{"id":1188,"date":"2013-03-07T16:16:53","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T16:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jlpp.org\/old_blog\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2013-03-07T16:16:53","modified_gmt":"2013-03-07T16:16:53","slug":"should-cyclists-have-the-ride-of-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/2013\/03\/07\/should-cyclists-have-the-ride-of-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Should Cyclists Have the Ride of Way?"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Poe4<\/a>Drivers, this may be a familiar feeling for you: You are driving along a somewhat narrow road when you see a cyclist trying to squeeze his way along the shoulder of the road. What do you do? Do you stay behind him, slow down, and hold up traffic? Do you hold your breath and blow by him and hope you don\u2019t kill him? Regardless, the thought probably flashed in your head: Why don\u2019t they use the sidewalk? Well, in some cases, the answer is: It\u2019s illegal. That\u2019s right, in some<\/a> cities and states, a cyclist can get a traffic violation for riding his or her bike on the sidewalk.\n\nTo be fair, it is statistically<\/a> proven that sidewalks are more dangerous for bicyclists than riding in the streets. On the other hand, cars are much larger than bicycles and I would be much more terrified riding a bicycle in the streets than hiding in the safety of a car.\n\nLarge cities, such as Chicago<\/a> and New York City<\/a>, are those that typically have laws prohibiting bicycles on sidewalks. This is due to the large amount of pedestrians on the sidewalks and the higher potential of collisions\u2014of course, it\u2019s certainly difficult to weave back and forth between mobs of people in Times Square without hitting someone. But it isn\u2019t just the crowded cities: Cornell University<\/a> (in spacious upstate New York) and the entire state of Georgia<\/a> also make it illegal to ride a bike on the sidewalk. But often, these laws aren\u2019t readily known by everyday cyclists and when they get ticketed<\/a> . . . well, they aren\u2019t happy.\n\nShouldn\u2019t there be an effort to make these laws more public? Moreover, should we keep these that keep cyclists off of sidewalks entirely?\n\nWhile the common perception is that bicycles are safer on the sidewalk, research suggests that they actually aren\u2019t<\/a>. It turns out cyclists become almost invisible to motorists when they are on sidewalks, so that at intersections, motorists tend to turn into cyclists using crosswalks<\/a>. In addition, more cycling injuries that wind up in the hospital are due to the obstacles and condition of sidewalks<\/a>. For the cyclist\u2019s sake, it makes sense that they ride on the road. Plus, if the country is truly serious about trying to reduce carbon emissions, bike riding should be encouraged and laws should be passed to make cyclists safer.\n\nHow, then, do we placate the motorists? A good start would be revamping our underlying infrastructure. Minneapolis<\/a> is ranked one of the best cities for cyclists because of the biking infrastructure that they have in place. Separate bike lanes and dedicated paths make sharing the road with cars much more manageable. Motorists will be less nervous if there is a dedicated path that they can see, and cyclists will be less nervous if they have a dedicated path exclusively for their use.\n\nAs for the visibility of such laws, it\u2019s difficult to advocate for better publicity. There are many laws that aren\u2019t incredibly well-known, and to argue that this type law should be more publicized may be difficult given the importance of many other lesser-known laws.\n\nSo next time you\u2019re driving and you get frustrated at a biker sharing the road, remember that it\u2019s probably better that they\u2019re on the road and not on the sidewalk, where they might sneak up on you. And if you\u2019re a cyclist, I understand why you\u2019re on the road . . . but let\u2019s start lobbying for more bike lanes.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JLPP Blogger Alex Poe explores reasons why cyclists might be safer on the road rather than the sidewalk and how cars and cyclists can co-exist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[196,202,203,204,433,778,1548],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-student-blogs","tag-bicycle","tag-bike","tag-bike-safety","tag-bike-traffic","tag-cycling","tag-highway","tag-traffic-laws"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/jlpp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}