Quote:
Originally Posted by ken0042
Funny you should mention that, because that was going to be my exact arguement for the riding of your bike through a pedestrian cross walk.
Let's use a right turn on red example. I am turning right on red, but the intersection has a somewhat obstructed view. So to proceed safely I inch my car forward; slow enough that a pedestrian approaching at 5-8 km/h would easily have time to see me, and I would have time to also see him. By riding your bike on the sidewalk, you are now bringing a vehicle into play travelling at several times that speed, and also adding the extra margin of error into play of your stopping distance.
My near miss with a bike that had the greatest potential to be spectacular happened in a similar situation. I was turning onto MacLeod from a strip mall, and had a downward slope onto MacLeod and cars blocking my view of the street and the sidewalk. So I inched forward so that I was not posing a risk to pedestrians. However some guy on a bike was wipping down the sidewalk at around 30 km/h and we almost had a collision. The cyclist then proceeded to tear a strip off of me; thinking that I was in the wrong.
I'm sorry, but when I was working downtown for many months I was parking 5 km from work so I had a lot of ground to walk. And the ratio of near misses with bikes riding on the sidewalk far out weighed the number of cars who encroached on the crosswalk.
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I realize this as well, if I come up to an intersection, and I'm not 100% certain that every car can see me, I'll slow down and/or stop until I know for certian that everyone has seen me.
The walk across crosswalks rule is in place for exactly the scenario you described, it's for when drivers have to inch forward to see. There are times as a driver, where they simply cannot see if there is anyone in the crosswalk.
I'll agree with you that the biker was in the wrong in this case, hence why I say that I wait for cars to have seen me and stopped before I proceed to ride across the intersection.
It my life on the line, and I'll ride like I know that. If there's any doubt, I'll make sure that I'm protecting myself.
I also have seen too many bikers that don't seemingly care about watching out for themselves - doing the things that you mention.