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"expecting bicyclists to follow the letter of the law while motorists are free to speed and otherwise put others in real danger"
That's the point. Like many of the juvenile anarchist brigade, you're trying to mislead people into thinking disobeying a traffic control device (red light or stop sign) is less serious than minor speeding.
(Reposting this here for m1ek.)
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That's the point. Like many of the juvenile anarchist brigade, you're trying to mislead people into thinking disobeying a traffic control device (red light or stop sign) is less serious than minor speeding.
In regards to traffic violations, my primary concern is safety. I'm looking at what causes injuries and fatalities, where one person's behavior affects the safety of others. From this, I've found that the traffic violations of motorists do more than any other urban transportation mode to cause injuries and fatalities to others. That has nothing to do with "juvenile anarchist brigade". If minor speeding leads to more injuries of other people than disobeying a traffic device, then I'm more concerned about the minor speeding. If it's the other way around, then I'm more concerned about disobeying a traffic device.
Indeed have secondary concerns about traffic violations, and these include safety for oneself, inconvenience to others, quality of life issues for others, maintaining a predictable traffic situation for other users, keeping a good reputation for oneself, keeping a good reputation for one's mode community (e.g., the bicycle community), and perhaps some other issues that don't come to mind at this moment. [Oops. I was giving justification for the traffic laws, but forgot to mention explicitly that there is worth in obeying the law itself.]
I don't know why you're such a contrarian. I'm not even sure that we disagree on anything, at least anything substantial to either of us. And insults say nothing substantive about one's view that helps mutual understanding, but just make it more difficult to even have the conversation and come to an understanding of each others' views, let alone to help another learn something new and change the other's mind.
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We disagree as shown by your defense of your friends as "conscientious cyclists" who ran red lights, for one very simple example.
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We disagree as shown by your defense of your friends as "conscientious cyclists" who ran red lights, for one very simple example.
Point taken. This could get into a long debate regarding what riding "conscientiously" entails vs. unconscientiously. I think there are many fine details to this, or one could just say that any traffic violation, just for the sake of it being a violation, is an example of unconscientious behavior. However, that wasn't the point I was making in my letter to city council.
I have some friends who violate traffic laws with abandon. Their justifications for running red lights are pretty minimal and, from what I can tell, poorly thought through. They cause crossing motorists to slow down, for example. Even that they run red lights when there are nearby crossing motorists is telling.
It seems to me and many others that there is such a thing as running a cold red light conscientiously. For example, in 2006, the state of Idaho made just such behavior legal. This was after over twenty-five years of permitting bicyclists to essentially treat stop signs as yields, with apparently no negative impact shown on safety of bicyclists. http://www.velonews.com/article/86786 (Four other states are currently considering such a law.) Boise is a decently sized metro area, larger than the Corpus Christi metro, so the results in urban environments can be seen. One could argue that neither law is good and I suppose one could argue that those laws allow unconscientious behavior by bicyclists... though I'm not convinced of either of these arguments.
Regarding my two friends' thoughts on the citations, they each told me separately that they thought their citation was justified. However, they also each were most irritated that they have been exhibiting the same behavior for years without legal consequence. One of them asked, "Why now? Why after all these years is APD suddenly concerned about the safety of bicyclists?" (paraphrased)
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