The “irony” is that before and since that stop I’ve passed St. Pete’s finest traveling in both directions relative to my direction of travel, riding in exactly the same fashion and NOT ONE of them has ever stopped me to correct me.

I can’t remember if it was before or after this incident that while I was riding on 9th St. N. in St. Pete by 54th Ave. N. I had someone throw an egg at me. I called 911 to report it. While talking with the officer who responded I told her exactly where I am in the habit of riding i.e. the right side tire track. And she obviously had no problems with that as she did not correct me.

Ironically I had the opportunity to talk to her again recently and she remembered me from the egg incident. And I again repeated to her where I usually ride and again she didn’t indicate having any problems with where I ride.

I think that he had some sort of problem with cyclists in general. And knock on wood that is/was the first and last time that I have encountered him out on the street.

When these things happen, we recommend getting the necessary information and writing a letter to the law enforcement agency and other government officials having jurisdiction. Cyclists must be empowered to act in their own interests. Too often, we just go home and complain amongst ourselves. That accomplishes nothing.

I realized the “practical” mistake after I read my post.
I, personally, don’t think it’s practical to ride in the center of the lane either.
Just a bit more to the left than what any reasonable person would consider the normal position in a lane.
I think I read on here, someone saying that it’s better to be a little more to the left of the lane to let the vehicles behind me know that it would be better to pass by moving more towards the left (including going over the lane divider to their left) than to try to do somethin more dangerous (and illegal) like squeeze in between the lane divider and the cyclist.

In regards to the statement about saying the cyclist could have used the available sidewalk…
I’ll tell you how much more dangerous it can be on the sidewalk, than being on the road, when you have parking lot exits, driveways, cars coming from the opposite side of the road turning left, pedestrians, etc, etc, etc.

I was wearing a kit at the time, and the first words out of his mouth were “You and your clubs need to learn. . .” with him trailing off. Then he changes tactics and says how he is tired of cleaning us up off of the streets.

When I informed him that we cyclists have the right to take the lane he says that we didn’t and threatened to seize my bike right there on the spot. He had also mentioned another St. Pete rider by name and the number of moving violations that they have received within the last x number of years.

The whole time we are interacting I stayed astride my bike not fully dismounting it. He “instructed” me to ride closer to the gutter pan/curb then I had been. I’m pretty sure that I don’t need to say that after he had left and I left that the traffic was now passing me too closely.

Fortunately I was maybe a half mile to a mile from where I would be making a left turn and taking more residential roads to finish getting home.

I also had to laugh because as soon as I made my right turn shortly after making my left I encountered a ninja i.e. someone riding without lights, reflectors and wearing dark clothes. Someone that that off duty officer should have been looking for.

Question, give that he was off duty at the time of the stop would he have been able to seize my bike?

Another source of information, lacking a statutory definition, is common usage. Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary defies practicable as “Capable of being done, effected, or put into practice, with the available means; feasible.” They give synonyms of “workable, achievable, attainable”. They define “feasible” as “suitable: a road suitable for travel”.

An internet search on the word “practicable” gives us a number of other similar possibilities.

I would hope the legalities of such a definition would be considered in the context of bicyclists attempting to travel safely, and that the ones most at risk would be the ones who are making the determination of what is suitable under the given conditions. If we can demonstrate that our actions are based in the need for safety, that should suffice.

The Bicycle Regulations, FS 316.2065(5) recognize that in their use of the phrase “under the conditions then existing shall ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway”.

It’s POSSIBLE to ride your bike so close to the curb that the right pedal hovers over the curb itself; but it’s not practical OR practicable, because you can easily be launched sideways into traffic by curb contact. Practicable would be more like 2′ off the curb, out to the left edge of the right tire track. Practical would be all the way to the center of the lane!

Just clarifying for ya….

“The term in the statute is practical, NOT possible.”

The term is practicable, not practical.

“I don’t see why a Judge could say, forget the law and just make up something..
I would think that the cyclist who lost, probably lives in a town where there IS a law concerning traffic flow within THAT municipality.”

You have made incorrect assumptions on cases you know nothing about based solely on the way you believe the system works. None of us would predict that judges would make up the law according to his own (or the culture’s) bias, but they do. They do it with absolutely no basis in law. Studying these cases certainly challenged my beliefs that the legal system was impartial and could be counted on to at least support statutory rights.

What’s interesting and instructive is that what you’ve done in your comment is quite similar to what judges do when they make up their own flawed interpretations of the law. Cognitive dissonance causes people to make up conditions to support their beliefs with no personal knowledge, supporting evidence or basis in fact.

The judges in question probably don’t ride bikes in traffic, so they have little-no understanding of how a cyclist controls his safety, or his fundamental right to do so. Therefore, they don’t look at the law and see where it gives him the right to full-lane use on most roads (via the exceptions to 316.2065(5)). Instead they look at it through a windshield view of the road — our culture’s bias/belief that roads are for cars. That’s how they believe the system works. From that mindset, the law couldn’t possible allow cyclists to “get in the way” on most of our roads, therefore they interpret the law incorrectly, discarding the parts that are inconvenient to their belief system. Sometimes, like in the Delaware case mentioned below by Stephen, the judge even assigns intent to the legislature — they could not have possibly intended to allow cyclists to control a 12ft lane because most of the lanes are 12ft.

The cognitive dissonance is caused by attachment to a cultural belief system — cars are intended users, bicycles are toys that must be kept out of the way — which is supported by entrenched mythologies of danger and delay.

The misinterpretation is facilitated by how horribly the statute is written. This itself is a product of a culture that does not respect cyclists as drivers of vehicles with an equal right to the public roads.

This is a tough nut to crack, even in the seemingly-impartial environs of the justice system.