Cyclists: Traffic Scofflaws
This summer, I started bicycling to work a couple of times a week. On my 40-minute rides, I’ve made a couple of observations. First, there really are a lot of people who bike to work, at least here in Washington, D.C. I often find myself riding in tow with other cycling commuters, some wearing spandex outfits and others pedaling in their office clothes. Second, almost none of these people seems to obey any traffic law whatsoever. Red lights, stop signs—most bicyclists treat them as if they don’t even exist.
I’m guilty of this behavior myself. Although I find that I do stop at two kinds of intersections: the busy ones where I might get killed, and the quiet ones where one or two drivers sit waiting, patiently, for a red light to turn. In the latter situation, I figure the drivers will eventually pass me and yell at me. Most bicyclists I talk to have their own idiosyncratic, and usually self-centered, opinions of when or whether traffic laws apply to them.
Where does this pugnacious attitude come from? The physical demands of cycling are partly responsible. Stopping for a red light means losing momentum and then huffing to get back up to speed again. There’s also a little self-righteousness at play. Some bicyclists are so enamored with the carbon neutrality of their commutes that they figure society owes them a few breaks.
A big factor is that in most American cities, urban cycling remains a fight for respect—and survival. Biking in traffic requires winning a safe slice of road to ride on—I’m one of those riders you see taking up a whole lane for himself. The hazards of distracted drivers yammering on their cell phones, or having your bike hit by the opening door of a parked car, are huge. Lately, a lot of cities, D.C. included, have been striping roads with bike lanes, but these networks are nowhere near as comprehensive as they need to be. They also fall way short of the kind of off-the-road treatment bikers get in Amsterdam or Copenhagen. I often wonder whether bikers would behave better in traffic if American cities gave them the infrastructure they need to ride in peace.
Still, I doubt that’s enough to get bikers to abide by road rules. That won’t happen without more enforcement—cops, perhaps the ones who are on bicycles themselves, ticketing bicyclists. I know one bicycle commuter who claims to stop at red lights, at least most of the time. Once, long ago, she got stopped by a cop for running a light on her bike. She never forgot it.
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Governments should leap at the cost savings to their regions
(The Portland area saves 2.6B PER YEAR due to decreased driving that comes in part from increased cycling:
http://www.ceosforcities.org/blog/entry/986
) So maybe rather than trying to discourage cycling by making sure that the laws are designed only with cars in mind, governments should create cycle-sensible legal frameworks. (The Idaho stop law, which has been proven in practice, would be a good start.) Then enforcement would make some sense. Right now, the enforcement actions I see simply seem designed to convince folks to get back in their car and forget this silly "cycling" business.
Why single out motorists?
A much more serious issue: how do we get motorists to obey the law?
Here in Washington State, about 2 million cars are currently operating without any insurance coverage. Uninsured motorists impose millions of dollars of costs on the law-abiding public. It's illegal, it's immoral, yet it's so common the Legislature requires insurance companies to put uninsured motorist coverage on every insurance policy unless the insured rejects it in writing.
Motorists kill the equivalent of a 9/11 attack every single month in America. Where is the comparable carnage that makes scofflaw cyclists such an issue?
When the police have time to ticket cyclists, I will take that as a sign they've finally brought motorists under control. Until then, let the real threat to public safety drive law enforcement priorities.
OOPS, that is, Why single out *cyclists*?
Cyclists, not motorists....
What role should education play?
The League of American Bicyclists, http://www.bikeleague.org, has a good cyclist education program, but most people think that if they can get on their bike and not fall over then they "can ride their bike". That equips them to ride their bike as much as knowing how to stick the keys in the ignition and steer is knowing how to drive a car.
Most major cities have at least a few certified instructors, but there is little to no funding or support given to get people educated. Having gone through the program myself, I was surprised to learn how much I didn't know about bicycling safely and it is much more than just wearing a helmet and obeying stop signs.
Consider what we do for motorcycle training. Many of the ideas are similar for bicycle education. At least in my state, the state helps to organized formal motorcycle training classes. How long until we have state assistance in organizing formal bicycle training classes?
Obeying the Laws
Hi Chris--
Nice article. I've been in Western Europe investigating the bicycle culture for the past four months, and I've found that breaking the law in the famous bike cities of Copenhagen and Amsterdam is somewhat idiosyncratic.
In Copenhagen, where "bicycle tracks" provided a raised, separated and exclusive path for cyclists alongside city streets, almost no one breaks the law. They don't run lights, they ride in the right direction on the paths and increasingly, they're wearing helmets. Everyone signals, and when a Dane prepares to pass, they ring their bell.
In Amsterdam, the cyclists are a bit more laissez faire. They ride recklessly; few people signal, and fewer still ring a bell when they're preparing to pass. They often ride bikes that creak at every other pedal stroke, they ride the wrong way, they run lights (including the bike specific traffic signals) and almost noone wears a helmet.
Concurrently, though, the Netherlands also boasts one of the most safe traffic environments in the world, with fewer traffic fatalities per kilometer cycled than any other country in Europe.
Keep up the commute!
Anthony Siracusa
Berlin, Germany
Deregulation is the solution
Chris, congratulations on starting the commute; there's little that's more refreshing than a bike ride on a crisp autumn morning.
Traffic rules as we know them weren't codified until car traffic overran cities in the 1920s, and even then were created to prevent cars from running over everything else. If the intent of a stop sign is to keep traffic from speeding through an urban neighborhood, then any 10MPH cyclist is observing the intent of that law even if she doesn't follow the letter of the law. (Not that drivers do, either: stings here in Chicago found 80% speeding through school zones and almost none yielding at crosswalks.)
Cyclists in Amsterdam or Copenhagen get not just bikeways, but also a completely different set of road rules tailored around cyclists -- even green lights are timed to move bike, not car, traffic. Actual full stops are relatively rare; instead, signs oblige vehicles to yield. (And yet both driving and cycling there are much safer than in the US.)
This approach exists in North America: in Idaho, cyclists may treat stop signs as yield signs; in British Columbia, flashing-green stoplights allow pedestrians or cyclists to treat lights as stop signs; and in Portland, stops have been replaced with yields along 100 miles of "bike boulevards." These acknowledge that a full stop for a cyclist isn't like tapping the brake pedal in a car, since the car wields 500X as much horsepower (and thus deadly force). It's more like demanding that drivers stop, shift to park, engage the parking brake, turn off the ignition, remove the key, and start up again. It's akin to asking pedestrians to sit down before getting back up and crossing the street.
Instead of more enforcement, better laws would go a long way towards improving safe and orderly traffic flow for everyone.