• Evkob
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    3 months ago

    Unfortunately, an individual cyclist cannot enact laws, build infrastructure, or change a culture of dangerous driving by oneself.

    What we can do is take precautions and cycle cautiously.

    That’s for individuals though, any political entity focusing on cyclists’ behaviour instead of the behaviour of drivers is missing the mark so badly.

    As for the existence of such “safety” videos, the ones I’ve seen have all been jokes because the insist heavily on following the law, especially government-funded videos. Breaking road laws written for motor vehicles is, in many situations as a cyclist, the safest course of action, but I’ve yet to see any safety video address this.

    • Piece_Maker@feddit.uk
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      3 months ago

      As for the existence of such “safety” videos, the ones I’ve seen have all been jokes because the insist heavily on following the law, especially government-funded videos. Breaking road laws written for motor vehicles is, in many situations as a cyclist, the safest course of action, but I’ve yet to see any safety video address this.

      Yeah, I think we’re in agreement for the most part here too. I’ve even seen “cycling safety” videos put out by car companies and you can imagine the sort of nonsense they come out with!

      Obviously it depends entirely where you live and what laws you have, but where I am most of the rules we’re supposed to follow as cyclists do make sense and are relatively safe guidelines. The issues come because drivers think the rules don’t say what they do (common example: there’s nothing stopping cyclists in a bunch riding however many abreast they can, and nothing stopping a single cyclist from taking the lane rather than hugging the curb, but many drivers feel that this is illegally holding up traffic/being unsafe). I wish we had things like Idaho Stop laws, I’ve ridden in states that allow this and it really does help a lot of situations.