Discriminatory Laws Need to Go!
“I’m a human being goddamit, my life has value!”
It must be in the air. Fred was stopped 2 more times in the last 2 days. You can read his account of bogus law enforcement rationale here. An LCI in Idaho was ticketed today for “riding on the road,” you can read his account here. I know of several cyclists in other states who have not only been ticketed, but had the ticket upheld by a judge substituting prejudice for law and then had to spend more time, money and energy having the bogus ruling overturned or thrown out by smart prosecutors.
Traffic law is supposed to enhance the safety of road users. Most traffic law codifies the rules of priority and predictability—the logic under which traffic operates with safety and efficiency. The bicycle-specific law for roadway position is an exception. It exists only for the convenience of motorists. In other words, its job is to get us out of the way.
Operating on the edge of the road is not in the best interest of our safety or efficiency of travel. In fact the FTR law so blatantly compromises our safety, it has to be loaded with exceptions to clarify our right to protect ourselves! (see Roadway Position Explained)
But no matter how well we can explain the exceptions and parse the language in our favor, the premise of the law will still be how it is interpreted on the road by law enforcement, motorists and cyclists. This premise is injurious to cyclists because it legally and socially reinforces the belief that we must stay out of the way by default. That belief is the root cause of many fatalities and injuries. It is also the cause of constant inconvenience and frustration for bicycle drivers, like Fred, who must travel through the territory of uninformed law enforcement.
Fred has been fortunate to escape a ticket, and the waste of more of his time and energy dealing with the court system. He’s maintained admirably good humor about it, but it’s still ridiculous that he is delayed and harassed regularly by misinformed law enforcement in East Central Florida.
A year ago, American Bicyclist Magazine published an article about adding a 6th “E” to the League’s guiding principles—Equality. The purpose of this principle would be to address and abolish discriminatory laws mandating roadway position and the use of facilities.
Of course, this SHOULD be the underpinning of cycling advocacy. We cannot build healthy, sustainable bike policy on a foundation of legal and cultural bias against bicycling.
Encourage LAB to put it to action! We need them to help our state advocacy organizations overturn discriminatory laws. We need the League of American Bicyclists to stand up for the rights of bicyclists... like other famous (or infamous) membership organizations do for their members.
“Of course, this SHOULD be the underpinning of cycling advocacy. We cannot build healthy, sustainable bike policy on a foundation of legal compulsion of unsafe practices.
Encourage LAB to put it to action! We need them to help our state advocacy organizations overturn laws that compel unsafe behaviors. We need the League of American Bicyclists to stand up for the safety of bicyclists… like other famous (or infamous) membership organizations do for their members.”
There, I fixed the above two paragraphs for you Keri. We must present these ideas as safety concerns and not as rights issues.
As a cyclist, I am oriented to the Far-To-Right (FTR) laws as discriminating against my natural right to travel freely, which is the inevitable result of them.
But it is also bad to promote an expectation that some road users must share their lane with overtaking traffic. To require someone to travel side by side in a lane with another vehicle is dangerous on it’s face. This is a more persuasive argument in our car-centric world than one about equal rights.
A very good post, Keri! Clear reasoning, well stated and compelling. Thanks for the links as well!
Thanks ChipSeal! Excellent points.
I think it needs to be both rights and safety. It is reasonably safe for me to allow a small car to share a wide lane between intersections. But I need to have the right to choose to do that at my discretion, and not be mandated to do it because the lane is deemed wide enough to share by someone else. FDOT has determined that a 14 foot lane is “standard” width. Fourteen feet is wide enough to share with passenger vehicles, but not box trucks and utility trailers. And lane-sharing becomes complicated and less safe with any-width vehicle near intersections and driveways.
As you said, no other vehicle drivers are required to share a lane with another vehicle.
The problem with separating the equal rights from the safety argument is there is a strong push in bicycle advocacy to define safety as separating bicycles from motor traffic and then turning the rules of the road on end to protect cyclists from the increased hazards (eg: Oregon’s law). Theoretically, you can design a segregated system that is safe. But it will come with unacceptable delays for bicyclists, motorists or both (and with the lack of respect for bicycle transportation in our culture, I don’t have to tell you who will get the short end of that stick).
It is naturally a rights issue for us, but to persuade non-cyclists it is counter-productive. To them it is just more whining from an arrogant self-centered special interest group that simply hates cars. This is an earned reputation thanks to so many “groups” that claim to speak for me. (You know who you are!)
In fact, I expect bicycle advocacy groups to be the greatest impediment to a repeal of FTR laws. It somewhat undercuts their advocacy of bicycle ghettos. It may seem a little radical for them to think a bicycle might actually ride in the path of motorists! How could THAT be safe?
“But I need to have the right to choose to do that at my discretion, and not be mandated to do it…” The difference between compulsion and courtesy, in other words!
Tailwinds Keri! Thanks for bringing this topic up.
Keri, how’d you get that picture of me at my desk in Das Bunker?
As you know, cyclists in my neck of the woods are rushing headlong to get bikes off the road and onto “safe” places. Anti-cycling laws and attitudes are swelling nationwide, and will follow here. We vehicular cyclists are accused of surrendering to the auto-centric paradigm, when the truth is just the opposite.
I rue the day I got funding in place to build my first “Class A” bike trail (1994), and I said at the time that I wasn’t happy about doing it, as it held the hidden message that bicycles DON’T belong on streets and roads, but only in gutter pans and on-street paths. What I have seen over the last 18 years is a direct correlation between the miles of “facilities” built for cyclists, and the number of cyclists on open roads and streets.
To quote my second-favorite Floridian, “We’ve have met the enemy, and he is us.”
PMS mis-typed, and posts this correction: “I rue the day I got funding in place to build my first ‘Class A’ bike trail (1994), and I said at the time that I wasn’t happy about doing it, as it held the hidden message that bicycles DON’T belong on streets and roads, but only in gutter-lanes and on off-street paths.”
I think that hidden message is a product of a poor cultural foundation and not necessarily the fault of the facilities themselves.
The fact that bicycles are not respected as vehicles by our culture (including most bicyclists) feed pretty much every problem we have from scofflaw behavior to harassment to ill-conceived facilities and shameful minimum standards.
I think if you have a foundation of respect for bicycles as vehicles/cyclists as drivers of vehicles, including the recognition of equality/normalcy on the roadway, then you build infrastructure to facilitate/enhance access, the message would be different. The infrastructure would probably be different too.