John Forester

No. A very good statement of the rules of the road for drivers of vehicles is in the Uniform Vehicle Code. However, there are a couple of deliberate nastinesses regarding cyclists. When the NCUTLO made the big bicycle revision of 1975, one item it included was changing the classifications of bicycles from devices to vehicles. The committee had long resisted making such a change. They thought, as did the cyclists who advocated that change, that doing so would remove the effect of the rules that discriminated against cyclists. However, once the NCUTLO discovered that not only could they maintain that discrimination, but they could make it worse, they accepted that change. I participated in that meeting. One such discrimination was that up to that time the following too closely prohibition had applied to drivers of motor vehicles, but not to equestrians or bicyclists. The NCUTLO then changed the prohibition against following too closely to apply to all drivers of vehicles, thus prohibiting pace-lining by cyclists. The rule prohibiting racing of motor vehicles was similarly changed to prohibit racing of all vehicles. No big deal, you say? But the racing motorists had worked so hard to develop ways of evading the original racing rule that when the rule was applied to cyclists it prohibited cycling fast when trying to get to work on time, and prohibited cycling to the extent that one became tired. And, of course, cyclists had been racing for a hundred years without anyone complaining, so long as they did it at locations and times where they did not upset traffic (I had been racing since 1949 in this manner), so that the grass-roots racing was prohibited and only the big professional events permitted. Think about that, all you who complain that I aim my words only at what you call professional cyclists, when I have for decades advocated amateur cycling instead.