Monrovia cyclist hopes his ticket battle with Pasadena leads to change
Direct from the You-Gotta-Be-Kidding-Me archives in the Twilight Zone…
Wow. Let me get this straight.
California law says:
21202.(a) Any person operating a bicycle upon a roadway … shall ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway except … When reasonably necessary to avoid … substandard width lanes … For purposes of this section, a “substandard width lane” is a lane that is too narrow for a bicycle and a vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane.
So the Pasadena police officer says:
“Someone who has ridden a bike for more than 20 years obviously knows more about bicycling than I do… But it comes down to common sense… The street may be too narrow and the law might say that he should ride in the middle of the street”
And then he condones drivers not watching where they’re going:
“But here is a 2,000-pound car and you have a 30-pound bike. Do you want to be in the middle of the street where a driver isn’t looking for you?”
And the City courts are complicit in going against state law:”After losing his court battles, Ziegler said he would have continued the fight, but it became expensive and looked futile.”
And comments to this article advocate continuing violence against cyclists:
If a cyclist has an ‘ attitude ‘ – adjust it. When I drive and I see one of these ‘Lance Armstrong wanna-be’s', they had better be close to the curb and NOT sticking out. If they are not, then I whiz past them and honk the horn. Also, if they want to continue to have the ‘attitude’, a nice dousing of soda as I drive by can lighten them up, too. Hey cyclists, the streets are designed for CARS/TRUCKS FIRST, bicycles second. When I ride my bike, I usually take it where there are NOT many cars – like the Rose Bowl. [Must not have been to the Rose Bowl lately--ed.]
And comments to the article call for obeying the law, and when it is shown to them, they completely ignore it anyway:
This biker is an idiot. Bikers should follow the same rules as motorist.
And…
I do have a problem with the bicyclist who ride 2 or 3 abreast in a marked bike lane and one rides over the line into the traffic lane.
Maybe people can’t read in California?
Via Pasadena Star News.