Q: There are some intersections where the light never turns green when I’m on my bike. Eventually I just look both ways to make sure it’s clear and ride through. But what’s the right way to do this according to the law?
A: There’s a law written just for you. Well, actually, for anyone riding a bicycle, motorcycle, or moped. And it begins like this: “Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary…” That’s not a phrase in my standard lexicon, so I checked some legal resources to make sure I understood it. Generally, it means that this law supersedes any other previous law that conflicts with it. We know at a traffic signal we’re required to wait for the green light to go, but what if it never turns green? That’s what this law is for.
Let’s say you ride your bike up to a red light at an intersection, and you wait, and you wait, and several minutes later, it’s still red. The law says that if the signal fails to switch to green for you “due to the size or composition” of your bike, once you’ve waited through one cycle of the traffic signal you can, “after exercising due care,” ride through the intersection.
Maybe you spotted the same flaw in the system that I did. On an intersection with steady traffic in all directions it’s easy to observe as the lights go through a full cycle. But if you’re the one vehicle on a side street trying to cross an arterial, and you’re depending on a sensor that doesn’t see your bike, how do you know when the lights have gone through one cycle? There’s a good chance there’s a timer for backup, but I don’t design the intersections, so I can’t promise you that’s the case at your intersection.
There’s also a part of the law that says if you ride through a red light because you think you’re at an intersection with a sensor that’s not working, but it turns out that this particular intersection doesn’t use sensors, that’s not a defense against violating the law about obeying traffic control devices. If you’re going to ride through the intersection, it’s important to know for sure it’s controlled by a sensor.
Short of getting a list of intersections from the local traffic engineer, how can you know you’re at an intersection that’s triggered by a sensor? At some intersections it’s obvious. Perhaps you’ve seen a bicycle icon painted just in front of a stop line. That icon is telling cyclists where to stop to trigger the traffic signal. You might also see intersections with cuts in the pavement that form a circle or square where the sensor (called an induction loop) has been installed. Stopping on the edge of the loop will give a rider the best chance of triggering the signal. But what if there’s no loop and no bike icon? While the loop sensor is the most common, some intersections are controlled by cameras. And some intersections don’t have sensors at all.
From my perspective though, all of that is secondary to the requirement to “exercise due care.” Waiting at a traffic light can trigger impatience and frustration. Time gets distorted and 20 seconds feels like two minutes. If you’re sure you’re at a sensor-controlled intersection and that the sensor isn’t seeing you, don’t let urgency cloud your vision. Even if the law permits you to ride through that light, getting through it successfully is up to you. Take whatever time you need to make sure it really is safe to go.
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