[natestemen]

there are cases when you should treat a cyclist like a pedestrian and others where you should treat them like a car.

i don't think any driving teachers are doing a good job at teaching this, but as soon as you get on a bike you realize how silly it is to make a full stop at a stop sign, both from a safety point of view as well as a physics point of view.

[peterlk]

Nope. You follow traffic laws. If you're in the lane at a stop sign, you stop. If you're on the sidewalk, you can behave as a pedestrian.

Stop can mean different things in different places, so rolling through might be fine in some places.

[btrettel]

> Nope. You follow traffic laws. If you're in the lane at a stop sign, you stop. If you're on the sidewalk, you can behave as a pedestrian.

My experience is that drivers tend to have a much worse understanding of the law as it relates to cycling than I as a cyclist do.

I've been told by drivers to ride on the sidewalk where riding on the sidewalk was illegal. (Regardless, riding on the sidewalk is bad practice because it's actually more dangerous than riding on the road and not nice for pedestrians.)

I've been told by drivers to get in the bike lane when I was in the sharrow lane on an official city bike route. They want me to ride in parking, which is actually illegal as far as I know, though not enforced. Sorry, I won't be swerving in and out of traffic so that you can get to the stop light 10 seconds ahead of me and then still have to wait 30 more seconds for the light to change. Add on top of that the debris in a "lane" that's not intended for travel and thus not often cleaned; I won't get a flat tire to save you a couple seconds.

Some drivers seem to get annoyed that cyclists "run red lights" at a few intersections near where I live, when there are signs that say "cyclists may use pedestrian signal" and I have never seen a cyclist go through red there without the pedestrian signal.

For "infractions" like these I've had drivers do close "punishment passes".

Now, there are bozo cyclists out there, but as someone who is particularly knowledgeable about the law as it applies to cyclists like me, I know that drivers frequently believe cyclists are breaking the law when they are not.

[btrettel]

Thinking about it, it might actually have been legal to ride on the sidewalk at the time I had in mind when writing above. But still, riding on the sidewalk is bad practice.

[IshKebab]

Traffic laws and infrastructure have never really be designed to consider the fact that cyclists exist though, so it's not surprising that cyclists don't follow the law to the letter.

[ratling]

What does a cyclist do when they hit a redlight?

Nothing.