DerekU2

Just a Heads Up - Cambridge Bike Cops had numerous "Red Light" traps set up for commuters this morning. As best I can tell, they're only issuing warnings, and the actual ticket itself is only $20, but it's not worth the hassle.

Also, even if you get through their trap, make sure they're not tailing you to the next light. I saw them tail a rider who dismounted his bicycle and walked it through the light they had the trap set up at. He was stopped at the next light by the bike cop following him.

They do this every couple of years - I can only guess it's to appease the drivers who complain.

jstream

So call me crazy, but am I the only one here who doesn't mind stopping for red lights and stop signs? It's just a commute, not a race. I enjoy the chance to stop and look around. See what the people in cars are doing at the light... You see some pretty amazing things

moxfyre

Agreed! I always stop at red lights and wait for them to change. It's not only dangerous but kind of rude not to. I never blow through stop signs either; if no one else is present, I will roll through, but if someone else is there I will stop.

capejohn

Your crazy. It's Cambridge for crying out loud. Even cars don't stop at red lights?

All seriousness aside. Since lights are traffic control systems, it makes very little sense to acknowledge them if I'm the only one on the road. When there is traffic however, I take advantage of the system.

p.s. I don't wear my winter coat in July either. But I take advantage of it when it's cold.

DerekU2

I didn't post here to get a "You Should Stop At All Red Lgihts" lecture - I posted to keep people from wasting 10 minutes and getting a lecture on bike safety.

I'm still going to cruise through red lights when I deem it safe to do so. You're free not to.

cyccommute 

If you don't want to waste 10 minutes and get a lecture on bike safety...RIDE SAFELY! That means following the regulations. Yes, this is a "You Should Stop At All Red Lgihts" lecture! I have no sympathy for anyone who runs stoplights, drives over the speed limit, operates a bicycle or a car like an idiot, etc., and then complains about being stopped. The easy way to avoid all the hassles is to ride and/or drive by the rules. Stop at the light and waste a couple of minutes or don't stop at the light and risk wasting a whole lot more time. The choice seems pretty simple to me.

DerekU2

Where was it where I complained about getting stopped or even about anything? I was simply giving the heads up. Consider it the "Headlight Flash" of the bicycle world...

rknj

If you stay off Mass Ave you shouldn't run into any of them, there's been one smack dab in the middle of Central Sq on and off the last couple weeks.

igloomaster

When nobody is around, I get this huge adrenaline rush when I run a red light or stop sign. I then yell at the top of my lungs "Take that, suckah!!!!!!"

Let's not make a big deal out of this. People ride they way they ride, and Derek is being nice by giving us an observation.

rajman

As a rule I don't run red lights, but I have done the right turn-Uturn-right turn sequence more than once - if the conditions are deserted.

The Figment

No Harvard Students to tax,and no "Hippies" in Harvard Square to harrass I guess,so they "Must" find something to do...

mister

The only time I run a red is when there's no button to push and no traffic to trip the sensor. Otherwise stopping for the red keeps me from ending up on someone's hood.

gear

Last week in the Boston Globe some cager wrote a letter to the editor about how she hates having to share the road with bikes. Her reasoning was that they zip around ignoring the laws she (as a cager) has to obey. Her example was bicyclists running red lights.

BILLB58

I stop all the time....need some water anyway....

regularly see women putting makeup on.....normal to see men shaving, etc.....

saw this one woman a few times last spring, she looked to be in her mid-20's..... but no sign of her all summer, so she must work at a school.....this was a first!!!! and I lived in LA for 6 years... she was back yesterday....

she had a glass of water on a table in the passenger seat with a makeup kit....and was brushing her teeth...

she is usually in the right hand lane and looked to me that she was spitting out the window into the other lane

never ever saw that before....I stayed to her right......

PurpleK

And the law abiding commuter cyclists who have to face the issues created by those that think they can pick and choose the laws they abide.

We justly demand respect and rights to the road, we should be willing to respect the responsibilities that come with those rights.

slvoid

Let's see em get up to speed and catch a cyclist when they run the light at 25mph...

elbows

I've often wondered if there's a correlation between urban vs. rural commutes and running red lights or not. I commute in Cambridge and I rarely see cyclists waiting for red lights if they don't have to.

Waiting for lights isn't a big deal if you encounter one every couple of miles. But in the city you see them every couple of blocks, and many of them are just there for pedestrians, or are at T intersections where there's rarely any traffic on the side streets (these must be on timers because they turn red even if nobody is around).

Rolling through these lights doesn't hurt anyone, and poses no risk (provided you know the traffic pattern and look first). Even if there are pedestrians crossing, a cyclist going slowly can safely ride past them.

The argument that cars have to stop at lights, so cyclists should too, seems silly to me. People driving cars put up with a lot of crap that cyclists don't -- sitting in traffic, looking for parking, trying to negotiate the maze of one-way streets that is the Boston area. I ride a bike so I don't have to deal with that stuff!

Are there any urban commuters out there who are scrupulous about red lights?

jstream

Yes, me. I don't see the point in not stopping. Ultimately I always seem to end up ahead of many cars anyways. It's a commute, not a training ride - if I want the training, I'll head out onto county roads. If the point of my commuting by bike is to save wear and tear on the car, save gas, and for me to be more relaxed, why not stop at the lights? Like I said, I get to relax, look around, see things you wouldn't see if you were in a car... or riding like you were. I get to work calm, controlled, and happy. I teach. Then I get home calm, controlled, and happy. I still get the exercise - think of stop lights as interval training

grolby

Yeah, and like every other driver in the country, they completely ignore the fact that the majority of drivers routinely drive over the speed limit, which is against the law. And speed kills! So this argument doesn't fly with me.

That said, I stop at red lights and stop at stop signs (or at least roll through them slowly). Not because I think that it would change the minds of people like the woman who wrote that letter - since people will ALWAYS find reasons to rationalize anti-cyclist sentiment and behavior - but because it's the law, and because by obeying the law I am protecting both my own safety and the safety of others who are betting their money, health and lives on the expectation that other road users will obey the rules.

It's pretty much impossible to prevent a thread like this from turning into a debate about running red lights. Personally, I think that the Cambridge bike cops should give a ticket on the first offense - and that ticket should be $200. Running red lights is a stupid and irresponsible thing to do, whether it is "safe" to do so or not. Like I said, other road users are counting on everyone else obeying the rules. Lives are at stake here, so act on that principle. Road regulations should be taken seriously at all times. In the case of laws that negatively affect your ability to safely and conveniently operate your bicycle on the road, I encourage you to ignore them - the example that comes to mind are laws requiring bicycles to be in the bike lane at all times when one is present. That's a bad law, and a dangerous law. Ignore it. But stop lights and stop signs don't fall into this category. They are there for your safety. Stop for them, please. You'll lose 30-60 seconds of your life. That's not worth the potential penalties.

DCCommuter

I strongly favor strict enforcement of traffic laws. After all, cyclists are beneficiaries when there is culture of respect for the law. We are smaller and slower than just about everyone else out there, and we depend on the kindness of strangers, as it were.

But focusing on cyclists, to the exclusion of motorists and pedestrians, is just ridiculous -- especially in a place like Cambridge (my hometown).

8bit

I live in Cambridge and I run lights all the time. It's a risk, but usually I stop first and look before I go on and it's not that hard to know all the traffic patterns along my usual routes. Since they insist on having two lane streets with parking on both sides and a piddly little 'bike lane' in the door zone, running red lights lets me space myself out from the the cars. Otherwise, I'd have to hog my lane and hope some idiot doesn't cut me too close and whack me with a mirror (happens a fair amount around here) because they're trying to pass after waiting at a light and have their left blocked by other cars at the light.

The comment upthread about the lights being timed for pedestrians is spot on. Most of the time the few loonies in cars pass through in .0003 seconds and then the light stays open unitl the traffic engineers think granny's gotten across the street with her cart full of groceries. Out in the 'burbs or in Boston I usually wait at lights- but forgodssake it's Cambridge!

Thanks for alerting me to the stops, I'm pretty sure that my usual behavior of blowing throught the pedestrian lights at the T-intersection at Prospect and Mass Ave would have gotten me stopped.

PaulH

Sure. It seems perfectly natural to do so, and utterly alien to not do so.
One interesting point was the rural/urban dichotomy with regard to red light running. I see both cyclist and motorists running a lot of red lights here in the DC area. In fact, there is one intersection where one or more cars runs the red light whenever I come to it. In more rural areas, people (on whatever vehicle) seem to me to be more obedient to traffic.

I'm not sure why. Maybe when there is one light in town, the time penalty for obeying the law is insignificant, compared with an area where there is a light at every block. Maybe rural people are more risk-averse than urban ones, though I doubt it. There's plenty of speeding and drunken driving, so I wouldn't say they are more law-abiding or morally superior. I grew up and learned to ride and drive in a small town and the idea of deliberately running a red never occurred to any of us. Speeding -- sure -- even street racing. But we all obeyed traffic signals. Perhaps it ties into traditional small-town ethos in some way.

paul

fryth

I'm torn on the traffic light issue. My general approach is to wait it out if I don't know the traffic of the area. Where I do know the pattern, I try to jump the light by a few seconds (when clear) to get myself out ahead of the cars that want to shoot past me.

But, there is a part of my ride where I go through 9 traffic lights in just over a half mile with some stop signs thrown in. If two are green when I get there, I am doing well. Waiting out each light can easily take 10+ minutes to cover that half mile. I haven't started running them yet, as I keep hunting for a path with better flow, but I can tell you it is seriously tempting when there are no cars passing through.

bikingshearer 

I don't stop each and every time, but pretty darn close with traffic lights and at least a "California stop" at stop lights. I am not quite so vigilant when turning right, and like another poster, if there is no way to get a light to turn green, I'll run it, but only after stopping. Basically, I treat signs and lights marginally less seriously than I do when driving a car, but pretty darn close.

I do it for two basic reasons. First, predictablility. The more predictable my actions are to other road users (2, 4 or 18 wheel) the more likely they are to not hit me, I figure. Second, I see myself as something of an ambassador for our chosen hobby/means of transportation. There is a certain number of drivers who don't mind bikes and will cut us some slack almost regardless of what we do, and a certain number who will hate the fact that we exist no matter what we do. Then there are the drivers who are generally indifferent to us. These people may never be our friends, but we can at least keep them from becoming active enemies.

As for Cambridge, traffic - vehicular and pedestrian - doesn't so much flow as ooze more or less randomly. From my experience, traffic lights in the entire Greater Boston area serve the same function as lines painted on the road - decoration. Any similarity between what anyone is doing and the signs, stripes or lights is purely coincidental. You can usually count on people being on the right-hand two-thirds of the road, but that's about it.

As for Cambridge's finest ticketing cyclists - well, they can't hang out in the Dunkin' Donuts at Porter Square all the time . . . .

marqueemoon

I always stop, but that doesn't stop me from thinking crackdowns like this are bull****. The cops have been staking out one of the neighborhoods I commute though. While they pull over one cyclist another runs the same stop sign.