You are a vehicle operator now

1Watch

The line at the light

Nothing is coming. The whole film is those two seconds, and the film stops before the decision does.

2The idea

Same road, same rules

The line from Massachusetts Safe Routes to School is one sentence and it is the whole lesson: everyone on the road, bikes, cars, trucks and buses, follows the same rules. Stop signs, signals and right of way apply to you because of what you are doing, not what you are riding.

You are operating a vehicle. That is not a telling-off, it is a description. It is also the thing that makes the road work at all, because every driver near you is predicting what you will do from the same rulebook.

3The idea

What that means at a stop sign and at a red

A stop is a stop: behind the line, wheels not moving, then go when it is your turn. A red light is the same, and it does not become less red because the cross street is empty and you can see a long way in both directions.

The driver waiting on the other arm of the junction is working out whose turn it is. If you take a turn that was not yours, they do not learn that you are quick. They learn that they cannot tell what riders are going to do, and that guess gets applied to the next rider along.

4The idea

With the traffic, never against it

In Illinois you ride in the same direction as the traffic, keeping as close as is practicable and safe to the right-hand curb or edge, with exceptions written into the law for when the far right is not the safe place to be.

Riding against the traffic is on the federal list of the situations that produce crashes. A driver pulling out of a junction or a driveway looks first at the side traffic comes from. Arrive from the other side and you arrive somewhere nobody has looked.

5Look

One-way means one-way for you

A one-way street is one-way for vehicles, and on that street you are one. It is a short cut that puts you head-on into the one direction every driver on it has already decided nothing will come from.

6Decide

Red light, nothing coming, and you can see a long way in both directions.

7The idea

What this looks like from outside

Police chiefs in our own suburbs have described what they are seeing, in their own words: riders in the middle of the street, doing wheelies, intentionally interfering with traffic. In another village, riders running red lights, weaving through traffic and riding away from officers. A third chief put it down to inexperience with the rules of the road rather than anything else.

Riding away from an officer is its own problem: riders found operating illegally may be ticketed and detained until a parent or guardian turns up. The rules being written this year are being written about that list. Everything on it is a choice somebody made at a junction.

8Find them

Which of these is a vehicle operator doing?

Tap the ones that count.

9Say it

The line at the light with somebody already rolling

You will need it with a friend halfway across the junction already, looking back at you. It is one flat sentence and then nothing else, because the argument is the thing that makes it a big deal.

10Do it

Before you leave this page