The Washington Area Bicyclist Association has an online Resolution to Ride Responsibly that area cyclists can sign:
Please think about how you ride, your responsibility to yourself and other road users, and what you can do to help as a member of the bicycling community.
The pledge itself includes:
• I resolve to be a more responsible bicyclist
• I resolve to better respect the rights of other road users
• I resolve to make a good faith effort to better follow the law
• I resolve to yield to pedestrians
• I resolve to help make bicycling safer and easier for all of us
Sounds reasonable and welcome. I know some are irritated by it for various reasons, but not me. While I think I'm already a responsible rider, I'm signing because I'm all for encouraging a more civic-minded collective biking mentality in DC. We need to always strive to be a positive and collaborative part of the overall transit-scape.
Think of it as good cycling citizen-ship. All of us, to varying degrees, can do even better on these points. This could make the task of cycling advocacy easier during this pivotal time, and help defuse the kind of driver hostility that we know is out there, right or wrong.
No one's saying absolute, strict compliance, just as (for example) none of us stop fully at every stop sign when driving. Just make being a good biking citizen a goal and a habit as best you can. If you're already doing that, great.
Let's seduce with reasonableness, even in the face of irrationality.
