Critique of bill to change traffic laws for cyclists
 

House Bill 1451, the "Bicycle Protection Act," was designed to change North Carolina's traffic laws for cyclists, but died in committee this spring. The bill would have made bicycle lane use mandatory and eliminated the right to take the lane. Its sponsor intends to re-submit a similar bill this fall. The sponsor is not anti-cycling but allowed a lot of bad laws from other states to serve as "models" for the proposed changes. I have been asked by local cycling advocates to write up our concerns and recommendations regarding the bill so that hopefully a better one will result.

A draft of my write-up may be seen here:
http://humantransport.org/bicycledri...tatuterecs.pdf

Comments are welcome.

yes, the slow moving vehicles gambit to define bicyclists' lateral lane position. how does the law define where a cyclist in an 18 foot wide lane would ride then, steve?

pretty effing ambiguous. can you help the legal wording be more definite there perhaps? there's clarity in jurisprudence to be considered!

"eliminate the right to take the lane?" what kind of hokum are you peddling there???? that's a bald faced lie. stop misrepresenting what as far right as practicable statutes allows bicyclists. your marginalizing screed does a disservice to bicyclists and bicycling advocacy.


"as far right as practicable" statutes more accurately capture the uniform and organic rules of the roadway for operators of narrow, predominately slow moving, human powered vehicles while still allowing full unfettered vehicular use of an entire lane.

So for the record, bek, you support changing the law to add new, specific mandatory stay-right laws for bicyclists, and mandatory bicycle lane use laws, despite the fact that we already have police in NC stopping and ticketing cyclists for riding in the center of narrow lanes or outside of door zones? This is the implication of your post.

The intent of introducing the mandatory stay-right law for bicyclists in HB1451 is to prohibit cyclists from taking the lane. The bill does not even include the exemptions for narrow lanes. This bill contradicts the context-based defensive bicycle driving methods we have attempted to teach. Bicyclists who use those methods must be aware of what is coming and speak out against such bills if they want to be protected from additional harassment and prosecution.

Thanks - I'll change the text to make it more accurate.

I would prefer not to legitimize any legislation that specifies when a cyclist may or may not operate away from the right edge of the travel lane, since what we have in NC works quite well as-is. On those roads with wide travel lanes and under conditions when it is safe for cyclists to share the lane, cyclists do so voluntarily under the current law. The only exceptions I can think of in my personal experience are large groups of cyclists that take over the entire rightmost through lane regardless of lane width, typically at intersections, but leave the left lane unoccupied. At such volumes I don't think enforcing lane sharing would serve the interests of safety. Besides, I doubt the NC legislature would accept the 14'/unsharable lane exemption - the bill could easily get passed without it.

Effectively defending cyclists' interests in equitable access to roadways means opposing proposed statute language that has the potential to be interpreted in overly restrictive ways by police, judges, and the general public, but also promoting permissive interpretations of ambiguous laws that are actually on the books. So while I promote interpretations of "practicable" that allow taking the center of a narrow lane, I know that this interpretation is opposed by many who would persecute and prosecute cyclists, and so when an actual law is being drafted, I recommend better language. And while I support 14' sharable lane language in states with mandatory stay-right laws, I think having no bicycle-specific mandatory stay-right law is better for cyclists. When a cyclist is descending a hill at high speed, 14' is not enough space for lane sharing with a truck. These details cannot be adequately expressed in mandatory stay-right laws; meanwhile, courtesy seems to be adequate motivation for cyclists to share wide lanes when it is safe to do so.

chipseal rightly brings up the issue of 'what is a wide lane and where does the law define where bicyclists ride there' as well.

what do you mean "the details cannot be addressed" under mandatory far right as practicable laws, steve?

control of a wide lane is still allowed under FRAP laws, steve. "as far right as practicable" is NOT "right edge of roadway". You marginalize what is legally allowed bicyclists under FRAP.

I'm more concerned with you marginalizing FRAP than NC legislation specifics.

let me get back to you later at greater length, steve.

Law enforcement officers and judges in general are not, unfortunately, trained in defensive bicycle driving, or aware of all of the bicyclists's operational concerns at a particular time and place, despite the efforts of vehicular cycling educators and advocates. Given that lack of insight, they often interpret vague FRAP laws as more restrictive than you and I would prefer.

One way to mitigate this is to write explicit exemptions into the law to protect defensive bicycle driving methods. That way when a police officer inappropriately pulls over and tickets a cyclist, the cyclist has a clear legal defense, and hopefully police will eventually become more aware of the exemptions and stop ticketing cyclists in the travel lanes because they don't like spending time in court or sitting down for interventions with the city bicycle and pedestrian coordinator.

However, in order to cover all of the valid real-world contraindications to riding on the extreme right, the list of legal exemptions becomes very long. So long that it reveals the silliness of the rule in the first place. A rule with a truly adequate list of exemptions is most succinctly stated as "Be courteous to overtaking drivers and share the lane when safe and practical to do so." Since cyclists already do this very reliably, there is more potential harm to creating a law to mandate it than leaving well enough alone.

I simply draw attention to the problems with ambiguous laws and the motivations of those who propose FRAPs for cyclists. As I said in an earlier post, I oppose adding new ambiguous language that has been used against cyclists elsewhere despite promoting more permissive interpretation of those laws when they do exist.

You have so much energy, bek; I do have hope that you can learn to direct it constructively rather than tilting at windmills.

boy steve, I've got a solution for your problem - you said.....

i suggest that is precisely what FRAP language addresses. defensive bicycling. coz, 'if it ain't safe, it ain't practicable." surely you, as an LCI, are cognizant of this?


off to bike to work. hope you did the same.

The problem is, the police are not. Nor do they know what is or isn't safe. That is why better language is required.

Do yourself a favor and read the link to the article discussing the entirety of HB1451 and my recommended alternative language based on input from other cyclists. Then, if you have any substantive suggestions on how to word the law any better, please post your own wording here.

steve- i'm familiar with the issues and have read much background about FRAP language as how it relates to bicyclists.

STOP MARGINALIZING WHAT "AS FAR RIGHT AS PRACTICABLE" allows bicyclists legally. YOU marginalize it like the cops do - and that's reprehensible.

AS FAR RIGHT AS PRACTICABLE is not riding at 'the right edge of the roadway'.

stop your lies and innacurate smear as what FRAP language allows bicyclists.

FRAP allows me to take the entirity of an 18 foot wide highway lane if i need to control it. FRAP allows me to default 8 feet away from the curb if that's my determinant of my safe road position.

surely, as an LCI, you realize this?

STOP the marginalizing and the lies. YOU mislead the interpretation of the language to your fellow bicyclists. LAME.

you wanted some criticism and I gave it. stop misleading the public and bicyclists what as far right as practicable allows bicyclists. if your cops have a problem with this, it sounds like anti-cyclist bias. why do you think your alternate wording wouldn't get interpreted in the field as the more restrictive of the two halves of your proposed statute?

how bikes share a roadway with other vehicles,vehicularily, is most accurately characterized as FRAP.

you're trying to eliminate police bias to vehicular positioning general rules, by lying to the public.

Snip- rant deleted

Dude, take a deep breath and stop being so hostile. Some of the people you are calling names may actually agree with you on some things.

Interestingly, that's the same advice I would give to John Forester.

I've only read the paper 3 or 4 times, so I don't have many specific comments yet but I've thought for some time that North Carolina's bike laws have been among the best in the country, as you say. Had House Bill 1451 passed, North Carolina's bike laws would have instantly become among the worst in the nation, mainly because of the proposed bicycle-specific ride right law with no reasonable exceptions.

What many non-bicyclists don't understand is that bicyclists often need to ride well away from the curb for their own safety. There are road hazards¹, as well as times when it's important to discourage some impatient nutjob from trying to pass. Someone who has never had a motorist try to squeeze past, without changing lanes, when there isn't enough room, simply cannot understand how dangerous that can be.

Any law that requires bicyclists to share a lane is not a safety law; it is an anti-safety law. No other road users besides bicyclsts are ever required to share a lane. Many states have laws specifically stating that motorcyclists are entitled to the use of a full lane. If bicyclists have the same rights and responsibilities, then they cannot be denied the right to a full lane-- even though there are many times when it is reasonable and safe to share a lane.

The proposal HB 1451 lists only two exceptions to the bicycle-specific ride-right law (passing and preparing for a left turn). The UVC lists 4 (actually 5, since #3 is actually two, hazards and too narrow lane).


UVC § 11-1205. Position on roadway
(a) Any person operating a bicycle or a moped upon a roadway at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway except under any of the following situations:
1. When overtaking and passing another bicycle or vehicle proceeding in the same direction.
2. When preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road or driveway.
3. When reasonably necessary to avoid conditions including, but not limited to, fixed or moving objects, parked or moving vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, animals, surface hazards, or substandard width lanes that make it unsafe to continue along the right-hand curb or edge. For purposes of this section, a "substandard width lane" is a lane that is too narrow for a bicycle and a 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.


Source: NHTSA Resource Guide On Laws Related To Pedestrian And Bicycle Safety
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/inju...resourceguide/
The guide is a real pain in the rear end because it's in the form of a windows help file, and some of the state laws it quotes may be out of date (the guide seems to have been compiled about the year 2000) but the guide does compare laws from various states and can be fun to play with. If only it were in a better format.

A bicycle-specific ride-right law may be difficult to stop. What's important is that, if enacted, the law must contain all the necessary exceptions (the exceptions in the UVC, above, are the minimum).

According to the NHTS guide, no states use the exact wording in UVC § 11-1205, 1 has equivalent wording, 41 states have variations and 8 states, including North Carolina, have no comparable law.

I sincerely hope that North Carolina can be stopped from passing a bicycle-specific ride-right law without reasonable exceptions. Such laws make safe bicycling illegal.

Most bicycle-specific laws are unnecessary, at best (the exceptions are equipment regulations). At worst, bicycle-specific laws make it illegal to ride a bicycle safely.

----

Steve, if you'd have any use for an html version of your draft paper, there's one here (just something I do to pdf files if I want to read them more than a couple of times-- less suitable for printing but easier to read in a web browser-- if you object to that being on the web, I'll remove it-- copyright and all that good stuff. I respect copyright although most things I publish on the web are copyleft: all rights reversed, all wrongs preserved).

Notes:

¹regarding road hazards, don't even get me started on Missouri's infamous "bicycle trap" sewer grates. Much to my delight, a couple near me are on a bridge (on historic Route 66) that will soon be demolished. I can't wait to see what kind of grates the new bridge has.

another punter bicyclist, marginalizing 'practicable' language as it relates to bicycling.

don't conflate the onerous mandatory bikelane provision in that bill with clarifing vehicular road positioning with FRAP language, which in and of itself affords great leeway to bicyclists.

i can see the language being quite limiting in the NC bill. I would oppose that bill as well.

but as i told Steve above, i am much more concerned to find LCIs lying on a public bike forum about what 'as far right as practicable' affords bicyclists than the NC specifics.

that type of talk, from a LCI no less, that 'as far right as practicable = edge of roadway" lateral lane positioning is marginalizing, inaccurate screed.

it is reallly foul to hear such misinformation coming from a guy like Steve G.

So you, Steve and I all agree. How cool is that?

stellar.

I'll be in the carolinas this fall, and bringing a bike. i suspect i'll have little issue riding there regardless of the laws at the time, as i ride FRAP to follow the "universal" rules of the road as a vehicular cyclist.

sometimes thats smack dab in the middle of a four lane road dontchyaknow?:D how cool is that?

FRAP-FRAPPA-FRAP-PRR-FRAP went the vehicular cyclist, Walter Mitty, as the pistons of his legs pumped POCKETA POCKETA POCKETA and propelled him as far right as practicable as a vehicular cyclist would do..... POCKETA POCKETA FRAP FRAPA FRAPA


:roflmao:

i suggest "FRAP" rules encompasses the entire notion of vehicular cycling, in a nutshell.

it might be endemic in the LCI population to misintrepret FRAP to suit their personal agendas by lying thru repeated assertions that FRAP equates with 'mandatory effective lane sharing' or 'right edge operation'.

FRAP is neither of these things.

Bek,

Take a deep breath and read this carefully.

You appear to interpret my admittedly alarmist language above alerting bicyclists about possible changes to laws affecting their existing right to the travel lane as an attack by me on interpretations of "practicable" that would be better for cyclists. I am sorry that you interpret it that way. I have attempted to clarify my views above. If it is still unclear, let me say that I have never said or written that "as far right as practicable" should be interpreted by police and the courts as prohibiting taking the lane. I have always maintained that an interpretation fair to cyclists should not prohibit taking the lane.

My words in the original post were meant to convey fear of how the proposed NC FRAP law, especially given its lack of important exceptions, will be interpreted quite frequently by police, the courts, and others who do not understand defensive bicycle driving. If the bicycle-specific FRAP bill becomes law, the DMV will almost certainly remove language from the Driver's Handbook that tells motorists that cyclists have the right to use the entire lane. It will probably result in more aggressive actions than we have now by police against cyclists operating defensively in narrow lanes and near door zones, or where cylists ride abreast at intersections to increase their throughput.

I am sorry if my shorthand description confused you about my position and actions. Now that you should understand my position, do you think you could be a bit more civil and substantive in your remarks? I think you have a lot to offer the cycling community, given your enthusiasm, but your approach undermines your credibility.

How about this language instead of FRAP:

42-4-1412. Operation of bicycles and other human-powered
vehicles. (5) (a) ANY PERSON OPERATING A BICYCLE UPON A ROADWAY AT
LESS THAN THE NORMAL SPEED OF TRAFFIC SHALL RIDE IN THE RIGHT-HAND
LANE, SUBJECT TO THE FOLLOWING CONDITIONS:
(I) IF THE RIGHT-HAND LANE THEN AVAILABLE FOR TRAFFIC IS WIDE
ENOUGH TO BE SAFELY SHARED WITH OVERTAKING VEHICLES, A BICYCLIST
SHALL RIDE FAR ENOUGH TO THE RIGHT AS JUDGED SAFE BY THE BICYCLIST
TO FACILITATE THE MOVEMENT OF SUCH OVERTAKING VEHICLES UNLESS
OTHER CONDITIONS MAKE IT UNSAFE TO DO SO.

From Colorado's safety bill. http://www.leg.state.co.us/Clics/CLI...le=148_enr.pdf

The bill also allows a cyclist to use the left hand lane when passing, turning, and such. I personally find the language in the bill alot less restricting than a blanket, "as far right as practicable."

"as near to the right as is safe" is WA state language; WA defines vehicular, "FRAP" road positioning as being determinable by the rider. Colorada would to.

as does UVC's FRAP 'practicable' language.

This satisfies my safety concerns, at least for individual cyclists. However, it appears (to me) to prohibit groups of cyclists from riding more than single file in a wide lane. This restriction may have adverse traffic impacts at intersections, where single file groups take much longer to move though an intersection than when 2-4 abreast, reducing traffic capacity and increasing delays to other travelers. I think it's preferable for them to ride abreast at intersections for traffic capacity reasons of interest to everyone. I also think that on many medium to low speed 4-lane roads, it is probably safer and more orderly for large groups to take over the outside through lane regardless of its width. I'm not sure how to capture this in the wording of a law.

I'd suggest some inclusions of 'no more than two abreast' and 'FRAP's; this allows two bicyclists to claim a lane - even one cyclist- regardless of lane width.

Fundamentally, it appears to be a good document. JRA's comment regarding conforming NC's FRAP to the UVC FRAP is a good one, IMO. More generally, I think it is a good idea to be explicit about the language's intent -- which I think you have done at many places -- and convey that to the reader.

Have you discussed this with a lawyer?

In my experience, the FRAP law establishes the far right as the cyclist’s default legal position, and places the burden on the cyclist to prove that one or more of the permissible exception conditions exist that would justify riding farther out into the lane. Like it or not, this is how law enforcement and the general public interpret this law. More often than not, only the cyclist, not law enforcement officers or anyone else in the vicinity, can ascertain if such conditions exist and just exactly where “as far right at practicable” might be. It is ludicrous to expect that such a law can be unambiguously, objectively, and fairly enforced and prosecuted.

All the proposed modifications make good sense to me and I hope they prove successful in preventing this latest “well intentioned” assault on NC cyclists’ rights to share the public roadways. Especially valuable is the clarification that motorists should cross into/through the bike lane, after yielding to traffic in the bike lane, when setting up for a right turn.

Steve, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on the “Idaho Stop Law”, which is poised to spread into other states. Rather than derail this thread, I will start a new one here in the VC Forum.

FRAP most emphatically DOES NOT establish the 'far right' as a cyclists legal default position.

there is NO burden of proof in the legal operation of a bicycle under the general and vehicular road positioning rule of as "far right as practicable" either. ever block i ride i am under no such legal scrutiny, that is perry mason hysterics.

where do you guys come up with this stuff?

FRAP encompasses ever lateral destination position on any road i need to ride on and is the simplest, most base embodiment of vehicular cycling.

you guys serious about peddling your deceit and lies, go peddle it somewhere else. it stinks.

FRAP is the very essence of vehicular cycling.

We “come up with this stuff” when one of our fellow cyclists has to defend himself in court for choosing the safest riding position on Chinden Blvd. We “come up with this stuff” when irate motorists, not understanding (or caring about) the nuances of the FRAP law, scream at us to get in the gutter. We “come up with this stuff” when letters to the Idaho Statesman demand that the police “enforce the law” and force cyclists to the edge of the road, where the “law says they belong”.

Bek, I have to wonder if we have a case here of two people agreeing with each other, but too stubborn to admit it. Do you agree that the cyclist, and only the cyclist, has the right to determine his or her optimal position on the road, based on the conditions prevailing at a particular time and place? This question can be answered with a simple ‘Yes’ or ‘No’.

If you answered ‘Yes’, then what value does the FRAP law bring to the table? Every set of statutes I have read already confers to cyclists the same rights and duties as any other vehicle operator. The FRAP law only muddies the water.

Here is another way of looking at it. There are two diametrically opposed forces at work here, and a cyclist strives to achieve the best possible balance between these opposing forces:

1. The cyclist’s need to increase safety, which forces him away from the edge of the roadway. You are a veteran cyclist who understands all the conditions that would induce a cyclist to ride farther into the lane to increase safety; I need not spell all these out for you.

2. The cyclist’s need to accommodate overtaking traffic, which forces him toward the edge of the roadway.

The FRAP law prioritizes #2 over #1. As much as I want to give motorists every opportunity to pass me safely (I am hard-wired to be courteous, and it is in my own self-interest to have them in front of me, not behind me), I would NEVER prioritize #2 over #1.

According to what you mean by burden of proof, there are counter-examples both in local circles as well as on the A&S forum. I take it to mean that cyclists are issued citations -- one might include being stopped as well -- for taking the lane instead of riding a position further right. Consider Joejack's incident a while back. He had to appeal the initial ruling and hire a lawyer to win his case.

In a practical sense, if a LEO gives me a ticket that forces me to attend a traffic hearing to defend my actions, then I would consider that as having a burden of proof. If I get stopped by a LEO who asks why I am traveling in the through lane and I have to defend my actions, that I consider that as having a burden of proof. Or at the very least, for either case, a burden.

Now ... how often does this happen; i.e., that a cyclist takes the lane and is harassed/ticketed by a LEO? You got me. As far as I know, there is no empirical data that answers the question. Simply from conversations, however, with noncycling LEOs and ordinary people, the overwhelming majority share the concept is that "as far right as practicable" = "as far right as possible".