Please don’t start a fight with an aggressive driver. For your sake. They may be in the wrong, they may be breaking the law, they may be assholes, but you could very easily lose your life. Vehicle vs person/cyclist: vehicle will win the physical fight, with 4+ thousand lbs of force. No amount of court-ordered money to your family after you’re gone is worth that. Use a camera and report drivers, safely, after the fact.
We really need to pass laws that allow individual cyclists to collect bounties on drivers that violate safety laws.
Police are generally pretty ineffective at actually enforcing laws meant to protect cyclists. Most states have laws relating to minimum passing distance, laws that allow cyclist to take the whole lane, etc. But these laws mean little because cops don’t really enforce them for cultural and practical reasons. First, cops are extremely classist. They tend to assume cyclists are poor. And thus they really don’t see them as fully human, so they don’t really care about protecting them. It’s common for drivers to not even get a ticket when they murder a cyclist with their vehicle. Second, there are practical difficulties of enforcing these laws. Cops can’t realistically just sit at a location, waiting until a driver happens to violate some bicycle safety law. If police were to attempt to enforce safe passing distance laws, they would have to actually get on a bicycle themselves while in plain clothes and just wait until drivers violated their safety. But most cops would take riding a bike as an insult to their manhood, and they are generally pretty fat and lazy. Biking isn’t really their cup of tea. For cultural and practical reasons, police are generally very poor at enforcing bicycle safety laws.
I think the solution is to allow individual cyclists to enforce the safety laws themselves. It isn’t hard or expensive to equip a bicycle and helmet with a handful of very decent cameras. Are you following the law, occupying the lane, when an angry driver in a giant pickup truck comes up right behind you and starts tailgating you and wailing on their horn? They are likely violating the law. They are violating all sorts of rules about aggressive driving, unsafe following, etc. By doing this, they are putting your life at risk. As such, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to sue them in court for damages. Pass a cyclist within the 3 foot minimum passing distance? They should be able to take you to small claims court for $200. Aggressive tail gating and honking? $500. “Rolling coal” into a group of cyclists? $1000 per cyclist violated. Deliberately run a cyclist off the road? They now own your car. In many cities, some people could probably make their whole living just biking around and collecting fines from asshole drivers.
Cars have license plates on them. In a court case, it is not hard to find who owns a vehicle. And cyclists can easily equip their helmets and bikes that will clearly record the license plate and face of any aggressive driver that violates safety laws. So you can pretty easily find the specific individual that was threatening your safety.
I really think this is the most effective thing we could do to increase cyclist safety in the US. The unique risks cyclists face from drivers just aren’t the kind of violations that traffic cops are effective at dealing with. And enforcing laws like minimum passing distance really aren’t something that needs the full services of an armed officer to get involved in. Instead, these rules could be enforced through simple civil action. Let cyclists who have had their safety violated directly sue the drivers who violated their safety. No need to carry a weapon and fight it out on the streets. Instead, let them go before a judge and try to justify their ridiculous behavior to them. If small claims court proves inappropriate for this, we could also up the fines a bit and let cyclists also collect attorneys fees. An attorney could specialize in just this type of case, get really good at winning them, and then take the cases on contingency. They could even put up billboards saying, “make sure to have these types of cameras to most effectively capture evidence…”
If we can have bounties on people for using the ‘wrong’ bathroom, I see no reason we can’t do the same thing for cyclists and ignorant aggressive drivers.
I am so glad I don’t live where you do. Cyclists here are presumed to be reasonably wealthy, having the time to spend getting around our car based town at ~20km/h
So people behave a little better, police listen a bit more. Now I just wish they’d protect the main cycle route from my suburb cluster to the city centre with more than paint – that’s the sort of place where people don’t leave room, they presume they’ll be okay so long as they don’t cross the painted line
Knowing that the driver won’t get away with it greatly helps in keeping your cool when you encounter an arsehole. It also stops you being an arsehole back because it would weaken your case against them. This only works if the police will do something, but luckily they do here.
A small bb that goes in a bb gun, although any small rock will do. Think the sort of thing from “A Christmas Story”.
The idea is to slowly let air out of the tire without damaging it. When they put air back in the tire(or call for help, because bad parkers don’t know how to do anything for themselves), they’ll realize that someone let the air out on purpose and maybe think twice about parking bad again.
oh and btw, the last time I suggest this on reddit, I got downvoted to hell, but jokes about physical attacks on people were being praised.
Please don’t start a fight with an aggressive driver. For your sake. They may be in the wrong, they may be breaking the law, they may be assholes, but you could very easily lose your life. Vehicle vs person/cyclist: vehicle will win the physical fight, with 4+ thousand lbs of force. No amount of court-ordered money to your family after you’re gone is worth that. Use a camera and report drivers, safely, after the fact.
We really need to pass laws that allow individual cyclists to collect bounties on drivers that violate safety laws.
Police are generally pretty ineffective at actually enforcing laws meant to protect cyclists. Most states have laws relating to minimum passing distance, laws that allow cyclist to take the whole lane, etc. But these laws mean little because cops don’t really enforce them for cultural and practical reasons. First, cops are extremely classist. They tend to assume cyclists are poor. And thus they really don’t see them as fully human, so they don’t really care about protecting them. It’s common for drivers to not even get a ticket when they murder a cyclist with their vehicle. Second, there are practical difficulties of enforcing these laws. Cops can’t realistically just sit at a location, waiting until a driver happens to violate some bicycle safety law. If police were to attempt to enforce safe passing distance laws, they would have to actually get on a bicycle themselves while in plain clothes and just wait until drivers violated their safety. But most cops would take riding a bike as an insult to their manhood, and they are generally pretty fat and lazy. Biking isn’t really their cup of tea. For cultural and practical reasons, police are generally very poor at enforcing bicycle safety laws.
I think the solution is to allow individual cyclists to enforce the safety laws themselves. It isn’t hard or expensive to equip a bicycle and helmet with a handful of very decent cameras. Are you following the law, occupying the lane, when an angry driver in a giant pickup truck comes up right behind you and starts tailgating you and wailing on their horn? They are likely violating the law. They are violating all sorts of rules about aggressive driving, unsafe following, etc. By doing this, they are putting your life at risk. As such, I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to sue them in court for damages. Pass a cyclist within the 3 foot minimum passing distance? They should be able to take you to small claims court for $200. Aggressive tail gating and honking? $500. “Rolling coal” into a group of cyclists? $1000 per cyclist violated. Deliberately run a cyclist off the road? They now own your car. In many cities, some people could probably make their whole living just biking around and collecting fines from asshole drivers.
Cars have license plates on them. In a court case, it is not hard to find who owns a vehicle. And cyclists can easily equip their helmets and bikes that will clearly record the license plate and face of any aggressive driver that violates safety laws. So you can pretty easily find the specific individual that was threatening your safety.
I really think this is the most effective thing we could do to increase cyclist safety in the US. The unique risks cyclists face from drivers just aren’t the kind of violations that traffic cops are effective at dealing with. And enforcing laws like minimum passing distance really aren’t something that needs the full services of an armed officer to get involved in. Instead, these rules could be enforced through simple civil action. Let cyclists who have had their safety violated directly sue the drivers who violated their safety. No need to carry a weapon and fight it out on the streets. Instead, let them go before a judge and try to justify their ridiculous behavior to them. If small claims court proves inappropriate for this, we could also up the fines a bit and let cyclists also collect attorneys fees. An attorney could specialize in just this type of case, get really good at winning them, and then take the cases on contingency. They could even put up billboards saying, “make sure to have these types of cameras to most effectively capture evidence…”
If we can have bounties on people for using the ‘wrong’ bathroom, I see no reason we can’t do the same thing for cyclists and ignorant aggressive drivers.
Best thing to do right now is to file traffic complaints with the local police.
File one of those, and it goes straight to the trash bin.
Indeed, it probably does.
I am so glad I don’t live where you do. Cyclists here are presumed to be reasonably wealthy, having the time to spend getting around our car based town at ~20km/h
So people behave a little better, police listen a bit more. Now I just wish they’d protect the main cycle route from my suburb cluster to the city centre with more than paint – that’s the sort of place where people don’t leave room, they presume they’ll be okay so long as they don’t cross the painted line
Knowing that the driver won’t get away with it greatly helps in keeping your cool when you encounter an arsehole. It also stops you being an arsehole back because it would weaken your case against them. This only works if the police will do something, but luckily they do here.
My lawyer told me I shouldn’t smash up cars that are parked in the bike lane.
Unscrew the valve stem cap on a tire. Place a bb in the cap and put the cap back on. Escalation needs to start at the bottom.
What is a bb and what would it do?
A small bb that goes in a bb gun, although any small rock will do. Think the sort of thing from “A Christmas Story”.
The idea is to slowly let air out of the tire without damaging it. When they put air back in the tire(or call for help, because bad parkers don’t know how to do anything for themselves), they’ll realize that someone let the air out on purpose and maybe think twice about parking bad again.
oh and btw, the last time I suggest this on reddit, I got downvoted to hell, but jokes about physical attacks on people were being praised.