Inanimate Objects, People, Registration, Insurance

A long-form "Community Note" debunking a heap of nonsense on X.

Quick note: A few weeks ago, the hosts of the Dark Horse Podcast, Drs. Bret Weinstein and

Heather Heying

spend well more than half of an episode on the piece “🚗 🧠 / "Motornormativity" / Critical Car Theory,” pointing out several other items not covered here. It’s worth a watch or a listen starting at the 44 minute mark here or on most major video and podcast platforms. More is also to come here on the whole topic so stay tuned.

A user on X asked the following:

Why do cyclists ignore stop signs? Saw a cyclist (on an ebike) simply ignore all the stop signs. Even at the busiest one, did not even slow down. Multiple cars are waiting to take their turn. That’s just so dangerous - why would they just put themselves in danger like that?

This by no doubt is likely an honest question, and is a topic previously covered here in The Red Light and Stop Sign Cake which revealed some of the reductionism many bicycle advocates promote under the mask of “safety.”

But there’s something off here with the latter part of this person’s question.

Multiple cars are waiting to take their turn.

Bicycles, cars, trucks, buses, etc, are inanimate objects. They don’t see, not see, feel, think, obey or violate laws.

The living and breathing entities that operate them, whether well or poor are people. It’s people who see, don’t see, feel, think, and obey or violate laws.

In other words, the cars aren’t waiting, the person inside them, the motorist (or driver) is who is waiting.

Someone else posted a reply with a link to a law firm in the San Francisco area in hopes of answering the original poster’s question.

The title of that article? “Do Bicycles Have to Stop at Stop Signs in California?”

FFS!

Then the article itself starts with:

In California, a bike is considered a vehicle for all traffic codes and rights-of-way and can travel in the streets alongside motor vehicles. This means that a cyclist is required to stop at a stop sign just like any other motor vehicle.

Which is a statement that has plenty of errors on its own with many of those covered in an article from the California Association of Bicycling Organizations (CABO) called “Why and how bicyclists are subject to traffic rules in California,” but that’s getting too far off topic.

Seeing these types of basic errors being made by apparent attorneys are not new, see The Not So Savvy Lawyer, but these folks pretend to market their services directly to injured bicyclists. Sorry, but SF area bicyclists should find someone else if they ever need such services.

The article also mentioned the “Safety Stop Bill,” which is now old news, at least in California, since the bill was vetoed by Newsom last year along with similar bills in previous years.

Back on X, it was the mention of that bill though that drew the next comment:

If this bill passes, drivers still would be liable if a biker runs a light and collides with a car in doing so. They don't want to obey traffic laws but also won't register their bikes or get insurance.

Currently there is no such bill bouncing around the California Legislature or waiting on the Governor’s desk so this person is likely referring to last year’s bill, AB73, or the year before with AB122 (both were vetoed by the Governor during their respective Legislative sessions). Neither bill mentioned traffic lights, nor did they change anything with regards to liability on the motorist’s part. Bicyclists would still be in violation of traffic law for running reds, and if on a related note in the event one ran a stop sign but hit another road user or caused some sort of other type of collision, he or she would still be in violation of the law. A bill in 2021, which didn’t make it out of the Legislature, also didn’t include red lights to change legal duties for drivers of motor vehicles.

“They” here presumably means not just bicyclists, who as even many “bicycling advocates” fail to recognize are also drivers, but all bicyclists. The usual trope is to go to the population level with nuance being damned. After seeing the pattern of thinking this person has already revealed, it’s difficult to believe they have any understanding of basic traffic law let alone how it applies to bicycle drivers. While it’s true there’s at least a significant number of bicycle drivers disobey traffic laws, plenty of motorists do too, as do pedestrians. And in between, there is, as exhibited here, plenty of confusion about what people in each role feel the law is and what it really is. (Cops, juries, and judges also regularly get it wrong.)

As for the next part, the classic tropes of registration and insurance but interestingly enough missing licensing. California, and most, if not all states, for that matter require bicycles to be registered (or plated) in order to operate on highways. These types of laws apply to motor vehicles only. Bicycle registrations still exist in certain jurisdictions but ultimately cost more for the governments to run and administer than they take in revenue resulting in the abolishment. Criminal justice and reform advocates are often critical of such programs arguing they serve as a way to stop and target racial or ethnic minorities. While there are some silly expensive bicycles out there (which tend to rapidly depreciate) motor vehicles are expensive pieces of portable property. Governments tend to like to know who owns and uses expensive pieces of property, whether they’re mobile or not, and of course they like to tax it.

Motor vehicles meet that criteria along with their risk of serious harm to humans and other property if misused, which leads into the issue of insurance - another bugaboo this X user demanded. If someone injures or kills another person or damages their property, that victim (or his or her family, spouse, estate, etc) is legally entitled to compensation in a court. Insurance requirements sprang up in the United States in the early 20th century as the driving of motor vehicles over other forms of transport surged, and with that so did fatal accidents. Bicyclists have never, nor even with the recent surge in e-bikes, ever achieve the level of damage drivers of motor vehicles did back then or do now. In the event that a bicyclist does cause injury or death to another person (it happens, but is incredibly rare) and doesn’t flee the scene, the victims can receive compensation without auto insurance by going after any other asset they have.

That doesn’t stop this person from digging even more of a hole of course.

Bikes can certainly cause accidents. And anyone who is crazy enough to defy the forces of gravity and velocity---especially while ignoring all of the rules of the road--should certainly carry a big medical insurance policy so that taxpayers won't have to foot his medical bills.

Bikes still remain animate objects with damaging insurance and registration-less souls of their own, but now velocity is a force.