We really need to start applying the rules of the road to cyclists, scooterers and similar road users like we do with any other driver. And that includes identifying their vehicles with plates so we can track down the reckless ones. How many need to die before we start cracking down on the entitled recklessness we can all see?
Yeah, cops stopping cyclists for blowing through red lights is never going to happen if they don't even bother to do it for drivers doing the same right in front of them.
Ok maybe theyāre not going to stop every cyclist, just like they donāt stop every driver. But enforcement in high profile cases like this and some form of identification on bikes to facilitate such enforcement can absolutely influence behavior. Itās similar to drunk driving. Cops canāt prevent it from happening entirely. But awareness of the enforcement and other consequences has made it less prevalent.
Cops have limited time and attention. A reckless driver behind the wheel can do more damage than a reckless cyclist, so the driver must be the higher priority.
Forcing plates on bikes adds a significant new expense to what's supposed to be an affordable form of transportation for very little benefit; incidents of cyclists causing major injuries to others are super rare. You solve a problem, but you create a new one, and the new problem is worse
Many of the ābikesā on the road are now motorized and weigh 100 lbs. They should 100 percent have some form of identification on them. Theyāre practically motorcycles. And anyway as this incident exemplifies, bikes kill and gravely injure people. There needs to be a way to identify people engaged in reckless cycling that results in injury and damage to others. Having identification on the bikes signals to the cyclists that there is accountability and works in conjunction with enforcement.
Yea, afaik DC does not split out e-motos and e-bikes adequately and they should absolutely do so. They're entirely different vehicle classes. E-motos should be treated the same as regular motorcycles
And no. Costs of printing plates plus forcing all cyclists to get them does not justify the meager benefits you'd get from making some dude on a Schwinn pop up on red light cameras.
How else would a victim identify a hit-and-run cyclist or any of a dozen other sorts of situations where the police officer isnāt right there on the spot to grab the cyclist? Iām open to suggestions.
Me moving to the suburbs wonāt make DCās sidewalks and intersections safer for pedestrians. But entitled reckless cyclists moving definitely would. And so would enforcing consequences against them for not stopping or yielding safely.
I donāt even own a car. But any criticism of cyclists is immediately attacked as a car defense. You people really are a menace.
Your premise is correct, all should follow rules in society. I agree. It's just laughable to say 1 accident involving a bike should rewrite the rules of enforcement to favor attention to cyclists over the dominant offenders. That's the push back.
You stated your opinion, people don't like it.
I sincerely doubt everybody who disagrees with you is "one of those people" aka bike commuters/cyclists.
If everywhere you go smells like shit, check your own shoe.
Nah bro your idea of a licence plate is just fucking dumb and impractical and enforcement of all kinds of violations transportation modes is not performed by MPD. Singling out the one cycling accident where someone gets serious hurt or killed when there are literally hundreds of automobile and (ped or cyclist) injuries every few months is also fucked up.
The fixie rider here is an outlier and did a fucked up thing. How many fixie riders do you think there are here? They are a special breed. But sure, let's regulate the hundreds of thousands of everyone in DC because of the 15 fixie riders.
Same way we identify people if they run into us on foot. If it was a significant enough collision to cause real damage, both parties are getting knocked over.
You have to weigh the upside of that against the downside - in this case, the costs of making every cyclist in DC install a license plate, and the reality that a lot of the speed cameras are in parts of DC without much cyclist traffic. It doesn't make sense
Youāre right about the speed cameras. But we have tons of red light and stop sign cameras too. Those are the applicable ones to most of the cyclist/scooter issues. Sure, they likely canāt address the sidewalk speed issues but theyāre a start on the more dangerous stuff.
Bike lanes canāt stop cyclists and scooter users running red lights or not yielding to pedestrians or going at speed on sidewalks when there is a protected bike lane right next to the sidewalk as they do in front of my building all the time.
Bike commuters are legally allowed to use the sidewalk (outside of the central business district), have full use of the road, and bike lanes and are not required to use bike lanes when one is provided.
Please familiarize yourself with the laws before making incorrect assumptions.
Cyclists are legally allowed to use the sidewalks but that isnāt a blanket authorization to do anything they want on sidewalks. They have a duty to not drive at reckless speeds because they must yield to pedestrians. And the problem is the yielding to pedestrians part. Many just clip pedestrians at speed.
Cyclists are legally allowed to use the sidewalks but that isnāt a blanket authorization to do anything they want on sidewalks. They have a duty to not drive at reckless speeds because they must yield to pedestrians.
Agreed.
Many just clip pedestrians at speed.
I can't take you seriously with comments like this.
It's obvious you have a bias against people on bikes.
Where you live, they probably have paint and plastic sticks which, the person youāre responding too already pointed out donāt make roads safer: better built bike lanes do. So saying bike lanes donāt prevent danger where you live isnāt a great counterpoint
Where I live the bike lane is between the sidewalk and the parallel parking for cars. Car lanes are beyond that and the parked cars act as barriers and when the slots are empty the car-wide space separates the bike lane from the car traffic. The bike lanes are also one-way, and thereās one next to each sidewalk going in opposite directions, the same direction as the nearest car lane. Itās difficult to imagine a more protected situation.
None of that stops them from using the sidewalks at speed or from ignoring red lights or from clipping pedestrians.
I don't agree with OP's premise but I would point out that 15th has a bi directional bike lane and M has a one directional and that is where this happened. This was the fault of a reckless fixie rider.
I donāt drive in DC. Iām mostly a pedestrian and Metro user. If car drivers need more enforcement letās do that too. But car drivers bad doesnāt mean cyclists good. Thatās just whataboutism that fails to address the problem.
Itās not āwhataboutismā when you literally said āWe really need to start applying the rules of the road to cyclists, scooterers and similar road users like we do with any other driver.ā YOU are the one who brought automobile drivers into this and argued that we need to start enforcing laws for cyclists like we do for people driving cars (which wouldnāt change anything, because the vast majority of dangerous DC drivers never face any sort of criminal or civil consequences). If you wanted to focus on cyclists to the exclusion of drivers, YOU shouldnāt have brought drivers up apropos of nothing.
It is tho. OPās first point was that red lights should be red lights. OP is wrong about plates* but not wrong about running traffic signals. āBuT tHe IdAhO sToP!ā Miss me with that, this happened at 15th and M, I canāt think of many parts of DC that are comparable to anywhere in Idaho or Delaware, much less anywhere in Golden Triangle or Midtown.
* maybe not for e-bikes since thereās apparently no will to regulate electric motorcycles or electric mopeds but thatās a different convo)
Yeah go sit down OP. In the last 10 years 2 people on bikes have killed someone in DC meanwhile no less than 354 people in vehicles have killed someone over the same period in DC.
Death isnāt the only consequence of the increasingly overt cyclist recklessness in DC. We just donāt have a lot of stats on the other consequences because there are no repercussions to most of them.
DC canāt even track down or enforce laws on reckless licensed car drivers - you think thereās state capacity to do this with bicycles? What would that even look like? Would skateboards and roller skates have to get license plates too?
Weewoo call the police! Thereās a 12-year-old on an un-plated bicycle!
Shit, DC, MD, and VA don't even seem to do anything about the unlicensed drivers and unregistered vehicles on the road, and OP wants them to start enforcing bike registration?!
Two wrongs donāt make a right. We need ways to ID reckless cyclists. And we should enforce traffic laws better against drivers too. Many of the cars with the long list of unpaid tickets arenāt registered in DC. But the cyclists are likelier to be residents or at least to have rented the bike here. And if we can ID them at least we can prevent the reckless ones from renting again.
Nobody said that anything close to that - you are arguing with an imaginary point because you cannot deal with reality. Thatās why everybody in this thread is making fun of you, not because weāre like āawesome, run red lights to stick it to the drivers!ā It doesnāt seem like you have the self-awareness to understand that.
Get out of your weird moral absolutes and think about where the rubber meets the road. Cars are responsible for around 95% of all traffic accidents in the district, and responsible for nearly all fatal ones.
We have a robust regime to track licensed drivers and their vehicles, and a legal system set up to penalize or prosecute violators. They are large and pretty easy to track, and we have cameras all over the place that do so and automatically issue tickets. People rack up nearly six digits in fines and will still go unpunished for years if ever. The cameras will record them every day at the exact same intersection at around the same time for months going 20 over, and yet thereās no enforcement despite them being incredibly predicable.
With this extreme lack of will and resources to go after the most dangerous offenders, you propose we expend the limited capacity of the local government to design, build, and maintain a registration system for another 200-500,000+ significantly more difficult vehicles to track that donāt even require a license to operate? All to go after not even a percent of fatal traffic accidents?
And what is your proposal to deal with a palpably growing recklessness problem that has now turned deadly?
Weāve already spent untold amounts creating infrastructure for cyclists that keep demanding more of it. And thatās fine. Weāll likely spend more. But they should be required to use it and use it safely. Not turn around and then encroach on pedestrian areas; or run red lights or stop signs whether or not there are bike lanes.
Bike lanes exist to allow cyclists to travel faster because they are safer. But that speed cones with responsibility. All human interactions do.
My issue is many cyclists posit a one-way policy focus; where investing in their safety and convenience is always important, but investing in preventing or punishing their recklessness and dangerous behaviors to pedestrians and other cyclists is beyond the pale. We pay taxes too.
Once again youāre deflecting because you are completely divorced from reality.
I never claimed to have a solution for the less than 1% of fatal traffic accidents - you did. Have you forgotten youāre the OP?And when asked how it would possibly work in reality, you deflect and go off on inane screeds nobody cares about nor is arguing.
I donāt know how to explain this to you more simply without making it childish - the DC government has a limited budget. When you have a limited budget, you have to be strategic about your spending and ensure you are getting the maximum return for your dollar. It seems āone-wayā to you because you are seemingly incapable of understanding this, while everybody else around you is. You want to reallocate limited resources from going after the most frequent and dangerous offenders to the least dangerous.
We are not against the concept of enforcement, we are against what would be, as taxpayers, a terrible misallocation of limited resources that makes our streets more unsafe.
Imagine the uproar the city would face if the next time a driver with $100,000 in fines flips their car and rams into a restaurant killing 4 people, they have to say āwell we reallocated resources to go after teenagers going the wrong way up bike lanes instead.ā
Current DC law is sufficient as it allows Idaho stops - this means the cyclist that ran the red light broke that law. Plain & simple.
Changing the law to require plates, registration, & licensing is not the answer as it does not resolve the problem of the intersection design that creates conflict between directions of travel.
The cyclist who ran the light and killed the other cyclist broke the law, I agree. And that one will hopefully be charged because it is quite clear who he is.
But Iām trying to prevent this stuff from happening. And when it doesnāt cause a collision that prevents the cyclist or scooterist from continuing, thereās no way to fine them for breaking the law or even to identify them. If there is a reliable way, please tell me what it is. And why you think the problem seems to be increasing despite it.
Intersection design wasnāt the problem here or in most cases, though it might be in some. There was a red light. Thereās no intersection design that can prevent reckless behavior.
The other day a cyclist friend tells me he saw a cyclist t-bone a car turning right from 1st St SE into N St SE. The driver had a green light. So did the cyclist. Both had been driving southbound. The cyclist was on the protected bike lane. My cyclist friend was struck by the fact that he says there was no way the driver could have seen the cyclist before or even while turning, because the parked cars that protect the bike lane would have blocked the driverās view. Thatās an intersection design problem. And it stems from the well-meaning intent to create a protected bike lane. But the issues Iām talking about are behavior related and require identifying the person who behaved recklessly.
Itās definitely clear that we both (and probably most folks responding to your post) want to prevent tragedies like this from happening, and I appreciate your willingness to discuss this in good faith.
That being said, Iād much prefer to live in a world with less surveillance and without fear of our government. Giving them additional tools to track and find pedestrians is not going to end well - especially since walking and cycling is liberal-coded. We know that we canāt trust law enforcement to ONLY use registration/tracking tools for hit & run collisions, so Iād rather not give those fascists another inch.Ā
Instead, I would rather have our government spend resources on a built environment that makes it harder for these types of tragedies to happen, even when folks are reckless.
While itās true that there is no intersection design that prevents reckless behavior, there are absolutely designs out there that reduce the number of conflicts and/or reduce the level of danger when conflicts arise.
Might I suggest a book, There Are No Accidents by Jesse Singer. I think you might find it interesting. It goes much deeper into the design aspect of our built environment than a Reddit comment ever could.Ā
In addition to better built environments, better and more rigorous driver training and enforcement is a start. Any driver deviating from a straight line should shoulder check (lane changes, turns, etc) that would have solved the right turn across a bike lane.
With all due respect, I donāt think you know what an Idaho Stop is or how DCās version of the law is written.
To summarize: A bike rider intending to go through or left at an intersection must stop and wait at red traffic signals for the green OR pedestrian signal.
The exception is when DDOT has posted signage expressly permitting through or left movements on red at that intersection, and that the rider makes a complete stop; determines there is no immediate hazard; and yields the right-of-way to pedestrians and to other traffic lawfully using the intersection.
As far as Iām aware, DDOT does not have any signs at that intersection allowing the exception. The rider who went through the red broke the law.
I completely understand it, so let me be clear. The appropriate policy at places like 15th and M is one that does not leave such decisions up to the discretion of the cyclist, and if they want to cross with a pedestrian signal they can dismount and walk the bike like... a pedestrian. I've been in too many close calls where such signalization is present, and the lack of simple clarity in the implementation is part of the problem.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by not leaving decisions up to the discretion of the cyclist? Iām not sure how that applies at 15th & M if the law dictates that the cyclists should have stopped on red.
The only discretion I can think of is if they chose whether or not follow the very simple and unambiguous law of stopping at a red light. If you think thatās too much discretion for somebody operating a vehicle, then holy shit, wait till you hear about car drivers.
Two intertwined problems. One, the more distantly related one, is that if "the rider ... determines there is no immediate hazard" is a threshold that leaves a whole lot up to the rider's discretion. In other contexts, like prohibiting RTOR, we have correctly realized that driver discretion is pretty bad! In the context of cycling, none of this thread would be happening if there weren't a similarly shared recognition that an unacceptably high share of cyclists exercise poor discretion when it comes to handling intersections.
The more proximate one, I think, is clarity of traffic rules. A very good thing about banning RTOR is that it's system-wide. There's just no RTOR, unless specifically indicated. People are not good at remembering lots of rules and exceptions. It's why you get memes about how board gamers and tabletop fans are weird nerds who love rules. Most people don't handle rules well. For most people, "stop signs mean stop, yes you," is much clearer direction to give, and is easier to enforce because of its clarity.
That, and for those things we really do want to and should leave to driver/rider discretion, that discretion just cannot be exercised without taking the time to exercise it.
I think weād all prefer if cyclists were taking fewer risks and there were fewer rules to keep track of. However, the solution isnāt to make cycling worse via more rules.
Dismount and walk the bike at the pedestrian signal? That is just laughable and am not going to take that seriously.
Cyclists stopping at every sign even though itās clear? I understand how that can appear reasonable, but in reality itās a terrible riding experience in dense environments and likely leads to more collisions, so no thanks.
DCās rules are adequate., but the design of the built environment is poor due to how much land weāve ceded to the automobile. There are too many cars which results in not enough room & money for pedestrian infrastructure that would reduce the amount of risks some cyclists chose to take.
That is just laughable and am not going to take that seriously.
I hope you know that DC is in the minority in allowing cyclists to ride through crosswalks. Your reaction does a lot to exemplify why pedestrian-specific advocates are often skeptical of cycling advocates. But in most places, it's not more rules at all. It's just... the rules. Wanna ride through the intersection? Red means red. Wanna ride through people and have to avoid hitting them? There's a safe way to do that too. Wanna be an asshat who doesn't realize that you can kill and injure people too? Coolcoolcool.
but the design of the built environment is poor due to how much land weāve ceded to the automobile.
On the topic of comments that shouldn't be taken seriously... This happened on 15th and M. Where there is a dedicated bike lane on the westbound one-way, and a bidirectional protected bike lane on the N/S bound street. This is not an intersection where "the built environment needs to be better" will do more work than "have better traffic rules."
>Wanna ride through the intersection? Red means red.
Thatās literally the Idaho stop law and is adequate. Glad youāre on my side now.
>Wanna ride through people and have to avoid hitting them? There's a safe way to do that too. Wanna be an asshat who doesn't realize that you can kill and injure people too? Coolcoolcool.
Bro, you ok? Wtf are you talking about?
>This happened on 15th and M. Where there is a dedicated bike lane on the westbound one-way, and a bidirectional protected bike lane on the N/S bound street. This is not an intersection where "the built environment needs to be better" will do more work than "have better traffic rules."
Youāve yet to explain how the existing stopping at red instead of passing through an intersection is an inadequate rule.
Kinda feels like you just hate cyclists. Kinda sucks cuz we shouldnāt be beefing - we should be united against cars, but whatever. Stay mad.
It's a really unfortunate situation, but this is more of a freak accident than a common occurrence. Cars are still infinitely more dangerous to bike riders and pedestrians.
It's more of an issue with electric bikes than manual bikes. And while I agree that bikes should generally follow traffic laws, as long as bikes are careful and make sure to slow down and check that nobody is coming at an intersection, I don't really care. It's the ones that cruise through red lights at 30mph without a care in the world that are dangerous
Like I also donāt care most of the time a car doesnāt come to a complete stop at a stop sign when they think nobodyās around. The problem is when theyāre wrong.
The cops arenāt going to ticket cyclists who blow through red lights or stop signs at busy intersections. Thatās hard work. If theyāre told to start prioritizing ticketing cyclists, theyāre going to ticket cyclists who roll through a stop sign at 5MPH at an empty intersection, just like they used to in the 2010s.
That and stopping black male cyclists for things like not having a bell (the dumbest law on the books) or riding without a helmet or being adjacent to a car.
Whataboutism about driver recklessness when someone points to documented cyclist recklessness is about as convincing as reflexively referencing October 7 when someone says Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
I was doing hyperbole. I came up with a better analogy in another thread. The point is we need to be able to talk about this without it getting derailed by car talk every time.
I can walk you through the analogy if it would help.
I was being colloquial not praising MPDās enforcement against car drivers. Two wrongs donāt make a right. There should be stopping and yielding rules for all, with no special exceptions for cyclists or scooter users. All should follow the rules. And they should be enforced against all.
We really need to start applying the rules of the road to cyclists, scooterers and similar road users like we do with any other driver
So, not at all. Got it.
How many need to die before we start cracking down on the entitled recklessness we can all see?
You talking about cars here?
Edit: I do want to support one thing here; ALL CYCLISTS should stop at red lights. I am a daily bike commuter and follow traffic rules to an absolute T. I really wish everybody else did as well because idiots make us look terrible.
However, they can't or won't enforce cars driving illegally so I think the process of enforcing bikes is a very very long shot.
Taxing and tagging bikes is an awful idea. For many reasons.
I didnāt propose taxing bikes. Tagging them is needed for ID purposes. But Iām open to suggestions on other means.
I was also being colloquial in the āany other driverā language; not commenting on MPDās current level of enforcement against drivers. I just want cyclists to have to follow (and to follow) the same rules, especially as to stopping and yielding.
According to the DC Vision Zero dashboard, DC has experienced 21 traffic fatalities in 2025 to date ā 13 were pedestrians and one was on a bicycle ā and 266 major injuries.
Pedestrians in Washington, D.C., remain at serious risk even as overall traffic deaths declined in 2025. New data show that 25 people were killed in traffic crashes in the District in 2025, down from 52 deaths in 2024, a sharp year-to-year drop.
Even with that decline, pedestrians in the D.C. area were twice as likely to be killed in 2025 as they were a decade earlier,
99.999% of the bad actors are screaming around on free Lime bikes or overpowered delivery rigs. I have yet to read a single comment here taking up the "no, people should act like douchebags" side of the argument.
Having said all that, licensing cyclists is silly and of course you're going to get pushback.
Yes, I realize licensing sounds silly but many (most?) of these vehicles are now motorized and can achieve and sustain much faster speeds for more people than before. I donāt know how fast cars and motorcycles were before we decided to require licenses but these things are pretty fast. Thereās a line in the movie Parenthood (IIRC) where Keanu Reevesā character goes into how you even need a license to catch a fish. His point was about parenthood but the example highlights that deadly danger isnāt the only criterion we use for establishing licenses.
Iāve said several times I welcome other feasible solutions, but nobody has provided anything other than snidely telling me to move out of the city. So I appreciate that you at least acknowledge the fact that for all the downvotes and whataboutisms, nobody engages with the actual problem: the growing subset of cyclists and scooterers who behave like douchebags in ways that endanger others or at least needlessly make life that much more obnoxious for everyone around them.
I was reading your response on the Metro and as I got out of the station on Half St SE a guy in a Veo(?) bike was zigzagging around pedestrians on the sidewalk as if they were the poles on a slalom course. He didnāt hit anyone. Nobody visibly complained. But do we really want that to be the ongoing daily experience for pedestrians on the sidewalk?
I stood to the side to type this and two kids got on a Lime scooter together and sped off. Isnāt it supposed to be one per scooter and no kids? Iām pretty sure if I stood here a while with a camera Iād see much more questionable behavior just on this one corner.
I've been bike/scootering to work for the last 6 months until my accident (which is a whole different story). I've definitely had more close calls with other e-cyclists than cars or pedestrians.
My first hand experience over a decade here as a bike commuter in DC is that cars are more of an issue. Guess we should go with my experience if we're counting anecdotes as fact since I have more experience, right?
i agree op, i chose to move away from eckington bc having to use the mdt to commute was too dangerous as a walker. i would have really close calls, and as someone who has worked in an icu and seen bike TBIs, it wasnāt worth it for me. i also had teens intentionally fake me out like they were gonna hit me head on, and then try to bail at the last minute. itās unfortunate that bc bikes are targeted by cars, they target walkers. i also have to do a triple check at all lights for bikes. i hate bikes on sidewalks and they should slow down to pass rather than make me jump off he sidewalk. iām not from dc, not going to stay, just have some standards for ped safety than ppl in this thread.
bicycles donāt need engines to be dangerous- i worked with a man who fell off his bicycle 10 years prior not wearing a helmet and was still working on saying his name. if you do ride a bicycle, you should wear a helmet. i just donāt want to have to wear a helmet as a walker. in other countries, on trails like mbt there would be a bike lane with lines for either direction, a small runner lane, and a walker lane. be safe out there!
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u/merp_mcderp9459 10d ago
I'm fine with cops stopping cyclists who blow through red lights, but license plates for bikes is a ridiculous idea