[SDCBC] Oregon bicycle laws for the California-bred?

Mike Elliott camping.elliott at gmail.com
Fri Jun 13 11:18:24 EDT 2008


My wife and I are moving to Bend, Oregon, this summer. Today's issue of 
the local Bend paper (the Bend Bulletin) has an article about how more 
people are wanting to ride bikes these days,* and that they are 
discovering that a lot of roads lack amenities such as bike lanes, or are 
scary narrow to ride on. As a native Californian, I know my rights and 
responsibilities w/r/t riding in traffic, and don't mind taking the lane 
when conditions warrant it, but reading the article made me consider that 
what I know about the CVC might not apply to the OVC. Here's the 
bicycle/pedestrian portions of the Oregon Vehicle Code:

http://www.massbike.org/bikelaw/oregon.htm

Near as I can tell, my riding habits don't need to change: same 
responsibilities and rights as a motorized vehicle (within reason), take 
the lane when you need to, signal, etc. But before I act all knowledgeable 
and say that to my wife, I'd probably do well to ask folks here to point 
out anything that might get your average California road bikie into 
trouble up there.

Many thanks!

==============
*Such articles are probably appearing in most newspapers these days what 
with fuel prices being the way they are....

-- 
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott



More information about the SDCBC mailing list