Touchè. 
My point was more to the effect that as more and more people ride bycicles, new rules are needed, not just stopping the enforcement of ones you don’t like.
I’ve been a cyclist all of my life, didn’t get a driver’s license until I was 30 out of actual necessity, and still use it as rarely as possible. I pro-cyclist all the way, and my initial knee-jerk bias when it comes to traffic issues is that people operating cars are awful and people riding bikes are not.
And I still think it’s completely fucking stupid and dangerous not to stop at a stop sign. Unless it’s a 4-way stop, you’re asking to get t-boned by any car crossing the intersection the other way, and even if it is a 4-way stop, you’re a hazard to any pedestrians crossing at that intersection.
If the road layout there can’t handle the types and loads of traffic there, the answer isn’t “change the laws to make them preposterously unsafe by letting certain vehicles zip through intersections willy nilly.” It’s to improve the transport infrastructure to accomodate the load and type of passengers - with additional lanes, bike paths, etc.
7 Likes
I feel strongly that both sides need to change.
Many bicyclists need to learn what it means to yield. It means coming to a complete stop if any other vehicle has come to the intersection beforehand. I am one of the bicyclists who used to just slow down when other vehicles had the right of way, until I learned how much this was unnecessarily inflaming drivers, and more importantly was making it take longer for everyone to get going again as the drivers wouldn’t start moving until they were sure I wouldn’t dart through the intersection, which was often never. Now I put my foot down on the ground for show, to make the car drivers feel safe doing what they should be doing anyway: proceeding through the intersection that they have right of way to.
Car drivers need to realize that it’s to their advantage for bicyclists who get to the intersection before anyone to clear it without stopping. That increases traffic flow in all directions. Because bicyclists are much less likely to damage a driver than a driver is to damage a bicyclist, this asymmetry makes sense. Car drivers need to realize that because bicyclists travel at a different speed (10-15mph, about midway between pedestrian and car), they need different rules and especially different travel lanes. If cyclists annoy you, advocate for bike lanes.
2 Likes
I’m all for doing whatever needs to be done to encourage as many people as possible to bike.
Setup bike lanes, change traffic laws for bikers, allow them on sidewalks in residential neighborhoods, add extra bike racks to buses and businesses.
1 Like
Yes, in theory, you could get hurt by a cyclist, but mostly likely you might get scuffed up a bit. A car that hits you at normal speed can easily maim or kill you, and car collisions are much more likely (because they’re much bigger and have much worse visibility for the operator). The data about pedestrian deaths is all there to back this up.
SF does have bike lanes, and they are used (sometimes packed with bikes during rush hour), but they are not nearly extensive enough to get everywhere.
The whole point of this protest is that the rules don’t make sense.
1 Like
[quote=“wysinwyg, post:9, topic:63016”]
Bikes aren’t that fast, compared to cars. Especially when accelerating from a full stop – at a stop sign, for example. [/quote]
Huh? Its pretty easy to beat a car off the line on a bike if you downshift properly and jam the pedals; for one thing, a bike ‘engine’ has max torque from 0 rpm, unlike most cars. Not everybody makes the effort to ride a bike that way, but that really is the one time when a bike CAN be quicker than a car.
1 Like
Actually, it’s frustrating as hell to be stuck behind a bicycle while in a car, then get past them, then watch them pass you within a block or two, then get past them for a bit, then watch them catch up and surpass you again…etc. etc. for miles in a major city!
They’ve already shown that traffic is actually slower in London now than when there were horses & carriages. Driving a car through a city isn’t anywhere near as fast as you think. Bicyclists aren’t going slower than cars in total, they’re just going at a different rate of speed during the same amount of distance.
4 Likes
Isn’t that really a sign that you’d be better off riding a bike, too? 
3 Likes
In Chicago, in the middle of winter, when I’d be leaving behind orphans?
Have you seen how Chicago drivers drive?? 
3 Likes
I’ll add that I avoid driving as much as possible, walking or taking public transportation a good portion of the time. But living on the south side of Chicago (about 1/8 the public transportation options) plus having children means having access to a car makes a huge lifestyle difference.
I don’t ride to work, either, although I should. Several excuses, one about working at different sites, one about how dangerous the roads to the other site is, but I know they are just excuses. I’m lazy, really.
It is true that cyclists die fairly regularly near my main place of work, though.
1 Like
My personal philosophy (speaking as an infrequent cyclist) about this is that I have no problem with bikes rolling through- it takes a lot more effort to get going again, and for this reason I do it when I’m biking. But that’s only if there aren’t a bunch of other cars there, and not going through the intersection out of turn, I’ll try and time it so I roll through when it would be my turn. I feel the same way about cars; I often wish that if there are only two cars coming to a 4-way stop, if it’s obvious who is getting there first, it’s annoying that everyone still has to do the little dance and waste gas and brake pads and gear shifting, as well as adding pollution. The person who is arriving first should just go through, and the second person should just slow down and go through without stopping after. Then again I’m speaking about going through residential areas with low traffic.
I only resent when a cyclist blow through at full speed out of turn without noting whether there might be a car about to go, taking advantage of the fact that most of us really don’t desire to kill anyone.
1 Like
If you’re going across the path (ex: turn left) of a bicycle (or any object) you yield until the other party makes their intent clear (stop / no stop).
1 Like
I agree with reasonable rules that are enforced, and I saw others here talking about rolling stops, and maybe that makes sense for cyclists - they are actually different than cars. I think this protest is great, because it shows that the rules themselves are creating the problem.
But the animosity is in large part motivated by the fact that some huge fraction of cyclists are crazy idiots. As others have said, stop signs are totally ignored. I’ve been rammed by a bike at a crosswalk, and let me tell you, crosswalks don’t have anything to do with cyclists vs. motorists, they are there for pedestrians.
As someone who hasn’t ridden a bike since I was about 8 and who has never driven any kind of motorized vehicle, I feel like I’m in a unique position to say that while motorists may be act like assholes most of the time, you can very reliably count on them to behave in certain predictable patterns. With cyclists, on the other hand, it’s totally 50/50 that they’ll barrel through red lights while pedestrians are crossing without giving a fuck. You’ve got to them give an insanely wild berth because if they are heading straight for you they may not even slow down. I feel like I ought to be giving moral support for cyclists, but they make me crazy walking around my city.
5 Likes
It’s self selecting. People are crazy to ride with how little infrastructure we have in place to support bicycling.
4 Likes
Roads and their traffic control systems are designed for cars, not bicycles. If the same effort made to teach drivers of cars (licensing, tests, serious enforcement, meaningful laws…) was put into the bicycle transportation system, then bike riders would have a uniform set of responses to the various traffic situations.
1 Like
If I am at a four-way stop and there’s a car approaching on my left or right, I just go. I don’t wait to see if the car is going to obey traffic laws or not, the assumption is that the car will obey the laws.
If the car in question is a bike, I should yield and wait to see if the approaching biker will stop per the law or jam the intersection, because I do not know what the bicyclist is going to do?
That’s precisely the problem under discussion. If I knew and were expecting bicyclists to be exempt from stop signs, I’d know what to do. If I knew they were all stopping at stop signs, I’d know what to do.
The vast majority of our ability to navigate around in these speeding heavy machines is due to our shared understanding of behaviors. When people behave in expected ways, we’re better able to account for them.
For example, if I am approaching a four-way stop at a similar time as another car, even if I theoretically have right-of-way for some reason, if that car is non-VW german (bmw, audi, mercedes), I know that the person driving the car is probably a jerk and will roll the stop. Source: plenty of experience. I did once see a mercedes driver yield right of way, but that was only because the other driver was also in a mercedes, so it was kind of bound to happen.
1 Like
Nothing to do with the discussion, but I really wish I had saved my glitch avatar.
Certainly sounds like someone at that intersection is likely to be a jerk.
Stereotype much?
The probability that you drive like a jerk, given the observation that you drive a non-VW german-made car, is about 0.8495. This is cold, hard observational evidence. The probability that you drive a jerk, given that you don’t drive one of those cars, is much closer to 0.08. I’m not even excluding other traditional luxury brands from that demograhpic, I’d be surprised if Cadillac drivers didn’t also skew that mean.
If you happen to drive an Audi, you’re probably someone who will fast-roll a stop sign, not yield right of way, or like what just happened yesterday to me - roll halfway out into the intersection, stop, and wave a middle finger at me while I drive the perpendicular route, a route that had no stop sign. Yes, an audi-driver gave me the finger because I did not yield to him at an intersection where I had no stop sign. Because, you know: audi driver, more important gotta drive.
I’m sure that you’re all #notallaudidrivers, but let’s just get down to it: audi drivers tend to be jerkfaces. And scumbums. And probably coke-fiends.
