Jane’s rules of the road for cyclists

Last updated on: August 25, 2013 at 8:16 am by Jane the Actuary

Jane’s rules of the road for cyclists 2013-08-25T08:16:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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1) stoplights and stop signs: Bikers have to stop at all stop lights, just like cars. The only exceptions are that if the car has to stop unusually short of the cross street for safety reasons (e.g., if a car has to stop behind the train track running parallel and a little before the cross street, rather than in the two-car gap between the cross street and the tracks), I think it’s fine for the bike to ride all the way up to the cross street; and if there is really no traffic on the cross street, I think its fine for the bike to cross in the same way as a pedestrian might choose to cross. At stop signs, bikers have to follow the same right-of-way rules as a car, stop, and yield to any car there before them — but if there are no cars visible at or reasonably near the stop sign, I treat the intersection as more of a yield than a stop.

2) sharing the road: yes, bikes technically have the entire width of the road, at least in some situations, but it’s just rude and unnecessarily provocative for a cyclist to ride in the center, slowing traffic behind him and forcing drivers to wait for significant break in traffic in the left lane rather than the small break needed to veer moderately into the left lane.

3) cars making right turns: both bikes and cars have a responsibility here. A car making a right turn needs to watch for any bikes travelling alongside him (whether on the road, on a designated bike path, or on the sidewalk), and yield if a bike is about to cross. A cyclist has to be similarly mindful and not stubbornly insist on “rights” at the expense of his life or health.

4) when a cyclist is not on the road at all, but on a shared bike path with pedestrians of all kinds, or even on a designated bike-only path with small children, the cyclist should be travelling slow enough that if the pedestrian/slow bike rider blocking their path doesn’t move, the cyclist can move over rather than crashing, and, in a recent case near home, killing a pedestrian.

I don’t want to weigh in on whether cyclists have a chip on their shoulder. (At least not until the next report in the news on Critical Mass or other take-over-the-street protests.) I think that bikes should be considered as a reasonable means of transportation, especially for those without cars, and making bikes more available to inner city denizens, to get to work, a mass transit stop, and especially shopping is a better solution than pressuring major supermarket chains (except Wal-Mart) to locate in inner cities. (I have an inkling that part of the problem is bike theft.) But when pro-cyclism turns into anti-carism, I have an issue, especially when such attitudes fail to recognize that it’s far more difficult for a family with children to use bikes for transport than for the so-called childfree.

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