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As noted before, the law requires cyclists to have certain equipment for visibility.
https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title46.2/chapter10/section46.2-1015/

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@scoot 193455 wrote:

Still should be the driver’s fault. If you can’t see in time to react to someone legally crossing a road, painted crosswalk or no, then you’re out-driving your headlights.

Don’t ever complain about a ninja then.

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@Steve O 193423 wrote:

As mentioned, a bike requires lights and reflector to be legally ridden at night, so your strawman re: bikes is not applicable.

Not a strawman, just confusion. I was responding to the idea, real or imagined on my part, that someone believed that bikes should have absolutely no visibility requirements at all. If you agree that lights and reflectors are a good requirement, then we’re on the same page.

@Steve O 193423 wrote:

If a person is walking in a place that is legal for them to walk and a driver runs over them, I consider that the driver’s fault. “

I would guess that if you went out wearing an all black suit and no lights or reflective gear and you were hit by a car, and the motorist said he/she never even saw you until you were on the windshield, the court would side with the driver. I don’t know what the law is though. This, I think, is similar to the principle of “disregard of traffic.” If you were to get out in front of a moving car in a way that gives the driver no chance to react to avoid you, either because you are not visible or too close (and perhaps both) the driver can’t be faulted (again, that’s me talking, not knowing the actual law).

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@jrenaut 193395 wrote:

There is a huge difference between riding around at night with no lights and being required to wear some special reflective gear to trigger some sensor we’re now going to require in cars.

Okay, but I didn’t read your post as making such a distinction. I thought you were saying that a pedestrian or cyclist has no responsibility for being visible at night at all.

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@Steve O 193392 wrote:

I cannot possibly disagree with this more. If the person walking or biking is in an expected and legal place, like a sidewalk, bike lane or crosswalk, then it is absolutely the driver’s fault if they run that person over. A driver MUST be cognizant of the possibility of a vulnerable person being where they might be. If there is not enough time for the driver to react, then they are going too fast.

If the person can’t be seen, he can’t be seen. If you go out in the street on a moonless night in all black, you could be completely invisible to drivers. It is absolutely a driver’s responsibility to drive carefully and slowly and look ahead, but it is possible for a driver to not see someone, at all, until it is too late. It is the same principle as a pedestrian walking in “disregard” of traffic, i.e. not giving a driver enough space to slow down to yield.

If someone drove a car around at night with no lights on, we’d hold it against them too.

Again, we complain about ninjas….

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@jrenaut 193313 wrote:

A good chunk of bike safety advocates, myself included, consider this to be pretty equivalent to victim blaming. Drivers running over cyclists riding legally is a driver problem, not a cyclist problem. Shifting responsibility onto cyclists, requiring us to wear special gear to survive, is just one more way we absolve drivers of all responsibility for their actions.

If a driver can’t see you in time to stop running over you, it’s not a driver problem. It doesn’t absolve ALL responsibility, but sometimes a driver isn’t responsible if they simply can’t see you in time.

Safety equipment to make one visible is standard for everyone – cars, bikes and pedestrians. How often do we complain about ninjas?

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@ShawnoftheDread 193094 wrote:

Well now I won’t know when to stop ignoring the trail closed signs.

This comment calls for bringing back the “Elite” button.

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@jen_stoly 192898 wrote:

By the “art park” do you mean the Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art? https://www.nga.gov/visit/sculpture-garden.html

Or is there something similar at the National History museum?

Both.

The sculpture garden is located in between NGA and Natural History. But yes, NGA owns it.

What I don’t know is how they get sculptures to grow like that.

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@Steve O 192627 wrote:

Perhaps, although that does not explain why it could not have been installed at N. Lexington.

It’s possible they wanted to control speed coming down the hill from the opposite direction too.

All I know is it wasn’t really about pedestrians crossing, but about speed control.

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@Steve O 192596 wrote:

I remember when it was first installed, we discussed it at the BAC and we never got a good answer for why they selected that location.

The light wasn’t ever really designed to let pedestrians cross. It was a speed-control measure. It turns red automatically when you roll down that hill too fast. I think that’s why it is in that location, to give enough room to catch speeding cars from the west before they blow through.

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@Starduster 192545 wrote:

Maybe that is because the NuVinci’s shifter progresses in the *opposite* direction as a Shimano derailleur or hub setup. A different sort of muscle memory that constantly found me shifting in the wrong direction…

Wow. They should just turn the thing upside down.

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@DismalScientist 192590 wrote:

Not that this really bothers me, but why did they put the traffic light at that location on Wilson rather than just at the intersection with Manchester.

I’d guess it was meant for access to the tennis courts and park on the rose garden side and not anticipated as a detour. It could also be a matter of traffic having time to slow and stop and/or sight lines when turning from Manchester, which has no light.

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@Emm 192022 wrote:

After seeing reports last night about how bad 4mrt was near Shirlington, I was SHOCKED by the fact the 4mrt turn off from the MVT was completely clear on my ride home from work. No debris, no water, no mud, nothing. Usually after flooding there’s at least a few nasty debris piles under the GW Parkway/Route 1 bridges. It was so clean I actually wonder if someone had gotten there and cleared it out already since I can’t imagine that area didn’t flood.

My theory is that this flood was so powerful and fast that it swept all the debris much further.

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You: a Capitol Police officer riding a bike, running a red to cross Independence Avenue. Apparently not responding to an emergency or anything like that, just running a red because you can.

Me: SMH

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@huskerdont 191570 wrote:

Careful. Use that terminology at GGW and some pedant will call you out. (This really happened.)

They don’t know who they’re dealing with.

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