esther-L

There have been cases of bicycle riders killing pedestrians when they ran into them.
I am not accustomed to 20mph speed limit (school zone is usually 25 here), but I would likely try to obey the limit in a school zone.

I tend to slow down where I am likely to find children, because they behave unpredictably. I hate losing the downhill momentum to help me up the next hill, but I do brake on downhills when it looks like there is a good reason to do so.

Essex

Kids in elementary, middle and high school all practice different levels of road awareness and common sense. Middle school kids being the worst in my opinion as crossing guards, and other forms of supervision may or may not be there. So, a cyclist being ticketed makes grand sense to me.

And a speeding 200 lb cyclist at 20 mph could easily kill a small kid.

Chris516

Yes, I had to avoid an elementary-aged boy just yesterday, who had just left school. He seemed oblivious to road traffic, as the J-walked.

B. Carfree

Where I grew up we had a tongue-in-cheek code of "kiddie right of way" that pretty much everyone obeyed. It's a shame that our streets, even around schools and parks, have become such hazards to the children of our communities that cops must target them to cite scofflaws.

Kids should be expected to be oblivious to road traffic, but those of us who comprise that traffic shouldn't be oblivious to the children.

I don't encounter very many children walking or cycling around our schools; they all take the bus or are driven by a parent. Earlier in the week, a friend went on a "safe routes to school" ride where the children all dutifully stopped their bikes at a four-way stop sign to wait their turn only to be nearly run over by a motorist who ran the stop sign. I'm sure the kids learned something about traffic on that ride, but I don't think it was the lesson the SRTS director was aiming for.

dynodonn 

Here in my state, they know the difference in potential damage, in where our DUI and CUI fines are based on that determination. 250 dollars base fine for cyclists, and 1400 dollars for motorists.

dynodonn 

Interesting in how some people's perception of a cyclist is speeding at 20 mph.

turbo1889

School speed zones in my area are usually 15-mph (which is apparently a lot lower then what a lot of you guys are seeing in your area). I will not deny that on a bicycle I have a hard time not breaking them and going faster often because I've got an automobile on my tail chewing my @$$ off and I'll admit it also because when I'm on a bicycle especially a pedal only bicycle I have a habit of always going as fast as I can.

When driving a car or truck then I usually drive barely over 10-mph in those 15-mph school zones and just let the jerks pile up in a line behind me and behave like I don't give a ^&@%&@% about their inconvenience. When I'm driving an automobile myself I tend to be far more cautious then when on a bike about how I could risk hurt others by being driving too fast where as on a bike I'm more concerned about someone hurting me. I'm also more willing to just let traffic back up behind me and not give a $^@%^@^ that they want to speed and I'm annoying them when I'm driving the speed limit or a little under and they can just take it for all I care. Where as when I'm on a bike I'm much more careful about not tick them off by doing that.

Also, as to checking me pedal cadence that only takes one second ~ exactly. I count "one one-thousand" and count how many rotations I get in that, one full rotation, about one and a quarter rotations, a rotation and a half, one and three quarters rotations, or maybe even two or almost two full rotations. If you can accurately gauge time in your head you only need a single second to check your cadence. Start both time in your head at the top of a stroke and see where you end up when that single second of time is over. With practice checking speed that way you don't even have to take your eyes off the road and what's around you and you count by feel on your strokes while still watching traffic and it takes another couple seconds to pull up in your head where that puts you for speed knowing your gear (always know what gear you are in your head, night riding or riding on an old bike without indicators on the shifters will really teach you this). In traffic I actually consider it safer then looking down to look at a spedo mounted on your handlebars because you can check your speed without having to take your eyes off the road and your surroundings and don't have to have that short gap in your situation awareness that you have if you look down to look at a little electronic screen. Same thing goes for gear indicators, you shouldn't have to look down to check them, especially you shouldn't have to be loooking all the way down between your legs physically checking where the chain is on the sprockets. One of my friends in high-school ran right into the side of a car that pulled out in front of him at full speed because he was looking down between his legs at his rear gears trying to figure out where he was and he never saw the car pull out in front of him. Back in those days shifters where on the top-tube and there were only five sprockets on the rear and two up front and no indicators on the shifters. Even then you can still do it by feel and sound and shift without loosing situation awareness by putting your head down.

dougmc

PA is only one of many states. Also note that your "if mopeds need them,pretty sure cars need them as well" logic is faulty -- it doesn't necessarily follow.

I don't know the law in PA, but in general antique cars aren't required to have them (especially if never equipped with one) and often while one might be required when the car is new there's no procedure for verifying that they continue to exist and work. If PA checks them in inspections, then that would be the procedure -- Texas has inspections too, but they don't check speedometers.

Looks like federal law requires them for "bus, truck, and truck-tractors", though I don't know what the context for this is is.

Either way, required or not, the police aren't going to accept a "well, I don't know how fast I was going, and I'm not required to have a speedometer" excuse to get out of a speeding ticket. If you don't want speeding tickets, either have an accurate speedometer or go slow enough under the limit that "eyeballing" your speed is sufficiently accurate.

CB HI

Please quote the post of MINE where I claimed having difficulty knowing my speed?

Are you setting up another straw man or just confusing who wrote what post again?

RobertHurst

These claims were disproved long ago by a simple physical experiment which your sources never bothered to perform.


... same with bikes. It's a simple experiment.

dynaryder

The link and quote are from the Washington State Police's website,the state where the article was from. I just gave PA as an example because I was familiar with their laws.

Why would Washington require mopeds to have speedos but not cars? That wouldn't make sense.

AdrianFly

It's not always cool to ride fast man.. especially in school zones. You gotta be on the lookout for the kids who aint on the lookout dig? Nothing wrong with dialin it down to a cool groove in those areas.

Chris516

Yes, But at the same time, parents' usually teach their kids to cross at the traffic light.

I-Like-To-Bike

News Flash, "kids" of all ages don't always do what their parents taught them.

Double News Flash, some parent(s) don't teach their children anything about traffic safety.

Essex

Basic physics and physiology.

Astrozombie

Cono stop speeding in kids zones! Better yet stop speeding at all!

dynodonn 

One of the reasons why cyclists are being unfairly targeted by the general public, even though the cyclists are riding in accordance with the law.

Essex

Personally, I don't see a whole lot of folks here in NYC riding in accordance with the law. And some robo chick on her Cannondale Supersix (on the Westside MUP) this morning nearly clocks a 3 yr old kid holding his mom's hand. If she had whacked him at speed which was around 17-18 mph he would have been in the emergency room.
Note: I had stopped for this family and this robo chick just blasts by.

Also, I'm pretty sure peds, motorists and such have all seen cyclists crashing into something. And perhaps badly. As per the physics part -some doofus with enough mass and speed is going to cause major hurt to someone who weighs in the range of 40-60 lbs.

FBinNY 

The physics prove you wrong. The maximum G-force braking effort possible is determined by the angle from the center of gravity to the contact point of the front wheel. At a braking effort (measured in Gs), that would slightly reduce the weight on the rear axle of a car, an bicyclist would be doing an endo. See tip or slide calculation here.

Braking distance for bicycles is closet to that of cement trucks than it is to cars.

However, the likelihood of hitting a person with a bicycle is much less than with a car, because of the bicycle's much smaller frontal area and greater maneuverability.

I-Like-To-Bike

What is a robo chick?

dynodonn 

Listen, just last week, a local parent was driving his 3 children to school, speeding in the process, loses control of his vehicle, and takes out some homeowner's front fence, front porch, nearly missing taking out the homeowner with a large potted plant that went through the front room window, and it takes two tow trucks to extract the vehicle from the premises. A few days later, another local motorist is taking her child to school, fails to negotiate a turn in front of the school, takes out a fire hydrant, and floods the street in front of the school in ankle deep water, meanwhile her vehicle gets a undercarriage wash on steroids all the time it was parked on top of the broken water main.

Robo chick cannot hold a candle to bozomotorist.

Nothing like real life, since I just cannot dream this **** up

unterhausen

yeah, if we are going after the cookoobanananuts folks on the motoring side, the possibilities are endless. Not sure why people aren't up in arms about it, but they aren't. There was a guy on the interstate tonight that was making sure nobody passed him. He would pull in front and slam on the brakes. I thought he was going to put himself and another motorist into the concrete barriers Everyone was actually responding sanely to this bozo, I was a little surprised.

dynodonn 

Personally, I can better handle deliberate acts done by motorists, since they are generally good about telegraphing their intentions beforehand, it's the random/unexpected idiocy done by motorists that tends to catch myself and other road users off guard.

AdrianFly

Well now sir, I commend your fine motorist skills and mature attitude toward this mentally disturbed person on the highway. It's people like this that we need to make sure and not do things like pull up next to them, get their attention and flip them the finger while mouthing the words F*** Y** ya M****R F****R!!!

Never ends well when we do that. Nope.. sure doesn't Mmmhmmm.. that's right.

agent pombero

The shark saw a minow and decided to maul it for no other reason than to be mean, rude, and bullish.