Obeying traffic signs?
brod...@mindspring.com
signals, specifically stop lights and stop signs. It really
aggrevates me to be riding along, either in my car or while cycling,
to see a fellow cyclist blow through a light or stop sign with no
intention of stopping let alone slowing. It's no wonder that drivers
get fired up at cyclists and fail to cut us some slack while on the
road.
CRKJLaw
week, I had a motorist blow a red light. Missed me by 15 feet. Unfortunately,
he didn't miss the woman in the car behind me.
I stopped and administered first aid while waiting for the police and EMS.
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
Pogo
Chris Law
Bear, DE
Cory F
is probably
the less annoying of the two.
Do what you do and be happy, let me do the same.
He who conquers the mind, conquers the world.
<brod...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:397b4c84...@news.mindspring.com...
Tyrone Deane
That being said, I can't say I follow the rules all the time. If the
coast is clear, I usually don't come to a full stop at stop signs. Same
goes for red lights. That's similar to quite a few cars I see on the
road as well (the stop sign behavior anyway).
I actually got pulled over once by the cops and was given a $50 ticket
for blowing through a red light. That was quite a while ago, and I
haven't had any trouble since....
TECD
JJ
bitch about the repercussions. That being said, I find it difficult to stop
for every stop sign when I can sit at any major intersection in the Portland
area watch several cars, including police cars, run red lights all day long.
<brod...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:397b4c84...@news.mindspring.com...
David Cásseres
wrote:
>I would like to know how other riders feel about obeying traffic
>signals, specifically stop lights and stop signs. It really
>aggrevates me to be riding along, either in my car or while cycling,
>to see a fellow cyclist blow through a light or stop sign with no
>intention of stopping let alone slowing. It's no wonder that drivers
>get fired up at cyclists and fail to cut us some slack while on the
>road.
As for me, I get aggravated when I'm riding along, either in my car or
while cycling, and see a fellow motorist blow through a light or stop sign
with no intention of stopping let alone slowing. It's no wonder that
cyclists get fired up at drivers and don't much care how the drivers feel.
--
David Cásseres
Exclaimer: Hey!
Mike Dahmus
It's too bad that the only way that you can say this happens is to say "blow
through a light" when you actually mean "go through a red light which changed
from yellow within a few seconds after the change", because the generalized
activity, preferred by a small but easily observable minority of cyclists,
practically never happens with motorists.
---
Mike Dahmus mdahmus at I O DOT COM
http://www.dahmus.org/mike/
"No one likes a pedantic smartarse..."
David Cásseres
<mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> tricked a retarded drug addict into
writing:
Lord, lord, here we go again.
There is in fact no legal difference whatsoever, no demonstrable safety
difference, and no meaningful difference in terms of courtesy.
Mike Dahmus
Arguable, bullshit, and bullshit.
Brian D. Potter
hate to see cyclists pull weird, obtuse traffic-defying stunts (I especially hate
that cyclist to be me); but you've said some strange things along the way toward
defending vehicular style cycling: first, Casseres characterization of "blowing
through a light" is the indisputable perception of the person who has just started
rolling on green. Why dispute this? Elsewhere, you write: "Running a red light
by two seconds is clearly 'less' lawbreaking than running it by twenty." No, it
isn't. Same level of law-breaking. Same-level of unsafeness. If I'm driving or
riding at space-normal speed through an intersection where the light has turned
green, I don't care if the reckless idiot who just struck me in the side ran the
red after 2 seconds or 20 seconds. And I speak from ample, unfortunate experience,
here. The only time I've found it unsafe to come to a full stop as the light is
changing is the rare occasion when a full stop will put me smack dab in the middle
of an intersection. If you enter the intersection on yellow and leave it on red,
you haven't run the light at all, let alone by 2 seconds, which is an eternity,
during which cross traffic that WASN'T stopped, but moving toward the intersection
at full-bore, has plenty of time to find a collision path with the 2-second
offender.
Should cyclists obey the traffic laws? Yes. Should they never run a red light?
No, if the light won't sense you, then come to a complete halt, check yourself as
at a four-way stop, yield to any and all on-coming traffic, then go. In Tulsa, the
local PD formally okayed this behavior in light of primitive signal devices. The
concept of YIELDING to cross-traffic has decidedly more value than the concept of
stopping.
As for how cyclists see motorist and motorists see cyclists? Motorists tend to
make gross over-generalizations about all cyclists based on a relatively small
sampling. And cyclists use their fear as an excuse to act squirrelly. Of course,
there are honest mistakes of "Oh, Mildred, that was a stop sign!" "Was it,
Bettie? I thought you were driving." And of course, "Jeez, Louise, when did that
tree grow a red octagon?"
JJ
"Mike Dahmus" <mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> wrote in message
news:0np8ORNWRy0xgd...@4ax.com...
That, I am sorry to say, is absolute bullshit. While the type of red light
violation you cite (which is legally the same as the second) happen more
frequently, the "generalized activity" is easily observable in every US city
I have visited.
Joshua_Putnam
seeing motorists run lights and signs, and motorists do it
far more often.
Would obeying the law to the letter earn cyclists any
better treatment from the majority of motorists? I doubt
it -- most motorists treat cyclists fairly well anyway, and
the minority who cause the most altercations will hang
their rationalizations on any hook they can, or invent one
if they can't.
At least cyclists who run lights mostly risk their own
lives, while motorists who run lights kill hundreds of
innocents every year in the U.S.
--
Jo...@WolfeNet.com is Joshua Putnam / P.O. Box 13220 / Burton, WA 98013
"My other bike is a car."
http://www.wolfenet.com/~josh/
T H
A chronic topic here in r.b.s. Most respondants agree with everything
you've written, though a sizable minority think either that lawlessness is
equally frequent among the motorists or that even if it's true that cyclists
are worse in their behavior it's wrong to focus attention on that fact.
Such a focus distracts from the fact that the prejudice of motorists is the
source of nearly all cyclist-motorist friction, and the cause of a large
amount of danger for us riders.
Pick a side!
You might want next to post your thoughts on why either (1) so many riders
are obsessive about helmets which seem only marginally helpful, if at all,
to you, or (2) why so many riders are dumb enough to ride anywhere without a
helmet. Just another topic to find out what's on people's minds.
<brod...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:397b4c84...@news.mindspring.com...
RJD9999
<< I would like to know how other riders feel about obeying traffic signals,
specifically stop lights and stop signs. It really aggrevates me to be riding
along, either in my car or while cycling, to see a fellow cyclist blow through
a light or stop sign with no intention of stopping let alone slowing. It's no
wonder that drivers get fired up at cyclists and fail to cut us some slack
while on the road. >>
Personally, I fail to see the benefit from ignoring traffic laws and do see a
huge downside. This comes up often and the reality is that you can only control
your own behavior and chose your own battles. No comments of mine will change
the behavior of a wayward cyclist (or driver, for that matter) and it is
virtually impossible to have a discussion on the subject without a
confrontation.
I also don't believe that cyclists, as a group (gross generalization here) are
any worse about obeying the law than motorists, at least San Jose. Cyclists do
seem to be more aware of the road situation than most drivers due to the
improved visibility a bike offers and some apparantly make the error in
believing that if crossing an intersection can be done safely, the rules don't
apply to them.
Rick
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>Mike, I reviewed a couple of your posts. First, I agree with your basic stance: I
>hate to see cyclists pull weird, obtuse traffic-defying stunts (I especially hate
>that cyclist to be me); but you've said some strange things along the way toward
>defending vehicular style cycling: first, Casseres characterization of "blowing
>through a light" is the indisputable perception of the person who has just started
>rolling on green. Why dispute this? Elsewhere, you write: "Running a red light
>by two seconds is clearly 'less' lawbreaking than running it by twenty." No, it
>isn't. Same level of law-breaking. Same-level of unsafeness.
Is it the same level of unsafeness to go 60 in a 55 as it is to go 100?
Drivers and cyclists starting from a dead stop at a green in today's world
typically look for cross-traffic. Thus while abominable, running a light a
second or two after it has turned red is safer (and IMO 'less lawbreaking')
than running it in the middle of the red cycle.
Both cyclists and motorists run at the very beginning of a red cycle in
virtually equal proportions in my observation. However, the number of times I
have seen a car driver ignore a red light (or even come to a full stop and
then treat it as a stop sign) is about a hundred times less frequent than the
same observation for cyclists.
The main thing you have to ask yourself if you want to defend the cyclists'
behavior on the grounds that they're not hurting anybody is why motorists
shouldn't be given the same right to turn red lights into stop signs at will,
and whether or not you'd feel comfortable with the results when the entire
population starts exercising that right.
JJ
> Is it the same level of unsafeness to go 60 in a 55 as it is to go 100?
>
> Drivers and cyclists starting from a dead stop at a green in today's world
> typically look for cross-traffic. Thus while abominable, running a light a
> second or two after it has turned red is safer (and IMO 'less
lawbreaking')
> than running it in the middle of the red cycle.
The law makes no provision for "how red" the light is. It is, or it isn't.
>
> Both cyclists and motorists run at the very beginning of a red cycle in
> virtually equal proportions in my observation. However, the number of
times I
> have seen a car driver ignore a red light (or even come to a full stop and
> then treat it as a stop sign) is about a hundred times less frequent than
the
> same observation for cyclists.
Where do you live?! Sounds like a cyclists paradise
>
> The main thing you have to ask yourself if you want to defend the
cyclists'
> behavior on the grounds that they're not hurting anybody is why motorists
> shouldn't be given the same right to turn red lights into stop signs at
will,
> and whether or not you'd feel comfortable with the results when the entire
> population starts exercising that right.
Nobody (cyclists or drivers) as ANY right to break the law. Period.
David Cásseres
<mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> wrote:
>On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 13:46:46 -0700, cass...@pacbell.net (David Cásseres)
>hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>
>>In article <0np8ORNWRy0xgd...@4ax.com>, Mike Dahmus
>><mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> tricked a retarded drug addict into
>>writing:
>>
>>>On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 10:03:13 -0700, cass...@pacbell.net (David Cásseres)
>>>hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>>>
>>>>In article <397b4c84...@news.mindspring.com>, brod...@mindspring.com
>>>>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>I would like to know how other riders feel about obeying traffic
>>>>>signals, specifically stop lights and stop signs. It really
>>>>>aggrevates me to be riding along, either in my car or while cycling,
>>>>>to see a fellow cyclist blow through a light or stop sign with no
>>>>>intention of stopping let alone slowing. It's no wonder that drivers
>>>>>get fired up at cyclists and fail to cut us some slack while on the
>>>>>road.
>>>>
>>>>As for me, I get aggravated when I'm riding along, either in my car or
>>>>while cycling, and see a fellow motorist blow through a light or stop sign
>>>>with no intention of stopping let alone slowing. It's no wonder that
>>>>cyclists get fired up at drivers and don't much care how the drivers feel.
>>>
>>>It's too bad that the only way that you can say this happens is to say "blow
>>>through a light" when you actually mean "go through a red light which changed
>>>from yellow within a few seconds after the change", because the generalized
>>>activity, preferred by a small but easily observable minority of cyclists,
>>>practically never happens with motorists.
>>
>>Lord, lord, here we go again.
>>
>>There is in fact no legal difference whatsoever, no demonstrable safety
>>difference, and no meaningful difference in terms of courtesy.
>
>Arguable, bullshit, and bullshit.
Oh stuff it, Mike. I'll tell you the red-light running behavior that I
see cyclists doing: Come to a complete stop at a red light, then watch the
lights for the other direction to see when the light is about to change,
and ride through the intersection a moment BEFORE the light turns green.
I almost never see a cyclist running a red in any other way. Your
so-called "generalized activity" is what's bullshit.
So, is starting out just before the green more illegal than other ways of
running red lights? More dangerous or less? Less courteous or more?
Give us the detailed arguments, please!
nige
in the other way, and I run 'em when I definitely have the red
light and there are no other cars/motor vehicles coming the
other way.
Want to know why? Because I prefer starting out without having
Aunt Mildred or Uncle Ted take a right in front of me when I'm
going straight and just ignoring me -and where I live you can
take a right on red anyway. Do I think it matters? Do I think
other motorists would "respect" me more if I stopped doing it?
No, no, no, no and no. Heck, most motorists (myself included)
break the speed limit -so that to me is a ridiculous argument.
And oh yeah, when I see motorists obeying the speed limit,
sticking to road rules and generally being more observant, I'll
stop running reds.
Having said that, if a police officer stops me and gives me a
citation for running a red on my bicycle, I know I haven't got a
leg to stand on and I take the consequences -because I still
figure I'm better off for doing it and my safety (when I am
doing no harm to others) is worth more than a law. Of course,
under my breath I'll be thinking "yeah, like you don't speed,
you obey the road rules..." etc.
cheers
Nige
-----------------------------------------------------------
Got questions? Get answers over the phone at Keen.com.
Up to 100 minutes free!
http://www.keen.com
Mike Dahmus
infinite number of monkeys to write:
><<SNIP>>
>
>> Is it the same level of unsafeness to go 60 in a 55 as it is to go 100?
>>
>> Drivers and cyclists starting from a dead stop at a green in today's world
>> typically look for cross-traffic. Thus while abominable, running a light a
>> second or two after it has turned red is safer (and IMO 'less
>lawbreaking')
>> than running it in the middle of the red cycle.
>
>The law makes no provision for "how red" the light is. It is, or it isn't.
That might answer "lawbreaking", but it doesn't answer "safety". See above.
>> Both cyclists and motorists run at the very beginning of a red cycle in
>> virtually equal proportions in my observation. However, the number of
>times I
>> have seen a car driver ignore a red light (or even come to a full stop and
>> then treat it as a stop sign) is about a hundred times less frequent than
>the
>> same observation for cyclists.
>
>Where do you live?! Sounds like a cyclists paradise
Austin, and I find that peoples' views of this are largely shaped by whether
or not they drive often enough to get a good view of a lot of different
behaviors on different roadways. I'm about 50-50 in terms of trips.
>> The main thing you have to ask yourself if you want to defend the
>cyclists'
>> behavior on the grounds that they're not hurting anybody is why motorists
>> shouldn't be given the same right to turn red lights into stop signs at
>will,
>> and whether or not you'd feel comfortable with the results when the entire
>> population starts exercising that right.
>
>Nobody (cyclists or drivers) as ANY right to break the law. Period.
Yes. This is irrelevant to the topic of the thread, however.
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>In article <O698OZDdBsKA7e...@4ax.com>, Mike Dahmus
><mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 13:46:46 -0700, cass...@pacbell.net (David Cásseres)
>>hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>>
>>>In article <0np8ORNWRy0xgd...@4ax.com>, Mike Dahmus
>>><mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> tricked a retarded drug addict into
>>>writing:
>>>
>>>>On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 10:03:13 -0700, cass...@pacbell.net (David Cásseres)
>>>>hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>>>>
Your area is obviously very different than mine. I'd also like to say that
based on past experience with you, I'm fairly certain that a camera at a
variety of intersections would provide a different impression than what you
say, but that's just opinion.
The cyclist red-light-running activity which occurs here is best represented
by two examples which are fairly different in assumed intent:
1. As I'm coming home on Shoal Creek Blvd. on my bike, I often see cyclists
training (decked out in all their gear and not carrying anything which
would lead you to believe they were commuting) completely blowing 4-way
stop signs (not even slowing down if there's no cross traffic), and
treating stop lights as if they were 2-way-stops (come to a stop, then go
if there are no cars coming). My assumption is that these cyclists just
don't want to unclip and/or slow down.
2. Downtown and near the University of Texas, cyclists are unpredictable in
a number of ways - simply whizzing through intersections without regard to
signalization - just looking for cars. These folks don't even stop at the
red lights unless they think they have to. My assumption is that these
cyclists just fundamentally don't care about signalization at all.
For the record again, I commute to work on my bike about 3 times a week when
weather and schedule permit; and I drive the other days. My commute takes me
from near downtown to the middle suburbs; so I see a variety of different
types of cyclists from urban kids to racers to other commuters. Unless you're
going through downtown San Jose on your commute, I doubt that your experience
is similar.
Mike Dahmus
<nigel_pick...@go.com.invalid> hired an infinite number of monkeys to
write:
>Want to know why? Because I prefer starting out without having
>Aunt Mildred or Uncle Ted take a right in front of me when I'm
>going straight and just ignoring me -and where I live you can
>take a right on red anyway.
Proper lane positioning at stop signs and red lights can virtually eliminate
this problem without requiring you to break the law.
Brian D. Potter
Mike Dahmus wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 21:18:26 GMT, "Brian D. Potter" <brh...@iamerica.net>
> hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>
> >Mike, I reviewed a couple of your posts. First, I agree with your basic stance: I
> >hate to see cyclists pull weird, obtuse traffic-defying stunts (I especially hate
> >that cyclist to be me); but you've said some strange things along the way toward
> >defending vehicular style cycling: first, Casseres characterization of "blowing
> >through a light" is the indisputable perception of the person who has just started
> >rolling on green. Why dispute this? Elsewhere, you write: "Running a red light
> >by two seconds is clearly 'less' lawbreaking than running it by twenty." No, it
> >isn't. Same level of law-breaking. Same-level of unsafeness.
>
> Is it the same level of unsafeness to go 60 in a 55 as it is to go 100?
False analogy. I was pointing out a gaping hole in your reasoning: not everyone starts
from a dead stop when the light turns green. Some people are approaching the
intersection and entering it full speed just after the green. They may be going 55 or
100, but the result is that the 2-second red-light runner just met his hospital room
partner. So please relent on the "less-law breaking" rhetoric.
>
> Drivers and cyclists starting from a dead stop at a green in today's world
> typically look for cross-traffic. Thus while abominable, running a light a
> second or two after it has turned red is safer (and IMO 'less lawbreaking')
> than running it in the middle of the red cycle.
>
> Both cyclists and motorists run at the very beginning of a red cycle in
> virtually equal proportions in my observation. However, the number of times I
> have seen a car driver ignore a red light (or even come to a full stop and
> then treat it as a stop sign) is about a hundred times less frequent than the
> same observation for cyclists.
I don't dispute that many cyclists run these lights and with more consistency than
motorists. That's irrelevant to the original thread, but a valid observation. And I'm
sure the better part of them feel either the thrill of subversion or the defiance of the
vehicular underclass as they do it. I think the main reason you got teed off and
continued to beat this horse to death is that Casseres took the original post and
reworded it with cycl*** and motor*** reversed. His point seemed to be that we put all
the emphasis and blame on cyclists for making us look bad and breaking the law, when we
should probably be asking WHY they do it. (Cass: I'm reading in, here, but back me up
if I'm right).
> The main thing you have to ask yourself if you want to defend the cyclists'
> behavior on the grounds that they're not hurting anybody is why motorists
> shouldn't be given the same right to turn red lights into stop signs at will,
> and whether or not you'd feel comfortable with the results when the entire
> population starts exercising that right.
You've obviously been fighting a different battle with other players. I never set out
to defend cyclists' behavior when it involves out-and-out running a stop sign or
stoplight without a pretense of acknowledging its existence. Even if I were to run one,
purposefully or accidentally, I wouldn't have the nerve to defend the practice.
I would, however, feel perfectly comfortable in an imperfect world of lights that don't
change for cyclists in having the cyclists treat them as stop signs instead. You
haven't provided an alternative--do you believe I should dismount, push the pedestrian
Walk button, cross on the crosswalk and re-mount the bike at every intersection that
won't sense my presence? Thank goodness even the police in this town have better sense
than to require that.
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>
>
>Mike Dahmus wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 21:18:26 GMT, "Brian D. Potter" <brh...@iamerica.net>
>> hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>>
>> >Mike, I reviewed a couple of your posts. First, I agree with your basic stance: I
>> >hate to see cyclists pull weird, obtuse traffic-defying stunts (I especially hate
>> >that cyclist to be me); but you've said some strange things along the way toward
>> >defending vehicular style cycling: first, Casseres characterization of "blowing
>> >through a light" is the indisputable perception of the person who has just started
>> >rolling on green. Why dispute this? Elsewhere, you write: "Running a red light
>> >by two seconds is clearly 'less' lawbreaking than running it by twenty." No, it
>> >isn't. Same level of law-breaking. Same-level of unsafeness.
>>
>> Is it the same level of unsafeness to go 60 in a 55 as it is to go 100?
>
>False analogy. I was pointing out a gaping hole in your reasoning: not everyone starts
>from a dead stop when the light turns green. Some people are approaching the
>intersection and entering it full speed just after the green. They may be going 55 or
>100, but the result is that the 2-second red-light runner just met his hospital room
>partner. So please relent on the "less-law breaking" rhetoric.
The same story applies, though. Cross traffic is far more likely to be
watching for red light runners right after the light turns green. See next
paragraph.
>> Drivers and cyclists starting from a dead stop at a green in today's world
>> typically look for cross-traffic. Thus while abominable, running a light a
>> second or two after it has turned red is safer (and IMO 'less lawbreaking')
>> than running it in the middle of the red cycle.
[...]
>> The main thing you have to ask yourself if you want to defend the cyclists'
>> behavior on the grounds that they're not hurting anybody is why motorists
>> shouldn't be given the same right to turn red lights into stop signs at will,
>> and whether or not you'd feel comfortable with the results when the entire
>> population starts exercising that right.
>
>You've obviously been fighting a different battle with other players. I never set out
>to defend cyclists' behavior when it involves out-and-out running a stop sign or
>stoplight without a pretense of acknowledging its existence. Even if I were to run one,
>purposefully or accidentally, I wouldn't have the nerve to defend the practice.
>
>I would, however, feel perfectly comfortable in an imperfect world of lights that don't
>change for cyclists in having the cyclists treat them as stop signs instead. You
>haven't provided an alternative--do you believe I should dismount, push the pedestrian
>Walk button, cross on the crosswalk and re-mount the bike at every intersection that
>won't sense my presence? Thank goodness even the police in this town have better sense
>than to require that.
Red herring. I've never said that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists'
presence should require an indefinite wait. In fact, though, most of the
lights which I typically see run by cyclists here are ones which are timed,
not sensor-activated. (And a subset of sensor-activated lights in Austin also
have sensors for bikes which work about 95% of the time).
Brian D. Potter
> Brian D. Potter hired ten well-meaning circus clowns to write:
> >I would, however, feel perfectly comfortable in an imperfect world of lights that don't
> >change for cyclists in having the cyclists treat them as stop signs instead. You
> >haven't provided an alternative--do you believe I should dismount, push the pedestrian
> >Walk button, cross on the crosswalk and re-mount the bike at every intersection that
> >won't sense my presence? Thank goodness even the police in this town have better sense
> >than to require that.
>
> Red herring. I've never said that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists'
> presence should require an indefinite wait. In fact, though, most of the
> lights which I typically see run by cyclists here are ones which are timed,
> not sensor-activated. (And a subset of sensor-activated lights in Austin also
> have sensors for bikes which work about 95% of the time).
A red herring is a side issue of little or no relevance but of equal or greater "controversy"
meant to distract an opponent and deter him from pursuing a line of reasoning which will lead
to gains on his part or concessions on yours.
Let's take a look at your actual position to see if my statement was a "red herring":
> Once again, I am distinguishing between
>
> "light turns yellow or red as motorist/cyclist is approaching intersection;
> they end up going through by a couple of seconds after the light turned red
> even though they could have safely stopped"
>
> and
>
> "light has been red for quite a while; motorist/cyclist gets to light; stops
> (maybe); looks (maybe); and then goes across while light is still red".
>
All I can figure out is that you've been having this argument and making this distinction for
a while and you feel the need to repeat it now in slightly different form. So, you have
lumped all behaviors into two convenient but misleading categories, ignoring several
important facts along the way: 1) cyclists who treat non-responsive signalled intersections
as four-way stops and their evil cousins, cyclists who "blow through intersections" "20
seconds" after the light has turned red, VERSUS, 2) cyclists that try to beat the light and
end up running it "barely," along with their super-macho Mario Andretti combustion engine
counterparts (any embellishments are purely to enliven an otherwise drearily tedious topic).
So far as I can figure, you feel that case 2 represents a much less dangerous scenario, much
more acceptable, much less "unlawful," and, if I don't miss my mark, an accurate
representation of your regular driving and cycling behavior. ( I feel that I have dispatched
the misconception that this is somehow OK with sufficient alacrity in a previous post.) Case
1, however, becomes the catch-all demon-dog scape-goat for everything evil, something
motorists never do, except once in a blue moon, while cyclists do it all the time.
I did not throw out a red-herring for the demon-dog to follow here; I simply made the
appropriate distinction between the unyielding cyclist, regardless of when he "blows through
the light" and the yielding cyclist, both of whose behaviors you have disparaged
indiscriminately in previous posts, though I'm willing to accept as your final stance the
statement above about not condoning the infinite intersection wait in cyclist purgatory from
which only an automobile can rescue us.
Now here's a red herring:
*****I'm a little dismayed that you believe the car-free cyclist is an irrational animal. Is
he incapable of understanding traffic and more likely to disobey its laws? Does he resent
discourteous motorist behavior without reason, being more exposed to the fatal consequences
of the 2-second red-runner? My experience as a vehicular cyclist speaks volumes in the
opposite direction. Vehicular cyclists have altogether more traffic savvy than motorists (on
average). How many motorists have you seen suddenly lose cognitive ability when approaching
a cyclist? The sudden outward or (heaven forfend ) inward swerve, even on a four-lane
street? Honking? Projectile launching? Invective hurling? Trying to pass at a four-way
stop on two-lane roads? This thread would've ended too soon if someone had reasonably stated
that responsible driving and riding makes everyone happier and safer, but instead we're into
a contest. So here's the parting shot: cyclists are not typically encouraged to behave like
traffic and the majority who don't aren't car-free or vehicular cyclists--they're usually
kids, whether 10 or 40, who view the bike as a toy. They should be educated, encouraged,
exhorted and ticketed. But until traffic lights accommodate cyclists appropriately, don't
expect this to change much.
As a Coda, I lived in Austin for four years--some of the worst drivers on the planet and some
of the worst cyclists, too. I loved the place, but it's a little over-billed as a cycling
mecca. The bike facilities for cyclists were cruel and tortuous "bike lanes" of dubious
merit. The light-timing for autos seemed always to be a bit screwy--and I saw people running
everything while I was down there. The traffic was hideous. Street design was straight out
of 19th century Texas cow-town. But I would love to borrow its cycle-sensitive lights. Oh,
and the hills. Oh yeah, and the trees and wildflowers.
*****
Do you see the difference between a legitimate argument and a red herring? Are we having fun
yet?
Frank Krygowki
> >Oh stuff it, Mike. I'll tell you the red-light running behavior that I
> >see cyclists doing: Come to a complete stop at a red light, then watch the
> >lights for the other direction to see when the light is about to change,
> >and ride through the intersection a moment BEFORE the light turns green.
> >I almost never see a cyclist running a red in any other way. Your
> >so-called "generalized activity" is what's bullshit.
>
> Your area is obviously very different than mine.
Dave's area is obviously different from mine, too. It's hard to
generalize, because there aren't really a lot of cyclists in my area.
But I've been on club rides and seen riders run traffic lights in the
middle of their red cycles, passing cars on the right to do it, because
a) they would have to slow down going down a hill; b) they would have
to slow down going up a hill; c) part of the group made it through, and
they were behind and didn't want to get lost.
I remember a loaded touring cyclist zig-zag through three ways of a
5-way downtown intersection to avoid having to put his foot down.
I've seen a wrong-way-riding teenager cut diagonally across the
geometric center of the intersection of two five-lane roads, directly in
front of a police car waiting at the head of a left turn lane.
I've seen parents lead kids through red lights, riding on the wrong side
of the road.
Of course, I see motorists doing dumb things, but I don't see much that
compares with the above. Most of them at least know what side of the
road they're supposed to drive on!
But we've been through all this before. One side claims it doesn't
matter (I guess). The other side claims it does. The "does too / does
not" discussion won't satisfy either side. And from my experience, even
if someone collected lots of impartial data on the subject, it still
wouldn't satisfy a certain contingent. The subject would pop up again
pretty soon.
Ain't Usenet fun? ;-)
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
Pete
nige <nigel_pick...@go.com.invalid> wrote
[snip]
> And oh yeah, when I see motorists obeying the speed limit,
> sticking to road rules and generally being more observant, I'll
> stop running reds.
[snip]
So because they act like fools, its ok for you to act like a fool.
Riiight.
Pete
it actually works the other way around.
nigel_...@my-deja.com
being overtaken on the inside, I don't know what would prevent a car
taking a right in front of you at a junction.
cheers
Nige
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
nigel_...@my-deja.com
say, I would have absolutely no need to run reds then!
If I'm a fool for doing what I do, then at least I'm a live fool ;^)
cheers
nige
In article <2ctf5.25878$661.4...@news1.rdc1.va.home.com>,
Mike Dahmus
number of monkeys to write:
>IMHO, with the exception of being so far out as to be at danger from
>being overtaken on the inside, I don't know what would prevent a car
>taking a right in front of you at a junction.
I get all the way to the left edge of the lane, making it clear that I intend
on going straight. Then, if there's space, I move forward a little bit and
allow the car to turn right on my right.
I've _never_ been passed on the left by a right-turning motorist when
practicing this manuever.
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>Mike Dahmus wrote:
>
>> Brian D. Potter hired ten well-meaning circus clowns to write:
>
>> >I would, however, feel perfectly comfortable in an imperfect world of lights that don't
>> >change for cyclists in having the cyclists treat them as stop signs instead. You
>> >haven't provided an alternative--do you believe I should dismount, push the pedestrian
>> >Walk button, cross on the crosswalk and re-mount the bike at every intersection that
>> >won't sense my presence? Thank goodness even the police in this town have better sense
>> >than to require that.
>>
>> Red herring. I've never said that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists'
>> presence should require an indefinite wait. In fact, though, most of the
>> lights which I typically see run by cyclists here are ones which are timed,
>> not sensor-activated. (And a subset of sensor-activated lights in Austin also
>> have sensors for bikes which work about 95% of the time).
>
>A red herring is a side issue of little or no relevance but of equal or greater "controversy"
>meant to distract an opponent and deter him from pursuing a line of reasoning which will lead
>to gains on his part or concessions on yours.
>
>Let's take a look at your actual position to see if my statement was a "red herring":
I think my paragraph explained why it was a "red herring". Everybody with half
a brain believes that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists require special
manuevering, sometimes even involving running the light. It's ridiculous to
bring it up as if I claimed otherwise.
>> Once again, I am distinguishing between
>>
>> "light turns yellow or red as motorist/cyclist is approaching intersection;
>> they end up going through by a couple of seconds after the light turned red
>> even though they could have safely stopped"
>>
>> and
>>
>> "light has been red for quite a while; motorist/cyclist gets to light; stops
>> (maybe); looks (maybe); and then goes across while light is still red".
>
>All I can figure out is that you've been having this argument and making this distinction for
>a while and you feel the need to repeat it now in slightly different form. So, you have
>lumped all behaviors into two convenient but misleading categories, ignoring several
>important facts along the way:
The problem is that, like most cyclists here with little driving experience,
you seem to have mistaken what I mean by these two categories.
> 1) cyclists who treat non-responsive signalled intersections
>as four-way stops and their evil cousins, cyclists who "blow through intersections" "20
>seconds" after the light has turned red,
First of all, I was distinguishing based on motorist behavior, not cyclist
behavior; and second of all, I was assuming that the intersections were either
timed or responsive. As should have been obvious by my aside above.
>VERSUS, 2) cyclists that try to beat the light and
>end up running it "barely," along with their super-macho Mario Andretti combustion engine
>counterparts (any embellishments are purely to enliven an otherwise drearily tedious topic).
>*****I'm a little dismayed that you believe the car-free cyclist is an irrational animal.
This whole discussion merely confirms my belief. Instead of learning from
somebody who experiences both cycle and auto commuting on a weekly basis, you
ignore reality and try to defend behavior which even the worst automobile
drivers won't defend.
>As a Coda, I lived in Austin for four years--some of the worst drivers on the planet and some
>of the worst cyclists, too. I loved the place, but it's a little over-billed as a cycling
>mecca.
About 80% of the people in the world believe that the drivers in their current
city are the worst in the planet.
Pete
<nigel_...@my-deja.com> wrote in message
news:8lmpdb$hjs$1...@nnrp1.deja.com...
> Nooooooo it's a case of self preservation. If motorists did do what I
> say, I would have absolutely no need to run reds then!
>
> If I'm a fool for doing what I do, then at least I'm a live fool ;^)
>
> cheers
>
> nige
Nigel,
You seem to justify riding illegally, because "everybody else does it". A
few weeks ago, I saw a guy (motorist) blow through a red light, in the
middle of the cycle, at 50+. Missed the car in front of me by inches. Last
year, I saw a Ford Crown Vic total a Miata the same way. Cause those guys
blew through a red light, does that make it ok for me to do it?
Because I see a guy tearing through a residential neighborhood at 45 make it
ok for me to ride however the hell I please?
That's not the way it works, son. You are not the final arbiter of the
traffic laws. The law is. And you have to follow those laws. The fact that
other people don't is no excuse.
How does ignoring the traffic laws whenever you feel like it add to your
self preservation?
Pete
Pete
David Cásseres <cass...@pacbell.net> wrote
> So, is starting out just before the green more illegal than other ways of
> running red lights? More dangerous or less? Less courteous or more?
> Give us the detailed arguments, please!
Personally, I think its more dangerous. Obviously it should only be done in
the absence of cross traffic, but our local drivers manual says something to
the effect that you should really think about waiting a second or two AFTER
it changes to green, because of all the redlight jumpers following the
preceeding guy through.
Don't assume because you have the (almost) green that cross traffic is
actually stopping at their red.
Pete
nige
No, I'm not justifying doing it because everyone else does it -
never said that. What I said is that I do it for self
preservation. I think I covered in my email why I believe it is
safer for me at times to do this.
Concerning laws, I'd be more careful if you really think you
should always -and without exception -follow them. Don't know
about you, but personally I'd not keep on walking when I'm on a
crosswalk and a cars coming towards me looking like it's not
going to stop. I don't care at that moment whether the laws on
my side or not, it's just going to be stupid to continue
walking. Likewise I don't use crosswalks (even though I know
I would be within the law) that are positioned right on the apex
of junctions since they give you a real blind spot crossing.
Bit stupid if you ask me and you just go ahead and use them. I
of course know that you only enter a crosswalk when it's clear,
but cars pull out of junctions, speed etc... I could also go
on -I live in Massachusetts, and believe me, if you obeyed all
the traffic laws, you'd be an accident on your first day of
driving -guaranteed! I'm not going to get into an accident for
the sake of principle.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and mine is that
often I am alot better off breaking some laws than not. It's not
that I'm a deliberate scofflaw, I actually strongly agree with
laws and their very nature, but to me my personal safety is the
limit. For what it's worth, I never ran red lights when I lived
in another country -because driving there was alot different.
It may be you live in an area where more road rules are observed
or where traffic is more courteous and aware of you -this may
also explain our differences in our approaches to traffic
lights. Sometimes you have to adapt. I'm also prepared to take
the consequences if a police officer decides to stop me and
issue me a citation.
cheers and happy and safe riding!
Nige
-----------------------------------------------------------
Pete
nige <nigel_pick...@go.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:024e32ae...@usw-ex0101-008.remarq.com...
> Pete:
>
> No, I'm not justifying doing it because everyone else does it -
> never said that.
Well...yeah you did, but we'll leave it at that.
> What I said is that I do it for self
> preservation. I think I covered in my email why I believe it is
> safer for me at times to do this.
Proper lane position at the light can prevent Uncle Bob from right hooking
you. Move well over to the left, and he *cannot* do it. Or if he does try,
he'll have to make a right turn from the left lane. Not something people
will do as a matter of course. Move over more, and he can squeeze by on your
right.
Also, a bit of eye contact works wonders. Sitting at the stoplight first in
line. He comes up behind you....turn your head and stare him in the eye. He
has now realized that there is an actual person on that bike..one who will
act according to the rules. When the light changes..off you go, moving over
to your right as you pass through the intersection. And he goes around you
when he can. Or makes his right turn behind you.
Running through the red as you please because you don't want to get
righthooked is the wrong solution to a preventable problem. And one that may
get you squished one of these days.
> Concerning laws, I'd be more careful if you really think you
> should always -and without exception -follow them. Don't know
> about you, but personally I'd not keep on walking when I'm on a
> crosswalk and a cars coming towards me looking like it's not
> going to stop. I don't care at that moment whether the laws on
> my side or not, it's just going to be stupid to continue
> walking.
Exactly. Pushing the point of "my right of way" in the face of getting
squished is a no win situation. But that's a different situation. Going
through a red light is unpredictable. Unpredictability gets people squished,
because you are in a place where others expect to see nothing.
> Likewise I don't use crosswalks (even though I know
> I would be within the law) that are positioned right on the apex
> of junctions since they give you a real blind spot crossing.
> Bit stupid if you ask me and you just go ahead and use them. I
> of course know that you only enter a crosswalk when it's clear,
> but cars pull out of junctions, speed etc... I could also go
> on -I live in Massachusetts, and believe me, if you obeyed all
> the traffic laws, you'd be an accident on your first day of
> driving -guaranteed! I'm not going to get into an accident for
> the sake of principle.
Everybody's local drivers are worse than anyone else's. Personally, I
haven't found that to be true.
Everywhere has fools...
> Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, and mine is that
> often I am alot better off breaking some laws than not. It's not
> that I'm a deliberate scofflaw, I actually strongly agree with
> laws and their very nature, but to me my personal safety is the
> limit. For what it's worth, I never ran red lights when I lived
> in another country -because driving there was alot different.
> It may be you live in an area where more road rules are observed
> or where traffic is more courteous and aware of you -this may
> also explain our differences in our approaches to traffic
> lights.
Nope. People here routinely use the first few seconds of red as a signal to
speed up and go on through. Our drivers manual makes reference to that. 45
mph really means 60. And on and on. Add to that very few cyclists...
> Sometimes you have to adapt. I'm also prepared to take
> the consequences if a police officer decides to stop me and
> issue me a citation.
But are you prepared to get squished by a motorist operating *legally* and
going through his green light? I'm not.
> cheers and happy and safe riding!
Same to you...:)
Pete
Brian D. Potter
Mike Dahmus wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 23:32:41 GMT, "Brian D. Potter" <brh...@iamerica.net>
> hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>
> >Mike Dahmus wrote:
> >
> >> Brian D. Potter hired ten well-meaning circus clowns to write:
> >
> >> >I would, however, feel perfectly comfortable in an imperfect world of lights that don't
> >> >change for cyclists in having the cyclists treat them as stop signs instead. You
> >> >haven't provided an alternative--do you believe I should dismount, push the pedestrian
> >> >Walk button, cross on the crosswalk and re-mount the bike at every intersection that
> >> >won't sense my presence? Thank goodness even the police in this town have better sense
> >> >than to require that.
> >>
> >> Red herring. I've never said that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists'
> >> presence should require an indefinite wait. In fact, though, most of the
> >> lights which I typically see run by cyclists here are ones which are timed,
> >> not sensor-activated. (And a subset of sensor-activated lights in Austin also
> >> have sensors for bikes which work about 95% of the time).
> >
> >A red herring is a side issue of little or no relevance but of equal or greater "controversy"
> >meant to distract an opponent and deter him from pursuing a line of reasoning which will lead
> >to gains on his part or concessions on yours.
> >
> >Let's take a look at your actual position to see if my statement was a "red herring":
>
> I think my paragraph explained why it was a "red herring". Everybody with half
> a brain believes that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists require special
> manuevering, sometimes even involving running the light. It's ridiculous to
> bring it up as if I claimed otherwise.
>
> >> Once again, I am distinguishing between
> >>
> >> "light turns yellow or red as motorist/cyclist is approaching intersection;
> >> they end up going through by a couple of seconds after the light turned red
> >> even though they could have safely stopped"
> >>
> >> and
> >>
> >> "light has been red for quite a while; motorist/cyclist gets to light; stops
> >> (maybe); looks (maybe); and then goes across while light is still red".
> >
> >All I can figure out is that you've been having this argument and making this distinction for
> >a while and you feel the need to repeat it now in slightly different form. So, you have
> >lumped all behaviors into two convenient but misleading categories, ignoring several
> >important facts along the way:
>
> The problem is that, like most cyclists here with little driving experience,
> you seem to have mistaken what I mean by these two categories.
>
> > 1) cyclists who treat non-responsive signalled intersections
> >as four-way stops and their evil cousins, cyclists who "blow through intersections" "20
> >seconds" after the light has turned red,
>
> First of all, I was distinguishing based on motorist behavior, not cyclist
> behavior; and second of all, I was assuming that the intersections were either
> timed or responsive. As should have been obvious by my aside above.
>
> >VERSUS, 2) cyclists that try to beat the light and
> >end up running it "barely," along with their super-macho Mario Andretti combustion engine
> >counterparts (any embellishments are purely to enliven an otherwise drearily tedious topic).
>
> >*****I'm a little dismayed that you believe the car-free cyclist is an irrational animal.
>
> This whole discussion merely confirms my belief. Instead of learning from
> somebody who experiences both cycle and auto commuting on a weekly basis, you
> ignore reality and try to defend behavior which even the worst automobile
> drivers won't defend.
>
> >As a Coda, I lived in Austin for four years--some of the worst drivers on the planet and some
> >of the worst cyclists, too. I loved the place, but it's a little over-billed as a cycling
> >mecca.
>
nige
>Proper lane position at the light can prevent Uncle Bob from
right hooking
>you. Move well over to the left, and he *cannot* do it. Or if
he does try,
>he'll have to make a right turn from the left lane. Not
something people
>will do as a matter of course.
Ha ha -you don't live in the Boston, Massachusetts area do you?
The answer is yes, people will do this -I've seen it myself.
Also theoretically a Bumble bee can't fly too.
>Move over more, and he can squeeze by on your
>right.
>
>Also, a bit of eye contact works wonders. Sitting at the
stoplight first in
>line. He comes up behind you....turn your head and stare him in
the eye. He
>has now realized that there is an actual person on that
bike..one who will
>act according to the rules. When the light changes..off you go,
moving over
>to your right as you pass through the intersection. And he goes
around you
>when he can. Or makes his right turn behind you.
Wake up, it was all a dream ;^) -at least where I live.....
Pete, it sounds like you live in Utopia and you've been reading
too many manuals and not doing enough cycling to me. Following
a life of academia sounds promising for you. You stick with
your methods where you are and I'll take mine thanks!
cheers and happy riding
Nige
Pete
nige <nigel_pick...@go.com.invalid> wrote in message
> Pete:
>
> Ha ha -you don't live in the Boston, Massachusetts area do you?
> The answer is yes, people will do this -I've seen it myself.
> Also theoretically a Bumble bee can't fly too.
> Wake up, it was all a dream ;^) -at least where I live.....
Yup...Boston has the worst drivers in the world. Let me show you around
Madrid sometime....
> Pete, it sounds like you live in Utopia and you've been reading
> too many manuals and not doing enough cycling to me. Following
> a life of academia sounds promising for you. You stick with
> your methods where you are and I'll take mine thanks!
Utopia...ok..sure. Whatever you say. You just continue to run those red
lights...
Pete
jon winston
Come to a near or complete stop at the crosswalk. If there are peds stop
completely and do not move till the crosswalk is clear. If there are no
peds proceed slowly to the other side of the crosswalk. Come to a near
or complete stop. Look both ways. If the coast is clear proceed through
the intersection.
Whether or not this is against the law is irrelevant. It is a safe and
considerate way to handle intersections. If you wish to obey the law to
the letter that is your personal choice.
Jon
Brian D. Potter
This first part is just a recap:
Mike Dahmus wrote:
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 23:32:41 GMT, "Brian D. Potter" <brh...@iamerica.net>
> hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>
> >Mike Dahmus wrote:
> >
> >> Brian D. Potter hired ten well-meaning circus clowns to write:
> >
> >> >I would, however, feel perfectly comfortable in an imperfect world of lights that don't
> >> >change for cyclists in having the cyclists treat them as stop signs instead. You
> >> >haven't provided an alternative--do you believe I should dismount, push the pedestrian
> >> >Walk button, cross on the crosswalk and re-mount the bike at every intersection that
> >> >won't sense my presence? Thank goodness even the police in this town have better sense
> >> >than to require that.
> >>
> >> Red herring. I've never said that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists'
> >> presence should require an indefinite wait. In fact, though, most of the
> >> lights which I typically see run by cyclists here are ones which are timed,
> >> not sensor-activated. (And a subset of sensor-activated lights in Austin also
> >> have sensors for bikes which work about 95% of the time).
> >
> >A red herring is a side issue of little or no relevance but of equal or greater "controversy"
> >meant to distract an opponent and deter him from pursuing a line of reasoning which will lead
> >to gains on his part or concessions on yours.
> >
> >Let's take a look at your actual position to see if my statement was a "red herring":
>
> I think my paragraph explained why it was a "red herring". Everybody with half
> a brain believes that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists require special
> manuevering, sometimes even involving running the light. It's ridiculous to
> bring it up as if I claimed otherwise.
>
Mike, Mike, I'm very disappointed with you. It WOULD be ridiculous if you hadn't been so emphatic
about claiming otherwise and then repeated it five different times. Here is a previous comment of
yours:
> No, that is not what I am saying. Go back and read.
>
> I am making a distinction between entering at the very beginning of the red
> light cycle, which both motorists and cyclists do in roughly equal proportions
>
> and the
>
> FAR MORE DANGEROUS and FAR MORE LAWBREAKING process of simply treating a red
> light like a stop sign, which motorists almost never do but cyclists do fairly
> often.
>
***********************
NOTICE THE WORDS "like a stop sign." So that people reading don't get confused here, I'm trying
to show Mike how he's managed to commit egregious logical errors and then deny them after the
fact. I've actually almost lost interest in the original debate and am now merely intent on
soliciting some form of honesty. Here's what Mike had to say about our little issue a while back:
***********************
> Oh, GMAFB.
>
**
Classy, Mike.
**
> Once again, people who make no distinction between
>
> A. typical motorist law-breaking behavior (running through a second or two
> after the light changes from yellow to red)
>
> and
>
> B. typical cyclist law-breaking behavior (stopping at red light, checking
> for cross traffic, and going)
>
> just makes cyclists look like they're even further out of touch than we are.
> Yes, some cyclists also do A, but there's almost no motorists which do B.
>
> Mike Dahmus mdahmus at I O DOT COM
> http://www.dahmus.org/mike/
> "No one likes a pedantic smartarse..."
>
***********************
I like the signature. It takes on a whole new meaning in this context, yes? Now this is what
Mike had to say more recently:
***********************
> >> Once again, I am distinguishing between
> >>
> >> "light turns yellow or red as motorist/cyclist is approaching intersection;
> >> they end up going through by a couple of seconds after the light turned red
> >> even though they could have safely stopped"
> >>
> >> and
> >>
> >> "light has been red for quite a while; motorist/cyclist gets to light; stops
> >> (maybe); looks (maybe); and then goes across while light is still red".
> >
> >All I can figure out is that you've been having this argument and making this distinction for
> >a while and you feel the need to repeat it now in slightly different form. So, you have
> >lumped all behaviors into two convenient but misleading categories, ignoring several
> >important facts along the way:
>
> The problem is that, like most cyclists here with little driving experience,
> you seem to have mistaken what I mean by these two categories.
***
Tut, tut, Mike. Over-generalization and unwarranted assumption will make hash out of this one.
Please see the end of the post for the answer to today's riddle.
***
>
>
> > 1) cyclists who treat non-responsive signalled intersections
> >as four-way stops and their evil cousins, cyclists who "blow through intersections" "20
> >seconds" after the light has turned red,
>
> Mike wrote: First of all, I was distinguishing based on motorist behavior, not cyclist
> behavior; and second of all, I was assuming that the intersections were either
> timed or responsive. As should have been obvious by my aside above.
>
> >VERSUS, 2) cyclists that try to beat the light and
> >end up running it "barely," along with their super-macho Mario Andretti combustion engine
> >counterparts (any embellishments are purely to enliven an otherwise drearily tedious topic).
>
> >*****I'm a little dismayed that you believe the car-free cyclist is an irrational animal.
>
***********************
And this is what Mike had to say today:
***********************
>
> This whole discussion merely confirms my belief. Instead of learning from
> somebody who experiences both cycle and auto commuting on a weekly basis, you
> ignore reality and try to defend behavior which even the worst automobile
> drivers won't defend.
*********
Who is Mike talking to? I'm afraid he has fused the entire USENET experience into one giant
enemy. Everyone has the same opinion and everyone defends these horrible practices except him.
Have you actually read the Sender identity? Read other posts by that sender? I have.
*********
>
>
> >As a Coda, I lived in Austin for four years--some of the worst drivers on the planet and some
> >of the worst cyclists, too. I loved the place, but it's a little over-billed as a cycling
> >mecca.
>
> About 80% of the people in the world believe that the drivers in their current
> city are the worst in the planet.
**********
Let's talk about Austin in another post.
**********
>
>
> ---
> Mike Dahmus
It seems that other people have tried to call him on this and here is what that looks like:
> >=v= Why? Why rig your distinction so that what some motorists
> >do is just fine and what some bicyclists do is bad bad bad?
>
> I WASN'T doing that AT ALL.
>
> I was distinguishing between Behavior A, which a lot of motorists and a lot of
> cyclists do; and Behavior B, which a much higher proportion of cyclists do.
>
> This isn't "rigging" at all. Only truly out-of-touch cyclists would even call
> it so.
>
> Behavior A: "running" a red light by going through a second or two after it
> has turned red.
>
> Behavior B: Treating a red light as a stop sign (sometimes not even
> stopping!).
>
> These are fundamentally different (both are bad, of course; but B is much
> worse both for safety and for our image among drivers), but completely
> car-free cyclists seem to feel this urge to equate them to make the people who
> engage in Behavior B look a lot better than they really are.
>
> Mike Dahmus
>
****
Now let's put an end to this. Here is what Mike said earlier:
> Everybody with half
> a brain believes that lights which don't acknowledge cyclists require special
> manuevering, sometimes even involving running the light. It's ridiculous to
> bring it up as if I claimed otherwise.
>
I believe this admission, in light of all the previous evidence, shows an undeniable contradiction
in Mr. Dahmus testimony.
To conclude, I see two patterns emerging here:
Anyone who disagrees with Mike is out of touch AND
The most out-of-touch people are car-free cyclists.
Mike, seeing as I've been driving for 16 years and riding a bike longer than that, what is it
exactly you think you can teach me? You seem intent on delivering a lesson of some sort, but then
you waffle around, contradicting yourself, refusing to admit when you've made illogical or
unsupported claims. Other people have accused you of rigging your distinctions and you respond
with denigrating remarks, mis-used logical terminology, and disparagements of their intelligence,
as well as insults about car-free cyclists "making us look even more out of touch." You have
taken particular issue with the car-free cyclists without even acknowledging the distinction
between vehicular cycling and non-vehicular cycling. Non-vehicular cyclists are either 1) racing,
mountain-biking, or fooling around or 2) children or uneducated/unemployed utilitarian/sport
cyclists. Vehicular cyclists, from whom you could learn a lot (and who knows, with whom you may
have something in common: we are an ornery lot) may or may not be car-free, but have a pretty
good grasp of traffic laws and traffic flow. When we make mistakes, they are by accident. When
(and/or if) we engage in calculated risks, we don't make excuses for them. Now be careful who you
think I'm defending here. Please restore my (admittedly limited) faith in verbal communication.
Also, Mike, quit assuming everyone lives in Austin. I think it's great that 95% of the lights
there are cycle-sensitive. That means cyclists there should only be treating the lights as stop
signs 5% of the time. Other cities in other parts of the country not labelled as the pork-barrel,
stench-ridden dens of iniquity, the STATE CAPITOLS, might not have as much funding or support for
lights that recognize cyclists. Consequently, cyclists are justified in following the relatively
safe action of treating the light as a stop sign, provided they 1) actually stop, and 2) yield.
Thank you.
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>Mike, how old are you?
Relevance?
My credentials are that I'm a commuter both on my bicycle and in my car from
the central city out 15 miles to the suburbs; and I'm a member of Austin's
Urban Transportation Commission.
---
Brian D. Potter
jon winston wrote:
Jon, thank you for putting it so clearly. Please send a copy of this to
Mike Dahmus (mda...@io.com ) with this addendum:
This behavior does not violate the spirit of the law, and considering the
anti-cycling pressures in most areas, handles the letter of the law as well
as it deserves.
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>Mike, Mike, I'm very disappointed with you. It WOULD be ridiculous if you hadn't been so emphatic
>about claiming otherwise and then repeated it five different times. Here is a previous comment of
>yours:
[hundreds more lines deleted]
Brian, if you can't make your point concisely, then I don't particularly feel
like wasting my time in response.
I clearly was not damning bicyclists for treating stop signs as red lights
when they were sensor-activated but not detecting cyclists. If it wasn't clear
the first time, it should have been clear the second time when I SAID SO.
If you can't get past something as simple as that, you need to reexamine your
USENET reading _and_ posting styles.
Regards,
---
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>Jon, thank you for putting it so clearly. Please send a copy of this to
>Mike Dahmus (mda...@io.com ) with this addendum:
>
>This behavior does not violate the spirit of the law, and considering the
>anti-cycling pressures in most areas, handles the letter of the law as well
>as it deserves.
Please do not, and please note that if Mr. Potter could address any of my
points without going into hundreds of lines of paranoid ramblings about things
I never said or implied, he'd be getting a response himself.
1. Crossing as a pedestrian when the light is not timed and does not detect
bicyclists is acceptable behavior - and neither I nor anybody else here has
ever claimed otherwise as far as I'm aware.
2. Crossing by stopping, checking for cross-traffic, and then proceeding as if
at a stop sign when the light is not timed and does not detect bicyclists
is also obviously acceptable behavior as I have said several times.
3. Using the crosswalk to escape a simple wait for a green light, when the
conditions above do not apply, is pathetic, and truly vehicular cyclists
should not tolerate it.
jon winston
Mike Dahmus wrote:
<snip of some sniping>
> 1. Crossing as a pedestrian when the light is not timed and does not detect
> bicyclists is acceptable behavior - and neither I nor anybody else here has
>
> ever claimed otherwise as far as I'm aware.
>
> 2. Crossing by stopping, checking for cross-traffic, and then proceeding as if
>
> at a stop sign when the light is not timed and does not detect bicyclists
> is also obviously acceptable behavior as I have said several times.
>
> 3. Using the crosswalk to escape a simple wait for a green light, when the
> conditions above do not apply, is pathetic, and truly vehicular cyclists
> should not tolerate it.
Re point 3. You misunderstand. I'm just saying give peds the right of
way as you cross (laterally) the crosswalk before safely running the red light.
Your alternative of using the crosswalk going in the direction of travel
is not something I would do but I don't see why other cyclists should
not "tolerate" it. If a cyclist chooses to be a pedestrian instead of a
vehicle for a moment that is his/her choice. I'll be a vehicle, a
bicycle, a pedestrian, a rat scurrying in the gutter, whatever works at
the moment. I don't attend the Church of Our Lord, John Forrestor even
though agree with some of his ideas.
Jon
PS I usually choose to stop at most lights.
Allister
At least it is here in aus. I do on occasion run red lights, but do it
completely legally. It can only be done at T-intersections when you are
riding along the 'top' of the tee with the side road on the right (left
for the seppos). The procedure is simple; see a red light, hop onto the
footpath, pass intersection, remount road giving appropriate care to
avoiding traffic.
Two explanatory points may be needed here. 1. It is legal to ride on
the footpath in this state (Queensland - personally, I see this as
official admission of failure to adequately educate drivers) and 2. The
footpaths in Brisbane are almost always completely empty once you get
outside the CBD (but I still prefer the road)
Allister
In article <397F4499...@reproman.com>,
j...@reproman.com wrote:
> I don't attend the Church of Our Lord, John Forrestor even
> though agree with some of his ideas.
>
Amen Brother! I wouldn't even call them his ideas. He has simply
formulated and written down what any vehicular cyclist with enough
experience figures out for themselves. I see the same principles
written all over the place, and almost none of them cite Forrester's
work, it's just common sense. This is largely why I find the
trademarking of the term 'effective cycling' slightly objectionable, as
though I have to pay a royalty to ride properly.
> Jon
>
> PS I usually choose to stop at most lights.
Green lights? Headlights? The bright lights of Broadway? I usually
choose to stop only when I see red traffic lights and the ones in the
back of my eyes. :^)
--
Co-operation - not competition.
Diversity - not division.
Unity - not uniformity.
David Cásseres
<mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> moronically babbled:
>On Tue, 25 Jul 2000 14:07:18 -0700, cass...@pacbell.net (David Cásseres)
>hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>>Oh stuff it, Mike. I'll tell you the red-light running behavior that I
>>see cyclists doing: Come to a complete stop at a red light, then watch the
>>lights for the other direction to see when the light is about to change,
>>and ride through the intersection a moment BEFORE the light turns green.
>>I almost never see a cyclist running a red in any other way. Your
>>so-called "generalized activity" is what's bullshit.
>
>Your area is obviously very different than mine. I'd also like to say that
>based on past experience with you, I'm fairly certain that a camera at a
>variety of intersections would provide a different impression than what you
>say, but that's just opinion.
My erect middle fingers to you, with both hands.
--
David Cásseres
Exclaimer: Hey!
Brian D. Potter
Allister wrote:
> Strictly speaking, even treating a red light as a stop sign is illegal.
> At least it is here in aus. I do on occasion run red lights, but do it
> completely legally. It can only be done at T-intersections when you are
> riding along the 'top' of the tee with the side road on the right (left
> for the seppos). The procedure is simple; see a red light, hop onto the
> footpath, pass intersection, remount road giving appropriate care to
> avoiding traffic.
It's belittling and infantilizing to suddenly be forced into "pedestrian
mode." But in terms of liability should you misjudge and cause an
accident, crossing against the light leaves the cyclist out there hanging.
Then again, much of our legal system here hangs the cyclist out to dry.
> > I don't attend the Church of Our Lord, John Forrestor even
> > though agree with some of his ideas.
> >
>
> Amen Brother! I wouldn't even call them his ideas. He has simply
> formulated and written down what any vehicular cyclist with enough
> experience figures out for themselves. I see the same principles
> written all over the place, and almost none of them cite Forrester's
> work, it's just common sense. This is largely why I find the
> trademarking of the term 'effective cycling' slightly objectionable, as
> though I have to pay a royalty to ride properly.
I agree that vehicular cycling amounts to common sense. Most of its
precepts occurred to me during a year-and-a-half period of heavy commuting,
before I ever encountered the book. However, I don't object to Forrester
having written down what works and then having organized and elaborated
upon it. He bases his ideas on what competent cyclists typically do. And
he even admits that most of his ideas come from observing British and
French traffic systems, where cyclists are always considered vehicles.
It's nice to have a reference book with clearly articulated observations
and recommendations. If he were arguing for some totally illogical system,
like sidepaths and bikelanes, which the majority of folk seem to be in
favor of, then I'd resent the oppressive weight of his being invoked.
Frank Krygowki
>
> Mike Dahmus wrote:
>
> >
> > 3. Using the crosswalk to escape a simple wait for a green light, when the
> > conditions above do not apply, is pathetic, and truly vehicular cyclists
> > should not tolerate it.
>
> Re point 3. You misunderstand. I'm just saying give peds the right of
> way as you cross (laterally) the crosswalk before safely running the red light.
In other words, you gave us a detailed description of how you
elaborately obey right-of-way rules regarding pedestrians, before you
completely disobey right-of-way rules by running a red light. A
wonderful exercise in inconsistency.
Will you soon follow with detailed instructions on how to ride facing
traffic? On how to turn left from the curb? On how to ride at night
with no lights? I can't wait!
I do hope you'll give us some good rules of thumb about which laws to
obey and which laws to flaunt.
> Your alternative of using the crosswalk going in the direction of travel
> is not something I would do but I don't see why other cyclists should
> not "tolerate" it. If a cyclist chooses to be a pedestrian instead of a
> vehicle for a moment that is his/her choice.
I'd say it's his choice provided it's legal. Otherwise it's an
infraction, and probably foolish.
> I'll be a vehicle, a
> bicycle, a pedestrian, a rat scurrying in the gutter, whatever works at
> the moment.
You forgot anarchist.
> PS I usually choose to stop at most lights.
Big of you.
You know, I've done volunteer work on various committees that attempt to
make things better for cyclists. People with your attitude really make
that job harder.
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
Frank Krygowki
>
> IMHO, with the exception of being so far out as to be at danger from
> being overtaken on the inside, I don't know what would prevent a car
> taking a right in front of you at a junction.
Well, it's good to admit you have gaps in your knowledge. That's a good
first step. Step two is to learn enough to fill the gaps.
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
Allister
"Brian D. Potter" <brh...@iamerica.net> wrote:
> It's belittling and infantilizing to suddenly be forced
into "pedestrian
> mode."
I'm not being forced into it. It's just something I do occasionally to
avoid losing all that lovely momentum. I don't feel belittled
in 'pedestrian mode' at all. The fact that a bike can seamlessly flit
between road and footpath, so long as it's done judiciously, is one of
it's major advantages in traffic.
> But in terms of liability should you misjudge and cause an
> accident, crossing against the light leaves the cyclist out there
> hanging.
The footpath isn't controlled by lights. The only possible hazard would
be a pedestrian, and, as I originally said, there's virtually none of
them.
>
> I agree that vehicular cycling amounts to common sense. Most of its
> precepts occurred to me during a year-and-a-half period of heavy
commuting,
> before I ever encountered the book. However, I don't object to
Forrester
> having written down what works and then having organized and
elaborated
> upon it.
Well, no, neither do I. He has obviously helped a lot of new cyclists.
I object to his taking ownership of it as though he was the only one to
come up with it. It may not be that way, but it does come across in his
writing, which is - how should I put it? - blunt.
He bases his ideas on what competent cyclists typically do. And
> he even admits that most of his ideas come from observing British and
> French traffic systems, where cyclists are always considered vehicles.
> It's nice to have a reference book with clearly articulated
observations
> and recommendations. If he were arguing for some totally illogical
system,
> like sidepaths and bikelanes, which the majority of folk seem to be in
> favor of, then I'd resent the oppressive weight of his being invoked.
>
>
--
nige
All I can say is clearly you don't cycle where I cycle. Not
that I fault you, because not so long ago I was like you too,
where I thought that if you obeyed all the traffic rules life
was going to be hunky dory. But the real issue here is that
unfortunately life doesn't come neatly and theoretically
packaged in the same way whereever you live in the world.
Your fundamental mistake and gap in your knowledge is that
you're assuming that your riding conditions and experience match
mine -sometimes that isn't always the case. Not that I'm going
to admit that I'm always right at all times -we all make
mistakes -I'm just however trying to cycle the safest way I deem
possible given my situation and my own logical deduction, with
minimum impact to others. I also cycle on the roads, and don't
just read about it -something which may account for your gap
analysis (though as stressed earlier, it could also be where you
cycle, and hey, if it works for you, good!).
cheers, and happy and safe riding whereever you are,
Nige
-----------------------------------------------------------
RJD9999
In article <Aq59OUv3SrjYEz...@4ax.com>, Mike wrote:
<< Drivers and cyclists starting from a dead stop at a green in today's world
typically look for cross-traffic. Thus while abominable, running a light a
second or two after it has turned red is safer (and IMO 'less lawbreaking')
than running it in the middle of the red cycle. >>
Oh, I see, and cyclists don't? They just ride willy nilly on the roads causing
cars to carom into each other with massive loss of life.
Mike, you are beating a dead horse. You are so wrong on this that those on the
fringe are looking back to see you. The fact is that drivers running lights
don't always look. The great majority of time, they watch the vehicle in front
of them (just in case that vehicle might decice to stop) and ignore the rest of
the traffic situation around them. I think they are trained this way, but
that's another story.
When crossing a multi-lane street, against the light, large vehicles and poor
sight lines can obscure the vision of both drivers until it is too late to
avoid a crash. When the lane ahead is clear and a driver sees green, they will
approach a light at speed and collide with a vehicle that has entered the
intersection as little as one second after the yellow.
This type of collision is actually quite common, by the way, at least in San
Jose. I've observed many instances of same, and experienced another. I
routinely have to slow or stop to allow red light runners to safely traverse an
intersection (either on bike or in car) as where I live, folks do not routinely
stop when they approach left turn lights - they simply turn.
Rick
Mike Dahmus
number of monkeys to write:
>
>In article <Aq59OUv3SrjYEz...@4ax.com>, Mike wrote:
>
><< Drivers and cyclists starting from a dead stop at a green in today's world
>typically look for cross-traffic. Thus while abominable, running a light a
>second or two after it has turned red is safer (and IMO 'less lawbreaking')
>than running it in the middle of the red cycle. >>
>
>Oh, I see, and cyclists don't? They just ride willy nilly on the roads causing
>cars to carom into each other with massive loss of life.
>
>Mike, you are beating a dead horse. You are so wrong on this that those on the
>fringe are looking back to see you. The fact is that drivers running lights
>don't always look.
Allow me to suggest that you read the paragraph cited above again. It is no
wonder you think I'm past the fringe if your poor reading comprehension leads
you to believe I was saying that the red-light-runners were looking for
cross-traffic. Note the first sentence very carefully.
Mike Dahmus
infinite number of monkeys to write:
>
>
>Mike Dahmus wrote:
>
>
><snip of some sniping>
>
>> 1. Crossing as a pedestrian when the light is not timed and does not detect
>> bicyclists is acceptable behavior - and neither I nor anybody else here has
>>
>> ever claimed otherwise as far as I'm aware.
>>
>> 2. Crossing by stopping, checking for cross-traffic, and then proceeding as if
>>
>> at a stop sign when the light is not timed and does not detect bicyclists
>> is also obviously acceptable behavior as I have said several times.
>>
>> 3. Using the crosswalk to escape a simple wait for a green light, when the
>> conditions above do not apply, is pathetic, and truly vehicular cyclists
>> should not tolerate it.
>
>
>Re point 3. You misunderstand. I'm just saying give peds the right of
>way as you cross (laterally) the crosswalk before safely running the red light.
[...]
>PS I usually choose to stop at most lights.
Perhaps if a few more red-light runners had to sit through out UTC meetings
where every time a bicycle facility improvement is discussed (or a rules
change like prohibiting right-turns-on-red for the safety of cyclists), we
have to sit through 30 minutes of both public and other commissioners'
comments asking why we should do anything for people who think the law doesn't
apply to them, your opinions might be different.
Mike Dahmus
an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>You know, I've done volunteer work on various committees that attempt to
>make things better for cyclists. People with your attitude really make
>that job harder.
Wish I'd have seen this before my last article. A-freaking-men.
Frank Krygowski
nige wrote:
>
> Frank,
>
> All I can say is clearly you don't cycle where I cycle.
Yep. We've all heard that sort of excuse before.
> Not
> that I fault you, because not so long ago I was like you too,
> where I thought that if you obeyed all the traffic rules life
> was going to be hunky dory. But the real issue here is that
> unfortunately life doesn't come neatly and theoretically
> packaged in the same way whereever you live in the world.
>
> Your fundamental mistake and gap in your knowledge is that
> you're assuming that your riding conditions and experience match
> mine -sometimes that isn't always the case.
There's that excuse again. You believe your riding area is so different
than the rest of the world that only you are qualified to comment on
it.
> Not that I'm going
> to admit that I'm always right at all times -we all make
> mistakes -I'm just however trying to cycle the safest way I deem
> possible given my situation and my own logical deduction, with
> minimum impact to others.
In other words, you ride any way you feel like, and rules be damned. Of
course, _ALL_ POBs and rule breakers feel that way! You've not
demonstrated that you're any brighter than the 14-year-old kids I saw
riding facing traffic yesterday. They were convinced they, too, knew
better than the traffic laws.
> I also cycle on the roads, and don't
> just read about it -something which may account for your gap
> analysis (though as stressed earlier, it could also be where you
> cycle, and hey, if it works for you, good!).
Nige, trust me, you don't want to challenge my qualifications for riding
on roads. If you haven't commuted by bike for over 20 years, ridden in
dozens of major cities in the US and overseas, taught cycling classes,
written cycling articles for national magazines, served on several
government committees regarding bicycling, run a bike club, run an
award-winning invitational ride, done extensive touring and done at
least one double century, you're behind.
Now why not go to the library - or sign up for an Effective Cycling
class - and start filling your gaps in knowledge before you hurt
yourself?
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
nige
That's sad then; to me you clearly haven't bridged the gap.
Sometimes it doesn't matter what qualifications/experience you
have, it's whether or not you can learn and deduce in an
intelligent manner. I'm not going to dispute what you have or
haven't done, but I'm certainly questioning your ability to
assimilate the facts for other people. Clearly by
stating "Yep. We've all heard that sort of excuse before", you
wish to dismiss different cycling conditions -something that I
think is common sense to most cyclists to consider.
But I do want to clarify something from my previous posts -I am
certainly not intending to, nor dismissing your beliefs -but
since I'm not where you are, I'm not going to hazard a guess at
an effective cycling technique. As opposed to me "believing my
riding area is so different than the rest of the world that only
I am qualified to comment on it" I believe that your riding
world is different from mine and I'm not sufficiently
knowledgeable to comment on it. Clearly you're verging on the
all knowing-all seeing aspect of this -something I'd say 14 year
olds exhibit quite often, so I find your comparison of me to 14
year olds quite amusing.
The bottom line is that each individual takes responsibility for
their actions (particularly on an unprotected bicycle). You do
your best, and try to make effective and logical decisions. It
may not be what you believe, it may not be what I believe, but
we all do our best in the given situation. As I said in a
previous post, I'm willing to accept the consequences of an
illegal bicycle action if I believe it improves my safety. I do
not believe all laws are satisfactory and am not willing to risk
personal injury for sake of a legal principle.
Since I assume we are both injury free, I can only believe that
both of our points of view are correct for our situations.
cheers, and happy riding!
nige
jon winston
Frank Krygowki wrote:
>
> jon winston wrote:
> >
> > Mike Dahmus wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > 3. Using the crosswalk to escape a simple wait for a green light, when the
> > > conditions above do not apply, is pathetic, and truly vehicular cyclists
> > > should not tolerate it.
> >
> > Re point 3. You misunderstand. I'm just saying give peds the right of
> > way as you cross (laterally) the crosswalk before safely running the red light.
>
> In other words, you gave us a detailed description of how you
> elaborately obey right-of-way rules regarding pedestrians, before you
> completely disobey right-of-way rules by running a red light. A
> wonderful exercise in inconsistency.
It has nothing to do with rules. It has to do with consideration for
others.
> Will you soon follow with detailed instructions on how to ride facing
> traffic? On how to turn left from the curb? On how to ride at night
> with no lights? I can't wait!
The first two are dangerous and I wouldn't reccomend it. I often ride
with no lights when I'm in a bad neighborgood late at night though.
>
> I do hope you'll give us some good rules of thumb about which laws to
> obey and which laws to flaunt.
My rule of thumb is do whatever you have to do to be safe and
considerate for yourself and for others.
> > Your alternative of using the crosswalk going in the direction of travel
> > is not something I would do but I don't see why other cyclists should
> > not "tolerate" it. If a cyclist chooses to be a pedestrian instead of a
> > vehicle for a moment that is his/her choice.
>
> I'd say it's his choice provided it's legal. Otherwise it's an
> infraction, and probably foolish.
Its legal here in California if I understand you correctly. I'm assuming
you're getting off your bike here and crossing the street as a ped.
>
> > I'll be a vehicle, a
> > bicycle, a pedestrian, a rat scurrying in the gutter, whatever works at
> > the moment.
>
> You forgot anarchist.
Does that bother you? Sorry, I thought it was a free country.
>
> > PS I usually choose to stop at most lights.
>
> Big of you.
>
> You know, I've done volunteer work on various committees that attempt to
> make things better for cyclists. People with your attitude really make
> that job harder.
So have I. When I hear that cyclists are a bunch of scofflaws and
therefor don't need facilities, I brush it aside by pointing out how all
types of road users are lawbreakers. It usually works. Here in San
Francisco we have made a lot of progress making things better for
cyclists, largely as a result of both Critical Mass and good advocacy
work from the SF Bike Coalition. ( http:www.sfbike.org ) I've got feet
in both worlds. Works for me.
Jon
jon winston
Mike Dahmus wrote:
> Perhaps if a few more red-light runners had to sit through out UTC meetings
> where every time a bicycle facility improvement is discussed (or a rules
> change like prohibiting right-turns-on-red for the safety of cyclists), we
> have to sit through 30 minutes of both public and other commissioners'
> comments asking why we should do anything for people who think the law doesn't
> apply to them, your opinions might be different.
>
You know, I've sat through a few meetings at city hall myself and this
has never been a problem. We nearly always get the votes we need. When
we don't its usually because the Dept of Parking and traffic prefers car
throughput to more bikes on the road.
Jon
Mike Dahmus
infinite number of monkeys to write:
We haven't yet lost a vote, however the most recent facilities improvement
(changing lane configurations and allowing parking only on one side of a
street in order to have car-free bike lanes) is still up in the air, and the
behavior of the cyclists on the road in question has a lot to do with it.
jon winston
Mike Dahmus wrote:
> We haven't yet lost a vote, however the most recent facilities improvement
> (changing lane configurations and allowing parking only on one side of a
> street in order to have car-free bike lanes) is still up in the air, and the
> behavior of the cyclists on the road in question has a lot to do with it.
Well, our newspapers have been filled for the last year with articles
(about one a week) about how hard it is to be a ped in this town, what
with all of the scofflaw drivers.
------
From Tuesday's the Mercury News:
``People drive too aggressively. They take too much for granted,'' said
Ja, whose 85-year-old mother was struck and killed in May by a sport
utility vehicle as she rode her motorized, four-wheeled cart through a
crosswalk in the city's Sunset district.
http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/ped0725.htm
------
Its all politics. You have to learn how to use political jiu jitsu
things work to your advantage. The idea that because there are a few
dangerous drivers or cyclists we shouldn't provide safe facilities for
everyone is falacious on its face anyway. Should sidewalks be removed
because of a few jaywalkers?
Jon
Gene Floyd
> >
> > Both cyclists and motorists run at the very beginning of a red cycle in
> > virtually equal proportions in my observation. However, the number of
> times I
> > have seen a car driver ignore a red light (or even come to a full stop and
> > then treat it as a stop sign) is about a hundred times less frequent than
> the
> > same observation for cyclists.
>
> Where do you live?! Sounds like a cyclists paradise
>
To be honest, growing up in small-to-mid-sized cities here in the South
(Tallahassee and Gainesville FL), I have yet to see a car flagrantly run a stop
sign or red light. By flagrantly, I mean obviously not misjudging a yellow light
(what we call "running an orange light"). On the other hand, I've seen several
cyclists blow right through red lights that have been that way for far too long
to use "trying to make the yellow" as an excuse. Some don't even stop or slow
down, but simply look back and forth as they're entering the intersection before
breezing right on through. I know for a fact that drivers behave differently in
different parts of the country as I'm used to motorists here in Tallahassee
being very laid-back and non-aggressive, even if somewhat uninformed of cyclists
rights, yet just this past week in Washington DC, I saw several instances of
driving behavior that would have landed a motorist in jail here in
good-ol'-boy-land. In one case, a car almost took out a squad of Young Marines
crossing a 1-way road with the traffic signal and at the direction of a traffic
cop. The driver was pulling around the traffic guard when a Marine carrying an
M-1 (we had just left the evening parade at 8th and I and many of the Marines
were returning to the barracks with us) stepped in front of him at port arms and
stoppped him. By that time, the line of Young Marines had scattered and ran for
the nearest side of the road. The cop directing traffic then waved him on
through with an annoyed look on his face.
> > The main thing you have to ask yourself if you want to defend the
> cyclists'
> > behavior on the grounds that they're not hurting anybody is why motorists
> > shouldn't be given the same right to turn red lights into stop signs at
> will,
> > and whether or not you'd feel comfortable with the results when the entire
> > population starts exercising that right.
>
> Nobody (cyclists or drivers) as ANY right to break the law. Period.
Mike Dahmus
infinite number of monkeys to write:
>Its all politics. You have to learn how to use political jiu jitsu
>things work to your advantage. The idea that because there are a few
>dangerous drivers or cyclists we shouldn't provide safe facilities for
>everyone is falacious on its face anyway. Should sidewalks be removed
>because of a few jaywalkers?
In this case the analogy is not perfect. One of the things which our
commission was considering (which I'm against for other reasons anyways) was
changing the light timing on a minor arterial where it crosses a major
arterial to give the minor road a shorter wait, because although it's only a
minor arterial for cars, it has a lot of bike traffic.
One of the other commissioners pushed this for a variety of reasons, one of
which was convenience (which is a valid argument, although I didn't think the
particular situation was inconvenient _enough_), but another one was the
theory that fewer cyclists would run the light if the red wasn't so long.
While this might even be true (similar to what happens with underposted speed
limits for cars), it generated an attack from several normally pro-bicycle
commissioners which basically boiled down to: "They'll run the lights anyways,
because they don't care about the law".
I can easily conceive of a future facilities modification which I will want to
support which will run into the same kind of opposition because lawbreaking
bicyclists are prevalent enough that they are obvious. And the "running the
orange light" (wish I'd have thought of that term) phenomenon _is_ viewed as a
distinctly different one by practically everybody except car-free cyclists, so
that won't be a valid defense in this case.
jon winston
If its come to this then maybe its time to change the law. When you have
this many people ignoring a law perhaps it the law that's the problem,
not the violators.
If its important to you that cyclists obey the law give them a law they
will respect like Idaho's title 49 which allows cyclists to treat red
light as stop signs and stps signs as yields.
Of course this diverges slightly from his greatness, John Forrester's
divinely inspired philosophy that bikes must be like cars at all times
and ignore their own special characteristics.
Jon
Mike Dahmus
infinite number of monkeys to write:
>If its come to this then maybe its time to change the law. When you have
>this many people ignoring a law perhaps it the law that's the problem,
>not the violators.
>
>If its important to you that cyclists obey the law give them a law they
>will respect like Idaho's title 49 which allows cyclists to treat red
>light as stop signs and stps signs as yields.
The 85th percentile rule for speed limits came back into favor only after it
became clear that speed limits were being underposted for reasons which had
nothing to do with safety - and motorists figured that out. The situation here
is not analogous at all. For one thing, it is legally dubious to give cyclists
the right to run red lights and not give the same right to motorists - at
which point you have to decide whether you're willing to trust motorists to
make this decision for themselves.
(And please don't pull out the "cyclists can't hurt anybody but themselves"
argument. I almost wrecked my car last year trying not to kill a cyclist who
ran a red light near the University of Texas).
jon winston
Mike Dahmus wrote:
>
> On Thu, 27 Jul 2000 12:46:32 -0700, jon winston <j...@reproman.com> hired an
> infinite number of monkeys to write:
> >If its important to you that cyclists obey the law give them a law they
> >will respect like Idaho's title 49 which allows cyclists to treat red
> >light as stop signs and stps signs as yields.
>
> The 85th percentile rule for speed limits came back into favor only after it
> became clear that speed limits were being underposted for reasons which had
> nothing to do with safety - and motorists figured that out. The situation here
> is not analogous at all.
I'm not making that analogy. If cars can go faster than the speed limit
safely then there is probably a need for traffic calming but that's not
what we're talking about here. I can't help adding though that the 85th
percentile assumes that cars should move as fast as they can safely so
we can move as many of them as possible. I disagree with that. Cars
should be treated as second class citizens when it comes to who gets to
use the roadway because they are so distructive in so many ways.
For one thing, it is legally dubious to give cyclists
> the right to run red lights and not give the same right to motorists - at
> which point you have to decide whether you're willing to trust motorists to
> make this decision for themselves.
Street cars, busses and peds all have separate rules and even separate
signals sometimes. You don't see cars running the red light when the
streetcar signal changes. This is where I diverge from the EC cannon.
Bikes are different from cars and, while most of the time they should be
treated as "vehicles", oftentimes they need separate rules and separate
facilities. You can't expect the bikers where I live to conform to car
rules. They just won't do it. Just my opinion.
> (And please don't pull out the "cyclists can't hurt anybody but themselves"
> argument. I almost wrecked my car last year trying not to kill a cyclist who
> ran a red light near the University of Texas).
Please don't try to read my mind. The guy that ran that light broke the
Idaho law and my guidlines on how to safely run a red light. The fact
that you were driving a car lowers your credibility a bit, though. :)
Just kidding. Sort of.
Jon
Brian D. Potter
jon winston wrote:
> Dahmus:
> > While this might even be true (similar to what happens with underposted speed
> > limits for cars), it generated an attack from several normally pro-bicycle
> > commissioners which basically boiled down to: "They'll run the lights anyways,
> > because they don't care about the law".
> >
> > I can easily conceive of a future facilities modification which I will want to
> > support which will run into the same kind of opposition because lawbreaking
> > bicyclists are prevalent enough that they are obvious. And the "running the
> > orange light" (wish I'd have thought of that term) phenomenon _is_ viewed as a
> > distinctly different one by practically everybody except car-free cyclists, so
> > that won't be a valid defense in this case.
>
> If its come to this then maybe its time to change the law. When you have
> this many people ignoring a law perhaps it the law that's the problem,
> not the violators.
Agreed.
>
>
> If its important to you that cyclists obey the law give them a law they
> will respect like Idaho's title 49 which allows cyclists to treat red
> light as stop signs and stps signs as yields.
>
> Of course this diverges slightly from his greatness, John Forrester's
> divinely inspired philosophy that bikes must be like cars at all times
> and ignore their own special characteristics.
>
> Jon
Jon, I didn't know about the Idaho law, but part of it makes sense--I don't think
changing Stop Lights to Stop Signs (on a conceptual level) violates the fundamental
concept of Right of Way, but changing Stop Signs to Yields for one vehicle, and only
one, does.
Your characterization of Forrester, while funny, is a bit off-- in some instances,
he argues for making modifications to the system based on the bike's differences.
For instance, adding a bit of time to the green signal phase, as he urges,
acknowledges the bike as a slower vehicle. But I agree with his basic stance that
just a very few modifications to existing roadways would make them much more
bike-habitable--wider outside lane (no stripe), safe grates, sensitive lights,
longer green phase. And I agree with his basic stance that when you start monkeying
around with the established principle of "right-of-way," you create a logical muddle
that endangers lives and a legal mess that puts the cyclist at an even further
disadvantage.
jon winston
Yeah, I suppose so. But here in California, peds get the right of way at
intersections. They don't have to stop at a stop sign to cross the
intersection even though cars do. No one confuses cars and peds in the
street. Under the idaho law bikes would have to yield, that is they
would still give row to the cross traffic befor entering the intersection.
> Your characterization of Forrester, while funny, is a bit off-- in some instances,
> he argues for making modifications to the system based on the bike's differences.
> For instance, adding a bit of time to the green signal phase, as he urges,
> acknowledges the bike as a slower vehicle. But I agree with his basic stance that
> just a very few modifications to existing roadways would make them much more
> bike-habitable--wider outside lane (no stripe), safe grates, sensitive lights,
> longer green phase. And I agree with his basic stance that when you start monkeying
> around with the established principle of "right-of-way," you create a logical muddle
> that endangers lives and a legal mess that puts the cyclist at an even further
> disadvantage.
I like the stripe, sometimes. If its done right, as a part of a total
traffic calming project it works quite well like on Valencia St in San
Francisco. Since the lanes went in bike traffic has been up 177% and
collisions are down 25%. Plus, its now a pleasure to ride there now. Has
to be done right though.
Jon
Gene Floyd
> this many people ignoring a law perhaps it the law that's the problem,
> not the violators.
>
> will respect like Idaho's title 49 which allows cyclists to treat red
> light as stop signs and stps signs as yields.
And while we're at it, we can legalize riding on the wrong side of the road and
driving under the influence too. After all, many people break those laws too.
Brian D. Potter
Is this a troll? I'm pleased I don't have any students who hear of my
qualifications and then promptly announce that they can't learn from me
because, well, I just haven't bridged the gap.
Here's the deal: if you're not riding in a vehicular fashion, then
don't ride where there are other vehicles. If you're running red lights
(without even the formality of stopping to yield) and acting like a
goofball, don't be proud of it or exclaim to the high heavens (and
newsgroups on all sides) that the particular conditions in your
particular part of the world make that behavior acceptable or increase
your chances of surviving. They don't.
As for having given up on gaining the respect of motorists, I might
suggest you haven't tried hard enough.
I was commuting home one night, taking a lane (one out of four).
Motorists were passing in a civil manner and everything seemed
blissful. Up ahead of me was a nimrod on an old mountain bike, darting
in and out of traffic, on curb, off curb, in gutter, on sidewalk. Cars
passed me as though I were another car. Cars approached this guy and
you could see the uncertainty creep in: what's he going to do? what
should I do? They quit yielding the lane, but they weren't
comfortable. Traffic slowed down immensely AHEAD of me (not BEHIND).
When this screwy entourage approached an intersection, I queued up with
the autos. This guy winged through a corner driveway and shot through a
red light--presumably so he could build up a lead. This put him ahead
of three cars that had braved his erratic behavior to pass him not 100 m
earlier. Needless to say, they had to go through the same procedure
again to pass a second time. When I pulled up next to him, I said,
"Don't get out here much, do you?"
Motorists are capable of learning to accept cyclists and learning to
respect competent road-riders, but this guy was undoing the lesson
faster than I could demonstrate it. People who break the laws usually
expect everyone else to obey them, so even the errant motorist will
likely respect lawful consistency on the part of others.
And the fact that you've survived this long doesn't testify to the
validity of your viewpoint. In my neck of the woods, a tourist was
recently killed: he had a bad habit of turning through intersections ON
THE WRONG SIDE OF THE STREET (to save time, I think). He was
70-some-odd years old at the time of the fatal accident and had been
touring for many decades. How had he survived such an egregious lapse
of common sense for so many years? Luck. Maybe a dash of derring-do,
but let's not romanticize it: mostly luck.
I wish you a long life blessed with bridging the gap.
Ride long and prosper,
BDP
Frank Krygowki
>
> Frank Krygowki wrote:
> >
> >
> > I do hope you'll give us some good rules of thumb about which laws to
> > obey and which laws to flaunt.
>
> My rule of thumb is do whatever you have to do to be safe and
> considerate for yourself and for others.
Right. Whatever _you_ judge to be sufficiently safe and considerate is
OK. And again, I imagine almost everybody who violates almost any
traffic law decides that it's sufficiently safe and considerate.
The 14-year-olds who weave their bikes from the right curb to the left
and back as cars pass from different directions feel they know best
about what's safe. The people who ride at night without lights feel
they have reflectors, and nothing else is needed. The chick who reaches
into her back seat for a cassette while passing a line of cyclists
figures she can drive straight without looking at the road. The
18-year-old doing 30 MPH over the speed limit feels he's such a great
driver he'll never get in any trouble. And so on, ad nauseum.
> > > I'll be a vehicle, a
> > > bicycle, a pedestrian, a rat scurrying in the gutter, whatever works at
> > > the moment.
> >
> > You forgot anarchist.
>
> Does that bother you? Sorry, I thought it was a free country.
If a person doesn't understand the difference between freedom and
anarchy, he needs to spend some time looking in a dictionary - or
reading a political science primer. At least, if he does that, he may
learn to hide his ignorance.
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
Frank Krygowki
>
> If its come to this then maybe its time to change the law. When you have
> this many people ignoring a law perhaps it the law that's the problem,
> not the violators.
Another variation on the same theme: "The lawbreaker knows what's best."
Should we extend that to riding bikes without lights at night? Recent
data suggests that roughly 50% of adult cycling fatalities in Florida
come from riding at night without lights. But hey, those "headlight"
laws are widely ignored. By your standards, we might as well just do
away with them.
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
Frank Krygowki
>
> Street cars, busses and peds all have separate rules and even separate
> signals sometimes. You don't see cars running the red light when the
> streetcar signal changes. This is where I diverge from the EC cannon.
The EC _canon_ is not meant to convey that there should never be any
difference in treatment between bikes and motor vehicles. Forester
makes this clear. He points out several situations in which the law
treats cyclists differently than drivers, to the benefit of cyclists.
However, as a general principle, cyclists _do_ fare best when they act,
and are treated as, operators of vehicles. Except for a few
well-established exceptions, when cyclists get treated differently, they
get treated worse.
If you don't understand that, you don't understand Forester, and you
don't understand Effective Cycling.
> Bikes are different from cars and, while most of the time they should be
> treated as "vehicles", oftentimes they need separate rules and separate
> facilities. You can't expect the bikers where I live to conform to car
> rules. They just won't do it. Just my opinion.
Well, we know YOU "just won't do it". You've made that clear. Perhaps
others can learn, though.
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
nige
Look, you can go blue in the face extolling the virtues of what
you think is the correct and proper behaviour for your GIVEN
situation. I'm not going to argue that. All I'm saying is that
for the given traffic conditions I experience I've decided on
certain riding techniques which are not legal.
If you'd read my posts earlier, you'd have noticed I mentioned
I've cycled in other countries -where I've _never_ run a red
light. So do you think all of a sudden I made a goofball
decision to suddenly start doing it as a jest? Or a challenge?
No, I've made decisions on what I consider to be the safest way
of doing things for myself. I'm not trying to push my way of
doing things onto other people (as others here seem to be
hellbent on doing so), rather I'm saying: do what you think is
best for you and your personal safety where you cycle(with the
caveat that it will not effect the personal safety of others).
Concerning "bridging the gap", well, after being first accused
of having one, I feel it's only fair game to suggest likewise to
a poster who doesn't commute regularly in the same area I do.
Not that I can't learn new tricks -I certainly can and promptly
never said I can't learn from someone -but as I've said (again)
I'm alot less likely to tell someone what is proper and safe to
do when I'm not on their regular route or conditions, unlike
others who aspire to. Believe it or not, you can have all the
Masters degrees, Phds, and experience in the world, but it still
doesn't mean you know it all, and presuming you do is
dangerous. And it certainly doesn't mean you have a degree in
common sense.
And as there are lies, damn lies and statistics, it should also
be noted that assuming you haven't been in an accident yet,
going by your same argument, it doesn't validate you practising
safe cycling techniques either ;)
I've said all I can on this thread, I'll be glad to continue to
defend my riding technique and give further examples based on my
conditions via personal email.
cheers and happy riding (which is what it's all about anyway)
Nige
Frank Krygowki
>
> Frank:
>
> That's sad then; to me you clearly haven't bridged the gap.
> Sometimes it doesn't matter what qualifications/experience you
> have, it's whether or not you can learn and deduce in an
> intelligent manner.
Nige, trust me again: you don't want to challenge my ability to learn
and deduce in a logical manner, or to bridge the gap between my
knowledge and another's ignorance.
I have students who learn very difficult material from me, and go on to
very successful professions. They have given me awards for exactly the
type of thing you seem to think I lack.
Now it's true I can't succeed with every student. Some simply don't
have the mental horsepower to handle what I teach. But the saddest
cases, in my mind, are those who refuse others' help. Those tales about
young kids that can't learn because they already know everything are
often true. And apparently, it's true on Usenet as well as in school,
and in life.
> I'm not going to dispute what you have or
> haven't done, but I'm certainly questioning your ability to
> assimilate the facts for other people. Clearly by
> stating "Yep. We've all heard that sort of excuse before", you
> wish to dismiss different cycling conditions -something that I
> think is common sense to most cyclists to consider.
My cycling techniques - which are, essentially, to follow the rules of
the road - have worked in Columbus, Pittsburgh, Portland, Los Angeles,
Indianapolis, Dublin, Portland, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Denver,
Inverness, Toronto, and other major cities. They've worked in roughly
30 states. They've worked in four countries. They've worked in the
most deserted rural areas and in the very largest cities, from the dead
of night to the dead center of the 5 PM Friday rush hour.
Now what can possibly be unique about where YOU cycle?
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
Brian D. Potter
Jon,
My hometown is on the verge of cycling consciousness and I'm interested in what has and
hasn't worked elsewhere. San Francisco and bikes--I'm really unqualified to comment, so
I'll ask a question or two instead: would this particular stretch of road, Valencia St.,
have been made equally calm by other measures, say stamping a whole lane with cycle-guy
outlines? Is it relatively free of intersections and driveways? What made it dangerous
to begin with? Does it complicate traffic patterns at the intersections? What other
traffic calming measures were put into place?
Trying to find the line on this turn,
BDP
Pete
Frank Krygowki <frkr...@cc.ysu.edu> wrote
>
> Now what can possibly be unique about where YOU cycle?
Of course it's unique. He rides in Baastin....obviously worse than anywhere
on the planet. Worse than London, Madrid, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Adana, NYC,
DC...places I've ridden....
Pete
Brian D. Potter
Mike Dahmus wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Jul 2000 09:02:15 -0700, jon winston <j...@reproman.com> hired an
> infinite number of monkeys to write:
>
> >Mike Dahmus wrote:
> >
> >> Perhaps if a few more red-light runners had to sit through out UTC meetings
> >> where every time a bicycle facility improvement is discussed (or a rules
> >> change like prohibiting right-turns-on-red for the safety of cyclists), we
> >> have to sit through 30 minutes of both public and other commissioners'
> >> comments asking why we should do anything for people who think the law doesn't
> >> apply to them, your opinions might be different.
> >
> >You know, I've sat through a few meetings at city hall myself and this
> >has never been a problem. We nearly always get the votes we need. When
> >we don't its usually because the Dept of Parking and traffic prefers car
> >throughput to more bikes on the road.
>
> We haven't yet lost a vote, however the most recent facilities improvement
> (changing lane configurations and allowing parking only on one side of a
> street in order to have car-free bike lanes) is still up in the air, and the
> behavior of the cyclists on the road in question has a lot to do with it.
Oh, heaven! I've seen these facilities down by the University of Texas! Talk about
non-vehicular nightmares! They're separated by concrete parking barriers along the
east side of Guadalupe. I used them once. Ugghh. Please don't say the cycling
crowd has gone so non-vehicular as to prefer a facility ALL on ONE SIDE of the
ROAD! If you take out the barrier, you have the single worst kind of bike facility
known to man--one that has two-way traffic on one side of the street and encourages
all kinds of crazy crossing patterns. If you insert the barrier, then just shoot me
now. Bar parking on both sides, or encourage the cyclists to get out in the lane.
The latter is how I finally coped with Austin's crazy bike lanes (especially on
Speedway).
Frank Krygowki
> Believe it or not, you can have all the
> Masters degrees, Phds, and experience in the world, but it still
> doesn't mean you know it all, and presuming you do is
> dangerous. And it certainly doesn't mean you have a degree in
> common sense.
>
> And as there are lies, damn lies and statistics, it should also
> be noted that assuming you haven't been in an accident yet,
> going by your same argument, it doesn't validate you practising
> safe cycling techniques either ;)
Translation: You may be more intelligent, more educated, more trained,
more experienced and more expert than Nige is, but you still can't teach
him anything. And you may present data that indicates Nige is wrong,
but he doesn't have to believe it.
>
> I've said all I can on this thread, I'll be glad to continue to
> defend my riding technique and give further examples based on my
> conditions via personal email.
Translation: no matter what we say, Nige is going to keep breaking laws
whenever he feels like it. But we're making him feel uncomfortable
about it, so he's going away.
Well, at least we'll have one less advocate of irresponsible cycling
here.
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
Mike Dahmus
1. The Guadalupe facility you mentioned was ripped out several years ago and
there are now one-way bike lanes on each side of the street.
2. I was referring to a completely different street, not near the University
of Texas. It already had two one-way bike lanes, but the bike lanes were
put in many years ago before the city figured out they ought to ban parking
in bike lanes. Lots of our bike lanes are this way - and the bike/ped
program has been gradually prohibiting parking in these existing facilities
while at the same time not building any new ones which allow parking.
Mike Dahmus
<mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> hired an infinite number of monkeys to
write:
And 3, in case you didn't get it from 1 and 2, the "on one side of the street"
comment refers to restriping the road so that there is parking on only one
side of the street; i.e. instead of
|BLWP|CL|CL|BLWP|
BLWP = bike lane (with parking), CL = car lane;
we will have
|P|BL|CL|CL|BL|
P = parking, BL = bike lane (marked as no parking), CL = car lane.
No barriers - just restriping.
Brian D. Potter
Mike Dahmus wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 09:39:05 -0500, Mike Dahmus
> <mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> hired an infinite number of monkeys to
> write:
>
> >On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 05:48:50 GMT, "Brian D. Potter" <1001...@iamerica.net>
> >hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
> >
> >>> We haven't yet lost a vote, however the most recent facilities improvement
> >>> (changing lane configurations and allowing parking only on one side of a
> >>> street in order to have car-free bike lanes) is still up in the air, and the
> >>> behavior of the cyclists on the road in question has a lot to do with it.
> >>
> >>Oh, heaven! I've seen these facilities down by the University of Texas! Talk about
> >>non-vehicular nightmares! They're separated by concrete parking barriers along the
> >>east side of Guadalupe. I used them once. Ugghh. Please don't say the cycling
> >>crowd has gone so non-vehicular as to prefer a facility ALL on ONE SIDE of the
> >>ROAD! If you take out the barrier, you have the single worst kind of bike facility
> >>known to man--one that has two-way traffic on one side of the street and encourages
> >>all kinds of crazy crossing patterns. If you insert the barrier, then just shoot me
> >>now. Bar parking on both sides, or encourage the cyclists to get out in the lane.
> >>The latter is how I finally coped with Austin's crazy bike lanes (especially on
> >>Speedway).
> >
> >1. The Guadalupe facility you mentioned was ripped out several years ago and
> > there are now one-way bike lanes on each side of the street.
Excellent! Good riddance.
>
> >
> >2. I was referring to a completely different street, not near the University
> > of Texas. It already had two one-way bike lanes, but the bike lanes were
> > put in many years ago before the city figured out they ought to ban parking
> > in bike lanes. Lots of our bike lanes are this way - and the bike/ped
> > program has been gradually prohibiting parking in these existing facilities
> > while at the same time not building any new ones which allow parking.
Progress, and considering how Austin is laid out, probably the best that could be done.
>
>
> And 3, in case you didn't get it from 1 and 2,
Now, see, Mike, this is why you get negative responses: people don't like condescension.
And how was I supposed to deduce 3 from 1 & 2 when you made no mention of or allusion to
it? Who knows what logic will be employed when street designers get creative?
> the "on one side of the street"
> comment refers to restriping the road so that there is parking on only one
> side of the street; i.e. instead of
>
> |BLWP|CL|CL|BLWP|
>
> BLWP = bike lane (with parking), CL = car lane;
>
> we will have
>
> |P|BL|CL|CL|BL|
>
> P = parking, BL = bike lane (marked as no parking), CL = car lane.
>
> No barriers - just restriping.
Thank you for the diagram. It actually helped quite a bit. I suppose the width of the
street and the parking lobby make this scheme preferable in some way. However, I've been
arguing against bike lanes here in Tulsa (in part because of my experience in Austin).
"On-street connectors" is the current buzz-word. Still, I'm lobbying for arterials with
wider outside lanes, at least on the streets already scheduled for widening. Anything shy
of an arterial doesn't really need help. Just one opinion among many, but I believe bike
lanes are more psychological tools for the paranoid cyclist than legitimate modifications
to the road.
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
>> And 3, in case you didn't get it from 1 and 2,
>
>Now, see, Mike, this is why you get negative responses: people don't like condescension.
>And how was I supposed to deduce 3 from 1 & 2 when you made no mention of or allusion to
>it? Who knows what logic will be employed when street designers get creative?
It was the part where you assumed (despite the fact that I never named the
street) that the street in question was Guadalupe, and then jumped to the
conclusion that we must therefore be talking about 2-way bike lanes behind
barriers.
Brian D. Potter
"I've seen these KINDS of facilities down by the University of Texas!"
would probably have helped. Your original post said: "changing
lane configurations and allowing parking only on one side of
a
street in order to have car-free bike lanes," which was ambiguous,
and so I latched onto the only example I could think of which fit ALL the
criteria. My bad. But I did get more info out of it.
One must admit, though, there are no such things as CAR FREE bike lanes,
except where they are separate facilities.
Thanks,
BDP
jon winston
Gene Floyd wrote:
>
> > If its come to this then maybe its time to change the law. When you have
> > this many people ignoring a law perhaps it the law that's the problem,
> > not the violators.
> >
> > If its important to you that cyclists obey the law give them a law they
> > will respect like Idaho's title 49 which allows cyclists to treat red
> > light as stop signs and stps signs as yields.
>
> And while we're at it, we can legalize riding on the wrong side of the road and
> driving under the influence too. After all, many people break those laws too.
I don't think those behaviors are legal anywhere because they are unsafe
but treating a red light as a yield is legal in idaho because it is.
Since *most* cyclists disobey the red light rules as they stand I thinks
the law is worth a second look.
Jon
Gene Floyd
particular group of lawbreakers as "most". According to the same people who seem to
be arguing this point, "Most" motorists speed and run redlights too, so should this
behavior be legalized for them also?
jon winston
What town do you live in?
I'd like to put up a web page on Valencia St but I can't find the time. :(
Valencia is a two mile long urban street with a lot of restaurants, book
stores apartments, a bus line and a lot of cars. It used to have four
lanes going in two directions with a painted median in the middle.
Taking the lane was possible but not for the faint of heart or new
cyclists. There were a lot of injuries and more than one death. A few
years ago the city tried to solve the problem by eliminating the median
and widening the curb lanes by one and a half feet. This, if anything,
made things worse by making it harder to justify taking the lane. The
speed of the cars went up and so did collisions.
Four years ago several of us formed a committee within the SF Bike
Coalition to get real bike lanes. What we got after a couple of years
was the removal of a traffic lane, the repainting of a very wide
median/left turn lane, left turn pockets at the intersections and seven
foot wide bike lanes wide enough for two bikers to ride together outside
the door zone. We also reduced the speed limit and retimed the lights.
The overall effect was calmer and smoother traffic with no frantic lane
changes thanks to the left turn pockets and the single lane. Even though
we reduced the apparent car capacity of the street by a half, less than
ten percent of the cars went to other streets. These cars were divided
evenly over three streets so no one street got more than three percent
of the extra traffic. The bike traffic however jumped 177%. There was an
over all reduction of bike car collisions of 25%. The merchants are very
happy and my only concern for the neighborhood is that we have
contributed to making the area safe for Starbucks!
Problems have been bad enforcement of the double parking rules,
especially on a two block stretch where there are video stores and a
restaurant with curbside valet parking. (The overal calming of the cars
in the car alne has made it pretty easy though to move into the car lane
to pass these jerks. Also, confusion sometimes arises when cars try to
turn right and cut off bikers. The bike lanes become dotted one hundred
feet from intersections where right turns are permitted and cars are
supposed to merge safely into what becomes a right turn lane. This
problem is probably due to a combination of poor marking (some arrows
might help) and not enough education on the part of drivers.
Bike lanes to avoid planning for are the ones that push bikes into the
gutter or the door zone and lane on streets that are already calm enough
so that bikes may be *reasonably* expected to take the lane.
Jon
jon winston
Frank Krygowki wrote:
>
> jon winston wrote:
> >
> > If its come to this then maybe its time to change the law. When you have
> > this many people ignoring a law perhaps it the law that's the problem,
> > not the violators.
>
> Another variation on the same theme: "The lawbreaker knows what's best."
>
> Should we extend that to riding bikes without lights at night? Recent
> data suggests that roughly 50% of adult cycling fatalities in Florida
> come from riding at night without lights. But hey, those "headlight"
> laws are widely ignored. By your standards, we might as well just do
> away with them.
Hmm. The only time this law is enforced in San Francisco is during
Critical Mass. (Which is tonight, by the way!)
Jon
jon winston
Gene Floyd wrote:
>
> Judging by the debate about this subject, I'd really hesitate to classify this
> particular group of lawbreakers as "most". According to the same people who seem to
> be arguing this point, "Most" motorists speed and run redlights too, so should this
> behavior be legalized for them also?
>
I disagree with those who say that cars run red lights as much as bikes.
All types of road users user break the law but they are usually
different laws that get broken for different users. Cars, for instance,
tend to speed a lot and there has been an argument made that since if
its safe to go over the speed limit and eighty five percent of the cars
do it on a particular road, then the limit should be raised. This is the
law in California. (I'm of the feeling that, on streets like this,
traffic calming should be looked at first so that cars won't be cued to
go faster.)
Jon
Brian D. Potter
>
> What town do you live in?
Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's in the same liveability and size range as Austin (before Austin exploded
about 5 years ago into an overcrowded former college town metropolis of about a million).
Tulsa's highway system was well-conceived and well-designed--for cars. In fact, the total
design of the city, outside of downtown, favors fast auto-travel on mile-grid arterials which
feed bypasses and crosstown expresses in abundance. We suffer from urban/suburban sprawl in a
way only the midlands seems to favor. Both these factors weigh against cycle-commuting. I'm
busy trying to upset pre-conceived notions 'roun hyere.
Last year, Oklahoma had only four cyclist deaths, and four has been the average for the last
decade, so we're not competing with New York for Most Dangerous Transportation Area. But one
problem we've had, even with a pro-bike mayor, is encouraging cycling transportation.
Transportation funds keep getting funnelled into the trail system, which favors recreational
cycling over serious commuting. For the area, the RiverTrails project is really exceptional
and has become such a source of pride that the local politicians have a hard time thinking
beyond it.
RJD9999
In article <rlCAOS+wJhcBpb...@4ax.com>, Mike wrote:
<< << Drivers and cyclists starting from a dead stop at a green in today's
world typically look for cross-traffic. Thus while abominable, running a light
a second or two after it has turned red is safer (and IMO 'less lawbreaking')
than running it in the middle of the red cycle. >>
>
Let me rephrase. Red light runners don't typically look either. In fact, if you
watch them you will see a fixated gaze looking straight ahead. Seldom will a
consideration that there might be cross traffic enter their tiny little minds.
As to the opinion that it is safer to run lights after only a few seconds
rather than later in the light cycle, that position is laughable and not borne
out by anything but your own perceptions of the situation.
Rick
Brian D. Potter
RJD9999 wrote:
Rick,
I have to agree with this. A few nights ago, I anticipated a light and turned
right immediately as it turned green. I know better, but thought I had cleared
myself. One of those 2-second red light runners, who hadn't been in the
intersection when I turned but somehow managed to beat all the cross-traffic
anyway, nearly flattened me like a pancake. Fortunately for quick reflexes on
both our parts and heightened visibility on mine (tail light, reflectors, etc.).
They swerved left, I swerved right, everybody continued on. If they'd been drunk,
I'd be in the hospital or morgue. Consequently, I'm having a hard time buying the
"abominable but less law-breaking" angle on 2-second violators.
BDP
David Cásseres
<mdahNO_%_SPAMmus@iNO_%_SPAMo.com> (a finite number of morons) wrote:
>(And please don't pull out the "cyclists can't hurt anybody but themselves"
>argument. I almost wrecked my car last year trying not to kill a cyclist who
>ran a red light near the University of Texas).
So, in your fascinating one-time incident the cyclist DID NOT hurt anyone,
right? It was you, not the cyclist, who ALMOST wrecked your car, right?
And in your mind, this anecdote totally invalidates the fact that cyclists
are much less dangerous than motorists, no matter how many laws they
break.
--
David Cásseres
Exclaimer: Hey!
Frank Krygowki
So what are you saying? Should the requirements for bike headlights be
removed from the books?
--
Frank Krygowski frkr...@cc.ysu.edu
Jon Winston
Frank Krygowki wrote:
>
> > > Should we extend that to riding bikes without lights at night? Recent
> > > data suggests that roughly 50% of adult cycling fatalities in Florida
> > > come from riding at night without lights. But hey, those "headlight"
> > > laws are widely ignored. By your standards, we might as well just do
> > > away with them.
> >
> > Hmm. The only time this law is enforced in San Francisco is during
> > Critical Mass. (Which is tonight, by the way!)
>
> So what are you saying? Should the requirements for bike headlights be
> removed from the books?
I don't really care if the law is on the books or not, especially if its
not enforced. As I said earlier in this thread, I prefer to leave the
lights off late at night in bad neighborhoods although I have two
blinkies in the rear and a headlight and blinkie up front.
Its a personal choice as far as I'm concerned.
Jon
Mike Dahmus
hired an infinite number of monkeys to write:
Your assumption that I believe that cyclists are as dangerous as motorists is
incorrect. I was arguing the implied belief among many cyclists that they do
not cause a non-trivial amount of danger to others when they break traffic
laws.
Gene Floyd
with that for the rest of their life. For most people, that would be a pretty
heavy burden to have to carry even if it wasn't their fault.
Riley Geary
So is suicide--but does that give anyone the "right" to involve someone
else's involuntary assistance in such a recklessly self-destructive
endeavor (e.g. an unsuspecting motorist in these types of cases)?
--
Riley Geary
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
jon winston
Riley Geary wrote:
> > I don't really care if the law is on the books or not, especially if
> its
> > not enforced. As I said earlier in this thread, I prefer to leave the
> > lights off late at night in bad neighborhoods although I have two
> > blinkies in the rear and a headlight and blinkie up front.
> >
> > Its a personal choice as far as I'm concerned.
>
> So is suicide--but does that give anyone the "right" to involve someone
> else's involuntary assistance in such a recklessly self-destructive
> endeavor (e.g. an unsuspecting motorist in these types of cases)?
>
Hey, I've had bottles thrown at me because I drew attention to myself in
a bad neighborhood late at night. This is a neighborhood where it could
have just as easily been bullets instead of bottles. Luckily I was able
to get away from the perpetrators befor I loss all of the air in my
tires. Now when I pass through there after a late night's work I leave
the lights off and I wear dark clothes. Sometimes on balance its better
that way.
Jon
jon winston
Let me add a PS to that. This *discussion* group could do with a lot
less self righteousness on this and many other issues from the likes of
you and others.
Jon