Of any kind. Commuting, road biking, touring, mountain biking etc.
Been a cyclist of various types for 20 years now. Never seems to be non-controversial. Even among other cyclists… many hate other types of cyclists. And now there is a lot of specific e-bike hate/controversy.
I don’t get it man. What do you think?
IME assholes are assholes regardless of being on a bike or not.
I’m in Europe now walking down streets that are wide enough for a single car seeing other hikers and bikers and cars stopping for each other. Agreed these roads aren’t designed for cars hitting top speed with wide margins around them, but at least some of these comments are written in this thread are US is special / there needs to be an ideal design for bicycles or nothing is just aggregating to read
I think the problem is that roads not designed for bikes in Europe are also old enough to have not been originally designed for cars, so things usually end up working out to some degree.
In the US (especially for infrastructure built from scratch in the 1900s onward, i.e. most of the US except for some parts of the east coast) most roads and town layouts were designed specifically around cars and travelling at car speeds, and are explicitly hostile to anyone who isn’t travelling in the biggest truck you’ve ever seen in your life. Blame oil/motor companies for bribing politicians throughout the 1900s (and honestly still today)
Yeah, agreed the Europe case just kinda works. And yeah, there are plenty of countries with big broad roads and they’re mostly hostile to bikes.
I still think there is a bit of overemphasis on infrastructure over culture. If you can look out for bikes and cars on a windy road you can on a better road. And trucks are pretty cultural. At least the large ones. Its pretty frustrating how well the US exports culture because they’re becoming more common around the world