Reflections during a morning commute
Last night about 7:30 PM, Pam and I were on our way home from walking one of the local MUP’s when we spotted a cyclist in front of us. He appeared to be a pretty good one…he was traveling fast, spinning at a high cadence, and had what I call a “classic cyclist’s build”. By the time we had nearly caught up to him, it became obvious that we were going to get stopped by the light at Battlefield and Ingram Mill. I remember thinking “I wonder how this guy will respond to the stop light?”.
It didn’t take long to find out. Instead of coming to a full stop, he did a rolling track stand until he had a chance to scoot between oncoming cars and get into the middle of the intersection. From there, he did another trackstand until he had just enough opp0rtunity to squeeze between oncoming cars and make it the rest of the way across Battlefield Road. I made a comment to Pam that they guy was just plain wrong, as well as dangerous. Traffic was fairly heavy, and he obviously didn’t understand or care about what his obligation as a cyclist was in that situation.
What got me to thinking about him this morning was that I ended up running two separate traffic lights myself, but I considered the situations to be totally different. I was on my way to the fitness center at 6:00 this morning. In both cases, I stopped completely at the red light. In both cases, I was on the secondary cross street and the intersecting street was given priority. In both cases, there were absolutely no cars visible in either direction. In both cases, the light was on a trigger that I couldn’t trip on my own, and there were no cars going in my direction or coming toward me as far as the eye could see. I had a choice…wait a long time for a car to come along in my direction to trigger the light or run it. I chose to run it.
In contrast to the guy last night, there was nobody to see what I did and to formulate an opinion of “stupid cyclists who don’t obey traffic laws”. Had their been, I would have simply waited.
What do you think? Would you have done the same thing? I know in my case, I hit the fitness center and worked out with a clean conscience!
Cox North Fitness Center
Edit: Holy Crap! I just about lost it when I came home tonight and found this! I hope it’s just because I didn’t bleed out the CO2 and refill the tire with good old air after I fixed the flat yesterday. I just pumped it back up and hope it will be holding air in the morning…
Four in Four Days
God bless….
TW
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June 19, 2009 at 11:56 pm
[...] in Columbia, MO. We could use one here, too. A bike blogger in Springfield, MO asks when is it okay to run a red light? Finally, it has nothing to do with cycling, but my good friend at Altadena Blog notes that the [...]