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Cyclists Are Faster Than Cars And Motorbikes in Cities and Towns, Study Says (forbes.com)
Smartphone data from riders and drivers schlepping meals for restaurant-to-home courier service Deliveroo shows that bicycles are faster than cars and motorized two-wheelers. From a news writeup, which sources its data from Deliveroo, a UK-headquartered food delivery company with more than 30,000 riders and drivers in 13 countries: That bicyclists are faster in cities will come as no surprise to bicycle advocates who have staged so-called "commuter races" for many years. However, these races -- organized to highlight the swiftness of urban cycling -- are usually staged in locations and at hours skewed towards bicycle riders. The Deliveroo stats are significant because they have been extracted from millions of actual journeys. And it's all thanks to Frank.
Frank is the name Deliveroo gives its routing algorithm (the name was chosen for the Danny DeVito character in the TV series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.") Delivering millions of simultaneous orders from thousands of restaurants to hungry consumers within 30 minutes using roving self-employed couriers equipped with smartphones is a complex vehicle routing problem: consumers want piping hot food; restaurants want meals picked up when cooked; riders -- paid per drop -- want multiple deliveries per hour, and Deliveroo needs to make money. The algorithm team employs data scientists with PhDs in computer vision, computer science, operations research, cognitive neuroscience, econometrics, machine learning, and physics.
Frank is the name Deliveroo gives its routing algorithm (the name was chosen for the Danny DeVito character in the TV series "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.") Delivering millions of simultaneous orders from thousands of restaurants to hungry consumers within 30 minutes using roving self-employed couriers equipped with smartphones is a complex vehicle routing problem: consumers want piping hot food; restaurants want meals picked up when cooked; riders -- paid per drop -- want multiple deliveries per hour, and Deliveroo needs to make money. The algorithm team employs data scientists with PhDs in computer vision, computer science, operations research, cognitive neuroscience, econometrics, machine learning, and physics.
I'm of two minds on this.
First, some comedian said a while back: "When I'm driving, I hate pedestrians. And when I'm walking, I hate drivers. But no matter what I'm doing, I hate cyclists."
On the other hand, I've been commuting almost entirely on an electric bike for the last year and a half. Knowing what I've hated about cyclists for decades, I scrupulously stop at stop signs and red lights and use hand signals.
On the rare occasions when I take my car, it's always 25-45 minutes depending on traffic. On my bike I can cover the same four miles in 15-24 minutes, at times zooming right by 2-3 blocks worth of stopped cars.
In general, these days I avoid taking my car anywhere. Electric bike is usually faster and always way more fun.
By car it takes me 15-20 if traffic is light and 30min to 1 hour and 15 minutes for the same commute depending on the number of retards that can't drive are on the road. This is in Tampa Florida so it is a highly season thing. It is opposite of what you think is true. The locals are by far the worse drivers I have ever come across in the US. Even worse than Los Angeles. They can flip a car in a single vehicle accident on a straight road on a dry sunny day. Don't ask me how but they do it all the freaking time. The snow birds and the tourists that flock down here for vacation just add to the stupid that is already inherent in the system, but are hardly the cause of it.
I've converted over to commuting by bicycle because of the outdated stand your ground laws don't consider a person with their head up their ass (phone) randomly changing lanes in a 3000lbs piece of mechanized steel at 60mph in a 35 to be a lethal threat and justification enough to be countered with the use of lethal force.
Even with the dodge-em I have to play with the cars, commuting by bike consistently takes less time, has a more predictable ETA and is by far more gentle on my sanity than commuting by car. Self driving cars can't get here quick enough in my opinion.
In a reasonable world, we would change the laws to allow people on bikes to yield at stop signs and go at red lights after a full stop, as they already do anyway, so as to not artificially slow them down while making their behavior more predictable for pedestrians and motorists. But instead we moralize and say that if I can't legally plow through four-way stops in my car, no one can! Even though four-way stops were engineered deliberately to slow down cars in residential neighborhoods for the benefit of other road users.
Signed, an enthusiastic driver who also enjoys riding a bike, who follows the road laws exactly when in a car and bends them while on a bike, because I'm concerned about actual safety and not just arbitrarily following rules.
As they should be ...
Cyclists have better all-around vision than cars. They should be allowed to slow at a stop sign or red signal, check for cross traffic/pedestrians, then go. There are plenty of times when this is safe, as long as one actually checks.
Lane splitting -- cycles are narrower than cars. It's safer to keep moving than to risk being squashed between cars. Anyway, people need to figure out what they want cyclists to do. They bitch when they're part of traffic and ride in the lane, and keep bitching if they ride on the side/shoulder, affording the opportunity to filter/split past traffic.
Some jurisdictions allow something called the "Idaho stop", which allows cyclists to treat a red light as a stop sign and a stop sign as a yield sign.
Now personally, as a cyclist I'm dubious of this, but empirical studies of this rule show it actually reduces accidents. That actually mystifies me. On one hand I can believe the rule wouldn't increase accidents, because of cyclists' sense of self-preservation, but I can't quite see why it would actually reduce accidents. The one exception I can think of is the "right hook", where a motorist making a right turn hits a cyclist going straight or also making a right turn. This can happen even when the motorist sees the cyclist, because most drivers have a very poor idea of where their passenger-side rear corner is in a turn.
Advocates are divided on the Idaho stop. On one hand it's simpler and politically more palatable to simply say "bikes and cars are equivalent"; but I suppose there's no a priori reason why the rules ought to be exactly the same.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
First, some comedian said a while back: "When I'm driving, I hate pedestrians. And when I'm walking, I hate drivers. But no matter what I'm doing, I hate cyclists."
I'm a cyclise and I hate cyclists. Seriously everybody hates those guys. Actually come to think of it when I drive other drivers piss me off. And FFS why do people need to walk 4 abreast at 2 miles an hour on the pavement??
Hm maybe I'm just angry.
Joking aside, while it's possible to kill someone with a collision on a bike (it does happen), it's much harder to do in a car. Drivers are in control of a couple of metal stuff and 75kW of power, compared to a 80kg cyclist with maybe a kW for very short bursts. Drivers have a lot more responsibility than bikes and so their behaviour needs to be much much better.
The other thing that strikes me about driving is how self-defeting the driver lobby is here. They're always boo cyclists MOAR CARS. I live in London where the traffic is marginal at best and room for new roads does not exist. If you really want to drive the best strategy is to advocate for more bikes and pedestrians since that's the only way to reduce the traffic jams.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Probably true (well, not stop signs, because this is the UK where we don't have stop signs).
However, it is worth noting that we only need traffic lights because of the cars. If UK roads and traffic laws were built around cyclists and give them automatic right of way, then we'd be in a much clearer place.
Incidentally, while car drivers kill around 10 pedestrians a year jumping read lights, cyclists do not, which is the key difference.
On a bike, I don't blow through stop signs in residential areas, but I do slow down to the same speed Hollywood roll that most motor vehicles do. Which is to say, I don't slow down all that much.
The militant cyclists are indeed in a vacuum. I used to have some come to me with a bike map showing how I can easily do the 15 mile ride despite not having been on a bike in decades. I also had some friends at work badger someone to join them on a weekend ride, and they went on a difficult route in the mountains that they thought was "easy" and the newcomer ended up breaking a shoulder. They seem to honestly think everyone can cycle at an advanced level or at high speed, and they won't accept that someone does not want to join their cult.
On the same vein as "I'm not a racist, I have black friends!". Wrong. Cyclists obey the rules FAR more frequently than drivers do, most of the time even proportionally to the relative population.
But YOU drive (and, no, I don't believe your bullshit claim you cycle) and so you feel entitled to act that way because when YOU do it, "I have a good reason!".
But when it's a cyclist, you will delve deep to find a "reason" why the cyclist is bad, so that you can feel your utter hatred is not your problem but the cyclist.
They are not the ones getting cold, rained-on and run over by drivers. They are the ones sitting in their warm coccoons with their entertainment systems.