Why do people on bicycles and scooters feel that they don't need to follow the laws of the road?

I don’t know what others think, but I’ll tell you my thinking. I will blow through stop signs and red lights and I’ll play a kind of eyeball chicken with motorists when I’m riding my bike. Understand, I’m not daring anyone and I don’t want to create an accident, but I believe that I am being safe, even though I’m breaking the law.

As a bicyclist, I have to provide my own power for my travel. The thing I hate most is having to use my brakes to come to a stop, and then having to start from nothing again. I will do an awful lot to avoid having to put on the brakes.

So when I come to a stoplight or stop sign, if there are good lines of sight, and I don’t see any cross traffic, then I’ll run the light. If I see a another car at a four way stop sign, then I engage in eye contact, and indicate that I’m not stopping, and then proceed to pass through without stopping. If I can’t engage in eye contact to be sure they saw me, then I will slow down. Mostly drivers seem to understand that they have big powerful cars, and huge gas pedals and that it is up to them to stop in my favor, but every once in a while there are asshole drivers who deliberately don’t see you and make you stop, and you know they are laughing to themselves that they made you stop. It is very rude. In the sense of the balance of the universe, not the law. By law, they have the right of way. But not by karma (no pun intended).

I do not go as far as many bicyclists will. I always make sure I can stop if someone else blocks my way. I will always be supercareful riding up on the blind side of a car. I see younger riders take many more risks. Maybe they can stop faster. But many of them are riding fixies (no brakes and only one, fixed gear), and they can’t stop. They have to blow on through.

As a driver, I will always give extra room to cyclists. I will hold back at intersections to let them go ahead. I will be extra careful moving into the right lane to make sure they haven’t come up along side me. That sort of thing.

There is a karma of travel, I think. I believe that human powered vehicles should be given right of way. That’s because stopping costs human powered travel so much more in terms of energy than it does gas-powered locomotion. Also cars go so much faster, so making them stop isn’t as much of a problem as it is for a bicyclist to stop. In addition, I believe that human powered travel should be encouraged, and while I don’t think laws will ever be changed to privilege that form of travel, I don’t have a problem acting as if we are privileged, so long as we can do it without undue risk.

Automotive drivers are constantly speeding, talking on phones, rolling stops at intersections, failing to yield the right-of-way… etc. Why should you expect bicyclists to act differently?

We all don’t follow the rules of the road, but they are on a bike, and I’m in a car the weighs literally tons more lol. One of the main rules that stuck with me was to always yield to pedestrians for this reason. If you’ve ever had to drive in NYC, you get used to it. Or even worse, Chania, Crete. I’ve never seen such a lack of awareness, but they are still weaker than a car.

@GladysMensch Uh, why should they act differently? Uh, let’s see. There is a wreck between a car and a bike. Who got killed? I’ll give you three guesses.

I understand your logic @wundayatta, but I just would at least slow down when approaching an intersection. That guy sped up and he never even saw us.

Because they haven’t yet projected enough images of themselves lying on a hospital bed, or worse, morgue.

I think some of them actually don’t know they are supposed to follow the same traffic rules as cars. It seems like some bicyclists behave like pedestrians.

I don’t mind if they break a rule of the road if they first do the safe thing. Like if they decide to go on a red before the light turns green, because no cars are around, but please stop first! Or, at minimum make eye contact as @wundayatta mentioned.

if they decide to go on a red before the light turns green, because no cars are around, but please stop first!

That’s how I ride. I try very hard not to slow down an drivers.

But A LOT of riders around here ride straight through lights and stop signs at full speed.

It bugs me, too. The best I think I can do is set a better example.

@jaytkay They simply are risking their own life, ugh. But, when a driver hits them, God forbid, and causes great harm, the driver now never sleeps well again. At least near stop signs the cars are likely to be driving slowly. That is if it is a four way stop.

I will give you an honst answer. Its called lack of manpower by the police to enforce bike laws and most know it.

Too many domestic violence calls.

@GladysMensch came close in my opinion to describing the issue, but I will admit as a long time cyclist that it is an ongoing issue in the cycling community. The problem makes it harder for those of us who are safe riders because drivers view us all as scofflaws.

I think much of it is because we learn to ride a bicycle when we are young and don’t know the vehicle code nor do we (as kids) care.

@john65pennington But there are so many laws on the books that the police (and really we, as a society) don’t spend much, if any effort on enforcement. They are wishes more than laws. Advisories. You guys have better things to do unless you really get pissed off at a bicyclist for some other reason, and the rest of society doesn’t really want you enforcing those laws, either.

You can run a red light on a bike right in front of a cop in this town (and probably most towns) and they won’t even notice. There are a whole class of laws like this. The cell phone laws are kind of like that. They are there in case you have a need to arrest someone or ticket someone for it, but for 99% of violations, you own’t even notice.

Back in the 70s, I visited Sweden for a few weeks and heard there was a law that it was illegal to sneeze while driving. Why? I asked. Well, it seems that when we sneeze we involuntarily close our eyes and then we can’t pay attention to what’s happening on the road. That’s dangerous for a fraction of a second.. and sometimes longer, if you forget to pull your eyes open as soon as you can.

So the Swedes made this illegal. I don’t think they expected anyone to enforce the law. But what they wanted to do was to educated people. Beware of sneezing while driving. It takes your attention from the road. That was the first time I learned of such laws that are more educational than anything else.

Nowadays, with cell phones, we have much bigger problems with a lack of focus on the road. But no matter what, our goal should be safety. If the law doesn’t add to safety, then, in my opinion, there’s no need to enforce it. But if someone is behaving dangerously, then they should be ticketed. Of course, my idea of being safe may be someone else’s idea of being reckless. And the way regulations get written can be so ambiguous, too. There’s a whole “industry” based on that kind of wiggle room, and it’s the industry that lawyers inhabit, cheek by jowl.

To me, the laws that ARE enforced are common sense.

Not sure what country you are in, but here in Sydney the cyclists are just plain idiots. They break laws continually, and put their own lives at risk constantly. They ride up footpaths when they feel like it, and pedestrians have to scatter or be hit. They ride out in front of cars at intersections, and then give you the finger when they hear your car horn. They ride in packs, flouting the law that they must only ride two abreast, and don’t stick to cycle lanes when they are available. They deliberately obstruct traffic to make a point.

I used to do lots of cycling on Sydney roads when I was a teenager, so I understand what it is like to be a cyclist. However, the current crop are militant to the extreme, and just plain selfish and stupid.

Cyclists should be licenced and their bikes registered just like any other vehicle on the roads. Only then will police have the power to make them behave like human beings.

Because they’re not in a car, I guess.

I bike avidly and find myself taking shortcuts that are definitely illegal. But for the most part, I follow the rules. I only pull a shortcut if I know it’s safe to do so.

They assume everyone else sees them and will make exceptions to them because they’re not in cars. They’re wrong though, people in cars often “blank out” anything else on the road that isn’t another car, kind of a non-driver-beware deal.

Every person I know who rides a motorcycle has told me car drivers seem to not acknowledge them on the road and it looks to carryover to bicycles, moped/scooters.