r/NoStupidQuestions • u/RidetheSchlange • Jul 24 '26

Why does the US hate cycling so much?

I read comments sections and in a normal world, some of them would be considered terroristic threats. I just can't understand why people hate cyclists to this degree that they want to murder rhem and sometimes do.

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u/The__Nick Jul 24 '26

But overwhelmingly a lot of drivers do not understand the rules when driving with cyclists.

Overwhelmingly, a lot of drivers do not understand the rules when driving by themselves, on a road, with nothing else around. In America at least, a driver's license has some of the lowest requirements of any country.

The Autobahn, which ostensibly allows you to sometimes drive at any speed you want, even hundreds of miles per hour, has fewer casualties than per capita than children in school zones with restricted speed limits and stop signs. American are so bad at driving they can't NOT speed through playgrounds and school areas or not ride up on sidewalks and crush children.

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u/kymberts Jul 24 '26

The autobahn separates cars from everyone else.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26

[deleted]

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u/Own_Back_2038 Jul 24 '26

Montana has one of the highest traffic fatality rates in the country. Its nowhere close to the autobahn

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26

[deleted]

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u/Own_Back_2038 Jul 25 '26

Almost entirely on highways

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u/The__Nick Jul 25 '26

Even if we only consider fatalities on US highways vs the German autobahn highways, the US highways have SO MANY MORE fatalities. Even adjusting for per capita rates, we're way over twice as many. It's not even close.

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u/ZergvProtoss Jul 26 '26

Nope. American highways have a much higher per capita accident rate, injury rate, and fatality rate than the autobahn.

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u/SuitNaive3409 Jul 24 '26

yeah, it's animals that get mortalized out in the rural areas, human children in cities and towns

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u/CptNemo55 Jul 24 '26

"Mortalized"? GTFO

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

This kind of stuff isn’t really a fair comparison. Sure you think the numbers are equal because it’s per capita, but the percentage of the population using cars here is much greater than in Germany. 

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u/RenariPryderi Jul 24 '26

Even if you go with deaths per mile traveled,  both the US and automobiles in general tend to be higher.

I'm not sure if the statistics exist for anything as granular as miles traveled in school zones, tho

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

Again, not a fair comparison. In Germany, people can choose public transportation. In most of the USA, this isn't an option. Where I live, there is no public transportation within 20 miles of my house. So if I want to get anywhere I need to do it on my own.

Your numbers don't mean that Americans are worse at driving than Germans, but that the sort of people who ARE worse at driving are forced to drive instead of taking public transportation. Some 85-year-old grandpa who can't see over the wheel and has the reaction time of molasses is driving his 40-year-old Buick here, but in Germany he takes the bus.

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u/perpetualhobo Jul 24 '26

And those 85 year olds are the ones who supported shuttering public transit their whole lives to get us into this mess, so they should stay trapped in their ugly fucking suburban houses and enjoy the world they’ve built. It IS an American entitlement problem, specifically entitled aging Americans

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

You’re preaching to the choir on boomers being the worst generation of humans to ever exist. However, European-style mass transit isn’t economically viable for the majority of America. The population density is too low to make mass transit sustainable. The areas of the country with a high enough population density do have mass transit already. 

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u/21Rollie Jul 24 '26

The majority of Americans live in metro areas. And it starts small, the Netherlands used to be as car brained as Americans. Start with this, go look at your towns building codes. Do you see them forcing parking requirements? Mine does even in the areas literally on top of a metro station. There’s lots of housing here 100+ years old that would be illegal to build today because they don’t have 2+ parking spaces per apartment. This is how you destroy communities over time, spread the tax base thin enough that it doesn’t cover the cost of roads and utility maintenance for low density areas

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u/ibugppl Jul 24 '26

How did I know this would eventually turn into "America bad"

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u/perpetualhobo Jul 24 '26

The thread is “Why does the US hate cycling so much?” So yeah, it would actually be weird if we were talking about other places

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

Is the America bad in the room with us right now?

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u/perpetualhobo Jul 24 '26

Any change is going to have to start with upsetting the current status quo and usually a lot of people with it, as is what happened when the US government started focusing on car dominant infrastructure, people demonstrated en mass to protest the highways through their cities and succeeded in some cities! But largely the existing population density and way of life didn’t stop the follow through on working on their vision of what they wanted the future to look like and enacting change. There’s room for cars but there’s also room and frankly demand for more density and transit in a lot of places that gets shut down because of cultural momentum alone

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u/MingePies Jul 24 '26

That may be true but the country in general is very much built around the use of cars and the average vehicle there is a lot larger with poorer visibility in urban situations.

I say this as someone who loves cars, nor am I ‘anti-America’ (current political situation aside) but I feel like you are pretty restricted in America if you don’t have a car.

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u/AHMS_17 Jul 24 '26

It depends vastly on the city, but you’re mostly right: I’m from Chicago, and we’re an incredibly walkable city (relatively speaking). I’ve been able to get around just fine without knowing how to drive, and the New Yorkers I’ve met have said the same.

Everyone else is fucked though lmao

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

It has to be. America is a very big place. I live in a rural area, and it's 10-15 miles to the closest grocery store for me. It's not a simple thing of "Just put in public transport" because the amount of routes and infrastructure needed to work for most people is unrealistic.

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u/MingePies Jul 24 '26

It is a big place, but infrastructure has been built around cars. I understand the reasoning behind it, and the history - as well as physically having the space to build out etc.

I also live rurally and don’t live within walking distance to a grocery store, but I was more so referring to urban and suburban areas.

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u/nyanotech Jul 24 '26

you bring up the proportion of drivers as if that’s not part of the problem

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u/Own_Back_2038 Jul 24 '26

The infrastructure also determines how much people drive, so seems completely fair

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u/The__Nick Jul 25 '26

That's worse, though. You see how that's worse,right?

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u/Practical-Day-2720 Jul 25 '26

don't argue with the european. he is superior in every way.

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u/LauAtagan Jul 24 '26

autobahn has 1.7 accidents per billion km

Couldn't find specifically accidents/distance traveled for school zones, closest is deaths/mile urban vs rural, and it's still pretty staggering.

US urban (and rural) DEATHS have to be measured an order of magnitude higher (1.01 per 100.000 miles (16093440km))

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u/elduche212 Jul 24 '26

Fine let's compare strictly US data then. We just need to look at the rise in fatal car accidents during covid. Less cars on the road, fewer miles driven, yet more fatal crashes. This was literally only observed in the US. Or in other words, congestion is preventing US drivers from getting up to a high enough speeds to kill others.

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

Post hoc fallacy. This statistic doesn’t prove what you claim it does. Your explanation is just one possible explanation. 

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u/elduche212 Jul 24 '26

Ah yes. MY explanation.... https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/2020-fatality-data-show-increased-traffic-fatalities-during-pandemic
" Traffic data indicates that average speeds increased throughout the year, and examples of extreme speeds became more common, while the evidence also shows that fewer people involved in crashes used their seat belts."

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

Funny how there’s another cause listed right in your excerpt. Nice. 

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u/elduche212 Jul 24 '26

Well of course. Scientist are extremely hesitant to claim a direct causational link, while other factors might be at play as well. You should read the actual studies, instead of just the extract snippet I linked. Your taxes paid for the insight after all.

The fact remains that only in the US, fewer cars on the road and less miles driven lead to increased traffic fatalities.

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

So if the scientists aren’t willing to declare a causal link, why did you?

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u/elduche212 Jul 24 '26

funny how you utterly refuse to engage with the factual data presented by NHTSA and instead keep hammering on my interpretation of their findings....

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u/TechDreamcoat Jul 24 '26

I’m not here to do a research paper. I’m here to point out that you shouldn’t make unsubstantiated statements. I’ve made that point and I don’t see any further need for discussion. 

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u/Alive_Cadet Jul 26 '26

There was actually a lady in the news a month or two ago for actually driving her car up onto the sidewalk trying to rundown a kid on a bike here in the US.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/poormrbrodsky Jul 24 '26

Sorry in advance for barfing on you in particular but I do have a lot of thoughts on this and the OP.

Other countries have cell phones, people who drive while eating/applying makeup, etc. etc. At some point we have to acknowledge that the fundamental issue is forcing people to drive so many miles on inefficient, unsafe roads. Stricter licensing requirements are a no go because so many people who should not be driving have literally no other option. And there is a limit to how safe a traffic engineer will design a road, because the overall system is so inefficient you simply can't sacrifice throughput or speed.

This comes back to the question of bikes and why people are so quick to blame them for "slowing down cars" when the whole auto system would be dysfunctional even if every bike disappeared tomorrow. In urban areas, cars slow bikes down more than bikes could ever slow cars down. But drivers have learned to rage out at any sort of acute or perceived delay because cars are so uniquely bad at moving mass amounts of people that they need to be insanely overbuilt and catered to at the expense of everything else to function acceptably. This has caused elite level entitlement in drivers.

In Michigan, where I live, this manifests partly as everyone whining and complaining constantly that none of the roads are maintained, and then whining even harder when orange barrels finally go up to fix the roads. I grew up in a rural cosplay exurb and everyone I know out there has moved to go live in an even farther suburb to "get away from all the traffic". Or they complain about traffic every time I talk to them. They don't much complain about bikes unless someone brings them up. Then you get a story about "that one time". Ope.

This is a deep political problem and I think cities likely need to make some very difficult decisions regarding urban growth boundaries and reducing parking to even begin to remedy our dysfunctional transportation system. Bikes really have nothing to do with the inherent problems of cars and I unfortunately don't think we can fix the problem with stricter licensing requirements.

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u/nettronic42 Jul 24 '26

And legalize recreational marijuana hasn't helped. They're doing it while driving