Hey, bike rider, could you maybe follow the traffic laws?

The BBQ Pit
1

I have nothing against people who use their bikes to commute. I admire them. I gladly share the road with them; after all, it’s their road, too. But if you’re going to ride, you have to follow the goddamned traffic laws just like everyone else.

I’m on my way to work this morning. I’m heading up Powhatan Dr. in Alexandria, to where it terminates at Slaters Lane. I’m behind one person at the light, waiting to take a left. The light turns green, the person in front of me makes his left. I’m about to go as well, when all of a sudden, a biker comes up Slaters from my right, through his red light, and makes a left onto Powhatan right in front of my car, necessitating a very sudden stop for me. The guy didn’t even freaking signal that he was going to turn–he just cruised right through.

Hey, dickhead, I don’t know on what twisted planet you think you have the right of way, or are permitted to make a left turn on red thus cutting off traffic that does have the right of way, but you narrowly avoided becoming a smear on the pavement, and I narrowly avoided an inconvenient vehicular manslaughter charge. Where would you have been if there had been a less attentive driver than me waiting to turn? Do you think that the laws are just an inconvenience for you, or that you’re somehow exempt from them?

Jackass. Learn the rules of the road before you decide to pull a stunt like this again.

2

Sorry to do this - Can I see anything if I reply?

3

I’m stopped at a 4-way stop. Cross street has couple on bikes, with unhelmeted infant in bike seat behind dad, coming to intersection. It’s my turn so I start going, but I’m used to stupid bikers. Sho 'nuff, dad runs the sign right in front of me. Killing yourself through your own stupidity is bad enough. Don’t take your kids with you.

4

(About the previous message - sorry, I couldn’t see the OP. Now I can. Go figure.)

So as to make it worth it: I agree wholeheartedly pld. However in my experience the percentage of jackass cyclists is not too different to the percentage of jackass motorists.

Of course jackass SUV drivers out do them all. Score! :wink:

pan

5

Right behind you on this one, Phil. What really burns my bacon is seeing cyclists riding against the traffic flow.

You are a VEHICLE! You are subject (at least last time I checked) to the same laws as any other vehicle on the road.

I will gladly share the road with you, and I will not be an unmitigated asshole to you simply because you are on two wheels instead of four. This I promise. But goddammit, use yer head for more than an optional helmet rest!

6

I agree with all of this. I’ve nothing against cyclists and am one at times, but many of them seem to want to transform from vehicle to pedestrian and back depending on what’s convenient for them.

I have also noticed that reflectors on biks aren’t cool any more. I can’t tell you how many times, at night, I have nearly creamed someone because they came out of nowhere in stealth mode with nothing on them at all making them visible. Here’s a hint, Mr. Cool - bike always loses to vehicle. You’re far less cool when you’re paralyzed from the neck down.

7

Man, you people in cars think you have it bad? Try being a pedestrian in a city with a large number of bicycle messengers (the absolute worst offenders, in my experience).

8

For my part, I commuted to work for a year by bike, and always followed bike laws. I don’t like it either when they flout the law - it just gives car-riders another reason to hate bicyclists.

However, most bicyclists I know disagree with me. They say it’s not safe to always follow the laws. Cars ignore bicylcists all the time, and everyone who has ridden a bike on the streets has many horrible tales of idiot drivers who don’t notice or are openly hostile to the bikers. With this kind of danger, I think many bicyclists disregard all traffic laws, and just look out for getting themselves to where they are going safely. I tend to agree with them about the risk, but I don’t think it’s a good enough excuse to not obey the traffic laws.

9

See, my problem is the exact opposite: I’m über-conscious of autos while riding because they are always doing stupid shit like turning into lanes or drives directly in front of me, having just sped-up to pass me. In college I went over the bars after colliding with a woman’s car that did just that trying to get her son to school 1.7 seconds earlier by turning in front of me, rather than waiting for me to continue on my way. No where to swerve, no chance to brake, I was on the hood dragging the bike behind me since my feet were clipped in.

Face it, everyone else on the road is looking out for themselves and that’s it. You are in inconvenience to them. Drive or ride defensively, as though anyone and everyone else is just waiting to drop into your lane, turn across the median, turn left on red, turn right on red from the middle lane (I’ve seen this half a dozen times in Louisville) or just generally make your vehicular experience dicey.

10

uh…ENugent I was a bike messenger for 7+ years, I agree bike messengers can be dangerous, but this usually pertains to rookie bike messengers. In my first 2-3 years I did get into multiple accidents some my fault but most of them were drivers not paying attention. As the years progressed, the amout of accidents I had went down to the point that I have not had a serious accident for many many years <knock on wood> I would like to make a couple of points:

1-We try to obey the rules of the road, I swear we do. But if you get dispatched a job going across town with a 15 minute deadline you are going to have to bend the laws a bit.

2-Getting into an accident is detrimental to our paychecks. If you are seriously hurt you can’t ride, waiting for the cops or just making sure you are ok will waste time and jobs.
We are not surrounded by 2 tons of steel, if we fall down we can get really hurt. So we try to avoid it at all costs.

3-If you have been a courier for a while you become more professional. Despite the renagade stigma associated to couriers, I never considered myself an outlaw. I had a job that paid well, gave me a lot of freedom, great excercise, and I met tons of great people.

4-The more you ride the more you can anticipate the way traffic flows, I can usually keep up with the flow of traffic, if you are a driver and if you a courier next to your car window while you are going 20 some-odd miles an hour DO NOT PANIC!!! we are very much aware of the road and cars we are riding next to you for a reason.

5-I hated riding on the sidewalk. All couriers did, but if I had to ride on the sidewalk (the building I’m are going to is right down the street but if I don’t ride down the sidewalk I will have to ride 4 blocks out of the way with traffic) I would ride very slow behind the pedestrian until they noticed me and then go slowly around them. Pedestrians suddenly stop, turn into a store and do the most unpridectible things, so I stayed on the road as much as possible.

So to sum it up accidents are bad, couriers try to avoid them. While it looks like we are doing very dangerous things on the road, we really know what we are doing. The newer the courier, the more dangerous the courier. As to the OP I hated it when cyclists would break the rules of the road thinking they have the right of the way no matter what, I would give them shit when I saw it happen.

I will eventually rant about riding around the city as a courier but I’ll save it for later.

11

Around here a lot of the bikers have gotten fed up with the road and the way cars don’t give them room (or whatever their beefs are–I dunno what they all are, but I know they have them and they’re valid). So they’ve taken to riding on the sidewalks.

This creates other problems downtown here, where the sidewalks are not only busy with people, but retailers also put cafe tables and sale merchandise tables out. This leads to bottlenecks, browsing, unpredictable movements, etc. This is all well and good when you’re a pedestrian. I can handle someone cutting me off to go grab a book off the sale table at the bookstore. But bikers can’t maneuver through that without snagging people on their pedals or fenders.

I watched a guy insist on weaving through foot traffic, including a move where he speeded up to try to squeeze between a light pole and a family he was coming up behind. The thing is, they had two kids walking in front of them, one of them a toddler. Jesus, have you ever seen how toddlers walk? You don’t get a lot of clues that they might change direction. Naturally this guy misjudged and nearly mowed down the little girl. I could see all this happening and I’d already started to run forward so I could slug this guy in the face while we awaited the ambulance. To his credit, however, he crashed himself into the pole rather than flatten her, but the point is, buddy, you gotta move with the foot traffic if you’re going be on their right of way.

I humbly suggest that if bikers are going to ride on the sidewalk, they SLOW THE HELL DOWN.

12

I would love to get a bike and start riding again, so count me in the “I’ve got nothing againts decent folks on bicycles” camp. But damn, where I am, I would estimate that only one or two out of every ten bikers or so actually pay attention to traffic lights, stop signs or oncoming traffic. Delivery people are the worst, probably because they’re trying to avoid getting bitched at for allowing the food to get cold.

Traffic does indeed often suck in this city, so I feel for people on two wheels-- but bad traffic is all the more reason to be careful, so you don’t end up decorating somebody’s hood.

13

Amen pld. It’s pretty common knowledge that 98 percent of people on the road in Phoenix are morons (probably because it seems most of them are California refugees - sorry, couldn’t resist). However, there’s nothing like an idiot bicyclist to really raise the stupidity stakes.

I certainly don’t have any problem with people riding bikes, but they need to be extra careful when they’re on the road. They’re harder to see and will suffer more damage in an accident, pure and simple.

On the upside, though, you probably wouldn’t have gotten in trouble (certainly not vehicular manslaughter) if you’d smeared the rider. I had a similar experience a couple of years ago. I was stopped at a four way sign with no other cars. I started to go and a bike commuter blew through the sign and ended up getting bounced off my grill.

He broke his collarbone and was presented with a nice moving violation (failure to yield and reckless endangerment, IIRC) by the cop on the scene as they were getting him ready to load into the ambulance. Yeah, I felt like shit because I hit somebody, but I took comfort in the fact that he wasn’t killed and probably learned a lesson he should have known before he took the bike out of the garage.

I’ve been riding a bike since I was five years old and never got into an accident. I chalk this up to being aware of my surroundings and fastidiously following traffic rules, first and foremost the rule of common sense.

14

Fair enough - I’m sure I notice the offenders more than I notice people like yourself. But those rookies are still running down pedestrians on the streets of Boston as we speak.

15

My comment to cyclists on the sidewalk is usually a snarled “Why do you think they call this a sideWALK?” So I think they should slow the hell down to zero, get off, and become a pedestrian.

As someone who puts in between 5000-7000 miles on a bike during a year, I hate to admit that most of the cyclists I see during commuting are breaking the law in one way or another. This makes me pretty disheartened and grumpy. I hate it that I have to yell “STOPPING!” if I’m coming up to a stop sign with some bikes in my rearview mirror, on the assumption that they expect me to blow through the sign and will rear-end me when I do the legal thing (and half the time they don’t recognize the “stopping/slowing” hand signal, either). It’s no fun trying to determine the path of the oncoming rider going against traffic, and what I must do to prevent a collision. And so on with sidewalk scofflaws, clueless light-runners, and the rest. As long as the perception that bike=toy persists, this is going to be a hard problem to overcome.

16

Sorry, but I have a small problem with that point. Because you have a deadline to meet, this gives you license to bend the laws?

So to follow that logic, if I am late getting to work I can drive above the speed limit and disregard stop signs? Hey, the ones out-lined in white are optional anyway, right?

That is tantamount to saying you obey all laws except for the ones that inconvenience you.

17

Contempt of car? :slight_smile:

I bike a fair number of miles/year, and try to be good, but it’s sooo very difficult. First of all I mostly bike in suburban to rural areas, so congestion isn’t bad. Secondly I am usually biking as training, interruptions and stoppages destroy the flow of the workout and sometimes lead to early fatigue. So whenever practical (e.g. I won’t be inconveniencing a driver) I flagrantly violate traffic signs. I’ll also seldom use hand signals, unless I feel I am in a dangerous position.

Now I can see where a driver at a distance, still approaching a stop may see me blow through said stop and think evil thoughts. That’s unfortunate. Really, I have exemplary judgment. (:slight_smile: Yeah I know, who am I to judge my judgement.) Unfortunately not all cyclists do.llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll (sorry, I literally dozed off there for a second.)

It’s all relative to the environment. The greater the concentration of peds and cars, the more aware the cyclists need to be about how their actions are being perceived.

18

Well Bean Counter I agree with you but here is the situation. In the courier service we offer different rates of service;
1-Regular Job: The job will be picked up and delivered in 1 hour. cost 5$
2-Super Rush: The job will be P/U and delivered in 1/2 hour. cost 10$
3-Time Warp: The job will be P/U and delivered in 15 minutes from the time you call in. cost15$

These levels of service are imposed on us by the company we work for. Clients will call in a panic saying if this doesn’t get across town in 15 minutes I’ll lose my job, the company will lose the 75 million dollar contract, blah blah blah.

I personally didn’t like doing Time Warps(called other things in other cities) just because I didn’t like being put into that situation. I never thought it was worth the risk for the amount of money.

But we still have the deadlines to deal with that are imposed on us. I think there is a difference in bending the law with a car -vs- bike. If it’s 3am in the morining I’m riding home on my bike in freezing rain. I pull up to an intersection with a car next to me and the light just turned red. There is no traffic coming from any other direction. Am I expected to stand in the rain until the light turns green or can I cross the street with care. I would cross.

If you are late for work get up earlier and you will make it in on time. As another note pedestrians also have to obey the rules of the road. That means no jaywalking. I think there is a fuzzy line of breaking the law on a bike/foot and bending the law. If I get hurt on my bike while breaking/bending the law it’s my fault and I will probibally be hurt the most. If you break the law in a car most likely the people being hit by the car will be hurt while you won’t.

So to sum up my original post, when I had to bend the law I was doing it in a careful manner where I calculated the risks to myself and others and opted for the fastest way to go where I need to be. It should also be noted I do not think Bikers should ride in such an agressive manner, they should obey the law, I would never teach anyone to ride the way I did at work. As I said before I was a courier for 7+ years, I have retired from that line of work and now whe I ride home it’s with a combo/style of ingraned agressive courier riding and correct less agressive riding. I also jaywalk in a very cautious way (look left-right-left then step off curb) and I think nothing of it. But it’s still breaking the law.

19

Well, I’ve been biking to work on and off for two years. I’ve been hit by a taxi once, even though I kept, like I’m supposed to, as far to the right of the road as possible. I’m glad, pldennison, that you claim to be willing to share the road with us bikers, but the huge majority of motorists aren’t. We bikers regularly deal with double-parked cars, or worse, double-parked trucks (and even single-parked trucks are no picnic), taxis and buses which are constantly weaving through that area to pick up and drop off passengers…I can’t count how many times I’ve had motorists yell at me to get on the sidewalk, and a few times, this even happened while I was in a marked bike lane! It’s not like this city is teeming with bike lanes that I’ll be happy to spare a few and hand them back to the motorists. Damn it, if there’s a white lane divider, and on one side of that divider there are pictures of bicycles, don’t you dare tell me to get on the sidewalk, schmuck.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that my fellow bikers don’t exactly distinguish themselves. Way too many of them don’t know they’re supposed to drive with traffic rather than against it, just as one example. But too many motorists completely disregard bicyclists who are, in fact, obeying the traffic rules.

20

Since I’ve moved to the Bay Area and began working in San Francisco, I have witnessed four car/bike accidents and five bike/pedestrian accidents.

Just anecdotal, but two of the car/bikes were caused by the car, all of the bike/pedestrian were caused by the bike (the pedestrian could have avoided the accident if they had been paying attention, but they did have the right of way).
My philosophy around here is that the pedestrians are stupid, the bicyclists have death wishes, and the drivers can’t drive. It has kept me mostly safe.