Washington, DC, USA is a planned city, with a north-south and east-west street grid, overlaid with a number of diagonal avenues. These add to connectivity and offer vistas of important landmarks. In the horse-and-buggy era, when the street plan was laid out, there was little concern for any resulting complication in traffic movements.
New Hampshire Avenue is one of the diagonal avenues, and it has a 6-way intersection with 16th Street and U Street NW.
The image below, from Google Maps, gives an overhead view of the intersection.
Intersection of U Street, 16th Street and New Hampshire Avenue in Washington, DC, August, 2010.
U street (east-west) and 16th Street (north-south) are both major arterial streets. New Hampshire Avenue runs between northeast and southwest, and is less heavily traveled. Decades ago, the blocks of New Hampshire Avenue nearest the intersection were made one-way away from it. That way, there would be no need for traffic on 16th Street or U Street to wait for entering traffic from New Hampshire Avenue.
The interruption at 16th Street and U street improved cycling conditions along much of New Hampshire Avenue, diverting motor traffic to other streets. Cyclists liked to ride New Hampshire Avenue. They rode the last block before the intersection opposite the one-way signs, or on the sidewalk, and crossed the intersection in the pedestrian crosswalks.
Special traffic signals and contraflow bike lanes also were installed, in an attempt to regularize and legalize bicycle travel through the intersection. The illustration below is from a sign which the Washington, DC Department of Transportation posted at the intersection. The sign describes how the intersection is intended to work. You may click on the image to enlarge it so you can read the instructions.
Diagram of the six-way intersection showing intended use of the bike boxes.
The bike boxes at this intersection are a variation on the two-stage turn queuing area, as it is sometimes called. They facilitates “box turn” — a left turn in two steps: going straight ahead, stopping a the far right corner — then turning the bicycle to the left and proceeding when the traffic signal changes. A two-step left-turn usually involves more delay than a left turn from the normal roadway position, but it doesn’t inherently violate any of the principles of traffic movement. Timid or inexperienced cyclists may prefer a two-step left turn. It can work for any cyclist at an intersection where normal left-turn movements are prohibited, or if an opportunity to merge does not arise.
When I first saw the plans for this intersection, I regarded them positively. I even wrote about this and published my comments. As I already said, a two-stage turn queuing area violates none of the fundamental rules of traffic flow.
But , there is a saying:
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”
– Yogi Berra or Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut or maybe Albert Einstein
If I couldn’t laugh, I think I’d weep.
So, what’s the problem here?
In an ordinary four-way intersection, a cyclist can execute a two-step left turn using the same traffic-signal phases as other traffic. The cyclist will get a green light for the first step, wait on the far right corner and then get the green for the second step along with other traffic.
By introducing traffic — bicycle traffic — entering from New Hampshire Avenue, the DC Department of Transportation introduced the need for traffic signal phases which it had been avoiding. For this reason, the bike boxes here are not quite the usual two-stage turn boxes.
I was one of several cycling advocates who converged on Washington, DC in May, 2011 to examine cycling conditions. We discovered that theory and practice differed at this intersection. Cyclists were not using it according to plan. Instead, they were using it as shown in the video here.
Keri Caffrey’s illustrations below show cyclists’ preferred lines of travel. Let’s look first at what cyclists do if U Street (left -right in the image) has a green light.
When U street has the green light, cyclists cross 16th street on the concurrent pedestrian signal phase, as shown by the solid green lines. Note that this does not mean that the cyclists have the green light with the special bicycle signal. The cyclists are in conflict with right-turning traffic from U Street. As the cyclists are not stepping directly off the corner like the pedestrians, and travel faster, motorists have a harder time seeing and yielding to the cyclists.
On reaching the far corner, the cyclists turn their bicycles left. As shown in the video, most wait in the crosswalk rather than in the designated bicycle waiting area. When the light changes, the cyclists proceed across U Street and bear right onto New Hampshire Avenue, as shown by the dotted green lines.
Now let’s look at what cyclists do when U Street has a red light.
When U Street has the red light, cyclists travel around the intersection clockwise. They start by riding opposite traffic, then cross U street from right to left in the near-side crosswalk as shown by the orange arrows in the illustration. The cyclists wait on the far left corner, then cross 16th street and continue on New Hampshire Avenue as shown by the dotted orange lines.
The video below shows three expedition participants riding through the intersection on the designated route, and obeying all the signs, signals and markings the best we could. Bear in mind that I have edited out most waiting for the special bicycle signal.
Why doesn’t everyone ride like us?
Why do few cyclists, other than our expedition participants, obey the special traffic signals and follow the designated route? There are several reasons:
Before the intersection was reconfigured, cyclists developed the habit of crossing it along with pedestrians. A habit is harder to break when the proposed new behavior doesn’t offer an advantage.
The special signal is supposed to be triggered automatically when cyclists are waiting to cross. Triggering is unreliable.
The special signal is green for only 6 seconds of a 90-second signal cycle, and yellow for another 4 seconds. For most of the remaining 80 seconds, one or the other crosswalk is in the walk phase, and cyclists can get a start across the intersection along with pedestrians. The temptation is hard to resist.
The designated space to wait for the special signal on New Hampshire Avenue is very tight, delimited by a barrier on one side and a curb on the other. There is only room for three or four cyclists to start on the green or yellow phase of the special bicycle signal.
Extended yellow signals for cyclists are a well-known concept, yet the yellow signal for cyclists is not long enough to allow a decision whether to stop, or to cross 16th Street.
16th Street gets the green light only 2 seconds after the special bicycle signal turns red. Motorists behind cyclists in the bike boxes expect to be able to proceed on the green light. More than three or four cyclists will “accordion” in a bike box, when the first ones stop but the later ones do not have time to stop.
Motorists regularly encroach into the bike boxes. Some motorists harass cyclists with horn blasts and close passes.
The bike boxes are very small. There is hardly room for one cyclist to turn and wait — not to speak of several cyclists at once. This, and the encroachment problem, account for cyclists’ waiting in the crosswalk.
What lessons does this hold?
There are some design issues:
Attempting to accommodate two new directions of travel traffic with minimal impact on the previous four-way traffic results in cramped space and extremely short signal phases for the two new directions of travel.
The bike boxes at this six-way intersection differ from two-way turn queuing boxes at a four-way intersections, in requiring an additional signal phase.
That results in delay and unwillingness to use the installation as intended, but it also imposes a severe capacity limitation. The special installation can never accommodate more than a low volume of bicycle traffic.
Two-way turn queuing boxes at a four-way intersection are between the crosswalks and the street. Because the cyclists come from different directions at this six-way intersection, the bike boxes are behind the crosswalks.
Because the bike boxes are behind the crosswalks and are small — also because of motorist encroachment and the convenience of starting closer to the intersection — cyclists who more-or-less follow the designated route (going around the intersection counterclockwise), wait in the crosswalks, partially or entirely blocking them.
There are also behavioral issues:
Clearly, Washington, DC motorists are not accustomed to the bike box concept. The type of bike box used here — unlike the inline bike box — does not require X-ray vision or even unusual attention of motorists to avoid colliding with cyclists, yet motorists often encroach into the bike boxes, in most cases probably unknowingly or carelessly rather than maliciously.
Some motorists also have an attitude problem, manifesting itself in the horn blasts and close buzz passes.
Some cyclists operate carelessly or obliviously. This is especially the case with those who go around the intersection clockwise. The first stage of this route necessarily requires crossing New Hampshire Avenue, often followed by crossing U street at speed from right to left before the intersection –the most hazardous way for a cyclist to enter an intersection. .
There is widespread illegal parking, especially by truckers, who often have no practical alternative. Illegal parking is common in the contraflow bike lanes leading to the New Hampshire Avenue/16th Street/U Street intersection. Illegal parking belies the presumption that cyclists can operate simply by following painted lines.
There are larger political and planning issues:
If a special bicycle accommodation isn’t given the space or signal-phase time needed to make it practical or safe, is it worth the trouble to build at all?
Should bicycling advocates be praising a city government for an installation which, in practice, simply doesn’t do what it is supposed to do?
What can be said about a city government with a photostream that posts photos showing:
Should cyclists be expected to wait longer to use a special accommodation than to take an undesignated and mostly legal route across the intersection?
What happens at this intersection if bicycle traffic volume increases?
Can the long-term goal of improved bicycling conditions citywide be achieved through construction of installations that, in practice, don’t do what they are supposed to do? What is the political calculus here? Do we have to look forward to tearing all this down and starting over, like with the public housing projects of the 1950s?
Might a larger scope of planning be looking at alternate routes, or a bolder solution (for example, a grade separation? Yes, they’re expensive, but Washington, DC has numerous grade separations on major streets — many times more expensive. This and following photos on the DC Department of Transportation photostream (click left on “newer”) show what kind of effort and expense went into those.
There are peripheral issues:
I rate contraflow bike lanes on whether they meet the same safety standards as other lanes. The one north of U street: OK — the back-in angle parking avoids sight-line issues. The one south of U Street: not OK because it is in the door zone, and with wrong-way parking, motorists pulling out of parking spaces can’t see cyclists in their rear-view mirrors and many can’t see the cyclists at all.
Shared-lane markings for cyclists proceeding away from the intersection are painted in the door zone of parked cars.
The one-minute video below is a series of satellite views of the intersection showing the crosswalks, and then contraflow bike lanes and two-stage turn queuing boxes from 1999 through 2003. You may want to watch the video more than once to focus your attention on different parts of the intersection. Clearly, the city government grappled repeatedly with how to configure the bike boxes. Clearly also, the problem of motorist encroachment has not gone away.
We have not yet checked on any changes to traffic signals and timing since 2011. Stay tuned.
DC DOT evaluation of bicycle facilities showing an increase in crashes following this installation (Executive Summary now available in the Internet Archive; report still on the city Web site as of 2024).
I live in Easthampton, Massachusetts. Late in 2011, I began an effort to remove discriminatory language from my city’s bicycle ordinances, an effort that concluded late in 2012. As part of the effort, I attempted to educate city officials, most of whom had little knowledge of or interest in cyclists’ right to the road, about the true nature and consequences of these laws. As a result of my attempt, I was able to greatly expand and refine the way I explain these topics.
Bicycles must be considered and treated as equal road vehicles and bicyclists must be treated as full and equal drivers of vehicles in traffic laws and policies. Inequitable laws, which discriminate against bicyclists compared to other road users by allowing non-uniform local regulation, restricting access or movement must be repealed.
From the I Am Traffic Equality Goals Every state in the United States has a law that initially grants those traveling by bicycle all of the rights enjoyed by those who travel by motor vehicle, or by vehicle in general. And every such law goes on to make broad exceptions this rule. Some of these laws, in acknowledgement of the exceptions’ breadth, go on further to make exceptions to the exceptions. These laws often restrict, beyond what is required of other drivers of vehicles, the roads a cyclist can drive on and the position on a road that a cyclist can occupy. They can also require or prohibit certain equipment. These laws tend to be vague and arbitrary. Some states permit municipalities to impose further restrictions. The map on the right, provided by Dan Gutierrez, shows which states permit local traffic regulations and which states guarantee uniform statewide traffic regulations.
Many of the city ordinances that concerned me were contrary to the Massachusetts traffic code. (I use the term “code” loosely, as Massachusetts statutes are notoriously disorganized.) This raised a debate over whether Massachusetts law permits municipalities to enact their own traffic regulations. I, along with a number of my colleagues, am under the impression that Massachusetts does not permit local traffic regulations, and that is what I argued. However, some have expressed a contrary opinion, and I have been unable to find a clear demonstration of either position.1
The Far Right Rule
By far the most problematic of all common elements of bicycle laws is what I call the “Far-Right Rule”, also known as “(As) Far Right As Practicable”, “AFRAP”, “FRAP”, “Far To Right”, and “FTR”. The National Committee on Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances (NCUTLO), “a private, non-profit membership organization dedicated to providing uniformity of traffic laws and regulations through the timely dissemination of information and model legislation on traffic safety issues,” (defunct as of 2008) expresses the Far Right Rule in its last (2000) version of its Uniform Vehicle Code (UVC) as follows.2
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 vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane. 4. When riding in the right turn only lane.
(b) Any person operating a bicycle or a moped upon a one-way highway with two or more marked traffic lanes may ride as near the left-hand curb or edge of such roadway as practicable.
Many state vehicle codes include similar language, and in those states the language has caused great confusion, conflict, hardship, and expense for bicyclists. This map, provided by Dan Gutierrez, shows which state traffic codes include far right rules and which do not.
My home state of Massachusetts does not have a far right rule. The city ordinance that concerned me most, the one that inspired and motivated my effort, was a far-right rule. At the time, city ordinance, Section 3-41 read as follows.
Every 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 vehicles or approaching vehicles proceeding in the same direction.
Problems with the Far-Right Rule and other related language were recognized at least as early as the implementation of a far-right rule in California in the early 1970s. California lawmakers sidestepped the problems by adding on many qualifications and exceptions to the rule, and more have been added since then (see the UVC excerpt above). In fact, with so many exceptions, the rule rarely applies, but that does not eliminate the problems. As early as 1975, NCUTLO’s bicycle subcommittee issued a report pointing out these problems and recommending removing the language from the Uniform Vehicle Code, although the full committee voted by a narrow margin not to take the subcommittee’s recommendation. (Information about the history of the UVC was gathered through a conversation with Bob Shanteau, who has tracked down and reviewed primary source documents.)
So why is the Far Right Rule so problematic?
It is confusing. Few people are familiar with the word “practicable”, its meaning or implications for the law. Instances of the Far Right Rule that include qualifications and exceptions are long and complicated. It is difficult for most people to follow or remember them. The term “substandard width lane” is used idiosyncratically, and a whole other sentence is included to explain it.
It is vague. Few people have the expertise needed to competently judge what is and is not a practicable position for a cyclist to occupy, what constitutes an unsafe condition, when moving left helps to avoid one, or how wide a lane is needed for a bicycle and a “vehicle” (the UVC and many state vehicle codes explicitly define “vehicle” as excluding bicycles) to travel safely side by side within it.
It is prejudicial. Most people (cyclists, motorists, police officers, etc.), assuming they are aware of a far right rule in their jurisdiction, interpret the rule not by its technical implications, but by its overall message, especially if that message accords with their own attitudes and beliefs. Exceptions and qualifications aside, the overall message of the rule is that cyclists must stay to the right. That is the number one priority, the law insinuates. This accords with the common attitude that roads are for cars. Bicycles are toys, not real vehicles. Cycling is a frivolous activity, and cyclists have no compelling need to use the roads, or to use all features of the roads. Bicycles don’t belong on the road but can be tolerated as long as they stay out of the way. It accords with the belief that going slow is dangerous and that closer to the edge is always safer if you’re going slow. Through its vague and confusing language and its insinuation of priority for motorists over cyclists, the Far Right Rule begs to be misinterpreted by those who would see a cyclist riding confidently in line with other traffic and think, “That’s so wrong. It can’t possibly be legal.”
A New Home, A New Discovery
I moved to Easthampton, Massachusetts, from nearby Amherst, in July, 2011. In November, 2011, I had an unpleasant encounter with an Easthampton police officer, who did not acknowledge my legal right, as a cyclist, to use the road in the same manner as a motorist. I have had similar conflicts with police officers in other departments, and some of them escalated to extremes. Fortunately, this one did not.
When I reported the encounter to my friends, one, a fellow cyclist and Easthampton resident, wrote a letter of complaint to the police chief. He shared the chief’s response with me. The chief’s response was a non-sequiturial reference to city ordinance Section 3-41. The ordinance had no direct bearing on the conflict. The officer had never even accused me of violating it. From there, I read the city’s bicycle ordinances thoroughly. I found the entire body of bicycle ordinances to be replete with problems.
I contacted my ward representative to the City Council and voiced my concerns. As it turns out, he is also a cyclist, and he had his own concerns about the ordinances. He invited me to write up my concerns and send them to him. As it turns out, he is also the chair of the ordinance committee. He agreed to have the committee review the bicycle ordinances. With the help of another friend, who is also a fellow cycling instructor and Easthampton resident, I turned my complaint into a proposal.
Over the next several months, I met with the ordinance committee to discuss my proposal. In these discussions, they concurred with me on many of the more minor problems, but they repeatedly put off discussing my greatest concern, Section 3-41, what I call the “far-right rule.” I got the sense that the notion of repealing the far-right rule would be controversial because the committee, like the general public, was not all that enlightened about the issues for cyclists regarding lane position. I would have to educate them. Toward this goal, I gave a presentation to the committee on the subject of lane position for cyclists. I am quite proud of the result and am fortunate that it was recorded so that I can share it with you (it is embedded at the end of this post).
Presenting the Case
The Role Of Traffic Regulations
A bicycle is a vehicle. A cyclist is a driver of a vehicle. It is important to acknowledge this from the start because it has implications that surprise, and even offend, many people. But it is true under the common meaning of the word “vehicle”. Moreover, every jurisdiction either explicitly encodes this fact into law or makes a technically equivalent declaration.
This is important because the Rules of the Road, the basic principles on which traffic laws are based, are what they are because of the general characteristics of roads, vehicles (how they move) and of people driving vehicles on roads (how they perceive and react to their environment). Bicycles, cars, and many other vehicles possess all of the characteristics that make the Rules of the Road effective in facilitating safe and convenient travel. The Rules of the Road were formulated at the beginning of the 20th century, when the dominant vehicle was the horsecart. They were adapted from rules for waterways, which are far older. We often take them for granted now.
What do we expect of traffic regulations? Please excuse my presumption, but I will speak for all of us on this. As you read this, think about how actual traffic regulations accord with these expectations? Try to imagine what traveling would be like if traffic regulations did not meet these expectations.
We expect traffic regulations, like other laws, to be clearly specified. We want to know precisely what acts are lawful and what acts are unlawful, so that we can be sure to act lawfully, and so that can defend ourselves against accusations of acting unlawfully. We also want to be sure that others clearly understand what the law requires, so that they can act lawfully, so that they can be held responsible for acting unlawfully, and so that they cannot mistakenly accuse us of acting unlawfully.
We expect traffic regulations to be uniform over large areas. Most laws pertain to what we do in one particular place. But driving is about moving from place to place. We often pass through many jurisdictions on a single trip. Learning and remembering many different sets of rules, frequently switching from set to set, keeping track of which set to use when, researching new sets of rules before traveling to and through new jurisdictions: we would probably find this to be extremely burdensome. It would render us quite vulnerable to accusations of acting unlawfully. What did I do? Did I break the law? What law? What jurisdiction? Was it an accident? How can prove it was an accident?
We expect traffic regulations to be the same for all drivers and all vehicles. Again, we don’t want to have to learn different sets of rules for driving different types of vehicles. We also want to be able to readily anticipate what other drivers will do, readily enough for it to be instinctive. We want to be able to do this under a wide range of conditions, including at long distances, at high speeds, and in darkness. Hmmm, let’s see. What kind of vehicle is that? It’s a ?-mobile. And what is the rule for a ?-mobile in this situation? I remember. No, wait. That’s not it. Oh, right, the rule is–
We expect traffic regulations to be compatible with the way vehicles move and the way people perceive and react to their environment when driving. For example, the rules should not require us to move from side to side because vehicles can’t generally do that. The rules should have us focus our attention to the front most of the time, not the rear or side, because people are not made to focus their attention to the rear or side, particularly while moving. This is why other drivers are required to yield to us when approaching us from our rear or side, but we must yield to other drivers in front of us.
We expect traffic regulations to offer us trust and flexibility. Conditions on the road are dynamic and complex. No one but us, as the drivers of our respective vehicles, is in as good a position to assess our circumstances and to choose the best course of action. We need to have the flexibility to do what conditions demand. Lawmakers must not attempt to micromanage our actions before the fact. They must trust us to respond to conditions that only we, not they, experience.
We expect traffic regulations, like other laws, to solve more problems than they create. A rule that isn’t part of a solution is part of a problem. We expect the law to respect our dignity and liberty by imposing no more limitations on us than is necessary to solve a genuine and compelling problem, with side effects that are substantially milder than the original problem. We expect the arguments connecting cause (problem) to effect (solution) to hold up to rigorous intellectual scrutiny.
Positioning Narrow Vehicles
While most vehicles have the basic characteristics of vehicles that make the Rules of the Road what they are, vehicles are distinguished from each other by many additional characteristics, and driving a vehicle of a particular type comes with additional issues beyond those of driving in general. One such characteristic shared by a very substantial class of vehicles is that of being narrow (or substantially narrower than is typical). Here are some examples of narrow vehicles.
When driving a vehicle of close-to-typical width, people rarely think about their lateral position on the road. But when driving a narrow vehicle, choosing a position is far more complex and far more critical then when driving a wider vehicle. With a narrow vehicle, there are more options to consider and the decision has greater consequences. Advantages of a good position include
avoiding stationary hazards,
being able to travel along a predictable course,
having a clear view of the road ahead and around corners,
noticing and reacting to changing conditions early,
being readily noticed and correctly judged by others,
discouraging dangerous maneuvers by others, and
having room to maneuver around or escape from hazards that take you by surprise.
Likewise, disadvantage of a bad position include
encountering more stationary hazards,
being prone to making erratic maneuvers,
having an obstructed or cluttered view of the road ahead and around corners,
being prone to overlooking or reacting poorly to changing conditions,
being easily overlooked or misjudged by others,
encouraging dangerous maneuvers by others, and
having no room to maneuver around or escape from hazards.
Here is a list of factors that influence a cyclist’s choice of position.
TRAFFIC – other drivers’ speed, vehicular traffic volume, possible pedestrian traffic, possible pedestrian-like vehicular traffic, animals, motorist behavior trends
CYCLIST – bicycle equipment, destination, speed, familiarity with road
I meant what I said about its being a complex decision. Fortunately, it is usually an intuitive decision rather than an intellectual one. The skill of choosing a good position is improved with training and practice. Below are some photographs of road conditions in my area (click each image for a closer look). They are frames taken from video I captured with a helmet camera while cycling. Try to identify the conditions shown in these photographs that might influence the choice of position for a driver of a narrow vehicle. Or better yet, look at the conditions on the roads in your area. Try to identify those that might influence the choice of position for a driver of a narrow vehicle.
Driving too close to the edge is dangerous and burdensome. For safety and convenience, cyclists should stay well away from the edge. Sometimes this means being in the middle, or even on the left side, of a lane. Sometimes it means being in a lane other than the rightmost lane. Watch the animation below for a demonstrates.
This video is a real-life demonstration of the difference between an assertive position and a timid one
And this video shows a number of potential crashes that are easily avoided with an assertive position
How do we decide what the best position to take is? As I said before, traffic is dynamic and complex. There are many factors that influence the decision. Hence, there can be no simple rule or algorithm for determining the best position. It can only be made by someone who is present and fully aware of the conditions. And conditions can change rapidly. There is no time to apply a rule or algorithm that accounts for all factors, even if one could be formulated. While the decision can be evaluated intellectually after the fact, it must be primarily an intuitive decision. Also, the knowledge, training, and experience needed to select a good position or competently evaluate one after the fact are frustratingly rare. A cyclist’s position should not be evaluated before the fact, and it should not be evaluated by any of the majority of people who lack the necessary knowledge, training, and experience.
While there can be no rule or algorithm for choosing the best position, there is one very important guideline. More adverse conditions demand a more assertive position. Let me repeat that because it is important.
More adverse conditions demand a more assertive position.
Occupying more space is almost always safer. It is only a question of how much is enough.
The Role Of Courtesy
So if it is safer and more convenient for a cyclist to keep away from the edge, what obligation does a cyclist have to make room for other drivers to pass? Regardless of what ill-conceived and carelessly drafted laws might insinuate, your first priority as a driver should be safety. You should always drive defensively. Your second priority should be your own convenience. You have the right to travel on public roads, and you have the right to a trip that is as easy and carefree as anyone else’s trip. You should feel free to exercise that right fully. You should not curtail your exercise of that right for what is usually the trivial or imaginary convenience of another. Your third priority is courtesy. You should facilitate passing when it is safe and convenient. Laws and norms sometimes implicitly penalize caution or efficient travel for cyclists. These laws and norms should be resisted. We should not penalize cyclists for using caution or for traveling efficiently, as long as it is done with caution.
When you, as a cyclist, want to determine whether you should move over, you should ask yourself the following questions. If you answer YES to all of them, then by all means, do the courteous thing and let others pass you.
Are other drivers present?
AND
Do they want to pass?
AND
Are they currently unable to pass safely?
AND
Are they refraining from passing?
AND
Is it likely that they will be unable to pass safely for a substantial period?
AND
Would they be able to safely pass right away if I were to change position?
AND
If they passed me, would they then be able to move freely?
AND
Would my new position be safe and convenient for me to travel in?
AND
Would my new position be safe and convenient for me to move to now?
An argument I had earlier compels me to point out that it is not safe to change your position until you fully assess the situation, yield to anyone you are required to yield to, communicate your intention to other drivers, and achieve confidence that they will not interfere with your move or make any sudden moves of their own. This takes at least a few seconds under the mildest of conditions.
In this excerpt from my presentation, I explain the control and release technique.
Questions 8 and 9 are the only ones involving the cyclist’s convenience, and it might be surprising how rarely they need to be asked. The chain is almost always broken before that. The chain breaks at Question 7 in a traffic jam or approaching a red light. It breaks at Question 6 on a narrow road, and at Question 5 on a wide road, including a multi-lane road. It breaks at Question 4 if they blow past you when it is not safe to pass. Sometimes I move right to enable a motorist to pass only to find that they are correctly preparing for a right turn by waiting behind me. They didn’t even want to pass. It is rare for a motorist to have to wait for a substantial period to pass a cyclist, even an assertive one. In the rare cases when there is a substantial wait, the cyclist rarely has any reasonable way to shorten it.
For example, here is some footage I took while preparing for a left turn. As I am trying to move left in preparation for my turn, several motorists make aggressive and somewhat risky last-second passes. Since I am scanning and yielding they did not create a problem for me, but they could have simply passed me on the right after the roadway widened. Also notice that they end up alongside me or BEHIND me in the other lane at the intersection. Remember the car with the flames painted on the front? Followed by the white pickup truck? I turn and look back at them while I wait for the light.
And here is another example demonstration of the real cause of delay (hint: it’s not a cyclist) from Keri Caffrey.
It is important to understand that cyclists and motorists (and other travelers) largely want the same things. They want get where there are going safely and conveniently. They want to share the road cooperatively and harmoniously with their fellow travelers. Cyclists do not want to make anyone’s life more difficult. If anything, they tend to be overly accommodating at the expense of sacrificing their own needs. They even tend to make concessions that offer no practical benefit to anyone else, just to avoid conflict. They want to help others whenever they reasonably can.
The narrowness of a bicycle gives its driver a special ability to facilitate passing, which drivers of wider vehicles do not have. They are almost always happy to use that special ability when doing so does not involve sacrificing their own needs. Other vehicles give their drivers other special abilities, which can be used to help others. But the special ability offered by a bicycle is treated differently. Cyclists’ special ability is often used against them. They are often pressured or bullied into using that ability to help others at the expense of sacrificing their own needs. A cyclist who moves over to help us pass could have decided that it was too dangerous or too inconvenient, or they could have decided to drive a wider vehicle. We should not resent cyclists for being in the way. We should appreciate that they selected a vehicle that, unlike many others, often gives them the ability to get out the way. When they use that ability to help us pass, we should recognize that they did so for our benefit.
Effects Of Discriminatory Laws
Discriminatory laws put those who would travel by bicycle in a vulnerable position. They can render safe and effective bicycle travel unlawful or legally ambiguous. Or they can subject cyclists’ behavior to excessive scrutiny, so that they must anticipate being called to defend their behavior at any time. Lawmakers’ failure to unequivocally affirm the right to travel by bicycle (or by any simple means, for that matter) contributes to harassment by motorists and police officers and hinders justice for cyclists who are harassed or who are involved in a crash.
Discriminatory laws that use confusing, vague, prejudicial language can foster widespread misinterpretation of the law by public officials of all kinds, including police officers, as well as motorists generally, and even cyclists themselves. They frustrate the efforts of cycling educators to teach defensive driving techniques. Laws that use vague language implicitly dump the responsibility for interpreting them primarily on police officers and secondarily on prosecutors, judges, etc., a responsibility that they are not necessarily prepared to handle. This is the case with the vague language, “as near to the right-hand side of the roadway as practicable,” from the old Easthampton ordinance Section 3-41. In fact, few police officers receive any substantial training in effective cycling or bicycle law enforcement (a major problem for cyclists), let alone what would be needed to judge something as subtle as a cyclist’s position. This makes cyclists who drive defensively legally vulnerable.
Using bicycles for transportation offers vast benefits. It should be encouraged, not discouraged. Many people (including me) rely on bicycles as a means of transportation. Many of them could greatly enhance their lives by learning to use those bicycles more effectively. Many more people could greatly enhance their lives by replacing some or all of their travel using mass transit or personal automobile by cycling, assuming that they were made to feel comfortable using defensive techniques. These changes can make travel quicker, easier, more reliable, more flexible, less stressful, and less expensive, thus enhancing the possibilities for homes, education, jobs, shopping, health care, entertainment, socializing, political activity, and/or capital investment. For those who make the change, it opens up new dreams and ambitions and elevates their overall quality of life.
Beyond the benefits to individuals, using bicycles for transportation offers vast benefits to communities, governments, and societies. More cycling leads to less use of motor vehicles, which leads to to less congestion, less demand for motor vehicle parking, fewer crashes, less environmental and noise pollution, and less money diverted from the local economy. Expanding people’s options in life leads to more economic and cultural productivity, and hence more tax revenue. Fewer crashes leads to less public expense for health care and emergency services. Safe cycling behavior leads to less stress and conflict for everyone on the road.
However, discriminatory laws often prevent these benefits from being realized. Legal vulnerability makes cycling in a safe and convenient manner more stressful. Such laws can discourage people from cycling in such manner. Those who have other transportation options may be discouraged from cycling entirely. Even those who have no inclination to travel by bicycle are deprived of the public benefit of bicycle transportation.
The Result of My Effort
I consider my effort to amend the Easthampton bicycle ordinances a success. The ordinances were, in fact, amended as a result of my work, and all of the changes were positive. However, I did not get all of the changes I wanted. There will be opportunities for further changes in the future.
Section 3-41 was not repealed, but it was changed. Whereas it previous read
Every 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 vehicles or approaching vehicles proceeding in the same direction.
it now reads
Every person operating a bicycle upon a roadway shall ride as near to the right-hand side of the roadway as is safe, unless, preparing to make a left turn, riding in a lane which is too narrow to share safely, avoiding degraded street surfaces (“broken pavement”) and sewer grates, avoiding the “door zone” of parked automobiles, avoiding obstructions such as pedestrians and stopped vehicles or avoiding debris which could damage the bicycle or degrade handling (sand/gravel/glass).
The word “practicable” has been replaced with “safe”, and some exceptions have been added. I have some concern that the changes give an air of legitimacy to an inherently illegitimate rule. For this reason, I did not participate in drafting the new ordinance.
But changes to the ordinances are not the only result, or even the most important one. I believe that the greater success was in using the ordinances as a platform to educate and raise consciousness about cycling, paving the way (no pun intended) for future improvements not only in law, but in culture as well. And as the pyramid indicates, we cannot change behavior without changing culture.
Playlist of videos about Eli Damon’s work to change Easthampton bicycle ordinances – includes the video which is inaccessible in the archived Partial But Definite Success blog post.
Footnotes
Massachusetts is unique among the states in that many of the most important traffic laws, including, for example, what to do at a traffic signal, are not in state laws. Massachusetts has a model traffic ordinance, but each city and town enacts its own ordinances. — John Allen, 2024-08-09 ↩︎
It’s not Effective Cycling repackaged with a new name.
A common criticism of cyclist education is simply that “it doesn’t work.” Presented with such a statement, I suppose we first have to ask, “work at what?” Those making the claim seem to be saying it doesn’t work at getting more people to ride bikes. I don’t think many are claiming a trained cyclist is just as likely to crash as an untrained one.
Perhaps they may be right that it doesn’t get more people to ride bikes; but on the other hand I know individuals who have most certainly increased their cycling due to education. They have said so themselves. No doubt the “it doesn’t work” claim is based on a belief that few people will take a traffic cycling course.
This debate is at the core of how our society decides to promote cycling.
Do we take an ends-justify-the-means approach in which almost any strategy which encourages people to bike is deemed okay, or do we help each individual maximize safety, comfort and competence through means which are as ethical as possible? Those who argue for “getting more people on bikes” use cycling as a means to various ends: health, climate change, community livability, etc. Certainly those are all worthy goals, but it has led proponents to take some liberties with science, and misled many people about what factors are important both in increasing the number of cyclists and improving safety. They argue that increasing the numbers of cyclists will make cycling safer in spite of hazards created by some types of bicycle-specific infrastructure.
While it’s true that an increase in the numbers of bicyclists reduces the overall crash rate, the same is true of auto use and walking. Analysis of one study of a Danish bikeway found that the decrease in crash rate was less than would be predicted by Smeed’s Law. To put it in a more direct light: the numberof crashes went upmore than it would have if there had been no bikeway. Increasing numbers of bicyclists canimprove safety, but only given the right circumstances. And even if safety in numbers through facilities does reduce the injury and fatality rates, if those same facilities actually cause some injuries and deaths, then we must question the ethics of such a strategy, especially if other strategies are available which would be less likely to cause harm.
What’s more, proponents assert that the right types of facilities significantly increase cycling. But the scientific support for this is also debatable. Numerous factors affect bicycle mode share, including climate, demographics, density, street network connectivity, terrain, the costs of owning and operating a motor vehicle, and most importantly, the presence of a college or university in a community. Do places with bicycle facilities get more cyclists, or do places with more cyclists get more bicycle facilities? It may be both. But if increases in cycling are due in large part to factors other than bikeways, then any reduction in the crash rate is indirectly due to those other factors, not to the bikeways, and if those bikeways cause or contribute to conflicts and crashes — which they do — then providing bikeways as means of increasing use and improving safety does not work and is in fact unethical.
Aside from the debate about whether or not bikeways improve safety, cyclist training is essential. Florida emergency room data show that two-thirds of adult bicyclist hospital admissions do not involve a collision with a motor vehicle. A significant portion of bicyclist/motorist crashes occurs on local streets which will never see any sort of bicyclist-specific accommodation. Crashes involving turning and crossing conflicts occur whether one is cycling on a cycle track, a bike lane, a sidepath, a sidewalk, or on a road with no special accommodation at all. Training cyclists reduces their crash risk for all of these circumstances.
I — and other proponents of bicycle driving — am often assumed to be against all types of bicyclist-oriented infrastructure. That is not at all true. I support and very much enjoy shared use paths that run through independent rights-of-way. Short paths that connect local street networks. Bicycle boulevards. Bike routes and wayfinding that help people stay off of heavily traveled arterials. Shared lane markings on those arterials. Ensuring traffic signal systems detect bicyclists. Well-design traffic calming that keeps motorist speeds down or diverts motorist traffic. Even sidepaths can be a good solution in the right context. None of these treatments (if properly designed) encourages bicyclists to violate the rules for vehicular movement.
A Failure of Marketing, Not a Failure of Education
Another problem with the “it doesn’t work” claim is that it assumes cyclist education and training to be quite limited by definition. Adult cyclist education is presumed to be all the same. For many years, adult education was limited mostly to the League of American Bicyclists’ Traffic Skills 101 course and other descendants of John Forester’s Effective Cycling program. All other adult-oriented courses tend to be lumped together with them.
When detractors say, “We tried education; it doesn’t work (at getting enough people on bikes),” what they are likely seeing is not a failure of a particular curriculum, but a failure to effectively market a curriculum. Marketing is not merely advertising, it is determining what kind of product or service to provide in the first place and how to deliver it to the marketplace. And that, I believe, is where earlier bicyclist education programs have failed the most.
A number of years ago when Keri Caffrey and I were discussing what we’d like to see in adult cyclist education, we were frustrated with the materials we had to work with (the League curriculum) as well as with those who said education was of little value. We knew from direct experience teaching people that education had great potential, but also saw it fail for many individuals. To us that meant that the problem was the teaching strategy, not education per se. Sitting in League education meetings and reading posts on the League Cycling Instructor email list, I saw how instructors were nibbling around the edges trying to incrementally improve a marginally effective curriculum, or arguing endlessly over minutiae such as whether or not to use a mirror. Hardly anyone was asking who their students were, what they want, how they learn best, how they want to manage their time, and how much they might value good training. The League’s curriculum seemed to be based more on what instructors wanted to teach than on what the customers wanted.
The League’s course is based on the original Effective Cycling curriculum developed by John Forester; many of the long-time League instructors have wanted to return to it. Effective Cycling was originally a 30-hour course, developed in the 1980s. It was intended to make someone into a highly competent sport rider, interested in and capable of long-distance rides at higher speeds. The League whittled that down into two 10-hour courses, initially named Road I and Road II, later renamed Traffic Skills 101 and 201. While thousands have taken Road I and Traffic Skills 101, only a tiny number have followed up with the second course. TS 101 attempts to achieve the same goal in 10 hours — making an individual into a competent sport rider — as did the original 30-hour course. Students are given a significant amount of information on bicycle components, bike fit, special clothing, minor repairs, hydration and nutrition, cadence and gearing. This leaves relatively little time for learning traffic skills.
For average persons who just want to bike around their community at a comfortable speed, to run errands, visit friends, bike to work, or just have fun, most of those sport-cyclist-oriented topics are wasted time, and make cycling seem more complicated and elite than they want it to be.
CyclingSavvy was designed from the outset for average adults who wish to bike around their community at a comfortable and sociable speed; who prefer to avoid busy arterials but occasionally need to use them for short distances to get to a destination or another quiet, low-volume street. Observers of our courses will see very few Lycra shorts or club jerseys, and quite a few bikes with raised handlebars rather than dropped ones.
Core Concepts
Fear was of course an essential issue we had to battle for those intimidated by the thought of cycling amid motor vehicle traffic. That fear is based on beliefs, not on an objective assessment of clearly organized data, so belief-change became a core goal of the curriculum.
As anyone who has waded into some of the hot-button issues of the day can tell you, beliefs don’t get overturned merely by presenting facts. How those facts are presented is at least as important as the facts themselves. So Keri and I did a lot of reading on how to influence people. The most important strategies are to get students to “own” key concepts by discovering the information themselves, and to have them publicly break the taboos of traffic cycling in a peer-supported setting. These strategies are unique to CyclingSavvy.
The other critical strategy was focusing on right-brained learning. Bicycling is a four-dimensional, kinesthetic and social experience, so learning must take place in all of those modes. Few people can fully translate a written or verbal description, or even a static illustration, into a coherent four-dimensional model in their heads. Animation and video get us much further with students. Story-telling in the classroom and the group road tour make it social, and of course on-bike training brings in the essential kinesthetic component.
How CyclingSavvy Differs From Effective Cycling
Since the rules for vehicular movement are nearly universal, especially in North America, the similarities between CyclingSavvy and Effective Cycling are far more prominent than their differences. But the differences do matter. They matter because most people want to minimize the amount of time they spend cycling on high-speed arterials. Depending on where one lives, much of one’s cycling can be accomplished on lower-speed, lower-volume streets. We like cycling on such streets as much for their ambiance as for safety (or the perception of safety). We can ride side-by-side and talk to one another. These streets tend to be more shaded (important here in the subtropics of Florida). There’s more to see and enjoy.
But sooner or later we need to cross or use a stretch of arterial to get to our destination or to the next network of quiet streets. CyclingSavvy’s strategies show cyclists how to use these arterials in the most stress-free ways possible. Examples include:
Turning right on green even when a right on red is allowed. This gives the cyclist the road to herself for blocks at a time. This can be enough time to get to the cyclist’s target intersection without having to negotiate lane changes with high-speed, high-volume traffic.
Recognizing how traffic flows on the approaches to and exits from intersections. Early lane changes and strategic lane positioning can minimize interaction and negotiation with motorists while changing lanes.
We also teach a strategy we call Control and Release which is only used for narrow, two-lane streets with significant traffic, or briefly near signals on multi-lane arterials. No-one likes to be the slow vehicle driver with the long line of faster drivers stewing and fuming behind them, but we also don’t like having cars and trucks squeeze past us at unsafe distances and speeds. So we control the lane so motorists don’t try to squeeze past in an unsafe manner. But then, if conditions allow, we move over and strategically allow motorists to pass at lower speed, or at locations where we get some extra width to work with. A similar strategy is also taught for multi-lane arterials when we gets stuck at the front at a red light, and a long queue of cars gets backed up behind us. We simply control the lane going through the intersection with the fresh green, but then pull over into the nearest driveway and let the big platoon of cars go by. After usually just 15 to 30 seconds, the road clears out and we have it mostly to ourselves, and we can control a narrow lane without having traffic backed up behind us.
No Need for Speed
A criticism against “vehicular cycling” is that it requires cyclist “go fast” in order to integrate effectively with motorized traffic. While some proponents of integrated roadway cycling hold that belief, Keri and I do not. The strategies we teach work just as well at 10 to 15 mph as they do at 20 to 25 mph. Indeed, a key point we make during the course is that slower speeds confer some key benefits to drivers of any type of vehicle: a more comprehensive view of the environment, better reaction time, and shorter braking distance.
Speed differential is a very over-rated factor. To a motorist driving 45 to 50 mph, it matters very little if a cyclist is going 10 mph or 20 mph. A 30 mph closing speed requires about 200 feet of perception, reaction and braking distance, while a 40 mph closing speed requires about 325 feet, but motorists can easily see cyclists from much farther than that. We’ve illustrated how unimportant this speed differential is with one of our students on a large, high-speed interchange between a high-speed arterial and a freeway. Lateral positioning in the lane is far more important than the relative speeds of the cyclist and motorist.
One need only read the student stories on the CyclingSavvy website to see that speed is of little consequence in getting the average non-sport cyclist to be confident in traffic..
Lane Width and Lane Position
Forester in Effective Cycling and the League of American Bicyclists in their curricula tell cyclists to drive in the right wheel track when the lane is too narrow to share. What we have found, and what has been confirmed by research done by Dan Gutierrez and Brian DeSousa in southern California, is that the right tire track can sometimes be the worst position, particularly on higher-speed, multi-lane arterials. When motorists are driving at 45 mph and more, their decision zone — the range of distance behind the cyclist during which they are best able to decide whether to remain in the lane or change lanes — is quite a ways back due to the speed differential.
The problem is that from that distance, when a cyclist is driving in the right wheel track, it looks as though there is enough lane width for the motorists to pass within the lane. So some motorists will stay in the cyclist’s lane instead of changing lanes at the first opportunity. As they get closer to the cyclist they realize the width is not as great as they thought, but may have now lost the opportunity to change lanes. So they slow down a bit and pass within the lane. This results in a close pass at relatively high speed. Moving towards the center of the lane or left tire track makes it clear from a great distance that the motorist must change lanes to pass safely, so they do so at the earliest opportunity. By doing so they draw attention to the fact that there is something going on ahead, so the next motorist in the lane also sees the cyclist from a distance, and also changes lanes. This is best explained in this video.
Lane positioning is not a simple matter of either keeping right when the lane is wide enough to share or moving into the right wheel track when it is not. In a 9-foot lane the right wheel track is only about 6 feet from the left side of the lane, so the following motorist can see there’s not much width left in which to fit his vehicle. But in a 12-foot lane the right wheel track is about 8 feet from the left side, so many drivers will see that space as adequate. In CyclingSavvy we teach students to focus on how much space is available to his or her left, not to the right.
Changing Lanes
The lane changing instructions in Forester’s Effective Cycling strike us as overly complicated. They are also presented as though wide, sharable lanes are the norm. Lane changing is presented as first moving from the right side of the lane to the left side, then to the right side of the next lane, then to the left side of that new lane. That’s three movements with motorists passing on either side. How many would want to put themselves in such a situation?
What is far more common is for all the lanes to be too narrow to share. So the cyclist is already in the center of the right lane; scans, signals and then moves to the next lane, driving in the center of that one. One move, no lane sharing, very clear.
We also recognize that changing lanes when speeds and volumes are high is daunting and difficult for many people, so we provide a number of left turn strategies that eliminate the need to change lanes and negotiate with high-speed traffic: the “jughandle,” the “box turn,” and yes, even the pedestrian-style dismount-and-use-the-crosswalk (not recommended for Florida and other states where motorists treat pedestrians poorly).
Merges and Diverges
The League system waits until their second course (Traffic Skills 201) to teach strategies for merges and diverges. We include them in the core CyclingSavvy course because we think it is very unlikely that people will take a second course (a position clearly supported by the miniscule numbers of TS 201 courses taught). The fact that our students handle these features with ease during our road tours shows the wisdom of this approach. Interchanges and complex intersections can be enormous barriers to cyclists, so teaching them how to handle them is critical for attaining full mobility in their communities.
Our strategies for these features are very different from the League’s and Effective Cycling. We focus on helping the student read how traffic flows through such features, show them how to minimize converging paths with motorists and help motorists flow around them smoothly. Effective Cycling-based strategies have cyclists negotiate with motorists who are trying to change lanes or pass, often at relatively high speeds, all while sharing lanes. This strategy results in cyclists waiting too long to move into a defensible position and can in some circumstances create more traffic disruption and frustration among motorists. This is very stressful and intimidating for the cyclist.
We show cyclists how to change lanes early so they have control of the lane they wish to be in well before the merging and diverging movements begin. This means motorists are more likely to flow around the cyclist on either side with ample clearance, rather than force negotiation with converging paths. As you can imagine, this is better explained through graphics and video than through text.
While on the road tour, we present students with numerous situations in which leaving the right edge, and even the right lane, is the best strategy. In effect we “wean” cyclists from the curb.
Bikeways
While we do spend a fair amount of time discussing problems that cyclists will encounter when using bike lanes (or cycle tracks or sidepaths), we do this in an objective manner devoid of politics and ideology. The conflicts are real and we simply provide practical solutions. Some of the students themselves, after learning of those conflicts, then question the wisdom of providing such facilities.
John Forester was openly hostile to bike lanes and sidepaths in his curriculum. The League has been fairly neutral in its curriculum, but very supportive of bike lanes in its advocacy. Some League Cycling Instructors have been frustrated with the contradictions between promoting integrated cycling on the one hand, and promoting bike lanes and other separate facilities on the other.
We must be clear though that we do not dismiss all bikeways. We enthusiastically support well-designed paths in independent rights-of-way, short connector paths which help connect local street systems, bike boulevards, wayfinding systems, shared lane markings, and other on-road treatments that help cyclists while also supporting integrated roadway cycling. We’d even tolerate bike lanes on some arterials if they provided adequate width and a debris-free surface (but most don’t).
Communication
Rather than expecting motorists to be antagonistic towards cyclists, we strive to create an expectation of cooperation. What motorists want most from cyclists is clear communication on our intentions. We concentrate on communication strategies that assume the motorist is not clear on what we intend to do. (After all, if we watch most cyclists we can see rather quickly why motorists would be uncertain.)
[There was an image here embedded from Google. It is no longer on Google.]
Motorists appreciate clear communication, and going beyond the necessary signals and including ones of appreciation is one of the best forms of advocacy we can imagine.
Skill Building
While teaching Road I and Traffic Skills 101 courses we were frustrated by a number of things. We had only about an hour-and-a-half to teach a handful of skills, and the range of skills went from elementary to advanced. Experienced cyclists were bored until they got to the later skills, and the abrupt climb in difficulty intimidated many novices. Keri Caffrey and Lisa Walker had developed a series of skills for their women’s cycling club, the BOBbies (Babes On Bikes), which was more comprehensive and more progressive in pacing. These skills were incorporated and modified for CyclingSavvy, extending the bike-handling section to three hours. The sequencing of our skills provides interesting, fun skills for more experienced cyclists, while also building progressively enough such that novices are comfortable by the time they get to the more advanced skills.
As with the rest of our course, we strove to make this session fun, and most students report that it is.
Testing
We don’t. Most adults are not interested in meeting some score on a test. They just want to enjoy cycling and feel confident. Testing presents the opposite for many people; it creates an atmosphere of tension. Some people learn well but test poorly. Some test well, but don’t necessarily internalize the content completely.
Instead, we provide an experience out on the streets in real traffic. It is a group tour, but the cyclists drive through with a number of segments on their own. It is not merely a real traffic experience, but also a social experience. Students get to prove for themselves that the strategies we’ve shown them in the classroom actually work. That experience is reinforced by the other students in the tour. Those who are concerned by an early, intimidating segment can always have an instructor accompany them, but they always volunteer to strike out on their own in later segments, and they all realize the kind of empowerment we’re striving to give them. Those who don’t test well are spared the tension of answering questions and meeting a minimum score, and those who might not have completely bought-in to the concepts have them reinforced by their peers.
Creating a Community
Rather than focusing on club rides which focus on speed and distance, we complement CyclingSavvy with social rides at low speeds around town: ice cream rides, cargo-bike rides to farmers’ markets, and simple social First Friday rides. They are open to cyclists of all skills and speeds. We give them structure and safety, so even those who haven’t taken a cycling course such as ours can see and experience what is possible. They also learn some of the preferred back-street routes and “secret connectors.” Some of those social ride attendees come to CyclingSavvy classes. We are happy to use our area’s trails and connector paths, but prefer to avoid streets with bike lanes as they don’t allow us to ride side-by-side. Bike lanes also present more conflicts for groups than they do for solo cyclists.
Perhaps this strategy — of leading people towards confidence and competence rather than providing facilities which make people feel safer without actually addressing the real conflicts — won’t get as many people on bicycles, or do so as quickly, but we can feel sure that we are supporting our principles rather than subverting them.
Education Is a Gift
“You have such gifts that are important. Just like every species has an important gift to give to an ecosystem, and the extinction of any species hurts everyone. The same is true of each person; that you have a necessary and important gift to give.” — Charles Eisenstein
The nature of a gift is “more for you means more for me.” But look at how bike lanes and cycle tracks affect people. Some non-cyclists see them as taking away from “their” roads. Or they see them as something they were forced to buy (by the government) and give to someone else. Then they encounter them, and the cyclists who use them, and find them confusing and frustrating, especially at intersections. So bike lanes and cycle tracks take the “more for me means less for you” approach. It becomes a turf war. And of course they can only “work” where they are installed, so we “need” to keep taking more and more space from others to get more people on bikes. I spent 15 years trying to prove that bike lanes could increase cycling while improving cyclist safety. In the process I learned that they do not. (And other types of bikeways running alongside roadways are even more problematic.)
You cannot convince me that something works when every day I see it not working. I see wrong-way cyclists in bike lanes; I get right-hooked by motorists when biking in them myself; I see other cyclists setting themselves up for conflicts. I see the crash reports. While some of these problems are in spite of the bike lanes; many are, to varying degrees, generated by them. And they don’t eliminate many of the real problems cyclists experience. That is not a gift. To anyone.
CyclingSavvy encourages cooperation between road users. Once taught, a cyclist can figure out how to manage any road or intersection. Yes, some motorists get upset seeing cyclists take such an assertive approach, but they eventually realize that such cyclists are predictable and cooperative, and that they only need to adhere to the same rules they’ve been following when interacting with other motorists. We’ve also heard from many motorists who find our strategies predictable and cooperative from the outset. So CyclingSavvy is a gift not only to cyclists, but also to motorists. Those who think that cyclists should naturally be antagonistic towards “cagers” might do well to realize that virtually all the new bicyclists we might invite will be coming from the motoring population. How do we convince motorists to become cyclists when they perceive cyclists as adversaries or incompetent?
Those of us who teach CyclingSavvy believe that we have a gift we can share. Those we’ve shared it with have thanked us in many ways. That gift is the knowledge that they can hop onto a bicycle at any time and go wherever they wish with confidence. By getting on the bike they meet new friends, learn of wonderful new places they didn’t know existed, improve their health, spend quality time with their families, reduce their carbon footprints, and save money. Rather than waiting for the government to provide facilities which don’t work as advertised, they gain all of those benefits as soon as they want them.
You cannot convince me that something does not work when every day I see it working. I see people who used to be afraid biking wherever and whenever they wish. I hear their stories of enjoying life by bike. I hear them exclaim how much easier and stress-free it is now to bike. Real, sincere and practical gifts always beat white elephants.
Successful bicyclist behavior is driven by knowledge of common crash types and the behaviors needed to successfully avoid those crash types. Bicyclist behavior comes in a spectrum with three main behaviors, and in this article we aim to briefly describe the spectrum and show how those behaviors fare in common crossing conflict crash scenarios with diagrams and supportive video.
There are three types of bicyclist behavior:
Pedestrian behavior Avoiding the roadway by using paths, sidewalks/crosswalks, often against traffic flow
Edge behavior Operating at the roadway edge or close to parked cars, includes shoulder and edge bike lane use
Driver behavior Following the rules of the road by using roadway through lanes and turn lanes as an equal driver
The behavior descriptions above meant to describe behavior at a particular place and time, not people, since a cyclist for example who prefers to engage in driver behavior on normal roads, may be required by law to engage in edge behavior in an edge bike lane. When operating on a crowded shared use path that is away from roads, with high pedestrian volumes, that same cyclist who would prefer driver behavior, may have no choice but to use ped behavior to avoid crashes. So it is not uncommon for cyclists to engage in multiple behaviors on a single trip.
This is why we don’t talk of edge cyclists, though a cyclist may be edge riding on a particular facility, and similar for driver and ped behavior. It is also important to understand that unlike edge and ped behavior, driver behavior is a learned behavior that must be taught; it is not innate. So just because a bicyclist who may at present prefer the more common edge or ped behaviors, does not mean that they will never learn driver skills and/or engage in driver behavior, so we recognize that behaviors are not in general fixed and can change over time and exposure to skills training.
The value in identifying behavior, instead of cyclists themselves, is its descriptive power in identifying how behavior influences crash likelihood and why some behaviors are more successful than others in an urban environment with driveways and intersections, the places where most cycling crashes occur. The most common types of crashes are referred to as crossing crashes, where the paths of a turning motorist at a driveway or intersection and a straight through cyclist can potentially cross, creating conflicts and crashes. Because of this, we often refer to driveways and intersections as crossing conflict areas.
The pie chart couplet (right) shows that even though car-bike crashes comprise the minority of cases where bicyclists hit the ground, when expanded to a full pie (at the right side), the crossing crashes comprise about 5/6 of the total number of crashes. In examining these crossing crash types, we can learn a great deal about behavior and the facilities and laws that enable or restrict behaviors, influence how successful cyclists will be at negotiating urban roads.
Crossing Conflict Types
Let’s examine the three main crossing conflict types and the effect of bicyclist behavior. The three types are pullout, left cross and right hook. These conflicts occur at driveways and intersections. We’ll examine each individually.
Pullout
(shown in the diagram at a driveway)
A pullout occurs when a motorist leaves a driveway or turns right at an intersection and approaches a cyclist from the right side, perpendicular to the cyclist’s through line of travel, resulting in a side impact to the cyclist, or causing the cyclist to hit the side or rear of the vehicle if it turns sooner in front of the cyclist. Look at the driver of the silver SUV approaching the driveway, prior to making a right turn into the street. The driver is mainly looking to the left for road traffic, such as cars and trucks, so a bicyclist using driver behavior is more easily seen (visibility) by the SUV driver because they are operating where drivers pulling out of driveways are expecting approaching traffic to be located in the roadway. In addition, that same bicyclist can see further down the driveway (vantage) and determine when a motorist is preparing to make a right turn. Visibility and vantage go hand in hand when a bicyclists is further leftward in the roadway.
A bicyclist using edge behavior is not where motorists expect cyclists to be, and may be visually shielded by fixed sight line obstructions such as foliage, and street furniture, or even dynamic obstructions such as peds. Thus a motorist may not see a bicyclist at the edge and turn in front of them. An even more difficult dynamic occurs when bicyclists are on the sidewalk engaging in ped behavior. Here they not where motorists are expecting them to be (in the road), and are even more susceptible to visual screening by fixed and dynamic obstructions, so they have minimal visibility and vantage; the opposite of the driver behavior case.
Now we need to consider that motorists about to exit a driveway or turn at intersections also look to their right. They use this alternate scan to look for slow moving, about 2-3 mph peds on the sidewalk. They are not expecting or looking for much faster bicyclists facing traffic on the sidewalk, or the illegal bicyclists riding facing traffic at the road edge. So these “backwards” edge and ped behaviors have even poorer visibility and vantage than their normal flow counterparts. Notice also that there is no “reversed” driver behavior, driver behavior skills classes teach cyclist to never operate this way.
It should come as no surprise that bicyclists are more frequently injured by pullouts when operating on the sidewalk or at the road edge. These behaviors are less successful than driver behavior in negotiating driveways and intersection pullouts.
In the tabs below are video clips showing pullout scenarios.
[tabs slidertype=”top tabs”] [tabcontainer] [tabtext]Video Example 1[/tabtext] [tabtext]Video Example 2[/tabtext] [tabtext]Video Example 3[/tabtext] [/tabcontainer] [tabcontent] [tab]
An edge rider passes stopped traffic on the right to pass a motorist about to leave a driveway.
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This clip shows a driveway pullout hazard from a blind underground driveway. In this video it was clear that poor vantage and visibility from ped behavior can increase bicyclist exposure to pullouts.[/tab] [tab]
In this clip, we have one more example of a bicyclist trying to ride at normal traffic speed on the sidewalk to pass slower traffic in the road, and still dodge cars waiting to pull out as well as street furniture like a newspaper box.[/tab] [/tabcontent] [/tabs]
Left Cross
Happens where a cyclist is making a through movement and an oppositely directed motorist makes a left turn in front of and across the bicyclists’ line of travel.
Again we see that a motorist waiting to make a left turn at an uncontrolled crossing, has a clear view of a bicyclist using driver behavior, and a progressively more difficult time seeing bicyclists using edge or ped behavior in the direction of traffic, since they can be lost in visual chatter at the road edge, including street furniture, foliage or even peds. Here again we find that driver behavior gives the best visibility and vantage to cyclists approaching a crossing conflict area. For cyclist on the sidewalk, or even in the road, they are approaching from a direction behind the left turning motorist, and in their blind spot, so neither the bicyclist nor the motorist in such a “left hook” (the mirror image of the “right hook”, the next crash we cover) crash see each other until just before contact since the visibility and vantage are both very poor.
The tabs below contain video examples of left cross and left hook conflicts.
[tabs slidertype=”top tabs”] [tabcontainer] [tabtext]Video Example 1[/tabtext] [tabtext]Video Example 2[/tabtext] [tabtext]Video Example 3[/tabtext] [/tabcontainer] [tabcontent] [tab]
Even a left turning bicyclist using driver behavior may left cross another bicyclist who is engaging in ped behavior on the sidewalk, since the visibility of the sidewalk bicyclist approaching the crosswalk is very poor.[/tab] [tab]
And here is another case where a fit female cyclist is screened by stopped traffic in the travel lanes, and because of this neither she nor the motorist turning left could see each other approaching. While the motorist is legally at fault for not yielding, the cyclist could not see far enough ahead at her speed to stop in case motorist did make an ill-advised turn across her path.
In the above video the lesson is that facilities that enforce edge behavior often create poor visibility/vantage crossing conflicts, compared to encouraging driver behavior.[/tab] [tab]
And finally we show a video of a cyclist riding facing traffic to demonstrate the difficulties when cyclist ride facing traffic, on either the sidewalk or in the roadway.[/tab] [/tabcontent] [/tabs]
Right Hook
The last crossing crash type we will examine in terms of behavior is the right hook, which is the most frequent cause of car-bike crashes, and leads to many bicyclist fatalities.
The classic right hook crash comes in two varieties; a bicyclist riding near the edge (edge behavior) is passed close to the intersection by a motorist traveling in the same direction, who then proceeds to turn right in front of the cyclist, cutting her off and causing a crash. In the other the bicyclist approaches a motorist stopped at the intersection waiting to turn right and tries to pass on the right (edge behavior again) as the motorist starts their turn. In the first case the motorist is at fault for turning in front of another moving vehicle, in the second, the cyclist is at fault for passing a right turning driver on the right, though drivers often “help” the cyclist make the mistake by not driving close enough to the edge to preclude passing by cyclists on the right. These scenarios can be seen in the lower right of the image below:
In a similar way, a bicyclist on the sidewalk can be hooked by a motorist, or ride into the path of a right turning motorist. In contrast a bicyclist engaging in driver behavior, by riding in the center of the travel lane, discourages motorists from passing on the intersection approach, thus precluding the first type of right hook where the motorist passes close to the intersection. Driver behavior also avoids the second type by allowing the cyclist to either wait behind the motorist stopped to make a turn, or to pass the stopped motorist on the left, thus successfully staying away from the crossing conflict. Engaging in edge or ped behavior is much like driving a motor vehicle, such as a sedan, inside the turn of a large truck, which is why the yellow sticker at the top is often placed on the rear of large trucks. The same issue, scaled down, is also true for bicyclists engaging in edge behavior, riding inside the turn of a much larger motor vehicle, so we ask cyclists to imagine that the lower sticker was on the back of every car.
Look to the left side of the diagram, which is the case for bike lanes. Bicyclists often edge ride and stay in the bike lane on the intersection or driveway approach, even though the law allows them to exit bike lanes to avoid crossing conflicts by using the more successful driver behavior, and right turning motorists often stay to the left of the bike lane instead of merging into it as is required by law (bike lane is part of the roadway and right turns are to be mad from as close as practicable to the curb or edge of the roadway). Taken together, these behaviors tend to manufacture crossing conflicts where motorists are allowed to make right turns on roads with typical minimum standard bike lanes. The image to the right is a California example photo showing that motorists and bicyclists often cooperate to create intersection conflicts when bike lanes are present.
And now we give some video examples in the tabs below.
[tabs slidertype=”top tabs”] [tabcontainer] [tabtext]Video Example 1[/tabtext] [tabtext]Video Example 2[/tabtext] [/tabcontainer] [tabcontent] [tab]
This video shows an edge behaving bicyclist passing on the right in a faded bike lane and luckily the motorists, who didn’t merge into the bike lane to prevent such right side passing, didn’t turn into her. The bicyclists using driver behavior had nothing to fear, since they were not in the conflict zone.[/tab] [tab]
This video shows a ped behaving bicyclist entering the crosswalk in front of a driver turning right. The bicyclist didn’t look to the left, where the threat originated. Shows that ped behavior can be problematic at intersections, especially when the threats are ignored.
[/tab] [/tabcontent] [/tabs]
Avoiding Conflicts: Driver Behavior
Next we show how driver behavior allows bicyclists to successfully avoid crossing conflicts.
The tabs below show video examples of conflict-avoidance through driver behavior.
[tabs slidertype=”top tabs”] [tabcontainer] [tabtext]Video Example 1[/tabtext] [tabtext]Video Example 2[/tabtext] [tabtext]Video Example 3[/tabtext] [/tabcontainer] [tabcontent] [tab]
In this example, the bicyclists are approaching a complicated intersection with preceding driveways, and transition from lane sharing (more like edge behavior) to lane control (driver behavior) near the intersection to discourage pullouts and right hook turns:[/tab] [tab]
Here we show how a merge from edge to driver behavior avoids a pullout conflict.[/tab] [tab]
Here we compare a manufactured engineering conflict of combined edge/ped behavior versus driver behavior in side-by-side fashion.
In the right side video, the designers try to force the cyclists to engage in ped behavior, and this puts them at a severe disadvantage at the uncontrolled ped crossing (crosswalk). Compare how long it took for the cyclists on the right to reach the same place the cyclists on the left reached by using the more successful driver behavior.[/tab] [/tabcontent] [/tabs]
In summary bicyclists are more successful when they understand driver behavior, since it is often the only successful way to negotiate intersections and driveways, by ensuring that they are seen by traffic and can see traffic (visibility/vantage). Special facilities that force ped behavior prevent the types of leftward merges that allow bicyclists to transition from edge to driver behavior on approaches to crossing conflict areas.
In our next article we will describe how road and bikeway facilities interplay with the behaviors and crossing conflicts, as well as some of the parallel movement hazards. We will show how engineering designs and traffic controls can support successful behaviors, and not discourage or prevent bicyclists from employing them.
This story was originally published on CommuteOrlando, January 26, 2010. It has been updated here.
The Judge Mirandizes us as a group, then brings us forward one at a time to hear our plea, and the setting of a bond, etc. Those of us waiting are close enough to hear most of what is said.
When I approach his raised dais, he opens a folder, and then looks up in surprise. He says, “Are they serious? Operating a bicycle on the roadway?”
And as absurd as it sounds, my friend ChipSeal went back to jail that same night, arrested again on his way home from jail for operating on the roadway. What an incorrigible scofflaw! Read his story, beginning with While Minding My Own Business… I have great admiration for his gracious attitude toward those who detained him unfairly.
The right to travel by human power
ChipSeal’s case is a clear violation of his civil rights. The charge is unsupported by TX statute, and yet he was convicted of reckless driving and sentenced to time served (20 days).
When Eli Damon encountered an officer who didn’t want him on the roadway, he found himself charged with disorderly conduct. Eli maintains that he was calm and courteous in the encounter, but the officer was angered by his assertion that he was riding legally. The charge was prosecuted for four months before the prosecutor dropped it a week before the scheduled trial. You can read Eli’s story here.
In 2009, Bob Mionske covered the story of Tony Patrick, who was tasered and arrested for disorderly conduct in Chesapeake, OH for refusing an unlawful order to get off the road. His lawyer, Steve Magas, has more links to the story and the judge’s dismissal of charges here.
Being arrested for asserting your right to drive your bicycle on the road is an extreme violation of civil rights. But living under the specter of choosing between riding unsafely to avoid hassles and risking constant citations is also a violation of your right to travel by human power. In 2009, Fred U. experienced this in Port Orange, FL. The harassment ended when his lawyer got pretrial dismissals of all of his citations. Fred provided documentation for other cyclists who might face a similar predicament.
Cultural bias can be blinding
Nowhere is the bias more glaring than when an officer pulls a cyclist over for using one lane on an empty six-lane road on a Sunday morning. Then, during the stop the officer repeatedly asserts that the cyclist is failing to share the road by not riding at the far right of that lane. This might raise the question, with whom exactly is he failing to share the road? (See Red & Blue in the Rear View… Again?)
A few months ago, Mighk Wilson was pulled over for riding in one of three lanes on South Street. This is a one-way street, downtown, with a 30mph speed limit and plenty of traffic lights to prevent movement anywhere near that fast. Of course, when there are lots of motorists, traffic moves slower still. Agitated with Mighk’s knowledge of traffic law, the officer huffed that he was “one of those people who just doesn’t care about others.”
Bias denies basic human equity to its target. Bias is impervious to logic and reason. Bias is blind to its own absurdity, no matter how glaring. As much headway as we’re making with law enforcement, stubborn anti-cycling bias can still be encountered among the ranks of the most enlightened department.
These stories are infuriating to transportation cyclists in particular, but they cut even deeper for those who are car-free. When the cops are lying in wait for a cyclist who must pass through their jurisdiction, they are essentially violating that person’s right to use a public utility. By insisting, under threat of arrest, that a cyclist ride in a place not required by statute, these officers are abusing their authority.
Strategies for the chance encounter
Prompted by an Ask Geo email, I thought it might be a good idea to collect some wisdom on how to deal with uninformed police officers. I have not been pulled over or otherwise hassled by any of the many, many police officers who have passed me in my metro area travels. My interactions with them always consist of a friendly wave. But I know others who have been pulled over or ordered over the public-address system to ride far right. So I wondered, what’s the best way to conduct myself in a traffic stop? And how would/should I handle an officer giving me an unlawful order over his PA?
The unwarranted traffic stop
I think Richard Moeur’s story is exemplary in both his handling and its outcome. I got several good take-aways from it:
Ask the officer’s intentions. Find out what he is requesting (ride on the sidewalk, ride on the edge of the road, ride on a different road).
Resist the urge to discuss the law right away, and ask for a name and badge number.
If the opportunity arises, be armed with a copy of the statutes.
If the officer asks why you were riding where you were, present the pertinent talking points (know your talking points).
In my opinion, it’s better to not get a citation than to have to deal with one in court (even if you win). In the event that the officer does not respond favorably to your roadside defense, the best course may be finding a way to comply without compromising your safety, then deal with educating the officer via contact with the department.
The drive-by command
In the case of the cyclist who was told over the PA to get on the sidewalk, there is little recourse for dealing with the individual officer unless the officer stops. I’ve heard from several cyclists that deputies have told them over the PA to ride far right. This puts the cyclist in a predicament: comply and put her safety at risk (with no way to identify the officer); not comply and have an angry officer loop back around and pull her over; or flag the officer down and attempt to discuss it before he’s agitated by non-compliance.
There’s risk in that last option, too, depending on the officer’s attitude, as Brad Marcel in Tampa found out. When an officer ordered him to ride farther right in a narrow lane, he tried to flag her down to talk to her. She thought he’d flipped her off. He ended up receiving a citation and the officer has claimed that he was antagonistic (which he denies). In court the officer claimed he was impeding traffic (a statute which does not apply to non-motorized vehicles in Florida). He read the statute governing bicyclist lane position and explained that the lanes on road met the exemption of a “substandard” width lane because they are less than 14ft wide. The officer replied that no lanes in Tampa are 14ft wide, so that made no sense. The judge found him guilty.
So, I think Richard’s advice serves well here, too. If I could, I’d flag the officer down, ask him/her for clarification of the request and get a name and badge number. Depending on the officer’s demeanor, I might leave it at that and deal with unlawful demands higher up the chain of command.
Departmental bias
As far as I know, there are no systemic bias problems within any of the Orlando metro area police departments. As long as the source of the problem is an errant officer, it seems easiest to get the name and badge number and make nice till he goes away. Then I can deal with him through his supervisors. I also have the luxury of finding alternative routes and/or using my car until the situation is resolved.
Unfortunately, what ChipSeal and Eli are dealing with appears to be departmental. This was also the problem Fred encountered in Port Orange. He tried to go up the chain of command after the first encounter, to no avail. It took a swift pretrial dismissal of his citation to put a stop to his troubles. In the meantime, he faced harassment whenever he needed to travel through Port Orange to conduct business.
In December of 2009, Chipseal missed an appointment (after traveling a heck of a long way) because he was stopped three times for riding legally. We all thought that was over the top until he spent two nights in jail!
As it stands now, I am in under threat of arrest any time I travel, for slow vehicles like bicycles will, by their nature and in the strictest sense of the word, impede all other more powerful vehicles. How can I get to work? The grocer? Make appointments? Make any plans considering I could be jailed simply for using the public road? For leaving my driveway on a bicycle? Am I being subjected to a de-facto house arrest?
Eli’s saga is equally distressing. He’s been detained, had his bicycle confiscated and been arrested. His range of travel has been severely limited. He told me:
I have been on near virtual house arrest for the past several months. I am on bail because of the pending criminal charge so if I have another encounter, even with a different cop in a different town, before the case is resolved I could be put in jail until it is.
Of course, he’s learned a lot through his experience. Here’s some advice from him that I’ll keep in mind:
Know the law (of course).
If the officer asks for an explanation of your riding style, keep your answer concise (never too much information at once).
Use formal, respectful language and don’t interrupt.
“If the officer lets you go, do not ride away from the officer if you can help it. Let the officer leave first. You might have to walk to someplace that is a comfortable distance away but where you can still see the officer and wait awhile.”
A suggestion Eli plans to use with potentially volatile officers in the future: ask, “Are you going to write me a ticket?” It could potentially end the encounter quickly and prevent arrest. A citation is certainly less inconvenient than going to jail.
After the encounter, document everything that happened ASAP, contact appropriate authorities and assisting organizations. In Florida, contact George Martin.
Again, get the name and badge number. Get it first, before you get distracted!
Ultimately, these incidents are a manifestation of the bigger problem — what Steve Goodridge describes in America’s Taboo Against Bicycle Driving. The problem must be tackled from a number of directions. We are working very hard to build a mutually beneficial relationship with law enforcement and to create a program that will give them knowledge of the laws and help them understand how we protect ourselves on the road. But law enforcement officers are a part of our general culture. They’re people. They’re just as influenced as anyone else by the biases of the society in which they live.
The fundamental rule of the road is First Come, First Served (FCFS). The distorted rule of the Culture of Speed is All life yields to faster traffic. When the roads are governed by FCFS, pedestrians and bicycle drivers are people using public roads. When governed by the Culture of Speed, they are merely objects in the way.
As has been noted before, the Culture of Speed causes some police to enforce traffic flow vs safety. Worse, they often don’t even realize that their concepts of protecting safety are stealthy manifestations of the Great Reframing. Almost 100 years ago, traffic engineers began to manage the steady flow of automobiles at the expense of non-motorized users. The notion that speed differentials and lane changes cause safety problems resulting from the presence of a slow vehicle rather than the incompetent or aggressive behavior of faster drivers is a result of 100-year-old propaganda campaigns which removed pedestrians and bicyclists from the roads by dissociating safety from behavior. This is why most people, police officers included, don’t realize their ideas of safety are so badly skewed.
With this understanding, my friend ChipSeal’s graciousness is not only admirable, it is necessary to solve the problem. We have work to do. We need grace, understanding and cooperation. And we need those in law enforcement to be our allies.
Since the original publication of this post in 2010, Chipseal was charged and convicted of reckless driving (for what was essentially defensive driving). Eli has continued to face harassment from police departments in two Massachusetts towns. He has won his court cases and filed a lawsuit against one police department. In Florida, Fred U has faced repeated harassment from several police departments. Each time, he has won in court, but it has cost him hundreds of dollars in legal fees — to defend defensive driving.
In the video presentation above, I explain the root cause of the beliefs that inhibit bicycling in America, why the prevailing strategy can’t fix it, and offer a strategy that can. In addition to teaching people to be successful anywhere, this strategy includes many progressive infrastructure ideas that are cost-effective, versatile, expandable and supportive of successful bicyclists.
