{"id":246561697,"date":"2012-10-24T17:21:37","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T17:21:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=246561697"},"modified":"2012-10-24T17:21:37","modified_gmt":"2012-10-24T17:21:37","slug":"is-the-biker-rights-movement-gaining-momentum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=246561697","title":{"rendered":"Is the Biker Rights Movement Gaining Momentum?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By Eric Jaffe, The Atlantic Cities<br \/>\nIn the past few weeks, the long march toward equal road rights for urban bike riders took two big steps forward. In late February, Berkeley instituted a law protecting riders from harassment by granting them the right to civil action, and last week San Francisco officials gave preliminary approval to legislation that requires commercial buildings to let riders take their bikes inside if there&#8217;s no bike parking outside. Both laws are the second of their kind in American cities \u2014 and perhaps prelude to a wider trend.<br \/>\nBerkeley&#8217;s anti-harassment law gives riders the option of filing a civil suit against any driver who assaults, threatens, injures, or intentionally (and maliciously) distracts them. Those acts were already illegal, of course, but they could only be prosecuted as criminal offenses before the new legislation. A successful suit under the new law will require offenders to pay three times the damages or $1,000, whichever is more, as well as attorney&#8217;s fees and any other awards.<br \/>\nThe city modeled its law on a similar one in Los Angeles \u2014 the first city to pass an anti-harassment ordinance for bike riders \u2014 which went into effect last September. Before these laws riders were left at the mercy of an urban police force often reluctant to bring criminal charges against drivers who harassed bicyclists. Writing for Streetsblog last fall, attorney Ross Hirsch said the anti-harassment law is &quot;a recognition that that criminal enforcement of harassment and battery laws that currently outlaw certain behavior is essentially non-existent.&quot;<br \/>\n&#8230;<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theatlanticcities.com\/commute\/2012\/03\/california-bikers-rights-movement-continues\/1483\/\">https:\/\/www.theatlanticcities.com\/commute\/2012\/03\/california-bikers-rights-movement-continues\/1483\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Eric Jaffe, The Atlantic Cities In the past few weeks, the long march toward equal road rights for urban bike riders took two big steps forward. In late February, Berkeley instituted a law protecting riders from harassment by granting them the right to civil action, and last week San Francisco officials gave preliminary approval &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/?p=246561697\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is the Biker Rights Movement Gaining Momentum?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-246561697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biking-elsewhere"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246561697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=246561697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246561697\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=246561697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=246561697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.baltimorespokes.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=246561697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}