Politicians in the Bay Area want to remove bike lanes from the Richmond-San Rafael bridge because they are worried about traffic congestion.
Cyclists say removing these bike lanes will put them in danger.
https://richmondside.org/2025/08/05/richmond-san-rafael-bridge-bike-path-final-vote/
https://bikeeastbay.org/rsr2024-2/
During the public hearing, commissioner Karl Hasz was spotted driving his car
Why are all the top level comments from people defending reckless driving?
Careless/reckless driving is entirely normalized in America. Think of the number of people you see speeding, rolling stop signs, blowing through pedestrian crosswalks, speeding up to make the yellow light and “accidentally” running the red. Think of all the people who chat on the phone, attend work meetings, watch videos, do their makeup, and eat entire meals while behind the wheel of a moving car. Think of all the people you’ve heard essentially bragging about how much they speed, who bemoan all the “slow” people on the road who are just going the posted speed limit, or who feel they’re being unfairly targeted when they get a speeding ticket for going ten-over.
Chances are if you’ve driven a car in America then you yourself are guilty of having done some of those things. I know I certainly am, though I’ve been intentional about taming my own hubris behind the wheel over recent years. But it’s hard to accept that what is normal to you is also wrong or dangerous. Especially in a survivor biased environment like reckless driving culture, where nothing bad generally happens to you until it does and then as people get more reckless the higher the chances are you won’t walk away from an accident. And so when you see a post online shaming people for something you do on your way to work every day, you get defensive because to you that’s just normal behavior.
Edit: To be clear, I’m not defending these people or their actions, just offering an explanation for OPs question. Still, I expect to get downvoted for the very reason I just articulated.
If you’ve ever driven through American cities, you’ll see that a high percentage of drivers aren’t really driving. They’re using their phone and tangentially feeding occasional input into their vehicles. Automakers keep adding Federally required “safety” features to cars like auto-brake and lane-departure correction, I’ve heard from some people they use those to make an ersatz “autopilot” and just let the car ping-pong down the road while they use their phones. Others, as soon as they *almost *come to a stop, the phone is already in their hand again and they’re paying zero attention to their surroundings, probably thinking they’re being a “smart” cell phone driver.
It is rare I see a USian driver actually operating their vehicle as their sole focus these days.
I’ve personally got in the habit of managing cars behind and in front of me with longer stopping distances and early brake flashing to get their attention off their phones and back on the road so I don’t become an SUV sandwich, and also a quick polite horn toot when the drivers in front don’t realize the light cycle has been green for 5 seconds because some other driver didn’t pull forward, because all of the front drivers are on their phones.
So, they probably feel like they have to defend their idiocy.
you need to understand, that the murican car industry has made everything unreachable by walking and biking. its a total alien form of transport in newnaziland.
Based on this and a couple recent other threads I am becoming pretty convinced that more and more of the people on Lemmy are children.
Edit: I can admit that I was a dumbass who thought that I could do all the things while driving as a teenager. I am guessing the people downvoting me are either teenagers or people who don’t remember being teenagers.
I don’t know man, Lemmy seems to downvote people who make generalizing claims, period.
Your comment didn’t seem to ring with the community, that could be because they’re of the age group you’re citing as the group supportive of this shitty behavior (distracted driving), or it could be because the base of your stance didn’t root itself in examples they could identify with and so they downvoted an opinion they disagreed with.
I’d say the most likely reason people downvote is because they disagree, I wouldn’t have much knowledge on their age though so I won’t make claims on that part.
I think that’s part of the problem though. Downvoting isn’t for disagreeing it’s a vote that a comment detracts from the conversation as a whole.
Probably driving in the bike lane
c/FuckCars
How does putting slow-moving bikes into traffic somehow fix congestion? Some dipshits are under the same impression in Canada, too… Like, have they all forgotten how much a single cyclist can fuck up traffic?
The solution is obviously that the bikers are to join the daily traffic jam in a car, instead of entirely skipping the queue like selfish bastards.
/s, for the satire-impaired.
Cyclists weren’t allowed on the bridge at all until the bike lane, since it was a freeway bridge, so they hope they’ll just go away (and probably encourage them to buy cars or take the once-an-hour bus).
Lol so basically “think of the kids” once again forgetting about the kids.
They want to scare cyclists into not cycling at all
Did anyone call him out for this during the meeting?
There’s a public comment section, right? Straight up ask why he feels it’s appropriate be deciding matters of public saftey while actively endangering the public himself by distracted driving during this very meeting.
From my experience with a different fight in NYC, these people don’t give a shit. They have no shame, they only care about their golden kickbacks.
How do people not vote them out?
Quick, without googling, tell me your state level representative, and give me a summary of their votes on key issues.
Exactly. We can only deal with so many issues in a 24 hour period. With trump, there’s 47 new issues every day. Fraud overload. No way to respond to all the trash. We need the boondocks saints to just get rid of the bulk of the garbage and let’s see how the surviving trash changes almost overnight.
I mean, the point I was trying to make is that if you aren’t actively engaged in politics, you won’t know any of those things. Heck, I’m pretty engaged in my local news, taking maybe 15-30 minutes a day to read about local and state issues, and off the top of my head, I couldn’t tell you who my state level rep is, or what they’ve voted for recently. That’s why people don’t vote then out, there is an apathetic disconnect between the politicians vote, and the shitty policies that they support. Hence why people keep actively voting for politicians who undermine and harm them, the people voting can’t be bothered to connect their vote to the policies that are enacted.
Most people don’t pay much or any attention to local politics which makes advertising and incumbency very powerful. Most people literally just vote for the name they recognize from TV or mailers.
It would take a large increase in political consciousness to fix this.
They’re backed by billionaires and landlords who will easily spend lots of money attacking their rivals if it means slightly lower taxes
If billionaires always could win unions wouldn’t exist.
Is that even legal? Just holding your phone while driving can cost you a fine of €. 430 here.
No, it is not legal. This bike path is part of the Bay Trail, which was enacted by State legislation, and served as mitigation for environmental damage done by Caltrans highway work. The BCDC was specifically created by the legislature to ensure maximum feasible public access to the Bay. So voting to close the path violates any number of laws and policies.
As for driving while distracted by the phone…yeah that’s also illegal.
It’s probably on a hands free mount rolling at the camera angle.
However, it’s still illegal to have video playing within view of the driver, so he’s still breaking the law
It’s supposed to be mildly infuriating, but it actually made me laugh. Not because I like or agree with the idea, but just at the absurdity of it.
The bike lane is like 1/3rd the size of the car lane and has more people on it.
I don’t understand the upset, cause he owns a car? Is that enough to make someone a bad person now?
No, it’s because he was in the video conference while driving showing that he was distracted and danger to pedestrians and cyclists.
If he’s doing to drive recklessly he has no business deciding any matters of road safety.So when mum calls to ask if we need milk, she’sa villain!
if you answer a phonecall while driving, get distracted, and kill a child in the process, would you just be fine with that? act like you drove over a beetle and just go on with your day?
Removed by mod
I think you missed the mark.
If she doesn’t call handsfree yeah
Distracted driving is pretty irresponsible and dangerous.
Just this morning some guy blew through a stop sign and almost hit me. He had his cell phone in hand. Maybe he was on a meeting, too.
I’m a school bus driver. Last year I had a cop blow past me at 40 mph in the opposite direction when I was stopped with my red lights flashing and stop sign out, about to let off a large number of kids who cross the road at that stop. If I hadn’t kept the door closed, they probably would have been hit. I glanced down at the cop as he passed and he was driving with his left hand on the steering wheel and his right handing holding his phone - he never saw my bus at all.
We now have the external cameras that auto-ticket cars that pass us when our red flashers are on, but I wish to fuck we’d had them last year to catch this guy.
Would you tele conference from traffic? Do you think that’s a good idea? Why or why not?
So what? Calls suddenly not allowed anymore?
Driving distracted in a car of 1000 kg is a surefire way to cause an accident. It’s reckless and antisocial.
LOL
Because not only is he not giving the meeting the full attention that it deserves but also because he’s driving distracted and putting everyone on the road (like these cyclists) in danger.
As someone who constantly has calls on the highway, I cannot follow your arguments.
casually admitting to breaking the law
Casually admitting to not having a clue about the laws here
As someone who drives roughly double the average mileage per year, I don’t find this at all surprising. I see terrible drivers on the road all the time.
Same. And most of them do not have a phone call. So I don’t know what you’re trying to say.
It hasn’t been allowed since 2008. How old are you that 17 years is a sudden event to you?
It should be obvious to everyone that participating in a video call while driving is a dangerous activity
I don’t know where you live, but in most states of the US, hands free phone calls are allowed.
You’re conflating voice calls with video calls. I don’t think Video calls are legal while driving anywhere.
The aspect that makes it illegal is not if a camera is on or not, but if you actively control your phone with a hand. Using Siri? No problem. Video calls? Same. Texting? Big No No. And this makes total sense. I still struggle to understand what the big deal about this is. It is just based on wild assumptions (“he endangers cyclists” or “he is not paying attention”), no more no less. As if this shit was the biggest problem right now. How about you tell your government to not support Israel? Start with solving the real problems first.
Car drivers in the last two years killed about 80,000 people in the US. That is of a similar scale to the murders in Gaza. So your point that this is unimportant is off base.
Imagine being so absolutely unhinged and saying shit like that. This is absolutely mental. Comparing a few car accidents with a genozide. No wonder you have a president like the current.
Non-resident aggressively commenting on another country’s driving laws then shit talking foreign policy out of nowhere. Bold strategy, Cotton.
The fact is that a video call implies that your eyes are on the video. In this case while driving. Do you see how that’s problematic? Your argument is some weird whataboutism.
You obviously never had a video call while driving and you act like you always look at the road 100% of the time. Hypocrite doing hypocritical things I guess.
Do you also watch Movies while driving? No hand interaction necessary. Just press play at the start of the ride.
Of course that’s illegal.
Comparing watching a movie with a video call. Good one.
Video call is worse, you’re right nice
Sure sure. A video call without content shared on the screen is worse. Mhm. Please share more of your wisdom.
Mhm. Yeah, sure bud. Wisdom! lmfaoo
That bike lane is such an offensive waste of hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure.
A handful of bike activists got a recreational lane that sees almost zero use, while every day thousands of people trying to get to work are stuck in traffic next to an empty lane.
Source?
Approximately 68 cyclist use the bridge per day (3 orders of magnitude fewer than cars. Perhaps if it were within 1 order, it would make a difference).
“Vast majority use it for exercise or recreation, not commuting” https://www.kqed.org/news/12017869/will-the-richmond-san-rafael-bridge-bike-lane-stay-its-still-uncertain
Pedestrian use is even lower https://www.kqed.org/news/12017869/will-the-richmond-san-rafael-bridge-bike-lane-stay-its-still-uncertain
So perhaps 5 cars are taken off the road, at most, vs 67,000 cars.
Thats really making a difference. Great use of resources.
How many years, at even a dozen cars per day, to amortize the carbon footprint of the concrete used, let alone the equipment (diesel fuel), steel, asphalt/macadam, etc?
This project was an environmental net negative, and will never become positive.
I’m all for such projects, but far too often the bigger picture isn’t considered, it’s just a feel-good. Let’s do what actually makes a difference, otherwise we’re making things worse.
MTC data has different numbers: https://reports.mysidewalk.com/3374a0ca74
Regardless, adding a lane won’t work. The bottleneck is the 101, so you just get extra lanes to stand still in. And the toll gate as well.
The lane was already there btw, but it was an emergency pullover lane. It didn’t cost a lot of carbon to turn it into a bike lane.
If you want to talk bigger picture… they built a pedestrian/bike lane with zero access/amenities at either end (unlike the Bay Bridge). No staging area to load/unload your bike, no parking, no bathrooms, no water fountains. Good luck finding all-day parking on city streets in Pt. Richmond or… San Quentin.
Here are the directions: https://marinbike.org/news/getting-to-from-the-r-sr-bridge-pathway/
Once approaching/getting off the bridge, if commuting by bike, there is no direct connection to the Bay Trail. So anyone living in Marin and wanting to commute to, say, Berkeley or El Cerrito so they can get on BART (or even the Richmond Ferry) has to risk going through heavily industrial areas or dicey parts of Richmond. On the Marin side to/from Larkspur Landing, you had to ride unprotected on the shoulder of the freeway!
Only way to use it for commuters on either end would be to park and ride, but again, no parking and ride facilities. And there’s any wonder more people don’t use it? There’s wide open space at either end of the bridge to build staging areas, especially on the Richmond side right near the Toll Plaza, but nobody wants to make it easy. It’s such a gauntlet I’m amazed that many people use it.
The solution to traffic congestion is to make public transit and alternate forms of transportation more cost-effective, functional, and convenient. That includes offering easy transition/transfer points. It isn’t to open more driving lanes. They’ve known this since the days of Robert Moses in NYC, but keep doing it.
How is it that 68 cyclists are 5 cars?
I am thankful for the article links, but how many edits are you at?
I live there.
Opinions don’t count.
You reject first hand experience because it conflicts with your political biases.
Please tell me o wise traveler, how us Bay Area residents should convert full freeway lanes into unused bike lanes.
No I reject it because sounds like every other time I’ve heard push back on bike lanes. My city is currently going through a similar fight and I have heard your argument several times with no backing information.
Your comment doesn’t pass the smell test.
What do I know, I only live there.
is that you mr commissar
If their time is so valuable, maybe they should ride a bike instead of trapping themselves in traffic?
The average American commute is 41 miles round trip. I guarantee you that a large number of people stuck on that bridge every day have a much shorter commute, could ride a bike instead, and would actually spend less of their time commuting by doing so.
Those are the people you should be angry with because they’re the ones that are directly wasting your time with their frivolous driving trips. The more we get people riding bikes, the less problems those that are required to drive will experience.
Also, maybe if the average American car wasn’t a wasteful hulking behemoth there would be more room for more people on the roads. 🤷
That bridge is too long for bike commutes.
You mean the 3ft wide lane you couldn’t fit a compact car in? Who’s going to drive in that lane? Brodizers? Mall crawlers?
No. The bike lane is full width and the proposal replaces with a full car lane.
Get educated before you try schooling others.
Yes… let’s reschedule a public hearing because one person had a conflict? Maybe we could just adapt to people having lives and working?
One person was in their car tele conferencing from FUCKING TRAFFIC you stripped and rounded nut.
Fantastic insult, if I’m being honest. Also, yes.
video chatting with a screen visible to the driver? fk no. also his setup and use of it violates cvc 27602.
Every car now has screens visible to the driver
And that dumb af and proven to be bad for driving focus that why button are making a comeback ( slowly )
When you are driving your attention should be on the road not on the phone while a hearing about bike lane is going on
which is kind of funny wanting to remove a bike lane that help protect cyclist while driving dangerously
So can’t talk to passengers either then? It’s hands free once it’s setup, there’s nothing inherently wrong with what’s being done actually.
If when you talk all your attention is on the passenger like looking at them all the time and not the road then no you should not
Ah yes, the classic “these things share one property so they share all properties” argument.
Blinking closes your eyes. You can safely drive and blink. Thus, you can drive safely with your eyes closed.
Being on a video call while operating a motor vehicle is dangerous and should be illegal in any sane jurisdiction under distracted driving laws.
As long as it’s setup, how’s it different than talking to a passenger? It’s completely hands free at that point.
A passenger is somewhat aware of the surroundings and might shut up to let the driver concentrate on traffic every now and then. A video call - especially with a group - probably can’t and won’t
Considering the frame they caught him in he’s not looking at the road. Is it eyes free?
So can’t shoulder check or look at your passengers? Can’t adjust volume or other settings on your dash?Wrong thing to complain about lol. There’s hundreds of things that take your attention away from the road for a second or two that’s normally done while operating a vehicle already.
As a driving instructor myself: you’re the person I warn my learners about 👍
Those aren’t the same things and you should know that.
This isn’t taking your attention off the road for *a second or two as you say. This is the type of thing that splits your attention. And humans are terrible at multitasking at the level required for this.
Edit: *
It was scheduled. He could have taken measures, He could have parked for a while . This somehow is his job…
I do take calls in the car but when I need to focus on the call I either ask to call back or park. If I don’t need to focus that means the call isn’t important enough to keep it going for too long.
Your handle is definitely appropriate, troll.
Unless the conflict was like “someone close to me is giving birth” tier, he could have scheduled better.
