Greatest thing about bikes, and this still applies to ebikes, is that you actually experience and participate in the city you live in. You learn the small roads, you see other people and they see you, you spot tiny businesses and interesting parks.
I lived in Los Angeles without a car for a few years. I often met people who lived here much longer but knew almost nothing about the local area despite having intimate knowledge of freeway off ramps. Cars are just so isolating. It's no wonder we see so much unhinged antisocial behavior from drivers.
I know people who can't get around without a car with GPS navigation. They do not know the way to the shops or their friends' houses.
It's interesting to me that road rage is non-existent between cyclists and pedestrians. It seems to be a manifestation of the frustration of being reduced to a metal box with a monotone horn, a couple of lights and the ability to go forwards and backwards. On a bike you're still a person.
If you are a tourist in a Dutch city you will quickly be disabused of the notion that there is no road rage between pedestrians and cyclists. Do not ever idly wander into a Dutch cycle lane, at any cost. You will be treated as invisible, people will cycle straight through you.
Should they for some reason take notice of you, they will not slow down one bit, but swerve away imperceptibly, infinitesimally, from a collision, thus making sure you are sufficiently rattled by the encounter.
Oops, I see everyone misread my comment. I meant to say road rage between cyclists and road rage between pedestrians. Not between cyclists and pedestrians. The difference is car people have road rage with each other. Pedestrians and cyclists intermingling is a problem with the infrastructure. Car people can't even blame that as they have the best infrastructure of them all.
Road rage between cyclists definitely still exists, and personally I can recall a few incidents (of my entire life) that might count as road rage between pedestrians. I think this is all proportional to how to can intimidate people with tool you have; motor vehicles are much more powerful so people become much more entitled.
As someone who bikes in the touristiest Dutch city of them all, we aren't going to hit you.
It is possible to do something so monumentally stupid as a pedestrian that you get hit and nobody could have helped you. That thing is to start crossing a bike path and then suddenly go backwards because you got scared.
As long as you don't do that, you'll be fine.
And the cyclists aren't nearly as annoyed by pedestrians as they are by mopeds.
I once saw a cyclist hit a pedestrian in Salem, OR. The pedestrian then beat up the cyclist to where I'm sure he lost teeth. Others called the police and I eventually left when the ambulance arrived. The cyclist was still laying on the ground, and the pedestrian was long gone.
Let's hope those dutch don't purposely hit an American.
As a novice cyclist I've been the target of angry exchanges with other cyclists on urban bikeways where pedestrians and cars are prohibited, because I go too slow, or get spooked by someone passing too close, or because someone cuts me off. It's not utopia, humans are still involved.
You've clearly never been on a bike path in America! Road cyclists wearing spandex suits are the most universally obnoxious group of assholes you'll meet here. They make Tesla and BMW drivers look polite, and will openly roid range on anybody that doesn't dive out of their way while they ride shoulder to shoulder in the middle of the path.
This is so universal that I’ve noticed that when I am wearing spandex when cycling, pedestrians seem to be really fearful of antagonizing me and act surprised when I do just what is right, like yielding for them, or breaking when they inadvertently get in my way. They clearly expect to be berated by me, probably because of their former experience with other spandex wearing pretend-pro cyclists
I know a converted railroad paved with asphalt decades ago going through woods for miles and an absolute respite from the chaos of human activity around my area. However, dealing with these "gangs" of spandex laden, wannabe pro-cyclists telling me to "get over" while shoving their way past me has made it stressful and confrontational. They remind me of the entitled suburban mom shoving her way up to the front of the line to grab her caramel macchiato because she's in a hurry to her botox appointment. And since this is Ashburn, VA...we have mega sized datacenters looming over both sides of the path like the heads of sentinels staring at you. I need to move further out :)
I have the opposite experience actually - majority of road "rage" incidents, which have only been contained to near misses or yelling, have been with pedestrians. Bike paths are ignored by pedestrians, they'll walk right in or through them, even when they look and see a bike coming. Pedestrians think they always have the right of way, and its very dangerous. This is in an American city though, btw, reflecting American city culture.
I've seen this argument before and thought it strange at first as in my experience road rage is everyday experience for me as a pedestrian. Then I realized that it depends on how much space is actually shared between cyclists and others. In Dutch cities bikes have their own space and it's not as common as here where bikes have to share the space with pedestrians. And with old ladies and their dogs. And with young people with baby strollers.
I have the same strategy of exploration except I do it by running. I recently moved to Prague and my way of learning the city layout is to look at a map and plan a rough route that connects certain landmarks and then I go out and try to run it by memory. Rinse and repeat and pretty quickly and I quickly end up knowing the city layout better than almost everyone including the locals. The only issue with this approach is that you naturally end up knowing your are much better than the rest of the city, but even that can be helped by starting out with a tram ride to some other part of the city and then running back.
That said I like doing this both by bike, tram/metro, _and_ by car as well. By bike it's the same process, but you see everything faster and take different routes. Riding the tram/metro connects you to places in other ways and kind of teaches you those routes. By car it's the same thing, but another level. For me the important part is to basically not look at any map throughout the process and find your way around by landmarks, signs, etc. Looking at a map before/after is fine, but during you should just be navigating own your own.
> you actually experience and participate in the city you live in. You learn the small roads, you see other people and they see you, you spot tiny businesses and interesting parks.
And you get cussed out by either drivers or pedestrians, because street design pits you against either one or the other...
> Greatest thing about bikes, and this still applies to ebikes, is that you actually experience and participate in the city you live in. You learn the small roads, you see other people and they see you, you spot tiny businesses and interesting parks.
Too bad you can't do that with cars or as a pedestrian /s
If by "experience and participate" you mean "get hit by a negligent car", then yes, I agree. I'll never ride a bicycle again until my city is serious about cyclist safety.
This is my fear as well. My state recently started a program to give people rebates if they buy eBikes, which is great! I have one myself. But I know we're going to experience a lot of collisions between bicycles and cars when there are more bicycles on the road. I find that the biggest issue is confusion on what is appropriate and what's not when you're on a bicycle, and when there is no clearly marked paths/lanes a lot is left up to interpretation. We should be setting people up for success instead of leaving it up to chance. Making mistakes shouldn't cost you your life or health. But it will take a lot of will and money to do that, and I'm not sure if anything expect loss of life will spur that will.
I lived in Los Angeles without a car for a few years. I often met people who lived here much longer but knew almost nothing about the local area despite having intimate knowledge of freeway off ramps. Cars are just so isolating. It's no wonder we see so much unhinged antisocial behavior from drivers.