Cyclist behavior in cities where large proportions of people actually ride
The Law & Order BrigadeTM — the folks who routinely carp at cyclists for not stopping at stop signs and red lights (and presumably also disapprove of the behavior of the millions of curfew-breaking citizens in the Middle East — outlaws!) — and even some cycling ‘advocates’ (not me, of course) often suggest that cyclists in good cycling cities/countries, like Amsterdam/The Netherlands and Copenhagen/Denmark, always obey traffic signals. I always thought that people would behave normally all around the world, and that stupid, unjust laws would be ignored by almost everyone. Maybe my instincts were correct all along?
— Cyclists in Amsterdam Routinely Ignore Traffic Signals
Just back from touring Cologne, Gent, and Maastricht, all I can say is yes. In Cologne I saw so many people riding casually on sidewalks without pedestrians even batting an eyelash that I assumed it was legal, but when I asked a resident she said it was actually not legal. They were just chill about it, on all sides.
In all three cities riding against automobile traffic—“salmoning” in the parlance of New York’s self-hating cylists—was legal on most or all one-way streets and indicated by signs. Having two-way bicycle traffic is amazingly effective at calming auto traffic and letting people use the street. You really have to see it to believe it.
Signal compliance was generally higher, among both pedestrians and cyclists. The difference is not hard to find—they have far, far fewer stupid traffic signals. After an hour of riding around Cologne, we started talking about it and couldn’t remember if there had been any signals at all.
