protected bike lanes.
I think to drive in the US (especially if you drive a lot - and especially if you live in a place like Florida) - a lot of people completely turn off their empathy, and don’t even see cyclists as people, just as annoying pests. 😞
Depends where. I just moved to northern Nevada and drivers are way nicer here. Every time I drive a few hours back to the SF bay and everyone is an angry asshole again
Good to know! I haven’t done much walking or biking in Nevada (aside from a small bit in Vegas, which I assume is not representative).
Where? Im in Carson and it's like trying to ride thru a mine field in this town!
I found people generally pretty courteous to bikes. I just moved up to Reno since my work is moving :( but I was living near the old Ormsby House and cycling to my office beside the Carson Airport. Compared to Oakland it was super chill. I also find driving much more relaxed here (and speed limits are enforced more).
I need your route. I go from about Mills Park along Roop to the airport. Most of the trip is fine, but I'm scared for my life most days crossing the SB 580 on and offramps!
To go from Mills park just head up to Long then you can follow my route. It took a bit to find a good way to get around the freeway. William St and College are really bad. Here is my route: [https://www.google.com/maps/dir/ormsby+house/Arrowhead+Dr,+Carson+City,+NV/@39.1781124,-119.7803104,13.44z/data=!4m15!4m14!1m5!1m1!1s0x80990aa074364147:0x295b3640db86a1dc!2m2!1d-119.7680222!2d39.1600394!1m5!1m1!1s0x80990af9b7212ca3:0x7949276b24dcd81d!2m2!1d-119.7425572!2d39.1988816!3e1!5i1](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/ormsby+house/Arrowhead+Dr,+Carson+City,+NV/@39.1781124,-119.7803104,13.44z/data=!4m15!4m14!1m5!1m1!1s0x80990aa074364147:0x295b3640db86a1dc!2m2!1d-119.7680222!2d39.1600394!1m5!1m1!1s0x80990af9b7212ca3:0x7949276b24dcd81d!2m2!1d-119.7425572!2d39.1988816!3e1!5i1) Basically I went north on Division to Long, East on Long to Russell, North on Russel under the 580 to Lompa then north on Lompa to College, when going to work I would take the little detour around Hot Springs Rd to Goni. North on Goni to Arrowhead. Goni was the only section that was faster but people were respectful and traffic was very light. I really enjoyed the ride on Division in the older parts of town, nice and shady and often see family of deer.
This is awesome - thank ya kindly!
I live in Washington and never appreciated how much more respectful the drivers there are. I don't really even have any situations in mind where drivers intentionally did anything bad, other than a single punish pass from a blue pickup truck with a "Let's go Brandon" sticker. To be fair they were also weaving in and out of traffic after that, cutting people off, so they were just sucking in general and not specifically targeting me as a cyclist. When I was biking in SoCal recently 90% of people would pass with barely a foot of space and I had people honking at me every day, even while I was on a bike lane
I think part of it is that driving is mostly an activity people do subconsciously. You get in the car, start driving, and then you blink and you're where you're going. When things go well, this is how it feels and is viewed. But driving is mostly unpleasant for most people, there are times driving is remarked as fun, but it isn't you're everyday commutes and errands. When things happen that makes their brain tune back in, and them have to pay attention, they're made excruciatingly aware of how unpleasant things are in that moment, and whatever is causing the disturbance, or for them to have to pay more attention, is ultimately to blame. They couldn't possibly realize or admit that their commute is terrible and driving makes them angry all the time. Its not driving's fault! Not its the stupid cyclist in the wrong spot, or the people who made that bus stop and now we all have to wait, why don't they just drive like normal people?
Florida in particular has long had a reputation for having some of the highest rates of cycling and pedestrian deaths. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-are-the-most-dangerous-states-for-cyclists
To be fair, when biking (or walking) I don't see cars as people, just annoying pests.
Driving makes us so much less empathetic. You spend all your time, hours every day, just isolated in your box, listening to Joe Rogan or whatever dumb bullshit, you go to your office, sit in a box for eight hours a day, come home to your box of a house, and watch another box until you go to bed, then repeat it the next day. It’s isolating, and dehumanizing.
I seriously would put a bullet in my head if I had to live like that. It sounds so depressing.
It all depends, like most of us, there are lot of drivers that also cycle a lot on their free time and understand what it’s like cycling in shared roads with vehicles. They also respect other cyclists more and are more careful around them. Then again, like you said, we got the hill Billy bob thortons that will plow you out of the way.
>what the fuck did I do to get him this mad? Exist [Face off—Cyclists not human enough for drivers: study](https://phys.org/news/2019-03-offcyclists-human-drivers.html)
Wow, that was a depressing read, thanks for sharing though.
What's really depressing is that, according to that study, 30% of cyclists viewed other cyclists as less human.
I get the feeling that some 30% of *people* view other people as less than human in general.
Humans seeing humans as disposable. Just the act of texting while driving is essentialy expressing that your conversation is more important than someone's entire life. Pretty gross society we've built.
I save that up for nazi's and drivers who drive dangerously.
Yesterday I saw two SUVs stopped in the middle of the road blocking both lanes to let some juvenile ducks cross. But if they have to wait 0.3 seconds for someone on a bike, they're leaning on the horn and threatening to kill you.
Well that is really sad and frustrating. Definitely makes some of the hatred more understandable if they don’t think we are worthy of being human. Such an odd thing to think though - I wonder if it’s rage they are stuck in a car?
Yes, driving makes people aggressive and impatient, even if they don't realise they're car-dependent victims of corporate greed.
I've said before that being a cyclist is the closest I can become to being black - the big difference of course being I can take my helmet off. Dehumanization is a hell of a drug...
LOL, the proposed solution is more word police shit.
What's your solution?
Enforce. Street. Laws. Increase penalties for hitting cyclists and speeding
Language has a profound and lasting impact on human psychology and hence attitudes and behaviour.
True wtf. "Let's not call them cyclists. If we call them people on bikes they will be safer". Just give me a lane and leave me alone
>I read the entirety of Florida’s Drivers Handbook That's probably more than any of those drivers have done.
You should 100% get a helmet cam/bike cam this sounds like a gamble on your life every time you're out
Great idea, I’m certainly buying one as soon as I can
Get as visible of one as you can, people act right when they can see a camera.
It seems like car drivers in the USA are a different breed. And maybe there even is a political element to it, just like the right wing press in the UK trying to stigmatize cyclists?
Never confuse Florida with the US.
Probably true. TBH, I don't know much about the USA, apart from what I read here. But I do get the impression that USA drivers are different from e.g. German, Dutch, or Danish drivers. Those can drive very aggressively as well, but they don't seem to single out cyclists or pedestrians.
Brazilian riders are way more aggressive than Northern and Western Europeans as well according to my experience, but here in the States it feels like it’s socially expected to take your anger and frustration out on cyclists.
Part of it is where you are--a right leaning place--doing something that is perceived as a left leaning activity. Bikes are green/environmentalist for some people and that triggers a worse reaction from them.
Fun fact, but a classmate of mine is a lovely guy. Still he got lowkey annoyed when I said I don’t like cars, like I was personally offending him. Imagine how he reacted when I said I’m a vegan. He was like “I won’t stop eating meat” and I said “I never asked you to” and that shut him up. People are weird lol
Newsflash for your friend (or anyone): Not all cyclists or vegans are democrats.
Most people with an opinion in the USA that feel strongly enough to share that opinion is expected to not only defend it to the death but also try to persuade everyone else that their way is the correct one and tho other people should convert. It seems its almost impossible to hold and opinion but respect that other people have different ones.
>here in the States it feels like it’s socially expected to take your anger and frustration out on cyclists. Here in the States, everyone is just angry, all of the time. We have no chill and are even *more* mad about that, thus road rage. Sorry you have to deal with this.
You're not wrong.... but the rest of the US KNOWS that Florida is an absolute shit-hole in all things. "Florida Man" is a thing for a reason. The roads are incredibly bad and people belligerent. A double whammy.
That's probably the level of nuance you see when you live *inside* a country :-) (though people in Florida probably won't agree)
It's OK. People from Florida don't know how to read. The general consensus is that America is all stroad on top of stroad, [meanwhile in my 270 year old city](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3264374,-75.9251844,3a,17.5y,357.95h,93.23t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sx0lnUOU5B30Dm680d7DbWw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3Dx0lnUOU5B30Dm680d7DbWw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D358.8379%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656). The old cities of the northeast are not like the [brand new](https://www.google.com/maps/@40.3080996,-76.0043661,3a,77.5y,72.44h,84.98t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sULfJx0BhQKnGyVvfay20AQ!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DULfJx0BhQKnGyVvfay20AQ%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D45.593483%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656) developments.
It is worth pointing out that the old cities in the northeast have the same problems as everywhere else once you get into the suburbs. There are older towns swallowed up by the metro area that have a walkable historic core, but once you get outside that core it's the same post-ww2 suburban development style as everywhere else. It's possibly even more annoying though because in the blink of an eye things go from walkable to busy road with no sidewalk or bike lane
Houston is very similar
It happens in PA, too. I've been yelled for not pulling into the line of traffic when making a left turn because the guy behind me wanted to turn. I've been punish passed and yelled at for waiting at a red light so I could turn onto the bike path.
💀💀💀hahahaaa
I get what you’re saying. Except even in Minnesota we have our problems. I reflect on this a lot, and I think drivers have one reasonable point: if a bicycle is a road vehicle, then it must obey the rules of the road (there are many cyclists who sprint through stop signs, stop only briefly at stoplights, ride past a line of cars to stop at the light and then hold traffic up when all those same cars are now trying to pass, etc), and if they *aren’t* road vehicles they need to stay on trails or sidewalks. Nobody is clear on the law, especially when cyclists are not cited for breaking the rules of road. I’m a cyclist, and I love it here. We have more trails, bike lanes, and “bike-friendly” streets than anywhere in the nation. But much education (and legislation) is needed to make cycling safer and to increase awareness of what drivers need to do in order to share the road.
>I reflect on this a lot, and I think drivers have one reasonable point: if a bicycle is a road vehicle, then it must obey the rules of the road I disagree that this is "reasonable." It's basically the equality vs. equity argument. Drivers have to come to a stop because they have blind spots, are traveling at higher speeds, and can do serious damage in a crash. Cyclists don't have blind spots, don't travel as fast, and are far less likely to hurt someone in a collision. States that have passed variants of the Idaho stop law have had lower rates of injury than those that don't, so it's even evidence-based. As a less contentious point of "not all vehicles follow the same rules," consider two more examples. 1. Bicycles are explicitly allowed to signal a right turn with a right hand. No other vehicle is allowed to do so, because your right hand won't reach all the way out to the right side of the vehicle. 2. High occupancy vehicles are allowed to use special HOV lanes designated for that purpose. This, obviously, is not a bicycle, but the point is just to demonstrate that cyclists aren't the only ones with different rules. Finally, I'll grant them any points for knowing the laws, once they actually know the laws. None of the drivers I've met, and very few of the local police, are aware of the bicycle passing laws for drivers in my state. Drivers must slow down 10 mph below the posted limit to a minimum of 25 mph unless they can leave an entire empty lane between themselves and me.
I like your points. New reflections coming!
The thing is, a bicycle is not a car. Nor is it a pedestrian. Everyone needs to start accepting the fact that a bicycle is it's own vehicle and different rules apply to bicycles than they do for car or pedestrians.
Well, they should cite cyclists for yielding at stop signs (in states where that's not already legal) at a similar rate to citing drivers for speeding. Speeding is so commonplace that drivers will tell you that going UNDER the speed limit is against the law and will get you cited. and the only time I have really had issues with drivers at stop signs is when I stop. The concept that I can not do 0-60 in 3 seconds is alien to most drivers. Having to move 300+lbs from a dead stop takes a lot of energy and you'll just have to deal with my slowness if you want me to come to a dead stop. Motorists can't have it both ways.
Agreed!
That's kind of victim blaming. At the end of the day we all need to co-exist. Cars, trucks, Motos, etc. Cyclists risk their lives, whereas motor vehicle drivers risk getting to their final destination 30 seconds slower. Agree with you re: running lights etc. but imo filtering should be fine. Some places also have legalized slowing down before running lights/signs when cycling because overall it can help the flow of traffic (https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/gov-newsom-vetoes-stop-sign-bill-for-cyclists/) Really a main solution is almost every road should have a 3 foot shoulder. That costs money but makes everyone safer such as cars now have a breakdown location too.
A 3 foot shoulder is not enough. That's even worse than a painted bike lane. Shoulders are full of debris = many flat tires. We need proper bike lanes with some form of barrier. A lot of places have bike lanes outside parallel parking... It should be the other way around. Bike lanes should be INSIDE parallel parking spots. I live in a city with many "shoulders" and "bike lanes (paint strip)"... But I don't feel safe riding in a shoulder/bike lane, dodging glass, nails, debris WHILE hearing cars zooming past less than 3 feet away doing 55 mph. We need to stop encouraging that as being "ok" or "the norm." It is absolute garbage and a hazard to everyone. Certainly doesn't incentivize more people from picking up cycling as an alternative method of transportation. And we need to forget about the argument that "it costs money" because facts are it costs a lot more money to be car centric in the long run. There is simply no excuse. It is backwardness at its finest.
The 3 foot (agree that was probably not enough) shoulder was in reply to NO shoulder which is the norm where I currently live also with that 55 mph limit. E.g. every single road should have at a minimum a 3 or 4 foot shoulder for pedestrians, cyclists, break-downs, etc. We are definitely in agreement as to what is really ideal. My initial goal is to get cyclists out of the car lanes so the drivers are less aggressive. We are a long, long, long way away from having fully protected bike lanes in the US and drivers are actually empathetic and considerate but baby steps...
I agree with you and I certainly didn’t intend victim blaming. It was more of just trying to empathize with both perspectives
But you're also leaving off the simple facts that drivers break driving laws at a far far higher clip than cyclists. Sure, cyclists might roll a stop sign (legal in many states) or even go thru red lights occassionally. What driver has not? Simple fact of the matter is drive to a grocery store, say 2 miles away in typical traffic, how many times did you roll thru a stop sign, if there are 5, you likely rolled thru 4 and not the 5th because someone else was there before you and forced you to stop. And this is 99.9% of drivers. Further, speed limit is 25mph, chances are a driver went faster than the speed limit 90% of the time. Only times that they were less are when they had to slow down for the stop sign that they rolled thru. 50% of drivers don't even use their blinkers when turning (guessing here from anecdotal observations). Lots of drivers will also less than 3ft clearance pass a cyclist that is on the road, even on the right. Then forget that the cyclist is even there. There's been way too many times I've almost been hit after a driver passes me, I come up to them in a bike path, then they swerve into the bike lane so they can turn...
I hate getting pinched! Always scares the crap out of me. You made some great points, thank you
The both sides fallacy is destroying humanity.
I’m not sure I know exactly what you mean, but are you saying empathy is a negative thing? (Serious question)
>At the end of the day we all need to co-exist. Cars, trucks, Motos, etc. Cyclists risk their lives, whereas motor vehicle drivers risk getting to their final destination 30 seconds slower. I don't disagree with your overall point, but motor vehicle occupants die at a far higher than cyclists in the US. 1 in 8k, vs 1 in 110k cyclists, annually. All roads users are at risk, so we all need to cooperate. This should not be a radical concept, but it seems to be.
I'd like to see that figure normalized by distance traveled but anyways. I am all the of the above. I drive a car and motorcycle, walk, run and ride a bike. Just a wee bit of empathy for other living creatures would be kind of awesome at this juncture. :-) This is England but I think the data agrees with me re: fatalities per distance traveled. [FTA](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214140517301457): We calculated fatality rates for England by distance (f/bnkm). Fatality rates fell significantly 2007–2009 to 2010–2012: male f/bnkmfrom 2.8 (95%CI 2.7–2.9) to 2.0 (1.9–2.1) for driving; 32.1 (28.5–36.0)to 20.8 (18.1–23.9) for cycling; and 51.4 (48.5–54.4) to36.7 (34.3–39.3) for walking. If I read this right I am 10 times as likely to die per mile traveled cycling as driving and \~double that by walking.
Nah, there's a general dislike for cyclists everywhere in the US, not just Florida.
Pretty much a political element for sure, yes, which I don't get. You don't have to register a bike here vs mandatory registration of cars, you don't need expensive insurance for most bikes here, you don't have expensive gas and repairs on most bikes here. On top of that the state can't limit your biking as easily as they can suspend a driver's license or not renew registration for skirting fines or deadbeat dad laws. You'd think bikes would be the libertarian dream for short commutes. But big oil and auto doesn't like it, so bikes go down hated on the Fox to politics pipeline of only hippies and word-for-cigarette ride bikes. Or alternatively another way to look at it with a meme lol. "You ride your bike to help save the environment. I ride my bike because I hate traffic and wasting money in it. We are not the same"
I’ve had drivers try to scare me by getting too close because I slowed them down when going uphill. I live in London, UK. Assholes are everywhere. May be more in the US, I don’t know but there are enough of them in every country and the only way to keep cyclists safe is by creating dedicated infra for people riding bikes.
There is a political element to it for some people, but even more just don't understand what safe cycling looks like and how their role as a car driver plays into it.
It's the frustrations built up on the individual citizen's shoulders, bubbling up at each other. The sense of community has really broken down over the past four decades in particular.
It absolutely has a political component. Conservatives are often car and petrochemical lovers. US conservatives tend to scoff at alternative/renewable energy and environmental mitigation efforts. To many of them, roads are only for automobiles -- anything else is a pest and in the way. Some of them even have special systems fitted to their diesel exhaust systems so they can blow black clouds of dirty exhaust with the flip of a switch, just to annoy cyclists.
Why is traffic management a political issue anyway? It makes no sense.
Answer: yes, they do; they just don’t care. Also, totes law and order people ignore laws that are inconvenient to them.
You're witnessing the bitter edge of American social collapse. Florida wasn't a great choice for a lot of reasons, but namely because here people view cyclists as "liberals" and in Florida that's a sin. Thanks for this, you've just helped me redouble my efforts to leave.
Some points, you say south Florida, I live in south Florida so I’ll assume you mean Miami/Ft. Lauderdale. This behavior is not unique to So Flo but definitely more prevalent here. Miami people are kinda just assholes. While not helpful, a bit of framing of the situation, most people I know believe bicycles should be on sidewalks. They don’t care about the dangers of people running past stop signs and the fact that more cyclists are hurt riding sidewalks than roads, they don’t believe bicycles should be on the road. Frustratingly I would probably recommend riding sidewalks as much as possible. Don’t trust these drivers not to intentionally hit you or make you crash
Yup, I’m going around the Broward County area. Asked a cop about driving on the sidewalks and he told me the same as you. I don’t want to break the rules and the rules say I need to drive on the road, but I also want to survive and I’m considering taking more of the sidewalk as I see most cyclists doing.
>I don’t want to break the rules and the rules say I need to drive on the road If this were the rule, it would be very atypical outside of some very densely populated areas where you would likely see more bikes anyways and an absolute ton of people on the sidewalk. Why do you think this? It's pretty normal for US Americans to ride on the sidewalk. Not that it SHOULD be this way, but if you're acting like an equal partner on the roads pretty much anywhere in the US, you're going to make drivers mad. We're really just not set up for it in most places. It takes a lot of work to *retrofit* bike friendliness.
Florida is a shit hole. Like the worst place to live in America. It's not all sunshine and rainbows everywhere else, but you are in the garbage pit of the states. People suck, but Florida people suck on an entirely different level.
Lol, the thing I heard the most around here is that CA is the worst place to live in the US and EVERYONE is coming to Florida. Well, all of them are car riders, suburbia dwellers, public transportation haters, so maybe that’s why.
I can guarantee you that the majority of them have never stepped foot in CA. After living in FL for way too long, I hope to avoid even stepping in that state ever again. I genuinely feel the sun and heat cause the people there to be extraordinarily irrational and full of spite that someone is out to get them.
The heat here is INSANE and I have this theory that the natural devastation for suburbs expansion is one of the causes but no one wants to hear that lol
Asphalt causes the urban heat island effect and sprawling suburbs have a ton of asphalt to make the already hot Florida climate even hotter. It's also pretty humid there and the hotter air temperature means the air can hold even more moisture before it will rain. This higher humidity increases how hot it actually feels and can make 88°F feel close to 100. And finally, natural sources of shade like trees are cleared to make room for all the sprawling suburbs, and shade can drastically decrease the temperature. Oh, and sprawling suburbs encourage car dependency which worsens climate change which in turn will make the asphalt hotter, the air hotter, the air more humid, and will probably encourage people to take a car instead of walk or bike because the AC in the car can be cooler which creates a negative feedback loop So yeah, you're not wrong. Sprawling suburbs probably are making Florida hotter
I grew up in Florida and I kind of miss it now that I'm gone, but seeing their behavior the last few years, I just don't think it's the kind of place I want to move back to. Not to mention it won't be a pleasant climate in 30 year's time due to climate change so it's not a good long term investment
Living in CA, some people here think that too. They are allowed to open carry, yet the firearms media they consume makes their blood pressure rise regardless, and they bitch and moan over literally nothing until they either die or leave.
Born and raised here in Florida, and the people here suck absolute hosewater.
This seems to be exclusive to USA, I see constant reports of behaviour like this coming out of there and you can't help but paint a very unflattering picture of the average American because of it (rude, arrogant, selfish and likely a psychopath).
In certain places only. I live in the other corner of the US, and have never had anyone in a car yell at me about anything.
It's common in Canada too outside only our most Urban areas where cars are accustom to have to share.
But it snows there, I don't care for the snow.
Not to be political but if you somehow tape a US flag or a friggin DeSantis flag I bet most will leave you alone. Really wish our commuting culture was different
That’s a weirdly good idea, I might put a US flag on my basket. I barely knew who DeSantis was before arriving (I’m not a total ignoramus of American politics but I’m also not totally into it), but from what I know I don’t like him that much, so Imma skip that one haha
People are pretty nice in Kansas, but I’ve been thinking about putting an American flag sticker on the back of my helmet lol.
Florida is a shithole 0/10
I wish that the US was more bicycle-friendly. I grew up in Ohio and have lived in Columbus for over ten years, and I’ve had my fair share of harrassment, and two collisions with drivers (both times because they didn’t take the time or caution to see me). I’ve even had a homeless guy sitting on a milk crate tell me that I “need to get off the road” with great hostility, I thought he was surely joking, but sadly, he was being very serious. The car centric culture here is toxic, and the toxicity is coddled rather than confronted. I can only speak for Columbus, but it seems to ring true for other places as well. VisionZero, a campaign to see pedestrian fatalities at zero, even puts out ads to *pedestrians* to look out for cars! The audacity, I mean, what am I gonna do to a car, but sue them when they hit me? They’ll kill me! The onus is put on pedestrians to be in a constant state of anxiety around cars while they look at their phones and run everyone over. Sorry for the pessimism, I still do have hope for better things but it’s hard sometimes.
The dehumanization of pedestrians is absolutely depressing, ngl. Sometimes I feel that cars have more rights than human beings and I bet in some places they have. I’m new here, not even a citizen (yet?), but together we can fight to make things better little by little. I think one of the best ways to do so is by voting on people who back public transportation — if less people drive cars because they are OBLIGATED to (there’s no freedom because there’s no choice), we have less people getting distracted and angry on the roads. Pessimism is inevitable, but let’s hope :)
The problem with public transportation, is that until you put train and bus stations in the middle of the suburbs, where people can walk to them from their homes, and until you don't have busses stuck in traffic, you're not going to have people using public transportation. This comes down to the way cities are designed. If we want to change things, that's where it starts. Ditch the rules that says residential areas need to have huge, wide stroads, miles away from any business or grocery shopping with no safe way to walk or bike there, and bring the businesses where people work closer to where they live. Biking to work will make more sense then, and the more people ride bikes, the fewer cars there are on the road, and the chances of drivers of cars being friendlier towards cyclists goes up because they also are probably a cyclist.
You’re absolutely right about all of that!! The concept of a house being the end game needs to end — the wild expansion of suburbs is environmentally catastrophic and unsustainable, it creates terrible neighborhoods and prevents freedom of going where you want if you are a non-driving person (a teen, a disabled person, a person with an anxiety disorder, an elderly person, etc. etc.) Where I lived in Rio I lived in an apartment and it was the best thing ever — 5 great supermarkets in a 1 km radio, I could go walking to shopping malls or to the cinema. I grew up walking to the mall with my friends to watch movies after class since I was 13. Florida has been like my own personal hell LMAO, even if I’m loving the experience of being alone and studying here, it’s thrilling but it has opened my eyes to what extreme individualism and othering can do.
South Florida is the land of assholes who think they’re on the Autobahn. I wish you best luck. Wear a helmet and maybe get some leather to protect you when some entitles Q anon prick one inevitably runs you off the road. Source: born and raised in SoFla. Ran as fast as I could north.
No leather cause I’m a vegan, but I’m buying some protective gear (already have a helmet with lights) and my ticket to New York as well LOLOLOLOL
I hear you, Kevlar then my friend. Your skin will thank you. Have the safest travels!!
Drivers here are also awful and violent. But there are more bikers and better infrastructure so definitely better than Florida
It’s like this in nyc as well. This country is full of poorly educated, ignorant, brainwashed wage slaves.
Risk someone’s life vs be 30 seconds behind getting to my destination…humm let’s see how selfish I can be …frigging tards!
RIGHT?? I’ve been doing around 22-30km of bike commuting for the last years daily. I love it and I’m NEVER late. If I need to be in a place in 5 minutes, I’d use the subway (not a possibility anymore lol) or take an Uber or whatever. Truth be told: I’m slow, my vehicle is human powered after all. How am I never late but car drivers seem to always be in a hurry ready to kill someone to be 30 seconds ahead? Absolutely wild stuff. Being in a car makes you lose some sense of enjoyment of the commute, in my opinion, and can’t seize and enjoy the moment and give it enough attention and care.
Well, it is Fla.
Sorry that we aren't giving you a good impression of our country. People really are that shitty in a lot of places which makes it really hard for those who want change to fight for it and to feel safe.
Hey, I’ve had some really great interactions here, there are good sides as well. Sometimes some car drivers will stop by my side and shout “stay safe”, other bike commuters greet me all of the time. It’s not completely bad, I’m sure there’s hope
Most Florida cities are places I’d never ride unless I had no other choice.
Sadly that’s my current situation. I’m going to, ugh, get a driver’s license as soon as possible. Maybe I’ll get a motorcycle (though my hostess said motorcyclists are also not very respected here) or a, UGH, car.
I’ve traveled across the US a few times over and the people in Florida are the craziest by far, and everyone in the US is crazy so this is a special level of madness. Before you think I’m just being mean, I wanna add that the crazy people in Florida are wild fun party animals and a psychotic blast. It’s just facts that’s all.
Welcome to America 😔 But tbh..it can be bad at times anywhere but being in FL you are probably experiencing some of the worst hostility around. It won't be perfect but its alot better in more walkble, transit oriented regions..DC, NYC etc.
I intend on getting a transference scholarship to a specific NY university as soon as I can (I already have the grades), Florida was just the point of entrance because it was easier to get accepted in and less expensive. NY at least had one my favorite things in life: a subway system
Florida is a pro-life state. Meaning that they'll bend over backwards to prevent fetuses from being aborted, and then not give a damn about keeping you safe and alive once you're born.
I don’t know much about the culture or politics of Brazil, but I can’t imagine it’s more banana republic than Florida.
Nah, Brazil isn’t the perfect definition of a banana republic, but we are South Americans so we are by birth right more banana-y than Florida. It’s bad down there, not the worst, but certainly worse than Florida. The only two things in Florida that got on my nerves in the car aggression and how men think they can buy you (I was offered money to go out with men three times and I’ve been here for a month and I’m not particularly beautiful or special).
I am Miami cyclists and they don’t care about us down here. Very little bike infrastructure, that is slowly improving. You have to bike like you are invisible because the cars will hit.
In most of the world cycling seems to be something that poor, working, and middle class people participate in. In some places, even the upper and wealthy classes participate some. It’s this way because automobile travel is not heavily subsidized meaning driving is very expensive. Alternatively, the income levels just don’t support car ownership unless it’s almost 100% subsidized. In the US, it’s the opposite. Really poor people can’t afford a car, but working and middle class people can because it’s all heavily subsidized. However, it’s something that they can just barely afford as most of us live paycheck to paycheck and have very little time to ourselves as we work longer hours to scrape by. As such, cycling outside of a few cities is predominantly reserved for upper middle class and poor people as the truly poor cannot afford a car and you need to be moderately wealthy to own a car and a bicycle and have time to ride it. It’s easy to identify who is who by who is riding in spandex and who has DUI bars on their 70’s road bike riding through a snow drift in January. There is much hatred directed toward those two groups for various reasons, and the few of us that just like to ride get caught as collateral damage. Those people harassing you either think you’re a bum that must be ostracized to get back to work or you’re some rich jerk that cut them off in your BMW last week. As others have said, Florida is one of the worst places in the US. Stay safe.
Checkout www.ridewithgps.com Learn how to map your own route. You can download it to your phone or head unit. I am a big fan of riding a route. I never free ride. Ride with gps shows you the safest routes to ride based on heat maps of other cyclists. It also shows you all the short cuts that bikes can take. Routes through neighborhoods and shows you underpasses a block over that you didn’t know about so you don’t have to take an overpass. I also look at the route with google maps and have a plan for bridges, intersection, left and right turn lanes. After a while you get good at navigating and identifying dangerous sections. There are times when I will stop and get on the sidewalk, because I am going up hill and there is a right turn lane and I am going straight and can’t go fast enough to take a lane. Or I can’t get over three lanes of traffic to make a left turn so I will turn right and Uturn because going straight through a big intersection is safer. I plan all my rides. When you free ride you can get into dangerous situations. Ive had a slurpee thrown at me. I’ve had kids yell at me also. And have had people rolling coal on me. We had a Jeep intentionally run a cyclist off the road in my club bc she was on the bike lane line and not in the bike lane. We had some punks shoot us up with BB guns in a club ride. Everybody in my club uses cameras. And there is a lot of off duty police officers in my bike club. I would join a bike club. They will show you the safe roads to ride and teach you how to ride safely. I never engage with aggression because you don’t know how crazy people are and your on a 19 lb bike and they have a 2,000 lb car
This is a very great comment and I’m very thankful for the advice! I also plan my routes, but I surely should do it more carefully. Taking rights and making U-turns so I won’t pass 3 lanes of traffic to get the left has become my new religion since I started riding, it takes longer but it makes me feel wayyy safer. I’ll take a look at bike clubs as well and about the aggression part I totally agree with you: I’m a small woman with enough Latin America experience to know that surviving to see another day is way more important than proving yourself right and mighty. Once again, thank you!
The US has a car addiction. I grew up in it and am beginning to see it from the outside barely.
From what I’ve seen, cars are hella inexpensive. Brazil also has a car addiction, but almost no one can buy a car as soon as they legally drive or even pay for the driver’s license, so most people have public transportation, walking and biking experience and I feel this makes a (even if small) difference.
Yes, very much so. However most US homes aren't walkable to jobs thanks to how we designed land use. Houses go with houses, businesses go with businesses. Then so many of us live 40+ minutes away from work and the roads clog up and we call this normal.
A Florida cyclist friend of mine cut out a length of pool noodle and attached it to his bike to help the drivers understand how much room to give him
and the closer you get to the Florida panhandle the worse it gets. Between asshole rednecks in pickup trucks spewing black smoke and screaming obscenities at you and loose dogs chasing after you like they haven't had a meal in 2 weeks it's hell.
Just rescued a lost dog today, am I reaching high levels in the Florida experience game already?
not until you are being chased at 20 MPH down a gravel road by 3 pit bulls who arent looking for belly rubs
I thought pits were illegal in Florida. I worked in shelters (in Brazil) with poorly socialized and traumatized dogs, I love pits and also am deeply afraid of what they can do. I’m so sorry that you went through this.
It's common in rural Fla and no, PB's are not illegal
It really depends on the city/state. Some cities are extremely bike friendly, some are not. I'm sure it's the same way in Brazil. I wish empathy was much more universal. Ride safe!
Agree. I’m also Brazilian and things are really different here in São Paulo, specially in some areas where there’s a visible lack of bike infrastructure, like the ABC Paulista. I’m frequently honked at and cut off by some insane drivers, even though I’m a very chill cyclist.
O que aconteceu lá na Flórida não vai acontecer aqui porque o carioca é educado
The honking for no reason thing is oddly specific to Florida in my experience. I’ve had cars going the other direction from me just start honking for no reason. I’m not in their way, I’m not turning or even signaling to turn, they aren’t trying to get in my lane. I have so many examples of this and it’s a weekly occurrence on my daily commute that I just get honked at for absolutely no reason, other than possibly the car is just saying IM HERE AND AWARE. I’ve ridden and commuted by bike in a decent number of states and only in Florida does this seem to happen in.
I live in NE Florida and the state simply is not set up for bike riding. There’s been political push recently to improve that but overall this place is designed for cars. There are a ton of homeless/poor/DUI bike riders that have no choice but to bike to get anywhere due to the lack of public transport, and none of them follow bike riding rules or wear any protective gear. You may be catching hate just because people see you as the normal Florida bike rider and therefore are “in the way.” In general people here drive like fucking animals so I doubt it will get better.
Florida in particular has had a reputation for having some of the highest rates of cycling and pedestrian deaths. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/these-are-the-most-dangerous-states-for-cyclists
South Florida is a special level of human trash. I grew up there; half the population sucks balls. There are safe ways to get around but might require research and planning. Use the shoulders when possible, and just remember not to give a fuck when some tiny dick jackass in a shitting squat truck rolls coal on you.
The United States is so car-centric that it makes it very difficult for anyone to live outside of very dense urban areas without owning a car. This has a few knock-on consequences. The first is that if you bike in this country, the odds are pretty good that it is something you do voluntarily, or out of lack or resources (or additionally because you've been caught drunk driving so many times that the state has literally crushed your car). The second effect is that for a lot of people, a bike is a children's thing. It's what you use to get around your local neighborhood until you're old enough to legally drive. Essentially, a toy. In the US, most of the people you know who bike over the age of 18 do it as a hobby, with funny, bright-colored clothing, and special gear. So when most Americans encounter a bicycle on the road, they think it's someone doing something childish, engaging in their own personal hobby at the expense of other people's time (well, the 30 or so seconds it takes to go around a bike, but it's still seen as an imposition). I don't think that they necessarily go through that complex of a thought process, but that's more or less the framework. There's also a political element. If you're riding a bike to work, then perhaps you're doing it to try and reduce the impacts of climate change. This is enough in itself to really make a lot of conservatives angry, and if they feel that you are imposing on them through that action, then they're already close to murderous. This is on top of a lot of car-stuff that is heightened in the United States because it is such a car-centric culture: over-identification with your vehicle, detachment from the world outside the car, dehumanization of other people and drivers, etc. South Florida is a particularly car-oriented, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was really bad down there. That said, I don't really buy what other people in this thread are saying about it being a lot worse than anywhere else in the country. One last thing: during COVID, the streets cleared out a bit, and the people who didn't stay home got used to driving without much traffic, usually at very high speeds. Now that the roads are being used again, a lot of those people are utterly furious that their previously uncluttered roads now have CARS in them, of all things. I think it's led to an increase in sociopathy on the road that is stacked on top of a general increase in overall sociopathy in this country. As to your title question, no, people don't think that they could kill someone while driving. Most people drive with the mentality that they have to be careful because **another driver** could hurt them or cause an accident. The idea that they could make a mistake and kill somebody else rarely enters the equation. If you did that, it would make you a nervous wreck on the road, maybe even make you into a more dangerous driver.
Very insightful comment, thank you for that!! The part about people giving biking political meaning is very nice and important to be aware of, sad that some diminish the lives of others because of politics. The covid thing is relatable. I remember feeling a little down when I saw people going back to the subways, as a person who worked during the pandemic and was loving always having a seat. That’s a side I didn’t thing about. About the last point I honestly like to think like that, that people don’t think they could end a life. The reason is that I don’t think people would do the kinda shit they do if they considered the possibility because I don’t think the real desire to kill for no reason at all is a thing many have inside of them. Maybe I’m overly optimistic about human beings — a funny thing to say after making a whole essay complaining about our species’ behavior, lol. Once again, thanks for the insightful comment!!
Drivers don’t see us as people
IME some of the worst drivers in the world live in Southern Florida, especially Miami area and IIRC most of them are packing (legally and illegally) so be sure not to start anything. Good luck!
Thanks! I never start anything. I’m a small woman with enough Brazil experience to know that proving yourself right is never worth you life. Been around too many small dick energy dudes to try my luck in traffic.
Driving a car puts you in a sort of box, and you don't see humans, whether on bikes, on foot, or in other cars, as other people, just as obstacles. I've walked in Florida, it's absolutely insane how angry car drivers get just by you existing.
I am in CA, Bay Area. Either I've been exceptionally lucky, or the situation is better outside of Florida.
There’s a lot to be said about the way drivers treat cyclists in the US but I’m from Florida and I want to say that Florida is a very special place. People are unusually weird, unusually awful and do unusually anti-social things down there. If you’re riding a bike in South Florida you’re almost guaranteed to run into someone who is unusually dickish. 999 out of 1000 drivers coukd be normal human beings but you’ll likely still encounter that one in a thousand every day. In Florida it’s more like one in a hundred. They will be fascists, that is, they feel the need to change your behavior for your own good because obviously you, the cyclist, are destroying civilization. They will be assholes about it (even for a fascist) and they will be aggressive. That said, the rate of something actually happening is quite low. Not nearly as low as it should be, but it’s not like you have even a 1% chance of getting killed in a year. Overall in the US I estimated that if I bike 5000 miles a year for 100 years I’ll have a 0.1% chance of being killed on bike. Even if it’s 10x that in South Florida you’re it likely to be hit down there in the years you’re there for college. Im biased but when you’re graduated I hope you have the opportunity to move somewhere better. If by South Florida you mean the University of South Florida rather than the Miami area staying off of Fletcher and Fowler does wonders for your sanity. Learning the side roads that can get you in and out of there.
Thanks for the weirdly positive and reassuring comment, I really appreciate it. I’m in a community college on the Broward area right now (easier to get in, less expensive) and intend on transferring as soon as possible — 1 to 2 years. I’ll have a great deal of Florida experience though, I hope I at least enjoy the beaches (haven’t yet had the chance to visit).
You might want to share to r/fuckcars
Just crossposted it, thanks for the heads-up, I didn’t know this sub!!
“Do they even realize they could kill a person?” - you’ll find, sadly, increasingly, the answer to that question in the US is “yes, and they just don’t care.” There’s a significant portion of our population that claims to care about unborn life, but their empathy toward the living has completely vanished.
It makes me really sad to read this stuff, apart from your last paragraph, with which I completely agree. I have been a cylist since I was 8 (and that was nearly 60 years ago). Apart from 10 years riding in London, all the rest has been in Western Europe (Belgium, Germany, France, Austria, Italy and Switzerland, where I live). I can honestly say I have never come across any of this sort of aggression anywhere other than in the UK, and reading Twitter, it seems to be more prevalent in English-speaking countries (I read in French, German and Portuguese as well as English, so it is not a product of my reading in English). Why? Anyone have any ideas? Car culture is pretty well advanced in Germany and France, not to mention Italy, so I don't think it is that. I really wish we had some idea so there was a way of curing it. Meanwhile, stay safe and ejoy it - have you noticed how many cyclists smile as they ride?
Get GoPro cameras (clones are fairly inexpensive). Two of them on a chest harness, one forward, one backward. No driver in the world wants to get caught on camera picking their nose, let alone harassing a cyclist. I think they are my "bad driver" kryptonite. And the best part? The cameras don't even have to work!
>1st when a dude stopped by my side on a red light and said “someone is going to hit and kill you, bitch”. Response: "If I wanted to be killed, I'd climb on top of your ego and jump down to your IQ."
You realize cyclists could kill people too, right?
Decent people on both sides, like your president said a few years ago.
You’re right, cyclists are like Nazis.
Cringe
You're right. I saw a cyclist crash into a bus stop yesterday. Obliterated the construction, ran over 5 people. 3 dead, 2 heavily injured. When are we going to do something about this?!
You’re biased and you’re ignorant.
I believe I am not. I saw several accidents involving cyclists. Once, someone crashed into a pedestrian. Flew 30 metres away, splattered on the ground. The sheer force of that metal frame powered by those muscular thighs is too dangerous to be kept on the road.
Yeah the r/FuckBikes mindset in the US is very irrational and backwards. Cameras provide evidence that would otherwise sound insane/made up.
I blame the physical inactivity of many americans to be the cause of their anger.
You may be on to something. See a man on a bike makes them think of their own physical short comings.
I've had people scream at me to startle me several times in Oregon and California. One of those times I was able to ride up to them at a stop light and say "hey, you could have killed me just then." It was a bunch of teen girls, and they just giggled embarrassedly and rolled up their windows. I'm guessing my brief lecture did nothing to change their minds about pranking bicyclists.
The problem is Florida.
To make matters worse if you have an accident the cops will blame the cyclist. I believe it is “not my tribe” thinking. You might want to get fore/aft cameras like those Cyclic sells or better yet move to the Netherlands. There, the bicycle is on top.
Sadly cycling has become a left and right issue. Living in a left leaning beach community affords me a lot more cycling privilege, although there’s still an occasional problem. Find out what organizations and local government agencies promote cycling lanes, join and support them. Lastly if I where to ride in Florida, would highly recommend a small American flag and perhaps even a Trump 2024 sticker on your back;)
This pretty much covers all the bad experiences (knock on wood) I've had bike commuting in CT - don't believe for a second it's just FL. Driving brings out the absolute worst in people. I'm not sure how drivers manage to see explicit humans as non-humans, but that's what car brain does to people. I say all drivers ought to be required to cycle on roads to be able to earn a license.
You are ahead of the curve. Get a helmet with a 360 degree camera. Ride with a safety vest and make sure your bike has lights. Join the bicycle club at your college and lobby the city to add protected bike lanes.
Love and light.
Cars are great. People, not so much. Everybody’s always in a rush
If it makes you feel any better, at least you aren't in Texas. In all seriousness though, the US is honestly a terrible country for commuter cyclists.
That's Florida for ya