this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2024
165 points (93.7% liked)
Fuck Cars
9626 readers
733 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You know, today I was at an intersection with my bike, where I had a stop sign and the other street had a lot of traffic. Usually I wait for a car on my street to try crossing so I can cross with them because no car is gonna stop for a bicycle. But I made the mistake of staying on the right side when apparently most of the cars on my street wanted to turn right, going in front of me. Less than half of them used their turn signal. Seriously people?
You wait for a car to initiate crossing because the road is so busy that you need to just cross and hope the cars without a stop sign will slow down for you? That sounds like a horrible intersection for everybody.
Yeah, one of the places in dire need of a traffic light. But in the absence of it I will definitely blame cars for not following basic rules.
Stop signs are a situation where I ALWAYS take the lane. Going through the intersection with a car is a recipe for disaster. I take my own turn like any other vehicle. I stop at the line right in the middle where a car can't just slip around me like I'm not even a fucking there, I plant my foot, and make eye contact with anyone approaching the intersection before I pick up my foot again.
This is the way. Drivers are usually not able to understand how to respond to bikes at intersections, so imitating something they understand, a car, is how you stay safe.
Can confirm, I have no idea what bike signals even look like (although I presume a hand out to one side means going that way), so doing what cars do would at least give me a good idea of where it's going.
At least where I live, Bikes are legally considered Cars in most cases.
Also, this is the official documentation in Ontario for bike signals, not sure how it compares to other parts of the world.
I did that once in a left turn. I didn't make the green light so I stopped in the "bike left turn lane" (in front of the car lane). A second or so later when it was full on red a car swerved into the opposite lane to get past me and blasted into the intersection. Had it been a second later he would have been struck by a car.
Some idiots have absolutely no self control... I bet those 30 seconds he saved must have cured cancer or solved world hunger or something...
That's probably the safest way of crossing but getting in front of cars and hoping they will slow down is scary. I just try to avoid these intersections all together.
I kind of just stay behind the car in front of me and let their actions tell me their intent.
I can’t be too hypocritical because I fail to signal on a bike much - I’m using two hands to control my braking and direction, and signaling costs one.
I like to signal well before I start turning so that I have both hands to complete the turn. I also don't use the legally defined turn signals since I find cars don't understand most of the time and it's easier just to stick an arm out in the direction I'm turning.