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The Why and Wherefore of Traffic Law

Traffic Law for Drivers of Vehicles

You need to keep in mind that the following is a discussion of traffic law as it applies to all drivers, including cyclists riding on the roadway, in all states. Traffic law is not arbitrary. It is the legal formulation of a century’s experience with roadways, vehicles, and drivers—experience that is also formulated in traffic-engineering knowledge. Traffic law is not an instructional guide; it is a legal formulation that specifies what to do, or what not to do, but it doesn’t say how to do these things. A driver who drives properly is going to obey the law, even though he doesn’t know what the law says. However, there is so much erroneous opinion about the law applying to cyclists that cyclists who choose to ride lawfully and safely need to know the legal basics about drivers, and hence about cyclists. However, cyclists who choose to ride lawfully and safely also need to recognize two problems:

That the government’s program for bicycle transportation is based on attracting cyclists who don’t want to ride according to law and believe that bikeways eliminate that need

That traffic law also has an opposite side for cyclists, the law that prohibits cyclists from obeying standard traffic law by requiring them to operate close to the edge of the roadway, unless they prove a safety need to move away.

The situation doesn’t make sense and cannot be made rational, and you, the new cyclist, will have to put up with this cognitive dissonance until you realize that obeying the rules for all drivers is by far the best way to ride, and the rest is nonsense.

Principles and Statutes

To travel safely and efficiently when cycling on the highway, you must follow two guides. The first is traffic law, and the second is safe traffic-cycling technique. They agree because people have learned to make traffic law agree with traffic safety principles—dangerous laws get changed. But traffic laws do not tell you all you need to know. If you knew how to ride, you wouldn’t need to know the law at all.

Traffic law can be viewed as elementary knowledge, whereas traffic-safety principles are the advanced knowledge and skills necessary for adequate performance.

Another way of looking at it is to say that traffic law is divided into two parts: statutes and principles. Statutes are the written laws enacted by the legislature and published in the vehicle code. Principles are the guide that the legislature followed in composing the statutes. (By the term “vehicle code,” I mean a code that contains the elements that are common to most state vehicle codes, with some bias toward the California Vehicle Code because that code handles certain matters, such as the distinction between vehicles and motor vehicles, better than others. Except where specified, I do not mean the Uniform Vehicle Code, which contains serious errors with respect to bicycling.)

Still a third view is that statute laws are written with three intentions:

To define those acts that are illegal and for which you can be criminally prosecuted by the government

To establish liability in a legal suit for damages after an accident

To establish the principles of proper driving technique

The first two intentions imply that the law says what you must not do because those acts are dangerous to other people. The third intention conflicts with the other two; here the stress is on what you should do. This conflict could perhaps be resolved by very careful work if the tasks were equally easy, but they aren’t. It is far more difficult to tell you how to do something right than it is to tell you what not to do. Proper instruction requires development of judgment, discussion of many different kinds of conditions, and presentation not in cold logical form but in ways by which you can learn. No legislature is capable of producing this kind of law, and society has far more important tasks for legislatures. As a result, despite this nice theory, statute traffic law is far more prohibitory than instructional. It sets the bounds of legally acceptable behavior, and leaves it up to the drivers’ judgment about how they conduct themselves within those bounds. After all, as long as drivers are not openly dangerous to other people, they will probably behave so as to look after themselves. In fact, another school of legal thinking holds that the purpose of laws is not to instruct but simply to limit our antisocial behavior—to keep our attempts to make ourselves happy within socially reasonable bounds. This distinction between socially safe and personally safe behavior is particularly significant for cyclists. They must act as if they were almost as dangerous as a car (how could they expect equal treatment if they did not behave equally?), but because of their fragility and vulnerability, they must exercise better judgment and skill just to travel as effectively and safely as motorists. This suggests the theory that the right-of-way traffic laws should be rewritten to favor the vulnerable cyclist, but that doesn’t work. We have considered many ways to do this, and the cyclist always comes out worse off. The answer is really something different. If we knew a safer way of behaving on the road, we would apply it to all users, but the rules of the road we have now are the safest that we have been able to work out.

Drivers and Pedestrians

Traffic law has two different sets of rules, one for pedestrians and one for drivers. Pedestrians may cross the roadway, but they must travel along the sidewalk or shoulder. Drivers travel on the roadway and rarely cross sidewalks. Cyclists are unique because they are the only highway users who have a choice. They can follow drivers’ rules when traveling on the roadway, or pedestrians’ rules if they travel on the sidewalk or crosswalk. It is nearly always more effective to be a driver than a pedestrian—being a pedestrian is the cyclist’s last resort when nothing else works.

The legal name for a driver is driver of a vehicle: everyone who drives a car or a wagon, or rides horseback, or rides a bicycle is a driver of a vehicle. One class of drivers of vehicles has special restrictions: drivers of motor vehicles must be licensed, may overtake on the right only under specified conditions, may not follow too closely, and may not race. These restrictions are imposed because motor vehicles can be extremely dangerous to other highway users. No other drivers of vehicles have such special restrictions because nonmotorized vehicles are not as dangerous to others as are motor vehicles. Because there are so few wagons today, for all practical purposes drivers are either motorists (drivers of motor vehicles) or cyclists (drivers of vehicles). Today, the governmental program for bicycle transportation pretends to make cycling so easy, by bikeways, that cyclists no longer need to learn how to operate as drivers of vehicles. Therefore, government now emphasizes the other side of traffic law: that which attempts to prohibit cyclists from operating as drivers of vehicles. This turns cyclists into a new class of highway users without the rights of drivers but with more responsibilities. You will understand why this is bad for cyclists as you learn how to ride effectively.

The highways are public highways, built and maintained for the use of the people. The second guiding principle is that “all persons have an equal right to use [the highways] for purposes of travel by proper means, and with due regard for the corresponding rights of others” (as noted in the legal handbook American Jurisprudence [Westlaw, 1962]). You may not camp on the highway—that is not traveling, and it prevents others from traveling. You may not drive an overweight truck or use a tractor with cleats, because that damages the highway for others. You may not drive a motor vehicle without a license, because that endangers others. In general, if you treat other users as they should treat you, you have exactly the same rights as they have.

Conflict or Cooperation?

Many bicycle riders fear that life on the highway is an unregulated competition for road space in which might makes right. They fearfully compare 200 pounds of fragile cyclist against 4,000 pounds of unfeeling car and conclude that it is pointless for the cyclist to have equal rights—or any rights, if they are logical about their theory—because in a collision the cyclist always loses. These people confuse physical strength with legal right. The motorist who smashes a cyclist by an illegal action is liable to go to jail and pay heavy damages. The prospect of punishment and financial liability is expected to help prevent that motorist from being so careless that the lives of others are endangered, and to make him repay, so far as practicable, for the trouble caused. Suppose instead that those who oppose equal rights for cyclists had their way. Then the cyclist would have been negligent for getting in the motorist’s way and the motorist would not have been liable. Basically, inferior rights for cyclists turn the motoring license into a hunting license. The only preventive action cyclists could take if the legislature made them inferior to motorists is that forced on them by such a law. They would have to travel in even greater fear of motorists, not only of being hit but also of disturbing motorists’ passage in any way, lest they be arrested for obstructing motorists. Cyclists would have to sneak along the road trying to act as if they weren’t there at all. And if hit, they would have to conceal this event lest they be forced to pay the damages for scratching the motorist’s paint. Inferior legal status for cyclists turns cyclists into the lepers of the roads. The actions of fear beget greater fear. Remember that this hasn’t happened yet, and be thankful and confident that today, if you insist, you still have equal rights to use the highway.

Though these fears are frequent enough among people who ride a bicycle but have no training, they are not justified for well-informed cyclists. Car-bike collisions do occur to competent cyclists, but these are much less frequent than those to average bicycle riders, and they are basically similar to motorist-motorist collisions. They are caused by general mistakes in driving, not by the peculiarities of cyclists. Unfortunately, most car-bike collisions are caused by cyclists of low skill committing the most elementary kinds of mistakes: mistakes in which they disobey the law, which implies a very low level of skill in traffic cycling. Competent cyclists are reasonably safe, even though when hit they suffer more than the motorists.

Many people consider it foolhardy for a cyclist to stand up for his legal rights despite the danger. They argue that the cyclist who stands up for his rights will be “dead right.” That is not so. The object of traffic law is to minimize collisions while still allowing travel. Obeying traffic law while insisting on the duty of other drivers to also obey it is the best way to reduce the probability of collisions, car-bike collisions as well as all other types. All drivers should cooperate in obeying traffic law.

Nearly all motorists cooperate with other traffic within the rules of the road. If might really made right, the only vehicles left would be the toughest, gravel trucks, and the fleetest, Porsches. Motorists typically cooperate with cyclists as well as they do with other motorists, aside from a few understandable mistakes due to special conditions. As long as cyclists act reasonably, most motorists will treat them reasonably. Those that act unreasonably, either cyclists or motorists, are acting illegally. So be confident that most drivers will cooperate, but be watchful for those who don’t.

First Come, First Served

If you are traveling on a portion of a roadway, nobody else may intrude in front of you so close as to constitute a hazard. You have a superior right to the place you occupy and to a reasonably safe distance ahead of you. This is called your right-of-way. You must not intrude into anybody else’s right-of-way, either. The distance defined as “so close as to constitute a hazard” is based on speed, visibility, highway, and traffic conditions. Be reasonable with other drivers and they will be reasonable with you.

Right-of-Way at Intersections

Two drivers on intersecting paths might arrive at an intersection simultaneously and collide. Both the “first-come, first-served” rule and the right-of-way space rule are ambiguous here, so we have adopted the rule that in simultaneous arrivals at an intersection the driver on the right has the right-of-way and the driver on the left must yield the right-of-way. This choice was not arbitrary, because in an intersection, the driver on the left has an extra half-roadway width in which to stop before the collision and so is more likely to stop in time.

Superior and Inferior Roadways

In order to speed up traffic and reduce the number of stops necessary for a given trip, we violate the first-come, first-served rule at arterial stops. Traffic on an arterial highway always has the right-of-way, whereas traffic on a side street must always yield to any approaching traffic that is so close as to constitute a hazard. This rule enables the arterial traffic to keep moving with both speed and safety. Cyclists should take particular care to follow arterial routes: the added effort of stop-and-go cycling on the side streets is very great, and comes out of their endurance, not a gas tank. Their fragility and vulnerability makes the protection provided by the cross-street stop signs much more important for cyclists than for motorists.

Traffic Signals

Though the “first-come, first-served” rule works fine at low-traffic intersections, it is difficult to simultaneously observe the timing of many cars in a busy intersection. And even if you could observe it, it would be impossible to follow because some combinations of movements would create a logical impasse. So for busy intersections we use traffic signals, which signal to all drivers which stream of traffic must stop and which stream may go. Within each stream it is still first come, first served, but the whole stream is controlled by the signal.

Driving on the Right

Long ago, when wagon drivers going in opposite directions often met on a narrow road, it became convention and finally law for each to move to his right to let the other by. When roads became two-laned but were still narrow, drivers were required to drive as far to the right as practicable, so that the meeting situation was set up in advance. When we built multilane roads, which work best when all lanes carry equal volumes, the general principle of driving became to travel on any part of the right half of the roadway (except when specific maneuvers require a particular position).

Overtaking and Being Overtaken

The overtaking rules carry out the principles of noninterfering equal rights, right-of-way, and driving on the right. The slower driver maintains his or her right-of-way, but if possible must stay to the far right because it is not right to impede unjustifiably the equal right of the overtaking driver. A slower driver may neither hog the road nor speed up. But the overtaking driver may not interfere with the safe operation of the slower driver—that means that adequate clearance must be given and the driver may not return to the right side until safely past. Because the overtaking driver is using the left side of the roadway, it is that driver’s responsibility to ensure that the left side is used only when there is no opposing traffic. Being on the wrong side, the overtaking driver must not interfere with the right-of-way of a driver on the opposite-direction side. This is very important, because an opposing car cuts the safe distance to half of that for a stationary obstruction, and the driver on the normal side is not expecting the safety distance to disappear so suddenly.

Because of this, cyclists must think for and control the overtaking driver to some extent, even though this is not in the rules of the road. Motorists overtaking cyclists on narrow roads too often assume that there is sufficient width for overtaking, even though there is opposing traffic or a curve around which it might come. Or else they assume that the cyclist is traveling more slowly than his actual speed, slowly enough to stay clear when they move right again to avoid that oncoming traffic. Then the cyclist will be riding beside a motorist who dodges right to avoid oncoming cars. The answer is to stay far enough out in the roadway to inform the following driver that the left lane must be used for passing. That motorist will then be cautious enough to do it properly, because of the fear of approaching cars.

This system of overtaking works fine for motorists and cyclists, but it is confused and made more difficult by the special rule that restricts cyclists to the right edge of the roadway. This attempt to keep cyclists out of motorists’ path has no justification in traffic-law principles. It gives the motorist superior rights and status over the cyclist. This does not improve the safety or confidence of the cyclist, and it encourages the motorist to be aggressive. Fortunately, this is canceled in large part by the provisions that prohibit driving so fast that you cannot avoid a danger on the road. Motorists who hit cyclists from behind have clearly been driving too fast for the conditions. This difficult question will be discussed later also.

Signaling

When you drive, you assume that other drivers will continue to do what they have been doing, and they assume that you will also. To indicate to others that you are changing your action, there are signals for turning and stopping. A turn signal is required if your turn will affect another driver. This means that you must signal if you desire to turn into another’s path so closely that you interfere with that driver’s right-of-way. The signal indicates to all drivers in view that you are waiting, yielding, until it is safe to make your move, and in some circumstances it indicates to the affected driver that you are asking to negotiate with him to give you room for your move. Once yielding is done and you have completed your move, you establish your own right-of-way in your new path. Stopping signals are legally required whenever you have the opportunity to give one. This is because following drivers often cannot see why you are stopping. Cyclists often don’t signal normal traffic stops, which works well enough because the following drivers see right past you to the traffic situation ahead.

Channelization

Channelization is a principle of both traffic law and highway engineering. It means that whenever a driver intends to turn, the driver must prepare for the turn by first going to the side of the roadway appropriate for the turn: to the right side for a right turn, to the center for a left turn. Highway engineers build special lanes (channels) for turning traffic where the volume justifies them. Some lanes are single-destination lanes; they go only left, for example. Others are dual-destination lanes that serve two destinations: right and straight through, for example. Motorists handle these without thought because there isn’t room for two cars side by side in one lane, but cyclists should get to the side appropriate for their destination lest a car drive up alongside on the wrong side.

Notification of Special Restrictions

Special rules may be applied in particular places. For instance, left turns may be prohibited at a particular intersection. The rule is that these special restrictions apply only where the driver is notified, as by a “No left turn” sign. Drivers can be prosecuted for disobeying a special restriction only when a sign is posted where the restriction applies.

Human Abilities and Traffic Rules

These general traffic rules have been carefully designed so that they fit human abilities and psychology. No driver is required to look and pay close attention simultaneously to traffic in opposite directions. In every case in which it matters, the driver has time to transfer attention from one direction to another. The driver who does the unusual thing has to assume responsibility for it—the surprised driver is not required to overcome surprise and take action. No driver who is going to start a maneuver that could be dangerous is given the right-of-way to start it. That driver must wait until the path is clear. This system works very well.

Laws and Facilities for Cyclists Alone

What you have just read is how the legal traffic system works for all drivers, including cyclists operating on the roadway, according to particular statutes existing in the laws of all states. However, American society has, within living memory, never liked having cyclists operate as drivers of vehicles. Therefore, the legislators of most states passed laws that attempted to prohibit such operation by restricting cyclists to the edge of the roadway, using the excuse that it made childish cycling safe. That could not work because the conflict between the two sets of laws produced legal and intellectual confusion. However, the result satisfied American society until the 1960s: nearly all Americans, motorists and cyclists, believed that it was both unlawful and dangerous for cyclists to operate as drivers of vehicles, so that nearly all cyclists skulked along the edge of the roadway feeling both endangered and illegitimate. American society could ignore the few adult cyclists who knew better and cycled according to the laws for drivers. That came to an end in the 1960s when American motorists became frightened that the resurgence of adult cycling would plug up “their” roads. In 1971, California started what is now the national program to do something about this cyclist menace by providing bikeways and laws that physically enforced the socially approved childish cycling behavior on all cyclists. This might have been beaten, had the public come to recognize that this was nothing more than a means to discriminate against cyclists so that motoring was made more convenient. However, world events, generally unfavorable for motoring, then gave motorists the heaven-sent opportunity to cloak their convenience under proclamations about saving the world. It is now our patriotic duty to build bikeways to attract motorists from motoring to bicycling, by appealing to their superstition that bikeways make childish cycling safe without having to learn traffic-safe cycling.

Many people believe that cyclists have different rules than drivers. Even some who have been persuaded that they have the same rules believe that they shouldn’t. People say that because cyclists are different—unskilled, immature, too fragile, not taxpayers, or underpowered, depending on the noncyclists’ prejudices—cyclists obviously need the different, nonmotorist rules that appear in the bicycle section of the vehicle code.

Very few statutes have been based on these prejudices, but they are very important ones. There are only a few because any statute that requires one group of drivers to act in one way while another group acts in a different way is seen to produce conflict. Imagine a statute that required cars to turn left from the center of the road while trucks were required to turn left from the right edge of the roadway. No American legislature would enact such a foolish statute, because practically all the legislators would be endangered by trucks turning left across their paths. The only type of difference that doesn’t produce obvious conflicts is prohibition. If you don’t like trucks that turn left from the center of the road, then prohibit trucks from turning left. That would prevent trucks from holding up traffic by waiting in the roadway to turn left while not endangering anybody. Of course, no American legislature would enact that statute, because that would severely inconvenience truck transportation.

However, some American legislatures have enacted four kinds of prohibitions against cyclists, and the Uniform Vehicle Code recommends still another. The five prohibitions against cyclists are these:

Prohibiting cyclists from using most of the width of the roadway by restricting them to the right edge of the roadway

Prohibiting cyclists from using the rest of the roadway where there is a bicycle lane

Prohibiting cyclists from using any part of the roadway wherever a usable path is nearby

Prohibiting cyclists from making left turns where other drivers are allowed to turn left, wherever a traffic engineer wants to prohibit cyclists

Prohibiting cyclists from using any part of a restricted-access highway

The source of the first four prohibitions is prejudice against cyclists fueled by motorists’ dislike of being delayed by them. However, the statutes can’t say this, because it would contradict the principle that the roads have been built for the general public. If one class of users can be kicked off the roads merely because others don’t like them, traffic law would become arbitrary and lose its justification. Therefore, all these prohibitions are excused with arguments about cyclist safety. Consider the argument that cyclists are prohibited from using roads with adjacent paths because those roads are dangerous. Nobody has foolishly suggested that building the path made the road more dangerous. The argument depends on the notion that all roads are too dangerous for cycling, so that any way of getting cyclists off the roads is good for them and must be compelled by law. The whole argument is false. It is just a smokescreen for those motorists and highway officials who don’t want cyclists on what they consider to be their roads.

The prohibition against cycling on a restricted-access highway is not by anticyclist prejudice. Freeways are intended to carry continuous high-speed traffic; indeed, some states express this by requiring a minimum speed of 40 mph (unless safety requires slower), and others list all the types of slow traffic that are prohibited. Freeways benefit motorists and society in general, and they also benefit cyclists by moving high-speed, long-distance traffic off the arterial highways that cyclists use.

Another argument is based on the idea that the special bicycle rules in a special section of the vehicle code teach cyclists how to ride. “How else can cyclists learn to ride?” its proponents ask. As discussed earlier, the traffic law statutes aren’t suitable for instructional documents. This argument discloses the prejudice of its proponents, because the only generally applicable traffic rules that are in the bicycle section of the vehicle code are the prohibitions listed previously. People who advance this argument are insisting that teaching cyclists to avoid delaying motorists is the most important matter.

These aberrations in traffic law create problems for cyclists. Cyclists should be very wary of any law that applies to them alone. Laws that affect all drivers are likely to be good and useful, because the legislators who enact them are personally threatened with accidental death and injury for making a mistake. However, laws that affect cyclists alone don’t threaten most legislators, so they are enacted on the basis of prejudice alone, without consideration of the danger or inconvenience that they impose on cyclists. You are interested in cycling or you wouldn’t be reading this. The combination of your interest, the obvious importance of staying alive, the need to travel effectively by bike, and special instruction in the principles of traffic-safe cycling will enable you to overcome the extra difficulties imposed by bad laws for cyclists alone and by the governments’ bikeway program.

Summary

The rules of the road follow easily understandable principles and are designed to divide responsibility fairly. They are designed to be well within the capability of normal human beings, and they provide equal protection to all drivers. The special rules for cyclists alone upset this system, making cycling more difficult and frightening without increasing cyclists’ safety. They receive no support from the valid principles of traffic law and should be repealed so that cyclists are allowed to obey the laws for all drivers of vehicles.