Originally Posted by JeffS

The vast majority of motorists break a traffic law every single time they get in a car. So get off your soap box.

Originally Posted by AzTallRider

I've only been commuting a year, and about half way through that I realized I could take a slightly longer MUP route and avoid most the traffic I'd been in. But you go through a real learning curve when you start riding in traffic a lot. At first you either act like a pedestrian (riding the sidewalks - yikes!) or you try and follow all the car rules, like a good little bike-riding citizen, even though you probably don't even really know all the rules as they pertain to bikes. Then you find out what a hook is, have a bus almost take your handlebar off buzzing you, realize signals (or expecially the absence of one) really have no meaning to you, and have drivers honking at you for doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing. Then, if you are serious, you find forums like this, learn what taking the lane is all about, and begin to understand you need to be aggressively defensive if you want to survive. It's a process. I'm clearly still on the learning curve - it's hard for me to take the lane for an extended time in a 40mph zone where the cars are doing 50. But I learned pretty quick that the single most dangerous thing I could do was to wait at the curb (where a bike is supposed to be, right?)during a red light at a busy and narrow intersection in that 40moh zone and then peddle merrily across the intersection when the light turned green. Talk about taking your life into your hands, or rather, putting it into someone elses!

Nobody with any experience or brains is going to advocate breaking traffic laws in such a way that you are causing cars to have to avoid you. That defeats the whole purpose. Joey doesn't do that. I don't do that either, whether I'm riding, or driving a car. You can make a right turn (in a car) where a car coming has to slow or change lanes, and if they plowed into you from behind, they would likely be the one ticketed. But you shouldn't do that in your car, right? And you shouldn't jump in front of a car on your bike and force them to avoid you. The safest way to drive or ride is to make sure nobody has to avoid you. Sometimes that safety requires breaking a traffic law. So be it.