I consider myself a law-abiding citizen for the most part. It's true that I cut off the tags on my pillows that say "it's against the law to remove these tags...blah, blah, blah", but I don't feel like this negatively affects or injures anyone. I've also watered my lawn on Wednesday's instead of Thursday's when I've forgotten to water on Monday's. For some background info on this, Los Angeles is in a drought and we are only supposed to water our lawns on specific days. I feel that some laws and regulations are "gray areas", meaning they are laws or regulations that are intended to keep people safe or safer, but do not necessarily injure anyone if they are not upheld.

With that in mind, I've been riding my bike over the past two years to and from the store, Starbucks, pretty much anywhere within a 3-5 mile radius of my neighborhood, and have knowingly broken some traffic laws. For instance, on quiet side streets at similarly quiet intersections, I have breezed right through a stop sign or two. The reason I feel this isn't damaging to anyone is that I do look for approaching traffic and will slow down or stop if I absolutely have to. One may question my own safety or intelligence for running through an intersection, but for non-bike riders and those that haven't any experience riding bicycles, it takes a lot more energy to get moving from a complete stop than a rolling, slowing, I'm running through that intersection because there are no cars motion. If I were asked to write up a new set of bicycle laws, not stopping at stop-sign only intersections when there are no cars would definitely be okay in my book.

Another law I break when I ride around my neighborhood is the "don't ride on the sidewalk" rule. Bicycles are considered moving vehicles and are supposed to follow traffic laws, meaning I am suppose to ride my bicycle in the street whether there are marked bicycle lanes or not. Whether drivers purposely drive too close to me or not. Or whether the person in the parked car with the broken side mirror sees me or not. However, I have my own safety to consider first. Depending on the traffic on any given street, I make the choice to either ride in the street or on the sidewalk.

My neighborhood has its quiet streets; therefore I make the decision to ride in the street. There are also many busy streets, so I make the choice on those streets to ride on the sidewalk. This isn't to say I purposefully run into pedestrians on the sidewalk. I don't live in New York City, so in actuality, there aren't many pedestrians on the sidewalks in my neighborhood to run into. When I do come across the infrequent jogger or speed-walker, I make my approach known and politely say, "excuse me," and "thank you." I don't want the occasional pedestrian to have a bad experience with a cyclist on the sidewalk and forever disapprove of me or another cyclist.

Each and every cyclist has most likely deviated from the traffic laws at one point or another, and I don't advocate cycling wrecklessly into or across moving traffic. I also don't consider myself a wreckless biker, I just have selectively chosen which laws to abide and when to abide by them. On a last note, just to justify my riding on the sidewalk, I once had a driver yell out of his window when I was riding in the street, "Get on the sidewalk!" He obviously doesn't know that technically speaking, I'm not supposed to ride on the sidewalk. That day I was following the rules.