Originally Posted by pyze-guy
If we, as cyclists, want to be treated with the same concideration on the road as cars, we have to follow the same rules.
And if we have to follow the same rules, the lights should turn green for us (within a reasonable amount of time) just like they do for a car or a truck, and they should stay green long enough for us to get through the intersection. One intersection down the street from my house absolutely WILL NOT turn green unless there is a car waiting or someone presses the crosswalk button. I've sat there for as long as 30 minutes (with no traffic at all) waiting for that light before a car finally came up behind me and triggered the sensors. To make matters worse, I started moving as soon as the light turned green, and it was red by the time I got halfway through the intersection (about 8 to 10 seconds after it turned green). I had to come through that intersection every night for a month, it got to the point where I KNEW the signal was defective, so I just treated it like a stop sign (stop, make sure it's safe to go, then go). A cop saw me one night, I stopped at the AM/PM he was parked at and he was about to write me a ticket until I explained that I can't sit there forever and wait for a light that's never going to change.