Cyclists on Sidewalks

[Duck on Wheels]

It's against the law to ride on the side walks here. From the DMV Handbook:

Bicyclists:
must ride in the same direction as other traffic, not against it.

must ride in a straight line as near to the right curb or edge of the roadway as practical— not on the sidewalk.

Of course, this could be because in California, the let's drive there state, sidewalks are kept to a minimum so as not to "steal" space from the road. Whereas in Norway, sidewalks are many places built double-width with a dividing line so that half the sidewalk is a bike lane. That could explain why we're allowed to ride on sidewalks here, but only as long as we're not a nuisance to pedestrians, and are willing to forfeit our right-of-way at intersections.

As for who's a cyclist ... We just had a debate here about the definition of "Norwegian". The chairman of the Language Advisory Board put his foot in his mouth, had to extract it and apologize. The outcome is that anyone who lives in Norway is free to call him/herself a Norwegian. I think the term "cyclist" should be similarly defined: Anyone who rides a bike and wants to call him/herself a cyclist should be free to do so.