Originally Posted by John C. Ratliff
Today, my wife was almost hit as she walked a crosswalk by a bicyclist. Three cars had stopped at the crosswalk, and she started walking across, but had to stop when a bicyclist zoomed across in front of her.
Aw, man. Way to make me feel even worse. On my commute down this morning I was busy avoiding a taxi cab when I blew through a crosswalk right in front of an old Chinese lady. It was totally uncalled for, and I felt really bad about it, but I seriously didn't notice her because I was concentrating on the cab who had accelerated in front of me, and then slammed on his brakes (to stop for the crosswalk, natch).
A guy in lycra caught up to me at the next light, and politely said that blowing through crosswalks makes us all look bad, which made me feel even worse. I replied that I honestly stop for every single stop sign on all of my bike rides, including the one that at the bottom of the big hill that there are never any cars at, and that I just didn't notice the lady because of the cab. I don't think he believed me, though. If you're reading this, I totally do stop at all the stop signs and crosswalks!!! Check my previous posts!!!
Originally Posted by John C. Ratliff
So my question, for all the advocates of bicycling, is how do we get some amount of adherence to the laws of the road by downtown cyclists (I won't say which downtown at this point, because I think it happens about everywhere)? We make enemies of those who should be friends with this behaviour.
"You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." Being polite has usually worked for me, as has the tactic of warning people about police giving out tickets. "Hey man, I don't care if you blow through the stop sign, but you might want to be careful cause I got a $90 ticket at that very intersection a year and a half ago for doing exactly that. Ya know, just a thought." Does it get them to stop at stop signs? Probably not, but I've at least done something, and there wasn't any yelling involved.
The other thing I wish I had done was stopped when I saw an angry cyclist, and tried to provide a more reasonable alternative for the driver. (If there's only one cyclist, the driver can easily generalize to all cyclists. If there are two cyclists, then it's a lot harder to say "They're all crazy", because there's a demonstrably non-crazy cyclist right in front of them.) Hopefully I could even have calmed the situation (and the other cyclist) down a little. Next time, I think I will stop, and see if there's anything I can do to help.