I don't know if this was a joke!post or a circle jerk post, but I'm sure many people have read this and thought, "yep, valid, dumb cyclists, grumble grumble". I'm gonna point out that these memes, and those sentiments, are based on car-centric culture, and were most likely created by people who have never ridden bicycles, who have never needed to risk assess/negate while on a bike, or from people who've been led to believe roads always have been, and will be, exclusive to people in cars. There's a lot of well-intended people who don't know quite enough about cycling, especially in North America, to realize how bunk these memes are.
The attitude behind these memes are, at their foundation, actually based on very old propaganda from the automobile industry. Nope, this isn't a weird conspiratorial thing, I promise! Vox did an excellent article on it. Adam Ruins Everything did an entertaining skit, if you're pressed for time and want to laugh (then cry). The term "jaywalker", interestingly enough, was actually based on the slur "jay", and it was meant to villainize people who walked in the street, when at the time, walking, bicycle, and carriage was the standard way to get around, in addition to being a great place to socialize. Guess who invented the term? Yep, the automobile industry. They saw that people were dying by the bucketloads because of their product, the car, so they started a vicious campaign to save their product and shift the public view of those who walked in the streets. Walking went from being typical, to something only "dirty h**ks" did. So if you've ever looked at someone crossing an empty street and and gone, "ugh, jaywalkers" (I've done it too!), it's based on a belief that roads are only for vehicles, created by the companies that sold you those vehicles, so they could sell more vehicles and make more money. Kinda mind-blowing, right? And kinda shitty and insidious, when you think about it. It's become so ingrained in North American car culture that there are bylaws about it now, and we don’t really think about its origin anymore.
So these memes, which are based on the notion that roads are only for vehicles, suddenly feel really shitty on principle. In addition, even though vehicles are generally seen as the primary purpose for roads in North America now, people on bicycles do have a right to use the road, along with any dedicated bicycle infrastructure that's available. Most North American states/provinces transparently say that people on bicycles can use the roads in their bylaw documentation. Check out the info for British Columbia, Texas, Oregon, Ohio, Quebec, and California.
Notice how the California link explicitly says, "if you’re moving slower than traffic, you can take the lane if it's not wide enough for a bike and a vehicle to safely share side-by-side".
Signs like this exist, too.
So if you're telling someone on a bicycle to "get out of the road"... Chances are, they're not breaking any laws. If the presence of bicycles is hampering the way you drive on a regular basis, please contact your local bylaw enforcement and/or city council, and tell them to add protected lanes, because that is really the issue here!
Second, just to get it out of the way... Remember that not all people on bicycles are adults. They're not all men wearing spandex (known as MAMILs, or "middle-aged men in lycra", which is the derogatory stereotype most people associate with "cyclists"). These negative connotations are why I won't be saying "cyclist" here, and will be saying "people on bikes". Cycling is an all-ages activity, yet I don't think most of us would call children on bicycles "cyclists". I like to think the only reason our North American culture views "cyclists" as all adults is because no parent would allow their children to cycle in roads with traffic. But elsewhere, in places with better, safer cycling infrastructure? Cycling is a great sport and a mode of transportation for many people! Children, and seniors. Seniors lose independence in North America as they age, because they lose the ability to drive a car. But they maintain that freedom with a bicycle. They can still get around. Cycling also gives them the chance to socialize, which is so nice because a lot of the time, being of older age can be incredibly lonely. Socializing is much harder, if not impossible when you're in a vehicle, partially because it's much harder to make eye contact with other drivers and talk to them through glass and metal. Here are two articles about how bicycling, when framed as a valid transportation mode, can have enormous benefits for city travel and those populations:
How the Dutch created a casual biking culture
How Amsterdam became the bicycle capital of the world
For comparison, here are five negative ways that vehicle dependence can affect cities and the people in them. (Vehicle dependence being defined as a city’s reliance on motorized vehicles to the point where it’s the only feasible way to travel without significant inconvenience or hardship.)
If we frame cycling as something with no other purpose than being a sport, we ignore the health benefits gained from a bicycle (which doesn’t require a sweaty cardio workout like MAMILs aim for!), and the utilitarian benefits it provides, like cargo carrying (even the kids!), commuting, and even just the pleasure of cycling to sightsee. Cycling being all-ages is actually one reason why the city of Toronto, Canada has investigated, and dropped, the idea of requiring bicycles to be licensed... On three separate occasions, the first occasion dating all the way back to 1935!)
Moving on... Let's discuss the meme about the stop signs. Okay, so it's weird, and sometimes annoying, when someone on a bike rolls through a stop sign. But, may I introduce:
In many places, this law allows people on bicycles to treat a stop sign as a yield sign, and a red light as a stop sign. Here's a wiki article that shows where the Idaho stop is currently legal.
You might be thinking, "this sounds counterproductive. Surely, the Idaho stop makes everything more dangerous?" Actually, not really. According to many studies (1, 2), the Idaho stop actually makes it safer and more efficient for people on bicycles! It also reduces the frustration for people in vehicles, because they don't have to wait for someone on a bike to fully stop, then gain enough momentum and speed again to clear the intersection. It's very easy to zip across an intersection in a vehicle, but it's pretty hard on a bicycle once you stop. Bicycles have less mass, and they can't get anywhere near as much momentum as a vehicle within the same span of time. Many people don't realize this because, understandably, they don't have the experience of riding a bike (either enough, or at all) to inform them of this stuff.
If this is hard to understand, check out the Wiggle protest. (And here's a video.) These guys went on the road to demonstrate what would happen if every person on a bicycle was expected to make a full stop at stop signs. At one point, around 100 people on bikes were queued up at a stop sign, one behind the other, waiting to go through stop signs, and it took a damn long time. Comparatively, 100 vehicles at the same stop sign would clear the intersection in a fraction of that time. The Wiggle protest was organized to magnify the issues with bicycles needing to fully stop... All within the law! Talk about not-so-malicious compliance.
Besides, bicycles are a few hundred pounds on average. Vehicles are four thousand pounds on average. Vehicles can easily kill people. Bicycles are not going to kill anyone on the road unless by some freak accident. The potential for damage when someone on a bike treats a stop sign as a yield sign is way lower than if someone in a vehicle did it.
If someone on a bicycle cuts you off at an intersection, remember that people in vehicles do this all the time, among other things, but we still hesitate to paint all drivers with the same brush. This has to apply to people cycling as well. Me... I get cut off by drivers all the time. Drivers pull into the wrong lane. They misjudge how much time they have to clear intersections. We need to remember confirmation bias. Every day, I see at least two vehicles making illegal, three-point u-turns right in the middle of roads. There are jackasses of all kinds, behind every kind of transportation. Oh The Urbanity! did a short video touching on the confirmation bias experienced by drivers due to living in a car-dependent culture.
There's another factor at play where, lots of the time, people on bikes have to cross immensely wide roads (often, they are stroads) to reach the other side, perhaps during very small breaks in heavy traffic, and they barely have time to make it. In these cases, you may ask: "why do cyclists always cut me off/make me slam on my brakes here?! They have a stop sign!". But instead, try reframing the question as: "what nincompoops designed the roads to be so wide, have such short breaks in traffic, and not have any controlled crosswalks, that people who are walking and cycling are forced to make a dangerous dash across the road, which is guaranteed to endanger them and annoy drivers, just to cross?". Because really, infrastructure like that isn't helpful to anyone, not the people walking, cycling, or driving. It's just stressful.
Now, the "cyclists yelling when cars pass too close" meme... I'll break this one down simply. If someone is cycling on the road with vehicles, it means there isn't good alternative infrastructure available (I'll touch more on that later). And when someone is cycling on the road, they have two choices. First, they can ride near the curb. Maybe there is a painted bike gutter there, or maybe the street doesn't have a painted gutter, but the street is very wide, so they choose to avoid confrontation with drivers and stay well to the side, to let them pass without incident. Neither are exceptional choices because again, they lack physical barriers, but hey, that's what a lot of people are forced to work with. The second option, well, it comes into play when you have situations like this. Maybe there's a painted bike gutter, or some other kind of infrastructure, but there's a big risk of someone not being on their A-game and opening their door in your face, which can maim and even kill people even if they are travelling at low speeds. There's also the problem where, even if you're in a painted bike gutter, or you're near the curb, drivers simply don’t give enough space as they pass you (painted gutters, in fact, seem to give drivers a false sense of separation from people on bikes), which can be freaky as hell. So, to avoid this, you decide to "take the lane", or act like a vehicle, so you can't be closely swiped by drivers, and you give the illusion that you take up more space than you do. It's usually a safety thing.
The problem with that is, of course, you get the first and last memes in this series, which tell you to go back to the bike lane. And funnily, those memes contradict the third meme in the series, which depicts a scenario that happens when people cycling do stick to the side of the road (which results in a lot of drivers passing super close, or even "punishment passing"). So it's very damned if you do, damned if you don't... And to make it worse, in both those scenarios, the person is usually following the law!
"Taking the lane" is promoted by many, many municipalities (Ohio, for example; see letter C) to improve visibility, prevent vehicles from making right turns into them because they'd be in a blind spot, and to prevent them from being doored because in most car-dependent municipalities, staying "on the side of the road" means being so close to parked cars that you could get doored, which can be disabling if not lethal, and you're often so close to moving vehicles as well that you could go under someone's wheels.
It's not like following the law protects people on bicycles, when that law involves very flimsy, dangerous infrastructure. This guy followed the law. He got cut off and cussed out. This guy followed the law. He stayed in the painted bike gutter, where he was doored and ended up dying under the wheels of a dump truck. Vehicles routinely use bike lanes as parking lanes, forcing the people who are actually supposed to use the bike lane into traffic in an unpredictable way. Ghost Bikes exist, and have become a popular way to memorialize people killed while cycling.
A lot of people complain about people cycling in the road "when there's a good bike lane right there". But logically, if a ton of people aren't using a bike lane, it means there’s something wrong with the bike lane! Some people will always use the road (yeah, like many "MAMILs"), because they want to go fast and wider roads provide more room for error. But if that bothers you, again, please contact your local municipality and ask for dedicated lanes so people can zoom around without contacting vehicular traffic as much! People who aren't "MAMIL"s, on the other hand, avoid bike lanes because the lanes have constant bumps in them (especially if they were just marked over an existing sidewalk, where unlike walking, your wheels will pass over every single crack between the concrete slabs, which is really uncomfortable...). The lanes could be too narrow to pass other people safely, making it a PITA to use. The lanes could be too close to parked cars and people want to avoid being doored. There could be a lot of debris in the bike lane. The road could be a more direct route to their destination than the bike lane, which could be super circuitous (and may not even reach their destination!). Or, the lane could simply have no good connections to make it worth using, effectively being a bike lane "island". When I was exploring my city, I lost count of how many safe bike lanes abruptly stopped and dumped me into dangerous 70km/h zones without any infrastructure at all, so I don’t use those lanes anymore, and I don't see many other people using them, either. Those kinds of lanes are definitely not appropriate for AAA (all ages and abilities). The Netherlands has gotten AAA down to an art, but North America still struggles with it. For most places in North America, it’s somehow sufficient to, paint a white strip next to six lanes of fast-moving traffic. That’s because bicycles are still an afterthought. And the people on bikes, and even pedestrians, are still considered second-class citizens in respect to drivers.
When you're on a bicycle, small impacts can make the difference between life and death. Literally. If you are in a vehicle and you're very close to another vehicle, you won't think much of it because you're protected. If you're on a bicycle and you have a near-brush with a vehicle, that shit is scary! You're a meat sack on two wheels and you're only staying upright via gyroscopic effect. So yeah, if a two-ton machine brushes past you instead of giving them space, you'd probably get freaked out. Is it a wonder that someone on a bicycle will yell at a driver who, if they were just an inch closer, could have killed them? Not really. Especially if they have to deal with it constantly, almost day after day, and when a lot of the aggressive behaviour from drivers is because those drivers associate anyone on a bike, regardless of whether they’ve actually done anything wrong, with certain unfair stigmas, and they hold everyone who cycles accountable for the actions of other "cyclists" who might, in fact, actually do shitty things.
The bottom line of this post is, all the problems in the memes are caused by lack of sufficient infrastructure available to people on bicycles, which forces them to share the road with vehicles, which are inherently much different in capabilities, safety concerns, etc. Therefore, the frustration in these memes is better off directed not towards the people who are trying to make the best of that crappy infrastructure, but to the higher-ups who designed it in the first place! And these memes are really grounded in a lot of stigmas and bias against people on bicycles, including confirmation bias and status quo bias. People who have multiple bad experiences with people in vehicles don't become "anti driver", but when they have one bad experience with someone on a bicycle, somehow, they become "anti cyclist".
Like Jason from Not Just Bikes has said:
"The sad truth is that labelling people as 'cyclists' dehumanizes them, and puts them in an outgroup that some people believe justifies literal violence against them."
Hopefully you can see the problem with the above memes now.
Conflicts between bicycles/vehicles can be drastically reduced by providing safe, separated, AAA (all ages and abilities) infrastructure for people on bicycles (and other personal transportation devices, like scooters and cargo bikes!). Cut out the interactions with vehicles as much as possible. Make it safe, so people don't have to make decisions that, like most of these memes exemplify, benefit their safety (to an extent, since unless vehicles are limited to low speeds, sharing a road with vehicles while on a bike is inherently risky) but aggravate people who are in vehicles. If you were going, "lmao yeah, that's totally right!" at the above memes, please consider writing to your local representatives and asking about dedicated, safe bike infrastructure so you don't have to deal with the problems that your municipality kinda, well... Forced on you, by forcing people on bikes to ride directly in traffic in the first place. It will benefit everyone.
Why do cyclists ride in the middle of the road?
Is it a cyclist's right to 'take the lane'?
Ten common myths about bike lanes – and why they're wrong
Three Myths Used to Argue Against Toronto Bike Lanes
Relevant youtube channels:
Strong Towns
Propel
Shifter
Oh the Urbanity!
Not Just Bikes
