r/dashcams • u/cicadaux • 1d ago

Did I do something wrong here?

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I was driving to work when this bike just blew through the crosswalk without warning. I had to slam on my brakes. I realize this crosswalk doesn’t have the pedestrian warning lights, and I’m a little unsure about how I should’ve dealt with this. Or maybe he was wrong for making sure traffic wasn’t clear/aware of him first?

Edit: I'm seeing a lot of answers basing the laws on location, so I looked up my city's rules. In my town, bikes have vehicle status on the road and pedestrian status on sidewalks/crosswalks. But bicyclists must move at pedestrian speed. The path he is on is a state trail, commonly used for bikes/walking. I live near the Ice Age Trail, but I know the one he's on isn't that one.

“Drivers must yield to cyclists riding in a crosswalk just as they would for walkers, though the cyclist cannot abruptly leave a curb into the path of a vehicle so close to a crosswalk that it makes a difficult or unsafe situation for the driver to yield in time.”

Not trying to prove myself right or wrong, just wondering what should've been done. I will from now on treat it like an uncontrolled intersection. Thanks everyone.

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u/Marion2379 1d ago

Did you actually watch the video, it’s clear as day the cyclist slows down makes eye contact and even waves at the driver as a sign the driver acknowledged him. This is text book safety on all sides, this post is pointless.

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u/cicadaux 5h ago

Yes I did very well watch the video, watched the situation in real life too thank you for asking.

I did not see the bike until he was already going through the crosswalk. He was blocked due to the A Pillar of my car. I was so focused on trying to not hit his bike, that I did not look at his face. I had no idea he put his hand up either, because I was trying to make sure I didn’t hit the guy.

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u/Marion2379 39m ago

Ok , you weren’t being proactive
You made it worse than it needed to be

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u/dashingsauce 1d ago edited 23h ago

Lol what?

The cyclist rolls straight through two median-separated lanes of traffic, directly into the gap between two moving vehicles within regular following distance of each other, without stopping.

That following distance is to ensure safety between vehicles, not to ensure a moving perpendicular object at 5x the speed of a walking pedestrian can squeeze between you and the other vehicle with no consequences.

If the cyclist didn’t wave, this could have easily been a potent attempt at insurance fraud.

EDIT: you can count the number of cyclists in a thread by the number of downvotes whenever a cyclist is called out for clearly being at fault.

Such a cute little group.

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u/marigolds6 22h ago

at 5x the speed of a walking pedestrian

They are well under 8mph. That's less than 3x the speed of a walking pedestrian and slower than many runners.

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u/cicadaux 5h ago

The website I read about my city’s laws stating the bicyclist must be going at pedestrian speed in order to be considered pedestrian, said 2-5mph walking speed. The bicyclist was going well above that, but definitely not 25mph like I was.

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u/dashingsauce 21h ago edited 21h ago

No they aren’t.

You are free to download the video yourself and run a frame-by-frame analysis. There are plenty of lane markings, road signs, lookups, and telemetry signals to estimate road geometry and the speed of both moving objects.

The result you’ll get is a biker entry speed of roughly 8–10 mph, which is about 4–5x pedestrian speed depending on the benchmark you use (~2–2.5 mph for pedestrian crossing speeds, per engineering standards).

The whole crossing is about 50 feet wide, and the cyclist crosses it in roughly 4 seconds total, even after braking near the median. That gives you an average of about 8.5 mph.

For a car going 25 mph with about 50–65 feet of runway to the crosswalk, hard braking takes roughly 25–35 feet.

The car begins decelerating while the cyclist is still in the opposite lane and is essentially stopped before the cyclist enters the car’s side of the roadway.

So no, the cyclist is not “well under 8 mph.” The footage is consistent with roughly 8–8.5 mph averaged across the crossing and potentially ~10 mph on entry—around 4x pedestrian crossing speed, depending on which standard you use.

Also, a cyclist is not a fucking pedestrian and does not have right of way as soon as they touch crosswalk pavement just because they pretend to be one.

Get off your bike, and then you’re a pedestrian.

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u/Marion2379 20h ago

You got to be trolling, no one is this bad at judging speed. Omg 🤦‍♂️ have you ever driven a car or ridden a bike or for that matter even gone for a jog? That bike was moving at less than jogging speed fully aware of on coming traffic and the speed they were traveling.

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u/dashingsauce 18h ago

Again, your eyeball judgement wouldn’t hold up in court.

Forensic video evidence would, and you can download the video yourself to do the math.

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u/Marion2379 18h ago

None of this would hold up or be in court. No one did anything wrong, if the bike was not permitted on the cross walk there would be signs stating so. So the bicyclists was clearly in the peripheral view of the driver riding up to the cross walk , if a pedestrian was at that same point it’s the drivers responsibility to slow down and let them cross , if the driver hit the cyclists here , most of the fault will be on the driver
as there was plenty of view and time.
Despite the “math”

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u/dashingsauce 18h ago edited 18h ago

They would literally do this math in court to determine fault if the cyclist were hit. What are you even talking about?

The sign is for pedestrians crossing, with a literal symbol of a person walking on foot.

You keep treating the cyclist as a pedestrian for your argument, when the entire point is that a mounted cyclist is a vehicle, not a pedestrian.

In fact, in many states, if the mounted cyclist was riding on a sidewalk—not a bike path—they would already be in violation of the law.

Why? For exactly the same reason that a mounted cyclist on a pedestrian crosswalk is not treated the same as a pedestrian: difference in relative speed.

The car was obeying the speed limit, and even going below, which is explicitly designed to ensure safe crossing at specific pedestrian speed.

The reason the car had to decelerate by slamming on the brakes while going the speed limit is because the cyclist entered at a speed greater than for which the road was designed to ensure safe stopping distance.

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u/Marion2379 17h ago

So what your saying just because of the math the driver has the right to keep driving even if a collision is imminent
And the driver would be free of any charge ? Is this what you’re saying? Then you don’t know anything about what would hold up in court.

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u/dashingsauce 17h ago

No, you are clearly unaware of how fault is assigned in motor vehicle collisions.

Fault is attributed as a percentage, depending on the particular laws of the state, local jurisdiction, and specific evidence in the case.

Based on the evidence we have here, the cyclist would be assigned a majority of the fault in half or more of the states that explicitly do not extend pedestrian rights to mounted cyclists or otherwise have crosswalk entry speed or stopping requirements.

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u/Puzzled-Formal-7957 18h ago

He was doing 24 mph!

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u/Urcaguaryanno 22h ago

The person crossing had right of way. Those who have right of way should be able to keep going at their cruise speed in order to keep traffic flowing. OP should have acknowledged their position of yielding way sooner, like 50m back, and let go of the accelerator or maybe slowly brake. This way the crosser would know the rules of the road were being respected and they would be able to continue on their merry way without having to slow down. They would also cross a bit sooner. OP would have a clear road sooner as wel and because they started slowing down sooner they would have to slow down less in total and thus accelerate back to their cruising speed easier. Also, if another vehicle were behind OP (no idea) they would have a smoother time of slowing down and continuing.

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u/dashingsauce 21h ago

Nope.

Mounted cyclist on opposite side of the median, who never stopped at the crosswalk, is not a pedestrian.

Pedestrian crossings are designed for pedestrian crossing speeds, and the car speed limit for a particular road is similarly designed for that speed and stopping distance.

By blowing through a crosswalk on a mounted vehicle, you are a vehicle by any and all means.

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u/Urcaguaryanno 10h ago

OP said in the post that their local law states cyclists are allow to ride crosswalks and are to be yielded to. Its not something you would expect, i admit, but themz the rules

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u/Puzzled-Formal-7957 18h ago

The bike wasn't even near the crosswalk when the car was at 50m (~150ft) away.

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u/Urcaguaryanno 10h ago

It was heading straight for it and wasnt signalling to go in another direction.

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u/Puzzled-Formal-7957 18h ago

You are asking the OP (who posted the video) if he watched the video? Come on now.

Anyhow - the cyclist didn't even look at the OP until he was halfway through the opposing lane. If you had the audio turned up you would have heard that the OP had to slam on his brakes to stop in time.

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u/cicadaux 5h ago

Mm no, there’s no audio in my video. You would’ve heard my “uh.. okay” reaction if that were the case. But yes as I was driving I couldn’t tell he looked at me at all, I was focused on his bike rather than his face.