Mandatory Shoulder Use finally defined near adequately???

As many of you know Maryland is one of the few states that have a mandatory shoulder and bike lane use law. And some of you may have even been stopped or ticketed for not riding in a

http://www.sha.state.md.us/exploremd/bicyclists/oots/pdf/Chapter%202%20-%20Paved%20Shoulders.pdf

This definition is part of the new State Highways Bicycle Pedestrian Guidelines.

You probably have detected that I am not exactly ecstatic over this definition and you are right. The issue still remains that the law should not require you to ride in an unsafe facility. So while AASHTO defines the minimum for a bike facility as four feet wide they also require other things relating to striping and signage to qualify as meeting AASHTO guidelines. While it looks like the new State Guidelines address a lot of the striping issues they fail to address the signage issues so we still have a mandatory use of a