It's the Little Things

It's not exactly hot news, but a Bicycle Retailer news brief in the January 1 issue reports that the Kentucky Supreme Court has affirmed bicyclists' right to be on the roads by reversing a lower court's decision that a woman cyclist was responsible for the accident in which a passing motorist hit her.

The League of American Bicyclists still has the item, from November 2005, on their homepage, a few items down from the top, with a link to the whole decision.

While we road riders are out on the front lines, critical decisions like this shape the world in which we ride. There's so much more to advocacy than getting lines painted on the pavement in certain places and yet another sign erected reminding motorists to share the road. That's all well and good, but what really matters are laws reinforcing and protecting bicyclists' right to be on the road at all and the repeated court decisions providing some kind of meaningful penalty for drivers who disregard them.

Eventually, if enough people see that it can be safe, it will be fun and it will be environmentally and economically fabulous, they will see that joining us is better than trying to beat us. There is no magic bullet or nuclear bomb. There are only the little things that are really big, repeated over and over as long as necessary.