OMG I didn't know there were two more books in the series. Audible is doing a bad job at recommending books. It does not recommend the next books in series I follow.
I haven’t read The Children of Time, but I would highly recommend Tchaikovsky’s Final Architecture trilogy. It’s been my favorite series I’ve read in a few years.
I wouldn't necessarily say that. The cardboard/wax tears quite easily, and the wax tears with the cardboard. I don't think a plastic film would do that.
We're currently going through plastics being banned for snack foods where I live, and even vendors that were using "cardboard" boxes are hit because they are actually cardboard boxes lined with plastic (because cardboard + oil don't work together very well).
Wax gets soft when heated, so I'd be really surprised if the cardboard you're talking about is actually using "wax".
Just goes to show how effective unionizing is. Power to those workers! They're a key part in making Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world. They deserve a fair share.
Corruption, protecting shit employees from being fired, seniority preference over merit, politics, wage caps for individual contributors (not just wage floors), dues, inefficient administrative overhead, to name a few others.
For a lot of workers, especially knowledge workers and pro services, the value proposition doesn’t make sense.
Companies fight unions for the efficiency of the machine, which may or may not benefit employees (depends on context, right?). Employees fight unions because the value prop looks like shit in many cases - at best a bargain with the devil - circumstances need to be pretty bad to make the deal, or the union needs to have captured the right to work (at company or industry) already.
I say all this as someone with a small union pension waiting for me and as someone who managed union employees. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly with unions.
>For a lot of workers, especially knowledge workers and pro services, the value proposition doesn’t make sense.
yeah, there's no needs for unions in tech. The most ambitious are spending 2-3 years at a job, switching jobs, and getting 20%+ pay raises as well as negotiating stock benefits and all the like. A union would do nothing for that kind of worker that they can't do in a matter of weeks by walking.
> WASHINGTON, Dec 2 (Reuters) - President Joe Biden signed legislation Friday to block a national U.S. railroad strike that could have devastated the American economy.
Non-union workers get to keep their jobs with pay so low many need food stamps to survive. I think everyone loses, even the shareholders as the market for Walmart wares shrinks.
Gotta love how people blame lack of a company's success on those bad workers. How about actually doing the unimaginable and build decent cars? Almost every time I get a rental from a US car company I am reminded that they don't seem to care about building good cars. They just throw a bunch of options together and make the car bigger. Nobody seems to actually try the car and see if it drives well.
The problem with industrial unions in the US is not so much the salary and benefits paid to one, or even to a set, of individual workers. It's the demands by the union to maximize union membership (and dues) that make it impossible to take advantage of improving efficiency (which could lead to fewer employees).
The story I've heard...was that steelmaking in the US went into decline after WWII, because US mills weren't destroyed in the war. USX, Bethlehem et al. kept making steel using inefficient prewar methods, with equivalent staffing costs. Foreign (ex-Axis) steelmakers invested in brand-new, more efficient methods to replace what had been bombed, and these new mills gave them a cost advantage.
So why didn't the US mills upgrade? Because their contracts with the union more or less made sure that no matter how many fewer staff it would take to run, the number of United Ironworkers members on the payroll would never decrease. It wasn't worth the capital cost to upgrade in the '50s-'6s, and by the '80s, when it would've been, it was too late.
There was a possibility, if the unions were a bit more farsighted, to accept a gradual drawdown in staffing, and consolidation of job definitions by attrition, with no real loss of individual wages or benefits. But that never happened.
A similar dynamic occurred in the auto industry...labor (and the UAW is a bad, bad, bad, union for this) was very short-sighted, and Detroit purchased peace with them at a very high cost in terms of productivity per worker; partly because they had the money to, partly because it was seen as a necessary evil, and partly because the idea of being more efficient in operations was seen as intractable-they didn't listen to Deming when he first started to talk about it.
Separate issues. Yes American car designs sucked, but they were moving production to Mexico either way. It's not like they closed all the detorit plants because they didn't have any money, they just wanted to make more.
Hardly. Labor Unions were against immigration and globalization and demanded tariffs to protect US industries. Chavez was prolific in his anti-immigration arguments. It was the capital holders who pushed globalization, outsourcing and mass immigration.
The two flavors of US political parties were both right wing, neoliberal globalists. Clinton allying with Republicans to pass NAFTA is clear evidence of this. Only recently have they also both postured away from this stance, largely in response to the new Cold War with China.
> The two flavors of US political parties were both right wing, neoliberal globalists.
There were significant (but not always dominant) factions of that type in each party during the period of ideologically incoherent parties in the period of the long post-Depression realignment, and overlapping the very end of that period there was the brief neoliberal consensus period from the late 1980s into the 1990s.
> corporations aren't fighting them for their employees' benefit.
But they are. The long-term profitability of the company is essential for ensuring the jobs of everyone. History is filled with the bankruptcies of unionized companies where the workers asked for more than what the market would support.
I hate to rain on your parade, but in my experience the union leadership were much more like a parallel track of management. They definitely played favorites and took sides in political battles to protect some people and hurt others. Everyone dreams that the unions will be neutral protectors of the workers. That wasn't what I saw.
> The long-term profitability of the company is essential for ensuring the jobs of everyone
Long-term profitability is the goal of company management? In my experience that’s often not the case. Short term profit going straight to shareholder dividend, seeking a sale at the highest possible price… Maybe I’m too cynical but it feels like these are the primary goals of corporate America these days. Boost, boost, boost then cash out. If anything a unionized workforce can help keep management on the straight and narrow path to long term profitability because unions make the short term cashouts more difficult.
I’m not going to try to claim that all union management is wonderful but a great number of employees in the US would still be in a better place represented by selfish, inefficient union bosses than left to the company’s whims.
History is filled with non unionized companies going bankrupt too, seems like an issue that affects both.
Corporations are Moloch. They do not have human interests in mine. They are setup to grow and spread like cancer. Unions at least give some grounding back to human needs rather than the never ending pursuit of profit.
The stores are a pretty critical component in their sales, marketing, and support cycles, and generally considered a big part of their current success.
Even in urban areas of America, Apple Stores are often far away in inconvenient locations. Look at the map of Apple Stores in Seattle; it's a pain in the ass to get to one without a car.
> Don't think the CEO is making their iphones on the line
I didn't realize that anyone at Apple was making iPhones on the line. Last I heard it was primarily Foxconn, along with a few other companies. When did Apple get involved in the manufacture of them?
This is a meaningless hypothetical because in no world is a highly successful company ever going to let go of all their workers. On the other hand, one can imagine in a less capital friendly world, nobody would partake in Apples 1996 junk bond offering that rescued them from bankruptcy. It's counterintuitive that a stupid investor who yolo'd their money could have a bigger impact than intelligent and hardworking workers, but that's exactly what happened. Without investment, these workers wouldn't be able to realize the potential that they had at Apple.
These companies need to remember that NLRB and unionization was an agreement to take harsh violence off the table.
In the old days, when First International and IWW was created, unionization efforts were to "set the bosses house on fire, with them in it", "pass out rifles to all workers and shoot up the bosses house", assaults, bombs.. you name it.
That's also where we have the paramilitary force, Pinkertons. They were hired by the bosses to do the same thing to the union organizers.
These companies have NO problem violating the meager federal law protections for workers. And to boot, there's basically no penalties. When things get bad enough, just watch for the "whoopsies", subvert sabotage, and direct violence against bosses and against property.
Companies have forgotten about the older pact with unions to remove violence, and then now commit economic violence (destitution, starvation, etc). Maybe they should be reminded?
He is referring to the situation before / at the time unionization started. Modern unions are a peaceful reminder of the struggle for union rights. The US is pretty lonely among western nations in its treatment of workers right to organize and collectively bargain.
Not that I’m fully endorsing unions. In my particular part of the world (Netherlands) unions lack broad support but are the only laborers party bargaining collective labour agreements. The good thing is that those agreements are inclusive. The fun is where the unions members interest differ from genpop. You get things like union contributions paid for by employers, or worse like agreements that favor the old whom are more likely to be a member.
Oh, I was responding to this part of that comment, which is about the present day.
> Companies have forgotten about the older pact with unions to remove violence, and then now commit economic violence (destitution, starvation, etc). Maybe they should be reminded?
I was not calling for violence. But having companies continually violate the law, and having no real repurcussions does create a very BAD situation. People pushed into a corner react very badly.
And perhaps companies can go back to WHY the NLRB was created, and what the before-times was like. I particularly don't want to go back to that.
And you can be reminded with a history lesson and education, and not shooting up the bosses house. You all also broke HN guidance by assuming the worst of me too.
Okay, sorry again. It’s a nice conversational thread nevertheless. The interesting question is why the US followed a different trajectory irt unions than the rest of the west.
And the thing is that even people in dark corners usually don’t react darkly. That’s pretty much what saves civilization imho. That even the bottom 1% doesn’t go all out on the rest. People stand a lot of abuse and still keep their head up. I agree that workers right shouldn’t be an afterthought.
Let me make this blatantly clear. I am not advocating "shooting up the bosses house", arson, assault, etc.
I AM advocating education, by both employees and companies' legal council. Go study your union history. Teach it to colleagues. Understand your rights as non-union worker and union worker. And, unionize. (A company would consider that violent, given how they respond with illegal actions.)
And, you'd be surprised just how effective a PEACEFUL protest at the sidewalk at the bosses' house is. Ive seen a variation of that with a peaceful protest of our mayor doing dumb shit. The grievances got solved real quick.
> Let me make this blatantly clear. I am not advocating "shooting up the bosses house", arson, assault, etc.
So what did you mean by "Maybe they should be reminded?"
> I AM advocating education, by both employees and companies' legal council.
Reminding people of the "history" that violence and terrorism have (occasionally, arguably) been effective still comes across as an implicit threat. If you were advocating violence but trying to disingenuously pretend otherwise, you would have used the exact same words. I can and will assume good faith here, but you need to be a lot more careful about the implications of what you're saying here. Moreover, that kind of rhetoric normalizes the use of violence and terrorism to achieve social/economic/political goals.
At any rate, while we are having a dispassionate discussion of history, I would also point out that violence doesn't always work out for the left/labor side of the equation. Sometimes populists use public fear of that terrorism to justify right-wing authoritarian regimes. Sometimes those regimes start throwing the leftists out of helicopters. Sometimes catastrophic world wars break out between leftist-revolutionary dictatorships and right-populist dictatorships. And to me, the moral of that long and bloody story is that you do not normalize or advocate violence as a means of achieving social/economic/political goals.
No, it is in the best interest of companies extract as much labour value from workers for as little expenditure of payroll as possible. This is not in the best interest of the workers, however. The interests of the workers and those of the employer diverge on this point and both are working, rationally, for opposing goals.
If you’re in a fight and you have a weapon but your opponent is unarmed, of course you would oppose your opponent being given a weapon as that’s not in your best interest. Your opponent may see things differently, just as the employer and employees see things differently in this situation. Apple's opponent is currently unarmed, and Apple doesn't want to see them armed with the weapon of collective bargaining.
I don't think it shows this. I think it shows that companies expect unions to be a huge pain in the ass that they would go out of their way to avoid (even illegally), but it doesn't follow that unions are therefore effective at their stated purpose for the workers. That may or may not be the case.
Right. I happen to think it often is the case, but management resistance alone doesn't show it. In the world of anti-union PR where unionization hurts everyone but parasitic union organizers, we would also expect to see management resistance, so that can't distinguish between that world and ours.
Yet think currently the top 1% is paying over 50% of all taxes.
There's a few things to consider with this statement. First, and most importantly, everyone in the US who has more than $1m is in the top 1% by wealth, including assets. That illustrates how little money most people have.
Secondly, the top 1% captured 54% of the wealth generated in the last decade, so paying 50% of the tax sounds about right.
Lastly, we're not really talking about the top 1% because most of them are just people who lucked into buying a house in an area that subsequently became gentrified, or they got lucky with some stock options, or whatever. It's people who own more than $100m who have the sort of capital that enables them to pay very fancy accountants to get their tax burden down to single digit percentages. They're also the ones who get their companies to do union-busting tactics, because next year they want to own $200m.
I could not find where it says 99th percentile in the US is $1M, but it seems unreasonable based on recent run up in asset prices, especially homes. The median home price is north of $500k in the western US.
Come to think of it, I wonder if these net worth calculations incorporate present value of annuities such as Social Security benefits and defined benefit pensions.
That report might well be out of date. It's a year old, and possibly based on data from a year (or more) prior to that. I don't know.
My more general point is still true though - it's the people with 100s of millions who have the resources to minimize their tax burden who could (note: I'm not saying 'should', that's a matter of opinion) be paying more.
For the past half century, inflation adjusted wages have remained basically flat while productivity has more than doubled. The 1% heirs have captured almost all of that growth. So that is the source of this funding - the heirs expropriate the profit of surplus labor time to finance the government which oversees that expropriation.
Establishing a workplace democracy. Which means a workers council to decide of wages, future goals, managers abd everything related to the life and labor within the workplace. Just like a regular parliament in a regular democracy.
Individual workers have unequal bargaining power vs. the employer in almost all cases. The power differential is what makes the situation inherently unfair.
The owners wouldn't have been able to make more out of their company without others working for them. So yes, they did create the wealth. The owners could've died at some point and the company still would create the wealth.
Up until to a certain point it takes those owners but it's a synergy.
The workers could die at some point too, they will be replaced by new workers and no one would notice the difference. When do you notice the difference...when the owners or the top management are changed and the company strategy changes...not when a new iStore employee gets hired.
Funny, every company I have ever been a part of has taken out life insurance policies on me explicitly because if I suddenly die, it will take a while to replace me and it will cost a good amount to replace me.
That means you are near the top of the company and are a strategic value...do you think every Apple employee, or more specifically the ones targeted by this union, are the same value?
Individual taxes make up around 41% of government revenues. The tax on labor is far higher than the tax on capital. As such the very wealthy pay a way lower percent of their overall “income” in taxes than the rest of us. I know of know concept of fairness where this is considered just. Even Reagan thought the tax on capital ought to be higher than the tax on labor.
> The tax on labor is far higher than the tax on capital.
So, in the USA, if I were to make $50,000 in a year producing widgets, the tax rate on that amount would be higher if I made the widgets by hand than if I had a robot produce the widgets for me? That is interesting. In my country, the product of capital is taxed at the same rate as the product of labour.
Or are you trying to talk about capital gains? The human equivalent of gains on the sale of capital would be profiting from a slave trade, and I understand that is illegal in the USA, as it is in my country. I am not sure you can meaningfully contrast capital gains with anything human-related, and certainly not the product of labour.
> So, in the USA, if I were to make $50,000 in a year producing widgets, the tax rate on that amount would be higher if I made the widgets by hand than if I had a robot produce the widgets for me?
No, you spent $50,000 buying labor vs. $50,000 aquiring machines and parts to build widgets, your taxes and the taxes on the people you bought from would be higher in the labor case.
> Or are you trying to talk about capital gains? The human equivalent of gains on the sale of capital would be profiting from a slave trade
No, the human equivalent of capital gains is capital gains, since all capital gains are earned by hunans or legal fictions representing them. But the labor equivalent is wages; earnings from production are split between capital and labor, the labor share distributed as a mix of immediate and deferred wages, the capital share (eventually) extracted as capital gains, either directly as dividends or by trading future interest in dividends for current money by selling stock, etc.
This is not, however, an alternative to the analysis of taxes impacting the production methods; the two are both different framings of the same facts: capital gains are taxed preferentially to “normal” income which in turn is taced preferentially to labor income.
> No, you spent $50,000 buying labor vs. $50,000 aquiring machines and parts to build widgets, your taxes and the taxes on the people you bought from would be higher in the labor case.
Why is that?
The taxes paid would be the same here. If we say the rate is 10%, labour case would pay a straight $5,000. In the machine case the business selling it might profit $5,000, so they would pay $500, and $25,000 in labour costs to produce the machine, so they would pay $2,500, and $20,000 in materials gets divvied up in the same manner, leaving another $2,000. 500 + 2500 + 2000 = $5,000.
> No, the human equivalent of capital gains is capital gains
Okay, but then from that perspective the capital gains tax rate is always the same capital gains rate no matter what. The earlier comment suggested there were different rates. I guess that isn't the case.
No, they wouldn't, because payroll taxes exist, and are paid by both the employer and employee.
> Okay, but then from that perspective the capital gains tax rate is always the same capital gains rate no matter what
I was taking issue with your misuse of “human” for what ia properly “labor” (which is as much a human means of relating to a capitalist econony as capital is), and also discussed what the labor equivalent of capital gains taxes (which are very much not the same.)
> No, they wouldn't, because payroll taxes exist, and are paid by both the employer and employee.
Here that is not the case. The employer pays half of an employee's contribution into a retirement and insurance fund, but that is not a tax. That is additional compensation provided to the employee.
What's the logic behind taxing payroll?
> I was taking issue with your misuse of “human” for what ia properly “labor”
Labour is the productive output of a human. Capital gains is a property of the exchange of capital. The closest analog to capital gains with respect to labour is in the sale of humans (i.e. slave trade).
You haven't taken issue with anything, you've only repeated that it is silly to try and talk about capital gains and labour together. They are not meaningfully compared or contrasted.
That could be, but then how does that line up with labour? Labour is taxed on the productive output, just like the productive output of capital is taxed (at least in this country; I am not up on the US tax code). Capital gains is an additional tax placed on capital. There is no corresponding tax placed on labour.
There is no productive output in the sale of stock, though. You are only moving capital around. Similarly, moving labour around carries no tax burden, leaving capital to be the one with the higher taxes.
If your capital holdings produced $1,000,000 in productive output, presumably in the US you would pay the same taxes as if you you made $1,000,000 selling your labour. That would be the case here.
You are free to make whatever distinctions you want. Most people would say that it is unfair that a person who sells stocks for $50,000 profit pays far less in taxes than a person who lays bricks for a year for $50,000.
Because they don't realize the productivity of the capital is also taxed, and is taxed at the same rate as labour? That double taxation should sum to more than a labourer would be on the hook for.
After all, the value of capital is determined by its productivity potential. If there is no ability to generate productivity, the capital will be worthless, and then there will be no capital gains to speak of.
Let's face it, the real problem with the tax code (in this country, but I understand the US is the same) is that the borrowed income against capital is not taxed at all. This allows one to effectively create money out of thin air without paying a cent.
Apple's online sales (and product value) are in part due to consumers knowing they're able to walk in to any of their physical locations and receive good support.
I would relate fair share to how much value the worker is bringing in compared to an average applicant who is willing to take the position for a lower salary
There was a time (the late 1990's) when Apple had relatively little access to the market outside of specialized stores and nearly zero control over how their product was presented to consumers. It wasn't so bad for maintaining the status quo since many of those stores were fiercely loyal to Apple.
I suspect that Apple looked back at what brought them to that point when they started growing again. I don't know what their thoughts regarding the specialized stores were, but I wouldn't be surprised if they blamed the larger retailers for the acceleration of their earlier downfall. Having your product first shoved to the back corner, while being shunned by salespeople who knew nothing of the product, then removed from the shelves altogether does not inspire confidence in consumers. Sure, those retailers may have been picking up Apple products when Apple turned around ... but what is to prevent a replay of the late 1990's if things cooled down again?
What I am going to suggest is that the Apple's popularity in your country is built upon Apple's popularity in other countries. While that popularity may not be the product of the Apple Store, Apple's ability to sustain that popularity likely is.
They are effective indeed, esp. as political donations go - who would've thought the carpenters union donates more to political initiatives than Oracle?
Per [0] Oracle has ~100,000 employees and $6B in income. Per [1] the United Brotherhood of Carpenters has ~500,000 members; per [2] (yes, I'm aware this doesn't cover all of the occupations represented by the union, and some members will not be in the US) they have a mean income of ~$60,000, meaning the total income represented by the union could be ~$30B. That the union barely edges Oracle for political spending suggest that they punching well below their weight, relative to income.
Yeah but Oracle is a for-profit corporation and the union is funded by workers ... That money should be going to improve pay, benefits, working conditions, etc. Not funding political campaigns for causes the workers may not even support (its actually really difficult to even find out what/whom the Carpenter union is funding, just vague PACs). I'd rather see that money go back to the workers. Unions should disclose, if they don't already, how their money is spent (and not just 1 line item on their paycheck).
By that argument, Oracle is owned by shareholders, so that money should be either getting reinvested or returned to the shareholders, not funding political campaigns that their shareholders may not even support. (The rest of your comment can be similarly reinterpreted).
In reality, both organizations know that at the scale they operate (super-national), one of the legitimate means to advocate for their constituents' interests is to ~~bribe lawmakers~~ make political contributions, so they dedicate some of their resources to that.
And? You could say the same about the union. I imagine the groups individuals are donating to are way more diverse compared to the union or Oracle as a whole
A huge part of the Apple marketing are their retail locations and "Geniuses." A great deal of the reason I bought my first Apple product was because of an employee in an Apple Store.
Hasn’t Apple abandoned the whole Genius thing? It seemed to me that the Genius Bar is basically gone. You can still get help, and they fix stuff, but it’s not what it was when Apple Stores opened 20 years ago.
apple were massively popular in canada long before we had any apple stores, and in fact I've never been to an apple store and still own apple products. I don't think what you're saying is true.
In like one city maybe. There's a difference between "Started opening" and actually contributing to the success of apple products. I'd bet apple sells many many many more products that they get apple store traffic.
They do now. However, iPhone sales through cell phone companies didn't start until 2007 when Apple teamed up with AT&T. A lot of their success with the iPhone started with how people experienced their products through their stores. Saying that their stores did not contribute to the success of the company would be absurd.
While that is the case now, I'm talking about when the first iPhone was just about to come out. Apple barely has to bother with marketing now because of their huge success 10-15 years ago. Largely in part due to Apple stores on college campuses, in major retailers like Best Buy, and in city centers. It used to be that was the only way to learn about an Apple product. This was before the internet was widely available.
>Apple barely has to bother with marketing now because of their huge success 10-15 years ago.
What are you talking about? Apple is all over reddit, snapchat, instagram, facebook, TV/sports/youtube, they likely astroturf/hire reputation management on reddit, HN, and twitter.
The king of marketing doesnt stop, they double down.
Perhaps some compliance to a too-broad security policy. Like, across the board, all NFC enabled electronics with read/write capabilities must have a password mechanism.
They probably knew it was dumb but implementing it was easier than getting around all the organizational permissions to make an exception.
Quieter too. When wandering Tokyo I started asking myself, why does it feel so quiet when there are so many people and so much advertising? Then you hit one of the roads with cars, and you realise just how much road noise impacts a space. It is obvious in theory but I bet most of us in car-centric cities have learned to live with it so much, that it doesn't cross our minds as the source of discomfort.
I go on long rides on my bicycle between San Jose and San Francisco listening to audiobooks for background entertainment. I could listen to these at the same volume I listen to at home while taking it easy, unless there is a motor vehicle passing by, then sometimes no volume is loud enough to make the audio intelligible until the vehicle has gone far enough away.
I for a long time was also wondering because so many of the streets look so much more charming. I only understood why once I read that there is almost no street parking in Japan. Once I knew that, it became obvious that that's at least part of the reason.
Depends on the quality of the infrastructure. I live in a metropolitan area with elevated metros, suburban and long distance trains, cargo trains, trams (streetcars in american), etc. and it vastly differs. Paris line 6 makes a lot of noise due to the rubber tires and frequent turns (it's a semicircle line), meanwhile modern trams and modernised suburban rail (RER A) are barely audible even next to the tracks, let alone in buildings nearby.
I lived next to a freight line, never again. The corner was in my backyard. My comment is mostly about daily life outside of the house, and in a city center. So those moments on foot when you're out of the car.
For life in the city, it's much more pleasant to be in a foot only or mixed traffic street, even with a train nearby. There's the inherent danger of fast cars operated by non-professionals that you perceive on foot as well as the noise, neither you really need to worry about for trains. In many cities trams can run through pedestrian areas with no barricades or grade separation because they are slower and predictable. You can run cars with no separation too if you slow them down enough, but more often they are set to incompatible speeds and as a pedestrian you have all the downsides of the cars as they pass through what should really be a pedestrian space in most city centers.
It's a different kind of sound. Tire noise is white noise (or at least, similar). My experience working in close proximity to a light rail line was 1) the train shakes the ground as it goes by, and 2) if you're near a corner, the squeaking is pretty loud. We have water sprayers in those areas to try and cut down on the howling, but it's not a panacea.
That's just bad design. There very quiet tram and railway designs available - they just cost a bit more money than the cheap 19th century designs that are still in place.
Where I live in Germany the passenger trains (not even the tracks) got upgraded a few years ago and all those click-clack and screeching sounds are gone. What is left is a wooshing sound of the wind being pushed aside and the not-so-loud grinding sound of the thingy (collector?) that hits the power cable.
And I've lived across from from an elevated transit line in an otherwise carless city center and it was quieter than any north american subwayless city I've lived in so this isn't even true lol.
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines, such as with personal swipes and flamewar posts? You've done it a lot, we've asked you to stop, and you've continued to do it. Eventually we're going to have to ban you if you keep this up.
I know this is probably boilerplate but if it's not I'd be really interested in seeing where you've called me out previously because as far as I know you haven't.
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines? I realize the other comment was provocative, but provocation is not an ok reason to break the rules—it just leads to a downward spiral.
Even in the middle of the country you can hear cars. I lived in the country and you could see the road about a mile away, and when I put my ear to the ground I could still hear the cars when one would pass by every once in a while
The urban core should be pedestrian only. Bicyclists can stop at the edge and lock the bike and then walk. Then outside the bike zone there could be a car zone as it gets more suburban.
It should do but I am worried it won't. Just look on social media when a cyclist posts something about dangerous driving and they are hit by a combination of:
* Indifference from the Police most of the time
* Extreme vitriol from motorists who seem to literally believe that all harm is caused by cyclists
* Illogical city planning where cyclists are constantly being moved from safe spaces directly into busy traffic.
We have a sick motor-centric society in the UK and along with the rest of climate problems that are ignored/underplayed, I don't know how long until we can say that we are a cycle-friendly country.
According to the article, the number of cyclists have not increased that much. (They mentioned it is at 102% of pre-pandemic levels.) What they are seeing is a decline in motor vehicles. The cyclists are simply an interesting way to benchmark that decline!
It is still good news. People need to find better modes of transportation for both the environment and for society. It is just that the title doesn't mean what it suggests.
Many people working remotely, or commonly three days a week in town (incidentally it’s a buyer’s market for office space now).
Train ridership is also down for similar reasons.
Whilst I'm overall in favour of promoting cycling as a way of getting around, in preference to motor vehicles, I'm not sure I entirely agree with "safer".
I live in Cambridge and have lost count of the number of times I've had to contend with cyclists blowing through pedestrian crossings on a red light (or zebra crossings at any time) when I'm trying to walk over them, or cycling the wrong way down a one-way street - or on the wrong side of the road - or had to dodge people cycling on the pavement.
When driving I've nearly hit several cyclists. Examples include: one leapt off of the pavement out of nowhere in front of me, one blew through a red light at traffic lights with a restricted view, and one was cycling the wrong way around a roundabout. The first two of these aren't one-off scenarios. Fortunately on all occasions I was paying attention so managed to take evasive action. Similar incidents have occurred when I've been on my motorcyle, most of which have been near misses, but on one especially ridiculous occasion a cyclist ran into the back of me at a set of traffic lights.
What you say would only really be true if there weren't a portion of the population - even only a minority - who are, for want of a better word, massive dickheads (or simply very inattentive and situationally unaware). It needs to become socially unacceptable to cycle without due care and attention to the safety of others (the same way drink-driving has become, not just legislated against, but enforced against and socially unacceptable). However, unfortunately, it's not at the moment so I'm not sure that safety - particularly for pedestrians or, indeed, cyclists - is a given.
Overall it constantly shocks me how little responsibility cyclists take for their own safety.
> What you say would only really be true if there weren't a portion of the population - even only a minority - who are, for want of a better word, massive dickheads (or simply very inattentive and situationally unaware).
Isn‘t the same statement true for car drivers? But the major difference is that a car turns a dickhead into a mortal danger for other drivers, pedestrians and cyclists alike, while a bike doesn‘t.
I'd love to see fewer cars and more bicycles. That said, at least in the US and in SF in particular, I've encountered way more blatant violations off traffic laws by bicyclists. There were so many times I had to jump back from an intersection where I had a green light as a pedestrian because a bicyclist decided to race through at full speed. They probably thought it was safe, but I certainly felled endangered.
In the defense of bicyclists, I think a lot of this happens because the laws and roads aren't properly taking bicyclists into account. Stuff like bicycle lanes at the end of the block also becoming turn lanes for cars should just be unacceptable and provokes conflict between drivers and bicyclists.
We're all primed to see conflicts more frequently when we use a mode more frequently. A lot of folks who don't bike only really encounter cyclists when they're pedestrians walking around, and so feel this fear then. In the US cyclists break rules at roughly a similar [1] rate to drivers according to an FDOT study. FWIW cyclists interact with drivers much more frequently which is why so many cyclists feel animosity toward drivers.
Even before you get into discussions of selfishness/malice there are people who are just shitty at understanding how traffic works and how the different classes of traffic interact with each other. These people create problems wherever they go whether they go their on foot, two wheels or four.
In online discussions they're usually the ones screeching loudly about "rules" that get ignored contextually because they don't understand the context(s).
In theory I agree with you, but in practice the behavioural differences are noticeable, at least in Cambridge.
One example (admittedly anecdata from somebody who spends a lot of time on the road using different modes of transport, including foot): lots of cyclists blow through red lights, (relatively speaking) very few car drivers do so. Of course, the stakes of a car driver blowing through a red light are arguably higher, so it's still not great.
What I'm contending against is not cycling as a mode of transport, but the assumption that with greater adoption of cycling comes greater safety. That's not what I see because of cultural issues (behaviour) surrouding cycling in this area. Possibly the accidents would be less severe, but there would still be plenty of accidents if everybody was cycling.
OTOH, and again it's small numbers/anecdata so take with a pinch of salt, but over 20 years in Cambridge I know more people who've been injured in cycling accidents that haven't involved motor vehicles, as those who've been injured in cycling accidents where motor vehicles have been involved. A couple of those people have blacked out even though wearing helmets because, e.g., their head hit the pavement. Causes of accidents are a bit of a mixed bag: road conditions aren't great around here (potholes, gravel on road, etc.)[0], one clipped by another cyclist on a cycle path (other cyclist didn't stop), etc.
I'm very pro-cycling but, as I say, from an empirical standpoint I'm not convinced it's necessarily that much safer. I'm sure there's data that, in some area or other, would prove me "wrong". But so much of it is down to cultural and behavioural issues, as well as cycling infrastructure and road quality, that I don't think it's valid to just forklift figures from one area and say, well, if everybody in Cambridge cycled we'd see X% fewer injuries from collisions on our roads. Unless other factors are taken into account it's very faulty reasoning.
[0] On the road conditions point, you're much more vulnerable on a bike than you would be in a car. If you're a driver and you hit a big pothole, you might damage your car, but you'll probably be OK. If you do the same on a bike you are much more likely to fall off and injure yourself.
> What I'm contending against is not cycling as a mode of transport, but the assumption that with greater adoption of cycling comes greater safety.
The Netherlands has a massive cycling uptake and has some of the safest roads in Europe. What you say simply doesn’t hold water. Cyclists are simply not killing in the numbers that car drivers are.
For one, The Netherlands has great cycling infrastructure, at least places where I've been: Cambridge, UK doesn't.
Again, from what I've seen, cyclists in The Netherlands tend to behave quite a bit better than they do here in the UK (drivers too, for that matter).
Moreover, what condition is the infrastructure in? I don't know about The Netherlands but I can tell you that in Cambridge, UK, it's littered with potholes, and often to some extent multi-modal.
You can't just forklift an insight about cycling in The Netherlands and expect things to work the same somewhere else without making a whole load of stuff happen beyond just encouraging lots more people to cycle if you want to actually make it safer. In Cambridge, UK, we need both solid investment and cultural change (both cyclists and, yes, motorists too) for cycling to become a safer option.
Cyclists behaving better in the Netherlands than in Cambridge is likely true, but at the same time a statistical bias: In places with bad road conditions, only the die-hards cycle. Those tend to contain a larger share of assertive or aggressive cyclists. Bad road conditions also force cyclists into pedestrian spaces, onto pavements etc. I can observe that here in Berlin as well - places with good infrastructure see little to no conflict, but there are some spaces with frankly brain-dead planning where almost every cyclist cuts through the pedestrian space.
And that‘s where the Netherlands differ: Everyone cycles. You get a better cross-section of the population, kids, families. The infrastructure is much better, all around. It’s designed to reduce conflicts. And it‘s very likely that you‘d see similar effects in Cambridge as well. Build safe infrastructure and the normal people will show up.
That’s partially true but you said “cycling isn’t safer” when the available evidence is that it is. Even in the UK, you’re more likely to be killed on the pavement by a car than by a bike. Say what you like about numbers but cars aren’t supposed to be there. That fact alone should tell you something about the difference in danger.
I'm also in Cambridge. Many car drivers are also dickheads, at least they think that using the indicator is optional when leaving a roundabout. This mostly annoys me when I'm on foot and try to cross the street near a roundabout. I found traffic in Cambridge to be very hostile to pedestrians.
If you actually read what I said carefully you'll note that I said some portion of the population: a very general statement which is inclusive of both cyclists and motorists. I am an equal opportunities disparager.
People who dick around like that in a car find themselves in jail really quickly. People who do it on a bike wave self-righteously at the police while flagrantly violating the law, and get away with it.
Bollocks they do. People dick about in cars ALL the time. YouTube is full of people acting like knobheads in cars and getting away with it.
I know Cambridge really well and I know people that regularly race their cars on the A14 at night.
Do you really think all the people buying tuning kits are doing so because they like sticking to the speed limit?
When it comes to obeying traffic lights you won't be waiting long to see cars tailgating through amber. That happens every time.
Finally I'd point to the number of drivers still on the road with more than 12 points on their licence. They just plead extenuating circumstances in court and get away with it. They almost never find themselves in gaol. The real kicker is that those that do end up in prison on a Dangerous Driving charge never permanently loose their licenses.
That's because an accident and a traffic violation are different. Minor accidents are usually handled without police intervention, and this is by design.
See my other comment: he pulled out without looking because he was in the middle of cutting up other road users (me in this case). That’s driving without due care and attention which is a traffic violation in the U.K.
The police don’t care. What mechanism will put him in jail?
"Driving without due care and attention" sounds like a statute that has a much more specific interpretation than you think, and the police probably aren't the ones who misinterpreted that here. "Careless driving" and "reckless driving" are against the law in many states in the US, but both actually have very specific interpretations that are not entirely contained in the text of the statute. This is the joy of living in a common law country.
Things like running red lights, not stopping at stop signs, and speeding are much easier for laypeople to judge, and it sounds like none of that was happening here.
Yes, drivers who blow through red lights and stop signs like the bad actor cyclists do will find themselves in jail (on reckless driving charges, incidentally) pretty fast. You're trying to compare apples and oranges here: a driver who happened to not see someone while driving (because they were driving more aggressively than you liked) vs. people who regularly flout traffic laws.
One group kills and maims five people a day (drivers) and your problem is with the group that doesn’t. In fact, you’ll fight tooth and nail to defend the driving that put a man in hospital by choosing not to look for hazards.
This isn’t “more aggressively than I like,” this is a man put in hospital because a driver chose to ignore the UK official guidance on how to drive. Official guidance, I might add, that you must learn as part of your driving course.
It is really tempting when on a bicycle to think of yourself as being able to pick and choose rules to follow, magically switching from “more like a car” to “more like a pedestrian” as needed.
The rule that I personally follow: always behave like a car (albeit one that rides far over to the side of the road most of the time), and if I really feel an overwhelming urge to act as a pedestrian, time to fully dismount and walk the bike for a bit.
> It is really tempting when on a bicycle to think of yourself as being able to pick and choose rules to follow, magically switching from “more like a car” to “more like a pedestrian” as needed.
As someone who walks a lot, I find this very frustrating, as a lot of cyclists think it's okay to ride on the sidewalk at road speeds. My ideal world would have the urban core be restricted to pedestrians only. Or at the very least speed restricted to 5 mph. Cyclists could stop, lock up the bike and walk. Or walk the bike.
Not sure where you are from — in the US at least, most urban cores already have a bunch of space wasted on roads. If we just cut those out and split the recovered space, it should be fine. Bikes only need a couple yards or meters of width devoted to them.
As this is a UK based article, I'm assuming you mean the Cambridge in England. I happen to live in Cambridge, Massachusetts and the while cyclists can be reckless, the drivers pose a 1000x greater threat to safety than cyclists.
As a tip for dealing with cyclists: continue your movement as a pedestrian: they'll go around you. Most pedestrians have headphones in/little awareness of their surroundings, and as a cyclist I always assume I'm invisible to them and to cars.
>As a tip for dealing with cyclists: continue your movement as a pedestrian: they'll go around you. Most pedestrians have headphones in/little awareness of their surroundings, and as a cyclist I always assume I'm invisible to them and to cars...
This! I used to do a 10 mile commute to work through several areas that were designated as shared cycle lane / footpath. Every trip was a slalom of avoiding pedestrians dawdling along on the cycle lane side of the divide. Always either with headphones on, or their phone clamped to the side of their head. Completely oblivious to the world arund them. So I'd have to swerve round them. And then hear the involuntary gasp of surprise behind me, as I zipped past.
But much worse were the ones who'd wake up enough to spot you at the last minute and then suddenly jump to the side --usually the side I was just about to swerve round them on.
Just keep on walking in your own oblivious bubble. I saw you about 1/2km ago and have already planned to my route round you!
You could just about rewrite this and substitute car for bike and bike for pedestrian, and have it still be true. It's like there is a hierarchy based on speed, and everyone thinks the level below them is a bunch of twats ruining their commute.
I was going to reply and say "You wouldn't see a cyclist riding down the road with headphones on, blissfully unaware of what's around them..." but then I thought back to my cycle commuting days and remembered a fair few examples of seeing just that. And anoher one in similar vein; the cyclist who swerves out into the road to avoid a puddle at the kerbside --without so much as a rearwards glance to see if any cars are coming up behind.
No. Pedestrians don't have a monopoly on obvlivion. But neither do cyclists. Some of the things I saw people doing behind the wheel of their cars or lorries, as I cycled past them would put you off going out on a bike for life.
Ultimately people just don’t want you to cycle. This is very much a cultural thing. Anyone cycling past age 15 or so is either poor or dangerously counter cultural. One of the most interesting things about the Netherlands is that is very little bike culture! You don’t see people signalling with messenger bags, cycling caps, bike brand stickers etc. because choosing to cycle is not unusual.
> continue your movement as a pedestrian: they'll go around you.
Please, please tell that to my local cyclists. Especially the commuters. The norm here is "ON YOUR LEFT!" about 1.5 seconds before blowing by at 25 mph with two feet of clearance.
How about when you're going to pass a pedestrian, you give them a lot of space and slow down to 5 mph.
I live in Newcastle and the VAST majority of dangerous road usage I see comes from drivers. Just yesterday I watched a driver pull out of a junction straight into a cyclist because he wanted to rush out instead of checking.
When cyclists kill or maim 5 people per day, I’ll be the first calling for regulation. Until that day comes, the focus needs to be on the most dangerous mode of transport: private cars.
I don't disbelieve you but I'll bet you any amount of money that the number of cyclists per capita is far higher in Cambridge than it is in Newcastle.
That disparity in itself will change the behaviour of motorists: I'm used to checking every single direction for cyclists before I make a move, even as a pedestrian, because there are just so many of them everywhere.
It's also why you see "Think Bike!" signs along routes popular with motorcyclists. Lots of places in the country there just aren't that many of us compared with car drivers, so people become unused to looking out for us, with sadly predictable consequences.
That's not to excuse drivers in Newcastle, by the way. It's just to point out that you probably see more drivers behaving badly compared with cyclists because of the differences [apologies, my bet on the differences] in the numbers (which I did do a search for but couldn't find anything useful or authoritative).
There are more bikes than cars in London and a peruse of Cycling Mikey’s Twitter and YouTube will disabuse you of the notion that this is a numbers thing. It’s a culture issue within the UK that makes sure good infrastructure isn’t provided and cyclist and pedestrian safety isn’t prioritised (either at the infrastructure or day to day driving level).
Half of road deaths worldwide are pedestrians. The number killed by cyclists is so small it is under the significant digits of the total.
Cyclists violating traffic rules is frequently cited in anti-cycling astroturf, of which you can find current examples and a deep archive at StreetsBlog.
This "Overall it constantly shocks me how little responsibility cyclists take for their own safety." just screams "I'm a dickhead driver likely to hurt someone and I want a defense."
> This "Overall it constantly shocks me how little responsibility cyclists take for their own safety." just screams "I'm a dickhead driver likely to hurt someone and I want a defense."
You didn't twig with "When driving I've nearly hit several cyclists"
I can stand at my local crossing on Old Kent Road and there'll be non-zero cars jumping the red light (often accelerating from a good ways back) or entering the junction without a safe exit blocking the crossing, a bus lane, and another junction (in peak time this will often get into double figures). Multiply that by all the crossings and you'll absolutely dwarf the amount of cyclists doing similar (and in my 20+yrs experience as a pedestrian + cyclist in London, it's not nearly as bad as motor vehicles.)
> It needs to become socially unacceptable to cycle without due care and attention to the safety of others
Let's start with the heavy motor vehicles first, eh.
Also, once police are no longer occupied ticketing motorists, I hope cyclists are prepared for actually being held accountable to laws. The police budget isn't going to refill itself.
Or maybe we prioritise the class of vehicles responsible for almost 5 fatalities and 75 serious injuries a day[1]?
For comparison, [2] says that 30 pedestrians were killed and 1093 serious injuries involved cyclists in eight (8) years. In 416 weeks, that's less than one (1) week of car deaths (0.2% ratio) and two (2) weeks of serious injuries (0.4% ratio).
Anyone that says "we should prioritise X and 416*X the same" is either not arguing in good faith or should be nowhere near decision making.
Your attempt to classify my post as whataboutism is in incredibly poor faith.
I'm very pro-cycling, but it would be foolish to ignore the very real and observable safety concerns that occur because of factors such as poor behaviour (and also, although I didn't mention them originally, issues like infrastructure and quality of road surfaces).
You cannot simply assume that within a particular context or location that more peope cycling equates to greater safety. There are too many other factors at play, and those need to be addressed in order to ensure that cycling is a safer option for everybody.
> I'm very pro-cycling, but it would be foolish to ignore the very real and observable safety concerns that occur because of factors such as poor behaviour
You'll no doubt be able to point to the statistics that back up these very real safety concerns.
You could start with the number of KSI caused by cyclists compared with motor vehicles
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