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@KS1G 33343 wrote:

Depending on where you ride, a brighter than otherwise necessary light may come in rather handy to illuminate moving shadows that turn out to be pre-dawn / post-dusk ninjas, and to light up the dirty torn shreds of reflective material ninja-wannabes may have on their clothes. Just remember to dim/shield/point away when you have an oncoming cyclist so you don’t blind each other (also, I’ve seen ninjas try to hide in the glare-bubble of the colliding light beams – obviously an enhanced cross-ploarization effect of their cloaking silks).

I was in my car this morning and was suddenly passing a ninja road jogger. It was early dawn, headlights on, about 20MPH on a quiet neighborhood street, the guy was in dark non-reflective clothing, angled from behind a car, and a low streetlight was sort of behind him and made him impossible to see until the angles changed. Another couple of inches to the right and I would have hit him and never seen him at all. I suppose the well-maintained sidewalk a couple of feet to his left is just “too hard” or some bullshit like that. I can only assume that these idiots really don’t understand how invisible they are. I see this one guy out a lot, I’m going to stop the car and talk to him next time. Other joggers in the same neighborhood stick to the sidewalk & wear lights & reflectors. I need to send them valentines.

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@Terpfan 33341 wrote:

Sure folks shouldn’t be running stopsigns

Don’t encourage them. There is no reason to stop for the illegal sign in the situation described (other than to avoid getting a ticket). Characterizing it as “running the stop sign” is either applying a negative connotation or further muddying an imprecise term. Should both of these behaviors be described as “running the stop sign”: 1) without looking or slowing, proceed at a high rate of speed through a stop sign on a busy road 2) after slowing and making eye contact with a stopped motorist, proceed through a marked crosswalk as a pedestrian. If you’re describing #2 and an irate motorist is describing #1, the imprecision of the term is only going to make the discussion go downhill faster.

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@vvill 33327 wrote:

Ugh. I guess the sign should read “STOP. May or may not be required by law”.

Another reason for me to enjoy the freewheelin’ Custis, and then hop off the W&OD as soon as I get a chance.

Just another illustration of why the existing law was fine, and the illegal signs just screw things up.

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@KLizotte 33332 wrote:

I second eminva.

I hope the driver was ticketed appropriately.

Well, first it’s important to make absolutely certain that the cyclists weren’t breaking any laws. If cyclists are scofflaws, we can’t expect any respect from motorists, can we?

Anyway, this is a good illustration of the concept of “maybe bikes and cars aren’t the same”. This could easily have been much worse, and I’m really glad that it wasn’t.

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I don’t know about dc, but in many places the correct course of action would be to turn them over to the police.

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Lawyer’s road has some, and you’ll find some others scattered about, but there’s definitely not a lot of them. There should be more once/if the master plan is approved, because then VDOT will know where to put them as they restripe things.

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@KelOnWheels 33015 wrote:

Does anyone still make a rigid steel MTB? I think they are all aluminum and suspensiony now.

You’re right at the low end, the suspension adds a lot of cheap bling and sells better. (Not that all suspension bikes are cheap–far from it–but it’s getting pretty hard to find a cheaper bike that doesn’t have a front suspension.) For rigid you’re looking at more of a specialty item so you’ll pay more of a specialty price. E.g., take a look at the Surley Troll.

Edit to acknowledge that I was not aware that you could get as low as the $100 wal-mart bike listed above, so it is actually possible to hit a price point that doesn’t have a suspension.

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@Jason B 32933 wrote:

Personally, I can’t have it both ways. I can’t expect cars to treat me with respect as a car as I move into the lane, and at the same time cruise into the pedestrian wallk as a back alley to skip a red light. Gaining the respect of car drivers totally out ways the minute wait, so personally i’ll wake up earlier….but I still say, the fine is way too high, and i would try having it reduced.

Personally, I have not witnessed much “respect” for anyone on our roads, so I’m not going to reduce my safety in hopes that someone will deign to give me some. Your reference to leaving early so you don’t have to save a minute trivializes the very real decisions we all need to make about our safety. It is a quite rational decision to decide that crossing an intersection during the red cycle is safer than getting mixed up in traffic when the light turns green, regardless of how much time it takes or saves.

Driving to work this morning I had multiple encounters with bad drivers, including a guy who passed me on a double yellow because I was driving too slowly (the speed limit) through a residential neighborhood that has a lot of ninja road joggers, another that honked because I wouldn’t move into a dangerous position to facilitate his illegal turn, and multiple people so engrossed in texting that they didn’t notice signal changes. Had I been on a bike this morning instead of a car, any of those incidents could have been much more dangerous–and no imagined halo of righteousness would have protected me. We don’t need to be treated the same as cars, because motorists treat each other like crap and we’re too vulnerable to play that game.

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@Tim Kelley 32928 wrote:

So what’s the strategy to fix the problem?

Don’t just go along with pointless enforcement, push for enforcement against behaviors that cause death or injury to others.

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A ticket for going the wrong way down the road is something I could get behind as it puts a lot of other people in danger (serving cars, oncoming cyclist with nowhere to go, etc). The problem arises when someone decides to “do something” and “teach someone a lesson” by targeting something easy but benign rather than something actually dangerous (but which requires more effort).

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@jabberwocky 32915 wrote:

Just as a data point, I’ve seen Fairfax PD enforcing crosswalks along the W&OD several times around Reston over the years (by which I mean warning and ticketing cars that fail to yield to people crossing or blocking the crosswalk while stopped). So it does happen.

Yes, it’s not completely unheard of. It is kind of sad that it’s rare enough to be noteworthy.

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@eminva 32908 wrote:

Just a reminder — we’ve discussed this fully in other threads — but DC, Maryland and Virginia are all contributory negligence jurisdictions. Therefore, if you are involved in a crash and you are not 100% in compliance with the letter of the law (car centric though it may be), you may not be able to recover any damages for your injuries and you may also be subject to legal action for others’ damages — even if the other party was mostly or nearly entirely at fault.

That’s not actually what the law is. That’s the de facto state of affairs given the cost of lawyers, but the de facto state of affairs is also that regardless of whether you think you’re compliant with the law your ability to recover damages is basically out of your control. I’m skeptical that the odds of getting money after being hit by a car are statistically different depending on riding style–so then we fall back to wondering what riding style makes you less likely to have to test those statistics.

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@Tim Kelley 32906 wrote:

If you break the law in front of a police officer, what do you expect them to do? Just look the other way?

That’s what they do for people intruding on a crosswalk when stopping, turning right on red without stopping, entering the intersection when it is not clear so they can turn left after the light is red, parking police cars in bike lanes, speeding through intersections, and all the other lawbreaking that is socially acceptable for cars and incredibly dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. So remind me again why something that isn’t posing a danger to more vulnerable road users should be an enforcement priority? Just so a bike organization can try to claim a moral high ground? Pedestrian and cyclist safety rules get essentially zero enforcement from police, and “bike safety” pushes result in disproportionate enforcement against cyclists–which is absurd and does nothing to increase public safety. Look at what actions result in dead people, and target those instead of targeting things which piss off motorists and don’t affect public safety.

I let your “this is great!” comment pass, but then you asked…

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@eminva 32855 wrote:

This is right. Or, as the League of American Bicyclists has it, “Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles.” Come to a Confident City Cycling class to learn more!

Note that means “don’t worry, everybody has an airbag and the insurance is contrib neg”…

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@Tim Kelley 32883 wrote:

No, “it turned out that all the gnats that hit my eyeballs, got caught, and died, were falling out of my eyelashes.” This appeared to wife to look like makeup.

Thank god I don’t wear makeup.

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