The golden rule

Many cities are putting in new cycling facilities– successfully attracting new riders.

As I think about all the things that we cyclists can do to improve their image– stopping at a red light seems the most visible and by extension the most powerful. 

Our image among the cycling community is one of “rogue” users.  And of all the laws that are the most emblematic of this it’s stopping at lights.

Here’s a radical proposition– for those on the fence about stopping at Reds– consider that the best time to stop at a red is when there are the most people watching me.  The synergy there is that I’m making a statement to the broadest possible audience.  Furthermore, stopping just might encourage a few other cyclists to stop– increasing the spectacle of cyclists being nice.

I look forward to your thoughts!

I think it’s time to make a shout out for all the good things people routinely do.  

First off thanks to the courteous drivers who…

• don’t exceed the speed limit.  

It seems like everyone’s speeding everywhere these days.  If we pay attention though, there are many people who just like to noodle along.  On two lane roads they set the speed limit for the everyone behind them.  The slower they go, the safer the road for everyone.

• stop for pedestrians in crosswalks

There’s no better way to establish humanity than to stop for a pedestrian. Smile at them– and watch them smile in return.   Maybe a smile is not required– stopping is the critical piece.

• stop for red lights

Cyclists get the most heat for this, but according to wikipedia, this is the second most common motor vehicle violation behind speeding.   Thanks to all you drivers who do stop for lights and don’t hit the accelerator when you see an orange.

Cyclists– Unlike motorists you’ll never get a ticket.   Everyone notices the bad cyclists, especially as the volume of cyclists is way up in many cities.  Thank you so much for…

• riding in ways that don’t scare or anger other road users

This could mean a lot of things to different people.  There are three things that are most cited in blogs & article comments as annoying and angering people:

First is running red lights.  If you must do it… consider it only in very narrow situations.  For me it’s when two conditions prevail: First, the intersection must be completely empty with no cars in sight, and second I must be in a real rush to get where I’m going.   If there are any other road users waiting for a red light and you race through, chances are that you will anger someone.  If a cyclist is stopped at a red light and you fly by them, you can be 90% sure they are annoyed.

The second thing that encourages fear and anger among other road users is the sight of a bicyclist riding without lights at night.  Thanks very much to the vast majority of cyclists who do use lights at night.

The third and final courtesy is not riding the wrong way down a one way street.  I have to admit that sometimes this is completely unavoidable due to local conditions.  Consider dismounting and walking in these situations. 

Walkers– We are all walkers at some point– even if it’s from our vehicle to the shop. Our presence on the street makes life interesting for eveyone else.  Laws are made more for the comfort of vehicles than pedestrians, so the rules are more of the common-sense variety:

• when in doubt, make eye contact with drivers and cyclists.  Be sure they see you.  This applies even when you are fully in the right to proceed
• don’t be afraid to shout to get another road users attention
• band together to fight for better pedestrian amenities.  Together we can make a difference.

For all modes–

• Try your hardest to be happy!

Some people never get rattled.  A wise woman once told me, when you get angry, you only hurt yourself.  This not hold for every situation, but I have found it often true.  For those of you who move through the world calmly and joyfully, we thank you!

In all our own ways, we can be ambassadors for good behavior.

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Or scared the crap out of me, or made bikers look really bad. 

Following up on an earlier post “how do you communicate with people who are acting badly?”, my girlfriend came up with the best candidate so far: Whoa! 

Whoa!  According to web definitions this is commonly used for a draft animal to stop; or to cease or slow a course of action.  With some road users the draft animal that comes to mind is jack ass: A male ass or donkey; a foolish or stupid person.

So, let me know what you think about yelling whoa every time you see bad behavior.  It’s growing on me.

I’ve been slowing down lately on my bike.  Surprisingly, I don’t think I’m actually losing much if any time getting where I need to go. 

The strategy is really pretty simple:  I generally have plenty of time to watch the signals ahead– my goal is to maintain a constant speed so that I don’t have to slow down, or speed up to make the light.  

You might wonder, doesn’t this mean speeding to catch the light? Yes, but only when I’m in a rush– which isn’t very often.  Generally, I’m slowing down.

Essentially my top speed is closer to my average. 

The real revolution would be if cars would only do this.  An essentially instead of going 30 MPH and then waiting at the light for two minutes, they could go 20 MPH and end up waiting a fraction of the time or not at all.

This speed modulation results in a calmer, saner street environment.

One element of civil streets is conversations.  This is Bay State Bike Week in Massachusetts where I live.  As a commuter cyclist I’ve been going to some events to promote Civil Streets.

Yesterday I was talking to David Watson, the Executive Director of MassBike, about the Respect campaign and how it differs from a same-roads-same rules campaign for bicycles.  Most would agree that obeying all the traffic laws will be a good personal policy for both personal safety and the general image of bicyclists and pedestrians.  But most of us also break the law sometimes or possibly very often.  At times could this law-breaking be harmless?  If so, when?

If a tree falls in the woods and no-one hears it, does it make a sound?

If you break a traffic law as a pedestrian, bicyclist or car-driver and it doesn’t bother anyone, does it matter?

I think the key element here is does the activity bother anyone?  If it does, something that may seem harmless (I ran that red light after carefully looking both ways) actually really annoyed the three bicyclists and twenty car-drivers who watched the bicyclists run the red light while they waited. 

Some of this is a broken-windows syndrome: 

Everyone runs red lights. 
Cars break the law too. 
The system is broken therefore why should I follow the rules? 

The broken-windows syndrom really exposes itself as more and more people bicycle or walk or drive because these problems become cultural and mode-rage intensifies.  I see my own perspective shifting when I’m on a bike, walking or in a Zipcar, I adopt the viewpoint of the driver walker and bicyclist and get angry at those other road users.

Talking to other cyclists, I often hear, “I wish cars would do a better job of sharing the road”.  I do believe that overwhelming majority of cars do a great job of sharing the road.  But if 5% of the cars don’t share well, we have a real problem– and those 5% paste the reputation of all the other car-drivers out there. 

This same rule of guilt by association also applies to bicyclists and pedestrians.  Furthermore as we lobby for more facilities this guilt-by-association does not help our case for better facilities.   We hear “why encourage more of this behavior”.

So where does Civil Streets fit in?  At another event I ran in to Cathy Cagle, Mass DOT’s Director of Sustainable Transportation.  She saw the sticker and said “this is the behavior that matches a complete street”.   I read this comment to mean, if we have an environment that supports walking, bicycling, transit and city-scale driving, the way we interact needs to adjust.

Civil Streets then is about achieving great design that encourages better behavior and a change in law that facilitates good behavior.  In the meantime, what can we do to foster better behavior?  My hope is by showing the sticker each of us will up-our-game and be a little kinder to our fellow road users of every stripe.

The other very-important-purpose of the sticker is to flesh out what constitutes good behavior, design and laws.  The conversations around this bring us together and hopefully result in a kinder more civil street.

I was really heartened to get an email from an advocate in the Bay Ridge neighborhood of Brooklyn.  They’re looking to make the streets safer for pedestrians– especially mothers with kids.  They want to buy some stickers.  There are two really cool things about it:

1. I wanted this site to be truly multi-modal and not linked to any particular geographic area. The Bay Ridge folks are concerned about speeding traffic and I’m concerned about the public image of bicyclists and this site works for both of us.  At it’s roots this is about treating each other better.  With respect.

2. The second cool thing is that they asked if we had a poster that they could ask shops to post in windows.  Great idea!  The idea of the sticker was to post it on bikes, bags and strollers– be small enough to be cool and large enough to see.  The beauty of the poster is that anyone could print an 11 X 17 and hang it in a store window.  Low cost/ effective.  What’s not to like.

In the next week or so, we’ll upload a poster that you can use