Are questions about driver behavior/safety around drivers on topic?

Question

In my experience, there are a lot of repeated driver behaviors that are worth learning about and developing proper reactions to:

• Rolling through stops to turn at near corner
• Preparing for turn without using signal (often visible)
• Halting traffic to let cyclist through/disrupting right-of-way order
• Inching forward while at red lights
• Hesitation just prior to entering intersection/eye contact with cyclist

I have lots of questions about this type of behavior, and would definitely like to note as many of them as possible to be prepared. Would questions about a specific driver behavior as it pertains to cyclist safety be on topic? Would a driver-behavior tag be appropriate?

Answer 1

We have a few of those now, like "Is there a polite way to take the centre of the road without antagonizing motorists?", "Does it make you safer to use lights during the day?" and "How can I interpret the intent of and respond to cars behind me honking?", for example.

Note that the first two are clear questions about cyclist behaviour that can be answered with facts. The honking question is hard to answer so it got weak answers and in some ways is an example of a flaw in the Stack Overflow model - people will upvote questions that matter to them, even if they're poor questions or can't be answered.

I think it would definitely be possible to craft good questions on the topics you've suggested, but they'd be likely to need a bit of group editing and could well spark "discussions in comments" that would need to be deleted. Stick to facts, ask for advice, and be clear that you're neither posting a rant nor asking for rants as answers.

Answer 2

If you want to ask about how to safely bicycle around certain driver behaviors, that is absolutely on topic.

Just be careful that you're asking for practical solutions and not diverting into a rant about bad driver behavior or encouraging an open-ended discussion about how bad driver behavior is. We want questions and answers, not discussions, and definitely not arguing.