Common sense would tell the cyclist he should move over, but there must be a reason he is not. Safety?
This isn't about common sense, or safety. The deliberately visible, obstructionist cyclists here do what they do to make a point. It's the Occupy Travel Lane movement, essentially. If they want to use travel lanes, they use travel lanes. I'm not saying they don't have the right to, what I'm saying is that even when they have the option to easily let a column of cars get by at normal speeds, they don't. On purpose. Over and over again. There is the rare, sensible cyclist who gets it, and who isn't thinking that he'll make it better for future cyclists by making enemies of normal commuters.
If he is doing something illegal, then get a cop out there.
Nice platitude, but again, completely unworkable. If a cop is already there, ahead of the cyclist in traffic and able to see him, run across multiple complete lanes of moving cars and physically stop him, then he has a chance at writing a citation. Otherwise, it's a lost cause, and the cyclists know it. This is the second worst commuting area in the country. The cops don't make a fuss in traffic unless people are on fire or shooting at each other, because pulling over a single person to write a citation will cause a backup that will last for 45 minutes. The Occupy The Travel Lanes douches know this, and revel in it.
I SAID that I believe most cyclists are not commuters, they are out for exercise.
I'm talking about middle-of-the-business-day road use in dense urban and suburban areas heavy with traffic. These are commuters, mostly. The road team and recreational guys who travel in packs are a completely different sort of problem, but at least they move a little faster.
If the cyclist were breaking the law that frequently, the cops would be actively staking out the fucking place looking to gather revenue.
As mentioned above, no. They won't, can't, don't.
So I weeded out an admission of your deliberate law-breaking. So why is it ok for you, but not me?
Because I don't run red lights, or obstruct traffic. But that's the behavior we're talking about here. The guy going 50 in a 45 doesn't slow down dozens of other people. Are you insisting that the two things are equivalent - that moving along with everyone else at 5mph over the limit is the same as running a red light or holding up a long column of cars and trucks for no reason but Occupying?
You also don't seem to understand that have the right to drive slower than the speed limit.
Generally, here, that's not true. People falling more than 10mph below the posted speed limit while not behind some other obstruction are committing a moving violation.
Much less frequently is it paired with a sign indicating a minimum speed limit, but I have seen it on occasion. Only then are you constrained to a minimum speed.
Depends on the jurisdiction. Those are posted in places where (mostly) heavy trucks are notorious for slowing things down, and they post the minimum so that there's zero opportunity for argument in the case of a citation. Regardless, in some parts of this area, the cop can simply write a citation for "traveling at an unreasonable speed" - which they'll issue to, for example, someone stupid enough to move slow, heavy equipment (like a crane trailer, whatever) over the road during rush hour. That heavy trailer vehicle, unlike a guy on a bike who can hop a curb and disappear from traffic, is a lot easier to cite.