Update on ‘Enforcement’ in the 5E Framework

No, many communities use police for bicycle safety programming and current funding systems support police involvement in bicycle safety programming. If you have an effective program implemented by police then please continue it. If your program has struggled to reach all areas of your community and all demographic groups, consider what can be changed to more effectively engage all areas and demographic groups.

No, police are important members of communities and can be strong advocates for safe streets. Police need to understand bicycling and working with them is part of creating that understanding.

No, policing and enforcement have a role in traffic safety. Removing “Enforcement” as one of the 5 categories in our Bicycle Friendly Community program reflects the League’s view that traffic safety must be about more than enforcement and that enforcement alone is not one of the five most important categories of activities that communities should take to improve bicycling.

No, the League believes that each bicyclist has a right to the road. Currently too many people are denied that right by governments who do not plan, design, and build safe places to bike.

Data on policing is very limited, but what data exists indicates that enforcement is not a significant factor in securing bicyclists’ right to the road. In Florida, one of if not the most dangerous states for bicycling, only 113 citations were issued for unsafe passing of a bicyclist in 2019. In contrast, there were more than 3,000 citations given to people biking for things like failing to ride far to the right, riding more than two abreast, and not wearing a helmet.

Traffic laws continue to be important for the rights of bicyclists, but they are most often invoked after a crash in either a prosecution decision or civil case. The League plans to continue to keep its bike law resources updated and continue to advocate for the rights of bicyclists.

No, the League strongly believes in traffic safety. The League believes that a safe systems approach, embraced by many countries throughout the world with better traffic safety records than the United States, offers the best chance to improve traffic safety.

The United States has a significantly worse record of traffic safety than other high income nations. It is important to demand significant changes to our nation’s approach to traffic safety in order to improve traffic safety. Enforcement has been the primary approach to traffic safety in many jurisdictions and receives the majority of funding administered by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The United States needs to do better and examine why it has failed to match improvements to traffic safety over the last two decades, including significant increases in bicyclist and pedestrian deaths within the last decade. The League believes doing better means greater examination of enforcement as a traffic safety intervention and an overall change in the culture of the transportation sector to embrace safe systems, where planners, designers, and engineers take significantly more responsibility for safety and individuals are blamed far less for foreseeable behaviors.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, "studies have shown that enforcement is effective in changing behavior for up to 6 weeks, but a combined approach between enforcement, education, and engineering can lead to more permanent behavior changes." If a roadway has a speeding problem, a problem with people failing to yield to pedestrians, or other behavioral issues the League suggests that you advocate for comprehensive solutions with engineering changes as the ultimate goal. Do not accept police or engineers blaming drivers instead of engaging with engineering changes.

Police should still understand bicycling and the best way to understand bicycling is to participate in it. Classes taught by League Cycling Instructors can help police understand safe bicycling behaviors and what to watch for in their community for bicyclist safety.

Whether involved in traffic enforcement or not, police can be incredible advocates and ambassadors for street safety. Police often see traffic violence up-close and that perspective is crucial for public understanding of traffic violence. Police with experience bicycling will be stronger advocates for comprehensive traffic safety solutions that include engineering changes. Police can also speak to the difficulty of enforcing your way out of unsafe street designs that reliably lead to illegal and unsafe behaviors like speeding.

We will be publishing more resources to help support this shift over time. The best thing to share right now are these FAQs and Resources as well as our blog post, and be sure to show examples of what this change means in practice using these slides.

Every community will likely have a different context in terms of their current efforts and demographics. This change allows communities to continue to do the work they’re doing, but we hope that each community looks closely at how its enforcement approach may harm or fail to serve the needs of Black and Brown people. That close look may include improving data collection on traffic stops, partnering with community organizations to deliver bicycle safety programming, and replacing armed enforcement with automated enforcement.

The League is supportive of communities that are innovating new ways to accomplish traffic enforcement without the use of armed police officers, such as Berkeley, California. As this model is tested in more communities, we hope to add more related resources and case studies, and will consider how to integrate this concept into the enforcement-related questions on the BFC application. Please see our Resources section below under “Alternatives & Solutions” for more information.