[*BCM*] Bike Law.

[. nevele]

i've read the laws several times. my dad's a lawyer so i'd feel like an 
asshole if i didn't know the laws. so i do.

i'd like to note that a few of the laws listed at massbike.com are from the 
boston transportation department. the first - and hopefully last - time i 
was doored it was by a BTD car. so they can suck my balls. "Do not cross 
stop line when traffic signal is red." -BTD. i'm pretty good about that.. 
but when you're on a bike you've got a shit-ton more visability than anyone 
in a car and as a matter of survival have a better idea of everything else 
around you. at red lights i stop, i look around, and i go if it's an option. 
most of the time it actually works out to be safer that way. example: the 
light by the Model where brighton ave splits off in to cambridge st. and no. 
beacon. i take no. beacon.. if i were to wait for the light to turn green, 
i'd be in the way of merging traffic when it does. that's NOT my safest bet. 
i also check side mirrors before opening doors when i happen to be in a 
car..

"Ride on the right side of the road, with the flow of traffic." -BTD again. 
this completely contradicts MGL. you ride on the right side of the road when 
traffic is moving faster than you, you move over to the left when it's not.

"Do not pass on the right of cars turning right." -random. yea, because 
drivers are always so damn astute that they always use turn signals. no. for 
someone who is experienced in riding in the city it's easy to tell when a 
car is about to turn if they're not using their signal.. for someone who 
isn't it's a dangerous situation.

"You must give your name and address when asked by a police officer." -MGL. 
Ohhhh really!? i'm pretty sure we're not living in 1984 just yet. there's 
more to that law that massbike didn't mention. look it up.

my point??

we need a new set of laws for cyclists that actually makes sense. there's NO 
point in taking the local driver's test and trying to apply that to people 
riding bikes. "Two wheels or four, the law is the same."   uhhh, no. no it 
isn't. it's a completely different situation for cyclists. we need to be 
taken seriously by motorists, but that doesn't mean that we need to follow 
the same laws that they don't even follow half of the time, particularly 
when said laws put us in harms way.










>From: "David Watson" <david at massbike.org>
>Reply-To: Boston Critical Mass <list at bostoncriticalmass.org>
>To: "Boston Critical Mass" <list at bostoncriticalmass.org>
>Subject: RE: [*BCM*] List of dangerous streets
>Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2007 13:01:22 -0400
>
>MassBike does in fact offer classes on how to ride safely in traffic; more
>than 200 people signed up last year.  We're putting together the spring
>schedule now, and revamping our curriculum a bit, but the info will be up
>soon at http://www.massbike.org/skills/classes.htm.  We also have some tips
>online at http://www.massbike.org/skills/traffic.htm.  We've also got a
>pamphlet online that looks at the law from both a bicyclist and motorist
>perspective: http://www.massbike.org/info/roadhog.pdf.  One of the goals of
>the Bicyclist Safety Bill is to make the law even more clear about how cars
>should interact with bikes.
>
>-David
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: bostoncriticalmass-bounces at bostoncriticalmass.org
>[mailto:bostoncriticalmass-bounces at bostoncriticalmass.org]On Behalf Of
>Andrew Toomajian
>   Sent: Friday, April 06, 2007 11:31 AM
>   To: Boston Critical Mass
>   Subject: RE: [*BCM*] List of dangerous streets
>
>
>   I think it might be more productive to focus on "best" routes rather 
>than
>which streets are dangerous and why.  The SF Bike coalition, for example,
>makes a map of bike routes through the city avoiding it's major hills.  It
>would be a great project to do this for Boston, with the goal of avoiding
>areas of especially high traffic, severely pot-holed roads, etc.
>
>   Me and the sweetie were talking about this last night - does anyone 
>offer
>classes or guidelines on how to ride safely in traffic?  This might be a
>great project for MassBike, and I bet there is grant money for it 
>somewhere.
>A lot of it boils down to "when in doubt - take the lane" but I'm sure 
>there
>could and would be more to it than that.  The sweetie has done a lot less
>city riding than me so she ends up asking me for survival tips a lot.  I 
>bet
>a lot of people are in a similar situation and a well promoted class would
>help avoid accidents like this one.
>
>
>   >
>   > Maybe Massbike could compile a list of known, dangerous streets for
>   > bicyclist to avoid, or at least be aware of. That would be the best 
>help
>   > they could give for now. We have a wealth of knowledge here that needs
>to
>   > be dispersed before another tragedy occurs. I took Massbike's safe
>biking
>   > course but found their insistence that city biking is safe a little
>   > detached from reality. Bicycle safety is not as simple or easy as
>   > following a few road rules. Not acknowledging this is very
>irresponsible.
>   > We don't need to let another person to find out the hard way which
>   > streets are unsafe.
>   >
>
>
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