Life is better for everyone when more people ride bikes.

While riding, most bicyclists are focused on their safety and their ride, rather than their rights. “Can I make this light?” “What is that car doing?” Rarely, a person riding may notice that they pass from one jurisdiction to another. Maybe there is a Bicycle Friendly Community sign celebrating that jurisdiction’s efforts to improve bicycling conditions, maybe there is a general purpose sign saying that you have entered or are leaving the great city of Wherever. Perhaps, but hopefully not too frequently, the change from one jurisdiction to another will be met with an ominous sign that affects your rights as a bicyclist. The most common may be “No bicycling on sidewalks in the Central Business District,” but depending upon the powers of a local government there may be few, if any, limits on what restrictions you may face. In this edition of Bike Law University, I’m digging into the authorization of local regulations as they relate to riding a bike from one community to the next — and how that might affect your ride.

Organizations often have a culture that doesn’t allow women to thrive as leaders. Ashley Fullenwider and Laura Todd of Nuu-Muu want to inspire women to take stock of their authentic selves and create the space they want to be in. With a wealth of experience in this realm, we’re excited the duo will be leading a breakout session at this year’s National Forum on Women & Bicycling that will encourage participants to “discover their core motivations for doing the work that keeps them bright.”

For Mychal Tetteh, the old adage proved true: Necessity is the mother of invention. Portland may be his hometown, but when he started as the Executive Director of the Community Cycling Center in 2013, he felt like he was working from a disjointed map, an incomplete playbook on how to make streets safer in his community. “As soon as I got the job, I wanted to know everything,” he recalled. “From a regional standpoint, I wanted more complete information. I wanted to know who all the stakeholders were, a categorical list of all the advocacy organizations and agencies and neighborhood institutions.” He quickly discovered he wasn’t alone.

Leah Shahum had a jarring realization in 2013. In the wake of a particularly fatal year for bicyclists and pedestrians in San Francisco, it became clear to her that the slow, piecemeal approach to create safer streets wasn’t moving nearly fast enough. It was time to redraw the lines of the debate, shift the cultural compass for the city, the public and advocates to no longer accept traffic deaths as tragedies out of their control. So, at the start of 2014, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition launched a Vision Zero campaign, calling for a reduction of all traffic deaths to zero in 10 years.