Yesterday night, on our bike ride from school, as my helmeted kid and I were stopped at a red light on the painted bike lane, the driver next to us lowered their window to ask me where my helmet was.
Initially taken aback by the sheer entitlement of the request, I curtly told them to mind their own business, after all they were driving 2 tons of metal so where was their helmet?
Visibly on the back foot, they tried to justify that they were a “concerned [citizen]” (wink @Beko Pharm ). I replied I was concerned cars like theirs could kill me, which gave them an opportunity to mention the hypothetical usefulness of a helmet (in a collision with a car, it’s near useless).
Then the light turned green and while we started to ride away, they pretended to ram me by swerving at low speed into the bike lane.
At this point I’m used to drivers simply annoyed at bicyclists, probably because they would like to cross at the red too, but this was a new one for me.
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Marc Hedlund
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Kaz
•this is awful, and I’m sorry it happened.
As I’m sure you know (how sad that we cyclists have all these safety facts and figures memorized) car accidents are a huge cause of head injuries for those *in* the cars, so really they should be wearing helmets too.
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Beko Pharm (deprecated)
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Hypolite Petovan
•Wilhelm
•Sadly in germany this is not uncommon behavior and it happened more than once to me. In germany infrastructure was built for cars instead of pedestrians or cyclists. Drivers got used to everything around them catering their selfish way of moving through the city. And they get away with a lot. Sadly due to the judical system which seems to be car biased and speaks the oddest verdicts, often times they do.
One refelction of that uneven handling can also be seen in how illegal parking is handled. While people that do schwarzfahren (use public transport without paying, literal translation would be "black-driving") can end up in jail, illegal parking seems acceptable and municipals even refuse to toe cars that should be toed as defined in written decree 🤯
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Tristan Nitot✓
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Wolfgang Strobl
•Neither my wife nor I have worn a bicycle- or pedestrian helmet, ever. Our children haven't either, after a short period before elementary school. If you don't wear a helmet inside a car or while walking stairs or crossing a street of foot, you don't need a helmet on a bicycle, either.
Speaking of roads: With the exception of highways or expressways, roads in Germany are built for bicycle traffic, as stipulated in §2 of the STVO. We personally prefer roads to cycle paths and firmly reject the obligation to use cycle paths.