So in my conversations with SHA they stated something along the lines "You don't get to pick and choose what traffic laws you have to obey. So slow moving vehicle laws apply to cyclists." But I've always looked at cycling laws as a of clarification of slow moving vehicle law for cyclists. Slow moving vehicle law has "right-hand lane" or "as close as practicable to the right" and cycling laws basically have the same thing but with better explanations when one or the other can be applied. Not to mention the abundance of material that explains how bicycling law should be applied for safety. The from out of nowhere SHA pulls out the so called "requirement" that cyclists must obey slow moving threatens to mess that all up.

So why bring up up slow moving vehicle law at all? Is it just another excuse to say something close to "cyclists need to stay out of the way of cars"? How about SHA needs to build us nice cycling facilities so we could be out of the way of cars? For me this is just a victim blaming thing. Public roads are public space and need to be shared by the public. And everyone needs to be clear on the rules and MDOT has a habit of trying to mess up those rules.

When I was a kid I rode to the right and no big deal, motorists were respectful of my presence. When I got back on the bike in 2000 right hooks and close passing galore. So I found out about "taking the lane" and the problem virtually went away. Again overly stressing cyclist must ride far right is another victim blaming thing. If motorists were polite, courteous and thoughtful to cyclists there may have never been the need to make "taking the lane" lawful for cyclists.

Taking the lane is no more rude than motorists who follow other motorists at a safe 2 second distance. Sure everyone tailgates nowadays and when I drive with a safe following distance I upset drivers behind me but the extra buffer space has saved me (and those following me) from a crash on more than one occasion. Likewise "taking the lane has helped me avoid being in an crash multiple times.

Promoting cyclists must ride right under the unspoken pretence that traffic moves faster that way would be like promoting tailgating to help traffic move faster. Not only is there no net improvement in the flow of traffic more crashes result and crashes are a major source of delays, just listen to the radio during rush hour. (BTW I never hear about safety campaigns or enforcement efforts to crack down on tailgating so in a way it is promoted.)

• § 21-1202.1 which I take to mean if the bicycle subtitle covers bicycles going slower than the speed limit so therefore other sections in traffic law that cover going slower than the speed limit don't apply.
• The slow moving vehicle law that says: shall be driven in the right-hand lane then available for traffic or...

So everyone grab their speedometers because they will be necessary to follow these set of rules and let's see what kind of farce SHA has in store for us.

Here is a chart that shows what rules are applicable based on your speed in relation to the speed limit.

bicyclists traveling more than 10 mph under the posted speed limit are considered slow moving vehicles and should stay as far to the right as possible

The law says the bicyclist has the responsibility to move aside and let you pass.

A 3 foot passing distance is required unless... the bicyclist fails to ride to the right,

Art. 6. That all persons invested with the Legislative or Executive powers of Government are the Trustees of the Public, and, as such, accountable for their conduct: Wherefore, whenever the ends of Government are perverted, and public liberty manifestly endangered... - Maryland Declaration of Rights

"The right to make use of an automobile as a vehicle of travel," wrote Justice Ladd, "is no longer an open question." n39 "The owners thereof have the same rights in the roads and streets as the drivers of horses or those riding a bicycle or traveling by some other vehicle."

The Kansas Supreme Court struck down the Topeka ordinance and reversed Swift's conviction, declaring that [each] citizen has the absolute right to choose for himself the mode of conveyance he desires, whether it be by wagon or carriage, by horse, motor or electric car, or by bicycle, or astride of a horse, subject to the sole condition that he will observe all those requirements that are known as the "law of the road."

The right to travel by the vehicle of one's choice was thought to be as important as any personal freedom recognized under the Constitution.

The ninety and nine of every hundred people of this and other countries will not abandon the public thoroughfares to a single class comprising less than 1 per cent of all the population. If a selfish, reckless, and indulgent class must run faster than the majority of mankind, let them build their speedways and kill each other if they will, but they must not be permitted to continue to terrorize and kill the people whose toil and tax maintain the public thoroughfares.

Representative Cousins stated that fines and arrests did little to deter speeders, who simply paid the fines and continued speeding. n98 "Horrible and gruesome incidents are of almost daily occurrence," and the recklessness of automobilists "has bespattered boulevards with blood." n99 Representative Cousins went on to state, it should be said in justice to many automobilists, that after running over people they have stopped and rendered quick assistance and have furnished flowers for the funerals of their victims, although in a great many instances it appears that the greatest utility which high-speed gearing accomplishes is getting away from the corpse before the machine numbers can be detected.

Criminal liability cannot be predicated on every act of carelessness resulting in death ..... The carelessness required for criminal negligence is appreciably more serious than that for ordinary civil negligence[;]the carelessness “must be such that its seriousness would be apparent to anyone who share[s] the community’s general sense of right and wrong”.... Criminal negligence thus requires “some serious blameworthiness in the conduct that caused [the death]”... or some culpable “risk creation” ....

The United States should have a national goal to reduce the number of bicyclists and pedestrians killed on our roadways. 

Please ask your Senators and Representative to co-sponsor HR 3494/S 1708 to institute a nonmotorized safety performance measure.

It seems like a common sense request, but US DOT and the Federal Highway Administration has refused to set a performance measure to reduce bicycle and pedestrian deaths. We are now asking Congress to require such a measure.

Here's why:

•  MAP-21, the new federal transportation law, requires USDOT and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to establish safety performance measures for states to meet - but, no performance measure related to the safety of people who bike and walk is currently being considered by FHWA.
• The number of bicyclist and pedestrian fatalities has risen for the past two years (2010 and 2011) while overall traffic deaths have gone down quite dramatically — that means the percentage of fatalities that are bike/ped has risen from 12% to nearly 16%.
•  MAP-21 almost doubled the amount of funding available for the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP), a program run by state Departments of Transportation. Unfortunately, that program has woefully small investments in bike/ped safety projects: Only seven states have spent any of these funds on bike/ped projects, and combined they've spent less than 0.5% of the funds annually.

​Without a specific performance measure to focus on nonmotorized safety, bicyclists and pedestrians will remain firmly in the blindspot of traffic safety.

Please ask Congress to co-sponsor HR 3494/S 1708 to set a national goal to reduce the number of bicyclists and pedestrians injured and killed on our roads.

The Maryland Court of Appeals ruled today that Maryland is not going to make the leap to comparative negligence, choosing instead to defer to the legislature. The court has the power to change the law, it wants you to know. But it chooses not to.

I think contributory negligence is inane which is why some few states have kept it. Should the court defer to the legislature to make the call? I really don't know.

At some point, I'll write about this case because that's what you pay me for here. But I have already told you everything you need to know.

In the meantime, read the beginning of Judge Harrell's very Harrellarian dissent.

Paleontologists and geologists inform us that Earth's Cretaceous period (including in what is present day Maryland) ended approximately 65 million years ago with an asteroid striking Earth (the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event), wiping-out, in a relatively short period of geologic time, most plant and animal species, including dinosaurs. As to the last premise, they are wrong. A dinosaur roams yet the landscape of Maryland (and Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina and the District of Columbia), feeding on the claims of persons injured by the negligence of another, but who contributed proximately in some way to the occasion of his or her injuries, however slight their culpability. The name of that dinosaur is the doctrine of contributory negligence. With the force of a modern asteroid strike, this Court should render, in the present case, this dinosaur extinct. It chooses not to do so. Accordingly, I dissent.

My dissent does not take the form of a tit-for-tat trading of thrusts and parries with the Majority opinion. Rather, I write for a future majority of this Court, which, I have no doubt, will relegate the fossilized doctrine of contributory negligence to a judicial tar pit at some point.

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