In my state they changed the rules where a cyclist can treat a stop sign like a yeild sign, and a stop light like a stop sign.
the reasoning is this will encourage cyclists to ride through neighborhoods rather than on busier main streets. cyclists need to maintain momentum when riding, and stopping every couple blocks for a stop sign is a huge momentum killer.
obviously cyclists run a much higher risk of injury in a traffic accident than a driver. also cyclists dont really have blind spots the way cars do. so generally if a cyclist runs a stop, they have already checked for oncoming traffic. yes, there are idiots out there both driving and cycling, but typically if you saw a cyclist run a stop sign, he knows youre there and went when it was safe.
That’s a great law. That’s basically how I use them (with lots of care, obviously).
Which state?
I’ve been the car driver who nearly made jam out of the cyclist in the last panel. I’ve also been the cyclist hit by a car which was driving in the cycle lane.
Bad road users are everywhere and they use all sorts of transportation. Let’s stop with the division and generalisation.
one has a lot more power and uses a lot more space than the other
And we can still encourage both to obey the rules! Amazing!
rules aren’t neutral or grown out of the void. people with biases and maybe even ambitions create them for specific purposes
EDIT: To quote Anatole France: “The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.”
Rules governing bike traffic are generally quite reasonable though. It’s not like the enlightened traffic planners in the Netherlands went “you know what, cyclists don’t have to obey red lights” for example. So I’m not seeing the biases you’re talking about, at least in this example.
Comparing running red lights to sleeping under bridges or steal for survival seems, at best, hyperbolic. In any case I don’t think that quote supports the view that the law is intentionally biased
The lights often automatically changes to cyclists priority in many places in the Netherlands, and often provide underpasses to avoid conflict points in the first place. It is not a comparable situation. Traffic laws and infrastructure in the USA, for instance, are incredibly biased in favor of cars, so their comment is absolutely relevant.
When I bike in the USA often the safest time for me to cross an intersection is unrelated to whether I have a green light, but more related to if anyone else at the intersection does. The safest time for me to go is when no one else at the light has a green light, not when I do.
Often they will, but what about the circumstances where they haven’t? We’re talking about a bike-first country which still does this.
My whole point here is that pro-cycling rule-makers will try to make cycling work in various ways, but those ways do NOT include letting cyclists ride across junctions when there is crossing vehicle traffic. The bias the person above is talking about is not about traffic light rules; it’s about missing other bits of bike infrastructure. And if that infrastructure is missing it does not make it sensible or reasonable to break other rules as some kind of counterbalance.
It is perfectly legal in many places in the world to run a red light on a motorcycle or bicycle, provided you wait a reasonable amount of time. So your example is complicated. Simply because the magnetic strips that detects cars don’t detect them. But if run a red light after waiting, I guarantee the average person will think I’m the same as the person that flys through the intersection without slowing down. In my experience the average car driver has no idea why bicycles make the decisions they make.
And it is perfectly reasonable to break rules, if breaking them is what is keeping me alive. I really could give a shit what the law is. I care about getting to work alive. And I will make decisions to that end first and the law second.
Your anecdotal evidence is noted.
Who can forget the time a cyclist ran a red light and killed sixteen people?
Fair but think about hitting and killing a cyclist who had run a stop sign or light. That doesn’t just go away. The person has to live with the trauma of killing another person potentially at no fault of their own.
When did a car run a red light and kill sixteen people?
I’m not sure about running the red light, but there are cases where people have intentionally used cars to run people down in a mass shooting kind of style.
I’m sure the parent whose kid or pet gets mowed down by a cyclist going full speed will appreciate that, hey at least it wasn’t more people who got hurt or killed!
Entitled assholes exist behind many modes of transportation. That cars can cause significantly more damage doesn’t make the others less dickish, like this guy:
(and yes, I drive AND cycle AND like to jog too, depending on what the task at- hand is).
That so many have come out screaming in the manner pretty much showcases the “rules for thee but not for me” attitude.
Arkansas
Give cyclists lanes, so they wouldn’t have to stand in a half metre gap between an 18-wheeler and a traffic barrier covered in mix of 19th century soot and souls of the damned. Then they’ll follow the rules, case in point: entire Denmark.
Live in denmark, can confirm.
I saw like hells angles waiting for the pedestrian light to go green before crossing, in the middle of the night on an empty street in denmark, so yes they seem to follow the rules there (it was a long time ago, but we don’t even did that in sweden, sweden where youd get hassled if you like didn’t have your not legally obliged bicycle helmet on).
In UK cities where there is extensive cycling and infrastructure, cyclists still run red lights quite often. As a cyclist I don’t obey every traffic law either.
On my old way to work there was a traffic light controlling the entrance to a car park from the main road, but entering traffic was so infrequent that it was always very tempting to dart across. On the same route, a cut across pavement for 25 metres saved negotiating a large roundabout or dismounting.
Neither place could really have had better infrastructure: the junction had poor visibility so you couldn’t see if a car was coming if you did chance it. Backing up the main road wouldn’t have been sensible so both of these mean it couldn’t have been a simple give-way. The section of pavement is narrow and on a bend, so to cycle it safely you must go slow enough to stop. Putting a cycle lane in there would have invited people to go too fast.
Yes, still amused. Automobiles indeed have higher max speed than cyclists do, and they also accelerate more quickly.
In a comparison between cars and cyclists, I’m a little amused that you’d call cars slow to accelerate. When driving, my main issue with cyclists wasn’t anything to do with traffic laws; it was just that, when stuck behind them, my trip was doomed to take a great deal longer. Granted, the only thing I believe ought to be done about it is to build more bike paths, but still; a cyclist calling automobiles slow to accelerate is worth a laugh!
My biggest gripe with cyclists is that they act like a car when it’s convenient and a pedestrian when it’s convenient
Cyclists act like a cyclist when it is convenient and like a pedestrian when it is convenient.
Cyclists act like a car when it is the only way to avoid getting killed in car-centric hellscapes.
I watch cyclists every day hop right off the road at red lights just to use the pedestrian cross walk out of turn and skip the wait. There is literally no reason to do this other than having a death wish.
Perhaps it is safer cycling across a crosswalk while the only other traffic is pedestrians, instead of going with the flow of cars when cars turning left or right can run you over.
Perhaps you can run over pedestrians if you do so? FFS, just stop making the ashole moves you accuse car drivers of, if you want to be taken seriously! Never went to ER with a kid almost by killed by a 100kg male with a racing bicycle, didn’t you?
Car drivers love to criticize cyclists, but they don’t realize they’re the real aggressors in traffic. They both do most of the bad behaviors, and have the greater damage potential
Also, their existence necessitates the use of traffic lights/roundabouts at every intersection. Bikes don’t need that kind of infrastructure.
Video from BicycleDutch. Mind you, the video is now 8 years old, and the the traffic just got more.
In high traffic bicycle lanes they do, Amsterdam has tons of bicycle vs pedestrian crossings with lights, no cars involved.
And if you film at rush hour in the Netherlands you will find them.
Ah yes because every driver obeys every law all the time. It’s only the cyclists that break laws! No driver would ever consider speeding, rolling through a stop sign, or being aggressive!
Won’t someone think of the poor drivers!!
Your point is well taken, but whataboutism aside, EVERYONE should be obeying ALL the traffic laws. I cycle on public roads myself and I do see other cyclists not stopping at red lights. A bicycle IS a vehicle - it doesn’t come with pedestrian rights.
Or we can just keep escalating finger pointing and law-breaking until the traffic laws are meaningless everyone is dead.
I cycle thousands of miles each year, and I haven’t seen a cyclist run a red in years. Depends on where we’re riding, I guess.
So, why are you asking me to deescalate? Have you asked everyone else in this post and the author of the comic itself? Why pick me?
So, why are you asking me to deescalate? Have you asked everyone else in this post and the author of the comic itself? Why pick me?
can’t speak for the other commenter, but i will assume it was because of the whataboutism.
no one disputes that car drivers break a rules, but most of them at least know they are breaking the rules. cyclists really confidently act like the rules don’t exist (even that may depend on where you are).
few years back, some non-profit group advocating for bicycles in my city made a presentation for a media, where they showed a video how much faster a cyclist is going through some specific route during the working-day traffic jam than the car.
and then you saw the cyclist ignoring lights, driving on a sidewalk where he had no business to be and so on. he broke like a billion traffic rules during his 15 minute trip and they really acted like they didn’t even know that some rules applied to him.
Dude, come ride in my car sometime. Practically every driver out there thinks the rules don’t apply to them, either. I’d record them on a dash cam, but I don’t want to spend my life editing videos for YouTube. It’s a fucking jungle out there. As a practical matter, what’s the difference between not knowing the law (an assertion I reject) and ignoring it?
But car brains only get mad at cyclists for it. A car running a stop sign or rolling right on red is treated as business as usual. I see cops doing it.
I had to laugh at the links to deaths caused by cyclists. Two, world wide. Death from drivers doing stupid shit are so common, they don’t even bother writing articles about it. It’s not newsworthy. Cars do a lot more damage when they hit something.
And I say this as a cyclist that does follow the laws, aside from occasionally rolling a stop sign, when it’s safe (Idaho stop, but it’s not legal in my state).
As a practical matter, what’s the difference between not knowing the law (an assertion I reject) and ignoring it?
as a practical matter, there is no difference. but if one side is acting like a hypocrite pretending it is only the other party breaking the rules, it is worth pointing out.
But car brains only get mad at cyclists for it.
i am pretty sure people complain about other drivers all the time.
Death from drivers doing stupid shit are so common, they don’t even bother writing articles about it. It’s not newsworthy. Cars do a lot more damage when they hit something.
yes, this is true. but should that mean that cyclists should ignore the traffic rules, or what is the point?
but if one side is acting like a hypocrite pretending it is only the other party breaking the rules, it is worth pointing out.
On that I agree. Drivers regularly complain about cyclists as though they aren’t doing similar shit. Where are the comics about that?
But car brains only get mad at cyclists for it.
i am pretty sure people complain about other drivers all the time.
Show me the comics. Show me the online vitriol. Show me the death threats drivers get online every time a video is posted.
yes, this is true. but should that mean that cyclists should ignore the traffic rules, or what is the point?
The point is that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
They only get mad at cyclists because it’s an “other” group they can see.
sometimes one facepalm is just not enough.
But car brains only get mad at cyclists for it.
I’m going to assume that you’re so blinded by your prejudice against “carbrains” that you haven’t seen all the posts bemoaning speeding, passing in the wrong lane, riding people’s bumpers, “when a car swerves around you at mach 3 just to get stuck at the same light” to paraphrase a meme I saw on lemmy like last week, etc, and it’s everywhere not just lemmy.
You are probably just such a bikebrained chaincel that you haven’t noticed it, but it’s there.
Anyone who runs a red light is a stupid cunt.
Anecdotally, in my lived experience, there are more stupid cunts on bicycles than in cars.
That is all.
When a cyclist runs over a driver I’ll give a shit about bicycles running stop signs.
I don’t understand. You’re saying bikes should be allowed to run the red lights because when cars inevitable t-bone them they’ll die?
That seems pretty sick.
Also ignoring that while the impact of a car versus cyclist or heavily in favor of the car, a cyclist can still cause major harm to another person, pet or even another cyclist
Per capita? Really? Where do you live?
Whatabout, whatabout, whatabout.
The point is that while cyclists often get pissed off about the lack of safe driving by cars, there are many that similarly seem to ignore the rules of the road as applied to them. That may result in a collision with a vehicle whose driver is driving with proper care - with the cyclist tending to be on the losing end -but also other cyclists, pedestrians, etc.
Getting creamed by a cyclist (or scooter, or skateboarder) going at speed down the sidewalk - or one blowing through an intersection against the lights - is not going to be a minor injury, and I’ve narrowly avoided having myself, my kids, and once my dog get taken out in this manner.
Lately it’s been the battery-powered speakers scooters that are the worst culprits, but the cyclists who often bitch the most about cars are often the ones who seem to ride the least safely around here.
So yeah, not every driver obeys every lease every time, but similarly ignoring laws and being an assist is a good way to increase your own odds of having a bad encounter with one of those drivers, or one of the many others who share the streets and sidewalks.
