Did they measure the minimum speeds of the cyclists who didn’t come to a complete stop? And did they do the same for drivers who came through the intersection?
As a frequent cyclist, I think it’s important to generally obey the traffic laws and move in a predictable fashion, so as to do my bit to keep the goodwill of those who drive cars on the roads where I like to bicycle.
But I’m also a frequent automobile driver, and I can’t help but notice that, in that context, I’m far from the only one whose compliance with traffic laws is far from exact. Most drivers on most roads I drive on, drive over the speed limit. Most drivers come to a full stop at a stop sign only if forced to by cross traffic or visibility problems. And so forth.
Here on the Dope, at least, we should try to apply a consistent standard to both drivers and cyclists.
The numbers are undoubtedly significantly underreported because there is no real mechanism for reporting them. I’ve been injured as a pedestrian twice by irresponsible cyclists. Both times, I was properly using a crosswalk. Both times, the cyclist ran a stop sign, hit me, and then took off to escape the consequences, even though the first time, I was only seven years old and he left me lying in the street, bleeding and stunned. Even if I had called the cops to give my vague description of the cyclist, I’m pretty sure “injuries to pedestrians by cyclists” is not a statistic they track.
I know plenty of other people injured by cyclists too. None of them called the cops either.
I’m not sure I understand your logic here. It sounds like what you’re saying is that because many drivers play fast and loose with the rules, cyclists should be able to as well. Surely that’s not what you mean.
I always stop at stop signs. It’s the right thing to do, and I have seen many of the cars on my normal commute route blow through stops signs. To keep things in a positive light, getting up to speed is just extra exercise and gets me in better shape.
Very, very few of the fellow cyclists who ride my route stop at the signs, though. I expect to see one of them get pasted one of these days.
There are certain lights which, as Rick alluded to, will not change for me when I am on my bike, especially since mine is carbon fiber and does not have a lot of metal. For those, I will either hop off and press the button for the walk sign or run the red after stopping carefully making sure there is not traffic.
Ah. I was considering freeway driving. 10 mph over a 65 mph limit is a lot different from 10 mph over a 25 mph limit, in part because you are more likely to encounter pedestrians and cyclists. Someone going 95 in a 55 mph zone is a moron and should lose his license - someone going 65 mph in a 25 mph zone should be taken out and shot.
As a pedestrian in New York I’ve been hit by a cyclist - no injuries, though. At one point there were a hoard of messengers on bikes who were considered dangerous to pedestrians there. Where I live now the cyclist is far more likely to get hurt than anyone else. I’m sensitive to this since I worked one summer as a messenger, but that was 40 years ago and subways were so cheap that no one used bicycles back then. I see why they were popular in the pre-fax age, though.
Around where I live we have a big problem with people throwing themselves in front of trains. The physical damage to the train and to the engineer is slight - the psychological damage to the poor guy driving the train and killing someone is not so slight.
I don’t see how drivers being morons excuses cyclists being morons. I’m a big supporter of red light cameras, since they seem to have reduced the incidence of red light running at the intersections near me quite a lot. Red light runners in cars get me a lot angrier than those on bikes, possibly because one almost killed my wife.
Oddly, I don’t see a lot of stop sign runners in cars. There is a stop sign in front of my house, and cars come barreling down our street in the middle of the night and almost always stop or roll through at 1 mph or so.
Here’s the thing: The purpose of laws is to keep people safe. If I see someone operating a vehicle in an unsafe way, I’ll get upset about that, and if I see someone operating a vehicle in a safe way, I’m fine with it. This is true regardless of whether the vehicle in question is a bicycle or a car, and regardless of whether the driver is actually obeying the law.
The difference is that when I’m on a bike, I’m moving slower, in a lighter vehicle, with my eyes higher above the road, and with no frame around me to obstruct my sight or hearing. Because of all this, there are some things in some situations which it’s safe for a bike to do, but not a car. So yes, bikes should be given more leeway than cars with respect to the law, because a bike is a safer vehicle than a car.
So, when I’m approaching an intersection on my bike, and I take advantage of my superior awareness and slower speed to determine that it’s safe to do so, I’ll run a stop sign without stopping. When I can tell that it would not be safe to run the stop sign, I stop and wait for it to be safe. And when, for some reason, I can’t easily tell in advance whether it’ll be safe (an obstruction right up against the corner blocking the sight lines, for instance), I stop just to be sure. This, I think, is a reasonable standard, and it’s the standard I hold everyone on the road to.
I just looked at my Illinois Rules of The Road and it says Bicycle riders are to follow all the same rules of the road as for cars and may be ticketed for failure to do so.
A cyclist who runs a stop sign deserves to be a big red spot in the road. Unfortunately, the motorist who creams the cyclist doesn’t deserve the trauma s/he is going to suffer as a result of someone else’s negligence. I say this as both a motorist and a cyclist.
I’m with Chronos. I will run stop signs and stop lights if there isn’t any other traffic around. I won’t run them blind. I watched a couple of minutes of that video showing the 100+ cyclists (91 of whom “ran” the stop sign). It looks to me like maybe 1 or 2 of them did it dangerously. It is hard to tell since it is in time lapse, but the others seemed to go through with plenty of time to miss the cross traffic.
It should be obvious to everyone that it is possible to break the law but not automatically become a dangerous menace. At the same time, it is also possible to follow the law and absolutely become a road hazard.
I live in Oregon which is a very bike friendly state. And I’m a rider myself, although were I live it is not practical to commute by bike. A certain amount of our gas tax is dedicated to bicycle related road improvements.
In the last few years more and more people are commuting by bike and urban areas are being redesigned for this use. Bike lanes down the middle of the street. Which is all fine, except that it is also time to ‘pay to play’. The money spent is no longer insignificant. Don’t tell me that the riders are all ready paying through the gas tax.
I am not talking about licensing little Suzie’s pink bike. Only bikes used on roadways. Riding in parks, dedicated bike paths, little Suzie on the sidewalk, etc. should be exempt.
Many (not all) bike riders feel overly entitled to the road as it is, and every one who blasts through a stop sign puts them one step closer to further regulation.
Snowboarder Bo, I think your ‘not gonna happen’ is less than 10 years away, maybe 5. Local governments are looking for revenue everywhere. Bicycles are going to be a new frontier for taxes. It was no trouble at all to institute bicycle helmet laws, registration will be no problem either.
The vast majority of cyclists, even the ones who commute to work by bike, own cars and pay all the taxes and fees associated with them. If the state is funding development solely from a gas tax, that’s their own shortsighted problem.
How in the hell do you expect to a) define this and b) enforce it?
Where and when do I register my bicycles? And if the bicycle’s purpose defines its registration requirement, who decides what various bicycles are used for?
FWIW on the subject of the OP: Chronos and cmosdes made my original point better than I did.
Another cyclist (and driver) checking in. Located in California.
Yes, when I am on my bike I wear a helmet and I obey traffic signals. I do this for a couple of reasons, all of which have been touched on in this thread (and many before), to wit:
I want to live.
It’s the law.
It pisses me off when I see other cyclists blow through signals.
Every debate I’ve seen where someone talks about how much they hate those damn bike riders inevitably involves anecdotes wherein said bike riders ignore the traffic laws. I really don’t like drivers who are irate in part because of what some fool did that pissed them off.
In a collision between 4000lbs of car and 200lbs of me+bike, right and wrong makes no difference. I am the only one getting hurt or killed.
So every time I go for a ride I stack the deck in my favor. At night I wear a bunch of lights and screaming neon-colored reflective “don’t hit me” clothing. No matter what I assume that every driver is actively trying to kill me. This has saved my ass a number of times.
Just the other night I was going around a blind curve. I swung way to the outside and hit the brakes under the assumption that one of these days there’d be a car in the wrong lane. I wasn’t too surprised when that was exactly what happened right then - oncoming car stopped (to park or whatever), big SUV behind him just pulled right into my lane, thus passing over a double yellow “no passing” line, at night, on a blind curve. If I’d been a car there’d have been a nasty head-on collision.
When extra changes in highway design are to accomodate bicycles, then the new money should come from bike users.
This is what the legislature is for, I don’t have to provide the solution.
See legislature.
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Bike registration will come. It has already been proposed. See link.
As usual these things fail a few times, are continually reintroduced, and eventually pass. The point I was trying to make, relevant to the OP, is that every rider who blast through a stop sign puts this regulation one day closer.
Oh no, not exactly at all. EVERYONE should be making a complete stop at stop signs and before making a right turn on reds. Cyclists should follow ALL the rules of the road, since they are considered vehicles under the law, not just the convenient ones (and here’s some news for cyclists - YOU’RE NOT PEDESTRIANS!). I’m just saying what people are actually doing, not condoning it. And now I’ll bow out of this thread, because I can’t stand it when cyclists come in and pretend that they aren’t doing what I see them doing every day.