All Hail the Scofflaw Cyclist?
In the week since Alice Swanson was tragically killed riding her bike through Dupont Circle, there has been the usual back-and-forth between aggravated cyclists and aggrieved drivers. Cyclists accuse drivers of being two-ton road menaces, while drivers fire back by relaying long-worn tales of cyclists recklessly flying through red lights.
But in recent days cyclists have started defending their trade, looking to present their selective ignorance of traffic laws as perfectly justifiable. First up was the City Paper's Mike DeBonis, who wrote of being a "sensible scofflaw":
The whole fun and profit of riding your bike in the city is breaking the rules when safe and possible. That’s why I can get from my office in Adams Morgan down to city hall in 10 minutes or less during even the worst times of day traffic-wise. It’s what makes riding a bike around this city worthwhile.And what does he propose a sensible scofflaw can do? Run stop signs and red lights, go the wrong way down a one-way street and slide past cars in intersections.
More recently, The Atlantic's Megan McArdle penned a more nuanced defense of scofflaw cyclists by citing a difference between "moral" laws and "coordination laws":
Photo by zenfrisbee
Coordination laws, like driving regulations--where the laws themselves have no moral content, but are merely a convenient way to enforce a common standard--are different from things like laws against stealing. Indeed, so different that you don't even think of speeding as breaking the law, allowing you to get morally outraged at bikers without even thinking of yourself as doing exactly the same thing on the highways.Today TheWashCycle, the blog run by the Washington Area Bicycle Association (WABA), runs in the other direction with a wholesale and extensive takedown of the myth that all cyclists are lawbreakers:The reason cops don't ticket bikers when they fail to observe stop signs at uncrowded intersections, etc, for the same reason that they don't ticket people going 5 mph over the speed limit--those people do not cause many accidents.
Now then, I'm not trying to claim that cyclists don't break the law. Let me state clearly and upfront, they do. What I'm saying is that there is nothing unique about the frequency with which cyclists as a class break the law when compared with drivers or pedestrians. And even if cyclists broke the law more flagrantly, that would not negate the need to share the road.Yes, this is something of a tired argument, but it's good to see it flushed out. We don't really believe that the animosity between cyclists and drivers is as pronounced as some might make it seem, but it's important that both sides try and understand each other. At the end of the day, both cyclists and drivers are just trying to get to where they're going, so a little mutual respect and understanding would go a long way to cool tension between the two.