This coming from the guy who subjected the board to 500 renditions of “throw stuff in the quarry,” which is about 497 times beyond the point it stopped being funny.
But I will stop using irony around you. From now on, I’ll just simply patronize you, like by slowing typing out how proud I am of your posts that use lots of big-boy words. Good for you, Bo! Five more posts like that and I’ll get you a nummy-nummy root beer float!
This.
Wow. You mean the riding community that you associate yourself with. I see just as many older, experienced Harley riders riding side by side, cutting corners and crossing the center line and goofing around weaving inside the lane for fun as I do kids pulling stoppies, wheelies, and splitting traffic. Motorcycle riders are not some superior breed of driver with a higher sense of traffic morality or whatever code of safety honor you are trying to lay claim to.
Nearly everyone, male and female, in my family and circle ride motorcycles for fun and bicycles for recreation and none of us have ever been guilty of texting or talking on the phone while riding. None of us go after dropped cigarettes or hamburgers while driving. None of us reaches into the (nonexistent) back seat to retrieve a child’s dropped toy, none of us is dealing with an unsecured, squirming dog tearing about the vehicle, and not one of us busies ourselves retrieving our Big Gulps or Starbuck’s Grandes from the (nonexistent) cup holder while we’re piloting bikes or bicycles.
Drivers of cars have infinitely more distractions inside the vehicle than do bicyclists or motorcycle riders of any age or experience. They are also guilty of driving a vehicle that is ten times heavier, ten times wider and longer and far more capable of causing damage. Bikers of both kinds may have a little more room to maneuver and tend to take advantage of spaces cars can’t fit into to advance, but you can’t see the potholes, gravels, broken glass and oil slicks they are trying to avoid, either. They have fewer distractions, less potential to cause injury or death, and are subject to the same laws and punishment. Get over it and worry about following the law and piloting your own vehicle.
In this thread, several habitual pedestrians, motorists, motorcyclists and even some bicyclists have stated that it is has been their experience that road bicyclists disobey traffic laws more often than motorists do. A few bike riders have voiced their objection to this characterization of bicyclists as reckless scofflaws, assuring readers that they and all their cyclist friends follow road rules at least as stringently as motorists do. But are these paragons and their buddies really as representative of the majority of cyclists on the road as they think they are? Let’s look at some studies to find out!
First, a 2009 study led by a sociologist and an urban planning professor at Hunter College in New York observed 5275 bicyclists at 45 different intersections in mid-Manhattan, a noted NYC biking hot spot. Among the findings were:
-13.2% of the bicyclists were observed riding against traffic, which is really not something that bicyclists should be doing.
-Fully 37% of bicyclists observed ran right through red lights, and another 28% of them paused briefly and then rode through the still-red light.
Interestingly, they found that female bike riders were much more likely than male bike riders to obey traffic rules, but that they made up only 9% of the total bicyclist population. Also, violations happened more in the evening than during daylight hours.
Of course, rule compliance varies a lot depending on what intersection you look at. I found a study on bicyclists in London that tracked red light violations by intersection in five different regions of the city. On average, 16% of the bicyclists violated red lights, but it is interesting to note that some intersections had much higher violation rates than others–some intersections showed no violations at all, while in some intersections over half the bicyclists ran the reds. Again, male bicyclists did worse than female bicyclists and evening riders were worse than daytime riders.
But wait! Those studies don’t say anything about the motorist rule-disobeying rates. Maybe they are even worse, right? Well, this report conducted near Portland State University campus looked at 497 motor vehicles and 99 bicycles and observed that 56% of bicyclists ran red lights, compared to just 7% of motor vehicles.
Well, overall, it seems like the complainers are correct in that there are definitely at least some traffic rules that bicyclists are more likely to disobey than motorists are. Speaking as a pedestrian, I’ll add another one to this list, which is that I never see motorists zipping past me on congested sidewalks, whereas bicyclists pull that shit all the goddamn time.
We have few squids like that on Japanese bikes by me. They normally ride Ducatis. The people on Japanese bikes are usually old farts on Harley clones and are barely distinguishable, except audibly, from the hundred trillion [del]deaf old farts[/del] rugged individualists with the wind in what’s left of their hair riding Harleys with open pipes so they can hear if their engines are still running.
Saw a teenaged girl riding no-handed on the sidewalk while texting. She was too young to remember when that street was widened, but one tree was plenty old to remember when a chicane was put in the sidewalk to clear it. When I saw she wasn’t badly hurt in the collision (the tree wasn’t, either, but trees usually survive getting hit by most any vehicle with nary a scratch), so I felt permitted to laugh at her and call her a dumbass.
I don’t know about Nashville, but in Los Angeles, it’s perfectly legal to ride on the sidewalk, so long as you do so in a manner which does not endanger or terrorize pedestrians, which I do. I ride slowly, I speak and use my bell to make sure people are always aware of me (and I wait to see them notice me, I don’t assume they heard), and I always nod/thank/apologize when I pass, depending on the degree of imposition my passing entails.
There are times when it is simply to dangerous to share the street with cars, especially for me because I almost always have my dog with me, and he is at my left, closer to the path of cars. So unless I’m on a quiet side street or a very wide street with bike lanes in excellent light, I’m taking sidewalks to keep my dog safe. (And he also wears a very large reflective backpack, and at night there is a blinking red light on his collar. I have a 900 lumen headlight on my helmet, and all types of lights all over the bike. I’m Safety Girl.)
Now if only the people who ware walking directly towards us, looking directly at my dog on my left/their right could just engage their brains and realize that I am trending left to give them room on my right, the side with no big black dog, and move to their left instead of farther and farther and farther right…life would be so much more pleasant. I have taken to making eye contact and forcefully pointing at my right side, which often works. But what really gets me are the people who persis in this behavior in crosswalks, nearly forcing me into oncoming traffic as I do my best to make sure they don’t have to be worried about being near my (entirely safe and friendly) dog.
Even worse are the people I’ve come across whose own dogs are blocking us from passing by being directly in my dog’s path and seem oblivious. Ummm… could you get your little shihtzu-huahua-bichon thing out of my dog’s direct path, because I KNOW your precious little excuse for a dog is going to go batshit when we pass, which will trigger my dog and if you don’t move your dog, my dog will eat yours. PLEASE?
Once my Zusje is grown I intend to have both of them with me, one on each side. That is going to be considerably trickier. Since she’s a blue pit and she’s going to be on my right I think they will still go to my left around my Rotty-Border Collie.
I think with both of them I probably won’t have to worry about pedaling at all anymore. Especially her. She’s only 4 months and 22 pounds and she’s already ludicrously powerful.
Oh and for any fellow cyclists/dog lovers, this is the most wonderful and amazing thing ever. Not cheap, but beautifully designed to keep both rider and dog very safe, no matter what, far superior to any alternatives, and I did the research. I can testify that Preston cannot hurt himself or me, cannot knock me down or get in the path of the wheels. He tries sometimes when a dog is being super irritating, but all I do is keep pedaling. I can control him better on my bike than I can on my feet, no lie. Watch the videos. And it has had a wonderful impact on our relationship.
I’m saying, pretty plainly, that motorcyclists don’t indulge in illegal activity on the roadway as often as bicyclists. Have you witnessed bad behavior by some? I don’t doubt you. If you’re saying you see motorcycles breaking the law just as often as bicycles - yeah, I call bullshit. You see about the same amount of bad motorcycle riding as you do poor car driving. You’re trying to whitewash bad behavior by people on bicycles by highlighting the much fewer instances of infractions by motorcyclist. Nice misdirect claiming I’m touting superior character rather than observable behavior, though.
Bikes are supposed to be on the right, unless there’s a bike lane in the proper place. Some states and munipalities have different rules, but in general a cyclist should not be in the second right-most lane, but the right-most lane. Which means that a car making a right turn will pass a biker, and should wait, not just assume the biker will stop.
As for motorcyclists, seems to me they are usually more careful because not being careful on a motorcycle is suicidal. What proves how crappy car drivers are is how many motorcyclists die just riding straight down the street at the speed limit.
Interesting that you glossed over or outright ignored one stat on that study: Distracted driving (i.e. cell phone usage) the bicycle figure was at less than 2%. I wonder what the figure for drivers would be, and what causes more accidents.
Also, how did they rate cars running red lights? I could show them some intersections where the red-light running by cars is upwards of 80%. I also am curious how that 7% figure compares to the red-light camera intersections I see where the light pops damn near half the cycles.
Also I note some almost universal lawbreaking by drivers is ignored - especially speeding. For some reason that does not seem to count because <muttermuter>.
At the end of the day you take some stats in NYC and find that there are over 11,000 pedestrians injured by cars in 2012, with 100+ fatalities. The number of injuries caused by cyclists caused by pedestrians colliding was somewhere under 50.
This does not excuse misbehaving cyclists, but I do point out that the bloodlust and hatred for cyclists seems…misplaced.
Cite?
I observe far more, I would guess near 100% of car drivers talking on cell phones, texting, reading their phones, talking to and looking at passengers, fiddling with radio knobs, allowing unrestrained dogs to wander about the cab, eating, drinking, and smoking than I do bicycle or motorcycle riders. Most bike riders have both hands and eyes on their task, fewer passengers, less or no food and drinks, and far fewer distractions.
No surprises there. If you don’t have a Bluetooth or headset you crash the first time you try it.
I don’t have a car, and thus bike everywhere I go…
And let me just say, I wholeheartedly endorse this pitting. No, not all of us flagrantly disregard the traffic laws, but a very large number do. I haven’t kept actual count, but it’s still far too many.
To be fair, there are also too many car drivers who either don’t know how to or are unwilling to share the road with bikers. At least once a week, I encounter a driver who pulls out partway into the street, then sees me, and then stops dead in my path forcing me to stop, when they could have easily pulled out in front of me. And then there are the drivers who get frustrated by the all-too-common rude cyclists, and take it out on all of us. There’s plenty of blame to go around.
Well, you can either keep wondering or you can go do some research to find out. Either way, it doesn’t have anything to do with the topic of this thread, which is bicyclists running red lights.
You can read the linked papers to find out.
And you could probably show them some intersections where the red-light running rate by bicyclists is 97.48%. So what?
I am curious what percentage of bicyclists run red lights at those intersections.
Feel free to start a thread about it.
Probably not, though, because in NYC from 2007 to 2010, 500 pedestrians were seen in hospitals for bicycle accident injuries and I doubt it’s decreased very much since then.
Now, how wary should a New York City pedestrian be of any given bicycle rider? Should they be more frightened of a motorist? Let’s do some math.
So there are ~500 pedestrian hospital visits for bike crashes and about 12,000 pedestrian ER visits for motor vehicle crashes in New York City annually. So let’s say pedestrians go to the hospital for 24 car crash related injuries for every hospital visit caused by a bike crash related injury.
According to a Department of Health and Mental Hygiene survey, 500,000 NYC residents, or about 0.6% of all New Yorkers ride bicycles regularly. The percentage of city residents who own motor vehicles, by contrast, is about 23%. Probably most of those people drive regularly. I’ll be generous and say that the ratio of car drivers to bicyclists is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 drivers to every bicyclist.
So it looks like as a pedestrian in New York City, I should be about 25% more worried about being injured by any given bicyclist than I should be by any given motorist. And since bike crash injuries are much less likely than car crash injuries to be severe enough to require a hospital visit, it’s likely that the total per bicyclist pedestrian collision incidence is much, much higher than it is per motorist.
In conclusion, although there are certainly fewer of them, New York City bicyclists appear on the whole to be significantly more likely to hit pedestrians than are New York City motorists.
I know its probably confirmation bias, but bicycle riders scare me to death. I DO NOT want to kill someone ever, and most of the bicycle riders I see seem to have a death wish. Dark clothes at night, not paying attention to the signals or light, riding on the wrong side of the road, all of that stuff.
I always do my best to move away from them when I’m passing. I really, REALLY don’t want to kill anyone and if I hit a bicyclist with my cage, it would suck. If I hit him on my motorcycle, it would suck harder because not only would he be dead, my bike would be totally messed up.
I walk because it helps to clear my mind, and exercise is always good. I’ve been hit twice while walking on sidewalks next to bike lanes. That stopped when I started carrying a cane and was waving it around for balance. I don’t need the cane anymore, but I still carry it because it seems as though bicyclists riding illegally on the sidewalks are worried about me swinging a stick around as I walk.
Funny, the title says ‘bicyclists ignoring traffic laws’.
The point is that data in these matters can be very selective, as is the projection of drivers finding fault with cyclists.
The one I refer to is a six lane road intersecting with an eight lane road. I rarely see bikes on it and running the red there is suicide.
Convenient, as always.
Actually it probably has. As bike ridership increases and facilities improve bike vs. pedestrian, but never mind.
Ummm, your link is for the entire state of NY. Also, where is the stat saying cyclists cause some 500 pedestrian injuries per year? According to most data points, NYC accidents between cyclist & pedestrian are about 26 or so per quarter.
OK.
You would be very wrong. With the exception of the very outer boroughs most NYC inhabitants, even those with cars, don’t drive them regularly.
That puts your regular NYC driving commuter rate at about 18%, still seems awfully high for the Big Apple, where foot and public tranportation are the mainstays.
You based your stats on figures for the entire state, then extrapolated to make a mess. Your conclusions are bullshit as a result. Furthermore, much of your data is old.
In 2010, over 200,000 New Yorkers are daily riders, with probably a larger number riding ‘fair weather’ or riding more casually. That number has likely increased in the years since.
Meanwhile, for the last quarter of 2011, all boroughs report 26 injuries requiring hostpitalization, extrapolating out we can probably say 104 injuries in 2011 with let’s say a ‘worst case’ being about 200. Much less than the 500 figure you gave.
In an average NYC quarter about 2,600 pedestrians are hit by cars needing hospitilzation with 50 deaths.
I ride regularly and I totally agree with this. Car driver’s don’t notice the people riding that obey the law, only the douches that don’t. Bike riders don’t notice the people that give them room to pass and merge behind them and then turn. They only notice the douches.
I don’t know what the streets were like when you have visited Manhattan, but you are totally ignoring taxis,buses, and trucks which during my visits make up a majority of the traffic. :smack:
I bike almost everywhere- I don’t drive; and I give heartfelt “fuck that” to the OP.
Do I follow the traffic laws to the letter? Nope.
Do many motorists? Not a chance.
I have a vanishingly low desire to find myself being scraped off of the pavement and so I protect myself. I have an equally small desire to imbed in the memory of a motorist the sight of me being squooshed by their car; and so I protect them.
But to bitch about “90%” of cyclists ignoring traffic laws is ridiculous considering that drivers almost always (90% I’ve been counting) roll through reds and stop signs, fail to use their turning signals, speed, don’t check for other traffic when turning or changing lanes - the list goes on.
In fact I have often thought of opening a repair shop that deals entirely with broken turn signals. I have thought of this because at least half of the cars I deal with daily seem to have utterly non-functional turn signals. They are on 3 blocks before the turn (which makes it real easy to guess whether they plan to turn into your path) or they do not work at all (which makes it REALLY easy to guess that they are about to turn into your path).
Oh, and crosswalks. It seems there are invisible crosswalks all over the place. Drivers seem to decide (when I am obeying the laws) that there is a crosswalk where none exists and so they stop for no reason, but at least they take the chance of getting rear-ended or me getting smeared by the car in the next lane that cannot see me because asshole decided to BREAK THE FUCKING LAW and stop where it is neither warranted nor safe.
On the other hand, the crosswalks that are visible to me seem to be invisible to drivers. Big lines on the street, huge overhanging sign, signs on the sidewalk and yet no one sees them but me.
I’m sure you are the perfect driver who never, ever, ever, breaks a rule. I’m certain you are a paragon of drivational wonder; congrats you are in the elite 10%. Whoo-hoo you.’
Do stupid cyclists exist? Yup.
Are they the majority? Nope.
Most of us would very much like to survive the trip intact. Sometimes that means ignoring traffic laws because sometimes that is the only way to avoid getting creamed by some self-entitled prick in two-thousand pounds of fuck you get out of my way.
I do not swerve in and out of traffic, I do not obstruct or interfere with the flow of traffic, I do not dart in front of cars. I am not stupid.
I do run reds and stops when there are no cars. I do slide against the curb to make a turn - even if its illegal - because of the many times that I behaved legally and either almost got hit by an oblivious motorist or DID IN FACT get hit by an oblivious motorist.
In no way am I saying that we, as cyclists, should be allowed to ignore the laws. I am saying that if drivers paid less attention to their CDs, cellphones or whatever little doohickeys you guys like to fuck with while you are driving maybe cyclists would not have to take to the sidewalks or ditch laws in order to avoid getting smoked.
Just a thought.
TLDR
In short - either train drivers to be less stupid or get fucking bent.
There are two traffic rules that are critical for the roads to be relatively safe. 1) Drive on the right 2) follow traffic control devices at intersections. Without the vast majority of drivers following these two rules, driving would be epic chaos.
You can get away with everyone ignoring the speed limit, or not using turn signals, just as long as we’re all going the same direction, and don’t hit each other at intersections.
Cyclists violate the two key laws far more often than cars. Some cyclists feel that going the wrong way is safer for them Link with folks defending the practice, you have to scroll a bit , though this is a relatively small minority.
Intersections, OTOH, are another story. Cyclists approach intersections as though there were no traffic control devices at all. They survey the situation and ride through if it appears safe to do so. Cars do not do this. Cars run red lights by trying to get through on the yellow, and being a bit too late, they don’t approach the light, decide it’s safe, and drive straight through the red (not in any appreciable numbers, at any rate). The fact that large percentages of cyclists could manage to ride through red lights in big cities is amazing, since they would have to dodge cars who have the green light to do so.
Makes total sense to me, and sounds similar to the advice my grandfather gave me when he was teaching me to drive (I was about his ninth beginner driver): “Just assume the other guy is crazy AND out to get you”.
QFT. I get heartily sick of bikes trying to run me down on a sideWALK, when there’s a valid, legal bike lane just a few feet away (and so far as I know, riding on the sidewalk isn’t exactly totally legal in California, where I live). I also get really sick of being cursed at for being on that sideWALK as a pedestrian.
I also agree with complaints about bicyclists who vary between obeying vehicle laws and obeying pedestrian laws as whim takes them. Bicycles are VEHICLES, and need to obey VEHICLE traffic laws!
I think we can all agree that the ones who wear dark clothing at night with inadequate/nonexistent lights/reflectors are apparently trying for a Darwin Award (that or they’re trying to play the insurance settlement lotto).
As an unrepentant “scofflaw” cyclist I can honestly say that I get off of my bike and walk it past pedestrians when it seems like biking past them would put them in danger.
The only proper response to this is “eat my ass fuckwit!” And if you need Dave Folley to speak for you you have serious fucking problems my friend.
They are morons and deserve to get smacked. The driver that scrubs them doesn’t deserve the experience and attendant memory however.
So, being a pure white cracker it is okay if I skip reflectors etc? Really?
You have no right to take any moral or ethical position - by definition.
I prefer to avoid roads because drivers are blind fucking retards - for the most part. I specifically got a hybrid bike so I CAN go off road at a seconds notice. My bike has came complete with this new invention, I think they’re called “shocks” or some such nonsense.
There are idiot cyclists, no doubt. I’ve seen cyclists biking no-hands while reading and sending texts and hoped they’d hit a tree. By the same token how many motorists drive distracted (almost as bad as driving drunk)?
And obeying the law seems anathema to drivers in general.
Not only when driving or biking but in general. At the plant I told every new trainee that the best way to stay alive and intact is to look at the situation, imagine the dumbest thing the other person can do and protect yourself from it.
Assuming everyone else is stupid has saved my digits and, quite literally, my life.
Um, do you not see that you have just invalidated your own point? Cyclists are often cyclists because they were STUPID and DANGEROUS drivers. They are not cyclists by choice, they are cyclists because their own retarded driving habits forced it on them.
For the record not only have I never had a DUI, I’ve never had a full license. Why? Walking, biking and public transport have always been quicker, cheaper and easier.
So, 86.8% of cyclists don’t ride the wrong way on a street and 63% don’t roll though or run reds.
What a bunch of dickheads the majority of us are.
Unlike motorists who almost always come to a complete stop, use signals and are absolute fucking saints.
Laughing and dumbass was the height of your reaction? Shit I’d have been openly mocking her as she picked up her bike and dusted the tree off of herself. Stupidity hurts and ought not be coddled.
You walk you dog while riding? Are you more fucking stupid than people give you credit for. Oh wait, you’re planning on walking two dogs, on the sidewalk, while riding.
Clearly, we haven’t given you quite enough credit for achievement in stupidity.
People like you make me think literacy should be a privilege, not a right.
Don’t know about the States but here a cyclists is to keep to the most right hand side of the appropriate lane. If there is a turning lane and a through lane you pick your direction and keep to the right side of that lane. Sometimes obeying the law means we have to come up right beside cars in order to avoid fucking up traffic behind us and not get ticketed.
QFT
Do you actually understand numbers? At all? Even a little bit?
