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!

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      -3•1 year ago

      I doubt it’s any different anywhere else.

      I don’t know about local laws regarding bike helmets in NYC, but the reason they’re not mandatory in most places is that they don’t save lives. In fact, wearing a helmet in a car is statistically more likely to prevent you from getting a head injury than it is on a bike. Most cycling fatalities and serious injuries are a result of being crushed, not hit in the head, whereas, in the UK, anyway, most head injuries happen inside cars.

          • @[email protected]
            2•1 year ago

            Bikes dont have airbags, restraints, or a large cage of structural metal surrounding them. If you are on a bike, your only protection is what you are wearing. With that in mind, wouldn’t you want to wear something to protect yourself when moving at higher speeds? Even a speed of 10mph can be fatal if you fall off and hit your head on the ground. You cannot fall off or out of a car if you are properly wearing your seatbelt, and the airbags and structure of the vehicle are your immediate protections.

            Basically, helmets in cars aren’t mandatory and don’t make sense to make mandatory, because there are already safety precautions in cars. Bikes, whether manual or motorized, do not offer these or any protections.

            • @[email protected]OPEnglish
              2•1 year ago

              But the safety precautions in cars are clearly inadequte, because many people still die. We didn’t look at cars and say, ‘No need for airbags, we already have a safety precaution in the form of seatbelts’.

              • @[email protected]
                0•1 year ago

                Please tell me what exactly a helmet in a car will do for you, unless you are travelling well over 200 miles per hour? Seatbelts already hold the torso in place, preventing one from slamming their head into the steering wheel, dashboard, or windshield, and the airbags already absorb the energy and arrest the unrestrained body parts, such as the head.

                You would have to be travelling fast enough to outpace the airbags, which typically deploy at around 200 miles per hour. You wanna know why professional race car drivers wear helmets? Because they don’t have airbags.

                • @[email protected]OPEnglish
                  2•1 year ago

                  Because all those safety features don’t prevent cars from being the place you’re most likely to get a traumatic brain injury.

                  It’s quite illustrative how furious you are about this. If you read what I’m saying properly, you’d see that I don’t think people in cars should wear helmets. My point is that the arguments for doing so are just as good as they are for cyclists, i.e., not at all.

          • @[email protected]OPEnglish
            1•1 year ago

            I once read an article about a kid who was killed by falling masonry while sitting on a bench. Clearly, we should require bench-sitters to wear helmets in case of falling masonry!

            • kim_harding ✅
              1•1 year ago

              @frankPodmore That rather depends on whether your objective is to deter beach sitting or not. Of course, if the real objective is to protect life and health, the place to start is removing the source of harm 😉

        • @[email protected]OPEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          But it is a logically sound reason to ask, if they’re required for cyclists, why not in cars?

          And hey, why stop at transportation? I’m sure wearing a bike helmet makes it less likely that I’ll suffer a serious head injury if I fall down the stairs at home, so I’d better start wearing one inside, too. It’s the socially responsible thing to do.