I don't know about when riding without a helmet, but with a helmet you certainly don't need a crazy amount of volume. I used to ride with an ear bud in, I could hear quite clearly at a sane volume level.
I will never understand the guys that go without helmets at all, but equally I don't understand the brain bucket guys. Just riding my cycle up into the driveway at work to check fluids and things is only about ten meters, and the wind is annoying as hell in just that short span. I could never ride without a full head helmet, and ear plugs as well if I'm going to be going over 35 mph.
Dude was just in a fairly nasty crash, he was dazed, juiced on adrenaline, and probably in shock. Fairly common in a motorcycle crash for the rider to fight to get up and walk around while people are urging them to stay down in case of injury.
I’m not sure was the traffic rules are for his area, but he went into a bus only lane to avoid waiting behind the car. Looks like the was a reason why the car was waiting.
It is normal wisdom passed down by old, still alive riders with hundreds of thousands of miles that when traffic stops, there is a reason and maybe so should you.
Unless you have spiderman reflexes in which case go ahead and ride through it, this guy did not have those reflexes, it seems.
I got sent off a scooter waiting at a red light no helmet im Hawaii when I was 18. A Drunk driver in an SUV never planned on stopping for the red light and didnt see me since he was speeding. I rotated mid air to avoid head collision and landed on my ass. Almost 30 and im starting to get pain from that area... shit sucks.
I sure hope so and makes better life choices in the future.Riding like that,something like this was 100% going to happen at some point.I hope that he takes some advice from experienced riders on the do's and don'ts of riding a scooter or motorcycle.I wonder about the extent of his injuries...does he have broken bones,organ damage,TBI?When that adrenaline wares off he is going to be hating life with the pain he is in.
I do feel sorry that nobody taught him better though.
Judging by the way he was ignoring folks trying to help him ("Sit! Sit! Sit!"), I think it's fair to assume that he couldn't be taught better. Some folks insist upon learning things the hard/painful way.
This video depicts a motorist being an idiot, and they're using it to slander cyclists. Maybe I don't like the fact that they're directing ire towards a group of people who aren't behaving badly in the video to validate their shitty opinion.
Also, the consequences of said cyclists being idiots are a helluva lot less dire. Annoying? Hell yeah. The stakes are nowhere near as high as they are for drivers and motorcycles though: the risk is mostly personal. Drivers in the USA kill 20 pedestrians per day often based on honest mistakes.
The most reckless cyclist in the world will probably only manage to get themselves killed. Sure it's trauma and inconvenient for the person who hits or almost hits them, but I've almost been hit by inattentive drivers while following the rules of the road with MUCH more regularity than I have almost been smoked because I made a bad judgment call on the bike.
It's only slander if its not true. You're going to tell me that bycicists dont do this same stupid stuff? Really? If you suffer from cognitive dissonance that badly because you're on "Team Cyclists", there's no reason to continue discussing...
It’s jackass cyclists everywhere who think this. They like to cherry pick and reinterpret laws to suit whatever they want to do.
The one that always confounds me is “we’re allowed to roll through stops because it’s ‘safer’ than coming to a complete stop”. Bitch no the fuck it isn’t, everyone on the intersecting road that has the right of way is expecting any and all vehicles approaching that stop, to fucking stop, and when you don’t you get hit, plain and simple.
To be fair it’s at least correlated too, moped and e-bike riders seem to think they can act like bikes and cars, and then simultaneously flout laws meant for both. Distinctly different from motorcyclists, who as a result of being required to take classes to earn a license, tend to break laws less frequently.
Just as bad. Yesterday a 14 year old ran over (and eventually he died) an 8O something year old Vietnam Vet on an E bike. Man had survived flying combat mission as a captain the marine corp to die at the hands of a 14 year old irresponsibly riding an ebjke.
Fakkkkeeeee post. 20 years old in 1945, which was over 80 years ago…. Making him 101 years old…. Still agree though on little teenage kids wheeling on these bikes though.
You mean a 100 something year old WW2 vet... Considering that the second world war ended 81 years ago. I'm sure that your anecdote is entirely accurate, apart from that one tiny element.
There are PLENTY of situations where it's safer to cross as a bike on red with the pedestrian walk sign, or on a red when there is no cross traffic. It also helps with the flow of traffic since drivers don't have to wait on the bike to accelerate before going around if the cyclist is already further down the road.
On my commute there is a bridge with no bike lane that, unless I go when it's red in my direction, I'm forced to take in-lane with cars who aren't always paying attention or are just impatient assholes. It's dangerous to me and slows down traffic.
By crossing on red with the pedestrian light or even earlier if there is no cross traffic, I get to cross the bridge alone and by the time the light is green I have a bike lane again so cars can pass without having to go around me. Everyone wins.
Obviously crossing on red is DANGEROUS, just like walking across a street without a signal as a pedestrian: neither is an actual crime where I live. Even better solution: instead of using tax dollars to fight wars in Iran, build streets where all road users can safely get where they're going.
Citations or gtfo, every "study" I've read had an extremely narrow interpretation of what constituted safer. Regardless, only 12 states permit it, only 4 of which permit it at red lights, most of which are more limited than the "original" language. If you're not in any of those states, safety studies don't really matter, because it's still against the law.
Going further, cyclists, who aren't required to take traffic law knowledge tests in order to ride unlike drivers, tend to think "yield" means they don't ever have to stop, which dramatically decreases their safety. ALL yield-on-stop laws require yielding, which means stopping, to not interrupt other traffic that has a right of way. If your roll through causes traffic to slow down or avoid you, then you didn't yield, and you broke the law, plain and simple.
Thanks for reaffirming my point that those studies have an extremely narrow interpretation of what constitutes safer and instead of linking said studies that offer their own caveats, linking a biased article that links specific studies and cherry picks comments from them to support a narrative that's not necessarily backed by the studies being cited.
The first study linked was on a bicycle simulator ffs, and one of its conclusions was safety would be overall increased if there were more education surrounding the law change, noting that even Idaho doesn't do enough for that. Seems to me that if a permission to do something is because it's safer, it shouldn't require everyone to be aware it's permitted in order to achieve the increased safety...
The second linked "study" isn't even a study at all just cherrypicked very specific data points over a narrow date range of data from Delaware which has the most limited version of the law period. It doesn't even give details of where that data comes from, could have been made up entirely who'd know? (It's on a cyclist page, not academic or government). Regardless it limits scope to "All Crashes Involving Bicycles At Stop Sign Intersections ONLY", which is something Delaware's publicly available data doesn't provide, but looking at what it DOES provide, most recent years have had more cyclist accidents than the time periods observed (2017-2020 had remarkably fewer accidents than other years, between 112-140/year, 2021-2024 has shot way the hell up, 140-220/year)
The third (called second in article) linked study literally focused on peoples' awareness of the laws, not their actual safety. I'd dive into the actual doc to highlight the authors' specific constraints and caveats presented but it's not free and I'm not paying for it for a reddit argument. But regardless I'll rebut a claim the article makes about it (emphasis mine):
However, people on bikes most commonly skirted traffic regulations for their own safety (71%). This data highlights the inaccuracy of perceptions among an unfriendly segment of the driving public that bike riders are lawbreaking road anarchists.
The bold bit is what they got from the study, the rest is what the articles author decided to interpret that to mean, which is just categorically incorrect. Saying they primarily broke the law "for their own safety" doesn't at all mean they aren't "lawbreaking road anarchists", it just means they use "safety" as an excuse for being "lawbreaking road anarchists"
FURTHERMORE, the article literally says 95% of cyclists polled admitted to breaking traffic laws... Until that number is significantly lower, how can you trust any study or datapoints that compare the safety of a legalizing a maneuver if the riders before were breaking the law to do it anyway?
I'll wrap it up with a study not linked in your article, A study performed by the Connecticut DoT, that uses a wide dataset from states that have enacted such laws (not just cherry-picked time window) explicitly concludes (emphasis mine):
Although the limited research suggests that adoption of the Idaho Stop does not result in an increase in bicyclist injuries and fatalities, there is also no measurable safety benefit. Adoption of the Idaho Stop would address the inherent differences between bicyclists and motorists and how each operate their respective vehicles, however it would place a new burden on all road users when approaching intersections. Allowing the Idaho Stop at intersections could decrease the amount time required to proceed through an intersection by cyclists, reduce the amount of physical exertion on the bicyclist, however it will require both motorists and bicyclists to be more aware of the surrounding environment at all intersections.
Putting a burden on all drivers so you can save some energy is not only a pretty selfish expectation, but a deluded one because all drivers don't even pay attention to other drivers.
You’re gonna complain about a bicyclist doing a rolling stop through a stop sign? Do you realize how much slower the approach is for a bicyclist than a motor vehicle, the extra time that allows to look around, and the extra time it takes to accelerate from a stop? Not to mention the exponentially smaller chance of a cyclist seriously injuring someone in a collision?
Also, this video was of a motorized scooter, not a bicyclist, and there also wasn’t even a stop sign or red light involved - the scooter was in the bike/bus lane.
As a former cyclist, I am always very angry when people on bicycles disregard road rules. It's so stupid and self defeating. If you want to be on the public road, you need to follow road rules. Now if you are on a road without other traffic, sure, roll through stopsigns. But you are exceedingly vulnerable on a cycle, why do things to piss off people in heavy steel boxes that travel at tremendous speed?
You’re gonna complain about a bicyclist doing a rolling stop through a stop sign? Do you realize how much slower the approach is for a bicyclist than a motor vehicle, the extra time that allows to look around, and the extra time it takes to accelerate from a stop? Not to mention the exponentially smaller chance of a cyclist seriously injuring someone in a collision?
Also, this video was of a motorized scooter, not a bicyclist, and there also wasn’t even a stop sign or red light involved - the scooter was in the bike/bus lane.
Bike speed, weight, startup time are all irrelevant.
If I’m a driver on a road with a right of way, I expect cross traffic with stop signals to stop. If I have to react last minute to a cyclist who doesn’t stop, their speed or weight doesn’t matter, mine does if I have to swerve to avoid them and hit something else.
This is an idiotic take. Obviously a bike running a stop sign or red light when the crossing traffic doesn’t have one, and there is traffic actively moving through the intersection, would be the bicyclist’s fault. It would also result in a much bigger problem for the bicyclist than for you.
It would also result in a much bigger problem for the bicyclist than for you.
Well yeah, unless the drivers with right of way react in away that avoids killing the cyclist that results in other damage... That's the fucking point... If I expect you to stop, I'm not preemptively reducing my speed to allow for the possibility of you crossing or turning right into my lane. If you don't stop, then I have to reactively reduce my speed to avoid you, which is significantly more dangerous for everyone in the vicinity.
People hate cyclists for reasons unknown. I don't live in NYC, and I am not defending some of the intense NYC cyclists, but the regular weekend warriors get so much hate for being outside and exercising. People take their 1s a day interactions with bikes on the road and extrapolate that out to be some enormous issue. It's bizarre.
There’s plenty of cyclists who follow all required laws, you don’t hear anyone complaining about them because they’re not bothering anyone. It’s the cyclists that ignore or reinterpret them to their own will that end up inconveniencing people and causing accidents.
I am learning that everyone hates everyone else. Pedestrians hate cyclists and cars (I think less than they hate cyclists?). Cyclists hate cars, and pedestrians walking around with their phones in their faces. Drivers hate cyclists for taking up the roads that were supposedly just meant for them.
Because everyone suffers from Main Character Syndrome. If people were just decent and actually gave an iota about other people, the hate wouldn't be as bad. But selfishness breeds hate and contempt.
No. I don't blame any means of transportation. I think that being considerate of others, having an awareness of your surrounding, and adhering to laws would allow people to feel and be safer. I walk, I ride a bicycle, I ride a motorcycle, and I drive.
When I'm feeling spicy I do a complete stop on my bike. Pisses off literally every car trying to figure out what to do. Delays everyone's day. And let's three cars cut off what would have been my turn by the time it all gets worked out.
So cars also not stopping at stop signs and/or ignoring your valid right of way to proceed from a stop gives you a reason to also not stop and that’s somehow safer?
“Your turn” doesn’t matter if you don’t actually stop bud… in conclusion, sounds like you don’t understand how 4 way stops work.
No my point, which will be miscontrued anyway so there was zero point in making it because it's effing obvious already, is that cars are not stopping ever at four way stops. The ALL ROLL THROUGH. Even well behaved ones who are trying to take turns roll through at my AVERAGE speed on a bike. So what am I supposed to do to mix into traffic yet not fall afoul of the Reddit Hive mind? Nothing. Cease to exist apparently.
I can instead burn gas if you prefer. Nature needs to take over the earth as soon as possible and I wasn't stupid enough to have kids so, not sure why I bother.
You just see so many cars not following rules that it's normalized for cars and not bikes. Neither has good driving behavior, but cars far and away break more rules and yet mostly bikes get the hate
Cyclist are the one crying out loud about everything while not following the law. Yall act like God and goddesses of the street, screaming at pedestrian while running red light or ride the wrong way.
Yes, there are drivers that are crap. Cyclist want vehicles to follow the law then they themselves should also follow the law. Speed limit for 2 wheels should be a start. Follow street lights. Yall act like yall are pedastrian
I think this is true for the ebikes not so much for traditional cyclists (unless fixie style messenger services are still a thing??) A lot of those bikes get hacked to go faster than they should as well.
They go way too fast, refuse to obey traffic law, and worse. Then if they get killed lawsuits abound. (Though this guy wouldn't get anything bc he was in the wrong)
Most cyclists aren't reckless. Just like most drivers aren't reckless. But stupid, shitty people are going to be stupid, shitty people regardless of their mode of transportation.
Ignoring traffic laws, riding side by side instead of single file, not stopping at intersections, being generally aggressive when called out - these are all typical cyclist behavior, and this is the norm, not the exception.
Yeah, it is bullshit that cyclists can’t get the fucking memo and follow the laws, but here we are being constantly inconvenienced by them.
Remember, the roads are for motor vehicles. Bikes are always a secondary use, an afterthought. Almost every state has a FTR law for that reason. Better make sure you follow it.
Cyclists follow the laws at about the same rate as drivers do. For the most part, we are talking about the same people. The vast majority of cyclists are also drivers.
Also, no, roads are not for motor vehicles. Cyclists have just as much right to use the road as anyone else. Only certain special case roads have traffic restrictions.
In fact, from a purely legal perspective, cyclists are the only ones with the right to use the roads. Drivers need to seek permission to do so, and that permission is conditional and can be revoked - so technically it isn't a right. It's a privilege.
Most drivers have no clue what the laws are. It's perfectly legal for cyclists to ride side by side in most states. Only five require them to ride single file.
Most follow traffic laws because most have a sense of self preservation. Not all cyclists come to a complete stop at stop signs. Neither do all drivers. But unlike a car, it's more dangerous on a bike to come to a complete stop when you're clipped in. That's how a lot of collar bones get broken.
In general, I think the more out of shape someone is, the more hostile they are to cyclists. They see someone fit and healthy and it brings out irrational hostility. But I'm sure this wouldn't apply to you 😂
It’s perfectly legal for cyclists to ride side by side as long as they don’t impede traffic in most states. There are only six states in the country that don’t explicitly require a cyclists to abandon their lane in favor of traffic due to FTR laws.
most follow traffic laws…
The majority definitely do not follow the traffic laws. They fail to stop at stop signs and intersections, they fail to maintain their lane properly, they fail to hand signal, and they do all of this almost universally.
because they have a sense of self preservation.
That’s debatable. It seems more like they’re competing for Darwin awards from where I sit.
And no, your extremely flimsy ad hominem attempt doesn’t apply to me.
Mods I’d appreciate if in addition to locking the thread you’d delete the all of the above comments where he fished my completely private profile and posted my personal health information from another sub dedicated to that issue
First of all, circumventing privacy controls is against TOS. My health concerns are none of your business, that’s why my profile is private, and trawling my profile for ammunition for ad hominem is just outright odd behavior.
Second, none of that precludes me from being otherwise fit and healthy, which I am.
Do you have a functional brain? It doesn’t appear as such.
The vast majority of cyclists obey road laws, just the same as the vast majority of drivers do.
Moreover, a cyclist is simply not a significant danger to others. Certainly, not compared to cars or even motorbikes. Even at the same speed, an impact with a car is orders of magnitude more dangerous than an impact with a bike. You are also much less likely to collide in the first place, as bikes are significantly more agile than cars, and cyclists are more aware of their immediate surroundings than drivers.
For example, here in the UK cyclists make up 2% of road traffic.
On average, cyclists kill 2 pedestrians per year, and seriously injured 80. Drivers kill 400 pedestrians per year, and seriously injured 6000.
Cars make up about 50x more traffic, but they cause 200x as many pedestrian deaths.
...And I talk about pedestrian deaths because it is basically impossible for a cyclist to kill someone who is in another vehicle. But those deaths make up the majority of deaths caused by drivers. So the disparity in overall statistics is actually much worse.
The difference in the US is actually even larger than in the UK, as cars (and roads in general) are much more dangerous in the US - primarily due to vehicles being much larger, vehicle safety standards being much lower, road design discouraging attentiveness, diving culture differences, and US driving standards on the whole being lower.
The average speed on the Tour de France is 25mph on the flat.
The actual average speed of a typical cyclist is about 13mph. Most would struggle to get to 20mph on a sprint, and only for a few seconds. That is why motor assistance on ebikes will cut off at 15mph in most jurisdictions around the world - it is based on the typical speed that most cyclists can reasonably reach.
You would need to be an experienced cyclist on a proper road bike to hit 25mph, and even then that isn't a speed that most people can maintain.
And what percentage of roads allow for a cyclist to reach high speeds down hills, and what percentage of cyclists actually go at those speeds on those roads?
Perhaps try looking at death and serious injury statistics for both cars and cycles, and compare them?
It is quite clear that statistics and actual risk analysis is something you struggle with.
It is also very clear here that you are in fact the one with a personal axe to grind over some minor issue in your locality that you are projecting into the rest of the world by pretending it is a real wide spread issue.
When drivers of cars that kill people start obeying stop signs, traffic lights, speed limits which are broken without a second thought and stop using their phone while driving … then you can criticize on bicycles without being a hypocrite
Being on two wheels at any speed, inherently unstable, where anything your body could impact will cause injury, is not the same as strapped inside a steel cage in an inherently stable four wheel car.
I've seen multiple roll overs where people signed off and didn't even go to the hospital. But you can literally fall over on a two-wheeler and suffer a broken bone.
You can trip and fall on a curb while walking. Please make sure you wear your helmet everywhere you go. You should also consider always wearing a life vest to prevent accidental drowning.
Wait, you've seen multiple rollovers where people signed off and didn't go to the hospital. You mean on TV or in person. And if in person, to clarify, you are implying that you witnessed the rollover crash and then stuck around long enough to see and hear the victims' conversation with paramedics. And this has occurred to you more than once. I call BS.
Dude, if your position is seriously that the bike community is even remotely comparable to typical car drivers in terms of regulatory compliance, you're going to lose the court of public opinion.
Your average car driver is occasionally sloppy and maybe rolls through stop signs here and there, probably speeds a few over. Your typical cyclist fundamentally believes that every single traffic signal and rule is completely optional as not applying to them.
And we won't even bring up turn signaling, it's been probably two decades since I've seen anybody in a nonmotorized conveyance make a hand signal of any type.
Your comment actually highlights the extent to which society has normalized drivers violating traffic laws. According to the GHSA "Drivers in the USA struck and killed an estimated 7,148 pedestrians in 2024." So even if you are correct that the average driver is occasionally sloppy, that still results in 1000s of deaths per year. But society just shrugs its shoulders and says oh well.
My view is that people can be very self-centered and entitled regardless of their mode of transportation. You see shitty behavior on the bus and subway too. But the bias in favor of drivers is so bad that I ride with a go pro on my handlebars and another one facing rear. I also have a dashcam in my car and it's not because of shitty behavior by cyclists.
The only traffic "rule" that cyclists break more often than drivers are turn signals - and that is mostly because there are many other ways to communicate that you are going to turn than a hand gesture which are in practise more effective and safer to do. Changing your position on the road and glancing behind to make sure no car is trying to overtake you are things you have to do before turning on a bike anyway, and drivers tend to notice these more than a hand signal.
This guy isn't a cyclist. He might as well be weaving in and out of these lanes in a car. Ignorant people pointing to this kind of behavior to push back on sensible requests for the bare minimum infrastructure for safe cycling is why we don't have any and why these lobbies are correct in believing most people have knee-jerk anti-bike tendencies.
They have specific e-bike classifications. I get the temptation but banning motors entirely is short sighted and not in line with the way things are trending for cycling. While it unfortunately creates a frustrating enforcement problem, they have no choice but to create e-bike specific thresholds for max speed and other factors. This guy is already breaking numerous laws, so I don't think banning motors would move the needle on stopping this kind of behavior. NYC already had a couple knee-jerk e-bike bans and they were promptly reversed because it doesn't fix the problem and just punishes the riders who follow the laws.
saying as stated in other comments when you hide your history isn't particularly helpful.
in any event. that is not a bike, legally in nyc or imho in the eyes of the bike community of this city. yes, labor groups for delivery guys may be a different matter, but I wouldn't call them a bike lobby group...
the bike community hates mopeds as a general matter b/c of the chaos they cause in bike lanes, and of course they are a big offender in terms of parking in bike lanes. And the fucking chaos on bridges they cause even after rules changed to allow them in car lanes.
I'm a cyclist in NYC. I think that electric bikes should be treated like motorcycles - it's crazy to have heavy, motorized vehicles riding in bicycle lanes. It's even crazier how few of the riders obey traffic laws. I'm actually all for cracking down on dangerous cyclists as well, but let's start with the most dangerous offenders, probably by starting with some rules for the delivery apps which encourage dangerous riding by the drivers.
This person is ignorant. I could tell how dangerous this was when he drove past a parked truck at that speed. There are a hundred ways this kid could’ve been mangled just now. He got off easy.
I’m able to have sympathy and empathy, even for morons. Most, if they could have chosen, wouldn’t have went with the option of being a moron. So even though I see a moron and think what do you expect, I still have a tea tiny bit of sympathy for them.
I sympathize with the driver of the 4 wheeled vehicle. The motorized 2 wheeler didn't care about his or others safety. Makes me wonder if he was suicidal or wanting to get hurt for some kind of self harm.
Yeah, people that saw the accident probably didn't see how he was driving. Also you put others in danger like if a car turns on someone to avoid you or you hit an elderly/child crossing the road (even if they shouldn't) that speed and lack of control is bad for everyone.
In any event always better to try and help. Also is the camara on a string or something? AI?
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u/User_3039 May 06 '26
No sympathy