From: JForester@cup.portal.com (John - Forester)
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.soc
Subject: Discriminatory laws
Date: Thu,  7 Jan 93 16:45:54 PST
Organization: The Portal System (TM)

                THE CYCLIST-INFERIORITY SUPERSTITION
               ALIVE AND WELL IN THE LOS ALTOS POLICE

   Jim Stallman and other cyclists were stopped and harassed, but not
cited, by a Los Altos, California, police officer for cycling two
abreast on the shoulder of Foothill Expressway in Los Altos. The
cycling abreast resulted from different accelerations and top speeds
after starting from a green light. The officer explained (using the
width of the lane stripe to differentiate between shoulders and bike
lanes) that cyclists are allowed to ride several abreast on bike
lanes but not on shoulders and not on roadways. Jim writes that since
this doesn't happen on bike lanes he sees the prevention of this kind
of harassment as a positive aspect of bike lanes.

   The officer is absolutely incorrect. The side-of-the-road law in
the California Vehicle Code requires cyclists traveling at less than
the speed of traffic "to ride as close as practicable to the right-
hand curb or edge of the roadway."  The roadway "is that part of a
highway improved, designed, or ordinarily used for vehicular travel."
There is no definition of shoulder in the California Vehicle Code,
but the marking of the shoulder in too narrow a width for vehicular
use says that the traffic engineer intended that vehicles should not
use that area and therefore it is not part of the roadway. Therefore,
no law says that cyclists may not ride abreast on the shoulder of a
highway.

   Even if the officer were correct in his belief that the side-of-
the-road applied to the shoulder as well as to the roadway, he was
incorrect since the 2-abreast cycling occurred as the result of
overtaking. Overtaking is one of the situations in which the law
allows cyclists to ride other than "as close as practicable to the
curb or right-hand edge of the roadway."

   We should consider the general question of riding abreast to
decide about Jim's idea that bike lanes protect us from this type of
harassment. Whether the phrase "as close as practicable" prohibits
riding side by side has not, so far as I know, been adjudicated. The
California Highway Patrol maintains that that is its meaning, but one
could argue that with another person to one's right one is riding as
far to the right as is practicable, since it is obviously impractica-
ble to ride in that person's place. Some other states have definite,
specific laws about riding two abreast, but California has never had
such a law. The CHP expresses its dislike of cyclists by using a law
that only possibly may mean what the CHP says it does, and many
police officers follow its lead.

   This is plain discrimination against cyclists. Motorists are
allowed to use any portion of the roadways without having to explain
their motives or intents; nowadays cyclists are not. There is a slow
vehicle law that requires slow drivers to use the right-hand portion
of the roadway, but that law applies only to drivers who are
traveling slower than other traffic, not to any particular class of
drivers. The side-of-the-road law applies to cyclists as such, unless
they can explain their motives (going to make a left turn, overtaking
a slower cyclist, avoiding a pothole, etc.) as one of the allowed
exceptions. This was not always the case. The side-of-the-road law
was inserted in the Uniform Vehicle Code in 1944, with the other
changes that prohibited cyclists from using any road that had a
"usable" path near it (the mandatory-side-path law) and from roads
without driveways. The law is not necessary; fifteen states never
adopted the side-of-the-road law and they manage perfectly well. 

   The purpose of this group of laws is to get cyclists off the
roadways, and to restrict their use of the roadways from which they
are not prohibited, as much as is politically possible, merely for
the convenience of motorists. However, that argument was never
officially made to legislatures, because it would seem too self-
serving and could be contrary to the common law that we inherited
from before the Constitution. The only argument that has been
officially presented to legislatures, so far as I know, is that
riding away from the edge of the roadway is too dangerous. That is,
these laws were enacted under the pretense of being cyclist-safety
laws. That excuse is utter malarkey; no reputable study ever made has
shown that overtaking motorists cause more than a minuscule portion
of accidents to cyclists. There was no evidence justifying enactment
of these laws in the first place, and the Cross statistics (released
in 1977) proved that no such reason existed. 

   However, the desire to restrict and prohibit cyclists was so
strong that these laws were enacted in a majority of states and
became the basis for American bike-safety education. That's why
Americans can't ride properly; they are taught how to ride improperly
and to be afraid of riding properly. That's why American government
denies that cyclists have the right to use the roadways, as the
outgoing (I hope) Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration
under Bush maintained, while trying his political best to deny that
that was his position. That's what gives police officers like the one
that harassed Jim Stallman (and like those that harassed many other
cyclists, including me many times) the idea that cyclists don't
belong on roadways and whose use of roadways should be restricted as
much as possible, ostensibly for their own safety but actually for
the convenience of motorists. That's what encouraged the California
Highway Patrol to tell the legislature that it is the cyclists who
obey the normal traffic laws that cause the car-bike collisions that
we have in California, which was an out-and-out lie, contradicted by
every study that has been made. 

   The side-of-the-road law and the mandatory-side-path law are the
laws that are at the legal root of our problems. They deny that
cyclists have the normal rights to use the roadways that all other
drivers have. I've had an Eldorado County sheriff hold me for 40
minutes, explaining, among other things, that those motorists have
the right to use the roads while I had only a privilege (exactly the
opposite of what is considered proper law), and he even thought about
arresting me when I said that I would leave because he had no
official business with me. These laws are involved in the creation of
the cyclist-inferiority superstition, that foolishness that says that
the roads are too dangerous for cycling upon and excuses motorists
who run down from behind innocent and lawful cyclists. Like Gaylan
Ray Lemmings, who, while drunk (0.18% alcohol), on a straight and
level road in clear weather, hit from behind and killed a well-
lighted cyclist. He wasn't even tried for the offense, because the
investigating officers of the California Highway Patrol believed that
this was the result to be expected of cycling on the roadway, even
with careful drivers. Or like Miss Miller, who killed four adult
cyclists because she was driving along while looking in the back seat
for an audio tape, and got away with light probation and little
public service. The whole mess that we are in is multi-faceted, but
the legal aspect of that mess, and one of its foundations, is the
laws that restrict our use of the roadways because we choose to ride
bicycles.

   I have been fighting this situation for over twenty years now. I
started the national movement to repeal the mandatory-side-path law
(I think the score today is 15 states down) but I have had no luck
with the side-of-the-road law. Indeed, my opposition to that law
caused the highway and motoring powers to change that law so that it
now is safer from legal attack than it used to be by now allowing the
specific exceptions that otherwise were legal contradictions. That
move has been praised by many naive cyclists as showing the good
intentions of those powers, but I know, because I was there, that the
intent was to protect the law against the legal attacks that were
possible because the long-standing version had been so badly written,
just expressing the desire to get cyclists out of motorists' way
without considering the consequences. 

   So here I have fought for twenty years against a set of laws that
discriminate against cyclists, that cause us trouble with the police
and with other branches of government, that have screwed-up the
public psychology to where lawful and proper cyclists are believed to
be reckless risk-takers or to have superhuman skills, that have
formed the basis for the dangerous, incompetent and useless cycling
skills that government and the establishment trains into us; laws
that were enacted purely (there is no other result that can be called
a justifiable excuse) to make motoring more convenient. And yet, who
has been helping me? The competent cyclists have helped me because
they see the harm that these laws do to cyclist. But where have been
those anti-motoring, transportation reforming, environmentalists who,
one would think, would have been the first to sign on to a campaign
to repeal laws that were enacted to discriminate against cyclists for
the convenience of motorists? Those people, practically universally
as far as I have seen, oppose my position because they are not
sympathetic to competent cycling and they want bike paths and bike
lanes. Those facilities emphasize to the public that cyclists belong
behind stripes or behind dirt barriers, where they can't get out to
inconvenience motorists. Bike paths, in many states, still prohibit
cyclists from using the adjacent roadways, while bike lanes, in all
states, prohibit cyclists from using every other part of the roadway.
Such facilities are based on the same absurd logic that was used to
justify, untruthfully, the 1944 laws and is used today to justify
discriminating against cyclists. Bike paths explicitly carry out the
intent of those laws, while bike lanes do so only implicitly, but
only because bike lanes were not known in that time. 

   How can people have their brains so scrambled that they turn logic
on its head and advocate exactly the opposite of what they should be
advocating to attain their desired ends? This is the effect of the
cyclist-inferiority phobia and its other side, which may be called
the motorist-superiority superstition. True, I have been criticized
for introducing this explanation, but what other explanation has been
offered, or can there be, for this absurd situation? For so much of
the politics of cycling transportation the truth, as shown by
scientific evidence, legal analysis, or whatever discipline is
appropriate, is the exact opposite of what most people believe. 

JForester@cup.portal.com               John Forester
                                       726 Madrone Ave
408-734-9426                           Sunnyvale CA 94086 USA 
Xref: sparky rec.bicycles.soc:1411 rec.bicycles.misc:1888 rec.bicycles.rides:657