Busting the myth of the "scofflaw cyclist" Danish Road Directorate studies reveal that while 66% of motorists routinely break road traffic laws only 5% of cyclists do so. Law breaking by cyclists is higher where there is no cycle-specific infrastructure.

Some interesting stuff here, including links to more studies showing similar results in different countries.

The summary is that the reason motorists break more laws is that speeding is so common.

I don’t think this is because motorists are all evil and cyclists are all saints. Probably, the reason motorists break speed limits is that it can be relatively difficult to keep cars below the speed limit. It’s all too easy to absentmindedly speed up. It’s also, perhaps becuase of this, widely seen as socially acceptable to break the speed limit (speaking anecdotally).

One interesting thing here, which may not surprise regular readers of Fuck Cars, is that better cycling infrastructure leads to less lawbreaking by cyclists. As is often the case, it’s the design of roads and cities that changes behaviour, not abstract appeals to road users to be sensible!

  • pjhenry1216
    8•1 year ago

    No one disagrees that rule breakers need to stop. But licensing doesn’t look like it’d help, considering drivers are licensed and break more rules than cyclists.

    • zoe
      -11•1 year ago

      bikers aren’t fined enough. once there are enough cameras to spot their illegal driving and get issued fines that would help lower bike accidents. driving’s license and fines are barriers to discourage wreckless behaviour

      • Blackout
        5•1 year ago

        Dude cameras don’t even get a fraction of the cars breaking driving laws, why do you hate people who prefer to bike so much?

    • zoe
      -13•1 year ago

      considering drivers are licensed and break more rules than cyclists.

      says who ?

      • pjhenry1216
        13•1 year ago

        Are you posting on this without even being remotely aware of what the article says?

        • zoe
          -16•1 year ago

          i know i am talking about bikes,which are motorists, not cyclists…but as long as cyclists share the road with motorists, they could also use a driving license, and so e-bikers do and so forth…until there are enough cyclist lanes

      • pjhenry1216
        7•1 year ago

        It’s clear you’re just posting on this site to troll since you weren’t even aware of the basic concept of the post. I don’t need to reply to trolls.

        • zoe
          -14•1 year ago

          didnt pay enough attention to article ngl, but cyclists are as annoying (if they dont have cyclist lanes) and u were right

          • pjhenry1216
            9•1 year ago

            It’s the damn headline. You literally didn’t read anything. You clicked on a fuck_cars post and just made a comment based on nothing in the post at all. That’s literally trolling. You made a random comment purely to get a rise out of people.

            • zoe
              -12•1 year ago

              i wrote a comment, no one was supposed to reply to it, including u, could have downvoted and moved along…also u could have stated to me that it was about cyclists, not bikers…also not all countries have cyclist lanes, including where i live, and that makes them passively irritating

              • @[email protected]
                4•1 year ago

                I wrote a comment, no one was supposed to reply to it

                “I expressed an opinion on a public forum, nobody was supposed to read and interact with it.”