Dear Ace: I recently got a ticket for running a red light on my bicycle and was told that if I didn’t pay it, I’d lose my driver’s license. But you don’t need a license to ride a bike, so that seems inherently unfair. Should I sue the City for unequal protection under the law, or what? —Cy Klist
Dear Cy: Oh, Ace sure does hate being hassled by The Man! And, ever the libertine, he certainly understands your deep-seated desire (or narrow-seated desire, as the case may be) to flout the laws of the land, and to pedal wherever your heart leads you. Yes, Cy, you and Ace are the last cowboys—the free men of the range who spit in the eye of authority and invite all others to eat our dust.
On the other hand, tickets are a pain in the ass (or at least in those few square inches covered by one’s wallet), so—to get the skinny, and hopefully give your glutes some relief—Ace decided to play it sly and phone the Department of Motor Vehicles’ hotline as a regular Joe, calling on behalf of a friend.
That plan lasted all of 33 minutes…the length of time Ace was on hold before he hung up in frustration. I mean, come on—even crack investigative journalists need time to grab lunch!
Thwarted in his sneaky undercover plan, Ace decided to put in a call to Bill Foy, a DMV spokesman. Foy pointed Ace to the Code of Virginia (specifically section 46.2, chapter 8), which governs the regulation of traffic. The law reads, “Every person riding a bicycle…shall have all of the rights and duties applicable to the driver of a vehicle.”
“If a court convicts someone…for a violation of any of the provisions of chapter 8 for riding a bike on a highway,” says Foy, “then that will be posted to his driving record. It carries the same consequences on that individual’s driving record as if he was driving a motor vehicle.”
That certainly doesn’t bode well for your claim, Cy. Ace would urge you to hold off on that lawsuit for now. Sometimes, as you no doubt learned when you got that flat tire miles from nowhere, life is unfair.
But don’t feel too down. The same provision of the law that keeps you from running red lights willy-nilly also holds riders on horseback and people on Segways to the same standard. And if that’s not comfort enough, you can always take heart in the fact that you, unlike them, can wear Spandex pants with impunity. Let them try getting away with that!