Thanks to the bike party organizers!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate bicyclists because I can never predict what they’re going to do. Are they following car rules? Are they following pedestrian rules? Are they following presidential motorcade rules? It could be anything! And if I guess wrong, I could smoosh them. Approaching a 4 way stop at the same time as a cyclist is impossible.

It's quite possible, and I've done it many times, both while driving and while riding a bicycle. Here is how to do it when you're driving:

1. Slow down while approaching the stop sign.
2. Come to a complete stop behind the stop line.
3. Look around.
4. Proceed when it's safe to go.

Is this a parody account??

It is NOT the auto driver who needs step-by-step instructions on how to approach a stop sign.

Just last evening I watched 2 adults on bikes blow through the stop sign on Willow by the Women's Farm Market in Bethesda.

Not even a hint at stopping.

Thank goodness the car coming out of the parking lot just sat there (even though it was stopped and there FIRST), as if they knew this would happen, and watched. Otherwise, likely a double smash of those on bikes.

Seldom is the time I see a car at a 4 way stopsign come to a complete stop, as required by law. Like almost never. So please, let's just stop with the hyperbole. People driuving cars suck. People riding bikes suck. The difference is the severity of damage when one breaks the law over the other.

This line of argument is so disingenuous.

When drivers complain about cyclists ignoring stop signs, they mean the cyclist made essentially no attempt to stop. They just went right through a stop sign or traffic light at or near full speed, regardless of whether they had the right of way (as required by law). If you spend five minutes on DC roads, you know this is commonplace behavior among cyclists.

When cyclists complain about drivers "ignoring" stop signs, they mean something far more technical (and pedantic). They mean "yes, the car stopped in the commonplace sense of the term "stop" but the car didnt come to a complete and total halt where all of its forward momentum disappeared" (which is a definition that not even a traffic cop would enforce).

Those two things are not the same thing, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise.

No, I see drivers blow stop signs daily. DP but agree with the original point

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Like I said earlier, you are wasting your time engaging with cyclist. They want cars to go away--literally, and have the roads be cyclist and pedestrian only.

I would ask this, why should we design our places for cars rather than for people? Places designed for people are inherently preferable to places designed for cars. There is a reason why people live here instead of Houston.

When people go on vacation, most people try to get as far away from cars as possible. Think how awful Disney World would be if you had to drive from Space Mountain to TRON. Who would want to be at a beach with an idling truck next to them? How would you like driving to the top of a ski slope? Parking your SUV next to the green?

Put a car in those environments and its absolutely ruined. The same happens with cities, but most Americans just don't realize there are alternatives. They lack imagination.

Do you think people have never heard of bikes? Is that what you think the issue is?

People don't want to bike because they think biking fcking sucks.

Look at DC. We've had bike lanes for 15 years and the number of people on bicycles is *shrinking*. It's not that they haven't given it a chance. It's that they aren't interested.

Some of you cyclists have a real stalker vibe, where you can't seem to accept that people are saying no thanks.

I'm beyond impressed at your ability to keep pushing lies that have been disproven on every biking thread I've ever read on DCUM. Truly incredible effort.

Not sure what you think is being disproven. Just look at the transportation survey by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. They've been doing the studies since forever. They show biking is becoming less popular, even after correcting for the rise of telework.

https://www.mwcog.org/documents/2023/08/14/state-of-the-commute-survey-report--carsharing-state-of-the-commute-telework-travel-surveys/

Anyone who uses findings from a under-powered survey to attempt to counter a point referencing population-based numbers should have the sense of decency to refrain from any and all future discussions involving statistics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate bicyclists because I can never predict what they’re going to do. Are they following car rules? Are they following pedestrian rules? Are they following presidential motorcade rules? It could be anything! And if I guess wrong, I could smoosh them. Approaching a 4 way stop at the same time as a cyclist is impossible.

It's quite possible, and I've done it many times, both while driving and while riding a bicycle. Here is how to do it when you're driving:

1. Slow down while approaching the stop sign.
2. Come to a complete stop behind the stop line.
3. Look around.
4. Proceed when it's safe to go.

Is this a parody account??

It is NOT the auto driver who needs step-by-step instructions on how to approach a stop sign.

Just last evening I watched 2 adults on bikes blow through the stop sign on Willow by the Women's Farm Market in Bethesda.

Not even a hint at stopping.

Thank goodness the car coming out of the parking lot just sat there (even though it was stopped and there FIRST), as if they knew this would happen, and watched. Otherwise, likely a double smash of those on bikes.

Seldom is the time I see a car at a 4 way stopsign come to a complete stop, as required by law. Like almost never. So please, let's just stop with the hyperbole. People driuving cars suck. People riding bikes suck. The difference is the severity of damage when one breaks the law over the other.

This line of argument is so disingenuous.

When drivers complain about cyclists ignoring stop signs, they mean the cyclist made essentially no attempt to stop. They just went right through a stop sign or traffic light at or near full speed, regardless of whether they had the right of way (as required by law). If you spend five minutes on DC roads, you know this is commonplace behavior among cyclists.

When cyclists complain about drivers "ignoring" stop signs, they mean something far more technical (and pedantic). They mean "yes, the car stopped in the commonplace sense of the term "stop" but the car didnt come to a complete and total halt where all of its forward momentum disappeared" (which is a definition that not even a traffic cop would enforce).

Those two things are not the same thing, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise.

No, I see drivers blow stop signs daily. DP but agree with the original point

It was hyperbole before COVID, but its reality now. Slackened enforcement and drivers showed their true colors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate bicyclists because I can never predict what they’re going to do. Are they following car rules? Are they following pedestrian rules? Are they following presidential motorcade rules? It could be anything! And if I guess wrong, I could smoosh them. Approaching a 4 way stop at the same time as a cyclist is impossible.

It's quite possible, and I've done it many times, both while driving and while riding a bicycle. Here is how to do it when you're driving:

1. Slow down while approaching the stop sign.
2. Come to a complete stop behind the stop line.
3. Look around.
4. Proceed when it's safe to go.

Is this a parody account??

It is NOT the auto driver who needs step-by-step instructions on how to approach a stop sign.

Just last evening I watched 2 adults on bikes blow through the stop sign on Willow by the Women's Farm Market in Bethesda.

Not even a hint at stopping.

Thank goodness the car coming out of the parking lot just sat there (even though it was stopped and there FIRST), as if they knew this would happen, and watched. Otherwise, likely a double smash of those on bikes.

Seldom is the time I see a car at a 4 way stopsign come to a complete stop, as required by law. Like almost never. So please, let's just stop with the hyperbole. People driuving cars suck. People riding bikes suck. The difference is the severity of damage when one breaks the law over the other.

This line of argument is so disingenuous.

When drivers complain about cyclists ignoring stop signs, they mean the cyclist made essentially no attempt to stop. They just went right through a stop sign or traffic light at or near full speed, regardless of whether they had the right of way (as required by law). If you spend five minutes on DC roads, you know this is commonplace behavior among cyclists.

When cyclists complain about drivers "ignoring" stop signs, they mean something far more technical (and pedantic). They mean "yes, the car stopped in the commonplace sense of the term "stop" but the car didnt come to a complete and total halt where all of its forward momentum disappeared" (which is a definition that not even a traffic cop would enforce).

Those two things are not the same thing, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise.

Does someone really need to explain to you the meaning of the word "stop"?

A slow rolling stop is not the worst of sins that drivers can commit, but please have more respect for your audience than to try to ask us to believe that a cyclist riding at normal pace through a stop sign is eminently more dangerous than a driver rolling through the stop sign at the same speed.

I really don't know how you could have spent so many years on this earth but yet remained completely oblivious to vast differences between bicycles and motor vehicles in operator visibility, stopping distance, maneuverability, and momentum, but please understand that you have my full sympathy for failing to grasp that which is blatantly obvious to the rest of us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate bicyclists because I can never predict what they’re going to do. Are they following car rules? Are they following pedestrian rules? Are they following presidential motorcade rules? It could be anything! And if I guess wrong, I could smoosh them. Approaching a 4 way stop at the same time as a cyclist is impossible.

It's quite possible, and I've done it many times, both while driving and while riding a bicycle. Here is how to do it when you're driving:

1. Slow down while approaching the stop sign.
2. Come to a complete stop behind the stop line.
3. Look around.
4. Proceed when it's safe to go.

Is this a parody account??

It is NOT the auto driver who needs step-by-step instructions on how to approach a stop sign.

Just last evening I watched 2 adults on bikes blow through the stop sign on Willow by the Women's Farm Market in Bethesda.

Not even a hint at stopping.

Thank goodness the car coming out of the parking lot just sat there (even though it was stopped and there FIRST), as if they knew this would happen, and watched. Otherwise, likely a double smash of those on bikes.

Seldom is the time I see a car at a 4 way stopsign come to a complete stop, as required by law. Like almost never. So please, let's just stop with the hyperbole. People driuving cars suck. People riding bikes suck. The difference is the severity of damage when one breaks the law over the other.

This line of argument is so disingenuous.

When drivers complain about cyclists ignoring stop signs, they mean the cyclist made essentially no attempt to stop. They just went right through a stop sign or traffic light at or near full speed, regardless of whether they had the right of way (as required by law). If you spend five minutes on DC roads, you know this is commonplace behavior among cyclists.

When cyclists complain about drivers "ignoring" stop signs, they mean something far more technical (and pedantic). They mean "yes, the car stopped in the commonplace sense of the term "stop" but the car didnt come to a complete and total halt where all of its forward momentum disappeared" (which is a definition that not even a traffic cop would enforce).

Those two things are not the same thing, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise.

No, I see drivers blow stop signs daily. DP but agree with the original point

It was hyperbole before COVID, but its reality now. Slackened enforcement and drivers showed their true colors.

There's nothing quite like being punishment passed (https://www.bikelaw.com/2017/07/punishment-pass-defined/) by a driver who then slows right down to avoid getting ticketed by a speed camera. But such is life when traffic enforcement is outsourced to robots.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

that's all nonsense. in 2022, 35 people died in traffic accidents, according to the police. here's their breakdown of the causes:

12 -- pedestrian error
9 -- speeding
4 -- driver error
4 -- driver drunk/high/impaired
2 -- bicycle error
2 -- medical emergency
1 -- atv/scooter error
1 -- hit and run/unknown

why don't you tell us which of these we could engineer away, if only we tried?

The fact that you have failed to provide a link to your source does not lend credibility to your post. Any accident investigator worth their salt knows that most accidents have multiple causes and the fact that this list attributes a single cause to each accident raises more questions than it answers.

You know the police reports this stuff publicly, right? They have a Web site and everything. It's crazy. Since you're apparently either too stupid or too lazy to find it yourself, here's the report. It's on page 24. It's even on a chart so you dont have to tax your little brain reading entire sentences.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mpdc/publication/attachments/AR_2022_lowres.pdf

Lazy idiot who couldn’t be bothered including a link in his post accusing others of being lazy and stupid for not trawling the web to find their sources . . . It’s sad to see but true to form for anyone who thinks over-simplified tabulations like this contain any useful information. If speed and/or driver distraction were not at least a contributing factor to these incidents, odds are that many if not all of these 35 people would still be alive today. But as vehicles lack black boxes and devices to record driver eye movement, this is very difficult for investigators to discern.

If you have some specific information about these individual crashes that you think police investigators overlooked, you should contact them. But if you know literally nothing about them, then maybe just STFU?

Let's dig into this a bit, shall we? Specifically, the death of Shawn O'Donnell, a State Department employee who died after she was hit by a commercial truck at the intersection of 21st and I St NW in July 2022. I've been waiting almost two years now to read the full investigation of the accident. Other than a brief preliminary investigation report (https://mpdc.dc.gov/release/traffic-fatality-intersection-21st-street-and-i-street-northwest) that was apparently informed only by the testimony of the driver involved in the accident, no other reports into this traffic accident appear to be available to the public. This is a shame as it would be very helpful for our elected officials, agency officials, and the general public to know more about what happened.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

that's all nonsense. in 2022, 35 people died in traffic accidents, according to the police. here's their breakdown of the causes:

12 -- pedestrian error
9 -- speeding
4 -- driver error
4 -- driver drunk/high/impaired
2 -- bicycle error
2 -- medical emergency
1 -- atv/scooter error
1 -- hit and run/unknown

why don't you tell us which of these we could engineer away, if only we tried?

The fact that you have failed to provide a link to your source does not lend credibility to your post. Any accident investigator worth their salt knows that most accidents have multiple causes and the fact that this list attributes a single cause to each accident raises more questions than it answers.

You know the police reports this stuff publicly, right? They have a Web site and everything. It's crazy. Since you're apparently either too stupid or too lazy to find it yourself, here's the report. It's on page 24. It's even on a chart so you dont have to tax your little brain reading entire sentences.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mpdc/publication/attachments/AR_2022_lowres.pdf

Lazy idiot who couldn’t be bothered including a link in his post accusing others of being lazy and stupid for not trawling the web to find their sources . . . It’s sad to see but true to form for anyone who thinks over-simplified tabulations like this contain any useful information. If speed and/or driver distraction were not at least a contributing factor to these incidents, odds are that many if not all of these 35 people would still be alive today. But as vehicles lack black boxes and devices to record driver eye movement, this is very difficult for investigators to discern.

If you have some specific information about these individual crashes that you think police investigators overlooked, you should contact them. But if you know literally nothing about them, then maybe just STFU?

Let's dig into this a bit, shall we? Specifically, the death of Shawn O'Donnell, a State Department employee who died after she was hit by a commercial truck at the intersection of 21st and I St NW in July 2022. I've been waiting almost two years now to read the full investigation of the accident. Other than a brief preliminary investigation report (https://mpdc.dc.gov/release/traffic-fatality-intersection-21st-street-and-i-street-northwest) that was apparently informed only by the testimony of the driver involved in the accident, no other reports into this traffic accident appear to be available to the public. This is a shame as it would be very helpful for our elected officials, agency officials, and the general public to know more about what happened.

That's not unusual. Police investigations take a long time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

that's all nonsense. in 2022, 35 people died in traffic accidents, according to the police. here's their breakdown of the causes:

12 -- pedestrian error
9 -- speeding
4 -- driver error
4 -- driver drunk/high/impaired
2 -- bicycle error
2 -- medical emergency
1 -- atv/scooter error
1 -- hit and run/unknown

why don't you tell us which of these we could engineer away, if only we tried?

Given people make billions of trips every year the number of traffic deaths here is paltry. Surprising the police say almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, bicyclists and ATV/scooter.

You've made this argument elsewhere. It's profoundly stupid. Next you'll be showing up on the crime threads to claim that the 274 murders that occurred in DC last year represent a miniscule fraction of the trillions of seconds that DC residents lived through last year and that we consequently don't need to be concerned about violent crime and or allocate any resources to reducing it.

That's really more of the cyclists' jam, isn't it?

If you ask why we throw such an incredible amount of money at bike safety, when on average only one bicyclist per year dies on DC streets, cyclists get in high dudgeon and talk about every life matters.

If you ask why we don't throw a similar amount of money at preventing violent crimes in DC (the police budget has been cut considerably), and why we don't have a "Vision Zero" for murder when there's roughly 300 times as many murders annually as bicycle deaths, their response is always oh well it's a big city. things happen. if you dont like it, move.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hate bicyclists because I can never predict what they’re going to do. Are they following car rules? Are they following pedestrian rules? Are they following presidential motorcade rules? It could be anything! And if I guess wrong, I could smoosh them. Approaching a 4 way stop at the same time as a cyclist is impossible.

It's quite possible, and I've done it many times, both while driving and while riding a bicycle. Here is how to do it when you're driving:

1. Slow down while approaching the stop sign.
2. Come to a complete stop behind the stop line.
3. Look around.
4. Proceed when it's safe to go.

Is this a parody account??

It is NOT the auto driver who needs step-by-step instructions on how to approach a stop sign.

Just last evening I watched 2 adults on bikes blow through the stop sign on Willow by the Women's Farm Market in Bethesda.

Not even a hint at stopping.

Thank goodness the car coming out of the parking lot just sat there (even though it was stopped and there FIRST), as if they knew this would happen, and watched. Otherwise, likely a double smash of those on bikes.

Seldom is the time I see a car at a 4 way stopsign come to a complete stop, as required by law. Like almost never. So please, let's just stop with the hyperbole. People driuving cars suck. People riding bikes suck. The difference is the severity of damage when one breaks the law over the other.

This line of argument is so disingenuous.

When drivers complain about cyclists ignoring stop signs, they mean the cyclist made essentially no attempt to stop. They just went right through a stop sign or traffic light at or near full speed, regardless of whether they had the right of way (as required by law). If you spend five minutes on DC roads, you know this is commonplace behavior among cyclists.

When cyclists complain about drivers "ignoring" stop signs, they mean something far more technical (and pedantic). They mean "yes, the car stopped in the commonplace sense of the term "stop" but the car didnt come to a complete and total halt where all of its forward momentum disappeared" (which is a definition that not even a traffic cop would enforce).

Those two things are not the same thing, and it's absurd to pretend otherwise.

Does someone really need to explain to you the meaning of the word "stop"?

A slow rolling stop is not the worst of sins that drivers can commit, but please have more respect for your audience than to try to ask us to believe that a cyclist riding at normal pace through a stop sign is eminently more dangerous than a driver rolling through the stop sign at the same speed.

I really don't know how you could have spent so many years on this earth but yet remained completely oblivious to vast differences between bicycles and motor vehicles in operator visibility, stopping distance, maneuverability, and momentum, but please understand that you have my full sympathy for failing to grasp that which is blatantly obvious to the rest of us.

You can just say you dont think cyclists should have to obey any traffic laws.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

that's all nonsense. in 2022, 35 people died in traffic accidents, according to the police. here's their breakdown of the causes:

12 -- pedestrian error
9 -- speeding
4 -- driver error
4 -- driver drunk/high/impaired
2 -- bicycle error
2 -- medical emergency
1 -- atv/scooter error
1 -- hit and run/unknown

why don't you tell us which of these we could engineer away, if only we tried?

The fact that you have failed to provide a link to your source does not lend credibility to your post. Any accident investigator worth their salt knows that most accidents have multiple causes and the fact that this list attributes a single cause to each accident raises more questions than it answers.

You know the police reports this stuff publicly, right? They have a Web site and everything. It's crazy. Since you're apparently either too stupid or too lazy to find it yourself, here's the report. It's on page 24. It's even on a chart so you dont have to tax your little brain reading entire sentences.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mpdc/publication/attachments/AR_2022_lowres.pdf

Lazy idiot who couldn’t be bothered including a link in his post accusing others of being lazy and stupid for not trawling the web to find their sources . . . It’s sad to see but true to form for anyone who thinks over-simplified tabulations like this contain any useful information. If speed and/or driver distraction were not at least a contributing factor to these incidents, odds are that many if not all of these 35 people would still be alive today. But as vehicles lack black boxes and devices to record driver eye movement, this is very difficult for investigators to discern.

If you have some specific information about these individual crashes that you think police investigators overlooked, you should contact them. But if you know literally nothing about them, then maybe just STFU?

Let's dig into this a bit, shall we? Specifically, the death of Shawn O'Donnell, a State Department employee who died after she was hit by a commercial truck at the intersection of 21st and I St NW in July 2022. I've been waiting almost two years now to read the full investigation of the accident. Other than a brief preliminary investigation report (https://mpdc.dc.gov/release/traffic-fatality-intersection-21st-street-and-i-street-northwest) that was apparently informed only by the testimony of the driver involved in the accident, no other reports into this traffic accident appear to be available to the public. This is a shame as it would be very helpful for our elected officials, agency officials, and the general public to know more about what happened.

That's not unusual. Police investigations take a long time.

Which is exactly why it is surprising that MPD 2022 annual report attributes a cause to this accident and others that occurred in 2022 and why it is only reasonable to take what is in that report with a veritable salt mountain.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

that's all nonsense. in 2022, 35 people died in traffic accidents, according to the police. here's their breakdown of the causes:

12 -- pedestrian error
9 -- speeding
4 -- driver error
4 -- driver drunk/high/impaired
2 -- bicycle error
2 -- medical emergency
1 -- atv/scooter error
1 -- hit and run/unknown

why don't you tell us which of these we could engineer away, if only we tried?

Given people make billions of trips every year the number of traffic deaths here is paltry. Surprising the police say almost half the deaths are the fault of pedestrians, bicyclists and ATV/scooter.

You've made this argument elsewhere. It's profoundly stupid. Next you'll be showing up on the crime threads to claim that the 274 murders that occurred in DC last year represent a miniscule fraction of the trillions of seconds that DC residents lived through last year and that we consequently don't need to be concerned about violent crime and or allocate any resources to reducing it.

That's really more of the cyclists' jam, isn't it?

If you ask why we throw such an incredible amount of money at bike safety, when on average only one bicyclist per year dies on DC streets, cyclists get in high dudgeon and talk about every life matters.

If you ask why we don't throw a similar amount of money at preventing violent crimes in DC (the police budget has been cut considerably), and why we don't have a "Vision Zero" for murder when there's roughly 300 times as many murders annually as bicycle deaths, their response is always oh well it's a big city. things happen. if you dont like it, move.

The "cyclists" you describe exist only in your head.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

that's all nonsense. in 2022, 35 people died in traffic accidents, according to the police. here's their breakdown of the causes:

12 -- pedestrian error
9 -- speeding
4 -- driver error
4 -- driver drunk/high/impaired
2 -- bicycle error
2 -- medical emergency
1 -- atv/scooter error
1 -- hit and run/unknown

why don't you tell us which of these we could engineer away, if only we tried?

The fact that you have failed to provide a link to your source does not lend credibility to your post. Any accident investigator worth their salt knows that most accidents have multiple causes and the fact that this list attributes a single cause to each accident raises more questions than it answers.

You know the police reports this stuff publicly, right? They have a Web site and everything. It's crazy. Since you're apparently either too stupid or too lazy to find it yourself, here's the report. It's on page 24. It's even on a chart so you dont have to tax your little brain reading entire sentences.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mpdc/publication/attachments/AR_2022_lowres.pdf

Lazy idiot who couldn’t be bothered including a link in his post accusing others of being lazy and stupid for not trawling the web to find their sources . . . It’s sad to see but true to form for anyone who thinks over-simplified tabulations like this contain any useful information. If speed and/or driver distraction were not at least a contributing factor to these incidents, odds are that many if not all of these 35 people would still be alive today. But as vehicles lack black boxes and devices to record driver eye movement, this is very difficult for investigators to discern.

If you have some specific information about these individual crashes that you think police investigators overlooked, you should contact them. But if you know literally nothing about them, then maybe just STFU?

Let's dig into this a bit, shall we? Specifically, the death of Shawn O'Donnell, a State Department employee who died after she was hit by a commercial truck at the intersection of 21st and I St NW in July 2022. I've been waiting almost two years now to read the full investigation of the accident. Other than a brief preliminary investigation report (https://mpdc.dc.gov/release/traffic-fatality-intersection-21st-street-and-i-street-northwest) that was apparently informed only by the testimony of the driver involved in the accident, no other reports into this traffic accident appear to be available to the public. This is a shame as it would be very helpful for our elected officials, agency officials, and the general public to know more about what happened.

That's not unusual. Police investigations take a long time.

Which is exactly why it is surprising that MPD 2022 annual report attributes a cause to this accident and others that occurred in 2022 and why it is only reasonable to take what is in that report with a veritable salt mountain.

Yes, clearly, the answer is that the police are conspiring against you.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

Next party starts tomorrow at the van ness metro around 6:30

The bike party will be led around by the local ANC with middle fingers extended.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

:roll:

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

that's all nonsense. in 2022, 35 people died in traffic accidents, according to the police. here's their breakdown of the causes:

12 -- pedestrian error
9 -- speeding
4 -- driver error
4 -- driver drunk/high/impaired
2 -- bicycle error
2 -- medical emergency
1 -- atv/scooter error
1 -- hit and run/unknown

why don't you tell us which of these we could engineer away, if only we tried?

The fact that you have failed to provide a link to your source does not lend credibility to your post. Any accident investigator worth their salt knows that most accidents have multiple causes and the fact that this list attributes a single cause to each accident raises more questions than it answers.

You know the police reports this stuff publicly, right? They have a Web site and everything. It's crazy. Since you're apparently either too stupid or too lazy to find it yourself, here's the report. It's on page 24. It's even on a chart so you dont have to tax your little brain reading entire sentences.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mpdc/publication/attachments/AR_2022_lowres.pdf

Lazy idiot who couldn’t be bothered including a link in his post accusing others of being lazy and stupid for not trawling the web to find their sources . . . It’s sad to see but true to form for anyone who thinks over-simplified tabulations like this contain any useful information. If speed and/or driver distraction were not at least a contributing factor to these incidents, odds are that many if not all of these 35 people would still be alive today. But as vehicles lack black boxes and devices to record driver eye movement, this is very difficult for investigators to discern.

If you have some specific information about these individual crashes that you think police investigators overlooked, you should contact them. But if you know literally nothing about them, then maybe just STFU?

Let's dig into this a bit, shall we? Specifically, the death of Shawn O'Donnell, a State Department employee who died after she was hit by a commercial truck at the intersection of 21st and I St NW in July 2022. I've been waiting almost two years now to read the full investigation of the accident. Other than a brief preliminary investigation report (https://mpdc.dc.gov/release/traffic-fatality-intersection-21st-street-and-i-street-northwest) that was apparently informed only by the testimony of the driver involved in the accident, no other reports into this traffic accident appear to be available to the public. This is a shame as it would be very helpful for our elected officials, agency officials, and the general public to know more about what happened.

That's not unusual. Police investigations take a long time.

Which is exactly why it is surprising that MPD 2022 annual report attributes a cause to this accident and others that occurred in 2022 and why it is only reasonable to take what is in that report with a veritable salt mountain.

Yes, clearly, the answer is that the police are conspiring against you.

More like the authors of glossy annual reports are conspiring against those ignorant souls who lack the nous to find a better citation.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I see this type of driver behavior all.the.time.

But sure, its the bikes that are dangerous

:roll:

The cyclist is traveling in the left lane at a rate of speed 1/3 below the speed limit and normal flow of traffic. The car made a pass that provided a safe distance between the cyclist and the vehicle. The cyclist complains that the pass was made over double yellow, okay, but the cyclist continues to travel in the left lane as a slower moving vehicle, demonstrating that they were determined not to let anyone pass them. It’s also funny to see cyclist claim they stopped at red light, when it looks like they are illegally in the crosswalk and the spedometer says 4 MPH, indicating that they are still moving and not actually stopped.

I don't know the cyclist, perhaps they were getting ready to turn left.

Either way, the cyclist has the right to ride in the lane and it is illegal for the driver to cross the double yellow line.

So you are wrong on both counts.

There is no blanket prohibition for crossing a double yellow line in DC. However, the cyclist has recorded themselves committing at least one clear traffic violation.

I've been looking this up and cannot find a reference in the DC regulations to the double yellow line. This is of course covered in the DC Driver Manual and we all know it is illegal, but what specific regulation does it violate?

There is not a specific bright line rule because the law intentionally allows for situations like what the cyclist depicted. Needing to cross for safety reasons while also complying with other laws.

Blowing past a cyclist is not "safety reasons" - that is just being selfish and operating the SUV in question very dangerously.

Cyclists are the least law abiding people on the road. They don't even follow the rules of "Idaho stops," a rule they wanted. They're only allowed to blow stop signs if no one else has the right of way at an intersection.

This really is focusing on the speck in another's eye while ignoring planks in your own territory. Drivers really are completely blind to their own illegal behavior. Speeding is the most obvious, and dangerous one, but the vast majority of drivers at any given point in time are violating one or more laws. Illegal driver behavior is so ingrained it doesn't even feel illegal to most drivers.

Not to mention that drivers enjoy the privilege of being ensconced in a multi-ton steel cage that not only insulates them from the consequences of their own reckless behavior but socializes the adverse effects thereof across all manner of surrounding road users. False equivalences between driver and cyclist behavior are one of the dumbest tropes to be found on the whole internet.

uh, what? this is bizarre. the laws are the laws, and everyone is supposed to follow them. the rules about when idaho stops are allowed are very specific. it's not just "you can do whatever you feel like."

Speed limits, stop signs, and red lights are also very specific, but routinely ignored by motorists on DC roads as a matter of course. When a staggering proportion of road users flout the law, focusing on those whose behavior poses the absolute least risk to others is, um, bizarre.

Nonsense. If drivers ignored stop signs at the same rate as cyclists, there would be wrecks at every single intersection in the city, every single day.

There were 41 reported car accidents on the most recently available full day of reporting, with possible reports still coming in: https://opendata.dc.gov/datasets/DCGIS::crashes-in-dc/explore

What sort of police/fire/medical resources do you think those accidents consume? That's with current "law abiding" drivers.

Says the cyclist who wants the city to spend $50 million to build him and his friends their own bridge next to a bridge that's already there.

The daytime population of Washington DC is one million. That's a lot of people moving around and accidents are inevitable (that's why we call them accidents!). Everyone who is on the road, regardless of how they are moving about, should expect to be in an accident sooner or later. (The notion that we can engineer away accident is silly).

That said, it would be helpful if we got the police back in the traffic enforcement game (something WABA opposes!). Traffic cameras basically only catch tourists and they give a free pass to people who are driving while high or drunk who are the most dangerous people on the road.

This is the attitude that gets 40,000 Americans killed every year. And yes, you can engineer away the vast majority of those deaths and injuries. You just don't want to try.
Other countries have 1/3rd the fatalities per mile driven, and most of that difference is design.

that's all nonsense. in 2022, 35 people died in traffic accidents, according to the police. here's their breakdown of the causes:

12 -- pedestrian error
9 -- speeding
4 -- driver error
4 -- driver drunk/high/impaired
2 -- bicycle error
2 -- medical emergency
1 -- atv/scooter error
1 -- hit and run/unknown

why don't you tell us which of these we could engineer away, if only we tried?

The fact that you have failed to provide a link to your source does not lend credibility to your post. Any accident investigator worth their salt knows that most accidents have multiple causes and the fact that this list attributes a single cause to each accident raises more questions than it answers.

You know the police reports this stuff publicly, right? They have a Web site and everything. It's crazy. Since you're apparently either too stupid or too lazy to find it yourself, here's the report. It's on page 24. It's even on a chart so you dont have to tax your little brain reading entire sentences.

https://mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mpdc/publication/attachments/AR_2022_lowres.pdf

Lazy idiot who couldn’t be bothered including a link in his post accusing others of being lazy and stupid for not trawling the web to find their sources . . . It’s sad to see but true to form for anyone who thinks over-simplified tabulations like this contain any useful information. If speed and/or driver distraction were not at least a contributing factor to these incidents, odds are that many if not all of these 35 people would still be alive today. But as vehicles lack black boxes and devices to record driver eye movement, this is very difficult for investigators to discern.

If you have some specific information about these individual crashes that you think police investigators overlooked, you should contact them. But if you know literally nothing about them, then maybe just STFU?

Let's dig into this a bit, shall we? Specifically, the death of Shawn O'Donnell, a State Department employee who died after she was hit by a commercial truck at the intersection of 21st and I St NW in July 2022. I've been waiting almost two years now to read the full investigation of the accident. Other than a brief preliminary investigation report (https://mpdc.dc.gov/release/traffic-fatality-intersection-21st-street-and-i-street-northwest) that was apparently informed only by the testimony of the driver involved in the accident, no other reports into this traffic accident appear to be available to the public. This is a shame as it would be very helpful for our elected officials, agency officials, and the general public to know more about what happened.

That's not unusual. Police investigations take a long time.

Which is exactly why it is surprising that MPD 2022 annual report attributes a cause to this accident and others that occurred in 2022 and why it is only reasonable to take what is in that report with a veritable salt mountain.

Yes, clearly, the answer is that the police are conspiring against you.

More like the authors of glossy annual reports are conspiring against those ignorant souls who lack the nous to find a better citation.

Go down to the police station and ask for the accident report. It's not that hard. It's probably sitting in a drawer. If you're waiting for them to put out a press release, you're going to be waiting a long time.