City agencies—including transportation departments and police departments—should always prioritize safety when making decisions on how to design and manage their streets. However, some of the laws that regulate bicyclist and pedestrian behavior on streets fail to improve safety and lead to harmful over-policing.

Some rules that appear to be focused on safety, such as rules requiring bicycle registration or helmet-wearing, are attempts to plug holes in a transportation network that is insufficiently designed to keep all road users safe, especially those walking, biking, and rolling. These laws are too often enforced unevenly, and marginalized people are paying with their liberties or their lives—especially low-income, unhoused, Black, and Latine/x groups.

NACTO is working to help cities identify common traffic laws that lead to over-policing without improving safety, provide guidance to encourage cities to eliminate those laws, and mitigate discriminatory enforcement practices.