It's a nice legal issue... and I hope the Posey County Quorem Court has a nice fat legal defense fund if they go forward with this idea, as someone will surely take them up on the challenge.

First of all, the highways are public highways, built for the use of the people as a whole. All persons have an equal right to use the highways for purposes of travel by proper means and with due regard for the rights of others. You may not camp on a public highway, since that's not travel, but you may use them with any legitimate vehicle to go somewhere. Your means of conveyance is wholly your choice, restrained only by the requirement to obtain and maintain a license to operate specific types of vehicles. For example, if you don't have an automobile driver's license, your right to drive a bicycle or ride a horse is still uninfringed. (American Jurisprudence; see also Bob Mionske, Bicycling and the Law, Velo Press, 2007)

Every state in the U.S. has a traffic law or code that's substantially consistent with the Uniform Traffic Code, and has a law which says something to the effect that “Every person riding a bicycle (...) , shall have all the rights and all of the duties applicable to the driver of a vehicle, except those provisions (... ) which by their nature can have no applicability.” As a cyclist, when you ride on the public roads and streets, you're subject to the same traffic laws as the operator of any other vehicle. John Forester (Effective Cycling, 1976) has distilled this down to what is referred to as the "vehicular cycling principle," "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles." This is the sort of stuff that the LAB's BikeEd program focuses on, not only riding safely but acting responsibly and predictably in traffic.

It's definitely an education issue. The County may not ban one particular type of vehicle from the roads simply because they aggravate the farmers. In turn, the farmers need to exercise due care in not scattering corn cobs all over the road (in most states, this is a misdemeanor offense called "littering," and subject to substantial fines and community service picking the stuff up). While a corn cob on the highway or shoulder may not be much of a road hazard to an automobile, it can be a substantial hazard to a cyclist or a motorcyclist, causing them to suffer a diverting fall and the injuries therefrom.

I live and ride out on the Grand Prairie of Arkansas, which is almost wholly agricultural like Posey County (where my ancestors once lived, and probably still have some distant cousins around there somewhere). We don't have the corn cob problem (yet); but we do have the big chunks of mud that tractor and combine tires drag out of the rice fields and scatter up and down the rural roads. And sometimes they get a little careless with the hydraulics on their disks, and scarify the soft summer asphalt with dozens of little parallel ruts from the blades... also a source for nasty diverting falls for cyclists.

Cyclists in turn need to be courteous to other drivers. Road rage, sadly, isn't confined to "cagers." Getting into confrontations/fisticuffs with other drivers is the wrong way to deal with this sort of stuff.

Working with the local cycling community & clubs is going to be just as important in helping this sad situation as dealing with the quorem court, local farmers, and the rest of the community. Maybe starting with some simple, short classes on cycling & traffic law to the local riders would be a good thing; Indiana has a good population of LCI instructors who may be able to help (http://www.bikeleague.org/cogs/resou...18&submit.y=11 ; Ray Hess was in the same seminar that I attended early this month), and there's some really good resources just across the river in Louisville (Bicycling for Louisville, a non-profit advocacy group) who can give some good pointers.

"Share the Road" ain't just for cagers, either... In states where there's a bike-specific law or regulation against riding more than two abreast, that's part of the traffic law that we have to comply with. In cases where the traffic lanes are too narrow to safely share with a motor vehicle, cyclists are legally justified in "taking the lane" for safety's sake... but consider that part of the law that says, "with due regard for the rights of others"... The call "Car back!" isn't just a warning, but a notice to form single file and allow the faster traffic to pass when it's safe.

Hopefully both sides can bring a little sense to this situation before it gets any nastier... but there's a lot of outreach that needs to be done on all sides.

Tom
newbie LCI