That traffic signal does not detect a bicycle!
Therefore, it fails the Susquehanna County Wheelmen Triad Compliance Spot Check, which I happened to conduct on it at 2:45am 3/1/09.
Obviously, this blog isn't being read by my PennDOT-bigwig, cycling-event-participant-buddy customer after all.
The Triad http://www.newmilfordbike.com/Triad.htm requires that cyclists act and be treated as driver of vehicles. Readers of SCW's sporadic newsletter "The Triadal Core Protection Forum" (which has been on its duff since 2004 and which this blog semi-supercedes) will recall my rarely-limited-to-Susquehanna-County spoutings about how basic it is for a traffic signal to detect a metal bike like it detects any other vehicle (and about how ultra-yuppies with carbon fiber bikes, on the other hand, can be left out with unshod horses as far as I'm concerned - I'm practical, too, you see).
But it usually takes a while for a rural-resident cyclist such as myself (even in my own county, all three of the traffic-light towns in which are even further from the Frost Farm than Clarks Summit is) to happen to be cycling through a signalized intersection at a sufficiently wee hour (i.e. with no cars around to trip the signal for me and thereby hide the problem) to apprehend it failing to detect me. That is why, for example, the SCW Systematic Ride of Susquehanna County - a several-year project that I completed in 2000 although I never got around to sifting through the data therefrom afterwards - had to include 3am-start editions for at least one each, of its Montrose, Hallstead and Susquehanna legs.
In Lackawanna County and partly for similar reasons, this blog's previous discussions about our most-impeding-of-paper-carriers-in-Clarks-Summit traffic signal - namely the one where we turn left onto rt. 11 next to the video store while leaving the distribution center - focused on how long that signal took to respond, and sometimes not respond, to the presence of our motor vehicles. Besides distance from home, the other part of the reason I focused only on the motoring aspect was that, as I discussed back in "About the name of this blog", this blog makes no apologies for the fact that motoring is current state of the art of how I always do at least certain parts of the route (and that applies especially to how I leave the distribution center, when I have the full load).
So it took me until 3/1/09 - two years into doing this route - to happen to get a chance to do an SCW Triad Compliance Spot Check of this particular traffic signal.
3/1 just happened to be the second Sunday in a row that I'd arrived at the distribution center at 2:30 instead of my usual 3:45 (because my Route Associate was taking a well-deserved couple of Saturdays off from preparing the inside sections for me, and this time I'd finally worked up enough guts to try the more challenging version of preparing them myself, namely waiting until Sunday morning to do it instead of taking any Saturday trip to Clarks Summit). The previous Sunday, 2/22, I'd found the distribution center to be already open at 2:30 (instead of the apparently-usual 3:00), but on 3/1, it wasn't; so, I had some time to kill.
I used some of that time by yanking the bike down from the pickup truck and riding it the couple hundred feet to that traffic light.
And there I sat for a whole 4 minutes or more (entertained, at least, by punks in the parking lot of the restaurant across the street who were having a little bit too much of a fracus to notice me), and then I turned around.
I also found, later that same morning while going through that intersection with my pickup truck as usual after loading the papers, that it's back to taking a minute or two (as opposed to the "instantly" of 2/15 and 2/22) to turn green for a motor vehicle.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Try to bear in mind that, even if someone is riding a carbon fiber bike, that doesn't necessarily mean they're not "practical" cyclists. For example, if I could afford it, I would likely have at least one carbon fiber frame bike for recreational riding in addition to a bike for practical, every day use.
Besides, if cyclists are to be treated as vehicle operators as you say then all cyclists must be treated that way including those who are out there only for fun. Systems are available out there that don't depend on a vehicle's magnetism; those systems are the most fair for all road users (not to mention they take into account the possibility that, in the future, maybe not all cars will be made of metal, either ;)).
You might be right, in view of the fact that _already_ (indeed, at least by 2003 - in Lewisburg, Pa., earlier on the same day that I would meet John Forester at the Pennsylvania Bicycle Rally there and thereby have a deluxe opportunity to discuss such things - was when I first received some "knowing" comments from a pair of motorcyclists about it at a light that I was having difficulty at), _motorcycles_ are often manufactured with relatively few metal parts, thereby apparently giving riders of many modern motorcycles the same difficulty.
But you see, "can be left out with unshod horses as far as I'm concerned" (a line that I'd cooked up long before that) is too deluxe for the writer in me to want to give up easily.
Post a Comment