bad decision

alan' .@. said:

Hi group. This is what happened to me last night riding home at 12am. Very
wet, brakes not too responsive, coming up to a light anticipating the green
by watching the yellow turn to red for the cross street. wait, wait, no
green! Too late to stop! Cars coming towards me on a green left turn arrow
that I had never noticed before! Snap decision to accelerate through. Thank
the gods I had been seen. Lesson learned. Just wanted to share.
-alan

Good thing you weren't in the wrong gear!

I've got one intersection on my route that defies timing. It seems like it
-never- changes, doesn't respond to the bike on the 'trigger sensor', has
no crosswalk button, and even when cars precede me, and it looks like
they'll trigger it, the damn thing never changes. I end up faking a right
turn and then doing a U turn and coming back around and turning right to go
straight through it.

-B

"Badger_South" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

alan' .@. said:

Hi group. This is what happened to me last night riding home at 12am.

Very

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

wet, brakes not too responsive, coming up to a light anticipating the

green

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

by watching the yellow turn to red for the cross street. wait, wait, no
green! Too late to stop! Cars coming towards me on a green left turn

arrow

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

that I had never noticed before! Snap decision to accelerate through.

Thank

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

the gods I had been seen. Lesson learned. Just wanted to share.
-alan

Good thing you weren't in the wrong gear!

I've got one intersection on my route that defies timing. It seems like it
-never- changes, doesn't respond to the bike on the 'trigger sensor', has
no crosswalk button, and even when cars precede me, and it looks like
they'll trigger it, the damn thing never changes. I end up faking a right
turn and then doing a U turn and coming back around and turning right to

go

Quoted message said:

straight through it.

-B

I used to have a route on which there was a triggered traffic light. I
changed my route.

sunshine_buttercup said:

"Badger_South" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

Quoted message said:

Good thing you weren't in the wrong gear!

I've got one intersection on my route that defies timing. It seems like it
-never- changes, doesn't respond to the bike on the 'trigger sensor', has
no crosswalk button, and even when cars precede me, and it looks like
they'll trigger it, the damn thing never changes. I end up faking a right
turn and then doing a U turn and coming back around and turning right to

go

Quoted message said:

straight through it.

-B

I used to have a route on which there was a triggered traffic light. I
changed my route.

Lucky you.

-B

In article <[email hidden]>,
"alan" <.@.> writes in part:

Quoted message said:

Lesson learned.

Maybe a couple of lessons:

1) 'timing' the light can backfire on ya

2) when it's raining it helps to dry the brake pads while
approaching intersections, even though it slows you down
and you might miss a green light. It kind of enforces
not barging through intersections in the rain.

cheers,
Tom

--
-- Nothing is safe from me.
Above address is just a spam midden.
I'm really at: tkeats [curlicue] vcn [point] bc [point] ca

"sunshine_buttercup" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

I used to have a route on which there was a triggered traffic light. I
changed my route.

I realize how lucky I am. There are only triggered traffic lights in the
suburb I live in. They paint a white X where you are to line up your front
wheel to trigger the light. When a loop is non-functional, they will have
the traffic engineers out there the next day working with you to fix it.
Except for a touchy one at 145th Ave SE and Lake Hills Blvd (where I have to
line up the bike *perfectly* on the X or it'll think I'm just a piece of
aluminum foil that blew across the road), the system works great.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
please substitute yahoo for mousepotato to reply
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

<< Hi group. This is what happened to me last night riding home at 12am. Very
wet, brakes not too responsive, coming up to a light anticipating the green
by watching the yellow turn to red for the cross street. wait, wait, no
green! Too late to stop! Cars coming towards me on a green left turn arrow
that I had never noticed before! Snap decision to accelerate through. Thank
the gods I had been seen. Lesson learned. Just wanted to share. >>

Everybody makes mistakes like that occasionally.
When you add up the sum total of everybody's
mistakes, you get a thing called traffic.

Robert

LOL!

I had a similar episode.

Waiting at cross roads for lights to change. Anticipating racing the
cyclist beside me, we had raced up to the lights (typical road warrior
stuff).

Both us watching the lights, opposite lights go orange ... get ready
.... red. up on the pedels, into the intersection trying to jump the
lights, but the lights didn't change!!!!

Some turning lights, unoticed by us went on instead, and 3 lanes of
traffic started barrelling down on us both.

We made it through but kept expecting to hear police sirens behind us
.....

"Gary" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

We made it through but kept expecting to hear police sirens behind us

I recently was standing around with a bunch of cyclists, and we all had some
story about how each one of us had done something bonehead, not really on
purpose, mostly through inattention, that could have gotten us killed, but
the fates were with us.

Me, I was coming up Madison the wrong way on the sidewalk. It was for only
half a block, but I know some of you are already rolling your eyes. Then,
when I got out to the street, onto Third Ave, without thinking much of
anything, I took a left while the right was red. So, I hopped across four
lanes a major of downtown street against the light, making a left from where
no one would expect a bike to be.

I don't know why I did it, I just did it without thinking very much. I felt
like one lucky idiot when I realized what I was doing and made it to the
other side of the street.

OK, end of true confessions.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
please substitute yahoo for mousepotato to reply
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at: http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

My bonehead move was in Las Vegas on Blue Diamond Hwy... At the light
by Truck Stop at I-15, I usually moved into the right-turn lane to get
out of traffic. There were cars lining up behind me, and I thought
they were going to turn right. When the light turned green, I soon
discovered I was in the middle of two lanes, the "right-turn lane" was
going to the freeway a half-block later. I meandered from the middle
of the highway to the shoulder, not knowing why cars were lining up
behind me, thank goodness the lead car was patient to let me to the
shoulder.

Mike Swenson
now in Omaha Nebraska
US Air Force

Claire Petersky said:

"Gary" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
news:[email hidden]...

Quoted message said:

We made it through but kept expecting to hear police sirens behind

us

Quoted message said:

I recently was standing around with a bunch of cyclists, and we all

had some

....

alan' .@. said:

Hi group. This is what happened to me last night riding home at 12am. Very
wet, brakes not too responsive, coming up to a light anticipating the green
by watching the yellow turn to red for the cross street. wait, wait, no
green! Too late to stop! Cars coming towards me on a green left turn arrow
that I had never noticed before! Snap decision to accelerate through. Thank
the gods I had been seen. Lesson learned. Just wanted to share.

Good observation. What you saw is the latest trend in traffic lights.
All red for a brief but noticeable time during the change. It was
supposed to cut down on right of way violations and incursions such as
you describe.

However, the brilliant drivers have gotten wise to this, and now, a
yellow light means "speed up", and the red means you've only got ten
seconds to get through the intersection, i.e. the red has the meaning
the yellow used to have. I've seen cops sit and watch this behavior.
without doing anything about it.

I've also heard people say that there's an actual "grace period" to
run the light if you're at the end of the line to get through, and
that it's perfectly acceptable to run the "first part" of a red light.

But then, in a recent survey I read somewhere, half of the people
asked said that traffic in the right lane of a controlled-access
highway had a duty to move to allow mergers on. Today, a
bumper-to-bumper gaggle came down the onramp, tailgating a slow
driver. The driver immediately behind the slow driver tried to come
around, cross an interval between cars and merge into the second lane.
Problem was, someone was already there. That driver did some expert
driving to avoid a multi-car pileup.

Do you even have to take a test to get a driver's license anymore????