I'm following the discussion of cycling in the Portage and Main thread, but thought in best to post a response here:
Quote:
Originally Posted by windypeg
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Interesting studies cited here. Thanks for posting these. The finding that motorists and cyclists are about as compliant with the law is somewhat misleading without considering the context. According to the first study, cyclists obeyed the law about 87-88% of the time, while motorists obeyed the law 85% of the time. The second study found rates were about 91-92% for motorists and 92-93% for cyclists. Great. However, keep in mind that these are individual average rates, not aggregate numbers.
There are many more cars on the road than bikes, and keep in mind that the main cycling season is only about 6 months in Winnipeg. Even if individual rates of compliance with the law are comparable, there are many, many more traffic violations in total (aggregate) per year by motorists than cyclists because of the far greater number of cars on the road, and the seasonality of biking. It is therefore not surprising that motorists get many more tickets than cyclists.
Also, consider the fact that most motorists break the law (strictly speaking) nearly every time they drive (exceed the speed limit even just a bit? Roll through a stop sign? Fail to signal? etc.) Given this fact, it's actually quite interesting just how rare it is to get a ticket as a motorist. I've been driving a car nearly every day for almost 30 years and I've had only about 5 or 6 moving violations (speeding, no left turn, etc.). That's a very low rate of detection!
Given the very very low rate that motorists are actually caught and ticketed for driving offenses, it stands to reason that cyclists would represent a much smaller overall proportion of traffic tickets.
So, yeah, it's not reasonable or logical to demand cyclists and motorists get an equal number of traffic tickets.