stop signs
Oct. 18th, 2009 09:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacHere's an interesting article on whether bicycles should obey traffic laws, particularly stop signs. The problem, as the article explains, is momentum: having to stop frequently is extremely fatiguing on a bicycle, and pointless when there's clearly no cross traffic.
What the article doesn't mention is that it's equally pointless for cars. Nevertheless American traffic enforcement is obsessive about coming to "a complete stop" and frustratingly vague about what counts as "a complete stop" while pretending that it's a simple binary condition. I've learned by hard experience that coming to a complete stop is insufficient; you need to stay stopped for some small but unknown number of seconds, but no cop will tell you what that number is or admit that there is one.
I warn visiting Britons who might be driving in the U.S. about this obsession, because it would be completely alien to them. (The other thing alien to them is that "keep to the slow lane except when overtaking" is never followed here, even though Americans think they do it.) Aside from a few blind intersections, the stop sign is essentially unknown in Britain, and even the traffic light is rare. Traffic is managed by roundabouts and a system of painted lines which indicate who yields to whom. If there's somebody coming, and you have the yield line, you stop; if nobody's coming, you just go.
A much more civilized system, and what I follow on a bicycle. I do not run red lights, however. If there is no cross traffic and the light had slammed red just as I arrive - which happens often enough that I am inclined to disbelieve in coincidence - I will sometimes turn right onto a small cross street, make a U-turn and come back. But that's the closest thing to an exception, and I won't do it if there's traffic. I also stop at the stop sign if there's traffic. And only on narrow local roads, and not if they're congested, will I pull out into the traffic lane before making a left turn. I never do what I see many bicyclists doing, which is crossing multiple traffic lanes into a signalled left turn lane. I consider that insanely dangerous. To make a left turn at a major signal I use the pedestrian walk lights. (But I ride, not walk, across the intersection.)
The common thread here, though, is: only if it's safe, only if there's nobody coming. I would not risk startling or confusing a car driver, or even worse - for them, if not for me - a pedestrian. I regret that, in my capacities as a pedestrian or another bicyclist as well as as a car driver, I often see dangerous, arrogant behavior by bicyclists, to the extent that it's sometimes startling to see a cautious, polite bicyclist. But then I noticed something. Dangerous, arrogant bicyclists are always wearing spandex. Most of those who aren't, don't.
What the article doesn't mention is that it's equally pointless for cars. Nevertheless American traffic enforcement is obsessive about coming to "a complete stop" and frustratingly vague about what counts as "a complete stop" while pretending that it's a simple binary condition. I've learned by hard experience that coming to a complete stop is insufficient; you need to stay stopped for some small but unknown number of seconds, but no cop will tell you what that number is or admit that there is one.
I warn visiting Britons who might be driving in the U.S. about this obsession, because it would be completely alien to them. (The other thing alien to them is that "keep to the slow lane except when overtaking" is never followed here, even though Americans think they do it.) Aside from a few blind intersections, the stop sign is essentially unknown in Britain, and even the traffic light is rare. Traffic is managed by roundabouts and a system of painted lines which indicate who yields to whom. If there's somebody coming, and you have the yield line, you stop; if nobody's coming, you just go.
A much more civilized system, and what I follow on a bicycle. I do not run red lights, however. If there is no cross traffic and the light had slammed red just as I arrive - which happens often enough that I am inclined to disbelieve in coincidence - I will sometimes turn right onto a small cross street, make a U-turn and come back. But that's the closest thing to an exception, and I won't do it if there's traffic. I also stop at the stop sign if there's traffic. And only on narrow local roads, and not if they're congested, will I pull out into the traffic lane before making a left turn. I never do what I see many bicyclists doing, which is crossing multiple traffic lanes into a signalled left turn lane. I consider that insanely dangerous. To make a left turn at a major signal I use the pedestrian walk lights. (But I ride, not walk, across the intersection.)
The common thread here, though, is: only if it's safe, only if there's nobody coming. I would not risk startling or confusing a car driver, or even worse - for them, if not for me - a pedestrian. I regret that, in my capacities as a pedestrian or another bicyclist as well as as a car driver, I often see dangerous, arrogant behavior by bicyclists, to the extent that it's sometimes startling to see a cautious, polite bicyclist. But then I noticed something. Dangerous, arrogant bicyclists are always wearing spandex. Most of those who aren't, don't.
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no subject
Date: 2009-10-18 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-10-19 02:04 am (UTC)[re-reads three or four times]
Oh, you mean that kind of screeching to a halt that a car makes when it brakes suddenly. Maybe that explains why I got the tickets: I don't usually drive like that. I bring the car gently to a stop without rocking back and forth like a maniac. Apparently if you don't do that visibly enough for the cop's dim eyesight, he thinks you haven't stopped. Good grief.