Cyclists & The Rules Of The Road

Two Toronto bike cops doing security for a protest. Nothing to do with post other than they're cops on bikes.

Today, the popular Toronto Blog BlogTO had a piece written by Derek Flak about whether or not cyclists should have to play by the same rules as cars on the roads. The article was called, predictable, “Should cyclists have to play by the same rules as cars?” What Derek Flak means when he asked that question is if a cyclist judges an intersection to be safe is it OK for him/her to just ignore a red light or stop sign. Derek opines that cyclists are “[a]lways something of a grey area when it comes to traffic laws…” Really Derek? You go on to acknowledge in your article that under the Ontario Highway Traffic Act cyclists are responsible just like other road users to obey all traffic laws but you don’t seem to think that is much of an issue. I am not a lawyer – and maybe one of my favorite commenters who is one will weigh in here when this article is posted – but seems to me that no matter if a law is generally followed or not it is still the law and you can still get in trouble for disobeying it, and rightly so.

A friend of mine’s brother once walked across the opening to a private street (in many people’s opinion it is more of a driveway, here’s a link to Google Street View of the intersection) and the 16 year old kid was given a ticket for jaywalking because it was a red light for him. He didn’t pay it and got his permit (not his license, his permit) suspended, which we all thought was absolutely hilarious at the time. Now, do people jaywalk across major streets all the time? Sure they do. Did most of us even consider where this guy walked across a real side street? Nope. But, the law says it is a street therefore it is a street and the cop was perfectly correct in giving the kid a ticket.

Derek Flak’s reasoning for why it is OK for bikes to disobey the rules of the road are:

• They don’t even take up a full lane.
• When a bike hits a motorized vehicle they will’ lose’ (bear the brunt of the collision and more likely be harmed) pretty much every single time.

I will deal with these 2 reasons and why I think they are not valid arguments.