Short answer - YES ... they do not follow the laws concerning operation of a vehicle on the roads (They are the same for any vehicle be it electric, gas or pedal powered). The most violated rule is yielding of the right-of-way to faster moving traffic and as the piece below relates yielding the right-of-way to pedestrians - who have the ultimate right-of-way over any mode of vehicular traffic.
There
are many more pedestrian fatalities involving cars, but the recent death
caused by an allegedly negligent bicyclist who ran a red light and plowed
into pedestrians crossing the street in San Francisco and actually killing
one man raised heat rhetoric over the behaviors of some cyclists and the
question of who owns public space:
The bicyclist was zipping south on Castro Street at the end of
his twice-weekly ride to the Marin Headlands, blowing through red lights
and stop signs.
But the Market Street crosswalk was filled with pedestrians, and
Chris Bucchere, 36, allegedly was riding too fast to stop. So he aimed
for the least populated spot and plowed on through.
"In a nutshell, blammo," a blogger purporting to be Bucchere
wrote that March day. The man he hit, Sutchi Hui, 71, died four days
later. Bucchere was charged Thursday with felony vehicular manslaughter
and is scheduled to be arraigned next week.
Post-crash commentary, angry and profane, didn't just call for
Bucchere's head, although there was plenty of condemnation for him and
the rest of the Lycra-and-toe-clips set. Instead, the conversation became
a fight about who owns public space — a scarce resource in the
second-most dense city in America, where bike use is soaring and many
motorists decry a war on cars.
Maria L. La Ganga of the Los Angeles Times has the story
here.
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