The strangest thing happens when anyone mentions cyclists on Facebook (yeah, I know, I’m old) – the get off my road folks come out in force. Most of the time, I ignore it. You can’t have a rational discussion with someone who is having a faith based rage fest. But sometimes, despite my better judgement, I wade in. Slow day at work today :).

I’m not going to recycle what George said, it wasn’t even the worst comment in the thread (on a post by the government of Highland Park soliciting feedback about cycling in the town). But they called cyclists “entitled”, and that’s what got me. It’s a pattern I see all the time; motorist claims exclusive access to a shared resource, but the other road users are entitled? For being in their way? Weird, huh… anyway. Below is what I wrote to George, hopefully he follows the links and learns a few things. Probably won’t, but Facebook is performative – it’s not just for his eyes ;P.

Hi George, glad to have a reasoned conversation around rules of the road. It seems like you’ve experienced some cyclists behaving badly, and conflated those cyclists for *all cyclists*. We all know that’s not a valid way to understand patterns of behaviors. We’ve all seen cars blow through stop signs, fail to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, run read lights, speed, etc.; would you like to be lumped into that group because you also drive a car?

As a refresher, you can have a look at page 12 of this pamphlet. There are few interesting points there about a motorist’s responsibilities when passing cyclists – most notably *driving over double yellow lines*, *not exceeding the speed limit to pass*, and that it’s only legal to pass in this scenario if a cyclist is traveling at less than 50% of the posted limit. Most residential streets are in the 20-30mph range. Very few cyclists that ride on the road are going under 15mph. It’s important to recognized that unless otherwise posted, cyclists are *entitled* to ride on the road. The road is a shared resource. The posted speed limit is the maximum legal speed on that roadway – it is not illegal to travel at a lower speed. If someone disagrees with the law there, it’s worth asking “who is the entitled one?”.

It’s also worth understanding why cyclists often do not come to a complete stop at stop signs, or move through a red light after coming to a complete stop. This can be frustrating to motorists, who obviously do a full 3s stop at every sign, always follow right turn on red laws, always yield to pedestrians in marked/unmarked crosswalks, and slow down on yellow. Afterall, they follow the rules, why can’t people on bikes?

The answer is because there’s a disconnect b/w what’s legal and what promotes safety. It’s unfortunate that despite the plethora of studies that demonstrate that cyclists are at the greatest risk in intersections, and reducing the amount of time they spend in intersections reduces the risk that they will be injured or killed on the road, efforts for IL to follow the 8 states where “stop as yield” is the law have so far been killed in committee. If you’d like to better understand the research and background on this topic, this is a great place to start.

Again, happy to have a more detailed data driven discussion on this topic. Have a great day.