INDYVELONAUTS: March 2011

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

To stop or not to stop...

Cyclists as it were, are fighting for a lot of rights in Indianapolis, and I believe we're making some strong headway. Miles of bikelanes, new trails that are connecting downtown with the rest of the city and to itself. Advocates like INDYCOG, are making it easy to find out what's happening. One thing that generally bothers the hell out of me is red lights. It's not waiting for them to turn green, generally, it's seeing other folks on bikes run the red light for no apparent reason. If we're going to be on the roads then we need to obey the rules. This brings me to my biggest frustration w/ the situation, however, which isn't other people on bikes, it's lights that don't acknowledge bikes. 42nd and College, Fall Creek and Delaware/Penn. and I'm sure a slew of other lights use sensors to switch from red to green. If there aren't vehicles there, they skip particular directions to keep traffic moving. While on my bike, I use it as a vehicle, however, when I'm stopped at these lights, they don't recognize me as being there. I've waited over 10 minutes and watched traffic switch multiple times, with no cars coming my way. I then, proceed to run a red light, which is against the law and against my natural inclination, but if bikes aren't recognized at lights, how can people on those bikes be expected to not run them? Another take on red light running here.