What is the Bill of Rights? And how many of us read it, let alone how many of us know all ten amendments? Most of us probably learned it in school and we hear it in conversations all the time.
But sometimes we take the rights of the People for granted. We are used to freedom, liberty, security, etc. until…
…we don’t adhere to the behavior of our car-centric society.
Cyclists all over the United States have been treated like second class citizens.
Cyclists have no protection from aggressive drivers, uneven police enforcement, or misapplication of the law.
Cyclists are forgotten at transportation hearings, at community plans, and at new developments.
Cyclists are dismissed as irrelevant, unpractical and simply unreasonable rebels.
But hopefully not for long! The Bicyclist Bill of Rights is on its way! And it’s going to change the world as we know it 
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Damien Newton // Feb 5, 2008 at 2:37 pm
I think that any Bill of Rights needs to address three distinct points:
1) What happens on the roads
2) What happens when funding decisions are made
3) What happens in the press
I’ve been stunned since I’ve been out here that the press completely ignores the plight of cyclists on the roads unless they can turn it into a human interest story of some sort. When reading through the morning papers today I was stunned that there was actually coverage of some of the pedestrian fatalities, but bike fatalities are still barely spoken of. To create better awareness that cyclists aren’t just a bunch of freaks and what we experience when we go out on our bikes we need to somehow also get the press to cover our stories and not just when there’s a charismatic figure like Monica somehow involved.
On another note, I used to be a lobbyist and a legislative aide back east. If I can be any help in drafting this Bike Bill of Rights, let me know.
2 “Cyclists’ Bill of Rights” creating a buzz in L.A. // Feb 8, 2008 at 6:03 pm
[…] http://illuminatela.com/whose-bill-of-rights/ […]
3 Streetsblog LA » Coming Soon: Bike Bill of Rights // Feb 26, 2008 at 3:12 pm
[…] Soon: Bike Bill of Rights Activists, Bloggers, and Ridazz are fired up about a new idea from Illuminate LA’s Stephen Box called the […]
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