jyl

Here is a bike advocacy question from a different angle.

What bicycle rider behavior would you like to see the police actively ticketing? If any.

My own vote is riding on streets at night with no lights.

(Year-round bike commuter here.)

GrouchoWretch

Salmoning and blowing stop signs or traffic signals where doing so abrogates another road user's right-of-way.

Commodus

Lights is a good one. Salmoning...for the most part, but some bus and train stations are setup to effectively require cyclists to do so for short periods. Round here anyways.

CB HI

Hitting a pedestrian and not yielding to a pedestrian in a crosswalk or on a sidewalk.

Most other tickets handed out to cyclist do nothing for safety.

squirtdad

70 in a 35 mph zone. Most would take the ticket to frame it for bragging rights.


seriously Red lights, Salmoning. As for lights at night I would prefer to see that cops have funding to hand a person a rear blinky and front light and second time around ticket....

GrouchoWretch

Not even salmoning?

You know more about this than I do. So I would tend to take your opinion seriously.

I'm not too fond of the idea of ticketing cyclists in the first place.

turbo1889

In short, in order of priority:

#1 - Cyclists that actually cause a collision accident by breaking the rules of the road should be ticketed for doing so, regardless of the nature of the offense itself if it resulted in an accident ticket is issued.

If I could only have one, that would be it, but I would really like these as well (extra especially #2):

#2 - "Kamikazes*" should be ticketed, I would even support an "Impound the bike on the spot and let them walk until they come down and pay the ticket to get the bike out of impound" policy for these nuts.
#3 - "Salmon" - for repeat offenders with multiple prior warnings and tickets I would support the same "Impound the bike on the spot" (ItBotS) type policy as above.
#4 - "Night Ninjas" - for repeat offenders with multiple prior warnings and tickets I would support the same ItBotS as above.

Enforcement against motorist harassment is more important after that, but once that is successfully accomplished (REAL enforcement against motorist harassment):

#5 - Not even treating a red light like a yield sign but flying right through (Non-Kamikaze offense, no other traffic forced to yield as result) - do no support ItBotS type policy.
#6 - Not even treating a red light like a stop sign (but do treat it like a yield sign) - do no support ItBotS type policy.
#7 - Not even treating a stop sign like a yield sign (Non-Kamikaze offense, no other traffic forced to yield as result) - do no support ItBotS type policy.

Last of all, I wouldn't ask for it until the culture had changed to fully treat cyclists as equal users of the roads, but at that point:

#8 - Not treating a red light like a red light (Fix the darn sensors to register bikes first !!!) - do no support anything close to an ItBotS type policy or high ticket price but on the long run if the sensors are fixed running a red is running a red regardless of how it is done and it is a "blood boiling point" incident for most people that see a cyclist do it and is one of the most frequent things that the haters bring up as what is in their mind a valid reason for their hatred. And hatred in the heart of the wrong person can be deadly for some poor cyclist someday somewhere. Possibly you or me and I don't think you want it to be you and I know I don't want it to be me.

For just about everything else, a simple warning should be more then sufficient in most cases.






* Kamikaze ~ Definition in cycling = a cyclists that blatantly, deliberately, and knowingly runs red-lights, stop signs, and other traffic controls requiring their flow of traffic to yield to another flow and in so doing blatantly, deliberately, and knowingly violates the right of way of other vehicles and blatantly, deliberately, and knowingly force other drivers to slam on their brakes and or swerve and skid and take drastic action to avoid hitting them.

Chris516

1. Salmoning

2. Riding w/o headlights on at night, in inclement weather

3. Riding when drunk and/or on drugs

4. Riding w/o a working headlight/taillight

5. Tailgating.

6, Running Stop Signs/Red Lights

7. Speeding

MMACH 5

Same roads.
Same rights.
Same rules.

unterhausen

generally, I think that cyclists should be ticketed for the same things that motorists are ticketed for within reason. The cops around here mostly ticket for speeding and going the wrong way down one way streets, although they ignore wrong way in the alley through the center of town. Officer Joe Bagadonuts could make a career out of that one, probably 5 motorists an hour go the wrong way down that street.

Angio Graham

cyclists, like others, should be ticketed when they harm someone.

no harm, no foul, no extortion money for the state.

rebel1916

Not minding their own business, meddling in the affairs of others and sanctimony.

bhtooefr

So, the basic framework would be similar to that of automobile infractions.

Salmoning on the road surface should fall under whatever automobile regulations require driving right of center.

Improper lighting... bicycles tend to have low (or no) standards for this, as exceptions to motor vehicle laws. So, fix that, and require lighting when cars are required to have it.

Red lights should be handled as automatically malfunctioning unless proven to work well for bicycles (and probably signed as such) - so, a cyclist that stops for a red and then continues before getting a green isn't ticketed unless it's signed as a bicycle-friendly stop light, but a cyclist that blows a red is.

Set a 5 mph speed limit for bicycles on the sidewalk (where sidewalk riding is legal), ticket cyclists that exceed that.

TomCat_Ford

What's your take on ticketing motorists?

Grillparzer

Anything short of riding on a bike trail after dark. That was my ticket.

Improper lighting definitely, most states do have minimum standards specified in their laws. Salmoning I'm not so sure, Washington D.C. has bike lanes on one way streets marked for travel in the opposite direction of the motor vehicle traffic. Rather then a blanket prohibition against riding on a sidewalk I'd rather see a law against riding recklessly. Riding on an empty sidewalk only endangers the bicyclist, but riding at speed through a crowd is another story. The difficulty there though would be the wording of the law itself. If it were written too vaguely it would end up being used against everybody from BMXers to mountain bike riders.

CB HI

Not even salmon riding, unless they hit a pedestrian or injure another cyclist. If they hit a cyclist without injury, or a motor vehicle; make them pay for the material damages. On a car and some bicycles, that will run at least $2,000.

Salmon riders have always moved out of my way when they realize I will hold my line.

Why waste time ticketing cyclist that do not endanger pedestrians, when there are hundreds of "right on red" motorist that endanger pedestrians and cyclist every hour in every city.

Tom Stormcrowe

Violating any r=traffic law. The only exception being minimum speed requirements, because of it not being possible to maintain minimum speed inder so many conditions.

We are traffic, and legal road users, so we are equally responsible for our actions out there.

howsteepisit

Egregious violations of traffic laws. Rolling through a stop sign really should not be ticketed, blasting through should be. With all things, some reason and compassion. riding at night without a light for sure as it endangers the drunk drivers. ( thats a joke for all you with no sense of humor).

I-Like-To-Bike

For yelling at another bicyclist, "Where's your helmet?"

GrouchoWretch

I wouldn't say I'm terribly fond of that, either, but it often seems much less pointless than ticketing cyclists, to me, anyway.

I can't quite buy that bikes must be operated exactly the same as motor vehicles, with all the same penalties and so on, because they are in fact so very very different. Crazy, I know. It just seems to me that the laws and rules of the motorways were not made with bicycles in mind. I could be wrong.

Six jours

Ending sentences with prepositions.

jolly_ross

It's the sort of language up with which we will not put.

genec

Except some traffic laws are clearly written for motor vehicles... or in support of motor vehicle based traffic.

MMACH 5

Yea. It would be pretty silly for a cop to issue a seat belt citation to a cyclist.

genec

Or more than one cyclist side by side in the same lane... which is a violation for motorcycles and automobiles in most states.