(no subject)
Thanks to Willigula for this great article.
My bosses at work carry this myth with them. Most are willing to point fingers, but few are willing to look at their own behaviour.
I rarely run red lights, but I do get started before other cars to get out there so that they can see me. I lane split often (when cars are gridlocked on Main and there's no reason for me to sit behind them), and I tend to jaywalk in downtown Portland, as do most.
One of the things I think we need to do is exercise some democracy. If the vast majority of people do something, shouldn't we be less prescriptive? (ooh, look, another argument for the word cant being a substitute for 'can't'. Why am I so stubborn?)
TheWashCycle: The Myth of the Scofflaw Cyclist:Then someone asked Eric a variation of "Why do cyclists run red lights?" There are several reasons I've heard (safety in getting ahead of traffic and in-street sensors which do not detect cyclists, for example) but the basic answer is a classic risk/reward scenario. Jaybikers are calculating that the reward of keeping momentum or gaining the early start outweighs the risk of being caught or hit. People are notoriously bad at calculating risk and reward (sub-prime mortgage crisis anyone?) so I won't weigh in on whether they're right or wrong, but I'll just leave it at that's what they're thinking.
This, coincidentally, is the same reason why drivers and pedestrians run red lights.
...
Therefore, a better question is "Why don't drivers 'jaydrive'?"
...
It's because their risk/reward calculation is coming up with a different answer. And that makes sense. In a car, you're several feet farther back from the intersection and you're often a foot or two lower than on a bicycle, meaning you can't see as well (I bet those on recumbents don't jaybike as often as those on standard bikes). In a car, you're in a soundproof enclosure, so you have no stereoscopic hearing. And if you make a mistake you aren't as maneuverable as you would be on a bike or on your feet. You can't just ditch to the sidewalk. Drivers don't jaydrive because, in their own estimation, they can't. If they could, I'm sure they would.
Still, that doesn't explain the anger. Drivers get - I feel - irrationally angry about this. I wondered why for so long; and then an anthropologist friend of mine helped me to understand. Running a red light is so dangerous for cars that it isn't just illegal, it's taboo. You're breaking a social construct. That means people find it objectionable and abhorrent. So if education is needed, maybe it's needed to explain why it's safer for cyclists to do it than for drivers.
Which goes back to the question of what can be done about jaybiking. I said there was nothing, but that's not true. I've told this story before, but here it is again. As a college professor told it to me.
On a campus, campus planners laid out the sidewalk to a building in the shape of an L. Students ignored the sidewalk to walk along the hypotenuse wearing a path in the grass. The school planted hedges to "guide" them. Students cut a rut through them. The school put up a fence. Students climbed over it until the fence broke. Fed up, the school got an architect to design a fix. She tore up the old sidewalk and laid another new one along the path. Problem solved.
Sometimes we create our own problems. I think that the Idaho stop should be standard. It would facilitate even more bike riding. Because conservation of momentum is a lot more important when you are doing the work, rather than million year-old decayed plant matter doing the work...
Idaho has changed its law - and California is considering it - to allow cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, and stop lights as stop signs. This (and the article about allowing wrong-way cycling) is the same as moving the sidewalk. Streetsblog argues for this - and that the way to end wrong way biking is to get rid of one-way streets.
I'm not saying that cyclists should break the law. Nor am I saying they shouldn't. But we all know it's safer for cyclists to run lights than it is for cars. Shouldn't we evaluate the need for these laws? One of the best arguments for being a foot-dropper is "if bicyclists want to be respected like other vehicles, they have to obey the same rules." But, if the law were to change, how many cyclists would really sit through the whole light cycle when there was no traffic anyway? Would this make cyclists less safe?
No. No it wouldn't. Simply put, there's a difference. When you're in a car, it is someone else's ass on the line. When you're on a bike, it is yours (most of the time).
My bosses at work carry this myth with them. Most are willing to point fingers, but few are willing to look at their own behaviour.
I rarely run red lights, but I do get started before other cars to get out there so that they can see me. I lane split often (when cars are gridlocked on Main and there's no reason for me to sit behind them), and I tend to jaywalk in downtown Portland, as do most.
One of the things I think we need to do is exercise some democracy. If the vast majority of people do something, shouldn't we be less prescriptive? (ooh, look, another argument for the word cant being a substitute for 'can't'. Why am I so stubborn?)
TheWashCycle: The Myth of the Scofflaw Cyclist:Then someone asked Eric a variation of "Why do cyclists run red lights?" There are several reasons I've heard (safety in getting ahead of traffic and in-street sensors which do not detect cyclists, for example) but the basic answer is a classic risk/reward scenario. Jaybikers are calculating that the reward of keeping momentum or gaining the early start outweighs the risk of being caught or hit. People are notoriously bad at calculating risk and reward (sub-prime mortgage crisis anyone?) so I won't weigh in on whether they're right or wrong, but I'll just leave it at that's what they're thinking.
This, coincidentally, is the same reason why drivers and pedestrians run red lights.
...
Therefore, a better question is "Why don't drivers 'jaydrive'?"
...
It's because their risk/reward calculation is coming up with a different answer. And that makes sense. In a car, you're several feet farther back from the intersection and you're often a foot or two lower than on a bicycle, meaning you can't see as well (I bet those on recumbents don't jaybike as often as those on standard bikes). In a car, you're in a soundproof enclosure, so you have no stereoscopic hearing. And if you make a mistake you aren't as maneuverable as you would be on a bike or on your feet. You can't just ditch to the sidewalk. Drivers don't jaydrive because, in their own estimation, they can't. If they could, I'm sure they would.
Still, that doesn't explain the anger. Drivers get - I feel - irrationally angry about this. I wondered why for so long; and then an anthropologist friend of mine helped me to understand. Running a red light is so dangerous for cars that it isn't just illegal, it's taboo. You're breaking a social construct. That means people find it objectionable and abhorrent. So if education is needed, maybe it's needed to explain why it's safer for cyclists to do it than for drivers.
Which goes back to the question of what can be done about jaybiking. I said there was nothing, but that's not true. I've told this story before, but here it is again. As a college professor told it to me.
On a campus, campus planners laid out the sidewalk to a building in the shape of an L. Students ignored the sidewalk to walk along the hypotenuse wearing a path in the grass. The school planted hedges to "guide" them. Students cut a rut through them. The school put up a fence. Students climbed over it until the fence broke. Fed up, the school got an architect to design a fix. She tore up the old sidewalk and laid another new one along the path. Problem solved.
Sometimes we create our own problems. I think that the Idaho stop should be standard. It would facilitate even more bike riding. Because conservation of momentum is a lot more important when you are doing the work, rather than million year-old decayed plant matter doing the work...
Idaho has changed its law - and California is considering it - to allow cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, and stop lights as stop signs. This (and the article about allowing wrong-way cycling) is the same as moving the sidewalk. Streetsblog argues for this - and that the way to end wrong way biking is to get rid of one-way streets.
I'm not saying that cyclists should break the law. Nor am I saying they shouldn't. But we all know it's safer for cyclists to run lights than it is for cars. Shouldn't we evaluate the need for these laws? One of the best arguments for being a foot-dropper is "if bicyclists want to be respected like other vehicles, they have to obey the same rules." But, if the law were to change, how many cyclists would really sit through the whole light cycle when there was no traffic anyway? Would this make cyclists less safe?
No. No it wouldn't. Simply put, there's a difference. When you're in a car, it is someone else's ass on the line. When you're on a bike, it is yours (most of the time).