If you're not using or somewhat into bicycles, why do you think that is?
I'm curious. I know where my life diverged and where I would've been a car guy otherwise, would be interested to see what the dealio with other people is or whether they even ever thought about it
I am a bike guy. I don't own a car. Haven't for over a decade. But I've been hit by cars a couple times (only one major one that luckily only put my bike out of commission and not me) and had close calls way more than that. I live in a city with decent, for America, infrastructure with 100 miles of protected bikes lanes. And I get why safety wise, people aren't ready to do it. I am taking my life into my own hands in a way every time I get on my bike and try to share the road with motorists, who are insane.
Like, I think the term 'carbrain' has gotten over used a bit by urbanists and anti-car folks because it is such a tantalizing term. But it's certainly not without its use. Something happens to people when they drive cars. They become impatient and entitled on a way that borders on psychological transformation. I've never seen an average American more entitled to break the law than when they are a motorist. The speed limit is a suggestion, if you're not going at least five miles over it, you're not really driving. There is almost no other activity in American culture I can think of where people suddenly become rule breakers like this (and there should be many times where it would actually be good to break the law and they don't!), but they suddenly think the most important thing in the world is for them to get where they are going and literally fuck everyone else.
How many times have any of us seen people double park or otherwise put their car in everyone's way and just throw on their flashers as if 'fuck everyone else, my shit is more important' than we do with motorists? I can't really think of any other situation where this happens so publicly, so nakedly as it does when people drive.
And the anger driving causes in folks, I think mostly comes from the cognitive dissonance of their behavior in their car and knowing, deep down, that it is wrong. That they shouldn't be doing a lot of things they do in their vehicles. Stuff like pedestrians and bikers, who they literally have license to kill (look at the average criminal punishment for murdering someone with a vehicle versus literally any other way one can kill another human being and notice how little consequence there is for ending a human life while driving), remind them of the fact that their decisions are bad. Similar to how certain people get so angry about vegans/vegetarians. It's the guilty that drives fear and turns it into rage. And that rage, in turn, makes them even more deadly.
Driving is hard. It's demanding. And honestly it should have a much higher bar for who can do it because it is so dangerous. But, we've completely destroyed people's ability to get to most places in our society without cars. So, until we make it safe and easy for folks not to drive, we're stuck in this hellish predicament.
Rambling today, I guess.
People have absolutely no respect for the heavy machinery they use that could easily kill themselves or the people around them.
Have you seen the temper tantrums they throw when they’re told to put on a front license plate lol, muh aesthetics are worth more than being held accountable for what they do with their death machine
Or the meltdown that starts whenever registration fees come up - how DARE they make me pay for the infrastructure I’m destroying one drive at a time! How dare they make me go the speed limit, how dare they make me have a license plate, how dare they not let me wake up the entire city doing 60mph through the streets billowing out black smoke, how dare they make me stop at red lights, how dare they not let me park wherever I want, how dare they make me pay for parking, how dare they make me yield to pedestrians, how dare they make me get a smog check, how dare they how dare they how dare they
It’s all me me me - drivers are the most entitled people in the world
im into bicycles but i cant use them outside of recreation in very specific areas like parks. like i would need to drive my bike somewhere in a car to ride it.
because i would be dead right now if i were a bicycle commuter
edit: to clarify, like i literally cant even illegally ride my bicycle on the sidewalks to a safe place to ride bicycles, because the sidewalks leading from my neighborhood abruptly end in the middle of nowhere after a few minutes' ride
bc if i rode a bike around town i'd get run over by one of the thousands of psychotic, homocidal cagers in my city
Death to America
Theft rates where I live. You can have all the expensive locks you want, if you leave your bike out of eyeshot for more than a few minutes you'll never see it again.
Is where you live like really cycling friendly (apart from that) or how come every bicycle gets stolen? Scrap metal value?
how come every bicycle gets stolen? Scrap metal value?
Nah. my area isn't so so bad for theft (still wouldn't leave anything outdoors overnight) but it's generally either easy money resale or because the thief wants to use it to get around. Even if you only get 1/4 of what the bike is worth, its so trivially easy to cut a cable lock, and not all that hard to cut most U locks either, and then sell it for cash the next day. Its easy money and people are destitute.
It’s 98 degrees outside today
Also I live on a 45mph stroad with terrifying bicycle gutters and no shade
Honestly never really thought of it. I've used public transit my entire life and occasionally ride bikes.
When I was a kid I always dreamed of having a car, but the older I got and more I dealt with cars as a pedestrian (including being struck by one in a low velocity collision), the more I grew to dislike them in a city environment.
Then I always hear what a pain in the ass it can be to own one and that more or less solidified my car-free life.
As for bikes specifically, I usually rent out a bike when the weather is nice. I've been doing a lot of walking/running this year so I haven't ridden as much as I have in recent years but I'll probably get back to it later this summer.
I am uncomfortable with the fact that "bike" is not short for "Bichael."
Bichaelangelo says cowabunga dude!
everyone i know who bikes regularly has been run over at least twice and i hit the tolerable limit on health issues a while back
That's rough, I'm sorry
It's ancient history now but
That's why I'm not into bicyclesI used to be an exclusive bike commuter when I was younger, in rural parts of a state where that was a pretty fucking dangerous thing to be. Close safety calls and a series of moves got me off the bike and I never really got back on. Now where I live the state of the infrastructure makes cycling straight up suicidal, way worse even than anywhere I lived in the States, and I've got more to lose.
Cars
brevity is the soul of wit
The older I got the farther I wound up living from places that I needed to go.
When I need to go to places (beyond work) I need to be able to carry about 100 pounds of stuff (minimum) and 700 pounds (maximum). Pretty much the only time I leave the house is to go to work or get groceries/farm supplies where the closest we can get some stuff is around 25 miles away (50 mile round trip).
I actually live really close to where I work now, I think the shortest route is about 10 miles. Which should be totally doable by bike, distance wise. But its almost all on a dirt road and past several CAFO style chicken farms. And that makes it dangerous to bike as lots of semi's and overly large pickup trucks like to fly along the road, the road is in terrible condition often made worse when limestone gravel is spread on it, and during the 1/3 of the year that is now "Summer" the smell from the chicken houses can be overwhelming (and can cling to clothes), and the heat index will regularly be close to 100 degrees F so I'd get to work looking like I walk in from a rainstorm.
ebike with a trailer or cargo bike could almost make that base commute tolerable, but yeahhhh it'd be a sacrifice for sure. Especially the chicken barns, god poultry farming is foul. And 50 mile round trip to get groceries is also pretty non-feasible unless you really commit to some craziness lol
I didn't get to bike as much as I liked growing up because my parents lived on a mountain and climbing 500 vertical feet in a mile gets old fairly fast.
Because theres like 1 thing of note in biking distance but not walking distance.
Because the bike lane isnt separated so id be doing it on the sidewalk
Because i never learned how to maintain them, so they literally fall apart after a year
I am extraordinarily large and have had difficulty finding. Acomfortable bike, plus i've been sick for a very long time.
I think most people in the US don't think about it and go with the flow of "I'm an adult with a job of course I need a car", and if prompted why not try biking they just go "that seems like a pain in the ass/unsafe/not going to work in X weather". Even for ones that like biking recreationally. And I do empathize with not particularly wanting to bike commute every day in rain or snow or whatever. A lot of people have very inflexible work environments/schedules that wouldn't allow any exception for bad weather, so why take the chance (and it will be viewed especially negatively by bosses if they see it as "you're late because you choose to ride that stupid bike in instead of driving like a normal person")
And genuinely, not having a car in most US cities does limit your options geographically, economically, and socially.
I actually was a car guy from like age 16-21. I owned multiple cars, maintained them mostly myself, drove almost everywhere I went, gave people rides, etc. But day to day all that gave me was poor health, exposure to dangerous situations on the road, and a residence too far from the city center to reasonably visit any other way. It sucked. The only thing it was really good for was long distance travel, but when everyone you know still has cars that isn't as much of a factor. I wasn't doing a ton of solo road trips anyhow. I moved back into the city and kept my cars, but consciously tried to get around more and more with walking, transit, and eventually biking (due to the aforementioned poor health biking wasn't a primary way of getting around again for me until I got an ebike). I just enjoy those modes more, I feel more "in the world" that way. Eventually I realized I didn't need or particularly want the cars.
there are no sidewalks let alone bike paths, and i'm just not going to keep the traffic going 5mph behind me on the 50mph road my house is on, the trump flag trucks will kill me and even if its survivable its not worth the anxiety. unlimited nonexistence upon amerikkkan suburbs
This might sound silly but I tried it as a little kid and it was sooooo hard to push the pedals for whatever reason that it completely turned me off from the whole idea. And I was also only allowed to basically ride around in tiny circles in our driveway because all we have in our area is narrow roads with no sidewalks where people drive their dodge rams at 50mph around corners. And it's still like that where I live now so yeah.
yeah honestly there's a lot that can go wrong and give a person a bad experience biking. unmaintained shitty old bike? probably is a harder to pedal and horrible rolling resistance. Bad gearing? either super slow or super hard to pedal. frame too big or small, or seat not properly adjusted? that's gonna suck
So if you never get into it as a kid, and can't really do it even just for fun, its kinda no surprise.
it was 40 C today
The implicit other option here is car though, right? Not hating but from my experience with 39°C degree weather biking is way more plesant than walking
yeah the roads arent designed for anything else, and the distances won't allow it even if you tried to walk
Flat tires. Constant flat tires. The final straw was getting one 12 km out from destination and having to walk home. Also, I prefer riding on footpaths because I'm paranoid about being swiped by a car, but people don't like that either.
I have disliked the steering geometry of every bicycle I have ridden in my adult life. Is a reasonable amount of rake too much to ask.
My partner hates the toe overlap and twitchy steering of their road bike, I feel you
I take the bus. I'll bike again when it's not winter - I don't want the wheels to slip over and get my chest gouged again like what happened last year.
highly highly recommend studded tires if you ever feel like giving winter biking a go again. you can ride on sheer ice with solid traction, its crazy. I've never fallen with them, though deep snow could probably mess you up if you're not careful
But taking the bus is also pretty dank. beats a car any day
Bus. I can walk to the store and the bus takes me anywhere else I need be. Really, if I get a bike it would be just so I can get more exercise in. My place of living also has completely satisfactory cycle infrastructure, so it's just that I have my needs covered already.
I like bikes but riding a bike is dangerous in the city. Ive been hit twice, never again. I hate rich white people who do the cross country biking thing on busy streets. Its so uncool and so annoying
I've been biking to work all spring and summer. The only reason I stopped was because I bought a motorcycle so I've been taking that instead. I just love being on 2 wheels
i used to ride my bicycle every day but during the winter i decided not to get squashed by trucks and started walking instead (the sidewalks didn't get cleared, so i couldn't bike on them and i absolutely wont share an icy road with cars).
but come spring and summertime, i just preferred to keep walking. i think it's mainly because it's more leisurely, which makes it easier to transition between work brain and leisure brain during the commute.
on my bike i still mainly stuck to the sidewalks (which is somehow fucking illegal here btw) since at least half of all american drivers want to either maim or murder bicyclists on the road, but i have to carefully move to the road if there is a pedestrian on the sidewalk or whatever ahead of me. so even though while walking i still have to be on fairly high alert for the red-blooded american patriots who think the stop signs in residential areas are suggestions, walking is just a more pleasant experience.
i feel incredibly lucky that i live close enough to walk and bike to my job, especially so considering how deeply carfucked my city is, so my heart goes out to everyone who is forced to endure commuting by car or playing chicken with your life against american motorists as a bicyclist. wear a helmet.
i used to ride my bicycle every day but during the winter i decided not to get squashed by trucks and started walking instead (the sidewalks didn't get cleared, so i couldn't bike on them and i absolutely wont share an icy road with cars).
If you have some disposable income I cannot recommend studded bicycle tyres enough here. I mean the slippey-slidey-cars are still a (potential) danger but having car drivers gawk at you like you're walking on water because you're riding a bicycle at 30° corner leans on iced out roads is fun
it's definitely on my radar for next winter if i need to bike; i would love to stroll past all the lifted f250s stuck in the snowbank
So so much this
I live in a place with brutal winters most years and studded tires are worth every cent
I live in a really good bike city, but I don't know how to buy a bike. I need a irl bike friend to hold my hand to the bike store and make sure I get a okay bike. That is my biggest barrier.
Anything like a cycling advocate club near you? From my experience they're often more than happy to help to convert you to the cause
-7deadlybicycles
I grew up 10km from the nearest store. And that was a gas station.
The drivers have only gotten worse since the days in which I'd bike 2-4 hours a week for work/school. Seeing people pass in the bike lane while blowing through red lights and even worse behavior like that has got me wary. That said, once the construction at my job is finished, I'll start biking there again. It's close enough to walk with enough time carved out, but I currently need to use my car to transport supplies between locations.
i like bikes but have nowhere safe to store a couple in my small ass apartment and my area isn't exactly bikeable
I live in a village, if I wanted to go somewhere in the village I'd walk there, if I wanted to go to the nearest city I'd use the bus.
Idk how to ride one lmao
The only place I can bike around town is my small suburb. There is literally no way to get onto a sidewalk without driving a car. At that point, I may as well just drive to my destination directly.
I live at the top of a hill. I ain't biking up no hill. I am about to move to flat land closer to my job, and I do plan to bike then.
Just to warn you flatlands usually come hand in hand with wind, and that fucker is way less honest than hills. At least if you ride up a hill, you can ride down a a hill. No such guarantee with the wind. Only time you may actually be riding both ways uphill (metaphorically)
ebike!
even the lower power ones will make hills way easier unless you're hauling a lot of weight/cargo
It's not just a hill. It's a couple of pretty big hills and a 15 minute drive on a highway with cars going 70+ mph. No alternate route. I was strongly considering getting a Sondors Metacycle, but they stopped making them before they delivered many. Like I said, I'm moving to town soon and even a regular bike will be fine then.
It rains 80% of the year where I live and it’s pretty remote
I'm scared of dying on South African roads. Still like riding bicycles for fun, but I can't imagine commuting to work on one where I live.
no place to use it and im tired
The issue has always been that you can only cycle on the roads here, and that leads to you getting smushed (most of 'em are 60mph+ to top it off). If we had at least a vaguely complete cycle network, or at least walk paths I could cycle on, I'd be all over it.
I wonder why user 7bicycles is asking a question about bikes.
I have a bike but it's kinda been allowed to sit outside in the elements and I'm a bit unsure of what to do regarding fixing it back up. The roads around here aren't really bike friendly and its just safer to walk or drive and I like walking! I miss living in a place that was more bike friendly.
The first step is to take it inside, even if that’s inside a shed.
Then you wanna either replace or soak the chain in something called “chain brite”.
Once the pedals spin and the chain transmits that spin to the rear wheel, see if the brakes work. If the cables are stuck you can drip some kind of penetrating oil into them to help get things moving again. Sometimes I give up and replace the cables.
Once you can make the bike go and stop, pump up the tires and see how it rides.
Well that is clear and straight to the point, thank you!
I work 45 minutes from my apartment. Anywhere I care to visit, besides a couple good restaurants and a convenience store in walking distance, is at least 15 minutes away. I would happily live in a walkable micro-community with a grocery store, barber, gym, park etc. all in a couple block radius though.
I can't balance myself on a bike...
im a lazy scaredy cat. now the weathers good i probably could be biking places but the way people drive here and the lack of infrastructure is terrifying.
I never learned how to ride a bike. I was always afraid.
No safe paths to ride one by my place and hilly terrain. I like mountain biking though
I don't have the time or energy and it only takes a few kwh to drive around.
I like biking, but it's illegal to bike on sidewalks anf my work is too far away to bike to anyway. So i usually just walk when i wanna go outside.
When I lived in Copenhagen, I biked every day, but really only to the metro station. The great bike infrastructure was coupled with great walking infrastructure, so there were very few times I actually needed a bike. Also seemingly paradoxically, better biking infrastructure also meant greater risk of crashing, simply because of the volume of riders. Rush hours are a real sight, seeing hundreds of people move in a single blob down the street. There’s as many rules of the road as we have for cars, and I’m honestly surprised they don’t require licenses. I had only been there for a couple months when I got in my first accident. Neither of us were hurt, but we fell in the road in front of an oncoming bus lol. I feel bad for the guy, my beater of a bike’s spokes got stuck in his super fancy brake and it snapped off. I’ll still take that crash over anything I’d experience in the US though. The real danger is the people on mopeds who use the bike paths. I saw it a lot with food delivery drivers unfortunately.
Little fun Danish bicycle tidbit: pretty much everyone calls it cycling there. Biking is only for motorcycles, and “bikers” and “rockers” are what the media still calls gang members. Allegedly this is because of the Hell’s Angels and other biker gangs, who have been in Scandinavia for decades and still run a lot of the drug trade.
I'm Black and I don't want to make it easy for one of the local chuds in a pickup.
I used to bike with my kid to her kindergarten, but unfortunately someone thought my just-restored-after-winter-bike looked too good and napped it while I was sleeping. When I got my insurance pay out, I decided that I couldn't really spend the money on another bike, as my 2nd kid is just about to reach the age where I have to take him to kindergarten as well, which means I would have needed a new bike anyway. Currently debating whether I need to spend the extra money i'm about to receive on a new bike or just use it to further pay down my car-loan.
Skateboard
i miss my bike. i was wrecked in a storm and i left it's husk when i moved out of the city
i miss only using to my car to go work (which was way out in the suburbs, also i used it for work)
but i live in a very rural area, drive 35 minutes to work but still want an ebike just waiting to get enough $ together to get one for my partner and I
As a biker the main reason that anyone should not bike is if they live in the US and value their life. Biking in the US is TERRIFYING and I know zero people who bike regularly who have not been injured by a car. I still do it and others should too but it's basically one of only 2 valid excuses as far as I am concerned
I do think people are bad at estimating this risk (both over and under estimating it at times), and frankly the data on it isn't the best. My city has pretty good infrastructure and culture around biking, but the stats are still not great I imagine. What is my risk level if I stick to the high quality paths and calm side streets? Is it better for the people that just bike down sidewalks and don't follow the separated lanes and paths? I don't know. I do the former and it feels pretty safe, but there's still a ton of cars around that could maim me any day. I assume the majority of the injuries are happening off of the dedicated bike infrastructure (not to say they deserve it at all, just that one can probably lower their risk by being cautious and staying away from busy roads with poor to no bike infra)
You can put that zero up to a one though. I've biked much of my life, give or take a few years of car dependency, and not been injured by a car yet. I think I have a lucky horseshoe up my ass or something.
In most parts of the US its defs hazardous, but as someone living in one of the better places for biking as transportation in the US, people still act like it's instant death out there, so I'm becoming less and less receptive to the safety argument, as I think it's mostly used here at least as a thought terminator by people who haven't tried it and don't want to. Same with weather in some ways.
I guess it's less a worry about actively dying, and more a worry about being doored and breaking something. That's how the vast majority of people I know have been hurt, by being doored. There's just only so much you can do about that as a biker and most cities put it like road | bike lane | parking | sidewalk so the risk of getting doored or having a car turn out into you at low speed trying to get from parking to the road is just massive.
A lot could be done simply by banning huge pickups without a permit and banning semi-trucks entirely tbh, with no investment in infrastructure.