Berkeley Enforces the Law

Blowing through a stop in Berkeley (Chron)

Your humble blogger only rides a bicycle for weekend recreation, but even that limited experience enables me to understand why serious riders, including those who ride bikes for a living or use them to commute, hate to stop. A bicyclist expends some effort to build a full head of steam, wastes that effort by coming to a stop, and then has to start all over. Also, everyone has grown accustomed to cars' acceleration, and by comparison bicycle acceleration after a stop takes excruciatingly long.

Bicyclists--though not everyone, just to be clear--have long operated under the belief that the rules don't apply to them, for example, that they can ignore stop signs and stop lights if there are no cars, or even if cars are slow--often because of their presence! (Some states now allow bicyclists to yield at stop signs.)

However, the increasing crowdedness of our streets has made it more important that everyone follows the rules that apply to them, for example, pedestrians must use crosswalks and only when the "walk" signal is on, cars must come to a complete stop and proceed with caution when making a right turn on red, etc.

Now the City of Berkeley is strictly enforcing the bicycle laws:

Berkeley has taken a different approach to traffic safety: penalties of more than $200 for cyclists who roll through stop signs.

The enforcement campaign, carried out by police officers who patrol the city’s quiet bicycle boulevards on motorcycles, has caused anger to spill from Twitter into City Hall.

Police say they are trying to prevent collisions and fulfill the requirements of a $250,000 state grant to promote good behavior on roadways.

The progressive nanny-staters who are fond of passing laws--no plastic straws! no free grocery bags! penalties for not sorting trash!--to regulate everyone's behavior don't like it when they have to follow the law.