The Paper Bag

Local writer Christopher Beam wrote an article on Slate about cyclists and the law. He starts out mentioning that several cyclists he knows in DC have been ticketed and wonders if there has been a crack down.

A colleague was recently slapped with a moving violation after breezing through a stop sign. My roommate was pulled over 30 feet from our house for the same infraction. And driving around Washington, D.C., recently, I saw a cop scribbling out a ticket to a bewildered biker.

I had never heard of a biker getting ticketed in D.C. Has there been a sudden crackdown? "I'm not specifically aware of any stepped-up enforcement," says Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Kenny Bryson. Eric Gilliland, a lawyer for the Washington Area Bicycle Association, disagrees with the policeman's take. Bike ticketing "comes and goes in waves," Gilliland says, but the rate has gone up over the last five years.

Eric Gilliland is a lawyer? That's a definite demotion from Executive Director.

The article discusses vehicular cyclists and what he frames as the other group, facilitators.

Facilitators, meanwhile, say we should change the laws and the environment to recognize the innate differences between bikes and cars.

And that while the two groups are often opposed, both support the Idaho Stop. He points out that the Idaho Stop failed in Oregon and hasn't gotten much traction elsewhere despite "a follow-up study of the Idaho statute that found that accidents involving bikes actually decreased the year after the law was passed and haven't varied much since." So what he proposes is what has happened in Portland, the police promise not to crack down on safe, but illegal cycling and to instead crack down on dangerous cycling like riding at night without lights and wrong way cycling.

I like the Portland Compromise as an interim solution, but it's an incomplete solution at best. Having a law that few follow and that no one enforces does not make society stronger. Many drivers will still think of cyclists as scofflaws largely because they run stop signs and lights. The only solution to that is to (1)  crack down on cyclists - thereby driving down numbers, (2) change the law to decriminalize normal cyclist behavior or (3) somehow change the culture whereby Americans feel like it's OK for me to break the law (speeding, stop sign running and jaywalking) but not you. If someone knows how to do the third thing, I'm all ears; but until then, I'll go for changing the law.

Comments

[Kristen]

The Idaho law as proposed for Oregon specifically called for bicyclists to slow way down, look both ways, and then roll through if it was clear to do so-- and also specifically called for serious fines for bicyclists who "breeze through" or "blow" the stop sign.

Most bicyclists who do not stop for stop signs don't slow down first, either-- they just go through without a care of other people's right of way.

I look at it as legalizing the California stop (the slow and roll) that most drivers use at stop signs.

I think it would have passed had it applied to all road users; after all, we're all doing the same thing, why are bicyclists getting ticketed so heavily while car drivers are not for the same lack of full stop?

[Contrarian]

I think Christopher Beam is well-intentioned, but he's got major factual problems with his article. He needs to read "The Myth of the Scofflaw Cyclist."