It's kind of interesting ...
/ dtp /
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Date: Fri, 06 Nov 1998 18:39:44 +0000
From: Peter Haight <peterh@sapros.com>
Subject: My gross inaccuracies.
I would like to take back my statement that 95% of motorists come to a
complete stop at intersections. This was way off. I sat by an intersection
for about an hour this evening as Jym Dyer suggested.
While I would say the results are still inaccurate, the are probably not
grossly inaccurate.
I live in Berkeley and the intersection I picked was Milvia and Channing
which is also a bike route intersection.
473 cars went through the intersection
67 bikes went through the intersection
Cars
- ----
219 (46%) come to a complete stop
246 (52%) were rolling 'stops'
8 (2%) cars did what I call 'slowing down' but would probably be better defined
as 'unsafe behaviour'.
Note: I would bet that most cars that came to a complete stop only did so
because there were other cars at the intersection whose turn it was to go.
In fact, most of the 8 'unsafe' cars were ones that did rolling stops when
there was another stopped car at the intersection whose turn it was to go.
I'll probably do this exercise again at a less traffic intersection and I
would bet less than 10% of the cars would come to complete stops.
Bicycles
- --------
7 (10%) bicycles came to a complete stop
24 (34%) bicycles were rolling 'stops'
26 (39%) bicycles did what I call 'slowing down'. I'm not going to
say that this
is 'unsafe behaviour'. I'm definitely unsure. This was definitely a faster
speed than how fast cars who did 'rolling stops' were going, but not by
much.
10 (15%) bicyles made no apparent effort to slow down.
I am definitely less sure about my position that bicyclists need to stop at
intersections. I think more bicycles should have stopped at this particular
intersection because the cars get in this mode where they are taking turns
and when they are doing that, they are only watching the car that they
expect to go next and totally miss bicycles that zip through out of turn.
I can see, though, that even the 'slowing down' bicycles were at what is
probably a safe speed at an intersection where there are no cars.
Basically, I still totally understand Supervisor Kaufman's statement, but I
think it is not a useful observation. Watching bikes at an intersection you
are struck by what seems to be a completely blase attitute towards the law.
What that statement fails to take into account, though, is the relative
speeds of the different vehicles. You could say that at least 85% of the
bikers were behaving in a safe manner, though compared with 98% of the cars,
that record is nothing to brag about.
But, perhaps the point I want to make is if you look at the statistics you
can see why motorists get so upset with bikers. Very few people can handle
it when someone breaks a law that others are obeying. While it may be the
case that the bicycles are behaving in a manner that is just as safe as
cars, the _perception_ will still be that bicycles are breaking the law
while the cars are not. Most people would not consider the cars doing
'rolling stops' to be breaking the law, but would look at a biker doing what
I call 'slowing down' and say, "look at the @$#! maniac".
All this really speaks to is better education for both parties.