I kind of sensationalized the title of this post, but Rep. Karickhoff has introduced HB 1143 which would allow motorcycles, scooters, and bicycles to proceed through red lights under certain circumstances. Specifically, those vehicles would be allowed to proceed through a steady red light if:
1) They stop for at least two minutes; and
2) They exercise caution, treat the red light as a stop sign, and determine that it is safe for them to proceed.
I know with my bike, sometimes the bike just doesn’t have the weight or the metal content or whatever it is that triggers automated lights at certain intersections. I don’t know whether motorcycles suffer from similar problems. In any event, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be safe and fair to treat cars in the same fashion. If you’re sitting at a red light for two minutes or more and there is no oncoming traffic, I don’t see why it would be less safe for a car to proceed through an intersection than a motorcycle or bike.
Two minutes is a long light.
Sure is, Paul. Motorcycles install green light triggers on the bottom of the crankcase to trip the inductive coil in the pavement, and even that doesn’t work, all the time. If you commute via motorcycle at night, and your route has 10 lights, you have one unnecessarily long ride home.
http://www.jcwhitney.com/green-light-trigger-green-light-universal-triggers/p2020044.jcwx?TID=8000000&origin=pla&JCW=1&JCW_SRC=PPC&003=27372719&010=29071G&gclid=CKHr1dni9rsCFdE-MgodQQMALg
These laws have been acted in some other states. The easiest solution is to wave a car around you or run the light and take hour chances.
There are also problems triggering left turn signals.
In approaching a light on a bike, always ensure that your engine sits directly atop one of the inductive coil wires in the pavement. The wires are easy to spot; they’re the borders of those rectangles you see at many stoplights.
Of all places, Utah has one of these. They’re sometimes called “stop as yield” laws for bicyclists. As someone who bikes everywhere, it’s easy to get frustrated at a series of lights when the most dangerous and difficult part of biking is starting up again, especially as cars collect around you — moving or not.
Seems odd to include motorcycles and scooters to me, but perhaps they have similar problems.
I consistently learned to avoid certain intersections in Beech Grove because I knew the light would never change for me and cars coming behind would be rare.
“Seems odd to include motorcycles and scooters to me”
What? This is a motorcyclist’s law. That it covers bicycles is the surprising part.
These laws are backed by ABATE.
http://www.abatewis.org/page.php?section=1&subsection=2&article_id=889
http://www.abateofoklahoma.org/legis.html
Et al.
There’s one stop light getting off of I-65 and onto Kessler that is particularly long after 9 or 10pm or so. I don’t know if the trigger doesn’t work or there’s just no trigger but it is not unusual to wait 8-10 minutes at that light.
I’m all for this, but no reason cars and trucks can’t also fall into this as well as far as I’m concerned.
I have TWO lights on my way home from downtown Indy that are triggered by under-pavement sensors and my bike doesn’t trigger them. They will *never* turn in my favor (at least, I waited seven minutes once, just to see). True, I *could* get off my bike, wheel it up onto the sidewalk, push the pedestrian button, wheel it back down to the street (I’m not good with ‘hopping’ my bike over the curb). This seems like one of those “a ‘reasonable’ person would expect [the light to change in their favor after a wait of…]” types of things. Of course, we *could* just fix the problem lights…
Isn’t HB1143 an environmental bill that would permanently excuse Indiana from making anylegislation that would protect its constituents from any kind of evvironmental pollution? Maybe not as terrible as running red lights on your bicycle, but..?