this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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Fuck Cars

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A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!

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[–] [email protected] 140 points 1 year ago (23 children)

As a cyclist, two people cycling side by side while other vehicles are waiting to pass is a bit of a dick move tbh.

Not illegal, and nothing compared to the shit that drivers do to cyclists, but still a bit of a dick move.

[–] SonnyVabitch 56 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

Cycling two abreast is better for the driver, since they can overtake much quicker.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (8 children)

That image is quite a niche scenario and doesn’t represent the situation in the original image.

Obviously it’s different with a group of eight compared to just two people…

[–] Mr_Blott 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

niche scenario

Never been to a country where road cycling is massive then? Try living in anyplace that has Alps in it lol

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’re right. I live in a city and have never seen more than four people cycling together.

It’s almost like cycling in the alps is a niche situation, and cycling in cities happens much more frequently 🤔

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[–] MeanEYE 14 points 1 year ago

Great image, but you see people really don't want to use their steering wheels. And if possible they'd like pedestrian crossings removed as well. In ideal world there would be a race track from their home to exactly where they need to go and everyone else in traffic is a dick. Including other car drivers. Learning traffic laws and rules is too much of an effort anyway.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I disagree since overtaking a cyclist in the same lane is unsafe anyway. In the city I always cycle in the middle of the lane because it prevents unsafe takeovers and dooring.

[–] MeanEYE 11 points 1 year ago

So it's a bit of a conundrum. Because there are pros and cons in riding abreast.

On one hand, cyclists are more compact and more visible. On the other filling whole lane would mean drivers behind them would have to time their overtaking. However, car drivers almost never leave enough space when overtaking cyclists and 100% never think about wind that might push them or that cyclist might need more space to avoid potholes and stuff. So being a dick driver is not exclusive to cyclists.

Traffic law, at least where I live, states when overtaking cyclists driver must leave enough space between him and the cyclist so as to not inconvenience cyclist. Which is vague and not helping one bit. However I think it's far better to be forced to slow down and time overtaking than not slowing down and flying next to a single lane of cyclists. Because if and when there's a car coming from opposite direction, car driver won't care or look twice to move closer to the edge of the road and push others out.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Where do you see another vehicle "waiting to pass"? There's absolutely nothing in this picture telling you how much traffic there is, how wide the road is, etc. Nothing.

What can be seen in the picture, however, is a car that, no matter the speed, is tailgating way too close. Which is a misdemeanor in some countries.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Yes illegal, depending on the country.

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[–] MeanEYE 63 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Great image, however slightly wrong. In some countries car pictured should be a huge fucking truck which people use to go and buy Starbucks because of deadly combination of ego issues and laziness.

[–] FlyingSquid 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] FireRetardant 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Canada is rapidly mirroring America with car centric design and "you're only a man if you own a truck" mentality.

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[–] mriormro 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I wish the diagram would have put little fart clouds labeled 'Methane' behind the bicyclists.

What I'm trying to say is that I crop dust a lot when I bike.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Fun fact, humans actually produce only trace amounts on methane in our farts because we're not ruminants. Most of our farts are nitrogen swallowed from the air and CO2 produced by gut bacteria. The bad smelling chemicals are in even lower concentrations and barely make up a rounding error by volume, we simply evolved to be really sensitive to them because it's beneficial to our survival to avoid poop.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You left out the part where the ones on the bikes are going the fraction of the speed

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago (35 children)

So people saying the bikes side by side are a dick move are implying that you have more right to the road because you're driving a car?

Generally speaking, to do an overtake, a car needs to leave the lane completely, so it doesn't matter whether it's one or two bikes.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

You are assuming drivers respect the safety distance from a lone biker...

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It does matter. It's safer for everyone if cyclists travel side by side in one lane because then the car driver has to spend less time in the oncoming lane to complete the overtake. A long string of bikes takes more time to safely pass.

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[–] Subverb 25 points 1 year ago (14 children)

Why state a car's length in millimeters? Why state any length over a meter in millimeters?

Why doesn't the world use the decimeter? I don't think I've ever seen it used anywhere.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Using millimeters is pretty common in engineering.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)
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[–] Rakonat 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How I wish I lived in a part lf the world built and designed for bycicles or proper public transit.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Missed the part where the people in the car are obese.

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[–] AnUnusualRelic 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It also works fine with just one person in the car.

[–] taiyang 19 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's the most unrealistic part of that. Almost every car here has only one person in it.

[–] HexesofVexes 15 points 1 year ago

I love this sub so much. It's as if confidently incorrect had a weird little clone with just the right mix of sass, poorly thought out arguments, and environmental awareness to vex both cyclists and drivers in equal amounts.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh gosh, metric that is too confusing. Can you convert it into units we can all understand like yards, feet, inches

/s

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