The Marginalization of Bicyclists
How the car lane paradigm eroded our lane rights and what we can do to restore them
Not long ago I was riding in the middle of the right-hand (slow) lane on a 4-lane urban street with parallel parking and a 25 mph speed limit. I had just stopped at a 4-way stop when the young male driver of a powerful car in the left lane yelled at me, “You ain’t no f***ing car man, get on the sidewalk.” He then sped away, cutting it close as he changed lanes right in front of me in an attempt, I suppose, to teach me a lesson.
That guy stated in a profane way the world view of most people today: If you can’t keep up, stay out of the way. My being in the right-hand lane and therefore “in his way” violated his sense that roads in general and travel lanes in particular are only for cars, a viewpoint that I call the car lane paradigm. The car lane paradigm conflicts with the fact that in every state of the union, bicyclists have the same rights and duties as drivers of vehicles.
So which is it? Do bicyclists have the same right to use travel lanes as other drivers or not? Before lanes existed, bicyclists simply acted like other drivers. But now that travel lanes are common, most people grow up with the car lane paradigm with bicyclists relegated to the margins of the road. This article goes into the history of how the car lane paradigm came to be and what we can do about it now.
Reading this is going to take a while, so here is an outline of where we’re going:
- 1897: In the beginning, bicycles were vehicles and bicyclists were drivers
- 1930: Bicycles are not vehicles
- 1911 – now: Lane lines are invented and become common
— Oops, the inventors of lane lines forgot about bicycles
— “Slower Traffic Keep Right” or “Slower Traffic Use Right Lane”?
— What does the “or” in “right-hand lane or as close as practicable to the right” mean?
–Do speed and might mean that travel lanes are actually “car lanes”?
- 1944: If you can’t keep up, you don’t belong (in the lane)
- 1911 – now: Lane lines are invented and become common
- 1968: Motorcyclists, but not bicyclists, are entitled to full use of a lane
- 1975: Bicycles once again defined as vehicles, but still not entitled to use of a full lane
— Exceptions to the law requiring bicyclists to ride far right are better than nothing, right? - Now: No room on the road for bicycles
— Bicycles at the far right and laned roads are incompatible
— What do we do now?
1897
In the beginning, bicycles were vehicles and bicyclists were drivers
In 1789, the United States Constitution delegated to the states the power of policing their own citizens, including the power to establish their own rules of the road. As it turns out, some states even allow local agencies to have their own rules of the road. Since it is impractical to go over the history of every set of rules of the road in the U.S., this article will for the most part focus on events at the national level.
As the bicycle became popular in the late 1800’s, some states and local agencies adopted laws prohibiting bicycles on their roads. By 1897 the League of American Wheelmen had successfully challenged those laws and declared in a pamphlet1:
The League has made it possible for a cycler to ride the wheel on any street or highway in the United States. When the League was formed the bicycle had no legal recognition; now it is universally recognized as a carriage, and may travel with impunity wherever any carriage does.
Some foresighted people saw that it was necessary to formally organize the laws applying to road users into what came to be called “rules of the road.” One of the first places where rules of the road were adopted in the U.S. was New York City in 19032
. In those first rules of the road, bicycles were defined as vehicles, the operators of which were treated the same as operators of other vehicles (most of which were horse-drawn wagons and carriages).
Many of those early rules of the road are familiar to us even today: drive on the right side of the road, slower traffic keep right, overtake on the left, don’t go faster than is safe, turn left from the center of the road, turn right from the far right, etc.
But there were variations in the rules of the road adopted by the various states and localities, which eventually led to an effort to create a model for the rules of the road for all the states and local agencies to follow. In 1926, the Uniform Vehicle Code (UVC) was created by what came to be known as the National Committee on Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances (NCUTLO).
States are encouraged to adopt the provisions of the UVC as their own, with some complying more than others.
The original 1926 UVC incorporated the victory won by the LAW when it defined a bicycle as a vehicle:
“Vehicle.” Every device in, upon or by which any person or property is or may be transported or drawn upon a public highway, excepting devices moved by human power or used exclusively upon stationary rails or tracks; provided, that for the purposes of (Title II of) this act, a bicycle or a ridden animal shall be deemed a vehicle.
For bicyclists, defining bicycles as vehicles was crucial, not least because two of the most important provisions of the UVC are the definitions of “highway” and “roadway,” which in turn use the term “vehicular travel”:
Section 1. Definitions
“Highway.” Every way or place of whatever nature open to the use of the public, as a matter of right, for purposes of vehicular travel. The term “highway” shall not be deemed to include a roadway or driveway upon grounds owned by private persons, colleges, universities or other institutions.
Notice that the definition of “highway” said nothing about speed, so the roads were just as open to the drivers of slower vehicles as to faster vehicles. That slower vehicles are normal was reinforced by the law requiring drivers of slower vehicles to keep right:
Section 10. Drive on Right Side of Highway.
…Upon all highways of sufficient width, except upon one way streets, the driver of a vehicle shall drive the same upon the right half of the highway and shall drive a slow moving vehicle as closely as possible to the right-hand edge or curb of such highway, unless it is impracticable to travel on such side of the highway and except when overtaking and passing another vehicle subject to the limitations applicable in overtaking and passing set forth in Sections 13 and 14 of this act.
The UVC also addressed overtaking:
Section 13. Overtaking a Vehicle.
(a) The driver of any vehicle overtaking another vehicle proceeding in the same direction shall pass at a safe distance to the left thereof, and shall not again drive to the right side of the highway until safely clear of such overtaken vehicle. (b) The driver of an overtaking motor vehicle not within a business or residence district as herein defined shall give audible warning with his horn or other warning device before passing or attempting to pass a vehicle proceeding in the same direction.Section 14. Limitations on Privilege of Overtaking and Passing.
(a) The driver of a vehicle shall not drive to the left side of the center line of a highway in overtaking and passing another vehicle proceeding in the same direction unless such left side is clearly visible and free of oncoming traffic for a sufficient distance ahead to permit such overtaking and passing to be made in safety.
(b) The driver of a vehicle shall not overtake and pass another vehicle proceeding in the same direction upon the crest of a grade or upon a curve in the highway where the driver’s view along the highway is obstructed within a distance of 500 feet.
(c) The driver of a vehicle shall not overtake and pass any other vehicle proceeding in the same direction at any steam or electric railway grade crossing nor at any intersection of highways unless permitted to do so by a traffic or police officer.
Except for the now antiquated rule about giving way to the right on an audible signal (which only makes sense on rural unlaned roads), the rules for overtaking are still well understood today, at least when it comes to motor vehicles overtaking other motor vehicles. Bicycles, however, are another matter. People don’t seem to understand how the rules apply when overtaking bicycles or being overtaken by bicycles. I believe the reason has to do with the car lane paradigm, which came about after the introduction of lane lines.
As it turns out, the overtaking law was written before lane lines became commonplace, so it is not surprising that it does not address overtaking on a laned road. Indeed, it is not logical for either the reference to the “right side of the roadway” or the requirement for the driver of the overtaken vehicle to “give way to the right in favor of the overtaking vehicle on audible signal” to apply on a laned road.
Without lane lines, a wide road has room for multiple lines of vehicles (as illustrated in the recently rediscovered movie of Market Street in San Francisco in 1906), so there needed to be a provision prohibiting moving left or right unless such a move can be made with safety:
Section 18. Signals on Starting, Stopping or Turning. …(a) The driver of any vehicle upon a highway before starting, stopping or turning from a direct line shall first see that such movement can be made in safety and if any pedestrian may be affected by such movement shall give a clearly audible signal by sounding the horn, and whenever the operation of any other vehicle may be affected by such movement shall give a signal as required in this section plainly visible to the driver of such other vehicle of the intention to make such movement. (b) The signal herein required shall be given either by means of the hand and arm in the manner herein specified, or by an approved mechanical or electrical signal device, except that when a vehicle is so constructed or loaded as to prevent the hand and arm signal from being visible to the front and rear the signal shall be given by a device of a type which has been approved by the Department.
Whenever the signal is given by means of the hand and arm, the driver shall indicate is intention to start, stop, or turn by extending the hand and arm horizontally from and beyond the left side of the vehicle.
Notice that even in 1926, the UVC authors assumed that all vehicles had a left side beyond which the hand and arm could be extended and that although Section 13b required only drivers of motor vehicles to sound their horns, Section 18a required drivers of all vehicles, including nonmotorized vehicles such as bicycles and horse drawn wagons, to sound their horns, too, even though nonmotorized vehicles were not equipped with horns. Thus the original UVC authors were apparently already thinking that all vehicles were motor vehicles, a viewpoint that still exists among highway and transportation professionals today.
1930
Bicycles are not vehicles, but bicyclists have the same rights and duties as drivers of vehicles
In 1930, the UVC authors decided that bicycles would no longer be considered vehicles and instead inserted a provision giving bicyclists the rights and duties of vehicle operators:
“Vehicle.” Every device in, upon or by which any person or property is or may be transported or drawn upon a public highway, except devices moved by human power or used exclusively upon stationary rails or tracks.
Every person riding a bicycle or an animal upon a roadway and every person driving an animal shall be subject to the provisions of this act applicable to the driver of a vehicle, except those provisions of this act which by their very nature can have no application.
This seemingly innocent change had disastrous effects on bicycling. In 1975, the NCUTLO Panel on Bicycle Laws wrote3:
A bicycle is not a vehicle, but a bicyclist on the roadway has the same rights and duties as the driver of a vehicle. Too frequently judges, attorneys and police don’t accurately perceive how the provisions work together to regulate bicycles, and if these people can’t figure it out, how can the bicyclists and vehicle operators be expected to do any better? Laymen view the existing Code provisions as a bunch of “mumbo-jumbo.”
Excluding bicycles from the definition of vehicles has been and is being used to justify the following inequities:
- Police not preparing collision reports for bicycle crashes.
- Highway engineers ignoring bicycles in the design of streets and highways.
- Judges ruling that bicyclists are not intended users of highways, as an Illinois appellate court did.
- Not treating bike paths as highways. This has led to treating bike paths as though they were walkways. For instance, instead of treating a location where a bike path crosses a street or highway as an intersection, with the same rules as a locations where a street or highway crosses another street or highway, a bike path crossing is usually treated as a crosswalk. Also, a California appellate court ruled that a bike path was equivalent to an unpaved walking trail, for which public agencies have immunity from liability for injuries of bicyclists caused by negligence of their employees in the design and construction of bike paths.
- In his book, Fighting Traffic4, Peter Norton writes about how during the 1920s motoring interests fought and won a battle to define streets as spaces that excluded pedestrians, horses, streetcars, and bicyclists:
[B]y 1930 most street users agreed that most streets were chiefly motor thoroughfares.
Removing bicycles from the definition of “vehicle” was just one way of consolidating that victory. Since bicycles were not motorized, they were not considered part of the normal movement of traffic.
1917 – NOW
The invention and proliferation of lane lines
As more and more motor vehicles were used on the roads, more rules were added and new road design features were created to regulate their operation. Although bicyclists often complain about stop signs and traffic signals, I believe that the one road design feature that had more impact on bicycling than any other was the lane line.
Today, lane lines are so common that it’s hard to imagine a time when they did not exist. But just like all other traffic control devices, they had to be invented. The first documented use of a lane line was a center line installed on a rural highway in Michigan in 1911.5
In 1917, a centerline was painted on Dead Man’s Curve along the Marquette-Negaunee Road in Michigan. That highway was only wide enough for two vehicles to pass, but there was a tight curve where drivers tended to cut the curve, resulting in head-on crashes. The line worked beautifully to keep drivers on their own side of the road, and by 1940 use of lane lines was common in the U.S., not only for centerlines but also to designate multiple lanes in one direction.
But what is a lane? Here is the dictionary definition:6
lane (n.)
A narrow passage, course, or track…especially a strip delineated on a street or highway to accommodate a single line of vehicles.
Lane width is determined by the width of the widest vehicle likely to use the street or highway, which most often is a large truck.7
The current (2000) Uniform Vehicle Code8 contains the following provisions related to laned roadways:
1-147 – Laned roadway
A roadway which is divided into two or more clearly marked lanes for vehicular traffic
11-309 – Driving on roadways laned for traffic
Whenever any roadway has been divided into two or more clearly marked lanes for traffic, the following rules, in addition to all others consistent herewith, shall apply. (a) A vehicle shall be driven as nearly as practicable entirely within a single lane and shall not be moved from such lane until the driver has first ascertained that such movement can be made with safety.
The requirement that a vehicle must be driven within a single lane means that a vehicle cannot occupy two lanes at the same time (except when changing lanes, of course). You would think that if one vehicle cannot occupy two lanes, then two vehicles would not be able to occupy one lane, but that’s not true. Some lanes are wide enough for two lines of traffic, such as where the lane lines are striped far enough apart for two trucks to travel side by side or where both lines of traffic consist of narrow vehicles. In such instances, a driver is expected to share a single lane side by side with other drivers (with the notable exception of motorcycles – see below).
Even so, because two cars or trucks cannot normally fit within a single lane, it is common for car and truck drivers to act as though they are entitled to a full lane. For instance, it is expected that a car driver who encounters a hazard in a lane (such as a rock) will swerve sideways within the lane without checking first for another vehicle in the same lane. And it is expected that the driver of a car or truck who encounters slower traffic will change lanes to pass.
Lanes work well to promote the orderly movement of traffic as long as all vehicles (1) go about the same speed and (2) are wide enough that only one fits in a lane at a time. Almost all motor vehicles can go fast enough to keep up, even on freeways, but some, such as motorcycles and motor scooters, are narrow enough to fit two or more side by side in a lane or to slip between lanes (called lane splitting). Even when the driver of a motorcycle or motor scooter uses a full lane, though, car and truck drivers have no grounds to complain because these smaller motor vehicles have enough power to keep up.
Oops, the inventors of lane lines forgot about bicycles
As a general rule, until lane lines were invented, bicyclists had the same rights and duties as other drivers. Just like any other vehicle, bicycles had to be driven on the right side of the road and, when slower than other traffic, had to keep right. A faster driver who could not overtake safely could honk, but if there was no place for the bicyclist to “give way to the right,” then the overtaking driver would simply have to wait until it was safe. Since most people underestimate the space a bicyclist needs for safety, the meaning of “keep right” and “give way to the right” is not always clear in the case of bicyclists.
Because a bicycle cannot generally go as fast as a motor vehicle and because a bicycle is narrow enough that a motorist can often squeeze by one (unsafely) in a normal width lane, such behavior has become expected. Therefore most people do not believe that a bicycle is entitled to full use of a lane. The result is a mismatch between the historic concept of the bicycle as a vehicle and the basic idea of a lane’s being for a single line of vehicles.
I can find no evidence that highway engineers, law enforcement officers or legislators gave any thought to how bicyclists might use lanes during the time that lane lines were proliferating. It was apparently assumed that bicyclists would be relegated to the right edge of the road and that motorists would only move far enough left to overtake them, just as they had on unlaned roads. That assumption, though, failed to address a number of questions about how bicyclists and motorists were to interact on laned roads:
- What happens when a lane is not wide enough for a faster vehicle to safely overtake a bicycle within the lane?
- What happens when riding far to the right means being close enough to parked cars to be “doored”?
- Is it acceptable for motorists to pass bicyclists without changing lanes?
- Where on a laned roadway should a slower bicyclist ride?
Is a bicyclist prohibited from moving left or right within a lane without first signaling and checking to see if the movement can be made with safety?
The answer to these questions will be addressed in the remainder of this article.
“Slower Traffic Keep Right” or “Slower Traffic Use Right Lane”?
Recall that when all roads were unlaned, slower drivers were required to keep as close to the right edge of the roadway as practicable. With the introduction of laned roads, that law was revised so that slower drivers were only required to use the right-hand lane.
But all most people know about this basic principle is the highway signs that read “Slower Traffic Keep Right”. Even the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (the bible of traffic engineering for installing signs and stripes) admits that the sign should be used where slower traffic is not using the right-hand lane9:
The SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT (R4-3) or the TRUCKS USE RIGHT LANE (R4-5) sign (see Figure
2B-10) may be used on multi-lane through roadways to improve capacity or reduce unnecessary lane changing due
to the presence of slower vehicles that impede the normal flow of traffic.
Guidance:
If used, the SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT sign or the TRUCKS USE RIGHT LANE sign should be
installed at or just beyond the beginning of a multi-lane roadway section or at the beginning of an extra lane
provided for trucks and/or other slow-moving traffic, and at selected locations where there is a tendency on the
part of some road users to drive in the left-hand lane(or lanes) below the normal speed of traffic. These signs
should not be used on the approach to an interchange or through an interchange area where traffic is entering
or exiting, or along deceleration or acceleration lanes.
The idea that the speed of traffic increases in the lanes furthest from the right-hand edge of the roadway is called lane discipline, and is formalized as follows (a similar provision regarding use of the right-hand lane first appeared in 1930 but was deleted in 1934 – the current provision was added in 194810):
UVC 11-301 – Drive on right side of roadways – exceptions …
(b) Upon all roadways any vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall be driven in the right-hand lane then available for traffic, or as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway, except when overtaking and passing another vehicle proceeding in the same direction or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road, alley, or driveway. The intent of this subsection is to facilitate the overtaking of slowly moving vehicles by faster moving vehicles. …
The last sentence (which was added in 1979 through the work of Chuck Smith and the Ohio Bicycle Federation11) makes it clear that the reason for restricting slower drivers to use the right lane on laned roads and to drive near the right edge on unlaned roads is to facilitate overtaking and not, as commonly believed, for the safety of the slower driver. After all, overtaking drivers had always been prohibited from endangering the overtaken vehicle, whether the road had lanes or not. In any case, on a laned road the overtaking driver is expected to change lanes, which, because lanes are designed to be wide enough for the widest legal vehicle, usually means there is plenty of clearance between the two vehicles.
What does the “or” in “the right-hand lane or as close as practicable to the right” mean?
There has been a lot of confusion about what the “or” in UVC 11-301(b) means. Some people mistakenly interpret the “or” to mean “and”. By this interpretation, a narrow slow moving vehicle (such as a motorcycle) would have to be driven in the right side of the right-hand lane in order to comply with UVC 11-301(b), presumably in order to facilitate passing by faster vehicles in the same lane. Since the UVC specifically grants motorcyclists the right to use a full lane (see below), a driver could get a ticket for passing a motorcyclist without changing lanes. Therefore that interpretation must be incorrect.
The driver of a slow moving vehicle is in compliance with the law by meeting one of two conditions:
- Operating in the right-hand lane
- Operating as close as practicable to the right curb or edge of the roadway
On an unlaned road:
- The roadway does not have a right-hand lane for traffic, so condition 1 does not apply.
- The roadway does have a right-hand curb or edge, so condition 2 applies.
- Therefore the driver of a slow moving vehicle operating as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway is in compliance with UVC 11-301(b).
On a laned road:
- The roadway has a right-hand lane for traffic, so condition 1 applies.
- The roadway has a right-hand edge or curb, so condition 2 also applies.
- Condition 1 is less restrictive than Condition 2.
- Only the less restrictive of the two conditions needs to be met in order to comply with the law.
- Therefore the driver of a slow moving vehicle operating in the right-hand lane for traffic is in compliance with UVC 11-301(b).
In 1975, the NCUTLO Panel on Bicycle Laws came to the same interpretation when it considered what would be required of bicyclists on laned roads if the provision were deleted:
UVC 11-301(b) … will effectively require bicycles to stay in the right lane (although it will not require them to stay near the right edge of the roadway) when moving slower than other traffic.
Yet most people believe that it is OK to pass bicyclists without changing lanes, even when the lane is too narrow for a bicycle a vehicle to travel safely side by side. Also, people believe that cyclists are required to stay near the edge. Why is that, and how does it affect bicycling?
Do speed and might make right?
Notice that UVC 11-301 (slower traffic use right-hand lane or as close as practicable to the right) says nothing about a minimum speed for the slower driver. Before World War II, slow vehicles were still common on the roads. Deliveries of milk and other commodities in cities were still commonly made by horse and wagon. So any prohibition against driving too slowly would have to contain exceptions:12
UVC 11-804(a) No person shall drive a motor vehicle at such a slow speed as to impede the normal and reasonable movement of traffic except when reduced speed is necessary for safe operation or in compliance with law.
This law is commonly called the Minimum Speed Regulation. It was clearly not intended to prohibit slow moving vehicles from using streets and highways at all. For instance, at the time the provision was first adopted, trucks had solid rubber tires that prevented them from going as fast as cars. Now, technological advances allow trucks to go as fast as cars on level ground or downhills, although their limited power to weight ratio means that they still go slowly uphill. Clearly truckers going slowly uphill are not intentionally impeding other traffic, so the Minimum Speed Regulation is not applied to them. If it were, it would be tantamount to prohibiting trucks on uphill grades, which was clearly not the intent of the law.
Why is that same understanding not extended to bicyclists who, because of air resistance, are incapable of going as fast as cars on level ground? It is often assumed that because bicyclists are narrow they can get out of the way, and consequently that they must get out of the way.
Today it is virtually impossible to buy a motor vehicle that is incapable of going freeway speeds. That does not mean, though, that drivers of slower vehicles are no longer allowed to use the roads. In some places in Pennsylvania and Ohio, it is common to see Amish driving horse-drawn carriages. And Georgia’s Supreme Court found that the driver of corn combine going at its maximum speed of 15 mph was not violating that state’s Minimum Speed Regulation.13
In some states, the Minimum Speed Regulation omits the word “motor” and so applies to drivers of all vehicles, including bicyclists. In one of these states, Ohio, an appellate court found that a bicyclist using a full lane was not in violation of the law. The Ohio court compared the bicyclist to the corn combine in the Georgia case:14
In both cases, the vehicle was being operated at, or close to, the highest possible speed. In either case, holding the operator to have violated the slow speed statute would be tantamount to excluding operators of these vehicles from the public roadways, something that each legislative authority, respectively, has not clearly expressed an intention to do.
Still, many bicyclists are even today being found in violation of the Minimum Speed Regulation, even though they were traveling at or near their “highest possible speed.” Clearly, the wording of UVC 11-804(a) needs to be clarified so as not to apply to drivers of vehicles going at or near their maximum speed. For instance, bicycle advocates in Ohio recently changed that state’s Minimum Speed Regulation to explicitly say that drivers of vehicles being operated at, or close to, the highest possible speed are not impeding faster traffic.
As time went on and roads became more congested and speeds of motor vehicles increased, the number of horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians decreased. Some highway professionals saw that as a good thing. For instance, in 1950, Richard O. Bennett of the National Safety Council said:15
The modern automobile driver resents the presence on the streets of horse-drawn vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians, despite the fact that he may have been a driver of a horse-drawn vehicle, undoubtedly was a bicycle rider, and definitely is a pedestrian whenever he finds himself on the street sans motor vehicle. He considers these with whom he must share the road as monkey wrenches in the wheels of his progress, bunkers on the clear fairways that make up our highway system. Despite his resentment, the motorist must tolerate the walker, the cyclist, and the wagon. Not only must he tolerate them, he must learn to cooperate with them, give way to them, and help make it possible for them to go their ways in safety. They cannot be removed from the highway as an engineer would remove a hazardous obstruction.
Little is known about the number of animal-drawn vehicles in service today. It is known, however, that many domestic supply companies, such as dairies, ice and fuel distributors, fruit peddlers, and brewers have found it expedient to retain animal-drawn vehicles for door-to-door deliveries in densely populated urban areas. Some farmers with prejudices against motorized equipment or for economic reasons still depend on wagons and horses to transport farm products and for other purposes. … It is most fortunate in this era of high speeds and traffic congestion that the number of animal-drawn vehicles has diminished to this extent. Were it not so, our traffic accident situation would be much aggravated.
Today, almost no horse-drawn vehicles use our roads. Pedestrians are accommodated on sidewalks along roads and crosswalks to cross roads. That leaves mainly bicyclists for modern drivers to resent. Where do bicyclists belong on modern roads, almost all of which are divided into travel lanes?
1944
If you can’t keep up, you don’t belong (in the lane)
Until 1944, bicyclists on laned roads had the same lane use rights as other drivers. In that year, however, a new provision was added to the UVC requiring bicyclists to ride at the right edge of the roadway regardless of whether the road had lanes:16
UVC 11-1205 – Riding on roadways and bicycle paths
(a) Any person operating a bicycle upon a roadway shall ride as near to the right-hand side of the roadway as practicable, exercising due care when passing a standing vehicle or one proceeding in the same direction.
I have not been able to find any background on this addition, but we can be pretty sure that no bicyclists were involved in the discussion. The end of World War II was still a year away, and most people who would have cared were either in the service or otherwise occupied.
For those of you have spent all your life under this law, this change might seem minor, but denying bicyclists the right to use travel lanes like other drivers is actually the biggest legal challenge to bicycles using roads that has ever happened in the US.
Notice the similarity between the wording of this provision and the second half of UVC 11-301(b). The driver of a vehicle moving slower than other traffic has the option of either using the right-hand lane, or, if none, driving as far right as practicable. What UCV 11-1205 did was to deny all bicyclists, not only those moving slower than other traffic, the option of using the full right-hand travel lane.
Basically, this law requires bicyclists to ride “Far to the Right” (FTR), even if the road has lanes. What the FTR law did was to create a third class of road user. Before, there had been only two classes: drivers and pedestrians. But now a new class of bicyclist was created, one without the rights of either drivers or pedestrians. The UVC had clear and well-understood rules for drivers and pedestrians, but bicyclists were treated like drivers of vehicles except they were denied the right to full use of travel lanes like other drivers.
The UVC therefore gave bicyclists the superficial appearance of being drivers, but without the right to use travel lanes like drivers. Although a travel lane is intended for a single line of vehicles, bicyclists were told that they could not use travel lanes like real drivers. Bicyclists were told they had to ride at the right edge and if they strayed from the edge, they were doing so at their own peril. Bicyclists were now officially second-class road users.
The UVC gives no reason for this new restriction on bicyclists, and I have been unable to find any from other sources. But what I have found about the FTR laws in a couple of states give clues. New York’s FTR law says that its purpose is to “prevent undue interference with the flow of traffic.”17
And when California adopted its FTR law in 1963, the California Highway Patrol, which sponsored the legislation, wrote a memo to the governor requesting his signature with this reasoning:Memo from CHP requesting that Governor sign AB 1296, May 9, 1963.18
This will enable the development of a more effective safety program when the youngsters can see the simple and clear cut rules they are to obey.
In effect, the CHP was saying that the ordinary rules of the road were too complicated for “youngsters” (there were virtually no adult cyclists at the time) to obey. In reality, the result of the new provision has been the exact opposite of being “simple and clear cut,” a fact that was illustrated in an educational film from the 1950’s warning children of the danger of riding next to a right turning car, inviting what came to be known as a right hook. It was not until a large number of adults began bicycling during the “bike boom” of the early 1970’s that the actual effect of the new provision became clear. In 1975, the NCUTLO Panel on Bicycle Laws wrote:19
UVC § 11-1205(a) requires bicyclists to ride as close as practicable to the right hand side of the roadway. This provision is very unpopular with bicyclists for a number of reasons. It treats the bicyclist as a second class road user who does not really have the same rights enjoyed by other drivers but who is tolerated as long as he uses a bare minimum of roadway space at the side of the road. The provision is also frequently misunderstood by bicyclists, motorists, policemen and even, unfortunately, judges. The provision requires the bicyclist to be as close to the side of the road as is practicable, which we all understand to mean possible, safe and reasonable. But many people apparently don’t understand the significance of the word practicable, and read the law as requiring a constant position next to the curb. Even where the significance of the word practicable is recognized, the bicyclist is exposed to the danger of policemen and judges who may have a different idea about what is possible, safe and reasonable, and he is exposed to the very real danger of motorists who, because of their misconception of this law, will expect the bicyclist to stay next to the curb and will treat him with hostility if he moves away from that position.
The side of the road is a very dangerous place to ride. The bicyclist is not nearly as visible here as he is out in the center of a lane. Also there is reason to believe that motorists don’t respect a bicycle as a vehicle when it is hugging the side of the road. It is at the side of the road where all the dirt, broken glass, wire, hub caps, rusty mufflers, and other road debris collects, and it is hazardous to try to ride through this mess. Storm sewer grates are generally at the side of the road. The roadway is frequently less well maintained in this position. Also, in urban areas there is frequently a dangerous ridge where the roadway pavement meets the gutter, and the bicyclist must try to ride parallel with this ridge without hitting it. A bicyclist riding near the right edge of the roadway is also in substantially greater danger from vehicles cutting in front of him to turn right than is the bicyclist who rides out in the middle of the right lane.
Despite the widespread misperception that it is dangerous for bicycles to mix with motor vehicles (as well as the desire to facilitate overtaking by faster traffic), what the proponents of this new provision apparently did not realize was that relegating bicyclists to the edge of the road increased the risk for the following types of crashes:
- Right hooks
- Left crosses
- Driveway and intersection pull-outs
- Sideswipes and rear ends during overtaking maneuvers
- Door zone crashes
- Road edge hazards
- Walk-outs
I was one of the new adult bicyclists who started bicycling during the “bike boom” of the early 1970s, and soon thereafter became involved in bicycling advocacy. During one of my first organized rides, I recall a group of us approaching a red traffic signal when one rider started to pass some stopped cars on the right. I distinctly remember a more experienced rider yelling, “Never pass a right turning car on the right!” That was my first exposure to the possibility that bicyclists need not expose themselves to unnecessary danger by hugging the curb.
1968
Motorcyclists, but not bicyclists, are entitled to full use of a lane
The NCUTLO took a very different approach to motorcyclists and travel lanes. On an unlaned road, of course, any driver, including a motorcyclist, who is traveling slower than other traffic is required to drive as far right as practicable. But since a motorcycle is narrow, the question arises about whether a motorcyclist is entitled to full use of a lane.
20In 1968 the NCUTLO decided to grant motorcyclists the full use of lanes by adopting this provision:
UVC § 11-1303 – Operating motorcycles on roadways laned for traffic
(a) All motorcycles, other than mopeds, are entitled to full use of a lane and no motor vehicle shall be driven in such a manner as to deprive any motorcycle of the full use of a lane. This subsection shall not apply to motorcycles operated two abreast in a single lane.
(b) The operator of a motorcycle shall not overtake and pass in the same lane occupied by the vehicle being overtaken. This subsection shall not apply to a motorcyclist passing a bicycle, to the driver of a moped, nor to a police officer in the performance of the officer’s duties.
(c) No person shall operate a motorcycle between lanes of traffic or between adjacent lines or rows of vehicles. This subsection shall not apply to police officers in the performance of their duties.
(d) Motorcycles shall not be operated more than two abreast in a single lane.
Lane position is important to motorcyclists – so much so that it is taught in training classes. Since many law enforcement officers are also motorcyclists and have undergone that training, they understand how important full use of a lane is for motorcyclists. These law enforcement officers know that it would be silly to expect a slow-moving motorcyclist to use the right edge of the right lane.
The contrast with bicycles is notable. Even though bicycles are lighter and less robust than motorcycles, the NCUTLO believed that motorcyclists, but not bicyclists, should be entitled to use a full lane, meaning that bicyclists did not deserve the same protections as motorcyclists.
1975
Bicycles once again defined as vehicles, but still not entitled to use of a full lane
In 1975, the NCUTLO Panel on Bicycle Laws made two major recommendations: that bicycles be defined as vehicles and that the bicyclist-specific FTR law be repealed. The panel considered but rejected a proposal to extend the provision entitling motorcyclists to use the full lane to bicyclists. The full NCUTLO accepted the recommendation to define bicycles as vehicles but decided to leave in place the bicyclist-specific FTR law. This was another disaster for bicyclists.
Due to the way the UVC had developed over the years, changing the definition of vehicle to include bicycles was not simple. Numerous other changes had to be made to provisions related to things like sidewalk bicycles, criminal and civil liability, etc. Perhaps due to the complexity of changing their laws, few states have followed suit, so little has actually changed as a result. Even in states that do define bicycles as vehicles, roads are still seen as motor thoroughfares and bicyclists as interlopers. That experience has made it clear that even though changes in the law are necessary for bicyclists to be seen as legitimate users of the road, such changes are not sufficient. It has been so long since bicycles were defined as vehicles that it will take a lot of effort for highway engineers, law enforcement officers, judges, and the public to see bicycles once again as vehicles.
The discussion among the panel members came down to these opposing viewpoints:
Some members of the Panel expressed concern that a bicycle could ride anywhere in the right lane, and that where this is the only lane available, this would hold up traffic unnecessarily. Others noted that such an obstruction is no more than any other slow moving vehicle would cause when there is only one lane for the direction of traffic, and that the bicyclist should have no greater duty to pull over than any other driver of a slow moving vehicle. Most bicyclists will pull over as far as they think is reasonable and safe. They will not maliciously obstruct traffic, even though the law may entitle them to do so, because they are very much unprotected and they are unlikely to thumb their noses at several tons of steel kicking at their heels. Nevertheless, it should be left to the bicyclist to determine when he should pull over on the basis of his perception of what is safe and reasonable. If he has a good reason for not pulling over, he should be allowed to stay out in the lane, and the law should not suggest to other drivers that they have a legal right to substitute their judgment for the bicyclist’s and demand that he pull over.
Unfortunately, during the meeting of the full NCUTLO in November 1975, the viewpoint opposing the deletion of the bicyclist-specific FTR provision prevailed.
The proposal to extend the provision entitling bicyclists to use of the full lane did not even make it through the bicycle panel:
Motorcyclists are entitled to the use of a full lane and can’t lawfully be passed within that lane. Shouldn’t bicycles have the same right? The difference, of course, is potential speed — the motorcycle can keep up with traffic while the bicycle often cannot. One Panel member nevertheless favored the motorcycle rule for bicycles. Where speed differential is high there is even greater need for vehicles to leave the lane to pass a bicycle. When they pass too close it creates a vacuum which makes control of the bicycle difficult. Others noted that the Code requires passing at a safe distance, and that there are lots of conditions under which cars can pass bicycles safely in the same lane, such as where the car is small and the lane is wide. The Panel decided to recommend no change.
So, the decision made in 1975 was that even though bicycles are vehicles, bicyclists themselves are not entitled to the same right to use of a full lane as drivers of vehicles are.
Exceptions to the FTR law are better than nothing, right?
With the failure of the attempt to delete the bicyclist-specific FTR provision, attention next turned to clarifying what was meant by having to ride “as near to the right-hand side of the roadway as practicable”. In 1979, the NCUTLO decided to adopt amendments intended to clarify the FTR law. These amendments had originally been developed by the California Statewide Bicycle Committee in 1974 and became law in January 1976.
I was one of many bicycling advocates who took part in that effort. Our intent was to make it clear when bicyclists were not required to ride at the edge. Here is what we came up with:
UVC § 11-1205 – Position on roadway (a) Any person operating a bicycle or a moped upon a roadway at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway except under any of the following situations:
1. When overtaking and passing another bicycle or vehicle proceeding in the same direction.
2. When preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.
3. When reasonably necessary to avoid conditions including but not limited to: fixed or moving objects; parked or moving vehicles; bicycles; pedestrians; animals; surface hazards; or substandard width lanes that make it unsafe to continue along the right-hand curb or edge. For purposes of this section, a “substandard width lane” is a lane that is too narrow for a bicycle and a motor vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane.
4. When riding in the right-turn-only lane. [Added in 2000.]
This time, the NCUTLO documented the reason for the change:21
The proper position for a bicyclist on a roadway has been misunderstood by bicyclists, police officers, and judges. There clearly is a need for a special rule to replace the inadequate description designed for motorists in UVC §11-301(b). The 1979 revision closely follows an earlier change in the laws of California which was based on a study of its laws.
The opinion that UVC § 11-301(b) is intended for motorists is a mystery, as the 1975 NCUTLO Panel on Bicycle Laws had clearly described the intent in its report.
Although the exceptions should have clarified the situations when bicyclists were not required to ride as far right as practicable, that fact is not well known. Until this year, for instance, the CHP Redi-Ref guide only mentioned that there were exceptions to the FTR law without actually listing them.22
And a police captain told me a couple of years ago that bicyclists can never “stray” from the right edge of the roadway. All across the country, bicyclists who do stray from the right edge of the roadway are being cited and convicted. Thus our efforts to lessen restrictions on bicyclists’ lane use rights failed.
NOW
No room on the road for bicycles
Like millions of other children, I was taught to ride my bicycle at the right edge of the road. When I started riding seriously as an adult, I continued to ride the same way. I simply accepted the commonplace thinking that bicycles should not mix with cars and that I should stay as far from cars as possible. Thus when I started my bicycling advocacy, I remember thinking, “I need to do something about the fact that there’s no room on the road for bicycles.”
That attitude wasn’t always commonplace. When bicyclists won equal access to all roads in the 1890’s, they weren’t worried whether there was enough room on the road for bicycles. Since roads were built for carriages and wagons, every road had plenty of room for bicycles. All vehicles were governed by the same rules of the road, including the requirement for slower vehicles to be driven near the right-hand edge of the road. Bicyclists weren’t affected much by that law, since they were usually faster than the horse-drawn vehicles which dominated the roads at the time. But as motor vehicles became popular, bicycles went from being the fastest vehicles on the road to the slowest, and so were relegated to the right edge most of the time. But then, lanes were invented and shortly thereafter bicyclists were denied the right to use them. Despite the introduction of the exceptions to the bicyclist-specific FTR law, most people today believe as I once did, that bicyclists cannot stray from the right edge of the road. Indeed, most people believe that bicycles should never mix with motor vehicles at all.
With the exceptions added to UVC § 11-1205 being largely unrecognized, where are we? Edge riding leads to close passes (what some people call being buzzed), which is scary. And many crashes result between edge riding bicyclists and passing motorists, some leading to the death of the bicyclist. But bicyclists who ride in the travel lane are resented by motorists, who sometimes bully the bicyclist, as in my story at the beginning of this article. The danger of riding at the edge and the fear of bullying have made bicycling relatively rare in most places in the US. Most people believe, like I once did, that there is “no room on the road for bicycles”.
The reasons given for requiring bicyclists to ride at the right edge were bicyclist safety and to facilitate passing by faster traffic. Inevitably, as they got older, children stopped using bicycles for transportation and once they got a driver’s license, never bicycled for transportation again.
For their part, highway professionals in the U.S. never thought much about building roads to accommodate bicyclists riding at the edge (or anywhere else, for that matter). Their design vehicle was a large truck, but they gave no thought to how the roads would accommodate bicyclists. Today, roads are built as though they were motorways, with high speed limits, multiple lanes, widely spread intersections, and high speed merges and diverges. No wonder people believe that roads are for cars. Traffic law already requires slower drivers to use the right lane, but bicyclists don’t even have that right.
If a road has a paved shoulder or a bike lane or a sidepath or a sidewalk, then is a bicyclist who chooses to use a travel lane guilty of impeding faster traffic? A court in Texas found that a bicyclist using a travel lane on a high speed rural highway with what some people said was a “perfectly rideable shoulder” was guilty of reckless driving.23
Keri Caffrey and Dan Gutierrez have written:24
Cyclists inadvertently, or forced by the combination of ill-conceived infrastructure and/or discriminatory laws, make it more difficult for motorists to do the right thing. The resulting conflict creates the animosity between cyclists and motorists with both thinking the other careless and stupid.
Is the FTR law discriminatory against bicyclists? When I ask this question of law enforcement officers, they insist that the FTR law is attribute-based, as though bicyclists were always slower than other traffic and that other narrow slow moving vehicles also had to drive at the right edge of the road. But what other slow moving vehicles are there these days? Horses have disappeared, and virtually all motor vehicles are capable of freeway speeds. What the law enforcement officers are expressing is a prejudice in favor of faster motor vehicles, and that because bicyclists are narrow and can safely (in their view) get out of the way, that’s what they must do in order to facilitate the movement of faster vehicles.
What the law enforcement officers don’t realize is that such FTR thinking is incompatible with the whole idea of travel lanes.
FTR thinking and laned roads are incompatible
FTR thinking permeates every aspect of bicycling on public streets and highways. What follows is a listing of what happens when bicyclists engage in FTR thinking:
Edge behavior
- Overtaking slower traffic on the right
- Creating two lines of traffic in one lane
- Being hidden from opposing left-turning drivers
- Inviting motorists to overtake without changing lanes
- Inviting motorists to overtake on the left before turning right
- Riding in the door zone where parking is permitted, otherwise in the gutter
- Riding through surface hazards
- Making left turns from the right edge of the road
- Jumping onto the sidewalk and riding in the crosswalk to overtake stopped or slow vehicles
- Infrastructure
- Bikes May Use Full Lane signs
- Shared lane markings (sharrows)
- Share the Road signs
- Bike lanes
- Bike boxes
- Two-stage left-turn queue boxes
- Separated bikeways
- Sidepaths
Education
- Teaching children to ride FTR
- Treating bicyclists as though they were incapable of learning or following the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles
- Teaching people that being hit from the rear is the greatest danger
- Thinking of travel lanes as “car lanes”
- Thinking of roads as being intended only for cars
- Enforcement
- Teaching children to ride FTR
- Treating bicyclists as though they were incapable of learning or following the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles
- Teaching people that being hit from the rear is the greatest danger
- Thinking of travel lanes as “car lanes”
- Thinking of roads as being intended only for cars
Legislation
If bicyclists don’t feel that they have the same right to use lanes as drivers of vehicles, then why should they feel like they have the same duties as drivers of vehicles? That kind of rationalization leads to the following unlawful behaviors:
- Riding the wrong way
- Running stop signs
- Not stopping for red lights
- Not yielding to pedestrians in crosswalks
- Not using lights at night
FTR thinking causes bicyclists to act like victims and not to be aware of how their own behavior affects their risk. Bicyclists don’t know what the real risks are or how to avoid them, leading to a misjudgment of the actual risks and to the following types of collisions:
- Sideswipes
- Right hooks
- Left crosses
- Drive-outs
FTR thinking distorts the way that bicyclists and motorists think of courtesy:
- Bicyclists using travel lanes are viewed as being rude
- Bicyclists see courtesy as being more important than their own safety
FTR thinking reduces bicyclist use of high speed or high traffic roads
FTR thinking leads bicycle advocates to:
- Promote bicycle facilities that are inconsistent with the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles
- Favor segregation
- Refer to general purpose travel lanes as “car lanes”
- Think of being pro-bicycle as the same as being pro-separation
Finally, FTR thinking has resulted in many, if not most people growing up with the belief that roads are for motor vehicles. Roads for motor vehicles do exist, of course – they are what Americans call freeways or tollways and Europeans call motorways, Autobahns, autopistas, . But FTR thinking causes highway engineers to treat conventional streets and highways (on which bicycle travel is explicitly permitted) as if they were motorways (on which bicycle travel is explicitly prohibited).
It is now generally accepted that if bicyclists cannot keep up, then both for their own safety and for the good of society they must either ride at the right edge of the road or on the sidewalk or bike path – or not at all. It is as if every street and road is a motorway, with the understanding that bicyclists are tolerated only as long as they stay out of the way of “real” traffic. The victory that the LAW celebrated in 1897 was for bicyclists to use the roads the same as other drivers, but once bicyclists were denied the right to use travel lanes like drivers of other vehicles, they were no longer a “normal” part of traffic.
What do we do now?
Suppose there were a law that required bicyclists to endanger and inconvenience themselves for the benefit of drivers in faster vehicles.
Well, there is such a law – it’s the FTR law requiring bicyclists to ride as close as practicable to the right edge of the roadway. And we do have bicyclists who accept that law and routinely ride much further to the right than is practicable. And we do have motorists and police officers and judges and legislators who see that system as just.
But there’s also a law that says bicyclists have the same rights and duties as drivers of vehicles. If drivers of other vehicles who are traveling slower than other traffic don’t have to drive at the right edge of the right lane, then why should bicyclists? That contradiction within the laws needs to be addressed.
The FTR law has led to a dysfunctional set of beliefs related to bicycling. Keri Caffrey writes:25
Beliefs are the number one impediment to cycling. The belief that it is too dangerous. The belief that it is too difficult. The belief that human beings driving different types of vehicles can’t coexist on unadulterated roads.
The belief was created by motordom in the 1920s, has been the dysfunctional doctrine of “safety material” for almost a century, and now is being perpetuated by shortsighted bike advocates in the name of getting more asses on saddles.
The FTR law needs to be repealed in order to once again give bicyclists the same rights and duties as other drivers. Unfortunately, since that law has been on the books longer than most of the readers of this article have been alive, most people see the law as normal and reasonable. But it is not. It is the result of the mistaken idea that bicyclists cannot control travel lanes. Not only is the idea that bicyclists cannot or should not control travel lanes responsible for the FTR law, it is also responsible for low mode share. FTR thinking leads to the belief that bicyclists controlling travel lanes is somehow rude or more dangerous than riding at the edge of the road or on the sidewalk.
Along with repealing the FTR law, we need to encourage cities, counties and states to design roads and to install traffic control devices that recognize bicyclists as having full lane use rights. Instead of designing only for fast motor vehicles, highway engineers need to design streets and highways for a variety of speeds. On all streets and highways where bicycling is permitted, we need squared-off intersections that encourage motorists to drive more slowly and yield to bicyclists instead of high speed ramps that discourage yielding to slower bicyclists. Instead of the Share the Road sign, we need to expand use of the Bikes May Use Full Lane sign. Instead of shared lane markings (what some people call sharrows) in the gutter or in the door zone, we need them in the middle of the lane.
But the first step is repealing the FTR law. As long as the FTR law is on the books, bicyclists will continue to be marginalized and denied full lane use rights.
Also, along with repealing the FTR law, we need better education. For instance, instead of telling children to stay out of the way of cars, we need to teach them how to interact with motorists as drivers of vehicles. By teaching school children how to drive their bicycles in traffic, they will have a jump start on learning how to drive cars better when they grow up.
Footnotes
- Court Decisions, Legal Opinions &c. regarding the Rights of Cyclists in Streets, Parks, &c., League of American Wheelmen, Boston, 1897, retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- William Phelps Eno, Street Traffic Regulation, The Rider and Driver Publishing Co., New York, 1909. retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- Report of the Panel on Bicycle Laws and Supplementary Agenda for the Subcommittee on Operations, National Committee on Uniform Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C., January 27, 1975. ↩︎
- Peter D. Norton, Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City , MIT Press, 2008. ↩︎
- Inventor of highway centerline receives international honor, Michigan Department of Transportation, retrieved 2024-08=04 ↩︎
- The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- A Policy on Geometric Design of Streets and Highways, Sixth Edition, American Association of Street and Highway Transportation Officials, Washington, D.C., 2011. ↩︎
- Millennium Edition of the Uniform Vehicle Code, National Committee on Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C. ↩︎
- 11th Edition of the MUTCD, December 2023, Federal Highway Administration, Washington, D.C., Chapter 2B ↩︎
- Traffic Laws Annotated, National Committee on Uniform Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C., 1979. retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- Fred Oswald, Ratings — Local Bicycle Traffic Ordinances. retrieved 2016-03-05 ↩︎
- Traffic Laws Annotated, National Committee on Uniform Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C., 1979. retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- Smith v. Lott, et al., Georgia Supreme Court, 1980. retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- Trotwood v. Selz, Court of Appeals of Ohio, Second District, Montgomery County, 2000. retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- Jean Labatut and Wheaton J. Lane, eds., Highways in our national life; a symposium, Princeton University Press, 1950, retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- Uniform Vehicle Code, National Committee on Uniform Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C., 1968 ↩︎
- Laws of New York, Vehicles and Traffic,Title 7, Article 34 §1234, retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- Memo from CHP requesting that Governor sign AB 1296, May 9, 1963. ↩︎
- Report of the Panel on Bicycle Laws and Supplementary Agenda for the Subcommittee on Operations, National Committee on Uniform Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C., January 27, 1975. ↩︎
- Traffic Laws Annotated, National Committee on Uniform Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C., 1979. retrieved 2024-08-04 ↩︎
- Supplement to Traffic Laws Annotated, National Committee on Uniform Laws and Ordinances, Washington, D.C., 1979. ↩︎
- Redi-Ref, California Highway Patrol, Sacramento, CA, various years. ↩︎
- Cycle Dallas: Reed Bates found Guilty of “Reckless Driving”. retrieved 5/12/2013. The Cycle Dallas blog is no more and that page was not archived. But see this and this. ↩︎
- Private communication, November 4, 2012. ↩︎
- Private communication, May 16, 2012. ↩︎
Nice article and great historical references. The author’s of the original (1944) FTR law apparently intended for the provision to trump the rules on passing. The phrase “exercising due care when passing a standing vehicle or one proceeding in the same direction” sounds like they were intending that bicyclists always pass on the RIGHT. They also probably intended it to trump the rule on making left turns, but they didn’t say that explicitly. There are still several states which have this original 1944 rule.
As someone who has lived an bicycled for more than 20 years in a state without any FTR rule, I can safely say that there is a real difference in the lack of prosecution for the offence of failing to keep to the right, compared with states that do have this law.
For those that may be interested in seeing which states have FTR laws or other problematic laws for bicyclists, please go to this link on the I Am Traffic website showing all the laws in each state. Additionally, there tabs to the left for examining different types of laws, singly:
https://iamtraffic.org/advocacy-focus-areas/equality/u-s-bicycle-laws-by-state/
It’s important to realize that when bicyclists were formally placed under the vehicular laws governing carriages in the 1890s, they were also then subject to the same speed limits — single digit speed limits within the cities, generally speaking. Anybody rolling faster than that was labeled a “scorcher” and could be arrested and thrown in jail. Not being a reasonable rule for bicyclists, single-digit speed limits were widely ignored, despite the threat of jail for “scorchers.” This move put cyclists outside the law, not within it. Cities used the new laws, which also included draconian bell and lantern regulations, in attempts to harass cyclists off the streets entirely, setting the stage for a decade of crackdowns by police and mass protests by angry bicyclists. It was a bad move, despite the LAW’s self-congratulatory blather about cyclists’ rights. It didn’t have to be that way. The man who volunteered cyclists to travel at walking speeds in cities, drafting the single-digit speed limit laws, LAW’s Isaac Potter, was an old-fashioned rider from the high-wheeler era, who was uncomfortable with the safety bicycle and its capabilities, and who seemed to hate the new generation of riders. Cyclists were saddled to his faulty vision of the walking-speed high-wheeling park cruiser until the automobile came along and changed the speed limits.
I never felt safer riding a bike to work than in Taegu, S.Korea in the 90’s. Other Americans marveled at what they thought was my courage or my stupidity because the streets looked so chaotic. The other reason they thought it was stupid to ride a bike was because every body knew Koreans were BAD drivers. In fact, I never, in two years, came close to an accident with car. I eventually realized that the fact that Koreans were bad drivers and the fact that it was safe to ride a bike were the same. Very few Koreans had cars before the modernization of the country after the Olympics in 1988. In the 89’s they still had a bicycle mentality. I called it empathy. It was only a few years since they were in my seat and they gave me the respect they would have wanted for themselves. I would expect that Bejing,China would be the same right now because in the 90s almost everybody rode a bicycle to work.
So, it’s not about laws or lane painting. It’s about empathy and there just isn’t much of it around for bicyclists in America.
Thanks for this, Dan–hopefully some closed minds will be cracked wide open from reading this.
About my only gripe with this article is the negative attitude towards path-advocates. We should have both bike paths and full road rights. Where cars are a widely available option (i.e., in the present, not a century ago), the only thing yet shown to get a serious number of asses in saddles is very nice, often separated, infrastructure, and asses in saddles matters. But at the same time, we should have rights to use the roads; from a public-space/social-harm/public-health perspective, any time cars mix with unarmored people, they are decidedly inferior to bicycles. Outside of interstate highways, cars should be treated as second-class vehicles.
One useful purpose that paths already serve is to illustrate the difference between sharing space with bicycles and sharing space with cars, and how inferior cars are from the POV of consuming public space. I often use the Minuteman Trail to commute. It’s a 12-foot wide strip of asphalt, or one modern standard car lane. It’s easy to fit 3 bicycles in that lane with one going the opposite direction, and it’s common to see pairs of pedestrians, joggers, dog walkers, and (very) small children learning to ride bicycles. There’s a woman in town who is blind and walks on the trail, often chatting on her cell phone as she walks, no problem. One 12-foot lane, often decently heavy bike traffic, yet people feel quite okay letting their kids doodle on bikes in that space. Until this is also true of roads in general, I’d argue that drivers are insufficiently regulated and insufficiently careful.
This also suggests that those parts of the vehicular code designed to ensure car safety-for-others are overkill for cyclists. It’s clearly not necessary for a bicycle to stop for safety if there is a pedestrian in a 12-foot lane — hundreds, if not thousands of times every day, they share space on that path, with little-to-no-conflict (yes, I slow down, depending on what is in front of me — dogs and small children have me down to 10mph, where normal homeward speed is just shy of 20mph, and a crowd of high-school kids with hockey or lacrosse sticks is cause for some serious “hey, behind you!”).
Robert Hurst: I found no evidence of single digit speed limits in the late 1899’s or early 1900’s. In fact, the rules of the road published by Eno for NYC in 1903 make no mention of them, nor does Eno say anything about them in his book, Street Traffic Regulation, published in 1907.
Where did you find information about single digit speed limits?
Since, as you say, single digit speed limits were repealed as automobiles started to dominate the roads, which is also about the time lane lines were invented, why do you think discussion of single digit speed limits is relevant to the history of how bicyclists lost their lane use rights?
Yes, empathy may have something to do with the willingness of motorists to tolerate bicyclists who are riding in the travel lane. But the video on how cycle tracks became predominant in the Netherlands says that as cities were being changed to accommodate the automobile in the 1960’s (and presumably lanes were being striped), there were fewer bicyclists on the roads. If any motorists in the world were empathetic to bicyclists, it was the Dutch. And even there, bicyclists were expected to get out of the way of cars.
Your experience in Korea is interesting. Where on the street did you ride in Korea, and were the streets laned or unlaned?
In traffic engineering terms, what you describe is a “shared use path” for the use of both bicyclists and pedestrians. As the number of pedestrians increases, the level of service for bicyclists decreases.
The bikeway standards created in the 1970’s recommended against bike paths parallel to a street or highway. Bike paths were seen as being on separate rights of way through a woodland or along a brookside.
Today, though, we are seeing a proliferation of bike paths within street rights of way. Some of these are called “protected bike lanes” (a misnomer, since bike lanes by definition are delineated by a stripe) and cycle tracks.
The problem with such facilities is that their installation is based on the observation that bicyclists and cars don’t mix, which is not true. That most people, including those that might ride bikes, believe that bicyclists must stay out of the way of cars. It is that mistaken belief that is the cause of low modal share and must be fought.
I am arguing more for what has been demonstrated to work, e.g., in the Netherlands — their paths are, as I read and see in videos and pictures, not shared-use. We here in the US are the world experts at not-cycling; look at our ride share, look at our crash death rate. What that also means is all our examples are negative; US-based studies merely compare different levels of awful.
And I think my points about why automobiles ought to be second-class still stand, and the shared-use paths, even if they will fail to scale to a high rate of cycling, still generate interesting data. I see this article as a useful move in that direction — for sure, bicycles should not have second-class status — but I suspect it might also be yet another take at making excuses for the failure of vehicular cycling as public policy: “if not for those dratted pro-car laws, why, we’d beat the Dutch in ride share and safety”. We’ve been doing VC for about 40 years; I was there at the start, and was gung-ho for decades. But I cannot help but notice that it has failed to fill the roads with bicycles, and I cannot help but notice that it is often far more relaxing to *not* “share” the road with cars.
You are also imputing a motive that is incorrect. I don’t advocate for paths because “cars and bikes don’t mix”; as a former enthusiastic VCist, I have all the skills, know all the risks, and all the moves, and will ride in traffic when it suits me. But I also know that I am a member of a minority of the 1% that regularly commutes by bicycle. I advocate for paths because where paths were done right, bicycle trip shares typically exceed 30%, and ride shares that we would regard as high here in the US (18%), they see as a problem to address ( http://bikeportland.org/2013/06/06/in-rotterdam-a-peak-at-dutch-road-design-in-an-american-style-city-873 ).
So, remember two things: theory gives way to data, and you can’t read my mind, or anyone else’s.
I see. You personally believe that cars and bikes can mix but you’ve chosen to advocate for people who prefer to ride on a bike path. Have you ever considered WHY those folks prefer riding on a bike path? Isn’t it because they believe that cars and bikes don’t mix? After all, if they believed that bikes and cars can mix, wouldn’t they be riding on the road?
You personally believe that bikes and cars can mix, but you advocate for people who think otherwise. I would call that a distinction without a difference.
Also, what’s more important to you: butts on bikes or bicyclists’ rights to use roads, including travel lanes?
Since I know I’m not a mind reader, I don’t spend too much time worrying about why most people prefer to ride bikes on paths. I’ve heard from a few that they don’t enjoy sharing space with cars (“not safe”, “scary”, “intimidating”), but that was neither a large nor a random sample. Do note, not a single one of my small, non-random sample said “bikes and cars don’t mix”, so as it stands the only evidence I have that anyone believes that is your claim that some people believe that, and since we have some evidence that you imagine you can read minds, there might not be any data behind that at all, not even a small non-random sample. (I’m a big fan of arguing from facts, and I don’t much like this bit of imputing motives and forcing choices. You should stop doing that. This history in this article is interesting. The shared path experiences are interesting. Dutch bike trip shares are eye-opening. What you imagine someone thinks, is not.)
I didn’t realize that a choice was required. The right to travel is very basic — considered so obvious that it was not carried forward from the Articles of Confederation into our Constitution. At the same time, as long as we remain a 1% minority, getting that right properly recognized is going to be a very tough slog. We need both.
Referring to cycletracks, you state “their installation is based on the observation that bicyclists and cars don’t mix, which is not true.”
I can’t speak for everyone else, but for me this is false. This is the reason for the popularity of such facilities, not the reason for their installation. The reason for the installation of such facilities is that they are very popular with the public. They increase cycling rates without increasing injury rates. This is why I support them.
I, too, find it unfortunate that the actual point of the article, the need to repeal laws that push cyclists to the right of the road, is conflated with the vehicularists-versus-bike lanes issue. I agree that such laws need to be repealed and think that the author made a good case, but nearly stopped reading because I thought this article was just another vehicularist manifesto with nothing new to say.
The problem with many segregated bike paths is they aren’t totally segregated they mix At conflict points usually. Tossing both participants into each others path with out any warning. If I wanted that conflict I would ride on the sidewalk. Granted I like multi-use paths. They are usually by streams. Sometimes it is fun to pull off the path and watch the turtles or geese. If the Ganders aren’t coming after you cause you got to close to their young. Though most segregated bike paths, cycle tracks or sidewalks. will Increase your safety from the extremely rare chance of an overtaking accident. Alone this would be good although unnecessary. The problem is that this unnecessary improvement in safety comes with a penalty to you safety at intersections which are much more dangerous and where a boon to your safety is needed way more than a penalty.
The article isn’t shared use anti-path. In fact it makes no mention of shared use paths as undesirable, rather it portrays their desirability as a result of many bicyclists not believing that they belong on the road. That’s different than anti-path advocacy. Neither of the authors is a “vehicualrist”, whatever that means, though I suspect it is a reference to Forester’s ideology, one which we do not share. I don’t train transportation professionals to improve bike lane and path designs in order to oppose such facilities, quite the opposite, so please keep in mind that my goal is to restore bicyclists driver rights and ensure that professionals are following state laws, policies and standards.
One of the huge difficulties I see from my vantage working with Caltrans, police and local agencies in CA, is that many are ignorant of bicyclists rights, and even more actually think bicyclists should have less rights than motorcyclists or dual track motorists (and this is NOT CA unique, it happens in all US states). That is one of the reasons why so many bike lanes are discontinuous, and paths are fragmented and have deadly bollards at the entrances/exits, why so many road designs are made much more hostile to bicyclists than they could be, since if bicyclists are not lane users and we don’t need to consider them in designs, then we can add all manner of high speed features, like dual right turn lanes, etc., and just pretend bicyclists don’t exist. No group can hope to have equal rights when discriminatory laws are on the books, so eliminating such laws is the first step toward treating bicyclists as an expected and respected part of traffic.
To do that we need to make sure bicyclists are aware of the history of how their rights were taken away by motoring interests.
In the article is is implied that “FTR thinking” is not a good thing and that the following are among the results of “FTR thinking”: Bike lanes, Bike boxes, Separated bikeways and Shared-use paths
Seems pretty anti bike lane, anti-bike path and anti-cycletrack to me.
Also, in the timeline, the authors state “1897: In the beginning, bicycles were vehicles and bicyclists were drivers.” By contrast, the LAW quote from that era refers to people who ride bicycles as “cyclers.” Because is common for vehicularists to carry on about cyclists being “drivers of vehicles,” it is hardly surprising that people interpret the substitution of “drivers” for “cyclers” as vehicularist revisionism.
If what you claim were an intrinsic property of separated facilities (and also a significant cause of crashes), then the Dutch would have higher-risk cycling than we do, but they don’t — their crash mortality risk is about 1/4 to 1/5 of ours. Yes, there are “other factors”, but what this proves is that path-induced risk cannot be very large — in particular, it cannot exceed 25% of our existing risk.
In the case of the shared-use path I often use (Minuteman Trail), it has only a handful of intersections, most are low-traffic, and all are marked and obvious. There is substantial ambiguity at some high-traffic intersections were it is unclear if a bicycle is a pedestrian or a vehicle traversing the crosswalk (so does the cross traffic stop, or not?) but that mostly leads to delay, not crashes, as people engage in fumbling after-you behavior (to resolve ambiguity, I walk).
The dooring risk on the path is zero. The right hook risk on the path is zero. The driveway risk is zero. Those are all risks that are larger than the overtaking risk, and on the separate, rail-trail path that I often use, they are all zero, without requiring any care or training on my part.
The L.A.W. quote says, “the bicycle … is universally recognized as a carriage, and may travel with impunity wherever any carriage does.” The person who operates a carriage is called a driver, right? Well, if a bicycle is a carriage, then the person who operates a bicycle must also be a driver (as well as a “cycler”). How is that “revisionism”?
This is silly. All I’m saying is that you could get more support for your idea of repealing FTR laws if you would be careful to avoid conflating it with the divisive vehicularists-versus-bike lanes issue.
That this issue is a distraction seems clear to me since, elsewhere in this same comment section, people are arguing about protected bike lanes (or whatever you state in the article you want us to call them instead of what everyone else is calling them).
As I already said, I think this article otherwise presents a good case for repealing the FTR laws. I hope that effort succeeds. Now that I’ve reached the point where I am repeating myself, it is time for me to shut up. I wish you success in your effort to repeal the FTR laws.
Since you did not reply to my explanation of why the operator of a bicycle can be both a “cycler” and a driver at the same time, can I presume that I have addressed that concern and that you no longer consider that to be a case of “revisionism”?
Perhaps the confusion is over the meaning of the word “driver”. When I talk about the operator of a motor vehicle, I say “motorist” (even though a “driver’s license” is required to drive one). The operator of a vehicle is a “driver” (no license is required if the vehicle is not a motor vehicle). The operator of a bicycle is both a “bicyclist” and a “driver” (no license required).
In the article it is implied that “FTR thinking” is not a good thing and that the following are among the results of “FTR thinking”: Bike lanes, Bike boxes, Separated bikeways and Shared-use paths
Seems pretty anti bike lane, anti-bike path and anti-cycletrack to me.
Just becasue something seems “anti-bike lane, etc.” to you doesn’t make it so. When a person uses a logical implication such as FTR thinking leads to or implies segregated facilities in the US, that does not mean that such facilities must be bad or that they are being opposed, rather it is explaining why things like mandatory segregation as we see in many US states through FTR, and MBL (mandatory bike lane) and MSP (mandatory side path) laws are enacted. In states like California or Florida for example, bike lanes are not like other preferential use lanes, such HOV lanes or Bus lanes, since the bike lanes are mandatory use in those states, so the kind of thinking that forces bicyclists to the edge through FTR laws, taken further, leads to such removal of bicyclists from travel lanes entirely. In many cities in the US where bike lanes are mandatory, barrier separated bikeways which do not fit the definition of bike lanes in the standards are nevertheless being signed and marked as bike lanes thus making them mandatory use. That’s another case of cyclists being forced out of travel lanes that takes FTR thinking to the level of removal.
Other types of preferential use lanes such as HOV lanes or Bus lanes are optional, and provided as a benefit to the preferred classes allowed to use them. Why are bike lanes, another type of preferential use lanes then mandatory? If not to clear adjacent travel lanes of bicyclists? Sadly, FTR thinking and their pernicious effects on bicyclists’ rights are still prevalent in the US.
I can also point to US states that have actually added FTR and/or MBL laws in recent years, at the behest of bicycling advocates. South Carolina (FTR and MBL), Mississippi (FTR), FL (MBL) come to mind.
Jonathan, that same list included BMUFL signs and sharrows. Later in the article, it says “Instead of the Share the Road sign, we need to expand use of the Bikes May Use Full Lane sign. Instead of shared lane markings (what some people call sharrows) in the gutter or in the door zone, we need them in the middle of the lane.”
So is the article “anti-sharrow” because sharrows are mentioned on the same list as paths?
Earlier in the article, there’s a discussion of inequities in path designs caused by not treating bicycles as vehicles. Other than that, paths are barely mentioned. Is the article anti-path because it describes how paths should be better-designed?
Stop signs are mentioned a couple times. Is the article “anti-stop-sign”?
It feels like you’re reading things into the article that aren’t there.
Thanks for this very informative article. In your view, do we change public opinion first, then let the politicians change policy, or vice versa? I’ll respectfully argue that changing public opinion is the most effective path – the policy setting people will have to follow, against the wishes of their large corporate donors. To emphasize the point, don’t underestimate the power of “butts on bikes”.
Bob, Great job. A couple of comments.
You wrote:
“You would think that if one vehicle cannot occupy two lanes, then two vehicles would not be able to occupy one lane, but that’s not true. Some lanes are wide enough for two lines of traffic, such as where the lane lines are striped far enough apart for two trucks to travel side by side or where both lines of traffic consist of narrow vehicles. In such instances, a driver is expected to share a single lane side by side with other drivers (with the notable exception of motorcycles – see below).”
Later you wrote, “Although a travel lane is intended for a single line of vehicles,…”
Which is it? Some lanes are expected to be shared or a travel lane is intended for a single line of vehicles? As a motorist I’ve never felt that I should share my lane with other motorists.
You wrote, “The result is a mismatch between the historic concept of the bicycle as a vehicle and the basic idea of a lane’s being for a single line of vehicles.”
There should not be an apostrophe in “lane’s.”
You wrote, “On a laned road:
There is a right-hand lane for traffic, so both conditions 1 and 2 apply.”
I don’t understand why both conditions 1 and 2 apply.
Great Article!Hope you don’t mind, shared it around..
“As a motorist I’ve never felt that I should share my lane with other motorists”
Happens all the time in Massachusetts — two roads near here, Belmont St./Trapelo Rd. in Belmont and Mass. Ave. in Arlington, are nominally 2 lane roads, but the lanes are very, very wide. And like nature, Massachusetts drivers abhor a vacuum. And when I say all the time, I mean really all the time. There’s a frequently run stop sign where almost all traffic turns left. If, in my car, I come to a full stop and look both ways instead of rolling on through in the customary illegal fashion, twice in the last month I have had a car attempt to pass me on the excessively wide right and then start a left turn, because hey, look at all the road nobody’s using right now.
Pretty much any cycling nonsense here can be intuitively explained, even to a confirmed 100% motorist, as “well, if cars were six feet long, two feet wide, and you could pick it up one hand, how do you think people around here would drive them?”
Based on my understanding of how the law works, it’s also legal for bicycles to lane-split here. I infer this because that is explicitly called out as an illegal behavior for MOTORcycles — and not for anything else.
PS — more on Mass Law. Until not too long ago, 2 abreast was illegal, but it was recently changed with work from our local State Rep (Will Brownsberger, now State Senate, and hoping to run for Markey’s US Rep seat should that open up). Your site would have been helpful; Will wanted to know how our bike laws compared to other states, and so I went through as many states as I could, trying to determine what their laws were.
And the local-regs-allowed part sounds worse than it is (at least here, at least in my experience); in practice, it is a almost a no-op, and usually refers to things like riding bikes on sidewalks in business districts, where banning it is a local option. In cases where it is something more than that, usually when the state law changes, cities and towns that have their own similar laws either repeal their law entirely or modify it to conform to the state code. This happened recently in Somerville, for example, where they got rid of wrong-headed right-hook-allowed language in favor of the state’s right-hook-NOT-allowed law.
In the first case I’m referring to the law and in the second case to what traffic engineers intend. How about, “A normal width travel lane is intended for a single line of vehicles” or “A travel lane is normally intended for a single line of vehicles”?
I’m using the possessive form with an -ing clause. See example 23 here: http://papyr.com/hypertextbooks/grammar/grammar_and_usage_tip_of_the_week_9.htm
No one will contest Dave’s running in two elections simultaneously.
Both conditions apply because you have both a RH lane and a RH edge or curb. Can you think of a more elegant way of saying that?
dr2chase, you are mistaken about the facilities in the Netherlands not being shared use.
While they are primarily cycle-specific, they are also commonly (and legally) shared with both motorbikes and small automobiles. This seems to be a common misconception among American bicycle advocates for some reason.
I’ve experienced some especially harrowing passes from drivers of motor-scooters in particular, and witnessed the verbal abuse of cyclists by such motorists in the “bike lane.”
Here is a video showing the typical assortment of motor-vehicles one sees constantly in Amsterdam cycle-tracks:
http://youtu.be/ojhJ9oS7_rI
I have what I believe is the perfect spot for demonstrating much of what’s wrong with FTR requirements: Old US 1 immediately south of Apex, NC, also known as US Bike Route 1.
When traveling northbound, for example, one has the following: crossing opposite Apex Peakway an for a little beyond, the shoulder is about six feet wide, and the road has a tail-out from a left turn lane. Just thereafter, and as indicated in this link, the road both loses the center turn lane, and all but three INCHES of hard shoulder. Traffic is doing 45+ at this point; I’ve lost track of how many drivers see a bicyclist a foot or two in the lane as an invitation to share the lane, independent of oncoming traffic.
I’ve taken to riding not in the middle of the lane for this section, but rather a couple feet left of center, as even being in the center of the lane is not enough to discourage some drivers.
As a short section, it’s a bit easier to just consider it an interval and put on some additional speed, so as to minimize my exposure. That said, I would expect better of a road identified as US Bike Route 1.
A similarly tight area road is Davis Drive between Salem Church Road and Dolomite Road. Link.
I’ve seen this one identified as a Cary bike route at times, but it’s one I absolutely avoid. That road is filled to capacity at rush hour, and there’s no shoulder for a cyclist. Motorists stuck behind a bike for a mile, even at 20 MPH, get antsy… antsy enough to do stupid things and endanger they cyclist.
Anyway, my perspective is that better laws need to be established and enforced regarding safe passing clearance. Until that time, the animosity will remain between motorists and cyclists.
[Editor note: comment modified with HTML link references.]
So it’s a belief that is responsible for the low modal share of bicycling in the US, not the actual quality of the experience discovered by those who try it? What an amazing idea.
This whole thesis of this blogpost is based around an obsession with the idea that laws and regulations determine the quality of the cycling experience, not the design of the infrastructure. The experience of the high-cycling European states (and indeed the higher cycling US cities) is that it is the quality of the infrastructure which is critical, not the laws.
Wow, that does look annoying — but don’t forget, by two important metrics, that is still far better that what we have here, so if we care about either safety or getting people on bikes, we should still study what they have done, and probably copy it.
It’s the culture, not the laws and not the infrastructure that make the difference. America is still largely in a wild-west mentality (McLuhan’s rear-view mirror analogy.) where the rights of the individual trump the commons.
Read Malcolm Gladwell’s article about SUVs, which concludes that, although the passengers are less safe in them than in regular cars, SUVs sell well because the passengers FEEL safer in them.
http://www.gladwell.com/2004/2004_01_12_a_suv.html
In America, feeling safe, the imagined ability to crush the other guy who only has a ’65 Beetle to drive whereas you have a ’13 Lincoln Navigator, is more important than actually being safe. We love gambits that transfer risks to others, even if only seemingly so. For most people, belief trumps science.
Not only do we “not mind”, we actively encourage everyone to spread this article far and wide, so that we educate more cyclists about their lost rights.
“It’s the culture, not the laws and not the infrastructure that make the difference.”
But you can’t change the culture until you correct the laws. Correcting the laws is the first step in making culture change. This has been true for all rights movements. The majority of bicycling trips now occur and will occur on streets without bikeways, so repealing the FTR law is absolutely essential to protect bicyclists from hostile enforcement and liability for using travel lanes when crashes occur.
Sure you can change culture first, then laws. Look at marijuana becoming more legal, look at the spread of legalized gay marriage. The laws come last.
The “Bikes May Use Full Lane” language is dangerous too. Remove the word “may” and this has a completely different meaning.
“Bikes May Use Full Lane” is telling motorists that cyclists are allowed to use the full lane.
“Bikes: Use Full Lane” is telling cyclists how they should ride in order to be safer.
You guys are aware of Ian Walker’s overtaking distance study, right? One unexpected result was that taking the lane results in passes that are closer, not further.
And yeah, I know, just one study, and noisy data. Is there any other study?
Great Article. Please break it into a series of pieces for mass consumption. I think non-cyclists are more likely to read it in a series than all at once. Thanks for all the info & your work to make cycling safer for all road users.
Great article! Temporarily living in a country (Netherlands) that has embraced bicycles and created the infrastructure to support and encourage their use is a wonderful thing. Here, every road user (except those on foot) is considered a “driver” in the eyes of the law. Whether in a car, on a bike, or even riding a horse, the rules of the road apply evenly… as do the responsibilities. Showing respect and courtesy to other “drivers” is taught from an early age and is a cultural institution. But it has taken decades to get here. Maybe America can reach the same point by the time my grandchildren have grandchildren….
Bob, I think dr2chase is addressing a different perspective of a thought that was ringing through my mind as I read your article. Your article is the most in-depth and objective exploration I have seen of how generations of legislation have affected cycling–I love it. Yet I’d love to see someone take this and objectively tie in some history that explains the culture of transportation in America.
I believe our problem is in the culture of transportation. Why are there so many cars and so few bicycles compared to other parts of the world? Why are speed limits so high on such a large portion of the roads? Where do funds come from that created these roads, and what is the cost justification for building them?
On the surface, these questions seem easy to answer. Yet I think we cycling advocates could stand to learn from some objective analysis, and if we did then we could learn how to improve upon this transportation culture–the only true way to improve cycling safety and rights.
In the meantime, I’m glad we have shared use paths that make commuting and exercise safe and easy for all skill levels. Some also allow road cyclists like myself to ride at speed for stretches otherwise impossible in urban settings. Others allow a safe distance from cycle-legal roadways where the speed limit is 50MPH yet the average motor vehicle speed is closer to 70MPH.
Legislation directs the courts, but culture drives behavior.
I know, it’s a little known fact, but an important one.
Single-digit speeds for cyclists were formalized first, I believe, in NYC with the so-called “Liberty Law” drafted by Isaac Potter of the League. This law allowed cyclists access to public roads in exchange for single-digit speeds (the same speed limit applied to wagons) among other restrictions, a fine compromise in the eyes of Potter, who, as I said, was more of a relic of the high-wheeler era as a cyclist. You can look this up easily in the NYT archives.
Similar laws were enacted in cities around the country. In Denver, cyclists had an 8-mph speed limit downtown and a 4-mph speed limit through intersections. Additionally, they were required to ride on the right side of the street, surrender the left track to approaching wagons, stay off the sidewalks, etc. (The DWC Echo, Oct. 1898, pp. 17-18)
Why are single-digit speed limits important? Because, as I said, these laws, being unreasonable for cyclists, put them outside the law, not within it.
By 1907 I imagine all the single-digit speed limits would have been changed or simply ignored. All the powerful people were using horseless carriages.
Ian Walker didn’t go left far enough. He only went left a couple of feet, which still invites motorists to pass without changing lanes. If he had gone farther, he would have noticed motorists changing lanes to pass instead.
According to him, the lanes were 2.5 m wide, so the 1.25m position was in the center.
Are you suggesting that he should ride further left than the center?
Here’s a study that shows how much more clearance a cyclist gets by riding further left: http://www.cyclistview.com/overtaking/index.htm
Yeah, clearly you’re aware of it, because that page I linked is replying to you. And I see that you do know of another study, though N=50 is not exactly large compared to 2355, and multilane is different from two lane, and two-rider is different from one-rider. Drivers behave differently when they have to cross the centerline, and I have myself also made videos of cars approaching from behind, and when there’s multiple lanes and free-flowing traffic (as was the case in your video), they’re generally very accommodating. And when traffic’s not free-flowing, I want to be FTR anyhow because I am passing them.
Here’s another study (FL DOT, pdf), suggesting (fig 6, p. 31 in the pdf, numbered p. 13) that average passing distance is maximized at 3-4 feet from the curb — less distance if closer to the curb (agreeing with your results) but also less distance if more than 4 feet from the curb (contradicting your results) — these, measured on relatively wide US lanes, including some that were extra-wide.
They also discover a clear difference between cases where a lane change is “easy” (no car or centerline to the left) and “hard”.
They replicated Walker’s gender effect, how about that?
They seem to have observed a lycra effect, too.
It’s not a speed issue – it’s respect for motorists and “accepted” rules. I find many motorists (and police) are most insistent that bicyclists get off the road when they are frustrated rush hour traffic. I’m not holding up traffic, but motorists are offended that I think I have a right to use the road at all. I’ve never heard of police threatening to cite motorists for impeding traffic at rush hour (25mph limit, congestion slows to 10mph), while I’ve been pulled over in a state where impeding traffic only applied to motor vehicles. (Pulled over for trying to turn left from left turn lane; officer resorted to impeding when left turn threat was questionable).
I also think a critical factor in the Japan (experience) and the Netherlands (no experience) is that motorists can be punished for hitting pedestrians and bicyclists. I have yet to hear an explanation of how infrastructure will help bicyclists if motorist always have the ROW (i.e. never at fault) and “traffic” on facilities is always required to yield (local designs).
I see no reason to abandon legal rights, given that popular culture doesn’t support useful transportation either. (local facilities are designed by motorists afraid to use their own facilities – they’ve told me this at public workshops.)
On the infrastructure and laws — in the Netherlands, the good infrastructure came first. Their current laws (assigning financial responsibility, mostly, to the car driver) date to the 1990s: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2012/01/campaign-for-sustainable-safety-not.html
But it would also be nice to have all our rights to the roads; I see no reason whatsoever to privilege driving over cycling, and if anything, it should be reversed.
This is an excellent article. Has anyone started working on a one-page or two-page “digest” version or a synopsis that would be suitable for a bike safety class handout?
The prior law and culture in the Netherlands probably supported reasonable infrastructure for the environment, even if the current law came later.
Facility quality here varies widely; some areas are good but it is still routine to put in DZBL, route right turning motorists to the left of bicyclists at intersections (including some interstate entrances), and paint bike lanes to keep bicyclists away from detectors they need to change traffic lights.
The planners don’t seem to realize that many bicyclists easily exceed 6-7mph, so their facilities don’t always accommodate this. Motorists and some police are then confused (or worse) if bicyclists use the lane instead.
In this case I agree with Dan G. that it is better to start fixing existing law and educating police, rather than keep installing infrastructure even when it is bad.
From your comments, you may be in Massachusetts; from experience in the 80’s and recent comments from others, it may be much harder for police and motorists there to restrict bicyclists to facilities.
There’s a good article that follows up on this conversation at Mobility Lab’s website.
http://mobilitylab.org/2013/06/12/how-do-bicyclists-and-pedestrians-get-equal-rights-in-car-centric-america/
Might not be a state, but DC doesn’t require FTR.
http://www.waba.org/resources/laws.php
Small difference (statistically insignificant?) in clearance given during overtaking is an unimportant measure about a maneuver that is not a significant safety issue.
I don’t want legal access to the whole roadway because I want to control overtaking behavior. I want legal access to the whole roadway so 1) I can search for and use the cleanest surface 2) so my fellow roadway user’s behavior associated with turning entering crossing and exiting behavior makes more sense 3) so I can maintain as consistent a lateral line along long stretches of road so I can focus as much attention -ahead- of me as possible while traveling.
By the way. I am proudly and strongly anti-bikelane. Bikelane design is irredeemable design.
If I was willing to stoop to tricking people out of their low occupancy vehicles, I wouldn’t waste the tricks on tricking them onto bikes. I would trick them onto the buses and trains.
I am sure Saudi traffic laws are copied from one of the states. “Bicycles” are translated as a “transport utility” while “Cars” are defined as vehicles, and “Vehicles” are translated as a “transport utility”. Aside from the translation, Do all States in US define bicycles as vehicles? or is there a state that define bicycles as devices?
Several states still define bicycles as devices. All states define their operators as drivers.
It’s great that you are enjoying living in the Netherlands. Do you speak and read Dutch?
You say that in the Netherlands every road user, including a bicyclist, is considered a “driver” in the eyes of the law. But, as I understand it, on a bare road (no bike lane or cycle track) bicyclists are required to ride at the right edge of the road, right? That alone means that bicyclists aren’t really drivers, since, if the road has lanes, bicyclists aren’t allowed to use the full right-hand lane. In effect, the right-hand lane serves two lines of traffic, one motor vehicles and one bicycles.
What the Netherlands has done that the U.S. has not is to create other laws to resolve potential conflicts between motorists and bicyclists. In particular, right turning motorists are required to yield to bicyclists on their right. If bicyclists were really drivers, they wouldn’t need special laws to resolve these conflicts.
It may sound nice to say that every road user in the Netherlands is considered a driver, but for bicyclists, it simply isn’t true.