I’m a fan of Reelights. As I wrote in an instructable, three years ago:

For staying safe at night, magnetic induction lights are a great way to go. They just bleed off a tiny sliver of your momentum to generate nice, bright light. They’re perfectly silent (unlike dynamos) and need no batteries (unlike clip-on bike lights.)

The reason that I had to write an instructable, though, is that I had to hack the lights substantially to work around a number of drawbacks. Here were the things that I had to fix:

The problem with Reelights, though, is that they are mounted directly on the wheel axles. This makes the actual product small and compact (the coil and light are in one integrated unit) but has a number of shortcomings:

• The lights are very low to the ground, making them less apparent to drivers
• The arms can flex a bit as the magnets pass by them, so they have to be adjusted every so often
• The arms are kind of ugly

Fortunately, Reelight finally got their act together and are releasing new versions of the lights. They address every problem I had to work around. They upped the slick factor, to boot. Since I had one stolen off my bike in the Tenderloin last month, I’m going to get a new pair when they’re available on the Reelight site. A rep told me this should be by April 1st at the latest.

Here’s a PDF catalog of the new product.

From the S.F. Biker Bulletin:

[W]e’re pleased that the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is exploring possible “Stop and Roll” legislation for California, modeled after an Idaho law that allows bicyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, and red lights as stop signs. The Idaho stop sign law has been in place since 1982 and the stop light law since 2005. These changes, coupled with motorist, pedestrian, and bicyclist education, could smooth traffic flow for all road users. As gas prices rise and more people switch to sustainable modes of transportation, our government agencies need to reconsider how our traffic laws are structured and update them to support and encourage sustainable transportation, walking, biking, and transit. A thorough analysis on the feasibility and impact of these laws is needed, and we’ll keep you posted as the MTC’s research moves forward towards possible state legislation. For more background, read this SF Bay Guardian story “The Bike Issue: Don’t stop“.

The last SF Bike Coalition bulletin had tit-for-tat links to a an SF Chronicle article about how bicyclists are more often at fault for their own injuries and an op-ed response from the SF Bike Coalition. Reading them, I am reminded of the tensions that I myself have with auto drivers during my daily bike commutes.

From what I’ve experienced, these tensions tend to arise because bicyclists and drivers have different assumptions about what proper use of the road entails. For example, when I’m riding on a bike, it seems like common sense (i.e. when considering safety) that I don’t need to stop at stop signs if there is no cross traffic. On a bike, I can stop on a dime. I have more than 160 degrees of peripheral vision and unobstructed lines of sight and sound. I can tell if there is traffic is coming or not, and if there isn’t, there’s no common sense reason why I shouldn’t just keep riding.

Some drivers (a minority) seem to be angered by this. They will accelerate past me, getting real close (though still at a safe distance – one doesn’t have a very good sense of the space around your car, from the inside.) They will very occasionally honk or even roll windows down to yell at me. I just try to smile back. This one man even got angry enough that he ran into an intersection out of turn (at Sixth and Harrison) and ran into another car that had right of way. I did my best to suppress my schadenfreude on that one.

From what I can tell, this behavior comes from the driver’s thought of “Hey, I obey traffic laws, why shouldn’t bikers?” I understand this to some degree. If I ever get pulled over for running a stop sign on a bike, I won’t argue. I broke the law and I’ll take the ticket. In my opinion, though, the law should reflect common sense. I drive way less often than I bike, but even so, it’s clear that in my lifetime I’m much more likely to hurt someone while driving a car than while riding a bike. After all, traffic laws exist to regulate the flow of cars which are so often the source of injuries, whether or not bikes are involved.

In any case, this thought has been knocking around in my head for a while. Today’s articles finally prompted me to search around for what other people think. On the BCLU (Bicycle Civil Liberties Union) site, I hit the jackpot. That page has no less than sixteen well-reasoned arguments for why bicycles should operate under different traffic laws. The most interesting thing I read there, however, was the fact that Idaho and and Montana already have these common sense laws on the books. For example:

MOTOR VEHICLES CHAPTER 7 PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLES 49-720. STOPPING — TURN AND STOP SIGNALS. (1) A person operating a bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a stop sign shall slow down and, if required for safety, stop before entering the intersection. After slowing to a reasonable speed or stopping, the person shall yield the right-of-way to any vehicle in the intersection or approaching on another highway so closely as to constitute an immediate hazard during the time the person is moving across or within the intersection or junction of highways, except that a person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if required, may cautiously make a turn or proceed through the intersection without stopping. (2) A person operating a bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a steady red traffic-control signal shall stop before entering the intersection, except that a person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if required, may cautiously make a right-hand turn without stopping or may cautiously make a left-hand turn onto a one-way highway without stopping.

Basically, bicycles are to treat stop signs as yield signs and red lights as stop signs. Which, as it turns out, is already the social norm in San Francisco amongst bikers (and the way that I myself ride.) If only we could get this on the books, here, we could have a much better understanding between drivers and bicyclists, not to mention making roads safer and more efficient for everyone.