Road Bicycling

I've just been doing a little referrer-surfing, checking out sites that have linked to me recently, and found this little rant (reproduced here in its entirety) on one of them. It's not on a blog, so there's no commenting option, so I'm responding here:

A bicycle is either a motor vehicle or it's not. If you are sharing the road, all I ask is consistency. If you use your bike as a motor vehicle, then obey the rules of the road. Don't sneak up beside my car at a red light; don't ride through the crosswalk; and don't run stopsigns!

I understand where you're coming from here. Although I commute by bicycle (weather permitting, otherwise I take the bus), I also have a car that I drive places, and I've also seen bicyclists do some really stupid things. But if you're going to demand "consistency", I'm going to have to ask for the same in return.

If you don't want me pulling up next to you at red lights, then you motorists are going to have to stop doing the same to me. If you expect me to pretend that there's a full-sized car around me like that, then you better do the same, and stay behind me unless there's a passing lane. Not just when stopping at intersections, but all the time. Even when I'm going 15mph or slower.

That last bit's my legal right (at least in Michigan), but it's unrealistic, of course. Unless there's a bicycle lane, we're expected to just stay to the right (i.e. riding in the gutter, dodging sewer grates, parked cars, and loose gravel) and let motor vehicles pass us. So it's only fair to let us pass you when you and your road-clogging cohorts are backed up three blocks long at a traffic light.

I will admit to arbitrarily reclassifying myself as "vehicle" or "pedestrian" at a moment's notice. I often have to, for my safety. There are places where it's simply unsafe to ride in the road as a vehicle: too much high-speed traffic, no room at the side of the road for a bike, or the road is too full of holes and debris, etc. Likewise, there are places where it's unsafe to ride on the sidewalk: there are pedestrians, cracked cement, pavement slabs that don't line up, overhanging branches, curbs at intersections, etc. Depending on local laws, riding on the sidewalk can be illegal. It's also dangerous, simply because motorists don't pay attention to bicycles (or pedestrians, for that matter) on sidewalks.

The problem here is that there isn't any place for us. I'm sure it varies, but around here, the law usually considers bikes to be just another vehicle, with all the same responsibilities, but only some of the same rights. And the unwritten rules of the road are even less charitable. That's unfair, and I don't apologise for taking a few liberties to make up for giving up those rights.

The other day, as I was exercising my legal right to make a left turn using the left-turn lane, some asshole in a pickup truck yelled at me to get out of the road. I shot back, "Why don't you? It's my road too." As a matter of fact, it was "mine" before it was "his". That's right: paved roads were created for bicycles, not automobiles. For example, the Michigan Department of Transportation, the road-building arm of the state goverment, was founded in direct response to lobbying by bicyclists, who complained that dirt roads, while suitable enough for horses and horse-drawn vehicles, and even those motor-propelled thingies, weren't adequate for bikes.

Bicyclists got the roads paved.

You're welcome.

Since then, motorists have taken over our roads, quite literally pushing us to the margins and even off them altogether. Thanks a lot.

As a bicyclist, hardly a ride goes by without some thoughtless motorist violating some rule of the road or acting in defiance of common sense, and putting my safety in jeopardy in the process. By contrast, the greatest threat a misbehaving cyclist typically poses to a motorist is to dent the hood and bloodstain the paint on their SUV. We're on the look-out for you people all the time; you folks seemingly never are for us. See any inconsistency there?