Long story short, I was an idiot cyclist thinking I had calculated everything[1], when in fact, I hadn't. Someone in a car going northbound at about 60mph on Sansome had to slam on their brakes to save my life as I crossed from the right bicycle lane to chestnut. I was super lucky they were watching, and their brakes worked, and that they had enough reaction time.
From then on I have never ran stoplights. The problem is that, as they say, the first one is free. You might start out as a cyclist running a simple stop sign on a dead street. But as you get more comfortable, the temptation is to run ever more complex street lights. In my case, I only did it when I didn't see any cars. The problem with intersections like this is there are cars you cannot see.
[1] - Things to calculate:
1. Southeast bound car traffic on Embarcadero.
2. Whether there were southeast bound muni trains on the Embarcadero dividing route.
3. Whether there were northwest bound muni trains on the Embarcadero dividing route.
4. Cars behind you on northeast bound Embarcadero ( I had to cross from the bikelane on the left )
5. Northbound cars on Sansome. This is what I missed.
I don't know who needs to hear this, but the driver who gets mad at you for running a light might be a fellow or former cyclist.
There is nowhere you gotta be that is so important that you should be committing moving violations to get there. The rules of the road apply to you ever bit as much as a car, and you have absolutely no moral authority at all if you won't even follow the goddamned traffic laws.
You are not only risking your own life, you're making the rest of us look bad, and creating hostile drivers that other people have to deal with.
I don't run lights myself, but I don't agree with the theory of perfect symmetry of moving violations. The risk one poses to others by breaking traffic laws is different for a pedestrian, a cyclist, a car, a semi-trailer, and a jumbo jet. Insisting that all violations matter the same is nonsensical.
There's a problem with that. Lots of people who regularly drive cars but never cycle see cyclists flagrantly ignoring the law on a regular basis. It's easy to come to the conclusion that the reason cycling is so dangerous is because cyclists would rather throw themselves into oncoming traffic rather than dealing with the inconvenience of having to stop at stop lights.
And when there are pushes for regulations to make cycling safer, they roll their eyes and vote against it, even when they're simple, effective, cheap measures.
The seemingly widespread belief among cyclists that they don't need to follow the rules of the road is, in my opinion, a large part of the reason Americans are so opposed to changing said rules to make cycling safer. There are a very large number of Americans who believe the primary reason cyclists get hurt is because the cyclist was doing something dangerous.
> Lots of people who regularly drive cars but never cycle see cyclists flagrantly ignoring the law on a regular basis
They also see many more cars flagrantly ignoring the law on a regular basis. On a normal late afternoon, I can stand outside the local supermarket and see 20+ cars jumping red lights, obstructing junctions, sitting on pedestrian crossings, etc. within half an hour.
> cyclists would rather throw themselves into oncoming traffic rather than dealing with the inconvenience of having to stop at stop lights.
I have seen maybe once or twice in a decade a driver running a red light. I see about 1 in 10 cyclists running a red light. The proportions aren't even close.
Ah. Thanks for the data. Now that you mention it, I realize that plenty of drivers run red lights regularly. And yet I very rarely registered it as an emergency situation, especially compared to cyclists. What is going on?!
* Some cyclists blatantly run a red light in the middle of the cycle, oftentimes out of nowhere. Overall, perceived as unpredictable behavior.
* Some drivers tend to run the yellow, and sometimes pass through the intersection a bit after the red has been on. It just happens that the red cycles overlap a bit, then the other drivers are still stopped, and alert for the road to clear. While annoying to lose 500ms of the start, it is fairly predictable and rarely leads to sudden brake slamming.
My observation of your observations and other observations like it is that the observer chooses a narrow definition of "jumping the lights" that suits their own biases.
Specifically, the issue is with Amber lights. The highway code says:
AMBER means ‘Stop’ at the stop line. You may go on only if the AMBER appears after you have crossed the stop line or are so close to it that to pull up might cause an accident
Observing car driving habits in London, an average of 2-3 cars break this rule every time a light cycles from green to red. This behaviour is legally the same as jumping the light on red. Cyclists are far less likely to break this rule (they're slower across the junction and are aware that that puts them in danger from the other lights going green).
If you factor in all those cars into your assessment, you'll probably find that cyclists are not worse than cars at obeying the law around traffic lights.
I'm going with your definition of "jumping the lights" because that's what I was taught many years ago. I'd also include "people who enter a controlled junction with no clear exit" since they end up beyond the red light without being able to move - that's the situation at our local supermarket.
Normally end up with a bus in the bus lane and 3-4 cars sat in the junction across the pedestrian crossing on every light change at peak time.
Except if you observe a junction for a short while you'll see that in general people drive through even if there is no chance it would cause an accident.
/devils advocate
The loophole for a cyclist is that they could swing their leg off the bike and magically become a pedestrian, cross the stop line, get back on, and legally ride away across the junction regardless of lights. Given that swinging your leg off the bike makes no reasonable difference to anything, why get annoyed if they don't bother with that part?
Isn't it just like claiming a general exemption on all amber lights because doing anything might cause an accident?
I’m not really certain where I stand on that, but several thoughts come to mind.
It’s If a bicyclist and a driver approach a four way stop and the driver runs it, he can kill the bicyclist. If the bicyclist runs it, the driver can kill the bicyclist. While the risk is not symmetrical the outcome is the same.
One would think that the party with more risk would be less likely to run the stop sign but in my experience (which is probably not typical world wide) in the Bay Area the opposite is true. Although admittedly it seems the law just isn’t enforced here. Maybe unequal laws would more likely be enforced and some combination of personal risk plus enforcement would achieve the desired outcome.
Additionally many bicyclists are also drivers. So it might be prudent to penalize them for the behavior equally so that it discourages the behavior in general and removes dangerous drivers more easily; assuming their behavior on different vehicles correlates.
I add another point. All cyclists are also pedestrians. Maybe not in the Bay Area but pedestrians often run traffic lights when there are no approaching vehicles. A cyclist feels closer to a pedestrian than to a driver in my experience. So, no traffic, no danger, run the traffic light. The same cyclist (and pedestria) will stop when driving a car.
As someone who runs red lights from time to time both as a pedestrian and cyclist I more or less think this is the general view, especially if we take into account that bicycle lanes, at least in my country, often are linked to the pedestrian lights. I would never run a light in a car and if I ride my bike on the road I behave as a car.
Another imo. important part of this is the (perceived) risk of running a red light. If I run a red light on my bicycle I yield for everyone, i.e. my speed is low and I only have to watch for cars that go straight through the crossing which are easy to predict. Basically no need to interact with anyone, simply watch out for cars. Following the lights is the opposite, my speed is generally higher and I have to interact with turning cars. All crashes involving cars that I've been in have either been cars that should have yielded when turning or cars that are blowing through stop/yield signs. This is generally how bicyclists get hurt and I mainly see it as an infrastructure issue. The problem is that infrastructure is relatively expensive to change and so the blame often seem to focus on the cyclist for "not following the rules" or "not wearing a helmet" and nothing really seems to change.
Yes, that's it. Actually infrastructure did change in the last 30 years (roundabouts, etc) but to make cars safer, not bicycles. Those improvements were quite successful. Unfortunately they bring cars closer to bicycles any time they narrow the road. Old style intersections like the ones in the article suffer from the constant bearing problem but the cyclist can usually see a car coming from the other road. A car approaching from behind doesn't have to steer toward the side of the road where the cyclist is. With roundabouts and narrow lanes, not much so.
Modern roads are also much more dangerous for pro riders. Check how many crashes there are in a bunch because of infrastructure built for cars. That was not the case in the 90s.
There are also pedestrians in the mix - so a cyclist running a red light can still pose a serious hazard to other people. In the Bay Area there have been cases of pedestrians killed, as well as serious injuries such as broken legs or arms.
I'd also worry about bicycle-vs-bicycle collisions. Maybe density is too low to make this terribly likely, but it doesn't sound like a scenario that would go well either.
Oh wow that's interesting, I live in Washington State and I didn't know that we're getting the Idaho stop in October. It'll be an interesting change...
I have seen 3 accidents and maybe 100 near misses involving cyclists and have been in a few myself. In all of them, it was the cyclists fault.
Cyclists may have higher risks, but that doesn't seem to stop us from doing stupid dangerous things all the time. Although in fairness most near accidents I have seen are vagrants crossing a busy intersection without waiting for a green, seemingly with the intention of being run over.
The problem with these threads I find is they end up in anecdotes between cyclists and car drivers. I don't doubt you, I know there are idiots using all modes of transport but from years of cycling in different cities I can counter your points with a lot of my own involving car drivers acting incredibly irresponsibly and dangerously.
When I drive in San Francisco I spend most of my effort watching out for bicyclists and pedestrians. Cars not as much, first they are easier to see. Lower percentage of stupid. Big enough that they tend not to come from unexpected places.
I do that because I want to get out of this life without maiming or killing someone. I'm old enough to know it's long game and to know people that have accidentally killed people. And you don't want to go there. You might think that if it's not your fault it won't fuck with you. Trust me it will.
I used to rationalize it by considering myself a "pedestrian" when I ran red lights while the pedestrian crossing signal was green. Never did it without the crossing signal "cheat" though.
In the end it's the doors that got me, and it wasn't even the parked cars. After that I cut my losses and don't cycle any more.
In my opinion, cyclists should treat red lights like stop signs. Come to a stop, yes, but it's often easy to see if it's safe to proceed. Traffic lights are there to make cars safer. It's completely unfair to slow down cyclists unnecessarily as a result.
Indeed it was. Even crossing with traffic lights is sometimes a harrowing experience as there are cars behind you that sometimes are going 30-40 mph on that turn.
Long story short, I was an idiot cyclist thinking I had calculated everything[1], when in fact, I hadn't. Someone in a car going northbound at about 60mph on Sansome had to slam on their brakes to save my life as I crossed from the right bicycle lane to chestnut. I was super lucky they were watching, and their brakes worked, and that they had enough reaction time.
From then on I have never ran stoplights. The problem is that, as they say, the first one is free. You might start out as a cyclist running a simple stop sign on a dead street. But as you get more comfortable, the temptation is to run ever more complex street lights. In my case, I only did it when I didn't see any cars. The problem with intersections like this is there are cars you cannot see.
[1] - Things to calculate:
1. Southeast bound car traffic on Embarcadero.
2. Whether there were southeast bound muni trains on the Embarcadero dividing route.
3. Whether there were northwest bound muni trains on the Embarcadero dividing route.
4. Cars behind you on northeast bound Embarcadero ( I had to cross from the bikelane on the left )
5. Northbound cars on Sansome. This is what I missed.