What safer biking laws should look like

The League knows bike laws. For decades, the League of American Bicyclists has advocated for the rights of people who bike and for traffic laws that align with best practices for bicyclist safety taught in our bicycle education program, Smart Cycling. Starting in 2012, the League created Bike Law University to provide comparative information about 13 types of bicycle-related traffic laws and we have kept those resources up-to-date as advocates and legislators throughout the nation have changed traffic laws – mostly for the better.

Traffic laws provide rules for how road users interact and the consequences for when people don’t follow laws. It is often difficult to quantify the exact impact that traffic laws have on safety because we often don’t know key facts such as public knowledge about a specific traffic law, compliance rates with specific traffic laws, or enforcement rates. There is also no national organization specializing in the development and promotion of best practices in traffic law. 

Into this yawning void of data and leadership, legislators often come up with safety ideas that may be well intentioned, but are unworkable. Several years ago, this happened with a proposed Missouri law that would have required bicyclists to affix 15 foot tall flags to their bikes. This year, it happened with a Montana bill that would have required “A person operating a bicycle on a roadway without a flag vehicle escort shall ride opposite the flow of traffic.”

The League of American Bicyclists has long recommended that bicyclists ride with the flow of traffic. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that, as part of “defensive driving,” a bicyclist should “drive with the flow, in the same direction as traffic.” Nevertheless, due to pedestrians often being advised or legally required to walk opposite to the flow of traffic if no sidewalks are present – as they are required to in Montana – it is not surprising to hear the suggestion that bicyclists do the same. 

The reason that bicyclist and pedestrian behavior is different in this case is speed. People on bikes are two to six times faster than people walking and running on average and can reach speeds between 20-40 mph depending on conditions. These higher speeds mean that speed disparity is reduced when operating with the flow of traffic and increased to a dangerous extent when operating against the flow of traffic. Riding against the flow of traffic means that the bicyclist and driver have less time to react to each other, and if they crash the crash will transfer more energy into the bicyclist, resulting in greater injury.

We’re happy to report that safety best practices have prevailed in Montana. According to a local reporter, the lead author will no longer be pursuing the bill after swift backlash. While it may stay on the state legislature’s site until the end of the session, it will not advance. We’ll keep watching. We believe our Bike Law University resources are a great place to start for best practices and hope legislators and advocates who want to improve bicycle safety give them a look.