[SDCBC] Good article on bicycle scofflaws

[Trevor Bourget]

Californians and, by extension, the rest of the bike riders in the 
USA have a lot to thank for John Forester's precise attention to use 
of words in our language and to his comprehensive attack on written 
material. Leaving much of what he wrote aside (because he's right, 
and because it's irrelevant to the discussion I am interested in 
pursuing), let's continue:

At 09:23 PM 1/5/2007, John Forester wrote:
>With respect to the latter part of my sentence above, that society 
>claims that cyclists are incapable of operating as drivers of 
>vehicles,  Trevor agrees: "I asserted that while some cyclists may 
>be capable of operating as drivers of vehicles, the majority of 
>people who may ride a bicycle cannot be trusted to ride one 
>according to the laws that govern motorists." Note Trevor's sneaky 
>argument, presented in the hope that you won't notice its flaws. The 
>statement concerned society's claim that cyclists are incapable of 
>operating as drivers of vehicles. While acknowledging that some 
>cyclists can operate as drivers of vehicles, Trevor then changes the 
>verb from being capable to being trusted. All that Trevor is saying 
>here, in actual fact, is that most Americans think that they can get 
>away with operating bicycles in an unlawful manner. Well, yes, 
>Trevor, that is what I have written above, in slightly different 
>words. American society prefers that cyclists operate in an unlawful 
>manner, because it fears, erroneously, that if cyclists operated 
>lawfully motorists would be delayed.

What I actually said was not that Americans think they can get away 
with breaking the rules while riding a bike, but that they don't want 
any such rules, and that if such rules exist they will consider them 
to be silly intrusions and will ignore them. They think "Riding a 
bike is supposed to be fun, and we won't let traffic laws ruin our 
fun while riding our bikes." I suggest that perhaps this battle is 
not worth fighting, and that by giving up on it bicyclists who want 
to ride lawfully as part of the traffic system can get on with their 
own issues. The flaw with the approach, as I pointed out, is that 
play cyclists must now really be kept off the roadways (or prosecuted 
whenever they trespass there, as John suggests) and lawful cyclists 
must therefore be easily be identifiable as such. This is why I 
suggested that traffic cyclists might actually want to have a visible 
vehicular license plate required, which of course would require an 
operating license (probably including a test of knowledge and skills 
related to traffic law, if not also to cycling).

>That societal belief is one justification that society has for 
>discriminating against cyclists, because they are "only playing on 
>the roadway" while motorists are "using the roadway." You have all 
>read that before, haven't you? However, that belief, held both by 
>society and by Trevor, is jeopardized by the recognition that if the 
>roads are to be used safely and efficiently, all roadway users must 
>operate by the same rules. In other words, any society which 
>believes that riding a bicycle is only play must prohibit playing 
>with bicycles on the roadway, because that is dangerous. Which is, 
>of course, the argument made for kicking cyclists off the roadways.

The same argument kicks pedestrians out of the roadways onto 
sidewalks, and probably rightfully so. People walking have even less 
clue that they might be required to follow some rules than any other 
mode of transport I've seen. Even people sitting in airplanes do 
better (many even pretend to stay belted and seated until the 
airplane comes to a full stop at the terminal).

>I have no objection to that, provided that the money and space come 
>from recreational funds. I think, though, that such would be very dangerous.

Although skate parks, ski slopes, and other kinds of play areas are 
dangerous, people seem ready to leave the risk issue to the 
discretion of the users of the play areas. The issue for traffic 
cyclists is that they should NEVER have to be required to use a play 
area to reach any destination. This will probably mean traffic 
cyclists will use even more freeway shoulders, since many bike paths 
currently serve as the only reasonable alternate. An equally 
difficult approach would be to outlaw play cyclists from using some 
of the existing bike paths, converting them to "bike roads" instead.

By the way, society (specifically, Caltrans) later overcame its burn 
from the I-805 opening and I think the SR-56 bicycle+pedestrian 
freeway opening went quite well. Interestingly, many of the play 
cyclists voluntarily kept to the bike path on that day.


>Almost any police officer who sees a cyclist disobeying the rules of 
>the road for drivers of vehicles is capable of catching that 
>cyclist; the officer patrolling on foot is almost unheard of today. 
>Catch the cyclist and cite him for disobeying the law; there's 
>nothing complicated in that.

The motor officer is part of the problem, since they don't really 
think these silly rules should apply to people playing on bikes. 
Instead, they just think the cyclists should go play elsewhere. Even 
the general public would be outraged if they found that police were 
"wasting time" citing cyclists for "trivial infractions". As far as 
public support for enforcement currently goes, it's to have police 
harass groups of cyclists enough so they do get out of the way.

Let's imagine all cyclists voluntarily agreeing to be held to traffic 
law also agree to wear only standard-issue orange safety vests so 
that police could immediately pull over anyone riding in the roadway 
who does not belong there and immediately choose to cite other 
infractions of traffic law by those who identifiably do have the 
right to be there. Leaving aside whether this is a necessary extreme, 
I am curious whether people think this would actually solve the 
problem. Would today's motorists really be willing to share the 
roadway with cyclists who they knew would be following the same laws 
as themselves?

It seems to me that the "education and enforcement" approach 
currently argued may actually be striving at the same solution. 
Instead of putting the play cyclists on the sideways and byways, the 
idea is to get rid of the "fun" altogether, converting everyone to 
"serious" cyclists. I'm not convinced anymore that the approach will 
work. People actually like to ride bikes. Lawful cyclists I know 
still tend to think of their cycling as fun, but this takes a 
different mind set. Maybe figuring out how to get the fun back into 
law-abiding is the problem we should really be trying to solve. That 
would improve the lot of all highway users who consequently improve 
their compliance with traffic law.

-- Trevor

p.s. John alludes to some European cultures where cyclists are cited 
and prosecuted as rigorously as motor vehicle operators (whether it's 
for the same or a different set of rules, does not really matter). 
I'd be interested to know the name of these countries, in order to 
find out more about them. They could shed light on this ideal-world 
thought experiment.