ACPD Community Engagement Survey

[hozn]

Yeah, I like the new sign; it’s pretty funny. Agreed that downhill is probably a bigger problem, though. Cyclists going uphill are moving slower.

I loved that folks were blowing through the stop sign (downhill) on BTWD when there was a police car obviously parked right across the intersection.

I will readily admit that I don’t usually come to a complete stop there (unless there is a car), but I slow down and make sure it’s clear / or cars see me. I have seen cars not stop at that intersection, so I don’t take that for granted.

[MFC]

@rcannon100 142240 wrote:

Counsel: Objection your honor. Speculation.

Judge: Affirmed.

You can speculate all you want. Do you have any evidence? As indicated in a different thread, we have this problem of the laws of physics. One ton of steel traveling at 25 mph kills. A cyclists – make it 200 lbs – traveling at 14 mph does not kill. There were 36,000 (give a few thousand) automobile caused deaths last year. The number of deaths that involve bicycles, you can count on your hand.

So….. I return to being indignant.

Agreed. Cars, bikers and peds. all routinely break the traffics laws that apply to them, but cyclists and peds. generally only endanger themselves. But given how some cyclists act, a sign stating that cyclists need slow down is not an open season invitation on cyclists or a reason to get bent out of shape, even if to do so more fun.

Cyclists do kill but it is rare. Usually some Strava-head hitting an elderly person.

[sjclaeys]

@MFC 142246 wrote:

Agreed. Cars, bikers and peds. all routinely break the traffics laws that apply to them, but cyclists and peds. generally only endanger themselves. But given how some cyclists act, a sign stating that cyclists need slow down is not an open season invitation on cyclists or a reason to get bent out of shape, even if to do so more fun.

Cyclists do kill but it is rare. Usually some Strava-head hitting an elderly person.

It would be nice to get some facts to support your speculation. Please, take your time. Also, the sign does not just ask cyclist to slow down. it perpetuates the perception that cyclists all don’t follow the law and, therefore, the view that all cyclists do not deserve the protection of the law.

[sjclaeys]

@KLizotte 142239 wrote:

Well….technically….a law abiding driver could suddenly swerve to avoid an unlawful cyclist (say blowing a stop sign) and accidentally hit another car, cyclist or pedestrian. In that case, I would say the cyclist was fault of the injuries.

All of this is to say that cyclists can cause injuries/deaths too even if the likelihood is lower.

I guess that could be true, but we live in a world of limited resources. In what way would spending those limited resources result in the greatest increase in safety, focusing on drivers of motor vehicles that nationally cause over 30,000 deaths a year or focusing on cyclists that nationally cause less than 5 deaths a years (I remember seeing that somewhere)?

[scoot]

At the very least, such a sign should not single out bicycles. Automobiles are required to stop there also.

[hozn]

(5 deaths a year nationally can’t be right. Seems like there were that many in DC area last year.)

[hozn]

@scoot 142250 wrote:

At the very least, such a sign should not single out bicycles. Automobiles are required to stop there also.

Yeah, but automobiles generally do and cyclists generally do not. I have seen one or two cars not stop there. I have seen thousands of cyclists (well, probably many of the same people) not stop there. I think singling out cyclists there is appropriate under the circumstances.

Whether they should use their sign for higher-value enforcement is a different matter, though.

[Steve O]

I think sjclaeys meant that cyclists are responsible for 5 pedestrian deaths per year. I believe that’s in the ballpark.

There has been exactly 1 bike on ped fatality in the DC area in the last 20 years. There have been over 1000 car on ped fatalities in that same 20 years – about 1 per week.

People driving cars and people riding bikes break laws with about the same frequency; it’s just different laws. How many bicyclists do you know who regularly speed? How many drivers do you know who speed every time they get in their car? The big big difference is that the 3000-pound missile can and does maim and kill on a regular basis while the 30-pound hunk of steel & carbon doesn’t.

Time to review:
Why Bikes Make Smart People Say Dumb Things
We had this discussion before.

[Steve O]

@Steve O 142255 wrote:

Time to review:
Why Bikes Make Smart People Say Dumb Things
We had this discussion before.

Here’s a quote from the article:

The few studies that look at specific violations have found that people on bikes do roll through stop signs about 15% more than drivers do (at least in Oregon), but also that drivers roll through them almost 80% of the time, suggesting this is more of a human fault than a cyclist one. Meanwhile, a host of other infractions are almost exclusively the domain of motorists: speeding, dooring, aggressive driving, violating the three-foot passing law, etc.

There are a few areas where cyclists are more likely to break the law, most notably running red lights, though this is almost never a contributing factor in collisions (I suspect it’s because cyclists who run reds do so cautiously, since…well…they don’t want to die). The likely conclusion is that people riding bikes don’t break more laws or fewer laws than when they drive cars, but they do break different laws. Given that most cyclists are also drivers, it’s reasonable to think the levels of lawlessness would be consistent.

[Steve O]

More from the same article, this part specific to stop signs:

On the same day that Suchi Hui was struck by a cyclist in San Francisco, resulting in one of the only bike-on-ped deaths of 2012, around 82 Americans died in car crashes. Going by averages, roughly that many more died in car crashes the day before as well, and the day after, and every other day of the year.

We’ve been conditioned since infancy to ignore most of these fatalities, along with the behaviors that cause them. If you’re a typical American, your first experience of speeding was while strapped into a car seat, and you rode past half a dozen fatal accident scenes before speaking your first complete sentence. A lifetime of exposure has convinced us to normalize, dismiss or ignore most traffic violations, to the point where we routinely exceed the speed limit despite the knowledge that speeding causes more than 30% of all traffic fatalities.
This normalization is entirely a product of exposure, and that’s what makes bikes so comparatively frightening: we prefer the devil we know, even when it’s infinitely more bloodthirsty than the one we don’t.

Most Americans grow up bi- or tri-modal, getting around by car, on foot, and if they’re like Scott Simon, by transit, which makes these modes feel relatively safe. A driver who merges without signaling is like a pedestrian who crosses midblock is like a straphanger holding open the subway doors: annoying perhaps, but hey, we’ve all been there. It was probably because there wasn’t any real danger, we might tell ourselves, or maybe the intersection was badly designed. We can sympathize, and so we look for extenuating circumstances, unless the violation is particularly severe.

When a bike blows a stop sign, though, we’re more likely to see it as evidence that “cyclists think they’re above the law.” The social psychology term for this bias is “fundamental attribution error”: the tendency to attribute the actions of others to their inherent nature rather than their situation, and the less we sympathize with their situation, the greater the bias. A 2002 study from the UK’s Transport Research Laboratory found that it plays a starring role in our perceptions of traffic behavior, with drivers far more likely to see a cyclist’s infraction as stemming from ineptitude or recklessness than an identical one committed by another driver. It may also help explain why I’ve been approached more than once while holding my bike by random strangers, asking me to explain the behavior of another cyclist they once saw doing something stupid. I ride a bike, therefore I’m one of them.

[hozn]

@Steve O 142255 wrote:

I think sjclaeys meant that cyclists are responsible for 5 pedestrian deaths per year. I believe that’s in the ballpark..

Oh, sorry, yes that is exactly what he said.

[mstone]

@hozn 142252 wrote:

Yeah, but automobiles generally do and cyclists generally do not. I have seen one or two cars not stop there. I have seen thousands of cyclists (well, probably many of the same people) not stop there. I think singling out cyclists there is appropriate under the circumstances.

Why? If someone were to have a life altering injury it would almost certainly be caused by the one or two cars, not a thousand bikes. The numbers don’t matter, the consequences do.

[hozn]

@mstone 142259 wrote:

Why? If someone were to have a life altering injury it would almost certainly be caused by the one or two cars, not a thousand bikes. The numbers don’t matter, the consequences do.

I was simply suggesting that if you look at number/percentage of infractions and apply the law equally then it is appropriate to single out cyclists.

I realize you, and others, are suggesting that the law should not apply equally to cyclists because they are less likely to cause damage/injury. I have never expected law enforcement to work that way.

It would be wonderful to see legislation that would actually make Idaho stops legal in VA/DC/MD, then we wouldn’t need to rely on discretionary law enforcement.

[mstone]

@hozn 142260 wrote:

I was simply suggesting that if you look at number/percentage of infractions and apply the law equally then it is appropriate to single out cyclists.

I realize you, and others, are suggesting that the law should not apply equally to cyclists because they are less likely to cause damage/injury. I have never expected law enforcement to work that way.

Really? You have never expected law enforcement to spend limited resources where they will do the most good, and instead want them to waste those resources on harassing techniques that improve neither behavior nor outcomes? I guess we do have different expectations.

And, frankly, your argument is revisionist BS. When was the last time you saw a big lighted sign that said something like “DRIVERS MUST OBEY ALL SPEED LIMIT SIGNS INCLUDING THIS ONE” or “DRIVERS DON’T PASS WITHIN THREE FEET OF CYCLISTS, INCLUDING HERE BY THIS BIKE LANE” or “DRIVERS MUST STOP AT STOP LINES, INCLUDING THIS ONE RIGHT HERE, NOT IN THE CROSSWALK BEYOND THE STOP LINE” or “DRIVERS MUST OBEY NO RIGHT TURN ON RED WHEN PEDESTRIANS ARE PRESENT SIGNS INCLUDING THIS ONE RIGHT HERE”? The paternalistic singling out is not being applied equally and is in fact a pretty obvious symptom of windshield perspective.

[hozn]

Well, if the sign is the alternative to writing tickets, I think it’s great.

My experience as a driver has been that if there are problem areas (where drivers are routinely breaking the law), the police sit there and issue tickets.

I have received several tickets in a car, all were situations where my behavior impacted no one (going 65 on the Beltway early AM, not coming to a complete stop at an empty suburban intersection , going 55 on it Rt15 early AM headed to a race). So, no, I do not expect law enforcement to prioritize enforcement in situations of most danger/impact.

And given that I ride many more miles han I drive and have yet to receive a ticket on the bicycle, I wouldn’t say that local law enforcement is going overboard targeting cyclists.

Perhaps we have had different experiences. How many moving violations have you been issued as a cyclist?

[Author]

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