Taking your second link, do you contend that the interaction between the officer and the motorist is correctly, fairly, and completely described by saying only that the motorist failed to “kowtow” to the officer?
Nothing else occurred? I direct your attention to 2:14, in which the sergeant says, “Refusing to give your ID at a traffic stop is a misdemeanor.”
So I want to understand the precise boundaries of your argument.
Do you contend that the motorist supplying his ID to the officer would be “kowtowing?”
What, specifically, in this video do you believe provides support for the claim that he will shoot you or beat you up for not kowtowing to him?
Bike paths often don’t connect with each other. In fact, the path which runs near my house dead ends around 15th Ave and then picks up again at 19th Ave. And there’s a few paths that go right along the river but they don’t quite touch each other (the gaps are 3 blocks and 12 blocks, respectively). You have to go on city streets to get from one path to the other. And none of them connect with the path near my house.
Then there’s the dilemma of how to get from point A to point B if the bike paths don’t quite go in the direction you want. For example, to get from my place of work to the nearest branch of our bank at the end of the day, it’s 1.5 miles on the shortest route but that’s a busy street. On the other hand, you can go down to the bike path, then over to another street, then back up again to the bank, but that makes the trip nearly 2.9 miles.
FWIW, the fatality rates for bicycles are quite similar to that of cars in city driving. Your risk of being killed while going to the grocery store on a bike is about the same as the risk of being killed while going to the grocery store in a car. The differences are #1 cars are safer on the highway, which lowers their overall average fatality rate, and #2 bikes have more crashes per mile but the crashes are less often fatal, compared to car crashes.
Having been a pedestrian, a bike rider, and a driver, all with considerable experience, I have observed that the bicycle rider tends to have the attitude–ironically.
I seethe at bikers on cross streets who ignore their stop signs. I rarely see one running a red light. The last thing I want as a driver is to collide with someone on a bike–I can be, in the words of Maxwell Halsey, “everlastingly sorry.”
As for sidewalks, here in Gardena our mobile-home park is on Western Avenue where the sidewalk is narrow, and it’s worse because of fire hydrants and utility poles. There are many aged people in the park who walk to and from the park entrance–some with walkers and canes–and the last thing they need is some young punk on a bike or skateboard driving them out of the way–especially if they are, as many are, hard of hearing or with an impaired ability to walk. :mad:
OH, and to answer the OP, cops certainly can direct you to violate traffic laws at least for a time. They can & do wave you thru red lights when they are directing traffic.
In my state, I am required to follow traffic directions from a police officer. So at the first point of contact, I’m not breaking the law if a policeman tells me to ride backwards up the wrong side of the road with no lights.
What pisses me off is that when they are doing drink-driving traffic stops, they direct all the affected drivers to park in the no-standing area around the corner from where I work. All strictly legal. No laws broken. But it’s a no standing area because it creates a road hazard having cars stopped there.
Having been a pedestrian, a bike rider, and a driver, all with considerable experience, I have observed that the car drivers tend to have the attitude- ignoring any laws that seem unreasonable to a car driver, and seething at reasonable accomadations for other kinds of vehicles that make everyone safer.
Two good examples are, of course, red lights and sidewalks. Many, many car drivers stop half-way accross the pedestrican crossing at a red light, forcing any walkers to file around the front of their car, sometimes forcing them into road lanes to do so. It’s normal. Nobody objects. Only pedestrians and bicycle riders get booked for crimes like that.
Fortunately, some bike riders have the good sense to clear the intersection at red lights, because as the light turns green they create a safety hazard as car drivers stear around, past, or through them. Unfortunately, mostly only experienced male riders are confident enought to do this kind of thing, which is why inexperienced female riders are more likely to create traffic accidents. Like the one I helped last month, who had just been written off by a turning truck. She had waited for the light to turn green before proceeding, which put her in the place that the truck wanted to be. If she’d had the sense to just go on through when the intersection was clear, she would not have become an accident statistic.
Of course, most people have no sense at all of bicycle accident statistics, and care less. They’re just angry.
I call them as I see them, Melbourne. In 46 years of driving I have seen countless bike riders flouting the law and zero vehicle drivers running stop signs or red lights and endangering people on two wheels or two feet.
I once even read about a driver watching a fellow motorist who seemed to defy pedestrians by stopping halfway into the crosswalk zone, as you described. One feisty pedestrian stepped over to the front of the car, reached under the front bumper, and released the hood latch–just as the light turned green and the hood flew up!
Have ya seen cyclists? Blowing thru stop signs, and red lights at a whim, driving on the wrong side of the road. Deciding to have “critical mass” or "bike parties’ where they deliberately block traffic. Guys who dress all in black, with no lights or reflectors because (and I kid you not) “You can’t hit what you can’t see”. :rolleyes:
Sure, there’s a lot of bike accidents, and there’s a lot of stupid drivers. More bad cyclists than drivers, me thinks- BUT yes, when a driver fucks up vs a bicycle, it’s really bad news for the cyclist. not so much the other way.
Drivers really,** REALLY** need to be more aware of cyclists, bikers and pedestrians. Put the damn cell phone down already and *watch the fucking road. * But cyclists need to take responsibility too, stop with the critical Mass shit, stay off the fucking sidewalk, observe traffic laws (Hey, if it’s late, and you come to a stop but the light wont change- sure, check both ways and go, I am not gonna be anal about it. But dont just blow thru the light trusting in your “invisibility”.)
And that’s part of the problem. Among the stupid things I HAVE seen drivers do is leave their lights off at night. As a driver I flip mine off and on a time or two; usually the other driver catches on. But, just imagine a driver, in a car with lights off, crossing the path of one or more bike riders also with lights off. Enough said. And it’s even worse in bad weather.
