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Re: ideal bicycle rules
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Bob Shanteau
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Nov 05, 2009 11:44 PST
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Ryan Sharpe wrote:
| | But but, bicyclists are required to use motor vehicle facilities without necessarily having gone through a training and certification process, making them rather unique roadway users.
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Huh? Who says that public roads are "motor vehicle facilities"? Here are
the relevant sections from the California Vehicle Code
<http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/vc/vctoc.htm>.
***
360. "Highway" is a way or place of whatever nature, publicly
maintained and open to the use of the public for purposes of vehicular
travel. Highway includes street.
670. A "vehicle" is a device by which any person or property may be
propelled, moved, or drawn upon a highway, excepting a device moved
exclusively by human power or used exclusively upon stationary rails or
tracks.
415. (a) A "motor vehicle" is a vehicle that is self-propelled.
(b) "Motor vehicle" does not include a self-propelled wheelchair,
motorized tricycle, or motorized quadricycle, if operated by a person
who, by reason of physical disability, is otherwise unable to move about
as a pedestrian.
(c) For purposes of Chapter 6 (commencing with Section 3000) of Division
2, "motor vehicle" includes a recreational vehicle as that term is
defined in subdivision (a) of Section 18010 of the Health and Safety
Code, but does not include a truck camper.
21200. (a) Every person riding a bicycle upon a highway has all the
rights and is subject to all the provisions applicable to the driver of
a vehicle by this division, including, but not limited to, provisions
concerning driving under the influence of alcoholic beverages or drugs,
and by Division 10 (commencing with Section 20000), Section 27400,
Division 16.7 (commencing with Section 39000), Division 17 (commencing
with Section 40000.1), and Division 18 (commencing with Section 42000),
except those provisions which by their very nature can have no application.
***
Streets and highways are intended for *vehicular* travel. Only freeways
from which bicyclists are prohibited are for motor vehicles only
(motorways). True, motor vehicles have displaced almost all other
legitimate road users (horses and wagons, carriages, bicyclists, etc.),
but that does not mean every street, road and highway is a motorway.
| | I've been asked often enough about equipment requirements and the rules-of-the-road at the Bicycle Kitchen to have figured out that poorly-known laws -- especially those that ill-serve bicycle use or seem illogical to bicyclists -- do nobody any good.
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Pray tell, what are the traffic laws that novice bicyclists don't
understand apply to them?
| | Maybe we should start drafting our own set of "ideal" bicycle + traffic rules, so we can get a better feel for what we should be asking for, rather than merely complaining that the current system doesn't work. I'm willing to host a wiki on my personal website to do this, if anyone's interested in such a project.
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Name one or two "ideal" traffic laws for bicycles and we can start a
discussion right here (or better yet, since traffic laws are statewide,
on CABOforum <http://groups.google.com/group/caboforum>). Generalities
don't do anybody any good.
To be specific, what do you think of the Idaho stop law, which says that
bicyclists can treat stop signs as yield signs and red lights as stop signs?
Bob Shanteau
Transportation Engineering Liaison
California Association of Bicycling Organizations
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