If you ride a bicycle and hang out with cycling people that have been in the scene for a while, this is a fairly common topic of conversation. Drivers seem to have gotten more careless (phone use I'm guessing), more reckless (lowered concern and empathy for others), and more angry (this one seems obvious) over the last five years or so. Especially towards cyclists. I would say before five years ago, I would have someone throw something at me or be purposefully aggressive like, maybe once a year. Now it's a monthly occurrence.

I avoid huge swaths of my city now, and most rural roads. After being buzzed (once by less than a foot) three separate times by three different trucks in three consecutive weeks on rural paved roads with assholes yelling at me and throwing a can at me out of the window, I traded in my road bike and bought a gravel bike. Now I stick to gravel for long rides. I've got more options to bail off the road, traffic is extremely infrequent, and I know if someone is coming behind me very easily. If it's a lifted truck, I pull off and wait until they pass. Annoys the shit out of me to have to do it, but it's not worth dying.

The frequency at which people illegally and unsafely pass me in order to run red lights that I stopped at has definitely increased in the last two years.

Before the pandemic 10 over the limit was normalized in my area, now it seems 20 over is acceptable, even in school zones. It genuinely feels unsafe when I do the limit on some roads because of the agressive passes and tailgating. We've got some speed cameras but they are only effective near the camera, you can literally see the wave of traffic speed up once past it.

What bothers me most is it used to be usual suspects speeding like this, the fancier cars, lifted trucks, and modified shitboxs. Now everyone drives fast and speeds inlcuding the minivans and soccer mom SUVs. It really highlights how ignoring speeding for so long has made a hive mentality of its okay to speed now because everyone does it.

The light rail here in Seattle, going both North and South, was just interrupted because some idiot driver decided to try to beat the trains as they both were passing each other at an intersection. One idiot driver managed to take down two trains (remarkably, the driver seems to have been fine).

In PA it's legal to pass right if the person in front is turning left and I hate it, but recently I've noticed people not slowing down or rolling through grassy shoulders on the right just to stop and get a soda down the road. People walk these roads at night for jobs but folks don't care. :(

is it just me or is this graph saddam hussein?