The Myth of the Scofflaw Cyclist

Whenever you read an article about cycling in the city, or a discussion of transportation involving cycling it is highly likely that you'll read a comment like this:

"I will 'share the road' when cyclists start 'obeying the traffic laws.'"

and this

"I always see bikers disobeying traffic signals. They always run red lights going across R Street and Connecticut Ave"

and this

Before encouraging people to cycle and spending millions of pounds of our money in the process, the Government should have down some groundwork to make roads safer for all of us. [WashCycle: Sounds reasonable]

Making cyclists observe a few traffic laws - such as stopping at traffic lights and zebra crossings - would have been a welcome start.[WC: Really? You'd START with cyclists?]

In fact, after Alice Swanson's death, many comments on the Washington Post, DCist and elsewhere mentioned that something like this was bound to happen because of the illegal manner in which most cyclists ride. Despite the fact that there is no indication that she did anything illegal. [Update: she didn't do anything wrong, though the police report claims the cause of the crash was excessive speed by the cyclist. She was going well under the speed limit and the driver admits never seeing her, though she was in a bike lane with a green light.]

Which leads to what I call "The Myth of the Scofflaw Cyclist".

Now then, I'm not trying to claim that cyclists don't break the law. Let me state clearly and upfront, they do. What I'm saying is that there is nothing unique about the frequency with which cyclists as a class break the law when compared with drivers or pedestrians. And even if cyclists broke the law more flagrantly than others, this would not negate the need to share the road.

Hello? Kettle? You're Black!

Implicit in all of these types of comments is that drivers (and sometimes pedestrians) constitute the law-abiding sections of society, but these scofflaw cyclists - with their Lycra-clad arrogance (you have to mention arrogance or self-righteousness for it to count) - are a menace to society.

Let's knock that down first.

Many drivers break the law. I would almost be willing to say that every driver breaks the law, but let's stick with many. How?

First of all, they speed.

Driver compliance with speed limits is poor. On average, 7 out of 10 motorists exceeded the posted speed in urban areas. Compliance ranged from 3 to 99 percent. Compliance tended to be worse on low-speed roads, better on roads with prima facie limits, or where the speed limit was based on an engineering study. Better does not mean good compliance; less than 10 percent on [sic] the sites had more than 50-percent obedience with the posted speed

In DC, speed cameras were set up at several locations. They recorded 170 infractions per hour (that's one every 21 seconds for all you poli-sci majors).

And they run red lights

From August 1999 through May 2008, the automated red-light enforcement program has, at 49 locations, resulted in 741,780 notices of infraction.

And stop signs

The overall compliance rate for stop signs was 22.8 per 100 vehicles, ranging from 1.4 per 100 for bicycles to 46.2 per 100 for commuter vans. Compliance increased to 53 per 100 vehicles when pedestrians were present in the crosswalk. [WC: Okay, we're both guilty here, but the cars aren't even stopping half the time. More on this below.]

They illegally park

There were 1.67 million parking tickets written last year, up from 1.3 million in 2001, according to statistics provided by the D.C. Department of Public Works (DPW).

They double park and park in the bike lane.

They ignore toll booths

Court records show that among the first cases in Fairfax County last week, five motorists each had fines topping $10,000. A dozen more face penalties higher than $4,000.

They drive drunk and distracted, this being a mere drop in the bucket.

Through October, officers issued 9,484 tickets this year to motorists driving with a cell phone in their hand, according to police statistics.

The number of citations already issued this year is 13 percent more than the 8,358 issued last year. In 2005, police issued 7,523...

Drive aggressively

During the Smooth Operator campaign waves of July, August and September, officers are assigned to target speeding and other forms of aggressive driving. They issue lots of tickets: Almost three million since the campaign began in 1997.

and hit-and-run.

Townsend said, explaining why far more [hit and run] incidents were recorded in Maryland (19,311) last year than in Virginia (6,757). [1500 of these every year are fatal]

Pedestrians, of course, jaywalk.

My point isn't that two wrongs make a right or that drivers are worse than cyclists. My point is that it's hypocritical to call your neighbor rude, because his loud stereo makes it difficult for you to focus on your backyard chainsaw sculpting.

Do you think I don't know the law? Wasn't it me who wrote it? And this man has broken the law.

Riding on the road, riding on the sidewalk, riding in a lane when a bike lane is present, riding on the road when a bike trail is present, riding in the middle of the lane, riding two abreast, riding without a helmet, riding too slow, holding up traffic, riding through a crosswalk, lane splitting, passing on the right, locking up a bike to street furniture, riding without brake lights...

What do all of these things have in common? I've heard or seen each held up as an example of cyclists' disregard for the law.

And they're all legal (not in every circumstance, I note). Some are ill-advised perhaps, but all legal.

And cyclists know this. Cyclists in general know the law better than drivers (although Mike Debonis over at Washington City Paper is unsure about lane-splitting and sidewalk riding. Both are legal Mike). And better than the police even. So much of the myth stems not from willful disregard for the law by cyclists, but rampant ignorance of the law by drivers.

Are you crazy, my brother could be coming the other way

As I said before, cyclists do break the law. There is no denying that. Merriam-Webster defines scofflaw as "a contemptuous law violator". Do cyclists break the law with contempt? Perhaps, but no more so than drivers or pedestrians.

Sometimes cyclists break the law in the exact same ways that drivers do. They fail to signal. They fail to yield the right of way (especially to pedestrians - the three foot safe passing distance rule goes both ways). They catch an "orange" light. Etc...

Sometimes cyclists break the law in different ways than drivers do. Some cyclists ride at night without proper lighting. Some ride against traffic. Both of these are, IMO, ill-advised. [Though London is looking at making the second of these legal]

But the two biggies are red light and stop sign running. This is the most frequent criticism and the one that really gets the blood to boil. As mentioned above, cyclists run stop signs at much greater frequency than drivers do and I'm sure the same is true of lights.

I once heard Eric Gilliland of WABA on NPR asked the question "What can we do to get cyclists to obey stop lights?" He gave a very non-confrontational answer, saying it was a problem, and that WABA supports education and such. But Gilliland never really answered it, and I think the true answer is "Nothing." There is no engineering fix and probably no education fix (Let's face it, most jaybikers are experienced, well-informed cyclists - not that foot-droppers aren't. Just that they've made up their mind). Enforcement would have to be off the chart, and even then would probably have little impact. Seattle fought jaywalkers for years, writing thousands of tickets, as I recall, and finally gave up defeated. You could ban bikes - but I can't imagine any city doing that these days.

Then someone asked Eric a variation of "Why do cyclists run red lights?" There are several reasons I've heard (safety in getting ahead of traffic and in-street sensors which do not detect cyclists, for example) but the basic answer is a classic risk/reward scenario. Jaybikers are calculating that the reward of keeping momentum or gaining the early start outweighs the risk of being caught or hit. People are notoriously bad at calculating risk and reward (sub-prime mortgage crisis anyone?) so I won't weigh in on whether they're right or wrong, but I'll just leave it at that's what they're thinking.

This, coincidentally, is the same reason why drivers and pedestrians run red lights.

Let's talk about red-light running. There are two types of red-light running: "catching an orange" - or running the start of a red light - which every class of users does; and jaywalking or jaybiking - waiting for the intersection to clear and then crossing against the light - which only pedestrians and cyclists do.

Therefore, a better question is "Why don't drivers 'jaydrive'?"

Is it because they love the law so much? Did you skip the previous section?

It's because their risk/reward calculation is coming up with a different answer. And that makes sense. In a car, you're several feet farther back from the intersection and you're often a foot or two lower than on a bicycle, meaning you can't see as well (I bet those on recumbents don't jaybike as often as those on standard bikes). In a car, you're in a soundproof enclosure, so you have no stereoscopic hearing. And if you make a mistake you aren't as maneuverable as you would be on a bike or on your feet. You can't just ditch to the sidewalk. Drivers don't jaydrive because, in their own estimation, they can't. If they could, I'm sure they would.

Still, that doesn't explain the anger. Drivers get - I feel - irrationally angry about this. I wondered why for so long; and then an anthropologist friend of mine helped me to understand. Running a red light is so dangerous for cars that it isn't just illegal, it's taboo. You're breaking a social construct. That means people find it objectionable and abhorrent. So if education is needed, maybe it's needed to explain why it's safer for cyclists to do it than for drivers.

Which goes back to the question of what can be done about jaybiking. I said there was nothing, but that's not true. I've told this story before, but here it is again. As a college professor told it to me.

On a campus, campus planners laid out the sidewalk to a building in the shape of an L. Students ignored the sidewalk to walk along the hypotenuse wearing a path in the grass. The school planted hedges to "guide" them. Students cut a rut through them. The school put up a fence. Students climbed over it until the fence broke. Fed up, the school got an architect to design a fix. She tore up the old sidewalk and laid another new one along the path. Problem solved.

The same can be true of red lights. The way to end jaybiking violations is to decriminalize them. As Lee Watkins pointed out

stop lights didn't need to be invented until there were too many cars in NYC, etc. leading to something new - car accidents, making streets a place to be feared. The purpose of all the traffic lights, signs, and lines - is to prevent CARS from running into everything else.

Idaho has changed its law - and California is considering it - to allow cyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, and stop lights as stop signs. This (and the article about allowing wrong-way cycling) is the same as moving the sidewalk. Streetsblog argues for this - and that the way to end wrong way biking is to get rid of one-way streets.

I'm not saying that cyclists should break the law. Nor am I saying they shouldn't. But we all know it's safer for cyclists to run lights than it is for cars. Shouldn't we evaluate the need for these laws? One of the best arguments for being a foot-dropper is "if bicyclists want to be respected like other vehicles, they have to obey the same rules." But, if the law were to change. how many cyclists would really sit through the whole light cycle when there was no traffic anyway? Would this make cyclists less safe?

Lee also talked of 'Naked Streets' and there is a lengthy article on them in the Atlantic.

Hey jerk, don't be a name-caller?

I try not to be a hypocrite. I try not to say that such-and-such action was wrong because it was illegal, but because it was dangerous. This is a philosophy that has evolved over the three years I've been writing this blog. As I've said before, I don't care if you break the law (like driving without a license); just be safe and be courteous.

The premise that cyclists' behavior somehow voids their right to sharing the road is indefensible. "Well officer, I thought it was OK to hit this cyclist because several blocks back I saw another run a red light" is not something anyone could defend. This becomes an increasingly difficult premise when one considers that, as I've tried to point out, cyclists aren't behaving any differently than drivers or pedestrians. They're taking liberties with law where they think it's safe to do so. Right or wrong, that is what every class does.

Once we clear up this myth, we can work on the one about how cyclists bring crime.

that basket on my bike is not just for groceries, it is for the goods that I rob from people while pleasure cruising down a rail trail.

This could be harder than I thought.

Comments

[think a little]

http://washcycle.typepad.com/home/2006/10/fatality_in_ann.html

http://washcycle.typepad.com/home/2007/03/fatal_collision.html

http://washcycle.typepad.com/home/2007/10/items-from-the-.html

Seems to me that about once every 6 months some "jaybiker" misses the bet on "But we all know it's safer for cyclists to run lights than cars." Which is still probably less accidents in total numbers than red light running fatalites in cars, but if you look at it in per miles traveled standpoint I'd bet its at least 10x greater if not closer to 40x greater.

just sayin'

[Royski]

Outstanding post

[mallfellow]

Great post, thank you.

My biggest complaint with most drivers is that they unfarily equate the actions of the cyclists that do break the law (one way or another) with ALL cyclists.

I think the main reason that they do is that they are more likely to remember a cyclist that cruised through a stop sign or red light than another vehicle that did the same as cyclists are still quite a small minority.

[washcycle]

think a little, Safer <> Safe.

Also, this blog is about 3 years old so that's about once a year.

In the first example, the cyclist was doing more that was wrong than just running a light. In the second it may be driver age was an issue.

[jeff m.]

Relatedly, I actually was pulled over by a police officer this morning on my commute. At the intersection of N. Lynn and Wilson in Arlington (heading towards the Key Bridge along N. Lynn), I stopped past the crosswalk. (I didn't go through the light until it changed, because that intersection has high speeds and a wicked blind spot.) The nature of the lanes at this intersection makes it such that the closest lane of traffic is still a good 5 feet off, but the officer had me on the letter of the law, no doubt.

He was nice enough, telling me that if I wanted to be a vehicle, I had to be a vehicle (an idea I don't totally buy into for the reasons above).

So, at least in Arlington, there's some enforcement of cyclist behavior happening. So long as it doesn't get to a place where I have to behave 100% like a car, sitting in same traffic at lights (but sucking down exhaust), I can live with it.

A similar incident happened to me about two weeks ago. I was pulled over by an Arlington Cop for rolling a red on Fairfax Drive at the Ballston Metro station (one of only two intersections that I rarely come to a complete stop at). I broke the law, and was ok with his decision to pull me over...until I followed him down Wilson and he disregarded two or three separate pedestrians jaywalking, as well as numerous vehicles (including one from the county) blocking the bike lane. That left me feeling a bit targeted. If they're going to enforce the laws to the letter, they need to be enforced fairly, with everyone's safety in mind.

BTW- good post.

[Melissa]

I absolutely appreciate this post, especially with all the statistics and your sources. Thank you very much.

[Beach Bum]

I stop at red lights and usually stop signs, but that doesn't mean if there is no one coming after I stop, that I just don't get back on and run the light. In DC, I know drivers are pissed off at me, but when I see the pedestrians crossing, then I can do it too, no?

Also, many of the lights I take (whether on the road or from a bike trail into the street), don't sense my bike, and even pressing the "walk" button it does not actually trigger a light change (there's one by 17th street in DC that it's at least a 5 minute wait after pressing the walk button), so I give up and don't waste my time waiting.

Said that, I never weave through traffic -- I only run red lights and stop signs when there's NO ONE coming.

Also, how dumb is all the stop signs on the Mt. Vernon bike trail? Shouldn't they be there for the cars instead of the bikers? And the "stop, dismount bike" signs? I can move much faster on top of my bike than I can walking along my bike -- how will dismounting make me safer when crossing the road?

[think a little]

Actually, if you look at the dates 10/2006 3/2007 and 10/2007 it comes out as once every 6 months....I know back in early '06 there was a stop sign runner on the W&OD who got killed, as well as the pair (2 incidents) in August of '05.

This is not to say that I dont occasionally treat a red light as a 4 way stop or "california roll" through a stop sign. Its my belief that in this area if you tried to change the rules so that bicyclists could treat stop signs as yields and similar measures you would end up with a whole lot of road paste. Drivers dont care and arent aware and bike riders would treat "yield" as no-stop no-slow ever as opposed to a traffic control device.

[Tom]

Although it may seem unfair to drivers that bikes don't have to sit and watch an empty intersection while cars must sit and wait. Tough crap.

The bike isn't taking anything away from or inconveniencing the cars at the stop light. It's just pure envy, which is one of the seven deadly sins.

So, I really don't care what the drivers think. Some may see me as smart by clearing up the intersection removing a distraction from them. Others will give in to envy and need to get right with their higher power.

[washcycle]

think a little,

Luckily we won't have to find out. I doubt any sort of change to the laws for cyclists at lights and signs is imminent in the area. If CA passes the law it would serve us to 'wait and see' how that goes.

FWIW, I don't think cyclists would change the way they ride - except that some who strictly follow the law will behave like those who don't. But I think it might encourage more people to bike. And as I recall, collisions per mile go down as rideshare goes up.

[ibc]

think a little:

Case 1: "He wasn't riding in the street either, but coming from the median"

Case 2: 82-year-old hits immigrant on road "road/area he was biking on also has caused numerous fatalities due to poor construction of the roads and no sidewalks."

Case 3: Hispanic immigrant in Laurel riding into an intersection against the light on a 6-lane highway.

Tragedy in each case, but it doesn't exactly sound like a gathering of the "Effective Cycling" crowd.

I saw the aftermath of an auto colliding with a drunk pedestrian out in Rockville a few months ago. The pedestrian was jaywalking and had a BAC of .22.

Doesn't say much about your average pedestrians' ability to make these sorts of cost-benefit analyses, though.

[washcycle]

The second victim, Dawen Li, was an honors student and a very bright young man from all accounts.

http://my.highschooljournalism.org/md/rockville/whs/article.cfm?eid=8322&aid=126890

I would not be surprised if this were a case of the victim not being able to tell their side of the story.

[Ray]

Thanks for the link to the Atlantic article.

From the Atlantic article: "When you’ve trained people to drive according to the signs, you need to keep adding more signs to tell them exactly when and in what fashion they need to adjust their behavior. Otherwise, drivers may see no reason why they should slow down on a curve in the rain."

If drivers are that stupid about how their vehicle functions in rainy conditions, they should not be licensed to operate.

[think a little]

Wash-
I guess my big beef is that everytime someone does something bone-headed, from the guy who runs the red and makes a bunch of drivers slam on the breaks to the idiots in critical mass who ruin the commute of hundreds, it increases the number of angry agressive drivers who will not give an inch to any cyclist under any circumstances, which increases my chance of getting squished. I bike commute 3-4 days a week, but after a major idiocy like critical mass I have to drive for the next 10 days or so till everyone calms down again, and I really hate that.

[washcycle]

I too am anti-boneheadedness.

[Marissa]

I hope both cyclists and drivers read this. Hell, pedestrians too.

[Jack]

I dislike it when cyclists violate the law because it makes us all look bad, and then I have to deal with the fallout as a bike advocate. But my observation is that it's not "cyclists" or "drivers" who violate the law but rather "people". When I ride with novices, they often start out as total scofflaws and mock me for stopping at red lights, then gradually improve as they take pride in their riding (or maybe they get tired of waiting me at lights). People naturally gravitate towards the freest behavior they think they can get away with and isn't taboo or dangerous -- thus cyclists run stop signs and drivers go 10 mph over the speed limit and pedestrians ignore the law completely.

[ibc]

>>I guess my big beef is that everytime someone does something bone-headed...it increases the number of angry agressive drivers who will not give an inch to any cyclist under any circumstances<<

Understood. Though it's interesting that when a car runs a red-light, swerves in and out of traffic, or drives up the shoulder to get ahead of stopped traffic, you don't see drivers say to themselves, "God what a bunch of a$$holes we are!"

I think "building on the goodwill of auto-drivers" is a fool's errand. To the angry little men (and women) who we're talking about, your mere *presence* is the provocation.

My response is to take the lane in most cases, ride my own ride, and realize that no one's going to intentionally run you down.

Maybe we should take a page from the motorcyclists, and cultivate the image of the cyclist as someone you really, really do not want to tussle with.

[washcycle]

Whether it's a fool's errand or not, you can't really hope for all cyclists to stop breaking the law. It's a tragedy of the commons situation. If you obey the law to build good will, you pay full price but get only incremental benefit. On the other end, if everyone obeyed the law, the one guy who broke it would get full benefit at zero cost.