Reply to Are bikes allowed to go through red lights on major roads?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Today, I was driving westbound on Macarthur Blvd, and I stopped at a red light. Two bicyclists, with children in tow, came up behind me, crossed four lanes of traffic to turn left onto Dana Place.  I know bikes can do a rolling stop through stop signs, but is this correct behavior at a stop sign.  It seemed very dangerous to me as cars were crossing Macarthur with the light.[/quote]

That intersection has crosswalks on all sides. So it sounds like they were effectively turning left onto the crosswalk across MacArthur and along Dana. If there was traffic turning left off Dana onto MacArthur, they could have remained on the crosswalk and been protected by the right of way. If there was no traffic on Dana, then they can just merge from the crosswalk onto the Dana proper without any issue. A cleaner way of doing this would have been to come up onto the sidewalk of MacArthur before turning left onto the crosswalk, but either way this sounds like a perfectly safe move. Had they followed the law for cars, they’d be stuck in the left westbound lane waiting for the oncoming traffic to clear before they could turn left and would still need to worry about cars turning right from MacArthur onto Dana while running the risk of being rear-ended by a driver on MacArthur who was not paying attention. I’ll take what they did any day over that risk. [/quote]

This is likely what happened. My only disagreement is that biking in the crosswalk actually can be dangerous because you’re less visible. [/quote]

Less visible than what? If drivers are unable to see people who are in the crosswalk, that's a real problem.[/quote]

If you’re going to bike in the city (esp with kids) you REALLY need to learn this. Biking in a crosswalk can be unsafe because cars are only looking for people moving at walking speed. You can bike through a crosswalk but you need to go slowly and look out for turning cars. [/quote]

I always look for cars whenever I'm on a bike, and I don't like biking through crosswalks because I don't want to hit pedestrians. But let's be clear: The responsibility for avoiding a crash involving a vehicle turning and anyone doing anything in a crosswalk is primarily on the driver of the turning vehicle.[/quote]

The responsibility to keep yourself (and your kids!) alive is yours. There’s a reason right-hook accidents are the most common - because those types of accidents are the ones where the objective physics of traffic make it most difficult for cars to see bikes. It’s absolutely idiotic to neglect to educate people on bike safety out of some kind of ideology that “cars are always at fault.”[/quote]

Cars can't see bikes, ever. Drivers can see bikes, and more importantly, people on bikes. Unfortunately, road engineering and vehicle design make it difficult for even motivated drivers to see.

"Here's how right hook crashes happen, and here are some things you can do to reduce your chances of being in a right hook crash?" Yes.

"Biking in crosswalks is unsafe!"? Nope. Stop with the victim-blaming nonsense.[/quote]

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