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I Can Beat Them All To The Next Red Light, Too
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Comic misses a parked car
I was on my usual bike ride a couple of years ago. On a particularly wide road, a car passed me and went way over into the other lane to do so, even though he could have kept the required 4' distance from me without crossing the double yellow line. Because he went so far into the opposite lane, a van coming the opposite way had to slow down a little bit - not even stop, just slow down. As this van passed me, the driver literally stuck his upper body out the window and yelled "you're gonna get somebody killed!" ... at me, not at the driver of the car that passed me.
I just couldn't believe the insanity of this dude. Like, I didn't make the fucking car pass me like that, and at most it made him get to the red light two seconds later than he otherwise would have.
This reminds me "nice" cars that do stupid shit because they see a biker. I just want cars to be predictable. I don't want them to be nice.
I can't stand the "oh I'll stop for you when I'm not supposed to at this 2 way stop" cars.
Like, dude. This doesn't help me. I have to wait and make sure the the car coming up behind you also stops and doesn't just pass you because you're being stupid.
And then now there is a car coming the other way and they aren't stopping (because they don't actually have a stop sign).
Can you just drive safe and predictable? I literally WANT to wait here until there are NO cars. Not 3-4 cars I now have to hope stop and don't kill me.
When people do this I literally just get off my bike now to make it obvious I don't want their "help". I've had too many times where people doing this have put me in danger. I have eyes. I want to wait until it's clear.
I understand and empathize with your frustration, as a commuter long boarder i have similar sentiments about how politeness can inconvenience me because of the precautions i have to take to stay safe. I would, however, like to point out that you are complaining about people putting in an earnest effort to exercise empathy for you; those who don't bike or otherwise do not have the experience to know that predictability is key, but they are otherwise attempting to care for your well being
Absolutely. Which is why it's so hard to get upset at them. I appreciate the gesture. But unfortunately we live in a world of cars. A nice gesture can quickly end with someone getting hurt.
Like, there is no world in which these nice polite gestures between bikes or pedestrians would ever have such high stakes. But sadly cars make it impossible.
The thing is that predictability is always key when you're driving no mater the situation. These are the same people who dont take their fucking right of way and wind up slowing down everyone. These are the same people who will stop inside a roundabout to let someone in and wind up causing a traffic jam.
Being "nice" behind the wheel is just being an asshole because you want to pat yourself on the back. Don't be "nice" while driving, be predictable.
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(3 replies)
"I can beat them all to the next red light."
Oh man.
I remember when I think it was Houston started using timed lights, the idiots said that a light timed for 30 MPH was also timed for 60 and 90 MPH. It's hard to comprehend such stupidity and bad math.
Houston is the only place where I've ever been passed on the right ... while I was in the right lane.
Were they just driving on peoples lawns or something?
This was on the interstate, they were driving on the shoulder. I was going with traffic at about 95 mph and they (like ten cars in a row) passed me on the shoulder going easily 15-20 mph faster than me. Extra crazy because the shoulders in Houston are loaded with all kinds of shit and debris.
I want to believe that Houston allows shoulder driving during certain hours. I believe you. But I don't actually want to believe that many people did that.
On a part of 405 in Seattle we have a "shoulder" that opens for traffic during rush hour simply for the fact that people would use it anyway to get to the exit ahead. So they just made it allowed.
I want believe that's what happened. But probably not.
I think in my case it was people jumping onto the shoulder to get to the exit up ahead. But "up ahead" was like two miles here.
That's what it sounded like. A similar situation to what happens on the 405 here.
But absolutely insane people do it when traffic is actually moving. I understand the "my exit is 300 ft away and we're all stuck". Understand it, but would still not be that guy.
Absolutely mind boggling people do this when traffic is moving.
That happened to me in SF/Mountain View. I was down there for an interview. I'd never visited the region before. It's like Mad Max on the freeways.
At a red light a woman decided she wasn't going to wait four cars back. Instead she just pulled over the curb, drove over lawns and headed down the road. No honking, just plowing across property to skip a light. We caught up to her at the next red light.
whilst I agree with the message, no busses are that narrow
There's some artistic liberties taken but neither are the bike lanes or passenger cars that narrow.
The artistic liberties contradict the point it's supposed to make.
Cars aren't that small, and buses aren't that uncomfortable.
The bike lane doesn't have a car parked in it, also...
You're morally obligated to smash mirrors on cars parked on bike lanes
Well, if we use the car to scale - the bike should be 1 seat wide, the bus stop should be 2 seats wide, and the bus itself should be 5 seats wide
Someone with photoshop skills needs to fix this
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No bus has that little people in it either
This is some sci-fi bus where the guy takes off his backpack and no one is blasting Skrillex on a Bluetooth speaker abomination.
There are many cases when a bus can have a really small amount of people, sometimes 1 or 2
Can confirm. After work I'm sometimes the only passenger on the bus.
~~I think that's depicting a tram, not a bus.~~
Edit wait no I'm wrong it has wheels it's a bus, not a tram nvm. Looked like a tram. Exactly because no buses are that narrow. Oh well. Art.
Yeah, that matches my experience on public transport alright.
Crammed in so tight you can't even bend a knee, and god help you if you're travelling with luggage or groceries...
That's not really a car issue, that's a "no-one invests in public transport" issue.
People don't invest in public transit because they have cars. Imagine if cars were banned. People would be falling over themselves to improve the systems they need to use every day.
That’s not really a car issue, that’s a “no-one invests in public transport” issue.
...which is absolutely a car issue. It's not happening for no reason!
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Nᴏ Wᴀʀ Bᴜᴛ Cʟᴀss Wᴀʀ
The only thing cars are better at than public transit and/or riding a bike (or similar), is traveling long distances. I'm not talking about your commute to the office; I'm taking about driving a percentage of the way across the country.
In that context and that context only, vehicles move more quickly, more consistently, and without needing as many breaks. With the obvious caveat of: traffic.
Other than that, for any notable Metro area, public transit should be the default, not your backup plan when your vehicle won't start.
Even then I would much rather be in a TGV going 300 kph than driving a car myself for hours on end..
Google shinkansen
The only reason that's true in the US at least, is because our long distance public transport infrastructure is horrific. Trains here are slow, dirty, expensive, and limited in their routes.
If we had a dense network of cross-country high speed trains, cars would be far less necessary. It's a vicious cycle. More cars requires more car-centric infrastructure, which creates incentive to continue using cars, which feeds the need for expanding the car-infra, etc.
The fun part is that the freeway system isn't built for cars. It's built to a standard that will survive entire armies, tanks, and other equipment being shipped across country, and they can act as impromptu runways for aircraft.
The American road network was built the way it is for national defense in case anyone were foolish enough to try to invade, so the military can quickly and effectively relocate their assets to where they are needed.
Sure, most of that stuff could go offroading to wherever they needed to go, but it would not be a quick trip.
Cars just use the highways and justify their existence until something else needs the roads as something other than a road.... Automakers have taken advantage of the fact that most of America is isolated in small pockets and Metro areas, while the vast majority of the country is borderline desolate. There's hundreds of miles of grassland, desert, forests, farmland, etc between some places. No transit goes there, because nobody lives there and nobody goes there, so if you need to go through that place, GFL without a vehicle.
The story isn't any different in my country.
It's all just a charade to make it seem like the government is doing everyone a favor in building highways and freeways, meanwhile the military is pulling the strings for where these roads should be built.
Airplanes, long distance busses, or trains?
Cars a good for long distance travel to the middle of nowhere. Which I personally rarely do, if I need to, I carpool or rent a car.
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public transit is only that crowded one trip in a hundred in my city. This comic feels anti-bus as much as it feels anti-car.
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A friend was recently complaining that cyclists were (also) complaining when he was walking on bike paths, but the city itself asks pedestrians to walk on bike paths because there's often no sidewalk. There's space for 4 lanes of cars plus parking on both sides, but not a sidewalk and a bike path, it's one or the other.
In don't remember the guy's name right now but there was an infamous cycling advocate a few decades ago that was against bike paths because it put cyclists into a specific space instead of making everyone share the streets that were already existing. I kind of wish his way of thinking won. Instead of pushing cyclists, pedestrians, people with strollers, people on scooters and all of the "not a car" forms of transport into the margins of a street, we should give the street to everyone, and force people with cars to share and care for everyone.
I know it's fantasy and unfortunately cars will always be given most of the space, even when road dieting, but it would have been nice.
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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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