In the middle of contemplating (and deciding against) responding to this ridiculous piece at the Ballston Patch, and getting a rather positive impression of recent ACPD enforcement efforts along the Custis Trail, I came across one of the smartest posts on cycling and the law that I’ve ever seen:

If you tried to survive [on the road] by counting on people to follow the formal rules, you’d be toast. Some of this is just ignorance of the law, but some of it–like speeding–is the result of informal practices that dominate the formal rules. Some of those informal practices might be more efficient than their formal counterparts, but surely some are not. So, even in places where “rule of law” supposedly prevails, many of our daily practices are still built around shared expectations based on unwritten and sometimes inefficient rules, and these unwritten rules can be very hard to dislodge when they are widely followed.

Check the rest of it out.  Lots to think about.

(The best response to the Ballston Patch piece came courtesy of WABA’s Executive Director, Shane Farthing.)