There I said it.

I’m in favor of the Idaho stop legislation, but I feel like the best way I as a cyclist can advocate for my chosen mode of transit is by displaying a little common courtesy (and as others have pointed out, predictability) in traffic.

I took it upon me to address this topic on my blog

http://holierthanyou.blogspot.com/2009/04/pedestrian-cyclist-collisions.html

3-ton cars don’t need to preserve their 100,000 watts of output in order for motoring to remain a viable transportation option. Motorists are able to physically survive a drive that includes lots of stops and starts (see freeways at rush hours). Cyclists–not so much. Cyclists put out 100 watts, and every dead stop requires us to red line it. Cyclists can only endure so much red-lining–exhaustion will and does suppress urban cycling.

So what do we as a community do? Few cyclists will ride if they must stop and start just like 100,000-watt cars can and do. Fewer cyclists and little further growth in cycling means more motorized transportation as a result. More pollution. More oil-wars. More obesity and higher health care expenditures for the state. Is it really selfish to change the law to make the physics of cycling and the law more congruent? Is it really selfish to make cycling easier and more attractive to as many interested persons as practicable?

Remaining in motion when practicable–efficient cycling–is only “self-indulgent and counterproductive” for cyclists who happen to live where traffic laws are 100% about the car, and where the needs of non-motorized transportation are willfully neglected by law. You know, places like San Francisco.

In more progressive cycling communities than ours, like Idaho, rolling stops are legal, predictable, and efficient. Imagine that–the physics and the law are in congruence!

Hmm…maybe cyclists could get 10,000 people together in a bicycle coalition of some sort, and work for years and years to change traffic law and street design to better balance the needs of motorized and non-motorized traffic! That’s what you support, right? Oh, wait–that kind of change is illegal here. And has been for 1,040 days.

The streets are chaotic under the anti-cycling status-quo, and shall remain so until redesign and reform come to San Francisco.

You’ve spent an awful lot of energy rationalizing why your law-breaking is somehow good – but at its core, it’s really about preserving your momentum (effort). That’s not noble; it’s selfish. Why can’t a motorist use the same exact argument in Europe, where they spent a pretty penny for the fuel that accelerated them to speed?

Gains have been made by cyclists for a lot of reasons, but I don’t believe for a moment that gains have been made by cyclists running red lights and stop signs. Trying to spin this behavior as some from of civil disobedience is amusing at best.

One of the biggest obstacles to fully achieving our shared dream of cycling being treated as a valid form of transportation worthy of equal standing with automobiles is the bad PR generated by those that think they are above the law. It’s easy to dismiss the rights, needs and concerns of scofflaws.

In my opinion, your behavior as you describe it is self-indulgent and counterproductive.

Every time you run a stop sign or blow a red light or otherwise break the law, you are giving ammunition to those that say cyclists are scofflaws, dangerous and irresponsible, and hence unworthy of respect and that cycling is not a “serious” form of transportation. Quite simply your behavior is damaging to the cause of cycling as a viable form of transportation in the city.

We cyclists have many goals: to get more folks to want to ride: to move public policy in a more cycling friendly direction; and to enlist drivers and cops as friends/supporters rather than hostile adversaries; to gain the respect and “place at the table” that we deserve. None of these goals are served by “outlaw” cycling.

Your opinion that obeying the traffic laws somehow puts you at risk reeks of serious rationalization to me. I’m not claiming perfect behavior, but I think that obeying traffic laws while cycling makes me a safer rider because my actions are predictable: I stop for stop signs, red lights etc. I signal when turning, take the lane when required for safety, stay out of the turn lane if I’m not turning, and otherwise conform to the rules of the road. How could that possibly make me less safe?

If we want the rights granted to us by laws, we have the responsibility to obey those very same laws.

This is much lower than bike-car and (especially) ped-car, but there are a few factors that make bike-ped collisions significantly under-reported including the fact that most bike-ped injuries are minor and that the MTA systemically under-reports ped-x injuries. This is a fact that the MTA explicitly makes clear in their report. There’s also an interesting article in the 2005 academic journal “Accident analysis and prevention” about the serious under-reporting of pedestrian injuries generally in SF.

What these statistics tell me is that cars are far and away the most dangerous vehicles on the road but that serious injuries and sometimes death still results from bike-ped collisions. The “minor” injuries that result from most unreported bike-ped collisions are still an assault on the safety and security of pedestrians. Like I said, just because getting punched in the face isn’t as bad as getting shot doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t care about folk getting punched in the face.

My point is that bicyclists have the potential to injure and infuriate pedestrians when they ride recklessly and without regard for the laws. When you act like that you become a less deadly version of the ‘crazy driver’ who thinks that their mode of transit gives them ownership of the road, all other users be damned. And when you’re dealing with pedestrians the whole “greener than thou so therefore I own the road” argument holds no water.

And yes, pedestrians regularly act like jackasses and we also present a danger to bicyclists when we do so. We need to all realize that the streets are a public commons and start acting like people who use other forms of transit are human beings.

It’s not an inconsequential question, nor is it unfair to ask of those making such an assertion.

I fully and actively support the bicycle as a transportation mode over the car. But I am confounded by bicyclists (the bad apples if you will, though a lot of them there are) who don’t show any respect to pedestrians. To be honest, it tempers my advocacy for bicycling.

Without questioning anybody’s personal motives in any particular situation, I always wonder why somebody who deals with dangerous bullying from cars would turn around and exact the same sort of behavior on road users more vulnerable than they are.

“We should decide which is the worst offense based on which is a greater threat it is to innocent lives….”

and

“I am neither as powerful nor as dangerous as a motorist behind the wheel.”

While I agree with the general sentiment here, that the fundamental problem is that our streets are designed for cars über-alles, I think its important to remember that from a pedestrian’s perspective cars may be murderous but bicycles are still dangerous.

All too often I think bicyclists lose sight of the very real threat that they pose to pedestrians. Perhaps I’m repeating myself but I just came back to my house angry because in the time between my fist post and now I had to literally jump away from a cyclist who was making a no-stop right turn off Valencia.

Sure getting knocked to the ground by a bicyclist isn’t near as bad as getting run over by a car, just like getting punched in the face by a mugger isn’t as bad as getting shot in the head. But neither are things that pedestrians should have to face. And it’s certainly not an argument for allowing bicyclists to push into the right of way of pedestrians (or cars, for that matter). No bicyclist thinks that they’re causing problems for pedestrians but a large part of that is because, in our vehicle-centered city, most people forget we exist.

Let’s work together to make the streets safer for all of us. And please, please, please notice pedestrians.

No marginalized group has ever gained its victory by avoiding confrontation with their opponents.

We should decide which is the worst offense based on which is a greater threat it is to innocent lives. Speeding by cars, even “minor speeding” is a direct threat to life.

I treat stop signs as yields while bicycling. I do not think bikes should run red lights and do not do so myself. However, a bike running a red light is clearly less of a threat to life than a car speeding.

I think the author’s attitude is not constructive. It is self-destructive to refuse to wear a helmet, and it is self-righteously self-destructive to say “It’s not a moral imperative to buy a commodity that offers meager protection in order to be critical of a ridiculously hostile road structure.”

Any argument that begins with the premise that bikes should operate exactly as cars is irrational. Cars put out 1,000 times more energy than cyclists, weigh exponentially more, kill tens of thousands more people, and so on. I am neither as powerful nor as dangerous as a motorist behind the wheel. Legitimate rules of the road will concede these realities when balancing the needs of motorized and non-motorized transportation on our shared streets.

Early in the 20th century, San Francisco voluntarily retrofitted its decades-old roads and laws to accommodate the private motorist. Today’s cyclist-citizens deserve the same accommodation from our shared government. Yet peaceful change to that end has been illegal in SF for 1,039 days and counting.

Cyclists in more progressive and better-adjusted cities like Portland are by all accounts more lawful and courteous than here, because their needs are being met legally. As long as the law continues to work against SF cyclists, SF cyclists will continue to work against the law. Motorists can smugly enjoy the entire road and wag their fingers at cyclists shunted to the sidelines, but the unruliness on the streets here won’t change until we eliminate the root of the problem–the brittle, irrational, and environmentally damaging autocentrism that dominates SF traffic management and street design.