With the weather finally turning nice and more people commuting by bike, I thought it would be a good time to discuss biking through the red lights. I do it occasionally, but under pretty specific circumstances. Some people, God love them, don’t blow through any reds, and some people seem to barely notice that there are conditions (let alone the red itself) that might warrant not going right now.
First off, if you don’t want to ever blow a red, that’s awesome. It can be dangerous. It can mess with pedestrians. Even if it is safe, it’s still illegal. In a city that doesn’t jay walk much, I can understand the urge to sit at those lights. Also, one of my favorite things about riding a bike in the city is the interactions you get with other bicyclists while waiting for the light to change. They’re usually short conversations that don’t get much beyond “where are you going?” but it’s still fun to talk to like minded people for a minute or two, and you’ll miss a lot of it if you go through the light.
That said, I blow red lights occasionally. I also jay walk in much the same way: be safe and don’t be an asshole. So the main question is not when do circumstances warrant it, but when don’t they: Don’t ever go through a red if there’s traffic.* Assume they can’t see you. Even if they can see you, they quite reasonably aren’t expecting you to blow the light when they have the right of way. But even if you can reasonably guess how fast the next car is coming, and that you can make it, don’t blow the light. If traffic is coming in that circumstance, there’s still a good chance that you’ll force them to hit the breaks or slow down by taking their foot off the gas. If they have the right of way, they shouldn’t have to do that. Bicyclists demand that cars share the road; we ought to extend the same kindness to drivers.
Even when there aren’t cars around, you still have an obligation to be safe and not an asshole to pedestrians and other bicyclists. If there’s a reasonable chance you might hit them, just stay put until everyone is clear. If the pedestrian at the curb is looking like she might cross, but you’re not sure, stay put. Hell, get off your bike, so they know you aren’t going until they’re done.
After that, I say go for it.
* You wouldn’t think this advice would be necessary, but it kind of is.
There’s a bigger issue than whether the bicyclist can get through the intersection without getting hit.
As someone who (before physical issues made it impossible) used to bicycle everywhere, and was even a bike messenger for a while in my (misspent) youth, but who now drives everywhere, I see both sides. This is the bottom line for a bicyclist: vehicles outweigh you by a factor of at least ten (often more). If you want to share the same road, obey the same rules. It’s as simple as that.
Most cars don’t go through red lights when there’s no traffic around; I generally didn’t, either, because you never know who’s watching, even from a window. Everywhere you go on a bicycle, you are an advertisement for sharing the road. That means obeying the same laws. Even if there’s no safety-related reason to wait at a light – or stop at a stop sign – you’re promoting the idea to whoever’s watching that bikes belong on the road.
The flip side is also true. People who blow through lights communicate that they don’t give a fuck what the rules are, the rules don’t apply to them. So why, a driver thinks, should car drivers honor the rule of respecting your space? There is no single action by a bicyclist (save the occasional person who recklessly weaves through slower-moving traffic) that pisses off motorists more. It might not have consequences for you, but it might have nasty consequences for some other bicyclist down the road who suffers from the driver’s resentment you helped stoke.
Short version: don’t be an ass. Stop.
@1
good post.
I think running stop signs is a much bigger issue – both cars and bikes seem to do “California stops” with equal frequency and I think most people are fine with it most of the time, but simply blowing through them is inexcusable.
I recently suffered a broken arm when a car failed to yield at an intersection where they had a stop sign and I didn’t. He claimed he stopped before proceeding – and therefore didn’t “run” the stop sign. I suspect that, whether he completely stopped or not, he saw me coming and figured I was on a bike, couldn’t be traveling very fast, and decided to go for it.
In either event, we was in the wrong and I’m the one who’s suffering the consequences.
@1
You said it right. If there’s a collision between a cyclist and a 2000 lb vehicle the vehicle will win everytime. I’m a cyclist who wants to avoid injury so I follow the law and stop at stop lights.
@Carl and 1
Great posts.
The only time I fudge red lights is to make the occasional right turn on red where there’s a big sign that says “no right turns on red.” Cars tend to fudge this intersection as well.
I do “Idaho Stops” at stop signs occasionally.
http://vimeo.com/4140910
@3
Ouch! Hope your arm’s healing well.
When I was younger, in more of a hurry, had a shorter commute, and triggers for bikes were few and far between, every light was fair game.
Now that I’m older, more cautious, and the infrastructure for bikes is markedly better, I stop and most all lights. Particularly since I only have a handful of lights on my 11 mile commute. They are a nice breather.
That said, there are, and will always be, young immortals; those who are going to do stupid things and piss people off, because they are young and immortal. It doesn’t matter what vehicle they are driving. At least on bike, they will generally only kill themselves. I think this is some sort of positive trait for society as a whole – if you don’t have a decent population of young males who are willing to do life-threatening things, your society doesn’t survive. Biking stupid is probably less risky than many other activities I can think of, I suppose.
I’m not sure what we can do about that, other than work the peer pressure. It will never entirely go away however.
I like to ignore reds in my car. It’s a long light, no one around, etc. If you can do it, I can do it. I always stop first. I never whiz through it without pause like the bikesters do.
I like to jaywalk also, as it’s fun to watch the others standing around feel “empowered” to do so, after they realize that the SPD isn’t tasing me within seconds.
LMFAO…poor carly….
Carly, did you happen to get the opinion of McGinn’s new Bike Nazi…oops, I mean trasportation guru/expert(insert laughter here)…on this subject? what say he to being a scofflaw?
As a fairly frequent cyclist I never blow red lights. It’s bad PR for cycling, it’s dangerous, and it’s pointless. With one exception: if there’s a light at a T-intersection and I’m riding to the right of traffic in a bike lane or broad shoulder at the top of the T, I will sometimes ride by–because I’m not crossing any traffic. I act as if it’s a light for the car lanes only because in effect it is. However, if the T doesn’t have a bicycle lane or wide shoulder I stop at the damn light, even if there’s nobody else around.
Stop signs are treated like yields sometimes, meaning I often slow and go through if there’s no other traffic. But honestly I do this when I drive my car, too (i.e. a California stop), though less frequently.
Goodness, look at all the sanity here, 8 providing contrast. Marked inverse from today’s Danny Westneat column in the Sound Times.
There’s trainloads of auto resentment towards assholes on bikes, way out of scale, that weighs on me enough to keep me at a light when opportunity otherwise allows.
Even in liberal Seattle, people have that 2nd amendment (the only one that counts) attitude toward their cars, they are deadly weapons after all. Oil addiction runs deep, and until the prices spike isn’t likely to change in the near term.
Here’s my opinion:
1. Bicyclists who run red lights should get tickets and pay the same fine that car drivers do. In addition, red light tickets should go on bicyclists’ driving records as moving violations, the same as if they had been driving a car when the infraction was committed.
2. Bicyclists using public thoroughfares should be required to have license plates on their bicycles and carry liability insurance, the same as car drivers are required to do.
3. A bicyclist who runs a red light, enters an intersection, and is hit by a car should not be allowed to sue the car driver who his injuries, because the accident was caused by his own negligence and he is 100% at fault.
4. A bicyclists who hits a pedestrian in a crosswalk waliing with the “Walk” sign should be charged with assault and battery. If the pedestrian is over age 65 the charges should be upgraded to felony assault upon an elderly person.
5. A bicyclist who runs over and kills a rabbit should be rendered to a foreign country, interrogated using enhanced investigation techniques, then tried as a terrorist before a military commission.
In today’s news, House Republicans passed a bill to gut President Obama’s new federal consumer protection agency, while Senate Republicans blocked a bill to repeal $2 billion of special tax breaks for big oil companies.
Republicans love scams, frauds, financial collapses, and deficits. Why would anyone vote for these asswipes?
The people running the Federal Reserve seem to think they should raise interest rates instead of shrinking the money supply.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43.....d_economy/
Which leads me to believe they’re determined to use inflation to write off the debts run up by the Bush administration and borrow-and-spend Republicans, destroying the pensions and savings of senior citizens in the process.
A strong argument can be made for raising interest rates right now. Artificially cheap money is creating asset bubbles in the stock market and other financial markets without boosting bank lending to small businesses or stimulating consumer spending, thus there’s no benefit of job creation to offset the negative effects of cheap money. In addition, keeping interest rates near zero is devastating to retirees who depend on investment income for their living expenses.
Meanwhile, we are seeing very dramatic inflation — not only in double digits, but in multiples of double digits, e.g. overnight grocery price increases in the fange of 30% to 60% — as a result of the Fed policy of flooding the economy with newly minted dollars.
This policy made sense when people spooked by the credit seize-up and financial meltdown stashed trillions of dollars into their mattresses. At that time, pumping dollars into circulation helped prevent a deflationary death spiral that would have led to a decade-long Great Depression. But the trick to that policy is to pull that cash out of circulation when the money comes out of the mattresses and reenters circulation. This is what the Fed needs to be doing now, not continuing to expand the money supply.
The Fed’s current policy is analogous to continuing to pump blood into a trauma victim long after his lost blood has been replenished. If the ER personnel don’t know when to turn off the plasma bottle, pretty soon blood will be pouring out of the patient’s ears, nose, mouth, belly button, and ass, because his body can’t hold any more. The Fed doesn’t seem to know when to shut off the plasma, and we’re going to pay for their mistakes with double-digit inflation.
But at least hyperinflation will have the benefit of wiping out the public debt our wingnut friends are so worried about — and, as a bonus, it’ll bail out underwater homeowners, who will see the nominal value of their homes double or triple. That doesn’t mean their homes will be worth more; it simply means their dollars will be worth less — or worthless.
Re your “Even if they [motorists] can see you, they quite reasonably aren’t expecting you to blow the light when they have the right of way.”
Not this motorist. I always assume that any bicyclist not stopped with a foot down is going to blow the light. Too often it’s the right assumption, and more than a few cyclists owe their good health to my defensive motoring.
@11
On #1: cyclists can be ticketed and will pay the same fines drivers do if ticketed (I got busted for speeding on my bike once.). I’m not sure how that works in regard to your driving record.
On #2: Cyclists are generally covered by their home owners or renters general liability coverage. When I inquired about bike specific liability coverage (never thought about it until you posted something about on here) there was none to be found.
Weirdly, motorcyclists aren’t required to cary liability insurance in Washington either. That’s another thing I learned from a comment on HA.
On #4: Sounds like negligent driving to me. The cyclist should be treated just like the driver of a car would be.
I do the same with cars (both while riding and driving). Cars blow though stop signs all the time.
I gotta say, I’ve had to make a few trips to Seattle over the last couple of months and the cyclists in your fair city do some incredibly stupid things. I see things in Seattle, bad behavior wise, that I just don’t see happening in Gig Harbor, Tacoma or Spokane.
Regarding red lights, not bicyclists….
When I taught my kids to drive, I also taught them that when they are stopped at a red light and it turns green, they should count to three, look both ways, and only then proceed.
I can’t tell you how many times they have come back to me, since then, and told me about cars racing to get through the red light, but don’t quite make it. If they had proceeded without pausing or looking first, they would have been T-boned.
Unfortunately, there are too many people in cars who think that they can make the light if they speed up to as fast as they can make their car go, only to find that they didn’t quite make the light after all, and there is no way at that speed that they can stop.
Oh oh, on the wrong side of the rabbit proof fence for once. Roger lays down the law for cyclists abiding by all the same regulations as motor vehicles in #11, an arguable stance if otherwise wrong; then proceeds to violate commenting rules of HA by going open thread on #12 
. This road is wide open for cottontails, no stoplights here! (and his offtopics are good ones). Certainly this is the late night of the HA era and traffic is light, but if you’re going to stand to principle Roger, a little consistency wouldn’t be out of place.
@18
I think I was stuck behind one of your kids at a green light, laying on my horn, the other day. J/K. It’s a good rule and has saved my butt a couple of times.
So now that we have a vulnerable persons law, if a cyclist or a pedestrian cause the death of one or the other will they be charged under the law?
I always appreciate it when bicyclists on hiking trails give me a nice yell from behind that they are ‘right behind you’.
I often think of that while driving past bicyclers: ‘I’m right behind you!’
The rudest pedestrians and bicycle riders in the world are in Boulder, CO: the home of the big, wide, hairy asshole.
@22
I lived in Boulder for about a month. Couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
@1,
Thanks! The original draft of this post had a reference to other people’s perceptions in the paragraph about people who don’t blow the light, but I decided it was already too long. It’s definitely a fair point, though.
@7,
In my car I never blow a red light, I always come to a full stop at stop signs and I never go more than like at most 5 MPH over the speed limit. I don’t know why the difference.
@19 I thought the information in the off-topic posts was too important to wait for an open thread.
@21 How can a pedestrian cause the death of a cyclist?
Oh, never mind, the answer just came to me. (Motorists have these too.)
http://www.google.com/imgres?i.....CCQQ9QEwAA
Light? What light? I didn’t see a light.
@26
Well their dogs, when on billion foot long leashes, can sure cause problems. And don’t get me started on joggers with their headphones turned up so loud that they can’t hear the cyclist that’s coming up behind them screaming “ON YOUR LEFT” as they wobble down a path veering directly into the cyclists path.
But, really it was just a snarky remark about adding complexity to an already complex world. I’m glad the vulnerable persons law is there but, I’d rather they just charged the motorist with the underlying law that they’ve more than likely broken.
@28 We’ve always had enough laws; the problem has always been not enough enforcement. There’s a yield sign in my neighborhood that all the motorists think is the green light at the dragster track.
I actually kinda like red light cameras. People are a lot more civilized where they have those.
Red light cameras are cool.
@29
There’s a long straightaway leading to my place. People speed like crazy, cause it’s long and it’s straight. Reduce the lane width by 2 feet and introduce a little bit of curve to it and the speeds would come down. No new laws or enforcement needed. In this case, it’s an engineering issue.
re 28: “ON YOUR LEFT” translates to: Get your ass out of the way because I’m not slowing down for you at all.
The bicyclists aren’t even supposed to be on the trails. It’s marked. Yet, there they are hollering at people to get out of the way. They’re all just a bunch of pushy asswipes in their spandex tights and Woody Woodpecker helmets.
@32- the BG was built as a bike trail back in the 70’s. It’s marketed differently these days, but the primary use was as a bike freeway. The current mixed used model can be awkward, but if that’s so then then solution is making residential streets conform to the same rules, as the Puke Place Market streets work.
Hi Carl.
I’ll sometimes run a red to clear an intersection, when I feel it’s the safer option.
Like if there’s no cross traffic and I have someone behind me wanting to take a right. Of if there’s someone across from me wanting to take a left.
“Cyclists are generally covered by their home owners or renters general liability coverage.”
are you smaking crack? your home owners covers damage to your home or sometimes liability to third parties in your home. your renter insurance covers your stuff and perhaps liability to third parties from your stuff acting up, though I doubt that. But I am sure neither one covers your negligence derived liaiblity when riding a bike outside the home.
“Weirdly, motorcyclists aren’t required to cary liability insurance in Washington either. That’s another thing I learned from a comment on HA.”
Am dubious about that one too. Let’s try googling for two minutes.
well I am wrong. this is outrageous. motorcyclists should have to carry insurance and in fact, their own PIP should be way higher too given the number of accidents they’re in that we all end up paying their medical costs for.
@35
Nope! That’s straight from my State Farm Insurance agent. ;->
@32
Last I checked, in America we pass on the left and cyclists were perfectly welcome on the Cushman Trail, the Green River, Trail, the Foot-Hills trail, the Centennial Trail…
Saying “on your left” as you approach people that you are going to pass is generally accepted trail use etiquette.
@37
It’s the “general” in “general liability” that you need to pay attention too.
From good old Wikipedia:
Just like my car insurance covers me regardless of what car I’m driving (not all policies are are like that) the general liability clause goes with me where ever I go.
Again, this is from my insurance agent, not just Wikipedia.