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Reminds me of the time I almost died riding on The Embarcadero. This https://www.google.com/maps/place/Embarcadero,+San+Francisco,+CA/@37.80494,-122.4039694,179
by cellis 6y ago
Reminds me of the time I almost died riding on The Embarcadero. This https://www.google.com/maps/place/Embarcadero,+San+Francisco,+CA/@37.80494,-122.4039694,179m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4!1s0x80858066993643ad:0x77178399d59a1e7f!8m2!3d37.7992627!4d-122.3976732 https://www.google.com/maps/place/Embarcadero,+San+Francisco... is the intersection. This is the link to the view you would have as a cyclist https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8051081,-122.4030922,3a,74.5y,268.57h,70.82t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sAF1QipPQXGu79Rxu575JjSzjZsyxcwoAZ6fZo0LticqV!2e10!3e11!7i11000!8i5500 https://www.google.com/maps/@37.8051081,-122.4030922,3a,74.5...
Long story short, I was an idiot cyclist thinking I had calculated everything[1], when in fact, I hadn't. Someone in a car going northbound at about 60mph on Sansome had to slam on their brakes to save my life as I crossed from the right bicycle lane to chestnut. I was super lucky they were watching, and their brakes worked, and that they had enough reaction time.
From then on I have never ran stoplights. The problem is that, as they say, the first one is free. You might start out as a cyclist running a simple stop sign on a dead street. But as you get more comfortable, the temptation is to run ever more complex street lights. In my case, I only did it when I didn't see any cars. The problem with intersections like this is there are cars you cannot see.
[1] - Things to calculate:
1. Southeast bound car traffic on Embarcadero.
2. Whether there were southeast bound muni trains on the Embarcadero dividing route.
3. Whether there were northwest bound muni trains on the Embarcadero dividing route.
4. Cars behind you on northeast bound Embarcadero ( I had to cross from the bikelane on the left )
5. Northbound cars on Sansome. This is what I missed.
- hinkley 6y agoI don't know who needs to hear this, but the driver who gets mad at you for running a light might be a fellow or former cyclist. There is nowhere you gotta be that is so important that you should be committing moving violations to get there. The rules of the road apply to you ever bit as much as a car, and you have absolutely no moral authority at all if you won't even follow the goddamned traffic laws. You are not only risking your own life, you're making the rest of us look bad, and creating hostile drivers that other people have to deal with.
- xenocyon 6y agoI don't run lights myself, but I don't agree with the theory of perfect symmetry of moving violations. The risk one poses to others by breaking traffic laws is different for a pedestrian, a cyclist, a car, a semi-trailer, and a jumbo jet. Insisting that all violations matter the same is nonsensical. In places, this recognition has actually been codified into law (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop).
- vulcan01 6y agoOh wow that's interesting, I live in Washington State and I didn't know that we're getting the Idaho stop in October. It'll be an interesting change...
- cgriswald 6y agoI’m not really certain where I stand on that, but several thoughts come to mind. It’s If a bicyclist and a driver approach a four way stop and the driver runs it, he can kill the bicyclist. If the bicyclist runs it, the driver can kill the bicyclist. While the risk is not symmetrical the outcome is the same. One would think that the party with more risk would be less likely to run the stop sign but in my experience (which is probably not typical world wide) in the Bay Area the opposite is true. Although admittedly it seems the law just isn’t enforced here. Maybe unequal laws would more likely be enforced and some combination of personal risk plus enforcement would achieve the desired outcome. Additionally many bicyclists are also drivers. So it might be prudent to penalize them for the behavior equally so that it discourages the behavior in general and removes dangerous drivers more easily; assuming their behavior on different vehicles correlates.
- pmontra 6y agoI add another point. All cyclists are also pedestrians. Maybe not in the Bay Area but pedestrians often run traffic lights when there are no approaching vehicles. A cyclist feels closer to a pedestrian than to a driver in my experience. So, no traffic, no danger, run the traffic light. The same cyclist (and pedestria) will stop when driving a car.
- Nimitz14 6y agoThat's a huge intersection, and it sounds like you were crossing instead of just following Embarcadero, that's obviously a terrible idea.
- cellis 6y agoIndeed it was. Even crossing with traffic lights is sometimes a harrowing experience as there are cars behind you that sometimes are going 30-40 mph on that turn.
- kiplkipl 6y agoThe linked road isn't one where cyclists die from running a stop sign, they have right-of-way.