Jaybikers
The other day I was waiting at a red light while a flood cyclists passed by me in every direction. It was a particularly long red, and car traffic was lower than normal. And I’m glad there has been such and increase in biking. However I witnessed several close calls because no one was operating by the same set of rules:
It seemed their main concern was to get from A to B in the shortest, quickest way possible. But it got me thinking about the mindset. There is vehicular cycling, and then there is a more pedestrian approach…
However if you’re just out to get places as fast as possible and not willing to rest on a red, you may just be on a collision course. Stop at a red light sometime and watch what almost happens.
Do you think more cyclists would follow the rules if they –
– had safe places to cycle? (infrastructure)
– actually knew the rules? (education)
While I do agree that some bike riders flaunt/ignore the rules I have real troubles with this idea that we (cyclists) need to police other cyclist behaviour.
Have any of you spent any time really watching what car drivers do? Answer – many simply ignore the rules as well yet there is no call from “driver advocacy groups” to self-police and clean up their act – and more importantly, a 5000lbs car is way more dangerous than 200lbs of bike/rider.
I wouls submit that if cities had more safe bike infrastructure and education campaigns for all road users these “scofflaw” cyclists would start to play nice and follow the rules.
I really agree with this – I feel like a lot of people break rules simply because the rules either don’t make sense, or put them at an distinct disadvantage in some way. I don’t see very many people run red lights here in Portland, and when I do, it’s usually to get a jump start on fast traffic that otherwise would not let them in, or it’s when there is literally no traffic around, so there is no reason to just sit and wait for the light for 2 minutes. In the second case, I see people walking do this all the time, and I do it myself when walking quite often. If I can determine that it’s safe to cross on red, I will.
Of course, I’m not advocating just willy-nilly breaking rules – I think generally you should make an effort to know what they are and try to follow them. But, I do think that if A) the law took people walking and biking into account more and B) our infrastructure (including signals, timing, etc) was better, we would have much fewer problems with people breaking the law.
It’s like with people locking bikes to cafe tables and trees and things – if there’s no bike racks, where do you think they’re going to park? As soon as you put in bike parking, guess what? No more bikes locked to cafe tables. If you make it easy to follow the law (by making the law sensible and adding infrastructure to support it), people will follow it, mostly (there’s always a few exceptions no matter what group of people we’re talking about).
I try to set a good example for kids, including my own kids, who pay more attention to actions than words. Running red lights teaches kids that cyclists aren’t really expected to follow the traffic laws and/or that running red lights makes them more grown up. When kids try it, they get killed. Lawful cycling is easier to perform safely and is good practice for operating other vehicles in public spaces.
Here’s today’s story about the danger of riding up beside a bus that may turn – it’s from the UK, so instead of a right hook, it’s a left hook:
http://road.cc/content/news/62783-cyclist-killed-olympic-bus-witness-accounts-and-wigginss-input
love it “he’s so cool the laws of physics don’t apply”. on another note, I hate it when people want to tell me about the “jaybikers”, I don’t ride that way so I can’t be expected to be responsible for every irresponsible cyclist.
In Portland, this also applies to motorists.