It's easy for cyclists to forget that many drivers simply aren't aware that people riding bicycles have the same right to the road that motorists do. Motorists make this point to me every day as they race to cut me off at stop signs, play chicken on residential streets, and otherwise drive as if the California Vehicle Code contained the phrase "automobiles first."
On Oct. 25, for example, I was waiting at a red light along Third Street when a woman started honking at me. She wanted to make a right turn, and apparently believed I should get up onto the sidewalk. I said, in what I fancy my pleasant voice, that I was waiting where the law prescribed. She replied, "Move, you faggot!"
LA Times columnist Meghan Daum pointed out this ignorance epidemic in a Nov. 5 column about the Dr. Christopher Thompson's conviction: "Many people don't know what rights cyclists do and do not have, which pretty much makes them assume they have none," she wrote. "I was in this category myself until I consulted the bicycle laws in the California Vehicle Code and learned that a cyclist has 'all the rights and is subject to all the provisions applicable to the driver of a vehicle.'"
Unbeknown to many motorists, that means we use left-turn lanes to turn left, and don't need to get out of the way so a car can go first on a narrow road. And it means that in traffic lanes where there isn't enough room for motorists to share side-by-side, with a four-foot cushion separating bikes from parked cars on the right, and three feet separation from moving cars on the left, safety dictates bicycles take the full lane of traffic, to prevent motorists from passing when there's not enough room.
The greatest safety hazard facing cyclists is that motorists are ignorant of this, and believe they have a right to try to force bicyclists out of the lane.
San Francisco is now experiencing a wonderful moment, in which the number of people using bikes to get to work is exploding. On a typical morning I'll see hundreds of cyclists emerging from apartments, dropping off kids at school, disappearing into downtown office buildings. The city feels safer, more peaceful, more beautiful than at any time during my 13 years living here.
With motorist access now limited on northern Market Street, morning rides through the financial district are quiet, festive, and devoid of the menace cyclists are used to absorbing from careless or hostile drivers. And an ever-larger portion of the morning bicycle commute seems to be female -- around half at a typical downtown stoplight, I find -- which social scientists say signifies that this is coming to be seen as a mainstream, wholesome activity.
Some people believe that when the new bike plan is implemented, and 109 additional miles of bike lanes and specially marked shared lanes are painted, people who'd been wavering regarding taking the bike to work will begin to do so, and the city will begin moving in the direction of locales such as Berlin, where one-third of all trips undertaken are on bicycles. But elements of the bike lane injunction are expected to drag on into next year, and the full bike plan will take a few years more to implement fully.
But there's an interim fix that nobody seems to be discussing, one that might soften some of the dangerous behavior of motorists who imagine there are laws that say cyclists shouldn't be in the road.
