Drivers need to be responsible

In the often heated debate about bicycles and traffic laws, one important factor fails to be mentioned: the behavior of drivers.

This was also the case in the September 22 story, “A Brewing Bike Law Debate.”

In residential neighborhoods and along the Greenway from Hopkins to the Mississippi, a significant portion of drivers insist on yielding to bicyclists when the cars have the right of way. When I wave them through, about half refuse to go. This is true even in some cases where I’m the only one with a stop sign.

By the way, drivers refusing to take the right of way also teaches cyclists to run stop signs.

As a cyclist, I do not ask drivers to inappropriately yield to me —this behavior puts me in danger.

When crossing four-lane roads along the Greenway, if the first lane yields to me they block my view of the second lane and I cannot see whether that lane is clear or hides a speeding car. Elsewhere intersections clearly regulated in traffic law (i.e. the first person to arrive at a four-way stop sign goes first) are effectively unregulated (i.e. the car got there first, but no one knows who goes first.)

I think this happens for two reasons. First, some drivers are trying to be nice. (It isn’t nice.) Second, drivers don’t know how to “read” bikes. Drivers recognize that a car rolling through a stop sign is yielding, but they don’t recognize a yielding bike and fear misreading and then hitting a cyclist.

I hope that efforts to enforce car-appropriate rules on bicycles will be matched by enforcement of right-of-way laws. I also hope that any education efforts will teach drivers to treat bicycles as they treat cars — which includes expecting bikes to stop when they don’t have the right of way.

Janne Flisrand
Lowry Hill