As a pedestrian in a dense Californian urban core, I have mixed feelings about bikers.
Most bikers are reasonable, sensible bicycle commuters. They stay in the road, wear helmets, and follow laws. No skin off my nose. (ecologically friendly, fights obesity, blah blah blah blah blah)
But I've also had multiple encounters with bicyclists who feel they are entitled to switch back and forth between a wheeled vehicle moving significantly above normal walking speeds and a pedestrian who just happens to be on a bicycle. Usually with no notice and as is convenient for them. Not infrequently such enhanced-pedestrians can top 20 mph barreling down the sidewalk. Sometimes with cargo in tow. I have literally never even heard of there being any real consequences for such irresponsible and reckless behavior.
I understand why they do it. It's so convenient! Roads certainly aren't always designed for the safety of bicyclists. Yet, these are perhaps less than adequate reasons for irresponsible behavior.
More troubling to me is the role bicycles seem to play in the underground economy of the Bay. But that seems more an issue stemming from law enforcement's general disinclination to be interested in bikes and bikers at all.
As an experienced bike commuter, I wonder how you feel about an issue that bugs me. When I was young I was taught to ride against the flow of auto traffic so that I could see cars coming. When I taught my kids I told them the same thing, but that has been countered by every other authority they have come into contact with, all of which instruct them to follow the same rules as cars, including riding on the same side of the road. I do all my riding on a trail, but my personal feeling is that if I were riding on a road I would not ride with car traffic. However I know people who have been ticketed/warned about riding against. If you really follow a rule that you're invisible when riding, then it would be hard to justify riding with auto traffic, rather than against, wouldn't it?
i guess that's because it's a chore and arguably dangerous to share the road with cyclists no matter what they're doing, and not only when they're ignoring the rules of the road
personally i just cycle on footpaths, i'm not really interested in what the law says. me getting hit by a car is a much more dangerous and likely situation than me riding into a pedestrian, and police aren't going to abandon their car on the road to chase me on foot.
Where are you located? In Oakland, I certainly see some bicyclists break the rules, but I probably see more abiding by them. (And I see cars and pedestrians break rules, as well...)
websitescenes did write that only cyclists are bothered, so the values being communicated by the community at large don't seem to conflict with the law.
We have some shared bike/pedestrian paths that twist and turn through a nice wooded area. The paths have a very well marked 10 mph speed limit; however, there is a certain kind of cyclist that can’t be bothered to slow down and whip through these paths at top speed. 10 mph isn’t all that fast, are these cyclists clearly speeding and putting pedestrians at risk.
Perhaps this is somewhat like what the other commenter insoeaking about.
Lots of people are going to be tempted to rant about seeing bicyclists run stop signs and red lights, just like the last time an article got posted about this subject. That has nothing to do with this law, which applies only when there is no interaction with cars anyway. What you are seeing is still just as illegal as before.
Austria has this sort of problem when it comes to forests and cyclists. You might want to read a longer article in German about this https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000134804355/als-oesterrei... but the gist of it is:
The law until 1975 didn't allow anyone (that's everyone in Austria) to enter forests (which in comparison belong to only a few people, besides the state).
Now that problem with this law (Forstgesetz 1975) is in § 33 (3) where it says "befahren" (drive) which is a very general word when the parliamentary discussion about the law in 1975 clearly meant motor vehicles and even lists them in the discussion but not in the law. A few years later mountainbiking became a thing and the owners of forests insist that the law includes mountain bikers. Fast forward to 2023 and the law still needs fixing...
Other vehicles not getting ticketed for violations has absolutely nothing to do with this. If LE isn't doing it's job, then it's not doing it's job regardless of the mode of transport. The article is about laws directed at cyclists not being logical. It rings a little hollow when the subject of the article can't follow the laws they already have.
For whatever it's worth, I don't hate cyclists. I have a bike that I ride around neighborhood streets and through local parks for recreation. I don't ride it on highly-traveled roads or as a transportation device because I think I'd be impeding motorized vehicles and I'd really rather not be killed.
The whole notion of treating bicycles as vehicular traffic was wayward and has been debunked. It's really obvious that bicycles are not cars, you can tell just by looking at them.
There are differing levels of enforcement in different places, but I've made thousands, possibly tens of thousands of infractions on my bike in 35 years of commuting, sometimes right in front of the police, and I've never had a ticket. Is a rule really a rule if it isn't enforced?
If I say everyone needs to wear clown shoes to work on Wednesdays, is that a rule? It doesn't mean jack-shit because I can't enforce it.
Drivers are held more carefully to the rules of the road, but given that they're ensconced in a protective metal shell, they have a lot more leeway with the law of the jungle. With cyclists it's the other way around.
I wonder if enforcement tends to be more strict when a hiker happens to be present.
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