[SDCBC] Good article on bicycle scofflaws

[John Forester]

When I wrote that "most Americans think that they can get away with 
operating bicycles in an unlawful manner", Trevor Bourget tried to 
correct this by repeating "[T]hey don't want any such rules, and that 
if such rules exist they will consider them to be silly intrusions 
and will ignore them." I fail to see any particular difference. And I 
fail to see any significance to whatever difference might exist; we 
agree that most Americans think it appropriate to operate bicycles 
without obeying the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles.

Trevor again introduced the subject of pedestrians, by writing that 
pedestrians are kicked off the roadways because they, too, should not 
play in the roadway. That is not the reason that pedestrians are 
required to use sidewalks where present. The reason is that because 
wheel vehicular traffic and pedestrian foot traffic are incompatible, 
each is provided with its own facility. This has nothing to do with 
playing; it is because they operate in physically different manners. 
Furthermore, Trevor then criticizes typical pedestrian behavior: 
"People walking have even less clue that they might be required to 
follow some rules than any other mode of transport I've seen." Well, 
there aren't many rules for pedestrians. There are the common law 
rules that you don't knock people down by being in a hurry, and 
similar. There is the traffic rule that you don't step into the 
roadway when approaching traffic is so close as to constitute a 
danger. There is the traffic rule that you use nearby marked 
crosswalks. There is the rule that you obey traffic signals. That's 
all, I think.

When I wrote that any traffic officer is very likely to be able to 
catch a cyclist whom he sees disobeying the law (as part of my 
argument denigrating Trevor's large-lettered bicycle license plate 
argument), Trevor replied with: "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"." Trevor didn't like my argument that our 
societal institutions, such as the police force, have been guided by 
societal pressures into believing that cyclists should not obey the 
rules of the road for drivers of vehicles, yet here is Trevor making 
exactly that argument. You see, we don't disagree about much.

Now Trevor gets down to a substantive suggestion, but which is just a 
modification of his earlier large-lettered license plate suggestion. 
"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." This suggestion is contrary to all of our 
legal procedures. People are assumed to be obeying the law until 
there are reasonable grounds for believing otherwise. Police who stop 
and interrogate people simply on a whim, without reasonable cause, 
are both subject to legal challenge and are a sign of un-American 
tyranny. (Now, lets not get into a discussion of current politics 
about this.) It is as true for cyclist violations of traffic law as 
it is for persons caught breaking and entering, that any police 
officer who observes such behavior is entitled, indeed is expected, 
to stop the act and ensure that the supposed violator is brought to 
trial. So this part of Trevor's suggestion is both unnecessary and 
detrimental to justice.

Trevor then brings up a societal influence that I had previously 
brought up, but which he, before this, denied the existence of. That 
is the matter of societal influence and acts by motorists. Here are 
his words: "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?" As I have written for thirty years, For sixty years or 
more the motoring organizations, through their control of the 
political process regarding traffic law, have pushed cyclists to the 
edge of the roadway and even off the roadway, and who, thirty-five 
years ago, set up the bikeway building organization to accomplish 
this aim in a more effective manner. I have long lost count of the 
many official meetings at which I have seen and heard motorists and 
representatives of motoring organizations arguing for their desire to 
get bicycles off the roadways; I know, at first hand, from personal 
observation of, and personal involvement in, the way in which the 
motoring organizations of California attempted to kick cyclists off 
the roadways onto bikeways. I was the leader in forestalling as much 
of that effort as we were able to forestall. The opposition of 
motorists and their organizations to cyclists' use of the roadways is 
a very serious problem, probably the most serious of the problems 
that hinder us. More about that below.

I think that Trevor, in his concentration of the "fun" of lawless 
cycling, has missed another and more significant motive. That is the 
fear that most Americans have when considering riding a bicycle in a 
lawful manner. In all of the literature that I have read on this 
point, there is great concentration on fear, while Trevor's thought 
about "fun" is the first that I have read. By my analysis, and I have 
written this for thirty years, fear has been the motivator employed 
by the motoring organizations to keep cyclists at the edge of the 
roadway, or off the roadway, thereby preventing those cyclists from 
operating in the normal lawful manner. I repeat, again, that the 
motoring organizations used fear to produce a societal belief that: 
"The cyclist who rides in traffic will either delay the cars, which 
is Sin, or, if the cars don't choose to slow down, will be crushed, 
which is Death, and the Wages of Sin is Death."

Then Trevor gets to the deeper part of his thought, with the 
following words: "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."

Anyway, by this unnecessarily convoluted path, Trevor has come to 
consider the difficulty that most of us vehicular cyclists realize 
that we must overcome. That is, how do we, first, preserve our own 
activity of vehicular cycling and, second, get society to recognize 
that cyclists should operate in the vehicular manner. Trevor seems to 
doubt that such a society is possible; I considered that issue in my 
other essay of today; such societies have existed. It is a reasonable 
question, though, whether it is possible to change the present 
society, that discriminates against cyclists, to one that treats them 
equally. There is a small sign of favorable circumstances. That is, 
whenever I have questioned closely the representatives of the 
motoring organizations, they have said that they don't mind what they 
call "professional cyclists such as you"; those they oppose are those 
who don't obey the laws. That would be very well, except that they 
are the societal forces who have produced the unlawful and 
incompetent societal mindset for their own advantage. Whatever they 
might think about that, the problem has been enormously exacerbated 
by the bikeway excuse that other segments of society have given the 
motoring organizations. If bikeways had been recognized for what they 
always were, facilities invented and paid for by motorists to clear 
the way for motorists, the political problem would have been much 
easier to solve. However, that truth has been entirely covered up by 
the claim of the anti-motoring environmentalists that bikeways reduce 
motoring by making cycling so safe, easy, and pleasant that hordes of 
motorists will switch to cycling. One may try to argue that the 
problem is not associated with bikeways, but that is not correct. 
Whatever their original motivation, bikeways have given everybody 
except vehicular cyclists the socially acceptable excuse for 
discriminating against cyclists in the way that was first desired.

So, what are vehicular cyclists to do? I say that the issue must be 
framed as vehicular cycling is good, while non-vehicular cycling, be 
it on the unadulterated roadway or on a roadway modified with 
bikeways, is bad. Bikeways are bad because they require, or strongly 
encourage, non-vehicular behavior, and they have failed to meet any 
of their claims: they haven't reduced the accident rate, they haven't 
reduced the level of skill required, and they haven't reduced 
motoring. Those facts ought to take the force out of the bikeway 
excuses. That ought to leave the way clear for a reasonable 
discussion of the need for the development of cyclist skill, just as 
would have occurred had the bikeway program not intervened. As Trevor 
has noticed, despite his argument about the fun of unlawful cycling, 
cycling lawfully and competently is an enjoyable activity. I think 
that vehicular cyclists, once the bikeway excuse has been cancelled, 
can manage to demonstrate the value and enjoyment of vehicular 
cycling for those who choose to enjoy cycling.

John Forester, MS, PE
Bicycle Transportation Engineer
7585 Church St.
Lemon Grove, CA 91945-2306
619-644-5481 www.johnforester.com