God Forbid that we would base Laws on Common Sense: Part 2: Bike Traffic

The second case certainly isn't as dramatic. It's a law proposed by Minnesota House Rep. Phyllis Kahn to create different rules for bicyclists than cars. Immediately, it invoked outraged comments on the Star Tribune website. No doubt, bike-hating Katherine Kersten is putting aside her fear of madrasahs in Coon Rapids to once again sharpen her anti-bike knives.

A recent "expose" by KSTP's Bob McCaney about bikers breaking traffic laws ran during sweeps week. It featured, essentially, McCaney doing his best impression of a journalist by setting up a camera at a three way stop and filming bikers skidding past the stop sign when no cars were coming.
Afterwards, local bikers reported a surge of tickets for the bike equivalent of jaywalking. It was an easy target for some hysterical reactions from motorists who felt slighted. They got a little flack from the Minnesota Monitor, but most comments tapped in driver's hysterical fear that bikers be held to a different standard than cars even though the situation on the road is different.

Kahn's legislation, in my opinion as a year-round biker, is a great step towards common sense laws. There are parts of the current law we rarely use, for instance, bikers rarely take up a whole lane to themselves like the law allows. The fact is, as one bike-friendly commenter pointed out in the now-erased comments at the ST, safety is the first priority. Sometimes, it's better to run a stop sign than wait for the car, which may or may not stop, to approach. I've always said that biking is an insurrectionist act because you're trying to navigate a system designed for, and dominated by, cars. Bikers are extremely susceptible to the two-ton monstrosities on the road, it's common sense that they should be given leeway for their safety. It's common sense.

Kahn's proposal makes sense, and it makes sense to end minimum mandatories, but that might be too much to expect from the politicians and Kerstens of the world, hungry for an alienating issue to bang away at people who don't have the political clout to defend themselves.