RatBastard wrote:
grateful wrote:
The celebrity-laced benefit concert is scheduled for Black Friday. All proceeds from the sale of the "Bike Aid" single will be donated to bicycle safety awareness charities, with the goal of eradicating the road rash epidemic by 2025.
A lot of that can be eliminated if cyclists remembered that they are subject to the same vehicle laws as all other vehicles on the roadways.
Hmm…those same laws that a majority of motorists also disobey
here is a great
article on this topic
but I'll post the part about how the perception that Bikers are the ones breaking the laws and the car drivers are sooo legit
Cyclists always break the law
Let?s get this one out of the way first, because it?s the one you hear most often: ?I can?t respect cyclists because they ignore stop signs? or ?Cyclists don?t seem to understand the rules of the road.? And yeah, when I?m on my bike, I sometimes bend traffic laws and see other cyclists doing the same.
The question is, how often does this happen? And how angelic are drivers? The data is a little hard to come by: Nobody, as far as I can tell, has placed a camera on the shoulders of drivers and cyclists and measured how well they follow the rules of traffic. But there is some information. One British study found that six out of ten cyclists admit to running red lights. Last year, New York magazine sent an intern out to see how cyclists handled traffic lights at three intersections. She found only 14, 22, and 36.6 percent of riders stopped at red lights, respectively.
How about cars? Well, an internet questionnaire found two-thirds of drivers admit to breaking the law at some point. The Society of Automotive Engineers concluded that US drivers use their turn signals just half the time when changing lanes, and only a quarter of the time when turning improperly, which could be responsible for as many as two million accidents annually. And that 14-to-36 percent compliance rate for bikers? It?s a little offset by the fact that New York City drivers collectively run 1.23 million red lights per day.
The truth is that we?re just not that great at not breaking the law. Cyclists neglect to follow some rules, mostly rolling though stop signs and going through red lights if there?s no cross traffic. Drivers tend to forget the following things are illegal (at least in California): Speeding, tailgating, not signaling, not stopping before a right turn, getting behind the wheel while drunk, texting or using a cell phone without the hands-free option, double parking, throwing trash (including cigarette butts) out the window, failing to stop for pedestrians in a crosswalk, making a U-turn when there?s a ?No U-turn? sign, honking your horn just because you?re angry, and yes, running red lights and rolling through stop signs.
I?m not saying two wrongs make a right. That drivers break the law doesn?t make it okay for cyclists to do so. I?m trying to point out that traffic laws are some of the least important and most commonly disregarded rules on our books. Drivers break them every day, casually, and usually without much thought. But the way some people talk about rule-breaking cyclists, you?d think our traffic laws were equivalent to the Bill of Rights, Geneva Conventions, and Magna Carta rolled up into one.
My conclusion is, chill out. Most people see cars breaking laws every day without saying ?I don?t respect drivers? or ?Drivers really need to learn the rules of the road.? Sitting on a bike seat doesn?t somehow turn you into a monster anymore than getting behind the wheel does. Cyclists don?t break the rules because they?re bad people, they do it because they?re people.
