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Drivers Who Run Red Lights Get Tickets. E-Bike Riders Get Court Dates.
(www.nytimes.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 May 2025
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Such recklessness poses more danger than cars doing the same thing? Either they should both go to court or both should just have the fine.
To repeat what I said in my original comment, the sheer number of cyclists running red lights poses a serious threat to motorists. It's inevitable that some of those idiots running the lights are going to get hit, and the motorists are going to have to deal with the consequences of the cyclists' stupidity.
Since cyclists running red lights is a widespread, deeply-ingrained problem in North America, and one that's much more frequent than cars running red lights, the harsher punishment is completely justified.
To break it down a simply as possible for you: yes, one car running a red light poses more danger than one cyclist running a red light, but one hundred cyclists running a red light poses an order of magnitude more danger than one car running a red light.
And for that reason, I fully support sending the cyclists to court, and only giving the motorists a ticket.
No? The cyclist is at fault.
100 people getting broken bones is better than one person dying. Not to mention how probably motor vehicle accidents are to cause a chain reaction, that cyclists' much lower inertia means they slow down much faster, and that motorists are more likely to be distracted—by bells and whistles and passengers and whatnot. Plus the ratio was ~36:1 (~29:1 excluding non-motorcycle bicycles, i.e. bikes that aren't e-bikes or mopeds and can't go above 15mph), not 100:1, as of 2016. Assuming constant speed and ignoring all the not-to-mentions, the median American vehicle delivers the kinetic energy of about 13 e-bikes. That's very little less-than-half of the 29 of the ratio.
The problem with your argument here is that you're ignoring the fact that those 100 squishy cyclists running red lights can all get hit by cars, potentially resulting in way more than broken bones, and possibly sending the innocent drivers to jail for vehicular manslaughter.
For the third time, a large number of cyclists running red lights is demonstrably more dangerous than a small number of motorists running red lights, and the court summons is more than warranted.
Edit: Also, holy shit, if you're right, and the number of cyclists who run red lights compared to motorists is actually 36:1, then YES send them all to court. Jesus!
Even just 29 all getting run over is a ways less likely than a single car causing a chain reaction and causing the same amount of damage.
Show me. I doubt that's more likely than sending an innocent rider to jail.
You completely ignore my 108-word argument to the contrary.
This is such a ridiculous claim that it's not even worth responding to.
From your other responses in this thread, it doesn't surprise me at all that you think that.
You've been ignoring everything I've said this entire conversation, which I've already pointed out multiple times in this thread.
It's clear that your biases aren't going to allow you to see clearly in this situation, so I think I'm going to cut my losses here and disengage.
Have a good one, and be sure to stop at red lights.
So is 29 cyclists all getting run over.
https://www.google.com/search?q=innocent+drivers+accused+of+vehicular+homicide https://www.google.com/search?q=innocent+drivers+accused+of+vehicular+manslaughter+of+cyclists
I’ve tried. I don’t see anything to objectively evince your claims in reality. In fact according to the AAA, “Nearly half of those killed in red light running crashes were passengers or people in other vehicles and more than 5% were pedestrians or cyclists.” If you want to prove the opposite, start your own study.
You think the damage of 29 cyclist collisions is insane, and I think it's not. You have biases that lie something else, that’s fine. But accusing me of ignoring what you've said when I've directly addressed them multiple times? In case it wasn’t clear enough, here’s what I meant.
That’s a direct analysis of the damage of a car. Cars have the same damage if they just cause accidents merely two times more than e-bikes, which they do at far more than two times; I did this math for someone else before and I think NY had data at the Statistics Repository for Traffic Safety or something like that (though the data did not factor in runs that treated the light as a stop sign). And not to mention that's e-bikes. Bicycles only have a 6:1 frequency ratio and one car running a red light far eclipses the potential damage of 6 normal bicycles. The article doesn't apply to just e-bikes; it applies to normal bicycles too.
As for the cyclist getting impacted, there's no mechanism that would automatically blame the driver or is more likely to falsely implicate the driver. Unless I'm not aware of articles that prove the contrary?