I am a daily bike commuter in Berlin. I think dickish people are evenly spread on all transportation modes. Difference is, dickish car drivers kill people, dickish biciclists don't. There has been 9 deaths of biciclists in Berlin in 2017[1] so there is definetely a reason for higher identifiability for car drivers.
How come you assume a person named Sabine must 100% be a woman?
And how come you assume that even if said person indeed has the XX chromosomes (to be nominally classified as a "woman"), that they also self-identify as a woman and prefer the adjective "she" over "he" or some other?
See how far this rabbit hole goes?
It's easy why they assumed the author is male: they don't care who the author is, and didn't read their name on the blog. I read the first 6-7 paragraphs of the post and didn't bother to read the name either. And even if I had, "Sabine" as a name doesn't tell me anything about the gender (not a name we have in my country, nor a very well know one, like Mary or Helen or something that everybody would guess). Heck, there are Spanish men called "Maria".
Had I made a comment I might have used either "they" or assumed it's a man, mostly because statically for things posted at HN, it would be true.
A cute video of Feynman answering the question of whether you're seeing an object, or only the light from an object, when looking at it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8aWBcPVPMo
Sorry, I was not aware that Sabine is not obvious in english. The picture in the top right could also have been a hint.
It is not about it being "100% woman" but about "male" being the default. I think it is telling that the assumption seems to be physics -> male. If this would have been about social issues or fashion, maybe the people would have checked before assuming male gender?
I don't say it does not happen to me too, but if it happens, I think it is good to raise awareness.
The gender of the name "Sabine" is not obvious to me. I wish English had a good gender neutral pronoun. "He or she" is too formal sounding. "They/their/them" is too informal sounding.
I wonder why you feel that singular they is informal? There's nothing wrong with the construction. It's attested as far back as 14th century. And, as you mention, it certainly fills a void in the language.
[1] http://adfc-berlin.de/radverkehr/sicherheit/aktionen/62-geis...