Young lady, indignant:

"I've already hit the curb three separate times"

"I don't think they were needed"

Girl, YOU'RE THE REASON THEY'RE THERE!!!!

Hedges or trees would also work, they look nicer.

Exactly! If she can't be trusted to protect her (oversized) car, then she can't be trusted with a cyclist or a pedestrian!

finally, snackysnacks!

You have to completely tear up the road for those usually, and that takes more time and money. They might have needed to do something similar for these, but it almost looks like they're placed there. The guy at the end did say they're looking into planters at least.

Curb.

It’s a curb.

I have mixed feelings. Hedges and trees block vision. They can be done well, but I have seen a lot of places where they made traffic less safe.

And they need maintenance

The complete lack of self-awareness.

I'd still take a curb over just paint.

But yeah, definitely should be 3 or 4 feet tall minimum.

Hedges can be low enough that pedestrians are visible. Trees typically have their branches well above car height. So nothing is obscured. Either way, it also reduces noise a bit.

That said, along highways (especially near urban areas), they're usually much taller, with the roadside having a barrier. A cross section:

homes - mainwalk - bike path - hedge - barrier - road (and then possibly repeat but inversely).

You can connect the mainwalks and bike pathes with well-lit bridges underneath the road.

Re: @dan1101@lemmy.world , I'd also like to mention that some hedges can be pretty low-maintenance. Here are some that are especially for roads.

Top illustration is what I'm thinking of.

That also goes for installing curbs. I'd argue it's worth doing so, since these hedges also provide a little shade and noise reduction that curbs don't.

I read the title and thought they were literally blocking the bike lanes with concrete barriers. Apparently I'm a little too used to anti-pedestrian actions by municipalities...

Trees and hedges are mostly safer than concrete and (as someone else pointed out already) can be implemented in a way that does not interfere with visual perception of traffic. Also trees provide shade during summer which is also nice.

Trees give a nice shade canopy and help reduce the noise level of a an otherwise loud city street, plus they can reduce the heat island effect that's a near constant in our concrete cities

I had a recent trip take me both into Manhattan and the Chicago Loop and it was night and day how loud the one with more mature trees to break up the echoey canyon of concrete and glass was than the other, despite the other having more vehicle traffic at that moment

Hedges are also safer than concrete curbs in most cases as they don't crack your skull open when you land on them in an accident and if someone drives their car into them they function like a cushion. Plus trees give shade in summer which is nice for everyone for several reasons.

I've heard a rumour that someone in my town is suing the city because they put up one-meter tall concrete dividers for a bike lane, and they drove into one and flipped over their car. Total write-off

Like, you absolute buffoon, you drove into a wall. Where do you think the blame should lie?

Make them bigger, when a truck tries to go over them the wheel should break

That is literally why the most you tend to see is plastic bollards or just a painted line. The cities don’t want to deal with the lawsuits from angry drivers that are more concerned with the damage to their cars than the life they just took.

Absolutely insane

Nice to see some normal news and signs of a normal life carrying on in the US. So sick of the constant cultural winging coming from a certain House in that country.

The planters might be a nice touch.

Imagine that: bike lanes!

She should.. curb her enthousiasm.

Same! I'm so used to seeing hostile architecture designs, and consequently posts and people calling out those designs as awful, that I just assumed that's what it was.

Which probably speaks to my echo chamber a bit, but I think also speaks to the fact that at least my echo chamber is one that wishes for less hostility and general evilness in the world, so yay?

So it's basically a raised median?

Like... We have raised medians. Drivers navigate roads with raised medians all the time. Maybe that one woman just doesn't know how to drive very well?

I went to Hawaii with my wife’s family a while back, my sister-in-law kept complaining about speed bumps in a part of the road there that’s 35 mph. She kept complaining because she kept hitting them at 60 miles an hour and we kept having to tell her they’re there because of you.

There's some rural highway intersections near where I live that have been getting the stop signs replaced with roundabouts and similarly people keep complaining because they have to slow down but these are intersections that happen to have frequent fatal collisions because people aren't slowing down. One of them has already had multiple single vehicle collisions where a driver just blasted into the center of the roundabout so the roundabout is clearly working at forcing traffic to calm down a little

Edit to add: there's another rural highway intersection that was a 2 way stop for quite some time. The county is getting ready to install a roundabout so they started by turning it into a 4 way stop. The new stop signs have a gantry arm over the road, flashing lights, signs 500 feet back saying "stop ahead" with flashing lights and signs 500 feet earlier than that saying "new traffic pattern" also with flashing lights. People have continued to blast through that new stop sign ignoring all of the new signage and flashing lights where previously there wasn't a single sign or light. Now I see regularly the sheriff parked just out of sight watching that intersection because drivers can't be trusted to follow basic traffic safety laws and not blast through a stop sign at 65+mph (in a 55 zone of course)

Yes please. Many more.

Her logic is hilarious lol. "I don't think the barriers are needed because I keep hitting them"

Lady... you are the reason they are needed!

I’d be happy with concrete curbs where I live. I hate those stupid white plastic toothpicks my city puts up.

Keeps surprising me on Lemmy how disproportionately large the bicyclist population seems to be on here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZe5J8SVCYQ

(To the woman): Your issue is that a small swerve can lead to impacting with a solid object that could damage your car. That issue remains regardless. The question is whether you ALSO hurt a person in the process.

I don't really ride but I live in an area where if you were to ride your bike on a street you'd be killed. I'd like the exercise and also to save on trumps fuel prices.

For the ignorant driver that clearly shouldn't be driving if you already hit a brand new curb 3 times:

Holy crap, 5$ for twenty minutes of bike sharing? I hope police is investigating that robbery!

Drivers have such an irrational disregard to the point of hatred for bicyclists. I don't get it.

There is a little more to it than that.

A barrier has to start somewhere. The blunt end is considered a hazard for cars if it is too close to the lane, called the clear zone. That blunt end is considered very dangerous and either needs to be located out of the clear zone or have expensive and large crash cushions protecting the blunt end.

It is going to be very difficult finding a civil engineer who will approve installing a blunt end right next to an active travel lane. That makes it useless if you're trying to protect a bike lane next to traffic.

Wasn't SJ already working on this for a long while?

I could've sworn there was a good portion in downtown sj that had dedicated bike lanes already

My real complaint with SJ transit is that the rest of SJ just sucks.

I live next to a bridge freeway exit/entrance that has no bike lanes, no flashing lights to indicate a pedestrian is even crossing. People speed out of the exit at 40 mph so walking through that area is a run for your life moment.

It's nice that they're finishing up dtsj but biking in the rest of SJ is impossible because there are 5 lane wide streets that don't have a bike lane.

Don't get me started on the vta (our version of lightrail). It doesn't go to sunnyvale directly which means 99% of commuters take their car, which means infinite traffic, or an hour or so to go 12 miles on bus

So like, ACAB and all but i want to kiss the officer who took away my MIL's license when she hit one of those barriers and then wandered off into the rain. All the signs of dementia, right? No. She has the munchausens. We had been trying to hide her keys for years and she kept finding them, but she refuses to drive without her license. Dude seriously saved lives that night.

No bueno. Need to get rid of the car parking or move it to the sidewalk. Bikes can’t be hidden behind cars. Protected elevated bicycle lanes should be in the middle, replacing the turn lane. They need to see and be seen. This is dangerous at all driveways and intersections.

you are different. you are bad. you are a threat.

it's that simple and ape-brained.

they also have a irrational disregard and hatred of each other, often based on vehicle make and model.

or just the fact you are in front of them and therefore in their way and you are slowing them down.

I sometimes experience that with reckless drivers but I have never been one to have road rage.

cyclists and peds have rage too. it's not exclusive to drivers. it's just that there are more drivers so they are more statistically significant.

the issue is people being entitled and full of rage at random strangers, not the method by which they transit.

i live in a city where i can drive, bike, walk, or take the subway to work. i have been harassed and had crazy irrational folks of any transit method come at me in screaming rages because of my 'offense' at them. and they never see themselves as the problem. it was me, because I made them angry for existing in a moment and space in time which they did not think I should have existed and it was VERY UPSETTING for them. plus I was like 'slowing them down' or 'in their way' or somesuch.

Fatalities caused by vehicles aren't even treated as homicides in the US. What do you expect from this 3rd world country?

All our problems in the world stems from our unevolved ape brain. And unfortunately, most people don't realise it.

Some people be treating the gas pedal like an on off switch...

As someone who's been on both sides of this, a lot of cyclists really don't hold one single fuck about traffic laws. I love cycling and it's a great way to get around a city and we need more of it and need it to be safer. There are a lot of bikers who basically act like a motor vehicle with the rights of a pedestrian, blow through stop signs, take up the road, etc. It's not a majority but it's enough to give riders a bad reputation.

So for the driver, they see the biker riding like an asshole and doing dangerous stuff and they know if they run the guy over they're going to get blamed for it. That's where the resentment comes from.

Also, a lot of drivers are just flat out idiots and assholes. That's part of it too.

Done well they work as traffic calming features, which makes traffic a lot safer

We all instantly realized this ahaha

OK here’s the upliftingnews take (beyond charitable): curb-height stuff is easier to hit than bicycle-height objects and she’d only do the former

Reminded of this:

Anyway someone grab her keys ;)