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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.
They don't respect traffick lights and stop signs.
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.
Motorbikes do that too, but motorbikes follow the road rules...
The article claims bikes were faster than motorbikes, and the lack of following rules is about the only differentiator in london - motorbikes are allowed in cycle/bus lanes, and motorbikes can generally accelerate much faster than a bike.
The annoyance with bikes at intersections is that although they filter to the front, even if they do obey the lights (often being forced to by traffic flowing in other directions) they pull away very slowly and delay all the other traffic, often causing some traffic to be caught when the lights change again. Motorbikes are usually capable of accelerating sufficiently quickly that they get away ahead of all the other traffic and therefore don't cause any delays.
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Then there is the whole utility thing. You aren't going to carrying a weeks groceries for a family of 3 or 4 back on bicycle. Yeah it can be done but who the hell wants to.
Um, I've never owned a car and I have done just that very thing for the last 25 years.
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.
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Having been knocked unconscious and suffering a concussion from being hit by a bicyclist while I was walking I fully understand why they aren't supposed to use pedestrian walkways.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I know the plural of anecdote is not data but yes, it happened to me. Vastly more pedestrian vs. car and bicycle vs car than pedestrian vs bicycle but it happens.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
To hell with my karma.
Yep, cyclists frequently break traffic laws, which helps them go faster through congested traffic. But, after having bicycle commuted for several years, rude cycling is not the major factor in reduced commute times. Taking up less space and moving continuously while cars idle is what saves the time. I've crossed intersections, waiting for green lights, with scores of pedestrians and other cyclists, all crossing at the same time. Parallel asynchronous flows work with pedestrians and cyclists, not so much with cars, especially in dense cities. And car drivers typically break just as many traffic laws as cyclists, just different laws: speeding, changing lanes in an intersection, driving distracted/talking on cell phones, using bike lanes as turn lanes, etc. Pot, meet kettle.
Every election cycle healthcare becomes an issue, and increasingly CO2 & global warming, energy independence, and global conflicts over energy. Here's an idea: Chip humans and log their blood pressure and heart rate. In order to get any health insurance, your log must show some reasonable level of aerobic exercise - 4 to 6 hours per week, for starters. You are too busy, too important, and don't have the time for this? Fine, pay for your own healthcare. All of it, including vision and dental. No exercise for 1 week - probation. No exercise for 1 month, no coverage, for anything. Probationary coverage resumes the first day you can show a week's worth of exercise, which can be done in half a day. Full coverage after a consistent month of reasonable exercise. A brisk walk per day is plenty good enough. For many, using stairs instead of the elevator would do it. If you exercise, healthcare should be very prompt and comprehensive. The real goal is to get fat, lazy people off their ass and moving around in something other than an SUV.
Is this socialist, bordering on fascist? Yep. But trying to get universal healthcare for a population that doesn't care about their own health is pulling money out of my pocket to keep some twinkie eating lard-ass alive for a few extra years, and that's just as wrong. Forcing society to pay for the elderly and handicapped is great, but if your choices make you handicapped, then that's on you, not me.
I'll take the rude cyclists anywhere, any day, over the lazy, whiny, entitled little bitches. You know who you are.
"Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race." - H. G. Wells
Statistical evicende: Accident statistics show that in 70% of all car-cyclist accidents, the car driver was causing the collision.
Sprawl is an ecological disaster. No environmentally conscious person should live anywhere but densely populated cities or on organic farmland.
The fastest Tour de France riders, going downhill in the Alps will hit maybe 65mph, so you probably should have challenged the cop's radar gun, because I doubt you were going 60.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"...most drivers willingly speed whenever they can..."
This is completely untrue. Most drivers ignore speed limits when they are unreasonable and most drivers have a very good sense for what reasonable speeds are. It has been well known for decades that speeding is the result of too low posted speed limits and that those limits are set for that very reason, at least in the US. Most drivers obey speed limits when they are reasonable.
"...they willingly break the law whenever they can get away with it."
This sounds more like a statement about you, not about the behavior of most drivers. I break traffic laws when they are unreasonable or produce a bad result but observe them otherwise even when no one is around. It has nothing to do with whether I can "get away with it", it has to do with always doing the right thing so I get it right when it matters.
Many cyclists show utter disregard for traffic laws. It is common within the cycling community to explicitly claim that traffic laws cannot be enforced on cyclists because they have an inherent "right to the road" that somehow doesn't apply to everyone else. Bicycles are unlicensed and cyclists think that means traffic laws don't apply.
As an e-bike commuter, I witness deliberate bad behavior among other cyclists most every day. With drivers it's always laziness and inattention, not contempt for the law.
tip: cars don't stop at stop signs either.
"Rolling stop" you say?
You never slowed down more than a bicycle anyway.
Let me get this straight. You say that it is untrue that drivers don't willingly speed and don't break the law, and contend that drivers don't have contempt for the law. Yet your reasoning for this is that they break the law and ignore speed limits when they think they know better (thus have contempt for the law).
Your reasons merely show that the grandparent was completely correct. So cyclists do deliberate bad behavior while drivers virtuously correct bad traffic laws.
The research is fundamentally flawed. Come back at me with a methodology that makes sense (e.g. doesn't rely on police reports).
In all my years driving, I have never once seen a car just out-and-out blow through a stop sign. I see it at least twice a month with cyclists.
If the research tells you something that is so obviously false, you should take the time to verify the research.
This.
Cyclists can't speed, but speeding is not dangerous in most situations, while blowing through a stop sign is something no sane competent driver does, but cyclists do with regularity.
When those cyclists get smeared, the roads have become a safer place for everyone else.
They found that a cyclist is faster than a motorbike.
A motorbike can do all the same 'squeeze through spaces' things a bike can (at least within 90%).
It is also significantly faster (in the situations where that would count).
So no, the difference is not the ability to split lanes.
That pretty much leaves breaking the law.. Which motorcyclists get pinged for, and bicyclists generally dont..
There are lies, damned lies and statistics.
If I, a driver, hit the door when another driver opens the door of his parked car, I was driving too close. If a cyclist hits a car door, the car driver was responsible for not looking (despite the fact that the cyclist may have come at him via a route that was illegal, and the driver had no reason to expect the bike-from-hell to hit him).
Large numbers of cyclists are killed in London because they try to pass trucks which are turning left. WTF are they on the inside of a truck for? The driver almost certainly can't see them, and would generally have his trafficators on for a good while, but a cyclist on the inside can't see them!.
We, (drivers) are told to leave 2 metres between us and a cyclist, while the cyclists calmly push along the side of the car, touching for the entire length, even when the car is moving.
Deliveroo cyclists are famously the worst of the lot when it comes to riding out of side-streets without looking, using pedestrian only routes, riding on the pavements, and scaring the hell out of mothers with young babies - and many other crimes against humanity too numerous to mention.
Commercial cyclists should be required to have a black box on their bike, and insurance. And taxed out of existence.
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Maybe not where you live, but this is about London, where the speed limit has recently been reduced to 20MPH almost everywhere, which reduces road capacity to the extent that traffic barely moves. However, most of London is pretty flat, and cyclists can easily exceed 20MPH - and having no regard for the concept of road markings - they come at you silently from arbitrary directions, and no more predictable than moths.
Cyclists need to know that unless other road users can predict what they are going to do, they will die. However, they seem to believe that they can out-manoeuvre other vehicles, so they do not need to plan what they are going to do next, let alone use their body language to show what they are going to do. They have no concept of what a large truck can or can't do, though they willingly go inches away from them at speeds which show they are not planning to live long. As a truck driver once told me: anyone who goes out on the roads of London without a metal box round him, is obviously a loonie, and should be locked up! The evidence appears to support this view.
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In Amsterdam cyclists have their own roads and are kept separate from cars and trucks. This is the best solution. However London, being such an old city doesn't have the room to do this.
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.
From the 500 meters I walk from my home to the train station, I never have seen a car doing anything wrong, besides not paying a parking ticket. I see 2 to 5 cyclists doing something illegal each day, including:
Driving on the pedestrian path.
Driving in a one-way street, where it is clearly forbidden for cyclists.
Not stopping at a crossing.
Not only do they do that, if I not go out of their way, they get angry. Yes, I have had them hit me. The trick I learned is that if they hit you with the steering bar, you feel relative little, while they say hello to the ground.
So if you ONLY see two per month, they behave well.
From the cyclists I see, around 50% is doing something wrong or at least unsafe.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.