I can’t take seriously the notion that bicycles should have the same rights as cars on the roads when they don’t share the same responsibilities. It’s not a small number of cyclists. I live in San Francisco, and it’s rare to see a bicycle stop at a stop sign, regardless of traffic.
Someone put a camera at a four way stop and of the over 100 cyclists who passed, they measured only seven who came to a complete stop. To be fair, the measured another 15 who rolled through and 91 who blew right through as if it wasn’t even there.
Either you have all the rights AND all the responsibilities or you don’t get the rights.
As an avid cyclist, I wholeheartedly agree with this. Cyclists who disregard safety and traffic laws bug the heck out of me, not merely for endangering their own lives but for making things worse for the rest of us.
I’ll never forget the dude who was cycling through a four-way stop as I was coming to a stop a couple of years ago. He even put up his hand imperiously to tell me to “stop!”. :rolleyes:
The parkway near my house is lousy with bicyclists. Like Voyager said, I have to be hyper-vigilant because so many of them aren’t. I don’t see them observing the same rules of the road which I learned as a youth. It concerns me because I don’t want to injure any of them.
But yeah, cyclists should stop for stop signs, and observe all traffic signs & signals.
Well unless your town is populated by a bunch of Tour de France riders, 9 times out of 10 you just passed this bike rider sometime in the previous say 15 seconds.
This exact scenario is addressed in the California Driver’s Handbook. The car driver is to merge behind the bike and then turn.
The closest I have come to death on my road bike was from a brain dead lady that cut me off to turn into a shopping center. I was going about 22 mph in the bike lane, she passes me, slams on the brakes and turns right, so she can negotiate the driveway at 1 mph. All of a sudden I am looking at the side of her car which is now proceeding in my direction at 0 MPH. I am still going 22 MPH. Fun fact: did you know that when presented with such a view, a Toyota Camry appears to be about 100 feet long? It does.
Anyway I hit my brakes as hard as I could, and since it was raining just slightly I laid the bike down. I slid past the rear bumper of that damn Toyota cussing a blue streak.
Bottom line my bike was OK, and I had to replace my shredded shorts, and I was sore as hell from the road rash.
Getting back to the OP, I stop at all stop signs, and red lights. There is one left turn light I stop at that will not trigger from the metal in my bike. I will stand there for about a minute and if there is no traffic run the red. I will bet that if the light did not change for your car you would do the same thing.
I didn’t own a car until I was 25 years old. I was an avid cyclist; it was both my primary means of transportation and recreation. It wasn’t unusual for me to ride 400+ miles per week. I made several bike trips from Tallahassee to Panama City. I used to ride centuries just for fun.
Back in the 1980s when I was doing this, the laws explicitly gave cyclist the right to use the road, and an exemption from obeying traffic laws so long as no motorists, pedestrians, or others would be affected.
So: stop sign with no traffic? Go ahead thru it. Traffic? Stop just like a vehicle. Want to ride in the middle of the county road? Go ahead so long as there are no vehicle to impede. Etc., etc.
When I moved to Nevada in the mid 1990s, their laws were similar except the wording made bicycles have both the same rights and responsibilities as vehicles. So in NV you stop at every stop sign, every red light, and so on.
But it’s going to totally depend on state laws.
I can tell you from my brief time in Cali back in the late 90s, AFAIR, bicycles share both the rights and the responsibilities that vehicles have.
The thing is, not every state defines a bicycles as a vehicle. As I mentioned, back in the day, Florida defined a bicycle as a vehicle, but then specifically exempted them from some of the “rules of the road”. As a result, no license, no plate, no registration, no insurance necessary.
And you aren’t ever going to see those things, not when it would mean every family having to license, register and insure every kid’s bike. Not gonna happen. (There are other reasons, but that is, IMO, where the fight would be lost.)
This is almost exactly how I had my first cycling accident. Unfortunately, I had no time to react, and went over the car, landing on my head on the pavement. My second major concussion resulted. I had no helmet; had only gotten the bike 3 days prior from a friend who had left town for the summer. I bought a helmet a few days later (when I could stand and walk on my own again), and have NEVER gotten on a bicycle without a helmet since. Not even to test out the tires on my cul-de-sac. NEVER.
Wear a helmet. Know the laws. Obey them. It might not prevent every accident, but at least you won’t be at fault.
Know the feeling. I nearly had a physical altercation with a car in just this way a couple of weeks back. What saved me was that she did that “car body language” thing where she just started edging towards the side of the road a little in anticipation of turning (no indicators though, natch). I thought “you effing idiot, I think you’re going to turn, aren’t you?” and took the precaution of hitting the brakes. Which was just as well because half a second later she slammed on the brakes and turned just in front of me.
It’s funny how you get to know a certain route and where you have to watch out: a year or two back another driver did almost the same thing in exactly the same place to a cyclist in front of me (I was far enough back not be effected). The car passed myself and the cyclist in front of me, then braked and swerved into a turning lane, missing the cyclist in front of me literally by inches. The driver clearly didn’t know where she was going because she then turned back out of the turning lane and kept going in the same direction. The cyclist in front shook his fist and yelled at the car but it just kept going.
But here’s the funny thing: a bit further up the road the lights were red and myself and the other cylist pulled up next to this idiot. She wound her window down. She had loud music playing. We both turned to look at her thinking she was going to make some comment on the near accident she had just caused. But she clearly had no idea at all what she had just done, because she just sweetly asked us for directions! Myself and the other cyclist just looked at each other and shook our heads, too astonished to reply, the light turned green and we took off. To this day she probably wonders why we didn’t reply.
I agree. If you speed in your car you have no right to be on the road, right?
It is absolutely normal for cars to drive over the speed limit here, and I have never driven anywhere that wasn’t true (UK, Europe, US). If we applied your suggestion even handedly around here, there wouldn’t be a car on the road.
I’m not saying that either blowing off stop signs or speeding is acceptable, but be careful what you wish for.
True. But this was mid-80s and helmets were just starting to be a “normal” part of cycling. Plus I was poor. The bike was a loaner. And as I said, I haven’t once gotten on a bike since then without a helmet.
There is a service road along side a major street a block from my house. There is a stop sign on the service road where it crosses the street I live on, which connects to the road. I slammed on my brakes as I turned right from the major street across the service road (no stop sign, I had right away) and a bike ran the stop sign right in front of me. He then looked pissed at me for the nerve of being there.
Another time is when I was turning right at a stop sign, with signal on, and almost hit a biker running the stop sign after coming up from behind me. BTW, I consider the biker in the right when continuing on in front of a car turning right when there is no stop sign, the situation mentioned above. On the other hand one time in San Francisco I was moving into a parking space, turn signal on, when a biker moving quite fast came between me and it. I don’t know who was in the right for this one, but it was a damn dangerous thing to do.
But I want to make clear that the vast majority of people riding bikes around here do it safely and I try my best to give them room.
There is going 5 - 10 mph over the speed limit in a pack of cars moving at the same speed, and there is going 30 mph over the speed limit weaving through traffic that has the nerve to get in one’s way. Getting that latter kind of driver off the road works for me just fine,
So you seem to be basically OK with driving a car at 5-10 mph over the limit, even though that is undoubtedly significantly dangerous to others. I invite you to provide figures on injuries caused to other road users by cyclists. I’ll give you a clue since I’ve had this debate before: you’re going to need a microscope, the numbers are that small.
The reality is that cyclists should obey road rules but a very significant proportion of them don’t. The consequences of them not doing so are trivial except to themselves. Motorists should obey the road rules but a very significant proportion of them don’t. The consequence of them not doing so cause casualties to an extent seldom seen outside a war zone, year in, year out to an extent so predictable it is just seen as an accepted part of modern life.
Despite this, motorists often indulge in near apoplectic indignation about socially unacceptable cyclist lawlessness while thinking nothing of their own seriously dangerous but socially acceptable transgressions. It’d be funny if it wasn’t rather tiresome.
Yep.
Here in Minneapolis, I have nearly hit several people on bicycles who not only run stop signs, they run red lights, even in the dark, wearing dark clothing, and with no lights on them. Also, riding the wrong way on one way streets, or riding on the wrong side of the street, etc.
From the perspective of a pedestrian, yes, absolutely cyclists need to obey the rules of the road.
Not long ago I was patiently awaiting the walk signal at a pretty chaotic intersection. When I got it, I looked around to make sure that no assholes were doing something stupid, then started to cross. I guess I was looking out for the wrong kind of assholes, though. A cyclist going maybe 30mph blew through the light and almost hit me.
I remember once last year taking a left turn onto our main road, and cycling up to the light. As I did, I saw it was red, and there was a cyclist ahead of me. That cyclist blew right through the red light. I am not a fast biker, and he was going much faster than me, but still - traffic was coming from the other road, making a left onto his road. I was very irritated.
I admit I don’t always come to stops at stop signs if no one is around, but then, the only stop signs I come across in my commute are inside my neighborhood, where there is very little traffic and I can see where everyone is. However, it is a bad habit, and I should endeavor to stop, all the time, every time.
Red lights though? Hell yes. That helmet isn’t going to protect me thatmuch!
What drives me crazy is for some bikers it’s like a way of sticking it back to the cars. But in an accident, the biker will lose every time, hands down. Makes no sense to me.
I don’t agree with this at all. A biker has the same level of responsibility as another vehicle on the road, not a pedestrian. A biker should not be in the blind spot of a car turning right, the biker should be behind the car and waiting it’s turn to cross the intersection like any other vehicle would have to.
As a bicyclist I was always taught that your best strategy is to ride as if you are invisible. You cannot and should not assume that drivers of other cars can see you. It is your responsibility to be a safe bicyclist, not someone else’s.
I disagree. It promotes resentment towards and disrespect of cyclists. It’s hard enough to get car drivers to “share the road” without these idiots spreading ill will.
I think cyclists should slow down at stop signs to roughly the same speed that cars do. If a cyclist is going under that speed already, that means no need to slow down at all.
There’s no reason to hold cyclists and drivers to different standards.