I wish more people took road safety seriously. I was driving around California a lot over the holidays and was appalled (as usual) by how few drivers bother to use turn signals on the freeway. It's such a mind-bogglingly simple thing to do that any person who can't manage it should probably be denied a license.
I have been laughed at by passengers in my car before for using my turn signals when no other cars were around. That really blew my mind the first time. Why anyone would try shaming someone else for adhering to safe driving practices is beyond me.
If you just use them all the time, you don't have to remember to use them in the right situation. That was a concept more than one person I know couldn't understand.
This was in California with other licensed drivers.
My wife laughs and prods at me constantly for reflexively putting on my seat belt when I get into parked cars, using my turn signal when there are no other vehicles (or I'm indicating that I'm leaving a roundabout), cleaning my windows/mirrors at the gas station if a long highway drive in bad weather is reducing visibility with salt/mud/etc, carrying a belt cutter, safety kit and air/booster/tools in the trunk, refusing to drive after having a drink, you name it.
She's an intelligent person, accomplished in her own scientific career and a stimulating person to talk to, all great signals about her brain, but dumb driving sense pervades all intellectual capacities I think. I sincerely worry she will die in a car accident. She is positive it would be me, though - she thinks I'm "overthinking" driving and driving safety, which introduces far more danger.
I've been in two car accidents. Maybe that helps. In one case my friend backed us up into a street light really fast because he seemingly didn't realize the accelerator was the brake. The other time I was crawling down a steep driveway in bad weather and my car slid off the driveway, down a hill, and ended up in the ditch below. It looked like a severe accident at a glance, haha. It was actually very slow and boring as it happened.
At any rate, these events instilled in me that small errors can have large consequences. The feeling of your car not doing what you want it to, then being in a situation out of your control, really sucks. I'm not interested in the slightest in finding out how badly that can go. Whether it's because I left my seat belt off, I had a beer, I couldn't see out of my rear window properly, I got stranded in the cold - these are all enormously bad reasons to get hurt or die.
A lot of people have never faced consequences or witnessed the disproportionate result of minor errors, so perhaps driving is one of those things were (unfortunately) many of us learn the hard way, often bringing innocent bystanders with us.
same here. a nice example is the repair stuff including inner tubes I tend to carry around on bike tours (like 10km and more). she also made fun of me for being so well equipped. and then one day she had a flat tire. good thing I had that stuff with me. because otherwise we'd have had to walk it for quite some time.
Ha, likewise - I used to tour really far (300-600km in a day sort of things) and sometimes I'd make the whole trip without a hitch, other times I'd get several flats in a day. It became second nature to assume my bike was going to get a flat soon, so I still carry it in a saddle bag everywhere I go.
Of course she thought it was silly too, but yeah, we cycle everywhere and I've fixed a lot of flats now.
In their defense, I only figured out why you should bring kit everywhere because I've been stranded badly, totally unprepared. I was finishing a 400km ride, around 40km to go at 1am, and my tire went. It was cold, raining, low/no traffic, no cell service for most of the trek back, etc. I got home as the sun was rising, haha.
You're right, what I should say is per continuous riding session - I used to take more like 38 hours for 600s (just under the cutoff, haha). There are breaks, usually 30m max, but I tended to average more like 18kph over complete ride. I wanted to reach 20kph, but had a kid instead – that kind of threw a stick in taking long rides.
> I have been laughed at by passengers in my car before for using my turn signals when no other cars were around
The times when I think "no one is around me" are the times using my turn signal has been MOST useful. Same thing in parking lots. If I see all the other cars on the road then I can drive defensively and avoid them. The turn signal is important for the cars that I DON'T see because it gives them a better chance of avoiding ME.
That's exactly it. Because I think I'm alone doesn't mean I am.
My blind spot indicator in my car has 100% prevented me from merging when I shouldn't, though I can't say with certainty how often. I'm a little embarrassed to say, too, that I've been honked at in the past for merging when I shouldn't. I think twice in 20 years, but still. I have no reason to think those incidents couldn't have been severe.
No one is 100% sure what's surrounding them at any time, plain and simple.
This is one argument I see for autonomous driving which actually seems valid to me. Those vehicles will be able to see far more than a human facing forward with a few mirrors. At the moment I think the problem is that the human can make far more sense from what they see, though.
Don't rely on your blind spot indicator, it's there to help, not replace a blind spot check. They often don't pick up motorcycles and especially not bikes. I have seen them not light up many many times when I'm passing through someone's blind spot on my motorcycle, when the car in front of me does set it off...
I definitely don't rely on it, I agree with you. I think what happens is I have moments of thinking I should be able to merge, then checking the indicator and realizing I was wrong. In those cases it's very likely I'd do a thorough check, but it's a great reminder otherwise that my gut sense of my surrounding is incorrect, and I do need to check thoroughly and, for lack of a better explanation, assume I'm always wrong until I've fully checked my surroundings.
If the sideview mirrors are set properly, there shouldn't be a blindspot.
If you can see the side of your own vehicle in your side view mirrors, they are set improperly.
When set properly, cars in the lane next you on either side should transition from your rearview mirror to your sideview mirror to your driver or passenger window without any gap in coverage.
The sideview mirrors are to see other cars, not your own car. You're in your own car, so there is no reason to set it to see the side of your own car. If you can see the side of your own car, then angle the mirrors out until you can't. Next time someone passes, check to make sure you see them transition your mirrors properly, it they don't tweak your mirrors a little more.
Indeed. Beyond that, it's also entirely possible there's someone -- a pedestrian on the sidewalk ahead, a driver about to exit their driveway... -- that you don't see but who is interested in what you're planning to do. (This happens to me commonly as a pedestrian.)
You reminded me about a situation with my father: basically he uses signals for overtaking/turning, not before it to signal the intent. There are many people who do it this way. He would look around forever in the mirrors etc. trying to start the manoeuvre but won't let anyone know his intent until it's already happening.
Incidentally, last week we were installing a fridge, and while cutting the packaging with a sharp knife, he told me, without looking, "be careful!" (without saying "yo, I'm cutting stuff with the sharp knife"), around 0.1s before cutting my hand ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This made me realize how prevalent and dangerous are poor communication skills.
> he uses signals for overtaking/turning, not before it to signal the intent.
This is the real reason. People aren’t incapable or put out by having to use the turn signals, they are choosing not to signal precisely because it reveals intent, and they are afraid of revealing intent. (Same is often true in many other social situations and at work!) I know I’ve done this myself in the past, and I know other people who will admit it. Fear of being cut off, fear of having someone not let you in, general fear of someone using your intent against you rather than accommodate you.
I think we need to figure out how to teach not just that signaling intent is safer, but that it works and people will accommodate a signal far more often than not. We also need to learn as drivers to respect other’s intent, that when a signal is on and it’s close but they have room, it doesn’t mean accelerate to close the gap, but that we should let them. Being nice is how we get others to be nice back.
I was about to say it’s probably everywhere in the US (world?), but then I remembered the only physical vehicle collision I’ve ever had in my life while moving was in Chicago, someone so determined to prevent me from merging they crashed into the back of my vehicle.
It's even more silly when you figure that consciously deciding whether or not you are going to use them takes a lot more effort than just doing it for every turn automatically. We only have so much of our attention to parcel out, and using it for pointless things while driving is negligence.
I finally bought a new & modern car a few years ago, and one of my favorite features is that it beeps at me when I turn on my signal and someone’s in my blind spot. At this point I can no longer count the number of times I was unaware someone was there and I even started moving into their space but got a beep notification and avoided turning into them. Using my signal is becoming absolutely reflexive now, because it helps me “feel” my surroundings and avoid doing things that surprise other drivers when I can’t see them.
It's not training: they 100% know that you're supposed to signal, stop at red lights or stop signs, park in the middle of a traffic lane, not cross a solid double yellow to pass someone going the speed limit, etc. The people who do that are choosing to do it because they feel whatever they're doing is more important and they know that most police departments stopped doing traffic enforcement years ago because it's beneath post-9/11 warrior cops unless they're looking for an excuse to search someone's car.
> If you just use them all the time, you don't have to remember to use them in the right situation.
I know of dead cave divers who followed protocols only when they really needed to and then one day made a category error and didn't follow the protocol when they really needed to.
I've gotten crap for following through the motions of protocols when they I "didn't need to" but if you do it all the time then you never make those kinds of category errors. There's no downside to always following protocols, there's high downside for making category errors that you wouldn't make if you just always followed protocols.
Similarly you should always use your parking brake, even if you are on flat ground so that you never make a category error there (or just get hit by someone when you're on flat ground and have a rollaway).
Similarly, signal your intentions every single time. You're doing it for the pedestrian you didn't see, or even just some idiot flying up the shoulder of the highway who shouldn't be there, but signal your intentions to take the exit so you move predictably.
The one time I was nearly in a serious accident was when I was in the fast lane on a nearly empty motorway - apart from a line of lorries in the slow lane, moved from the fast lane into the middle line without indicating... but one of the lorry drivers also moved into that lane nearly clipping my rear.
Yeah I was pretty shaken up about that one, because if he had clipped me, I would have ended up being crushed by a line of lorries.
Moral of the story: always indicate even if you don't think you need to.
Not using a turn signal is probably the least offensive thing that I see while driving around SoCal, to be perfectly honest with you. Not a day goes by that I don't see people blowing through stop signs and even red lights now. I don't even drive that much, really... Under 10 miles a day during the week, all local traffic. But I still see people every single day being extremely dangerous and acting without any regard for themselves or the people around them.
Just being on or near the roads stresses me out now. Even if I'm just on the sidewalk, I can detect a higher level of background anxiety happening. I've lost any degree of trust I ever had in other drivers.
My observations have led me to believe that the lack of accountability in cars is owed to a lack of enforcement. If the rules aren't enforced then they cease to be rules.
I doubt enforcement has changed significantly. I'm more willing to believe that this is part of the slow unraveling of the social contract in the United States. Everyone hates each other, and now people are driving like it too.
Traffic enforcement using police officers is just not very effective. People are bad at judging the risk of driving, especially as environment changes (highway to city) and as such do not very well self enforce. Speed traps only slow drivers immediately after the police officers (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/245559162_Study_of_.... The only enforcement that will actually move the needle in my opinion is automated enforcement such as speed governors and cameras.
Who's taking about speeding? I'm talking about people who treat red arrows like stop signs or worse. People that don't stop for stop signs. People that don't yield to pedestrians. People that turn right on red in no right in red zones. People that stop their cars in the middle of the street in 55 mph zones for $REASONS, like when it sprinkles in SoCal. Speeding is a fact of life around here. I moved out here in the 2000s. Myself, and the people that I know that live here and who I've bothered to talk to about this, do not recall seeing anyone run red lights or stop signs on a regular basis. Today it's feeling like a routine occurrence.
"people that treat red arrows like stop signs..." I'm not sure what you mean here. Are you saying people stop at the red arrow then turn? In some cases that is legal. A right red arrow out a left on a one way street.
Where I grew up in Ohio, there was a lot of traffic enforcement. Conversations with family leads me to believe there is still some degree of enforcement happening in that area, But I've seen little or none in California, outside of I-5 speed traps.
I live on a busy street and we can see into cars at the stoplight.
The majority of drivers have their phones in their hands while waiting at the light and always take an extra second or two to get going when the light turns green.
People don't realize the gravity of operating two-ton deathmachines and would prefer to do anything but pay attention to the road and their surroundings.
> The majority of drivers have their phones in their hands while waiting at the light and always take an extra second or two to get going when the light turns green.
> People don't realize the gravity of operating two-ton deathmachines and would prefer to do anything but pay attention to the road and their surroundings.
I agree with your latter statement but I don't think that overdramatizing helps. Someone looking at their phone while the car is stopped at a light is not creating much of a hazard, even if it does take them an extra second or two to get going.
The sibling posters have covered it, but the stop-and-go phone driver already has greatly reduced situational awareness because they missed out on the 3-5 seconds of events before the light turns green.
When I'm stopped at a light, I will check my rear view and side mirrors just for any cyclists, motorcyclists splitting lanes, or even for distracted drivers who might rear end me. I may pull forward a few extra inches to let the occasional car behind me make their right turn. Drivers focused on their phones can't extend this courtesy.
Distracted driving is absolutely not an over-dramatization. We're not talking about a "second or two" as you so blithely put it; sure the action might only take a few seconds (let's be reasonable and say it takes 5 seconds to reach out, grab your phone, rotate it to the correct orientation, open it, read the notification, parse the information, return your phone to its holder, return your hands to the wheel, return your eyes to the road), but the context rebuilding _after_ the distraction is brutal.
We're taking 10 to 20 seconds of complete context loss. Your mind is no longer on "I'm driving" it's on "I guess I can swing by Cub and grab some milk, wait, did I already pass the Cub? Maybe Rainbow is open.."
You will have outdated information on the location of every object around you. Is the old lady still waiting to cross on the other side of the intersection? Is the cyclist still blitzing the red or did he make it? Is that SUV that was coming up still behind me, or has it merged into the turn lane? That batch of 3 cars crossing in front is gone, what was behind them?
To rebuild this context you need to do quite a lot. Basically you need a full cycle of the attentive, aware "I'm driving" brain loop we all use when driving to get caught back up. When you put your phone back are you doing a full 360 degree update? Check left, right, left? Lean out and see what the oncoming traffic looks like? Check all your mirrors, glance over your left and right shoulders to check the blind spots? Lean your head forward and back to glance around your A-pillar support blind spots?
Check your phone quick, put it down and take the right-hand turn you were waiting for? Bet you just checked traffic on the left and then gunned it, good chance to run over the pedestrian on your right who just determined that you were yielding, and stepped into the intersection.
Glance at your phone right as the lights turn green, pull ahead into the intersection and take your protected left-hand turn? Whoops you got T-Boned, turns out the green light didn't come with a green arrow as well, and you were supposed to yield to oncoming traffic. You lost that context when you glanced at the phone and all your brain remembers was Green means Go.
Distracted Driving is multiple times more dangerous than Drunk Driving. "I was at an intersection and stopped" doesn't mean distraction won't happen.
Yes, agreed, we should not exaggerate. But guaranteed that more problems are caused by drivers who are looking at their phones while stopped than those that continue to pay attention to traffic. Because some amount of the distracted ones will suddenly start moving again when something has happened in the meantime to make that dangerous or inappropriate.
They're still active participants in traffic. Someone who is waiting for the signal without the distraction of a smartphone will have seen the flows of traffic commence and stop in the other lanes and the roads that meet at the crossing, and will go into the crossing more relaxed and with better situational awareness than the person who just got jarred from chatting with someone about whether to get take out, and “oh, could you drive past the supermarket to get some wine?” into moving because of the honking behind them. They are also much more likely to notice irregular or otherwise unsafe behaviour by others around them (like a kid on a BMX dashing across at the pedestrian crossing too late to beat the lights).
Collectively, these moments of reduced attention cause way more harm than they should, all because so many people can't leave their damn phone alone while operating a vehicle in traffic.
Denying a license won't prevent people from driving. The whole driver license thing is honestly a joke due to the entire country's survival being 100% reliant on cars.
I once visited Istanbul and sat in a bus during rush hour. Cars seemed to just go wherever they'd like, but only when a car wasn't using the turn signal everybody started honking.
> Most people are really quite careful towards others. But cars do blunt that a little bit. There’s something about being in a car that takes the kind edge off us.
They made the same point in the documentary “The Face” with John Cleese. Pedestrians can see each others’ expressions and realize no harm was meant, not so in cars (so the documentary claimed).
this guy is very brave. people get into fist fights for asking them to put on a mask in the US and I can't imagine what'd happen if he was standing in front of someone's car on a street out here.
There's quite a few comments disagreeing with his actions. Since his actions consist of recording breaking the law to have the law enforced, I'm curious if those commenters will argue that the law is bad, or whether enforcing the law is bad.
(The option "both options good but him doing it bad" is indeed absent)
I think that laws are at a certain degree "elastic" and texting while completely stuck in a jam is not the same as texting while you are moving. So, snitching on that it's closer to being a "vigilante" than filming drivers who are actually being dangerous to cyclists, which it's something I would totally justify and even do (the filming, I mean).
It's akin to a red light camera being used to spot drivers making an illegal right turn on a red light versus drivers who recklessly run through a red light. The latter is known to cause serious accidents, the former not so much.
A right turn on red light could still run over a pedestrian quite easily. Texting while in a jam will just add delay when the jam unlocks. If you keep texting after, then it's a different story (and you are moving).
Does anyone have any resources on how to do this in California or the USA in general? I've been meaning to dashcam my bike for a while, and considered making an raspi-based dash cam system for automatic video processing and automating paperwork. If the alleged traffic violators retaliate against me, my efforts won't be in vain. I'm tired of being hit by cars on my bike.
On the other side, I live in NYC, and as a pedestrian I've actually had way more bad experiences with cyclists than drivers. Especially now with the advent of e-bikes. They move so fast, and most ignore all lights and traffic laws. I've nearly been barreled over by cyclists probably a dozen times, and feel like getting hit eventually is almost inevitable.
Obviously there are reckless cyclists, but I see that NYC helpfully posts public (and up to date!) data about collisions[1] which shows that cars and trucks are far more dangerous to pedestrians (presumably even that too-fast e-bike and rider don't have much mass compared to an SUV...)
I've seen videos of traffic in NYC. Pretty much, everybody is breaking every conceivable law -- drivers, cyclists, pedestrians -- constrained only by the laws of physics and human / machine performance. Naturally this is coming from a non resident, so I can't speak from experience whether there are local customs involved that keep people safe.
It's not qualitatively different in my town, just less crowding so that people have less of a reason to break the rules. But still, for each modality, the rules broken are based solely on opportunity, convenience, and in some cases self preservation. For instance, cars can exceed the speed limit but bikes can't. Bikes can blow through stop signs because they can. Getting out of intersections quickly reduces the chances of getting hit. Pedestrians walk in the bike and traffic lanes when convenient to do so. Enforcement is triggered by enough people complaining, or a preponderance of accidents.
This. Totally this. And I think it applies to basically all human beings all over the world. We just cluster by transport type and hate the other TT person because they are in a different TT.
I think we also tend to adapt ourselves to the rules that we routinely break, but are surprised when we see others break their own rules. Driving a car in traffic becomes our baseline for what we think is safe.
I'm not concerned about being killed by a cyclist, just getting knocked over. Which could range from being an annoyance to mild or moderate physical injury.
This doesn't have much to do with cyclists but with planning: taking the vast majority of available street area and designating it to cars while letting cyclists and pedestrians share what little remains naturally causes conflict between the two. If you want this to get better demand better, fully separated cycling infrastructure and vote accordingly. (still look out for those bikes until then though, take care!)
If the Netherlands are anything to go off of, thats just due to lack of infrastructure that trains people and helps prevent mixed traffic and conflicts caused by mixed traffic.
Yup, use mixed trails at the park. Cyclists are the worst. I actually have to stop myself from extrapolating that bias and just hating cyclists generally (most are cool).
Not only do they hog the whole road for cars, but then they want to wiz by walkers. I've been yelled at. There was almost a fight once. This boomer jerk could see me for miles ahead, but decided he didn't want to moderate his speed and yell at me instead.
Many cyclists have the attitude that they can do anything, drive at any speed anywhere, and the whole world should just move out of the way for them. It's super infuriating. I do think the park could use some bike only trails, but that's not what they went with.
Also, I repeatedly get annoying comments about walking/running on "the wrong side of the road", however that's simply good pedestrian etiquette (walkers go against the faster traffic). I do make an exception for hills, because that seems much safer; what kind of idiot crashes their bike going UP hill :)
Maybe I'm out of the loop and there's different rules at the park. I know I do listen to music constantly, which can be problematic, and am more careful now... but I see oblivious cyclists on the road all the time. It's annoying, but I never considered that I should just be able to drive however I please, run them off the road, and yell at them.
I just slow down and scoot by them when it's safe. Cyclists should do the same. Get over yourself.
I walk with a hiking pole. When not needed (mostly on sidewalks and paved paths) I tuck it under my arm so it pokes behind and to one side at cyclist eye level.
It really incentivises cyclists coming up behind to pass with a safe distance.
I used to take a peter pan bus in and out of Boston frequently. Riding on those buses you get a good view of other cars. Any given day at rush-hour, on the highway, at least 25% of drivers had a phone in their hand, glancing back and forth between it and the road.
I wonder how many of those drivers are the same people I hear decrying the unvaccinated as selfish?
What do driving practices have to do with vaccinations? Do you actually have any reason to think that the pro-vax population is more prone to unsafe driving practices? Or is your point that "in a large population, I bet I can find many people whose actions don't perfectly align with the principles they identify with"? Such a statement would be inane--it's been known for thousands of years that virtually nobody passes the test of totally consistent principled behavior (see Diogenes, who was "looking for a [truly principled / reasoning] man", and could find none).
> What do driving practices have to do with vaccinations?
Mandatory rules. Yours is a good question, but the parent’s suggestion might be totally fair. People in the US, and in other countries too, clearly have a problem with mandatory things, a lot of people are so determined to defy rules imposed on them, they will break the rules even when it’s in their interest to abide.
I have family members who, to this day, won't wear their seatbelt in their car because "the government has no business tellin' me what to do!" They know it is safer but won't do it out of petty spite. Orthodox Individualism is America's national religion.
While I'm driving on the freeway, my spouse sometimes counts to see how many other drivers are on their phone. It's crazy what a large fraction of people (probably about 25%, I'd agree) are splitting their attention when moving at 75mph. Like what are so many people doing on their phone while driving? Surely they can't all be texting someone that often...?
Wearing a helmet is for one's safety, not others'. Endangering other members of traffic by not paying attention is not the same thing as endangering yourself by not wearing one.
How would you expect it to work? The police are not everywhere at all times. If there's a report of something, they have to investigate and try to interview witnesses. If one of the witnesses has a video, why wouldn't that be evidence?
In my country (France), there are very specific conditions for videos to be accepted as court evidences. One of them is that if you are a private party, the video recording must have been advertised to the person on film prior to the begining of it, and must be declared to a special authority (CNIL), to avoid abuses.
"Pour assurer la fiabilité de la preuve soumise via un dispositif de vidéosurveillance, la qualité de l’image s’avère également déterminante ; plus précisément, elle doit comporter 704 x 576 pixels de résolution au moins et une cadence de 12 images par seconde et plus. L’installation d’un tel système doit être justifiée par un besoin de sécurité ou de protection (personnes, biens, locaux, mesure d’anti-terrorisme). Dans le domaine privé, les personnes concernées doivent en être avisées et vous devez déclarer le dispositif à la CNIL."
"dans le domaine privé" could mean "by private party" or "on private properties", and since IANAL, I don't know which one. The first one would match my understanding, the second would mean the public street would be ok.
Thanks for the link! It's labelled «vidéosurveillance» though, it feels like it only applies to fixed permanent cameras, not smartphone or GoPro ad-hoc evidence.
EU countries in general are much more privacy focused compared to the UK. UK law & culture is that you have no expectation of privacy in public, and people can take pictures/take video of you anytime you are in public, for any reason.
In the EU, there is an expectation of privacy in public spaces. The gas station CCTV is only allowed to film private property, and maybe a tiny slitter of public space if there is no alternative.
Most countries also require registration of cameras to a governemental agency and warning/consent of the people being filmed. That's at least the theory.
There's lots of nuance though. CCTV that just records all the time is not the same as someone recording because of a specific incident. And then you get things like rules for dashcams that allow dashcams to keep an e.g. 30s buffer that gets saved on button press or if a crash is detected, ...
There has to be a sign at the gas station that shows that this area is filmed (at least in Europe). The sign has to tell you who is responsible and why you are filmed.
On this basis you can refuse to enter the area.
The fundamental difference is that you can at least in principle choose not to go into an area where you are filmed and know it beforehand while the other person's did not know that they are filmed. I guess they wouldn't have texted while driving in this case. They assumed privacy in their own car and on their phone.
Roughly speaking they help non-collision injuries (wheel failure, thrown by a pothole, slipped on an icy turn), but don't do much if the cyclist is struck by a car.
As much as I hate assholes on the road I do not think that regular people snitching on others is the solution to anything.
Where do you draw the line? Do you know how many laws people do not respect on a daily basis? What's next, filming your neighbor jaywalking on an empty street and reporting it to the police? And everybody cheering?
The USA has a philosophy of having loose laws and occasional enforcement. This is partly cultural, and has a lot of negative side effects, particularly for minorites. It's pretty easy to do drugs or drive 5-10mph over the speed limit as a white person, but it's much more risky if not.
Contrast much of Europe, where speed enforcement is done by camera. I got a $20 mailed ticket for driving 5kph over the limit. Fair, easy, scales with the offence, and there's not an excuse to pull over people for racial profiling.
So yes, I would love to live in a world where people got tickets for jaywalking on an empty street. Because that would encourage us all to respect laws, and would also encourage reform of laws that aren't working.
Unfortunately, reform takes time, and there's a lot wrong with the system. Until then, I'm not judging the "regular person snitching," particularly if they're complaining about behavior that's dangerous to others.
>So yes, I would love to live in a world where people got tickets for jaywalking on an empty street. Because that would encourage us all to respect laws, and would also encourage reform of laws that aren't working.
I'd love to live in that world. Because that world would exist for a week at best before jaywalking stopped be a crime, speed limits went up by 20 across the board and stop lights and signs gained all sorts of complex rules allowing drivers and cyclists to not actually stop in many cases (and all sorts of other laws regarding other issues would be revised similarly). The laws would be changed to reflect how people actually live and that would make dolts who conflate legality with morality a much smaller problem for society. We have procedural mechanisms to make it harder silly laws from being passed. Authoritarians are far less of a danger to people when they have to force their shenanigans through those processes than they are when they simply need to convince enforcement to target this or that issue.
Neighbor jaywalking on an empty street isn't dangerous.
People on their phones in traffic certainly is.
Whether it's dangerous while sitting still is arguable: certainly if the vehicle isn't in a parking lot and the driver isn't paying attention then they might not notice emergencies they're blocking.
The article mentions the car driver was filmed for a whole minute using his phone in his stationary car, before noticing.
A whole minute.
Stationary.
I'm pretty sure as far as "letter vs spirit of the law" goes, this is pretty much the opposite of what lawmakers were worried about when the "no texting while driving" law was passed.
If I were a policeman I'd be arresting the cyclist for reckless driving beside cars while not facing forward, stopping to intimidate drivers, and causing arguments with drivers affecting the focus, calm, and therefore safety of their onward journey.
Firstly, it may be more common in your country than you think.
Secondly, I cannot agree with "laws that are commonly broken shouldn't be laws" even if we replace laws with municipal bylaws.
People commonly smoke where they shouldn't, don't clean up their dog's poop, park their cars wherever they want, litter and improperly dispose of items and whatever not. So, hey, let's get rid of the rules?
If we are going to clean the system of laws that should not exist, we arguably should prioritize those that are commonly broken, but that can't be the sufficient condition. If we don't prioritize those that are broken, we may waste time repealing weird laws covering situations that hardly occur, so the work will have no practical impact.
Whether a law should be repealed must be carefully considered on a case-by-case basis, not based on considerations like whether people are breaking it like it's going out of style.
That's a much more nuanced argument, so thanks for writing that out.
I'll counter with this: widespread lawbreaking only occurs when laws are selectively enforced or not enforced at all. For instance, most people jay walk because they don't expect enforcement. No one in my town expects dog waste laws to be enforced. Those who pick up their poop do so because they're decent human beings. If you wanted to stop dog waste, however, you could step up enforcement to discourage law breaking. This would work with many commonly broken laws. Singapore is famous for this approach. Therefore, I still think commonly broken laws should be repealed. If the law is important, then it should be enforced. If it's enforced, then people won't break it.
Another reason that commonly broken laws should be repealed is that having laws on the book that are selectively enforced is dangerous. They give those in power tools to exploit people they don't like. For instance, traffic laws are frequently violated, but they are selectively enforced. Police use selective enforcement of these laws to target black drivers. There are many examples in the entire justice system where selective enforcement of laws has been used as a tool for suppression. Having this legal grey-area where some people can break the law and some can't is ripe for abuse.
Which brings me to my final point regarding countries that have poor safety for women. In corrupt countries, the law exists as a tool to maintain power of a small group of rulers. The mechanism of this control works in a similar, but more extreme, way to how selectively enforced laws can be abused in less corrupt countries. It doesn't make sense to talk about repealing laws in a highly corrupt setting because our fundamental assumptions about what a legal system should do don't hold up (serving and protecting people, maintain social order, etc). Thus, it's not surprising that the most dangerous countries for women also rank extremely high on measures of corruption. In such places, the law basically doesn't matter.
Laws are always selectively enforced. You cannot simply watch every citizen 24 hours a day, and you don't want that kind of society in the first place.
What you don't want is there to be some pattern to the selectiveness. Certainly not due to corruption (the enforcers turning a blind eye to some select individuals), but even if there is no such corruption, the patterns are hard to avoid.
Just because people figure out that they can get away with something doesn't mean it shouldn't be a law. There may be reasons why it shouldn't, entirely unrelated to the popularity of breaking it.
Even if generally enforcing a law seems hopeless, if the law is in place, it can be used in certain situations. Like dog poop. A neighborhood having problems with a particular offender can lean on that law to get something done about them, even if there is no enforcing to help with someone randomly bringing their dog (e.g. by car) from another neighborhood to have a poop.
Where I live, streets have an implicit 3 hour parking rule. Street segments which have no signage about parking, and are available for that purpose, essentially have an implicit, invisible "Parking 3H Max" sign.
Nobody will actively enforce it; you can park your broken down old van in front of someone's front yard and leave it there for months. If nobody calls to complain, likely nothing will happen to that vehicle.
The law exists there for complaints; you can lean on that.
You can also lean on it in situations like this: you shoveled deep snow for an hour and a half in front of your house to dig your car out and create a clean parking spot. When you come back from your errand, your dickhead neighbor, or someone else, has parked there. If they stay for 3 hours, you can have them removed.
That's the concept you're missing; laws do not have to patrolled by active policing that looks for infractions. Enforcement can be complaint-driven. If you repeal a law that is often broken without causing a problem, you take away the basis for someone to have an actionable complaint in those situations when it does cause a problem.
> You can also lean on it in situations like this: you shoveled deep snow for an hour and a half in front of your house to dig your car out and create a clean parking spot. When you come back from your errand, your dickhead neighbor, or someone else, has parked there. If they stay for 3 hours, you can have them removed.
Or when a black family moves into your neighborhood, you can enforce random laws to intimidate them to leave. Sorry, but you don't own a spot just because you shoveled it out. Either people can park there, or they can't.
> Sorry, but you don't own a spot just because you shoveled it out.
That is correct! But the city does own the spot, and it has rules about parking on it. Those rules apply equally against everyone, in principle. But they will never be enforced spontaneously. Someone has to complain, with some valid basis. It exists for these kinds of nuisance situations.
The city is very sympathetic to the concept that some uses of city property (in principle available for use to everyone and anyone) may be annoying to nearby residents.
For instance, some residential streets that are close to transportation amenities or shoppping/business areas have permit-only parking. Only people who can provide proof of residency on a specific street can get a permit to park there; anyone else is in violation, subject to ticketing and towing.
Someone who calls the police on their neighbor for parking more than 3 hours, and then parks in the same spot themselves for more than 3 hours is nothing more than a hypocrite.
The neighbor parked there because he's too lazy to shovel the snow in front of his own house, where an empty, but unusable parking spot is also available, and has no qualms just sailing into the tidily shoveled spot in front of your house, so that you have to shovel in front of his house too when you return.
The city recognizes that situation as a valid complaint and will take action, and that's the end of it. It upholds the concept of parking being associated with adjacent residences, even though it isn't owned by them.
If the city wants to recognize "parking in a free spot in front of someone's house when there is a free spot, covered in snow, in front of the car owner's house" as a legitimate problem then the city should codify it into law and enforce it. Otherwise, it's totally legal for someone in the government, say the police chief, to clear his street of cars right before his holiday party so that his guests have parking. Or for a person to harass neighbors they don't like. Why you want to have a legal system that allows for such abuse is beyond me.
You are probably in the minority. The two largest groups that together seem to form the vast majority are those who abhor this behaviour and don't do it themselves, and those who know that they shouldn't do this, welcome people being fined for it, know that it is a cause of a lot of unnecessary hardship, enjoy watching this guy's Youtube channel, and yet can't actually resist grabbing their smartphone when it plings despite being in the driver's seat. It's a global dopamine addiction.
I'm not asking "is looking at your phone while stationary in traffic bad".
I'm asking "the whole cycling through traffic with a headcam, actively not looking in front of you while doing so, fishing for people on their phones in order to aggravate them then doxx them ... isn't this a dick move and a safety concern in itself?"
As for the guy with the phone, if I was stationary for a whole minute, and had checked google maps for a traffic report in that time, I'd be pretty pissed off if some vigilante was trying to paint crap out of context to cause trouble for the purpose of ad revenue on youtube. Especially when they were being a public hazard while doing so.
Yeah, if I’m standing completely still in a traffic jam, I’ll be glancing at my phone every once in a while, and nobody is going to convince me that this guy is doing a public service.
Actually, it does mention in the article (referring to UK law, and the man is based in the UK) that the prosecutors want to see evidence of interactive phone use. That means that 'glancing at your phone every once in a while' is likely not enough to warrant their attention.
Then you are an asshole and a danger. Stop doing that. Pay attention to the road. Just because you are currently at a stop does not mean that your attention is no longer needed. You will need to be aware of the situation around you when you start moving, and you will not be aware of it if you have been looking at your phone.
You’re right of course. When I’m at a full stop in a never ending traffic jam on I-80, I’m totally a danger for not paying attention to the brake lights of the car in front also not moving.
Context matters. This entire article is about inner-city suburban streets in Britain, especially London with its high population density, in which pedestrians (i.e. gaggles of school kids, mums with pushchairs, people with dogs, independent cats, foxes) share the pavements and roads with cyclists, cars, sometimes even the occasional horse and carriage (even still today, yep).
We're NOT talking about stop-start commuter traffic on an American interstate.
There are a LOT more moving not-car objects which do not and will not follow the motorist's rules of the road, on these leafy suburban streets.
Phone use when idle at stop lights means you might not spot something until it's too late. Hell, even when you open your door when parked up you have to check your mirrors so you don't accidentally clothes-line a passing cyclist - that's a point that's drilled into us by good driving instructors.
As the people operating the industrial machinery, we have a duty of care to always treat it as such, and keep the others around us safe. Sorry, but your boredom is of little or no concern in relation to the safety of others. Just keep off the damn phone. Arguably even handsfree kits are a bit of a bad idea wrt concentration span and task switching - but they exist, so if you need to use your phone as a phone, you can do so without taking your eyes off the road. But otherwise, leave the damn rest until you're at home!!! The rest of your apps can wait.
Jail time for texting at a red light? That won't fly in a world where people often don't get jail time for crimes with a victim.
I don't condone it but some people are gonna text while driving. All else being equal it seems moronically counterproductive to target enforcement at the ones who are doing it while stopped.
> I don't condone it but some people are gonna text while driving.
People used to rail against wearing a seat belt too, and even now many people see driving with a couple of beers below the belt as totally fine when [insert excuse]. This is a behavioural issue that will be sorted in due time. Media attention like this helps. There is just no excuse for texting or otherwise fooling around with a smartphone when you are behind the wheel. If you need to do something with it, you pull over in a (legal) safe place.
Texting while driving should result in a license suspension (temporary, at first). Then if you drive without a license that should result in jail time, yes (and I believe it does in many places).
Yea full non-moving traffic jam? Maybe. Waiting for a red light? No.
Also per the article...
"...because using a handheld phone is only deemed illegal if there is proof of interactive communication, such as sending messages, talking, or commenting on social media..."
Unless there's a dedicated lane, you're putting your life in the hands of others... much moreso than being in a vehicle. I can appreciate the ideal of safe cycling on a road shared with cars, but it's not a reality.
There should just be separate lanes/carve out for bikes. Or, in a world of fully automated cars, cyclists can trust that they're safe. It's good to push for safety, but not realistic to expect it to happen fully in practice.
Personally I would love to cycle, but not a risk worth taking for me.
Saying that cycling is dangerous because you are putting your life in the hands of car drivers isn't saying cycling is bad, it's saying cars are.
This is a very American problem. I do hate driving on roads here, but when I ride on roads in the EU (even on roads without dedicated cycling infrastructure) it's a completely different experience.
> Saying that cycling is dangerous because you are putting your life in the hands of car drivers isn't saying cycling is bad, it's saying cars are.
No, it's not saying that. It's not a statement about blame, it's a statement about risk. If a motor vehicle hits a cyclist, the cyclist may die. The motor vehicle may get scratched. This asymmetry is a physical fact, not a moral judgement. As a cyclist on a mixed road you rely on drivers to keep you safe.
I don't know about the EU (I imagine there's a wide range of behaviours) but I sure as hell wouldn't cycle on most of the major mixed roads in London because it just takes one bad driver, and I'd like to see my kids grow up.
The same is true as a driver or a pedestrian. Another driver could easily jump the curb and hit you on the sidewalk/pavement, or swerve into you from the opposite lane. And you will end up hurt.
As a cyclist when I hop on my bike I shut up, set aside my hot-takes on lane politics and driver-cycler relations, and adopt your attitude. Understanding that I'm utterly responsible for my life and can't trust anyone but myself makes me a more assertive and circumspect cyclist. Off my bike however...
ahoy: I don't know a single cyclist who agrees with that (Forrester) statement.
btrettel: I've been a transportation cyclist for roughly a decade and I agree with everything he said. Many cyclists do, particularly more experienced ones. Bike lanes can be helpful, but they are not the panacea many people make them out to be. I think the main benefit bike lanes have is increasing the number of cyclists which leads to the "safety in numbers" effect. I think far too many bike lanes are made poorly, however, and these ones seem to be less safe than if there was no bike lane.
I'm not sure what your link is supposed to show, but it seems to be pretty clearly in favor of separated bicycle infrastructure:
"When accounting for sidewalk riding, normalized risk along road segments and intersections, and riding in the opposite direction of traffic, the results of studies arguing for shared vehicle and bicycle infrastructure suggest that dedicating right-of-way to bicycles may, in fact, improve roadway safety. There are additional, more recent studies designed to assess safety differences between mixed traffic, bike lanes, buffered bike lanes, and separated paths that show safety in separation."
> I can appreciate the ideal of safe cycling on a road shared with cars, but it's not a reality.
It depends on where you bike. In some countries, pedestrians and cyclist are more considered. I cycled for ~200 km on a regular road around Geneva's lake some years ago, and I never felt endangered, as cars gave me plenty of space. In Norway, cars often slow down or stop if they think a pedestrian walking along the sidewalk could cross the road: sometimes I felt obliged to cross even if I didn't want to, just because the driver stopped.
Huh? It's a hobby and form of transit. What's there not to understand? In most places, including the majority of the USA the right to use bikes on the road is the law.
Even though it's not the norm, they're entitled to use the road, just like a car. It helps keep you healthy, and you feel the fresh air and world wiz by you. Somewhat like a motorbike. Interestingly, I harbor some of the same sentiments regarding motorbikes, as you do for bicycles.
I have to admit this is hypocritical, and maybe a bit bigoted (though I'm not a cyclist). I guess you could say it's green, but I think that argument could be made for motorbikes too. Anyway, I don't think I'd hold another driver responsible for causing an injury/death either way, unless it was a really horrible error, and/or that type of event was likely to harm someone anyway.
I agree about dedicated lanes, but even those can be pretty scary. Would really like to see divided lanes also, when possible.
Many (not all) cyclists seem to think that they are exempt from traffic laws just because they're not in a car.
Running through stop signs, red lights, not yielding the right of way, weaving back and forth across the shoulder into the lane, and most importantly a general lack of awareness that they're sharing the road with 1-ton hunks of metal flying by them at speed.
I've lost count of the number of close calls where I've had to slam the brakes and lay on the horn because some idiot on a bike wanted to play a game of gotcha with Isaac Newton.
I don't have any data to back it up but I'd be willing to bet that the people on bikes who do these kind of things are just as unaware and careless when they're operating a motor vehicle.
> Many (not all) cyclists seem to think that they are exempt from traffic laws just because they're not in a car.
But, at the same time, many (not all) motorists seem to think that they are exempt from traffic laws just because they're in a car.
I could walk to the nearest junction (~5 minutes from here) and find 20 cars jumping red lights, blocking a junction without a clear exit, randomly changing lanes, blocking a pedestrian crossing when it's green, etc. in 5 minutes of watching. And that's one junction on a semi-major road which is probably 10 miles of solid traffic in peak time.
The difference between the cyclist and motorist is these scenarios is that while both are dangerous and stupid, the motorist at least has the innate protection of the vehicle in case of an accident.
The cyclist has a helmet and if they're really lucky some Kevlar sewn into their gear.
In a collision 1 ton vehicle vs a couple hundred pounds of flesh and whatever the bike is made of, the 1 ton vehicle almost always wins.
Given the risk profile of cyclist versus vehicle you'd think that cyclists would be a bit more aware of their surroundings.
> Given the risk profile of cyclist versus vehicle you'd think that cyclists would be a bit more aware of their surroundings.
Given how dangerous a car is and how much disproportionate damage they can do to the people and property around them, you'd think that drivers would be a bit more aware of their surroundings.
> I've lost count of the number of close calls where I've had to slam the brakes and lay on the horn because some idiot on a bike wanted to play a game of gotcha with Isaac Newton.
I've lost count of the number of close calls where I've had to slam the brakes because some idiot in a car wasn't paying attention and didn't see the cyclist who as just as much right to be on the road.
Alright, I'm going to say it - this guy is just a dick and not helping. The majority of the videos on his channel are of him rolling up on stationary cars and giving himself a justice boner because he caught a driver using their phone. The equivalent to me as a frequent pedestrian would be to stand at a stop sign in the neighborhood and claim victory when I catch a cyclist failing to completely stop at the stop sign, or (frequently) failing to yield to pedestrians.
I'm all for cyclists recording video for actual safety issues since it's demonstrably a big problem, but this kind of behavior just makes cyclists look bad.
I’m a cyclist and a pedestrian. I have been nearly killed by drivers using their phones several times. I have never had my life endangered by a cyclist rolling through a stop sign. They are not the same.
Actually no! A kid got hit at the same stop sign with a car. (everybody runs the stop sign in question in our neighborhood, it's fairly deep in the subdivision and no real way for a cop to stalk it without being noticed, and about 90 percent of the subdivision has to go through it to get anywhere) I remember stopping and waiting till his parents came, when i saw a kid crying on the road.
He didnt actually have to go to the hospital and went home that night (parents took him to urgent care and he had nothing broken and no concussion).
Kid who got hit with the bike had a hospital stay though.
I tell my own kids to stay the hell away from that stop sign now.
this is a really shite position to take. sure, i'm still threatening you with injury because i'm just too important to slow down or even stop for you, but try messing with the other guy!
Haha, I suppose I didn't think it would be interpreted that way. Car-ped collisions are frequent and deadly, cycle-ped injuries are rare and less deadly, but the attention devoted on this board is not in proportion. That's strange to me.
Don't worry about the helmet, it's not your problem.
As for "stopping", what you think of it depends on how you perceive laws should be taken. Are laws something that should be enforced "to the letter" each and every time a violation is spotted? Or are they a matter of judgement for enforcement officers?
In the vast majority of cases, they're a matter of judgement. This is why there is virtually NO RISK for me as a cyclist to proceed through a red light literally in front of police cars.
There are good reasons for cyclists to NOT stop at every intersection. One big reason is, actually, safety. Car-bike accidents almost always happen at intersections. In many cases, it's best for cyclists to get through the intersection before the mass of cars starts moving again. This way they can get through the intersection, position themselves safely, and gain enough speed so as not be an annoyance on the other side of the intersection. Sure, the cyclist has to fully aware of cross-traffic and if they get smacked, it's their fault. But the sense of outrage that some motorists feel when cyclists proceed through an intersection before them is akin to a toddler-tantrum IMHO.
I'm not worried about helmets or any of this: you're right, it's not my problem. I'm unlikely to injure a bicyclist.
I just find it interesting when I see someone choose not to wear a helmet. Reasonable people can disagree as to how dangerous it is to run a stop sign in a bicycle but the data is clear on helmets: it's far safer to wear one than not.
I have been hit by cyclists not stopping at a red light or riding bikes dangerously fast on the pavement too many times to have much love for them. Also, the environmental cost of providing shower facilities and water to those who think that riding a bike to work is an extension of Tour de France makes me question the environmental benefits of cycling. (I am not questioning health benefits).
Great, let's charge people for the environmental cost and negative externalities that their method of transportation causes. A driver will be paying 1000x that of a cyclist.
I'm curious if you cycle a lot. I think those of us that do (much like the guy) are fed up with too many close calls (or actual collisions) and want to try and at least do something about it.
Used to cycle in London all the time. Driving around a lot in Scotland right now.
The problem isn't when the cars are stationary -- it's when they start moving.
When stationary at a traffic light etc there's a hella lot of situational information that's actually quite important. e.g. are there cyclists coming up from behind me? are they on my left or right?
Fiddling with a radio or phone for an entire red light can mean zero situational awareness when setting off.
I've had a very close call with a "stationary" car.
At a junction where the lights filter left, then ahead, then right. I know the sequence well, it's been my walk to work for 15 years. One car stopped in the 'ahead' lane, the lights are red. Roads are otherwise empty, it's 6am. The pedestrian signal has gone red, but I know it's still 'safe' because the left filter's next, and the left lane's empty.
I received a glancing blow from the car in the 'ahead' lane that went (ahead) when the left filter went green. They blew a red light, and nearly took a pedestrian with them.
Being distracted at a red light is an issue, because you look up from your phone, see the green, and have a small panic because you're "late" - and react to the green light, short-circuiting the sensible thought processes like .. is that green for my lane. is there someone in front of me. Is it actually safe to enter the junction. Just "oops, go".
(and yes, that was a legal cross for me, "jaywalking" doesn't exist here - humans have more rights than cars.)
I've watched quite a few of his videos and observed it myself. Endless people claiming they never do it while moving, but it's an outright lie. Besides, phone use while stationary creates congestion since it slows reaction to the traffic signal by several seconds for every driver doing it.
I used to cycle all the time, and the only times a stationary car endangered me was when the driver failed to check before opening their door. That's my problem here - this guy isn't catching drivers on phones while moving.
Sort of? I've been sideswiped by a car stopped in bumper-to-bumper traffic. Driver yanked the wheel and hit the gas without looking or signaling. I was immediately adjacent to him in a green bike lane and got hit with no warning.
No ticket or warning was issued. I had a camera rolling.
Both of the examples that you provided are generally way less dangerous. Distracted driving is a common cause of deadly accidents. So I’d argue your examples are hardy equivalent. Using your phone in a stationary queue likely correlates with use while moving, which is significantly harder to capture.
I Used to cycle 150km a week for 10 years from one end of Cambridge to the other in rush hour. I agree with everything you said. The biggest danger to me was usually other cyclists going either too slow or generally being unpredictable.
This guy is just another stalker. There is absolutely no heroic actions cycling through traffic jams and filming bored drivers in cars playing with their phones.
I even more hate governments outsourcing law enforcement to the self made sheriffs. Make a fine for not using turn signals 100€, let few masked cop cars work a week or two in a city and voila, bad driving culture is suddenly fixed. Why does it not happen!?
Edit: would you like another stalker filming you in your house? Maybe you do drugs or beat your wife? You know, filming is very important to prevent the crime. Powerless person just wants to help the police.
A house is a private place - you own (or rent) the land and the dwelling, and with that comes the right and expectation of privacy.
A car is a way of moving through public space. There's no automatic expectation or legal right of privacy there, any more so than in public buildings, parks, on transit etc where people are walking around.
"When he returns, a grinning Van Erp tells me the man reacted badly to the realisation he was being caught on camera. Why the fury? The driver was using his phone as he waited for the traffic to move – and Van Erp recorded him doing it. In the coming months the man will most likely face a fine and six points on his driving licence, in turn triggering a significant jump in his insurance premium"
... Is this guy supposed to be a hero? Lol. What an obnoxious thing to do. He was at a red light. I was expecting it to be drunk driving or almost hitting him, and this is the first example they used?
Edit since people don't read the article, it says the driver was there for a minute before noticing being recorded. So the driver was waiting in stopped traffic long enough to start using his phone, then the bike guy rode up on him, then over a minute later the driver noticed, then the bike guy left after a conversation. So this guy was in completely dead stopped traffic for what sounds like 4 or 5 minutes and im supposed to care if he's on his phone?
The colour of the light is a moot point. If a driver is in charge of a vehicle that is on the road, then the laws apply. The UK government's guidance on this is clear on that and after years of media & press about phone usage whilst driving, nobody in the UK can claim ignorance of the law. https://www.gov.uk/using-mobile-phones-when-driving-the-law
"> What of those who argue that using a phone in stationary traffic does no harm? Van Erp has little patience with this – noting the “WhatsApp gap” – the way phone-distracted drivers tend to jerk forwards belatedly when the queue moves, often after a toot from behind. “There is evidence that phone use is as dangerous as drink-driving. I think it’s also very naive to imagine these people only use their phone in [stationary] traffic,” he says."
There is also the impact of context switching from phone use to driving, which I imagine pretty much everyone has experienced. The reason for the law is to stop people being distracted and there is a delay in refocusing attention when switching from phone to driving and even a second or two can make a big difference when you're in charge of a self-propelled chunk of metal.
Hes noting a thing he made up? Is "jerking" forward in dead traffic with a big gap a bad thing when theres enough of a gap you are being honked at? Is this causing crashes? Is this even what he recorded here? No to the last part, at least.
Bear in mind this is UK where the vast majority of cars are manual transmission stickshift. So you really can't drive smoothly with a phone in one hand. Using a bluetooth headset while driving is legal here, using a hand held phone is not.
> o the driver was waiting in stopped traffic long enough to start using his phone, then the bike guy rode up on him, then over a minute later the driver noticed,
So the driver was waiting in stopped traffic long enough to use his phone, and was so unaware of his surroundings that it took a full minute for the driver to realize he was being recorded?
If the driver took that long to notice someone next to him, imagine what else gets missed. At the /very/ least, he's the inconsiderate lout making everyone behind him wait until he wakes up to the light having changed.
I guess it was the first example as that is what he was doing at the time they interviewed him.
Better for the driver to be focussing on driving, which is the whole point of CyclingMikey's actions in lieu of proper policing.
It's definitely brave to be questioning people on their bad behaviour in real life, yes, though I disagree by default with public shaming and vigilante action.
The better solution would be for traffic policing funds to be paying coppers rather than using "safety" cameras as a red herring. But without that, its fair enough for brave civic-minded people to take the anti-social to task in a reasonable manner.
> He edges along the stationary vehicles until he is parallel to a car. It is well over a minute before the driver looks up and spots him – and the camera strapped to his baseball cap.
You might also say it doesn't matter if you roll through a stop sign when there's no traffic or pedestrians around. You can still get charged for that.
Other commenters in the thread have claimed that the light being red doesn't matter -- it's prohibited regardless. So -- do you have a source of a specific statute that mentions light color?
I think the line becomes blurred when you actively gather the evidence, rather than happen upon it, and post the videos online to publicly shame the people in question.
So if a a cyclist decided to bike up and film people smoking marijuana in their car, then submitted it to police aggressively, you wouldnt feel it was a vigilante act?
In a jurisdiction where driving while intoxicated on MJ is illegal, no, that's not vigilantism. You definitely don't want people driving around stoned in London traffic conditions - very much need to keep your wits about you when driving here.
Yes, peoples' reaction to and tolerance of weed varies considerably, but there's just no need or reason to drive while high here.
1. He is not a vigilante because he is merely reporting evidence to the proper authorities. A vigilante takes interpretation, defence and sentencing into their own hands.
2. UK police have actually asked road users to do this since they do not have the resources to be everywhere.
