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> If running a red light or stop sign is a $200 ticket in a car, it should be a $200 ticket on a bike.

Curiously; in France many red-lights are excepted for bicycles. There's often a special, permanent "orange" signal that applies to bikes, thus they are explicitly encouraged to run the red light. If I understand well, this was in agreement with drivers, who were annoyed to wait for all the bikes to start slowly after the light turns green.

I think that if you ever try to use a bicycle in transit (I mean, seriously over a few days, not for 5 minutes), you will see that it is essentially impossible to do correctly. Sometimes you have to turn left across many lanes of fast cars, what are you supposed to do? Inevitably you take the least dangerous path.

I rode a bike as my sole form of transportation for a few years. it's not "impossible" to do correctly, but it may be impossible to do without exceeding the amount of effort you're willing to exert.

> Sometimes you have to turn left across many lanes of fast cars, what are you supposed to do?

one of the great things about biking is that you get to pick and choose between car rules and pedestrian rules depending on which set fits the situation best. whenever I am uncomfortable making a left turn, I pull off to the right and cross the intersection like a pedestrian.

> one of the great things about biking is that you get to pick and choose between car rules and pedestrian rules

Oh, I hate that! Bikes are transit, and are not supposed to leave the transit in the middle of their way, especially not for negotiating an intersection. Bailing out of the bike and going on foot with the pedestrians does not count as "doing the correct thing", just that using the bike is impossible. Besides, it is annoying for the pedestrians.

> If running a red light or stop sign is a $200 ticket in a car, it should be a $200 ticket on a bike.

Hard to justify when safety is the main argument. Yeah, $200 fine for cyclists would be a good deterrent, but maybe then it should be a $1000 or $2000 fine for a car doing the same thing [0].

If you want to argue that cyclists should face the same penalties as drivers, you have to make an argument prioritizing safety, but something like "respect for the law".

[0] Or - $200 plus points on your license. That's the way it works in many jurisdictions: the motorist rightly faces a bigger penalty even though the top-line dollar amount is the same.

Cars took over the bicycle infrastructure; if we had dedicated bike infrastructure as we do for cars I think you'd see things a lot better. Sure there are self-righteous creeps in every subculture, but a lot of the things you see are consequences of adapting to a dangerous environment maladapted for bike use.

Bike infrastructure in a lot of European cities demonstrates that it can work. American drivers are much more polite than European ones yet kill more cyclists per capita.

> American drivers are much more polite than European ones

I don't know about American drivers, but you certainly shouldn't say e.g. Swedish and French drivers are equally impolite.

I’ve been equally terrified crossing the street on a Saturday night in Södermalm as in the 6e Arrondissement.

>If running a red light or stop sign is a $200 ticket in a car, it should be a $200 ticket on a bike.

Why? They are different crimes. Cars are faster and heavier, thus will injure someone much more when misused.

By that logic, should the fines car drivers face scale with the weight of their vehicle? Is blowing through a redlight in a small sports car a lesser crime than doing the same with a large pickup truck?

I'm receptive to this, but I doubt it would ever be implemented.

The fines probably do scale up as the class of the vehicle scales up. In large because you can lose your job if you are a bus or truck driver and do this.

Or, you pay more for insurance for a more powerful car, and the main impact of the ticket is not the monetary fine but an increase in premiums.

Yes. Or you could use a system of weight categories, for example one category for cars and one for bikes.

I think SUVs should br taxed actually, as well as trucks that have no commercial purpose, althouh that is a separate issue.

It’s not like (most) cars will run over the bicycles and just keep driving.

If one is driving, and a bicycle runs the red light and jumps in front of them, they’ll hard brake (at least most of the people). This means they have a very high chance of being rear-ended by the next car, and if the driver is not very experienced, then can lost control and hit other lane / objects and people at the side of the road.

As a similar example, we don’t allow untrained and unprotected people into construction sites with heavy machinery. Saying “hey, let me walk under this pile driver, it is my life on the line!” isn”t going to cut it in the US.

No, they are "the same crime" (failure to stop for a red light), it is one and the same law that applies to both, therefore the "crime" is the same. Therefore the penalty should be the same amount as long as the same statute applies.

Now, if you prefer the penalty to differ due to the potential for injury, you need to get the politicians to change the laws so they are not the same crime, or so that the penalty scales due to some formula in the law related to the potential for injury.

A cyclist absolutely can get badly injured when running red, arguably more likely than a car driver.

A cyclist can cause harm to themself and rarely one other person while running a red light, a car driver can cause mass casualties while running a red light. Difference of scale.

you can cause a large amount of harm at any time by doing something unexpected on a public road. doesn't matter whether you are a driver, cyclist, or pedestrian.

The traffic rules are there to avoid all sorts of incidents, you can't excuse yourself out with "scale". If you kill yourself running red, it is still a fatal road accident at the end of the day.

1. Your lack of sympathy comes from false generalizations about cyclist behavior. You tend to remember the egregious behavior and likely give a pass to drivers doing more dangerous (although common) stuff.

2. Drivers commit as many, if not more traffic violations than cyclists—and the consequences are much greater.

3. Your opinion would almost certainly change if you had to commute by bicycle.

Not sure why you're getting downvotes, you make a great point.

Bicyclists (I am one) apparently want to have their cake and eat it too: driving all over the place (sidewalk, street, wrong way, etc) while at the same time wanting drivers to always be at fault for collisions.

No, it's a stupid point, repeatedly being made. Why should cyclists be judged as a group by their worst members, but drivers as individuals?

As a driver, I think all roads should be closed for anyone else but cyclists. I'm a driver, you can't argue with my point, as I represent all drivers. "As an X person" is really good for discourse..

I suspect there is a fair bit of confirmation bias in what you are noticing. I say this as a biker that also notices these things.

I also notice them from drivers all the time, as well. Is it stupid when a cyclist runs a stop sign? Yes. The same as a car doing it. And people are notorious for not stopping well if they are going to take a right. Such that we design for the behavior with round abouts. Car or bike.

Meanwhile, both times I've been hit, the car turned right not checking that there was a biker in the bike lane right next to them.

I'm not sure the confirmation bias matters here.

The GC seems to be a comment replying to a lot of sentiment in this thread which is basically "the driver is always at fault". Given what I'm sure we've all seen from cyclists (and the things I've done as a cyclist), I can confirm that this is definitely not the case.

Your rhetorical style isn't helping. From what we have all seen from drivers, nobody should be allowed to drive a car. :)

What's wrong with my rhetorical style?

I meant just the clause I parrotted. It begs the question regarding what we've all seen/done.

Running a stop sign is a not a ticket. Nothing is a ticket. I regularly see drivers going 20 MPH the speed limit in the bike lane passing or even into on coming traffic forcing people off the road, all without plates. I don’t think I’ve seen a car pulled over on city streets in my life. It’s just normal for cars to run red lights and stop signs, to veer drunkenly all over the road, and to go 50 in a 30, and to shout slurs and spit on pedestrians.

I say this as someone who commutes by bike whenever possible -- there are some real assholes riding on the paths. It turns out that riding a bike does not change who you are, fundamentally. If those cyclists owned diesel pickups, they'd be coal-rolling with the best of them.

I used to cross a bridge to get to work. There was a shared pedestrian/cycle pathway, about 6 feet wide, with cycles yielding to pedestrians. I remember walking across that one time with my family, including my daughter who was about 3. This one jerk rang no bell and blew past my entire family, about a foot away, at 20+ MPH. I didn't even hear him coming from behind.

3 year olds are prone to random movements. If she had moved by a foot or two at exactly the wrong time, it would have been a very bad situation.

On the plus side, the cyclist behind the asshole (who properly rang his bell and passed us) stopped at the end of the bridge to apologize for the first guy.