Let me further explain to you what is occurring here:
People on bicycles, without stopping, will ride from a sidewalk, across an intersection, 2 or 3 lanes per side here, fairly big roads. When you pull up to a light, you are watching for oncoming traffic in addition to any changes to the area you may turn into. A bicycle, who wasn’t there and rides into an intersection with complete disregard for traffic or crosswalk signals can be in front of your car in a literal split second. If I wasn’t looking before accelerating (I am in a manual car and have to put it into gear and all), I would simply run them over. Clearly, that isn’t the case, but I imagine with the age of people here and the size of the vehicles they drive it is not an infrequent occurrence.
I’m really surprised how many people missed the sarcasm of my first sentence and literally the rest of the post…
It greatly depends on the traffic pattern here! I also mentioned this to another reply, but our county has IMO very poorly designed traffic patterns for road crossing. It will generally turn white with a walk sign for a few seconds, and then quickly shift to a flashing red hand indicator with a count down, which means you have X number of seconds remaining to walk until the full red hand (don’t walk) shows up. Flashing red hand symbol IMO is not the best indicator for “you can still walk.”
The times I’ve had this happen are at very large intersections that have 3 lanes each way on one side and 2 lanes per side on the cross road. With lead greens, and various traffic patterns the walk signs do follow a specific pattern, but there are also opportunities for right on red without the pedestrian having right of way. This mostly occurs during the transitional periods, and during lead greens, which can be a significant amount of time in intersections of this size.
Yes of course it’s the motorists job to avoid running over pedestrians, I don’t think that was ever a question.
That’s interesting, I never considered a flashing hand as an indicator to stop. It is timed to a slow walker, so I can tell whether it’s safe to cross if I can run across.
I would argue that the signal you should pay attention to is your red light. Which also doesn’t mean you can’t go through the intersection (this is bad policy in my opinion), but it does mean that you need to look out for and yield to people driving, and walking across the intersection.
It is generally not a good idea to bike on the sidewalk on the wrong side of the road. But sometimes that is the safest option.
Our county and state in general is miserable for biking and pedestrians outside of designated trails. I only know a handful of people who are serious about road biking, and multiple have been in serious accidents due to motor vehicles.
Let me further explain to you what is occurring here:
People on bicycles, without stopping, will ride from a sidewalk, across an intersection, 2 or 3 lanes per side here, fairly big roads. When you pull up to a light, you are watching for oncoming traffic in addition to any changes to the area you may turn into. A bicycle, who wasn’t there and rides into an intersection with complete disregard for traffic or crosswalk signals can be in front of your car in a literal split second. If I wasn’t looking before accelerating (I am in a manual car and have to put it into gear and all), I would simply run them over. Clearly, that isn’t the case, but I imagine with the age of people here and the size of the vehicles they drive it is not an infrequent occurrence.
I’m really surprised how many people missed the sarcasm of my first sentence and literally the rest of the post…
If you have a red, wouldnt the crosswalk signal be green?
In my city, bikes can go in sidewalks everywhere except a few blocks downtown.
So chances are it’s the motorists legal responsibility to look out for, and yield to pedestrians and cyclists when they do a right on red.
It greatly depends on the traffic pattern here! I also mentioned this to another reply, but our county has IMO very poorly designed traffic patterns for road crossing. It will generally turn white with a walk sign for a few seconds, and then quickly shift to a flashing red hand indicator with a count down, which means you have X number of seconds remaining to walk until the full red hand (don’t walk) shows up. Flashing red hand symbol IMO is not the best indicator for “you can still walk.”
The times I’ve had this happen are at very large intersections that have 3 lanes each way on one side and 2 lanes per side on the cross road. With lead greens, and various traffic patterns the walk signs do follow a specific pattern, but there are also opportunities for right on red without the pedestrian having right of way. This mostly occurs during the transitional periods, and during lead greens, which can be a significant amount of time in intersections of this size.
Yes of course it’s the motorists job to avoid running over pedestrians, I don’t think that was ever a question.
That’s interesting, I never considered a flashing hand as an indicator to stop. It is timed to a slow walker, so I can tell whether it’s safe to cross if I can run across.
I would argue that the signal you should pay attention to is your red light. Which also doesn’t mean you can’t go through the intersection (this is bad policy in my opinion), but it does mean that you need to look out for and yield to people driving, and walking across the intersection.
It is generally not a good idea to bike on the sidewalk on the wrong side of the road. But sometimes that is the safest option.
Our county and state in general is miserable for biking and pedestrians outside of designated trails. I only know a handful of people who are serious about road biking, and multiple have been in serious accidents due to motor vehicles.