Bikes are everywhere....and unfortunately politicans have no clue what to do about them.
Between the already vibrant riding community in Chicago and the continued growth in the use of bike share programs, we see bicyclists in every part of the city. For those of us who love to ride, we have five months of freedom ahead of us. No longer tied to public transportation schedules, or hampered by traffic jams, we can take to the road and run our errands, enjoy the lakefront, or even travel to work inspiring jealousy in the sardine cans of drivers that sit frustrated in traffic as we whizz by in the bike lane.
This freedom does not come without some challenges. Especially early in the season, drivers do not always expect bikes, and often make turns or enter traffic without looking. Pedestrians, used to having to only navigate cars, often overlook bikes as they make their jaywalking plans. Even the regular bike commuters have to adjust their travel schedules as normally open winter roads clog up with more casual riders.
Politicians, as expected, do not know what to do. On one hand, they get pushed by activists to increase bicycle infrastructure, while simultaneously getting lobbied by others to reign in "aggressive riders" in the name of public safety. As cities start to invest in bike share programs as a commuting option to reduce congestion, drivers push for concessions to maintain their dominance on the roadways. In Chicago last year, increase funding for bike infrastructure got tied to language that would treat bicyclists like automobiles in terms of traffic violations. This most idiotic of legislations shows a lack of understanding of basic physics....
Bikes are not cars.
Traffic control devices...stop signs, traffic lights, one way streets...exist to promote order and create a safe environment in which people on foot can exist safely with multi-ton machinery that even at low speed can inflict serious damage. Agreeing on social norms like lane markers, the "double yellow line", and turn signals gives us a measure of comfort and a basis for mutual understanding in an environment where we cannot communicate easily with another person behind the wheel. The results of breaking these vehicle-related social morays range from hundreds of dollars of property damage on one end to significant loss of life at the extreme. Our lives are better - and more importantly safer - because we have and follow traffic laws.
Making the stretch to regulate bicyclists like cars takes the concept of public safety to an absurd extreme. In purely physical terms, the amount of momentum (the physical property that measures how much energy a moving item can transfer to another) developed by an average car measures twenty-five times that of the average bicyclist...and almost twenty times that of an extreme bicyclist. Compare that with the ratio of an average bicyclist to a pedestrian, which calculates out to somewhere between three and eight, and we see that bicyclists have much more in common physically with pedestrians than motorists.
This similarity extends to maneuverability as well. Communities love to install stop signs as traffic calming - and let's face it, traffic deterring - devices so that residents can have some assurance that drivers are looking out for pedestrians, and especially children, as they drive through neighborhoods. Without getting into whether those same residents obey their own signs, these make some sense as drivers sit isolated from their surroundings, have a limited field of vision, and react relatively slowly to actions around them. Bicyclists, on the other hand, do not have anything separating them from the world around them. They have a full field of vision, and can easily communicate with someone else around them. Because of their relatively low momentum, they can stop quickly, and more importantly, they can maneuver much more efficiently to avoid collisions.
The numbers bear this out. While over 4,000 pedestrians a year are killed by motor vehicles and another 75,000 injured, we find fewer than 10 pedestrians killed and fewer than 5,000 injuries. Pedestrians suffer less serious injuries in collisions with bicyclists as well, even though statistics lump injuries together without significant discernment. Meanwhile, vehicles kill about 500 bicyclists a year.
This is not to say that bicyclists should get a free pass. The 2012 case of a San Fran bicyclist who blew several stop signs and a red light on way to killing a pedestrian while going 35 mph appropriately resulted in a felony conviction against the rider. But incidents like these are the exception, not the rule. A bicyclist pausing at a stop sign, or rolling through a red light at an empty intersection does not pose anywhere near the threat that a motorist does in the same circumstance.
Unless we are ready to start pulling over groups of twelve year olds who blow through stop signs on their bikes in residential neighborhoods, we need to take a step back and use some common sense. While extreme and dangerous people in any vehicle need to be dealt with appropriately, that is no reason to punish the average bicyclist. And make no mistake, threatening to ticket bicyclists as motorists is a punishment inflicted to preserve the dominance of the motor vehicle. We need to be encouraging more cycling, not less. More bicycling reduces congestion, increases health, and promotes a feeling of safety in our neighborhoods.
Treating bicyclists like motorists will not improve safety...and it just makes no sense.
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