left turn on red turn signal on a motorcycle

This is what I do, at a light near my house that refuses to change.

We have that law in WI as well and I’ve used it plenty of times to run a light near my house that won’t trip when my bike is on my sensor. However, I still wouldn’t do it if there’s a cop anywhere nearby. If there’s no cops, I’ll run the light the first (safe) chance I get since I know I’ll be there all day otherwise.

One of the issues I have with the law is it leaves out a situation where it can get you stuck.
1)I’m pulled up to the stop line, at far as I can go and on the loop, not able to trip the arrow.
2)There’s a car behind be, leaving me 10-15 feet.

Now what? We’ll be here all day. I know some bikers will wave for the car to pull up and point at the loop. The intersection I tend to get stuck at is set up very poorly and I can pull up way past the stop line and they’ll pull up too it (hopefully) and trip it. Otherwise I’ll run it.

Another, potentially scary situation is when other people in the left turn lane (or double left turn lane in my case) see you run the red arrow and for some reason decide to go with you. Since I don’t know why they’re running it with me I don’t know what they’re going to do next. Specifically, since it’s a double left turn, I worry that they’re going to move into me.

One more situation where I find myself, as a biker, stuck, still at this same (double left turn) intersection. When the city put in the loops and painted the stop line, they put them about a car length too far back. A LOT of people roll right over them. If their car is the only one there it won’t get an arrow. If my little bike rolls up behind it, we won’t get a light. The few times where someone looked out there open window and said “I think the light is broken” I’ve said “no you pulled past the sensor, so it didn’t trip, it’s way back there behind the stop line, you have to back up”.

I did email the city a few years back to tell them they either need to move the loops up to where people stop, change the programming of the lights so anytime the sensors trip while the lights are red that lane will get an arrow the next time around (not that it only gets an arrow if someone is on it right at the exact second that we’d be getting a green light) OR just put up a sign that says “Stop here on red”. I also added on that the sensors need to be adjusted because my motorcycle doesn’t trip them.
Nothing ever happened.

I’ve gone far enough to put down the kickstand and actually go and explain to the driver what he/she needs to do. Which may get me peppersprayed some day but ----- what the heck.

It’s 45 seconds. Read the law for the caveats.

There are bikers who keep a copy of the statute in case they run into an ignorant cop. Had there not been an article on it in the paper I wouldn’t have known about it. It’s never been brought up in any training or the CJ monthly bulletin.

I took the MSF class at MATC (which I highly recommend) and they explained it to me there. For some reason I thought it was a certain amount of cycles, not 45 seconds, but I see I’m wrong.
What’s interesting is that it doesn’t include cars, only bikes.

They did also mention that’s it’s not a terrible idea to keep a copy of that on you since if you do it often enough you’ll probably get pulled over for it. Actually, I think he said you should just have the statute number memorized. I also recall him saying (which I don’t see here) that there was an additional condition that there also can’t be a car coming up behind you that can trip the sensor for you. I thought that was in the book.

ETA, here it is on page 9 of this PDF of the WI Motorcyclist’s Handbook.
“No other vehicles are present to activate the signal;”

Don’t do that. Even though there is supposed to be a statute book in every squad brief case, many times there isn’t. Rattling off a statute number and saying what you say it says may just get an officer to cite you and tell you to tell it to the judge. It’s easier to have something tangible to look at. Don’t forget, there are a zillion statutes. We don’t know them all.

This is not legal advice, yadda yadda yadda.

If it’s unreasonable they should have no went already, why not just a reasonable wait time :wink:

If there’s a particular light that giving you trouble, I’d recommend contacting the owning agency with a complaint, and offer to meet them out there with your motorcycle to see if they can tweak the sensitivity so it picks you up. I made that offer with the city I live in, and one of their signal techs met me that afternoon at a light that was giving me trouble.

Sadly, at the maximum setting it still didn’t detect my motorcycle. :frowning:

In California the State DOT is installing a new front (first) loop design at traffic signals that will detect bicycles, which should make it much more likely it will detect a motorcycle. As Dag Otto points out, video detection is also becoming more popular.