[max pong]
>I am not convinced.
This belonged in a private message. You don't know me and you've
never seen me ride. No further response.
>Bicyclists rarely obey stop signs, or
>traffic signals for that matter.
As a pedestrian crossing with the light, I'd need my digits and some
of my hairs to count the number of times a car turning right on red
without stopping first almost got me.
One time, two cars came to a new red light, one behind the other. I
started crossing the street. The second car then pulled out, entered
my lane, and ran the red. Hey, the driver was probably right, I
wasn't in any danger.
As a bicyclist, I've developed a third eye for judging a car's
direction -- signaling a turn may not matter for other cars, but it's
crucial information for people moving at a different speed,
especially if you intend to Accelerate for Right of Way.
I have a fourth eye for figuring whether a Muni driver will see me as
an obstacle or a partner. Robert Parks's attitude fortunately is not
rare. There are some Muni drivers out there who will pass close in a
single lane rather than trail or pass properly, and some who will
pass near the intersection and dive for the stop, forcing the bike to
stop with them/behind them/in cross traffic, if the light was
changing. (That experience is what brought me and other bicyclists to
question the official descriptions of Rebecca Kresse's accident.)
>From comments I've heard, no matter the configuration of the road,
some Muni drivers expect bicyclists to ride "out of the way." In many
situations, this is not safe, and under the California Vehicle Code,
those situations are specifically exempted from "ride as far to the
right as practicable," **at the bicyclists discretion.** There's
another needed education campaign.
If you believe a bicycle is using this law against you, for whatever
reason, please reconsider that assumption. Class biases and speed
expectations make second-guessing the bicyclist tricky, and the law
says the decision is the bicyclist's to make specifically because
most bicycle hazards manifest themselves only at a bicycle's scale
and velocity.
The green arrows on the street, if you've seen them, are intended to
defend a safe lane position for a bicycle. Again, this position is
based on extrapolation of the CVC, this time by the Department of
Parking and Traffic.
* * *
As a driver, I have encountered bicycles all over the city, and only
once have I seen a bicycle claim right of way over me at a 4-way stop
when I was clearly at the intersection first, and proceeding through
it. Scared me to death. It stands out in my head as one of a handful
of "I could have killed you," compared to uncountable "you could have
killed me."
This fits with Robert Parks's "dead right" saying. My point is, the
number of times I've avoided a "dead right" situation is way up there
for encounters with cars, and only now becoming visible for bikes.
As a bicyclist, I am careful to obey right of way. 4-way stops are
the most confusing, because very often drivers will wait for me to go
no matter who gets to go first ... sometimes I have to wave people
through. If they wave me through, if in any way I feel they're
telling me to "go ahead, you're going to break the law anyway," I
insist that they go first.
I have witnessed bicyclists take the following exceptions:
** treat stop signs as yield signs
** treat stop lights as stop signs
** (rare) treat stop lights as yield signs
There are also the blatantly frightening "move it or lose it"
situations but in my experience those are as frequent as similar
behavior among drivers. Great personal harm comes from such behavior,
no genius required for that one.
As far as I'm concerned -- as someone who tries to follow the laws,
and who uses most of the different modes to get around -- none of
those exceptions are the equivalent of a car running a red light or
speeding, in terms of real danger or environmental stress.
I think there are great opportunities for improvement in the city's
bicycle infrastructure, starting with figuring how to treat a bike
trip equally on the street. What we have now, it's unacceptable:
bicycles being a poor, slow fit in the car-based designs; bicyclists
dancing with traffic signals where it feels safe, to cut trip times;
drivers crying FOUL! and city planners saying "bikes just aren't that
important."
In the past I've made the point that if all the lights in the city
were timed for bicycles instead of cars, red light running would be
RAMPANT among drivers, and would be cause for changing the timing. As
it is, there are 5 or 6 block sections around where I live where I
can't go more than a block at a time on my bike because the cycles
are tightly timed for 25 mph.
I can complain but the streets aren't meant for me. If I or others
react against the discriminatory design through riding practice,
we're criminalized, even though the public safety threat is fairly
small. When we took our complaints to the City, we were ignored,
before last year. Now, the City is recognizing that 1) current
bicyclists are people, who matter, use the streets regularly, and
vote, and 2) future bicyclists are many more of the same.
Part of that is because there are more bicyclists, and more
bicyclists on the Board of Supes or on the staff. Part is Critical
Mass. And part, I think, is a glimmer of understanding that high
speed car streets are not pleasant for the city, and will become less
pleasant the more people are pushed toward driving a car instead of
using bikes or transit.
All this, basically unrelated to Muni, submitted for what it's worth,
in the name of a communicative foundation for balanced, effective
transportation policy.
/ dtp /
-- David Powers san francisco ca usa fax 415 436.9141
chromo@sirius.com <http://www.sirius.com/~chromo/screed/> --
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