In my experience, most people don't have a great understanding of what keeps cyclists safe in mixed traffic (i.e. not within a protected lane), and how opposed those things often are to the law. As a former professional urban cyclist, I constantly broke the law to keep myself safe, while keeping my first priority never to endanger pedestrians or other cyclists. A kind of Three Laws where the unarmored travelers come first, then myself, then the folks in big steel boxes.
Cyclists need a different set of laws on the road for everyone's benefit. But people have become so inured to the constant threat and frequent (and often fatal) harm of motor vehicles, that they fixate on and exaggerate the threat of cyclists, and illogically insist that they need to follow the same rules of the road as cars.
Cyclists should follow rules of the road -- special rules created for a special vehicle.
There's a problem with that. Lots of people who regularly drive cars but never cycle see cyclists flagrantly ignoring the law on a regular basis. It's easy to come to the conclusion that the reason cycling is so dangerous is because cyclists would rather throw themselves into oncoming traffic rather than dealing with the inconvenience of having to stop at stop lights.
And when there are pushes for regulations to make cycling safer, they roll their eyes and vote against it, even when they're simple, effective, cheap measures.
The seemingly widespread belief among cyclists that they don't need to follow the rules of the road is, in my opinion, a large part of the reason Americans are so opposed to changing said rules to make cycling safer. There are a very large number of Americans who believe the primary reason cyclists get hurt is because the cyclist was doing something dangerous.
We apply very draconian rules to motorists, and then people get upset when those same kind of rules are not applied to other users. It is very inconsistent and that makes people angry. But this ignores the fact that motor vehicles are exceptional in terms of the harm they can cause simply due to weight and speed. That is why we need draconian and annoying laws, but only for motor vehicles. The risk posed by bikes and pedestrians is so small that strictly enforced rules would be authoritarian and restrict freedom to an unacceptable degree.
I do agree that cyclists should follow rules. But the magnitutde of danger caused by rule breaking is massively lower and that should be acknowledged. A dangerous driver is committing a worse crime than a careless cyclist.
Also, cyclists are not some homogeneous group. The person complaining about dangerous drivers is not neccessarily the person going through a red light.
My area has the opposite problem: motorists offering to let cyclists go when they have the right of way. It's generous of them to make such an offer, but they don't seem to realize that the safest thing for a cyclist to do is follow the same rules as motorists when they are cycling in traffic.
(Of course my area also has reckless motorists who don't respect the rules of the road, but they seem to believe they are above the law whether they are interacting with cyclists or other motorists.)
I'm inclined to be sympathetic to cyclists, however, I strongly disagree with you. When people get to choose which of the rules they get to follow, they always choose the rules that benefit themselves without regards to those of others.
Cyclists aren't only putting themselves at risk, they are putting others as well, as is the case with anyone operating a vehicle. A cyclist choosing to ignore traffic rules can indirectly cause someone who expected them to follow those rules to take an action that greatly amplifies the risk of that cyclists' own decisions.
The fact that cities are not designed well for traffic that is not traditional vehicular should not be an excuse for people to put themselves and others in greater danger.
As a sometime cyclist, I agree that cyclists should abide by traffic laws. I assume this was downvoted for tone. The premise is undeniable. Bicycles should obey the laws. Greater rule adherence means a more predictable, and thus safer, street.
As a cyclist, I constantly break the law, and I’m aware that I do so.
The thing is, most traffic laws are designed to keep drivers safe. They’re also designed for cars. Bicycles aren’t cars, and car drivers tend to be impatient and don’t pay attention, so we have to adjust—-which sometimes means, for example, running the red light a couple of seconds before it turns green. Or turning left on a red light, since I’m not crossing any lanes. Or treating a stop sign as a “slow” sign.
(This is a left-side driving country.)
All of that is necessary to keep my life expectancy up. As for the pedestrians, well, unlike a car I’m perfectly capable of spotting their existence. Nor is a slow-moving bike particularly dangerous.
Your last sentence is one of the most aggravating arguments I hear against cyclists using the road.
Motorists I would argue are much, much worse at obeying traffic laws than cyclists (perhaps simply because there are so many more of them). I think this is made much worse by distracting electronics in a the vehicle.
Regardless, why should a few bad cyclists be the measure for an entire group of people simply making a personal choice on how they're going to get around? Drives me crazy.
The problem is not with breaking the law. Drivers and cyclists do this more-or-less equally I'd imagine.
The problem is in breaking expectations.
If I see 10 cars driving 80mph in a 55mph zone, then it is reasonable for me to expect an 11th, and I'm certainly not shocked when I do see that.
At stop signs and red lights when I'm riding my bike I've seen far too many fellow cyclists seem to take pleasure in their ability to do the unexpected and get away with it.
They weave between stopped traffic, overtake slowing cars on the right, breeze through stop signs without yielding, block pedestrians by entering crosswalks and stopping.
These are legitimate bad behaviors on the part of cyclists, and until we admit that and start working on changing the culture towards one of behaving within expectations we're not going to get much respect from all the drivers on the road who largely do adhere to expectations.
I get out of sorts when other cyclists break the law. How can we cyclists ask drivers to obey the law, to protect us, if we won't even do it ourselves?
Cyclists break rules because the rules were not written with us in mind.
The tired straw man argument against cyclists has them saying "treat me like a car!" one minute and "treat me like a pedestrian!" the next. But really, I just want to be treated like a cyclist. There are three major classes of transportation, not just two [@].
Here are some road rules that I regularly break for my own safety:
> In most places, it illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk. However, most roads near me have no bike lanes. My city (Atlanta) has a notorious problem with highway traffic spilling out into the city, and as a result drivers are viciously impatient and I've had too many close calls while riding my bike on major roads. I ride on the sidewalk when there is no other safe option.
> In some places, it is illegal for a bicycle to pass a red light, even when it's all clear. However, when I'm riding on the road, there is usually a pack of impatient drivers waiting behind me. If don't accelerate quickly enough, they will honk at me and/or pass me within inches. Usually, I can put a safe distance between myself and the cars behind me if I start moving a little before the light turns green.
> Regarding sidewalk riding again: My city has too many one-way streets. This is fine for cars, who travel a longer distance on average than I do. But for short bike trips, not being able to use the sidewalk would increase trip time by 3-4x. This is a problem solved by separated bike lanes.
Not to mention the fact that we rarely hold drivers accountable for their rule-breaking. As a bicyclist, my mistakes can are only lethal to myself. A driver's mistakes kill other people.
Here's also a list of dangerous traffic behavior that SHOULD be illegal but ISN'T, because the law is written for the convenience of drivers, not the safety of pedestrians and cyclists:
> Right-turn-on-red should be illegal anywhere there is a pedestrian signal. When turning on red, drivers are looking to the left for oncoming traffic, and rarely look for pedestrians to the right until it is too late. When the pedestrian light is on, there should be ZERO chance of being hit by a law-abiding car!
> Left turns should have a dedicated lane and signal. Left-turn-on-green puts drivers in direct conflict with pedestrians, for the same reasons as right-turn-on-red.
> Speeding is too pervasive, and speed limits should be strictly enforced. Failing to use a turn signal should also be ticketed more often. I would support camera enforcement if I didn't think it would leak into public spaces beyond just roads.
> Freight trucks and other vehicles pulling a trailer too often swerve outside their lane. This is extremely dangerous and should be punished.
[@] Really, their are four modes of ground transportation, but Americans don't believe in trains.
Cyclists need to follow the rules in order to command respect, frankly.
I wish this wasn’t true but I see dozens of cyclists every week (no exaggeration at all) doing things that are blatantly illegal and definitely dangerous. FLYING through stop signs. Deciding to just “go” at a red light when there seems to be no traffic. Turning wherever they want without signaling. Assuming they have the right of way in pretty much any situation. Multiple riders in parallel formations that make them move into the road anyway. The list goes on, and on, and on. I am not kidding.
And that kind of behavior just makes me not want to help. I’m sorry, you have to make sure you are at least doing everything possible to help yourself before you expect drivers to make any more concessions.
I cycle a lot, and I don't drive. And yes, I sometimes break rules for my safety. For example, I refuse to use stupidly designed cycle lanes that:
* Mount the foot path and then return to the road.
* Force me to use pedestrian crossings at roundabouts.
* Railroad me onto the side of the road when I actually want to make a turn (ie: force me to dismount and use a pedestrian crossing instead of using the correct lane for that turn)
* Vanish abruptly
But a lot of cyclists I see (in my city anyway) are just inconsiderate assholes who have no road etiquette. They run red lights, ignore one way systems, cycle on pedestrian paths, or (the very worst) cycle the wrong way on cycle paths.
And don't get me started on lycra clad (always male) cyclists who 'come at you' side-by-side on a cycle path that fits exactly two cyclists. I'm not sure if they expect you to slide into another dimension, but a loud, sharp c-word generally jolts them out of their idiocy.
I've been driving for 23 years in about as many countries with not a single traffic accident (though I'll admit to a couple speeding tickets). I've driven in weather, climates and conditions as varied as polar winter conditions to mountains and desert.
I have something over a million road miles under my belt which puts me at near 20,000 hours of on the road driving experience in mixes of cities to extreme rural environments. I feel comfortable saying I'm a driving expert and that I'm a very safe driver.
I've never felt safe sharing pavement with a cyclist. Ever. Not for my own personal safety, or because of some dubious legal requirement, but for the safety of the cyclist. If you think that makes me sound like some kind of wild west psychopathic car driver hellbent on a Death Race high score spree I suggest you rethink that.
The law also puts requirements on bike riders when using public roads. It's not an unburdened responsibility. However, bicyclists would like to make it a responsibility of car drivers only (as the comments in this thread pretty clearly indicate), and have an unlimited right to use infrastructure that wasn't designed or built with them in mind. However, enforcement of those laws on bicyclists is virtually nonexistent.
The reason I feel unsafe around cyclists is that not only am I operating a complex, multi-thousand pound machine that can take me to triple digit speeds in under a minute, but because cyclists don't seem to be aware that I'm doing involved in that operation. They'll routinely swerve out into traffic, cut across busy intersections and otherwise behave like all the world revolves around them.
Not all cyclists are like this. But I'm hard pressed to find many that observe even some fraction of the laws they're supposed to follow.
This is absolutely the biggest issue for me. Another commentor pointed out this can't be the issue because drivers do the same thing.
The actually problem isn't that cyclists break laws. It's that they break them doing incredibly stupid and dangerous things that I don't/can't expect. I know most of the stupid things other drivers are going to do. Cars are easily visible and I can usually see stupid maneuvers coming. I've had several close calls with cyclists. A common scary scenario is when they are driving against traffic on the sidewalk when there are serious visual obstructions. That's what makes me the angriest.
Hold on, I have no firsthand experience of cyclists because I don't ride a bike through the street? So all those times I have walked (and driven) around cyclists mean nothing at all because I'm not the one on the bike?
Right now, we have car-centric rules that apply to cyclists, and that is pretty unsafe for cyclists and drivers, but pedestrians are often the ones on the receiving end of cyclists' bad/unpredictable behavior today.
I agree that cyclists need different rules, but I also think that cyclists need to have those rules written down and follow them. If you have walked around NYC for any length of time, you will experience an area that has: (1) a lot of cyclists, (2) decent infrastructure and well-defined rules for cyclists, and (3) a lot of cyclists who break those rules when it is convenient. That is completely untenable.
Traffic is a complex real-time action game where there are serious consequences if people make mistakes. So the best approach is to be predictable within the traffic rules.
Like no shit, I never said cyclists shouldn't obey the rules, but motorists should be held to a much higher standard from a legal perspective because of the insane amounts of damage that can be inflicted by jerking around on Instagram while driving, for example.
I've ridden around cities my whole life on bikes and you can obey all the rules you like, you're still completely vulnerable when it comes to dangerous, inattentive driving.
Cars, for the most part, really are a stupid idea, especially in cities.
As a motorcyclist, I think cyclists should be held to the same rules of the law as other vehicles to make driving predictable and safe. As it stands right now, I have to assume cyclists (via heuristics/profiling) as a wildcard--will they run a red light? Will they weave in and out of traffic unsafely (this is an acceptable practice, when done with ample buffer given their size and speed)?
I think cycling is great (I'm also a cyclist as well). But the fact they don't carry a vehicle registration shouldn't exempt them the rules of the public road to make them predictable users (and unpredictable users, such as those erratically lane splitting, jaywalking, reckless driving, under the influence, speeding, etc, should be penalized to encourage predictable use).
It's rather funny that the cyclist who rides downhill at 40mph outside my home every day classifies cars as the hazard and not himself, since he must ride on the road and not the footpath. He's no different to the guy who was riding at a similar speed on the footpath outside of my work. Apparently that was OK, you see, because if he was on the road he would have been riding the wrong way on a one way street and there was no way he was going to ride around the block to get on the southbound road. He nearly hit me every day after work for a month, because he was cutting blind corners at speed.
What about the two who were occupying a whole traffic lane, weaving back and forward to stop cars overtaking, while riding at under 15mph in a 40mph area? They'd start screaming like lunatics at anybody who legally overtook them - the cops wanted a word with them, but they disappeared when they saw me on my phone.
Five or six times a day, cyclists run a red light at a busy intersection in town. I see many near-accidents in my fleeting times in that intersection, all of which are caused by the cyclists - and I'm not counting the number of times they've nearly hit pedestrians crossing with the red light. I've seen one car run a red light, three years ago, since I started crossing there in 2012.
Years ago, I was overtaken by a cyclist and his three children, just as I had begun my turn. I nearly ran over the father, and they took their sweet time to move through the intersection a car coming the other way (who legally had the right-of-way) had to stop and wait for them. I could have got out of my car and walked, and I would have got to the other side before they did. They bumbled along as if they'd done nothing wrong.
It's not uncommon for cyclists enter intersections on foot, and so legally become pedestrians for the duration of the crossing, and then jump on their bikes and dodge through traffic while hurling obscenities at vehicles who have right-of-way because they didn't enter as pedestrians. The law here doesn't change your status because it's convenient for you.
Back in 2013, one of my ex-workmates told me quite a tale, about the time she pulled up at a set of lights. When she moved off she signaled to change lanes and only noticed by chance that there was a cyclist holding onto her car to get a free ride. He couldn't have seen her signal, the indicator was near his foot, and if she had turned he would have toppled in high speed traffic, perhaps ending up under her wheels.
Back in the early 1990s, a friend of mine was pulling out of his garage and was hit by a cyclist at some speed - the cyclist threatened to call the police, but stopped short he would have been charged, not my friend.
Don't lump it all on drivers, cyclists are dangerous, too.
I started commuting by bike about 3 years ago and it was then that I realized how many bad motorists are on the street...and how many bad cyclists are on the street. I believe that every vehicle on the road, no matter the number of wheels, should follow the rules of the road. I think of traffic laws as a protocol. If some one doesn't follow the protocol, then there's ambiguity. And ambiguity will lead to accidents.
Cyclists need a different set of laws on the road for everyone's benefit. But people have become so inured to the constant threat and frequent (and often fatal) harm of motor vehicles, that they fixate on and exaggerate the threat of cyclists, and illogically insist that they need to follow the same rules of the road as cars.
Cyclists should follow rules of the road -- special rules created for a special vehicle.
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