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.
I see so many cyclists run red lights that now when I stop, I turn around to make sure no one on a bike is about to crash into me. They still fly around me, much to my chagrin, as I wait at the light next to patient drivers doing the same. Do they think they know something we don’t? That it is POSSIBLE to cross? But not usually safe. I know riding a bike can make us feel invincible, as we did when we were children, but why risk a collision? Not to mention why piss off drivers unnecessarily?
I do sometimes ride along in the crosswalk to get across, if that is safer, in places like the Jamaicaway at Pond St., across from the Pond/Boathouse.
I also ride on sidewalks when I ride from the North Station T, dodging pedestrians as I cut through the Garden, and along and over the river to my job in Cambridge. There are sharrows by the Museum of Science, but the lanes are too small, the pavement hazardous with grease and bumps, and cars travel at freeway speeds. Same thing when I ride on Hyde Park Ave…I don’t! Many people treat Hyde park Ave like a racetrack (literally, you will see 2 cars or motorcycles racing on a regular basis). I have seen many, many motorcyclists do high-speed wheelies. I feel safer on the sidewalks, though I hate the bumps and broken glass. So I either ride on the sidewalk or cut through the quiet neighborhood side streets of JP’s Bourne district, to get to and from my home in Roslindale.
The only time I MIGHT run a light or stop sign is if I am going home late night, when there is no traffic within a 1/2 mile, on a main street where I’d just as soon not be a sitting duck alone on a corner when a car full of guys drives up next to me at the red light. Better to keep in motion, and also maybe use those quiet side streets and even quiet one-way side streets to avoid such encounters. I have good intuition, and I generally will go whatever path feels best at the time. Otherwise I pretty much follow vehicle laws.
I see cyclists run red lights all the time. I don’t mean to sound to negative but it upsets me because I feel that when one cyclist runs a red light it makes all cyclists look bad. I have also lost count of how many times Im stopped at a red light and another cyclist passes me through the red light and gets hit by a car that had a green light.
Wow – bad luck follows all of those in your general vicinity eh?
Cool is catching up to one of these intersection offender and ever so nonchalantly power pass him, turn and give him the look.
I try not to get too upset about cyclists who break traffic laws. They are, after all, mostly endangering themselves. We humans have a desire to cheat built into our DNA. If we can get away with it, we’ll cheat. The only way to stop cyclists running Stop signs and red lights is to increase enforcement – and that’s just not going to happen in today’s lean times.
What bothers me much more than cyclist scofflaws are motorist scofflaws. Motorists drive around in 1ton+ vehicles that can actually do a lot of damage and kill a lot of people, yet they flout more laws than any cyclist: they speed, they drive drunk, they text, they talk on the phone, they apply make-up, they shave, they tie their ties, they search on the floor for dropped earrings, soda cans, phones, etc. – all while moving at speeds that can easily kill.
The widely held notion that cyclists are the biggest problem on our roads only holds true as long as we apply blinkers when it comes to motor vehicles. Cyclists kill maybe a handful of people per year worldwide. Motorists kill over a million!
The whole reason motorists don’t get the same right to use the road that cyclists get is because in the 1900s, people got so angry at the carnage motorists caused on the road, that they petitioned government to take away their rights to use the road. Government responded by taking away those rights and reducing motorists to mere privileged road user status.
So let’s never forget that a motorist’s license is not an advanced driving diploma. It is a demotion, a mark of censure: driver’s licenses are a reminder to us all that motorists cannot be fully trusted on the road.
“no one was operating by the same set of rules”
Bingo. The rules don’t make much sense to many cyclists so they make up their own. But, as you point out, they all come up with different rules.
If the Idaho Stop law is ever widely adopted (Stop Sign becomes Yield Sign and Red Light becomes Stop Sign for bicycles), I expect that efforts to get cyclists to behave more uniformly might have more success. Mandatory bicycle education for anyone who wants a drivers license would also help.
I really hope the Idaho Stop doesn’t get more widely adopted. In Idaho, people now just dive past stop signs as if it’s a free flowing intersection (not even as a yield), and when you call ’em on this, they just shout back “bikes don’t have to stop, asshole!” Likewise at red lights: “If red lights are now the same as stop signs, and bikes can roll stop signs, I can roll a red light!”
If it’s safe to yield, then the sign needs to be changed to a yield sign for everyone. The midwest has no problems posting four-way yields, and when everyone’s on the same page, it really helps quite a bit for everyone to know what to expect. Stop signs in other regions tend to be far too overused, despite the MUTCD recommending stop signs to be applied only in locations where a full stop is absolutely required for safely entering an intersection, favoring the Yield sign for most unsignaled intersections.
That said, I’m a bigger fan of the Oklahoma Stop: Stop and Yield signs still apply, but solid red lights may be treated as a stop sign, with directionality of arrows still applying, for all human powered vehicles and any motor vehicle requiring a motorcycle endorsement to operate. For the same reason as my dislike for the Idaho Stop and it’s problems, it would be nice if Oklahoma had stricter standards for detection loops and enforced them, so anything smaller than a Smartcar could be detected consistently, but at least it gives the option for escaping a stale red that won’t trigger.
“If it’s safe to yield, then the sign needs to be changed to a yield sign for everyone.”
Hear here! I saw a Yield sign the other day – it was the first I’d seen for years. I thought they must have stopped using them altogether. I get so tired of 4-way stops used as traffic calming measures on streets that don’t see a car in hours. It really annoys me, especially when they come in a valley, making me lose all my momentum before a steep hill, when I can clearly see that there’s no traffic for a mile in each direction.