San Francisco Bike Blog

If I had a nickel for every person, bike and/or pedestrian advocate, or motorist who accused ‘outlaw cyclists’ of destroying the world, or ‘making things worse for all cyclists,’ I’d be…well, I’d probably have a couple hundred bucks.

Cyclists run stop signs and red lights and break all sorts of rules of the road. Walkers do the same. Motorists do the same.

There are several reasons why cyclists get targeted for this particular type of criticism, though, and pedestrians and motorists are spared:

1. We cyclists often break the law when motorists are stopped at a stop light or stop sign. Motorists are used to being kings of the road, and they don’t want to tolerate this slight to their superiority.
2. We often are not bashful about it - that is, we do it right in front of motorists.
3. The existing laws of the road are inherently unjust towards pedestrians and cyclists - they have been put in to instill some civility into the motoring public - to quell their primal urges to destroy, and they’re only somewhat successful. Pedestrians and cyclists have rarely if ever killed anyone by walking or riding out of turn - cars and trucks do it all the time. We need to rewrite unjust laws.
4. Motorists don’t feel like cyclists have any right to be on the roads.
5. Cyclists are so terrorized by motorists, that they fear a terrorist motorist will seek retribution against cyclists because that terrorist motorist saw a cyclist breaking the law.
6. Media loves the people who pay their paychecks - the auto industry.
7. Cyclists must often share the road with cars, whereas pedestrians do not have to.

So, what’s wrong with this ‘outlaw cyclist’ argument? Well, it’s misguided on several fronts, but the first is that motorists break more laws more often than cyclists, that they do it more blatantly, and they are much more harmful to the public health and to law and order when they do it - which is always.

For the past several months, I’ve been monitoring the media for reports of motorist-on-pedestrian and motorist-on-cyclist injuries and deaths, assaults and murders.

When an outlaw motorist runs down a cyclist and the cyclist’s leg has to be amputated, I’m not surprised.

When an outlaw motorist runs down a cyclist and drags him for 500 feet to his death, I’m not surprised.

When an outlaw motorist hits, crushes and kills a cyclist, and then runs, I’m not surprised.

When an outlaw motorist drives drunk and runs down a driver-turned-pedestrian, I’m not surprised.

When an outlaw motorist road rages with a machete, I’m not surprised.

I just picked these events randomly - to get a good cross-section of driver lawlessness. They all occurred within about the last couple of weeks.

These are everyday occurrences across the country, around the world, wherever there is motorized traffic. Outlaw motorists cause more harm, more injury and destruction and death, commit more crimes in a single day than the entire history of the bicycle in the world.

What we need to do as cycling and pedestrian advocates is start standing up to lawless motorist behavior and crack down on it. When pedestrians and cyclists break the law, they only risk their own lives — almost without exception. When motorists break the law, they risk the lives of almost everyone around them - pedestrians, cyclists, and other motorists, and they risk their own lives the least — almost without exception. This has to stop.

A recent study gives us a brief glimpse into the level of motorist law-breaking. It really is astounding. And it’s not like we need hard data to back up our assertions — we see it every single day - but if you’re so inclined, just take a gander at some of these numbers — outlaw motorists burned an average of 1.23 million red lights in New York City every single day.

The Outlaw Motorist must be stopped. Unfortunately, the Outlaw Motorist is not a fraud - ask the tens of thousands of family members who have buried their loved ones after an outlaw motorist went to work. This is the message that we have to deliver.

If the death and destruction rained down upon us by outlaw motorists were some other form of public health concern - say, a virus - we would have addressed it seriously by cracking down on it. This has not happened yet for outlaw driving. It will happen when we want it to happen.

When some knucklehead whines, “Bikers are outlaws!,” we have to respond:

Drivers are the true outlaws of our society, and they are dangerous outlaws - and they need to be stopped. Their lawbreaking kills people every day. Cars speed everywhere they go, every day. Speeding is not a joke - it kills people. It kills pedestrians. It kills cyclists. It kills other motorists. Speeding is against the law. Speed is the one of the most important factors in roadway deaths. Motorists break the law so often in any number of ways, it’s difficult to keep track. They speed. They drive under the influence. They talk and text on their phones. They drive aggressively. Traffic collisions are one of the major causes of deaths for Americans. From neighborhood and city streets where kids play and old people walk, to the major boulevards and highways where outlaw motorists concentrate on terrorizing other motorists, breaking the law behind the wheel of a car is an epidemic. Outlaw drivers run stop signs. Outlaw drivers blow red lights. Outlaw drivers speed so fast that their cars start shaking. Outlaw drivers can barely keep their cars on the road when they round corners. Outlaw drivers need to start obeying the speed limits. Speed limits are set for a reason - to make sure cars don’t kill people. And yet that’s what cars continue to do. We’re going to continue to reign in outlaw drivers until they stop intimidating, terrorizing, injuring, and killing people.

Blatant law-breaking by drivers is so commonplace that we don’t even think about it anymore. It’s just understood that it is going to happen and be so widespread, that it is not even worth talking about.

This needs to change.

Just how commonplace is motorist law-breaking? Just how widespread is this culture of motorist lawlessness? Shoot - ask SFPD - anytime they want to make a haul, they just start enforcing the law. It looks right now like they will always have a source of funds to tap should the police budget get tight. Whether terrorizing other drivers, or terrorizing cyclists and pedestrians, we can always count on outlaw drivers to keep us all on our toes, and to keep families around San Francisco in mourning.

Law-breaking by motorists is a serious public health matter. Pedestrians, in particular, are being killed in San Francisco at an alarming rate by outlaw motorists. At the same place Stacey Krause was run down on Alemany Boulevard, we know that motorists continue to break the law - by speeding and failing to yield the right of way to pedestrians - with regularity. In a sting operation, many were ticketed for various infractions - speeding, not yielding the right of way to pedestrians, etc. I walked over there the other day and was not at all surprised to see most drivers speeding and failing to yield the right of way to me. It’s a never-ending story in this city and all across America, and probably the world — outlaw motorists rule the road. They terrorize and kill, often with impunity - because police budgets don’t allow for proper investigation of outlaw motorists who run people down.

This needs to change.

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