Yes, but on the other hand, nobody on has yet outright defended Critical Mass. I’m a cyclist, and I hate CM, as well.
Presumably, it would give offended people the chance to say, “I saw bike 36GN404F doing some bad stuff on Western Avenue at 3:05pm,” instead of “there was this guy in a blue shirt on an orange bike who pissed me off,” or whatever. Because, I guess, bicyclists are vile, dangerous commie scofflaws who get a free ride on our backs and we cannot easily tell who they are.
Registering individual bicycles the way we do with cars is patently absurd. Obviously, if there was some registration scheme, it would attach to the rider, rather than the bicycle, like the numbers race participants wear. Problem is, I ride a recumbent, with a large seat that would effectively obscure any tag I might be wearing. And then there are the small number of velomobile riders who are completely inside a fairing. So, creating a consistent registration scheme that would work for all riders is pretty impractical.
Personally, I think the drivers are at once both jealous and fearful. Jealous of the much greater mobility that bicycles have. And fearful that they might be forced out of their cars and have to use their muscles and brains.
From the “known bike-hater”.
Maybe he’d feel better if you were riding a dekochari.
What does that have to to with the price of tea in China?
We had a critical mass event here. Seven people showed up. They rode like dangerous assholes through rush hour traffic on a main highway through the city. They were condemned by the vast majority of the cycling community in the city.
Don’t paint all cyclists with the same broad brush. There have been numerous example from cyclists in this thread about how they do obey the law, and in some cases go a bit above and beyond to try and set a good example. Of course you remember all the ‘bad’ cyclists, just like you remember the ‘bad’ drivers you see. But you tend to forget all the good drivers - you know, the 95% of drivers that you don’t notice because they are doing nothing wrong - and the same goes for the cycling community. Most are good, some are bed. Not all are the same.
This was the perspective I was coming from when I suggested bike registration - that there is a way to identify and report ‘bad’ cyclists, similar to how people report bad drivers, and it allows a method of ticketing. Why wouldn’t a bike caught on a red light camera also be subject to the same ticketing as a car? There are good points about why it wouldn’t work, however, and I am aware that it would be difficult to put a plate on the bike or rider (though not impossible - I have a race plate on my bike, it could be a similar set up).
Sorry, I am just not seeing a way to make it work. For it to be fair, cyclists would have to receive some sort of compensation for registering. But it could not be a flat stipend for registering, because then everyone would just register to get the money, most having no intention of riding even 100 meters a year. So you would have to have some way to determine whether they are actually riding (instead of driving), which is simply impractical.
Any way you look at it, registering bicycles has no benefit, unless your goal is to eliminate bicycles from the traffic mix. Might as well institute a program to register deer and possums and dogs and toddlers and every other creature and thing that presents a possible traffic risk. Yes, some people ride the wrong way, blow stop signs and cause other problems, and they piss me off, but their negative impact is largely trivial beyond creating a bad image.
Consider, for instance, the red light that I violated: it was not going to change for me and the way was clear (there were no cars coming), in what possible way would registration have been any kind of value to me? Or really, to anyone?
Well for one thing, the cyclist is pretty much just endangering themselves. A car running a red light put a whole of other people at risk.
Not saying there shouldn’t be some penalty, but having them be the same strikes me as another example of imbalance.
No, a bike running a red light that’s hit by a car going through a green endangers not only the cyclist, but the driver (and passengers) of the car too. Not only that, but that driver has to live with the consequences of hitting that cyclist. I don’t know about you, but if I were to ever hit and seriously injure or kill someone with my vehicle, even if I had the right of way, I’d live with that guilt and painful memory my entire life.
You could also make an argument that a driver slamming on brakes/swerving to miss a cyclist going against the red could cause another accident as well.
The guilt issue you might have a point, but everything else? Not really.
I have been asking examples of accidents for ages and the ‘swerving to miss the cyclist’ bit is pretty much pure myth. We had someone assert that as proof that cyclists should be off the road about 5 years ago and they triumphantly returned with examples…that proved to come up short.
This was the thread.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=505437&highlight=swerve&page=2
Start on post #66
Invariably, most of the examples of 'swerving to avoid a cyclist involve gross driver misbehavior.
Most likely a driver is just going to hit the red-light running cyclist or jam on the brakes. And if someone hits them when they are doing that they were following too close.
Still, given that probably the vast, vast majority of bike-on-pedestrian fatalities (which is not very many) happen when cyclists run red lights (such as with the OP) you’re probably right about the punishment level.