this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
794 points (85.5% liked)
Fuck Cars
9662 readers
98 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
I'm not sure I'm understanding... as a driver you can legally pass by going into the opposing lane momentarily, as long as the line in the center is dashed (not solid) on your side and there is no oncoming traffic. That's kind of the whole reason the center line is painted like that, combined with those signs that say "do not pass" and "pass with caution" when the line goes solid and back to dashed.
In that scenario, that would be part of the drivable area yes. However, that is exceedingly rare in the United States at least from my experience in smaller cities/suburbia (east coast). I regularly see people breaking the law by driving on the shoulder to go around someone turning left, and illegally crossing a solid double yellow line to pass a bicyclist.
In my experience in midwest suburbia the center line is almost always dashed unless there's poor visibility (seeing around a tight curve or over a hill) or more than one lane of traffic in each direction (eliminating the need to overtake in opposing traffic). Or its a pedestrian zone, with reduced speed regardless.
True, some people break the laws. I don't see it nearly as often as you claim to, and usually not in especially unsafe conditions, but the point stands that those people are selfish and impatient. I don't see why bicyclists should have to sacrifice either their freedom (to bike to where they please and utilize existing public infrastructure) or their safety (by leaving the illusion that a full size vehicle might squeeze by at cruising speed) for such people. It's not bicyclists' fault that the infrastructure fails to serve all of its users equally.