I'm sorry to hear that you believe exercising your rights is some sort of death sentence. I certainly don't.

its the tradition of RTFM - nothing more, nothing less...don't take it so personally...and if you take out an ad someone might find your lost sense of humor too.

My gawd, that reminds me of another FAQ:

Smileys are not evil clowns out to murder you

I just had another thought (see what happens when you feed me after dinner)

RTFM is kind of appropriate for a thread about rules, dontcha think?

Do you follow the rules? Why so worried about the rest of us, make up your own mind.

LIES! Smileys are a plot to make us follow the rules of the interwebs! To your keyboards commandos, prepare to type!

Today I think I blew through over 10 stop lights and maybe 5 stop signs. I also passed a bunch of cars waiting at the lights a lot. If I couldn't do all this stuff what fun would commuting be?

Oi, u better be careful - the queen of the harpies will read that.

Thanks for the feedback. I just wanted to get a feel for what people think is acceptable behavior. Noob question or not it looks like a good amount of people had something relevant to say. Why would I RTFM when I could just ask somebody? And if someone hasn't anything better to do than post five times on a thread they don't care to read in the first place, maybe they can go RTFM.

I'm too lazy to come to a full stop when there is no traffic in sight. I break the law sometimes, even though I know this is antisocial behavior I still do it.

so I need to explain what RTFM means, it seems.

You'll see a LOT more relevant comments by doing as I originally suggested, using the search.
Hey, maybe we can start a poll, then you can have make your decision based on that...and maybe even use it to fight a ticket, or worse.

Your choice --Godspeed.

Repeat:

Because as much as we want bikes to be treated as "vehicles", a bike is just different. A bike is not a pedestrian, and its not exactly a vehicle either. A bike is human powered like a pedestrian, the rider is more exposed to the elements like a pedestrian, a person on a bike weighs about the same a pedestrian. A person on a bike has the same level of visibility as a pedestrian that is very different from a driver in a vehicle. A person on a bike is more maneuverable like a pedestrian, can stop as fast as a pedestrian(when going slow). Rolling up to an intersection with sensor controls on a bike frequently doesn't trip the sensor the way "vehicles" do. (If I have to get over to the pedestrian button to get a light, I might as well act like a pedestrian.)

Going through a red light has nothing to do with "feeling silly". Its just as safe to roll slowly through a red light on a bike as it is for a pedestrian to jay walk. I don't really see a difference. I guess if you're a real stickler about jaywalking, then you should sit and wait.

Sure, search can bring up similar discussion, but I think a lot of people ask because they are new to commuting and see people doing it different ways. Its natural to want to see if there is some kind of consensus among those who have been doing it for a while about the "best" way to go about it. We all know of cases where people doing what "feels" safe really isn't - like riding upstream, on sidewalks, etc...

Of course you're right. But it's not being different that gives bikes such terrible PR. Motorcycles and big rig trucks annoy a lot of drivers, but they don't make spit fly from the corners of peoples' mouths while they leave angry comments on news sites, and bike inspire a lot of this.

I guarantee that if bikes were known for regularly exceeding the speed limit, we wouldn't have a PR problem. Motorcycles are less annoying than bikes, because they're less in the way ... getting behind one isn't a "death sentence" that will cost you several minutes. Scofflaws don't hate us because they think we're scofflaws; this all comes down to a conflict of interest, where drivers and cyclists both want the same space on (mostly) the same roads, but want to use it a different speeds.

Stopping at red lights to appease other scofflaws with your law-abidingness doesn't actually solve the problem of being in their way and going too slowly for their taste.

On the bike I use a different system than driving

on the bike a red light is a stop sign
a stop sign is a yield sign
a yield sign is still a yeild sign

I wont run stop lights, but stop signs do sometimes magically turn into yield signs if it's early in the morning.

I run stop lights going the wrong direction with no hands talking on a cell phone and knitting a sweater

if the sweater isn't wool, you're a wuss.

But, im not the wool expert, i use wolf hair

there are rules?

I never got the memo...

Damn, sorry i forgot to press send

None of which seems to make a difference in the context of going through a red light when no one's around
Like most things, a cyclist falls in between pedestrians and powered vehicles in both maneuverability and ability to stop. When it comes to stopping in particular, I'd suggest that a slow moving car can stop just as quickly as a slow moving bike. A bike is certainly far less maneuverable than a pedestrian.
Which is a specific application where the equipment is flawed. How does this apply at ordinary intersections where the lights cycle on a timer? Since we were discussing "waiting for the light," not "waiting for a car to come and trip the light," my assumption is that these are not sensored intersections (or if they are, it's sensitive enough to detect the bike).

And yet, the OP stated: "Sometimes I feel stupid waiting at red lights" as his justification for going through. (Sorry, when I was typing the first reply, I remembered it as "feel silly.") I am trying to understand why he feels stupider waiting for a light on his bike than he would in a car, since this seems illogical.

Thanks. I don't jaywalk either, and I encourage other people to also use traffic signals to their advantage.

Move to idaho and none of this would need debating

I'm thinking more along the lines of why I would run a red on a bike and not in a car. The reason is that a car is different. A car has much less visibility. Once in motion, if a car should come out of nowhere, it cant stop and turn around quickly like a pedestrian or a bike. Getting around on a bike is already considerably slower than by car. In many areas, on a bike, you end up getting caught by many more lights because you are unable to take advantage of the synchronized timing of multiple lights that were programmed for cars. If I stopped at every light downtown at 6AM when the streets are pretty much clear, It would add a LOT of time to my route and not my trip any safer.

Maybe the op feels stupid because he knows its completely safe to cross but sits there anyway. There are several intersections around town where the lights switch to flashing yellow late at night until rush hour in the morning. A lot of this discussion could be avoided if they did that more. There are many cases where it is silly even for a car to sit there for 3 or 4 minutes without a car in sight. The controls are really there for the busy times, but its too much work to program them differently for different traffic load times.