Florida criminalizes sleeping on public land.

[Westinghouse]

Getting back on the subject of those two small wooded areas around Walmart supercenter in Stuart Florida. Here again, two homeless men living in tents in that area were found capturing wild raccoons and torturing them to death. They were discovered in March. I think some legal action was taken against them, but exactly what I do not know. Torturing animals to death is a felony in Florida.

[froze]

I will never ride down into Florida, they have the highest bicycle fatality rate in the nation due to all the old people driving half blind if not totally blind!

[BikeliciousBabe]

Fatalities include drunks riding bikes because they lost their licenses for driving drunk.  A cyclist fatality in a tangle with a car is not always the fault of motorists.  I lost an old friend when she got hit by a truck riding home from work.  I assumed it was the motorist's fault, but the executor of her estate told me it was her fault.  "She wasn't being careful enough." is what he wrote.

[davidbonn]

A cyclist fatality in a tangle with a car is not always the fault of motorists.

Yeah, but an accident that might cost a motorist a few thousand dollars, mostly paid by their insurance, would likely seriously injure or kill a cyclist.  The penalty for making a mistake should not be death or dismemberment.

I think we as a society often get trapped into thinking that "things are just the way they are and we can't do anything about it."

[Westinghouse]

On the subject of motorist - bicyclist fatalities in Florida. They say it is true, per capita, more people are killed on bicycles in traffic then almost any other state. The state has become extremely overcrowded. Over a period of let's say 15 years, I knew or was acquainted with seven men who were killed in traffic while riding their bicycles. Some, maybe two or three, had lost their driver's licenses because of motor vehicle violations. They were drunks most of them if not all. They were not at all like an experienced bicycle tourist who is knowledgeable of bicycling safety. I saw one person with my own eyes nearly get run down. She just darted across the crosswalk right out in front of oncoming traffic. One person had to slam on his brakes and honk the horn. It's amazing. Another person misjudged distance at night and plowed right into the side of the moving truck. Another man was cycling drunk. A car driven by another man who was also drunk slammed into him and drove over him and dragged his body hundreds of feet.

[BikeliciousBabe]

A cyclist fatality in a tangle with a car is not always the fault of motorists.

Yeah, but an accident that might cost a motorist a few thousand dollars, mostly paid by their insurance, would likely seriously injure or kill a cyclist.  The penalty for making a mistake should not be death or dismemberment.

I think we as a society often get trapped into thinking that "things are just the way they are and we can't do anything about it."

My point (directed at another poster) was that statistics about fatalities can be misleading.  If you are not riding around drunk or otherwise cycling really stupidly, you have a much better chance of not being inured.  Ergo, to say "I am never riding in X because it has the highest rate of fatalities, without knowing more about contributing factors, seems odd.

[Westinghouse]

There was this other man in Stuart Florida who was killed riding a bicycle. If you had seen him in traffic, you would not wonder why. When he had a green light he would just shoot through an intersection of very busy traffic. He did not even raise his head to look left or right or anywhere. I saw him cycling this way. Others had seen him and spoken to him about it. According to what one person told me his answer was this. " When it's my time to go it's my time to go." One day when he was cycling through the intersection of A1A/dixie highway and Monterey Road in Stuart Florida, he was hit by a young fellow driving a pickup truck or a car. He just cycle right out in front of traffic. His name was Arthur Hudson. He was fairly well known in the area. Not an alcoholic or drug addict that anybody knows. But the way he rode his bicycle in traffic would make the hair stand up on the back of your neck. It is not only the fact that so many people are killed riding bicycles in Florida. You have to consider each case individually. Every case I know of firsthand was absolutely as far as I could tell much more the fault of the person on the bicycle.

[Westinghouse]

Some months ago another man was killed riding his bicycle. In this case, the fault was 100% with the driver. I did not know this man, but according to the newspaper article, he was well known in the community. He was riding his bicycle over the bridge from Stuart going to sewalls point. As far as the reports went, he was legal in every way. A woman came up from behind him in a vehicle. She was I think at least twice over the legal limit for intoxication by alcohol in the state of Florida. She smashed right into him and drag his body for quite some distance, or was it the bicycle that got caught under the car. In that case, the driver of the vehicle was 100% at fault.

[froze]

Some months ago another man was killed riding his bicycle. In this case, the fault was 100% with the driver. I did not know this man, but according to the newspaper article, he was well known in the community. He was riding his bicycle over the bridge from Stuart going to sewalls point. As far as the reports went, he was legal in every way. A woman came up from behind him in a vehicle. She was I think at least twice over the legal limit for intoxication by alcohol in the state of Florida. She smashed right into him and drag his body for quite some distance, or was it the bicycle that got caught under the car. In that case, the driver of the vehicle was 100% at fault.

This is why I don't see the point of those expensive radar rear lights, they don't tell you that a car is on a course to hit you, all they tell is there's a car coming, ok, so will a mirror.

[davidbonn]

I think we should keep in mind that Florida has a toxic brew of arguably the nation's absolute worst drivers and poor cycling infra.

That is reflected in the statistics which show that Florida has consistently been number 1 in rate of bicycling fatalities per capita.

https://data.bikeleague.org/data/states-biking-walking-road-safety/

I'll stick to my original thesis:  death or dismemberment for making a mistake while cycling is not an appropriate consequence.  And we are bicycle tourists here and all of us have had times when we were tired or got lost and we made serious mistakes that could have killed us.  Except all us here survived.

[Westinghouse]

Survived in many more ways than only one.

[davidbonn]

I don't think it is just Florida, either.

States currently with camping bans on the books in one form or another include Texas, California, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

There are also a lot of cities and towns with camping bans on the book.  So the days of passing through a small town on a bike and camping in their city park or at the fire station may well be numbered.

There are a lot of places where dispersed campsites are being closed and "dispersed camping" is being outright banned.  Fortunately not near me.  Yet.

I'm hearing a lot of accounts from RVers, Van Lifers, and distance hikers about getting much more static about doing what they've always done, which is camping.

The big concern that I have with this is that in practice it may well be impossible to comply with these laws.  If only because you probably won't have any way to know what they are until you stumble into a campsite two hours after sunset and see the "No Camping" sign.

[Westinghouse]

There is a book on adventure bicycle travel. A young married couple from California set out to bicycle around the world. Barbara Savage is the author. The book is miles from nowhere. They started out across the United States. Things proceeded normally or as normal as could be expected I suppose. They bicycled all the way across America and into Florida. Soon after they arrived in Florida certain problems what you might call social problems began. It was the way people interacted with them and the way the traffic interacted with them. They had similar somewhat unfriendly experiences all the way down through Miami and into the keys. The traffic had been so rude and others had been so rude that when they got as far as South as they could get, I think they took a bus out of there or flew away. Those troubles began in Florida and continued all the way down south. That was sometime in the 1980s. I will guess and say 1984.