Curiously; in France many red-lights are excepted for bicycles. There's often a special, permanent "orange" signal that applies to bikes, thus they are explicitly encouraged to run the red light. If I understand well, this was in agreement with drivers, who were annoyed to wait for all the bikes to start slowly after the light turns green.
I think that if you ever try to use a bicycle in transit (I mean, seriously over a few days, not for 5 minutes), you will see that it is essentially impossible to do correctly. Sometimes you have to turn left across many lanes of fast cars, what are you supposed to do? Inevitably you take the least dangerous path.
> Sometimes you have to turn left across many lanes of fast cars, what are you supposed to do?
one of the great things about biking is that you get to pick and choose between car rules and pedestrian rules depending on which set fits the situation best. whenever I am uncomfortable making a left turn, I pull off to the right and cross the intersection like a pedestrian.
Oh, I hate that! Bikes are transit, and are not supposed to leave the transit in the middle of their way, especially not for negotiating an intersection. Bailing out of the bike and going on foot with the pedestrians does not count as "doing the correct thing", just that using the bike is impossible. Besides, it is annoying for the pedestrians.
Hard to justify when safety is the main argument. Yeah, $200 fine for cyclists would be a good deterrent, but maybe then it should be a $1000 or $2000 fine for a car doing the same thing [0].
If you want to argue that cyclists should face the same penalties as drivers, you have to make an argument prioritizing safety, but something like "respect for the law".
[0] Or - $200 plus points on your license. That's the way it works in many jurisdictions: the motorist rightly faces a bigger penalty even though the top-line dollar amount is the same.
Bike infrastructure in a lot of European cities demonstrates that it can work. American drivers are much more polite than European ones yet kill more cyclists per capita.
I don't know about American drivers, but you certainly shouldn't say e.g. Swedish and French drivers are equally impolite.
Why? They are different crimes. Cars are faster and heavier, thus will injure someone much more when misused.
I'm receptive to this, but I doubt it would ever be implemented.
If one is driving, and a bicycle runs the red light and jumps in front of them, they’ll hard brake (at least most of the people). This means they have a very high chance of being rear-ended by the next car, and if the driver is not very experienced, then can lost control and hit other lane / objects and people at the side of the road.
As a similar example, we don’t allow untrained and unprotected people into construction sites with heavy machinery. Saying “hey, let me walk under this pile driver, it is my life on the line!” isn”t going to cut it in the US.
Now, if you prefer the penalty to differ due to the potential for injury, you need to get the politicians to change the laws so they are not the same crime, or so that the penalty scales due to some formula in the law related to the potential for injury.
2. Drivers commit as many, if not more traffic violations than cyclists—and the consequences are much greater.
3. Your opinion would almost certainly change if you had to commute by bicycle.
Bicyclists (I am one) apparently want to have their cake and eat it too: driving all over the place (sidewalk, street, wrong way, etc) while at the same time wanting drivers to always be at fault for collisions.
As a driver, I think all roads should be closed for anyone else but cyclists. I'm a driver, you can't argue with my point, as I represent all drivers. "As an X person" is really good for discourse..
I also notice them from drivers all the time, as well. Is it stupid when a cyclist runs a stop sign? Yes. The same as a car doing it. And people are notorious for not stopping well if they are going to take a right. Such that we design for the behavior with round abouts. Car or bike.
Meanwhile, both times I've been hit, the car turned right not checking that there was a biker in the bike lane right next to them.
The GC seems to be a comment replying to a lot of sentiment in this thread which is basically "the driver is always at fault". Given what I'm sure we've all seen from cyclists (and the things I've done as a cyclist), I can confirm that this is definitely not the case.
I used to cross a bridge to get to work. There was a shared pedestrian/cycle pathway, about 6 feet wide, with cycles yielding to pedestrians. I remember walking across that one time with my family, including my daughter who was about 3. This one jerk rang no bell and blew past my entire family, about a foot away, at 20+ MPH. I didn't even hear him coming from behind.
3 year olds are prone to random movements. If she had moved by a foot or two at exactly the wrong time, it would have been a very bad situation.
On the plus side, the cyclist behind the asshole (who properly rang his bell and passed us) stopped at the end of the bridge to apologize for the first guy.
In another case, a cyclist blew by my at full speed down a steep hill on the sidewalk, again coming stupidly close to an accident (for both of us) for no reason.
As a driver, I constantly see cyclists on the wrong side of the street, back and forth between the sidewalk and not, and not obeying stop signs or stop lights (let alone other rules). I’ve never even heard of one being ticketed.
I’m all for new bike lanes that are separated from traffic. But honestly before a city encourages more bike riders I really think they need to dramatically step up enforcement of traffic laws against them. If running a red light or stop sign is a $200 ticket in a car, it should be a $200 ticket on a bike. Otherwise it is just unsafe for everyone involved.