Originally Posted by sudo bike

We're on the same page with most of this, there are only a few point we see things differently.



But that isn't what the law says. The law says "normal speed of traffic at that time". If they had meant faster traffic, they could have simply written "in the presence of faster traffic". As it is, there's the quandary of a cyclist having to assess traffic and determine what is "normal".



In essence, it is what you are saying though; you are saying that a cyclist must ignore the speed of other cyclists when determining what is "normal" (basically that they "don't count" when assessing traffic), and you seemed to say that this was because they are faced with the same requirement to assess traffic (apologies if this isn't right, but that seemed to be what you were saying). What I'm driving at (ha), is why do you think that other cyclists are excluded from this cyclists' assessment? If we have determined that (a) the speed limit of the road doesn't have bearing on what the "normal speed of traffic at that time" is, and that (b) the law says the cyclist is to assess "normal" traffic speed, not just faster traffic speed, then it follows that (c) the majority of traffic sets the "normal" speed of the law. I don't think the law says (or implies) that other slow traffic should be excluded from this speed assessment just because they are all faced with the same task.

Let's simplify this and, for the sake of argument, assume we are on a road with no speed limit (or minimum). Even a "virgin" road, with nary a treadmark. How is the "normal speed of traffic at that time" figured? I would say if, on such a road, there were 20 cyclists riding along and a single car comes up from behind, the cyclists are obviously setting the speed of what is normal on that road at that time, since "normal" does not necessarily equal faster. Or if there is a road with a 40mph speed limit that sees high volumes of cyclist traffic but low volumes of car traffic. Wouldn't this case be that the "normal speed of traffic at that time" is cycling speed, even if it's below the speed limit.

FWIW, I have no doubt that your interpretation is probably more in the spirit of the law and that is how the law would be applied by the courts, I just don't think it's terribly well written because it doesn't make things as clear as it could.