{"id":15801,"date":"2015-12-03T07:30:08","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T11:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/atlantic\/?p=15801"},"modified":"2015-12-15T18:05:03","modified_gmt":"2015-12-15T22:05:03","slug":"plea-clear-reasonable-rules-cyclists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/atlantic\/2015\/12\/03\/plea-clear-reasonable-rules-cyclists\/","title":{"rendered":"A Plea for Clear and Reasonable Rules for Cyclists"},"content":{"rendered":"

HALIFAX\u00a0– Every morning I put on my helmet, get on my bike, and enter a world of legal anarchy.<\/p>\n

Trying to follow the rules is sometimes scarier than some of the riskier things I got dared to do in high school. Consider intersections where cyclists are supposed to merge into the centre lane just to bike straight, despite the 3,000 pound, fast-moving objects\u00a0on all sides. Like many, I continue straight through on the right-turning lane, keeping that curb close.<\/p>\n

Drivers often complain about people on bikes breaking the rules. It also sucks for cyclists. We would like to be able to follow a consistent set of guidelines\u00a0that would keep us safe and maintain positive interactions with others on the road. Nobody likes uncertainty.<\/p>\n

A recent survey<\/a> of some 18,000 people found that pedestrians and drivers primarily break the law to save time. It found cyclists, however, do so first and foremost to feel safe. For lack of dedicated infrastructure, cyclists are forced to adapt as best they can to streets and intersections that were designed without them in mind, and so they feel the need to\u00a0 break <\/a> or bend <\/a> the rules.<\/p>\n

Cyclists are also governed by laws that only vaguely acknowledge their existence. (For goodness sakes, it\u2019s called the Motor Vehicle Act <\/a>.) While drivers\u00a0are told precisely what to do in all variety of situations, cyclists are given\u00a0a handful of simple prescriptions to apply in\u00a0all cases. People on bikes\u00a0are supposed to stay on the right even when it would be precisely the wrong thing to do, such as when biking alongside parked cars whose doors could open at any moment and cause severe injury.<\/p>\n

For lack of bike-specific rules, the prevailing\u00a0thinking\u00a0for how bikes should act is\u00a0\u201cVehicular cycling.\u201d Essentially,\u00a0cyclists should pretend they are slow cars.<\/p>\n

The problem is that bikes are not cars. They are not armoured and do not go as fast.\u00a0If the number of people brave enough\u00a0to bike in Halifax without a proper bike-lane network is only 1.1%<\/a>, the number who are willing to bike roundabouts\u00a0just like a car\u00a0is\u00a0much less. And we expect everyone to adopt this philosophy?<\/p>\n

Moreover, some things make sense on bikes that don\u2019t in cars. Bikes take physical energy to start and stop, they have a much tighter turning radius, they fit between cars, and they don\u2019t have a blindspot.\u00a0Rules cyclists will follow\u2014both intuitively and for safety\u2014must take these differences seriously.<\/p>\n

Remember, people on bikes are other times people in cars. They are not a different species. Rules are broken because they fail to reflect the realities that people experience from the perspective of the bike seat\u2014just as drivers speed when a road looks safe to drive fast on.<\/p>\n

So let’s develop rules that reflect the reality of cycling.<\/p>\n

Legalize and Regulate<\/h2>\n

One reason to develop such rules would benefit all road users: if normal cycling behaviour is legal, we can regulate it.<\/p>\n

When all un-car-like\u00a0behaviour is banned, we lose the ability to encourage good, reasonable behaviour, and to specifically prohibit the worst.\u00a0Consider the following proposals for more nuanced regulations. (Whether they are laws or just guidelines matters less than that they are\u00a0official and in driver’s handbooks.<\/p>\n