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Comment by gaff33 | Hacker News Reader

This is what happens when bikes follow rules designed for cars:

http://archives.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2015/07/30/this-is-wh...

It's patently stupid to have the same rules for bikes as it is for cars since they are completely different vehicles.

Now perhaps this is a case of semantics: The Highway Code has rules for all users of highways, but obviously within those rules some apply to cars, some to pedestrians, and some to cyclists. Still point remains that the specific rules are different depending on what vehicle you're in, and we'd be wise to think critically about this.

A good example of this is the Idaho Stop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

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This is the crux of the issue. Many of the laws we're supposed to follow aren't fit for purpose.

I do stop at red lights - and I can tell you it pisses people off no end. People want to gun it off the lights, and instead they're stuck behind me. I have been involved in an 'accident' where the driver behind me tried to overtake off the lights, through the junction, and into the traffic island on the other side.

At the same time, it's obvious cyclists don't get carte blanche either. Anyone who's seen a bicycle plow through a pedestrian crossing like a god-given right, can see that much.

We need rules that make sense, and then enforce them. Meet us in the middle. Trying to enforce rules that don't make sense doesn't work (and not just for us - many of these cause us to frustrate or hinder other road users too)

Yep.

I observe red lights in London. I observe red lights in Oxford. Locations where, however imperfectly, the highway authorities consider cyclists in the design process.

I used to work in Burton-on-Trent (ex-industrial town in the English Midlands). My daily commute involved one particular intersection so badly designed that the only way to avoid a dangerous and potentially fatal car/bike interaction, if you were at the front of the queue, was to set off 5 seconds before the lights went green. (It has since been redesigned, thankfully.)

If you build infrastructure and formulate laws to benefit motorists and to potentially kill cyclists, don't be surprised if cyclists break those laws.

Funny. I guess there were never enough bikes in the US to make rules to keep them out of the way.

In the Netherlands, one of the rules is that bikes do not take the middle of a lane, but instead the right side of the right most lane (and if there is a bike path or a bike lane nearby, they have to use that).

So this kind of protest would be impossible, because on any road wide enough that a car and a bike can share a lane, cars can just overtake within the same lane the bike is in.

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