Photo: SDOT
SDOT’s blog mentions that they’re painting Ts on traffic signal actuators buried in the street, so bicyclists will know where to place their front wheel for best results.
Technically, it’s your bike that trips the signal, not the front wheel alone. Even a carbon fiber frame probably has enough metal on it somewhere (gears, cranks) to work. The T should help newbie cyclists especially not to ride right over the actuator, and give them confidence they won’t make the fuming line of motorists behind them miss a turn cycle.
There is nothing more wonderful than cycling for looking into how in-group and out-group behaviors develop. This is one instance. When you can’t, on a bicycle, get a turn signal actuator to work, you’re usually stuck in the middle of traffic. Neither option available (dismounting and using the crosswalk; or making the turn anyway, when traffic permits) inspires confidence in the drivers around you, who more than likely have no idea you can’t get the light to change.
Every time a cyclist doesn’t appear to be obeying the rules of the road, it counts against cycling in general. This is that in-group, out-group thing I mentioned. Some of these instances have to do with learned understanding, as with this actuator example; you don’t really know why a cyclist is doing what they’re doing (whether it’s legal or not) until you’ve ridden yourself.
Some have to do with people just being bad drivers (of bikes, of cars, of motorcycles). I’ve been stopped on my bike at a red light only to have another cyclist whoosh past. That person has broken the law, but cycling hasn’t. Most people who complain to me about how cyclists behave are not spending equal time counting up how many times the driver in front of them changed lanes without signaling, how many people were speeding, who pulled a U-turn, or who pulled into a bike lane to park for minute.
Car drivers talking among other drivers have no problem detailing everything some asshole or moron did during the commute, but they never say, “Car drivers don’t obey the law!” or “They don’t belong on the road!” That’s absolutely normal in-group thinking. What’s strange to me about it is that many car drivers also walk, also occasionally bike. And when they do, they notice that people drive “crazy.”
Protected inside of a car, people develop strange priorities regarding the saving of five to ten seconds in the stretch before the next red light makes them idle for 30 to 45 seconds. They’re insulated from the fear and anger they inspire when they cut into a crosswalk to “sneak” their two-ton SUV through pedestrians. Rather than stopping, some drivers prefer to time their acceleration just as the pedestrian makes it across.
This is car crazy, enabled by the tendency of people to jump out of harm’s way. The analogue is bike crazy–the person who thinks since cars have to stop to stop at red lights, bikes don’t. But the common denominator is that a person, not a car, not a bike, is making both decisions. That makes it a really large in-group.
love the in-group clarification. I deal with it so often, “when are you cyclists going to start obeying the law?” always sounds so strange to me coming from someone who probably broke 10 laws that very morning commuting to work in a moving 2-ton brick of metal and glass. It’s such a warped perspective, and we all do it. I used to be a car commuter, so I remember the days when a 30 second delay in my usual route to work could wreck my whole morning. That informs my current in-group behavior — where I believe that every car commuter is a cell-phone addicted, big-gulp drinking, tv-watching bovine who would be perfectly willing to kill a pedestrian in exchange for 5 minutes off their commute.
ok, I’m sure that’s not true of every motorist. Some days, though, I sure can’t tell that from their actions.
Near my house – at the intersection of Boyer and 24th – you can paint all the markers you want to indicate where the traffic sensor is, but until you get rid of the embedded broken-off pipes in the road, I ain’t going near the center of my lane when biking. It is, quite literally, an accident waiting to happen.
Further, the city really needs to get an visual-information technology person on board to evaluate our continual repainting of roads. They’re really beginning to resemble the proverbial hot dog stand.
This is a classic case of individual changes making sense, but not having a cumulative vision. When I look at the recently repainted Roosevelt, north of 45th, all I see is a maze of paint. Very hard to know what to do. Add to that the ground-out old paint – which is still visible – and you haven’t achieved much.
It really seems like zealots with no sense of reality are running the DOT these days.
You are correct, sir! I think if you were to put on Jay Leno mask and wander around asking people what all the paint means, you’d hear a wide variety of mostly incorrect responses. You can paint all you want–it certainly is cheaper than almost anything else, and it looks official–but if people don’t have any idea what a sharrow is, or what the rules of a bike lane are, it’s not helping.