PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • March 29, 2025
In State v. Ray, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court recently vacated a trial court decision against an experienced cyclist, who was wrongly ticketed by a law enforcement officer for allegedly violating the statute. As the court made clear in its decision, “because the statute leaves it entirely up to a cyclist to determine how far to the right it is safe to ride, it becomes unenforceable against a cyclist who claims it would have been unsafe to have ridden farther to the right.” This holding was a powerful affirmation of something we at the Bicycle Coalition of Maine have said for years: cyclists deserve the right to make safety-based decisions about where and how they ride. ~ Andrew Zarro, Bicycle Coalition of Maine.