"Some authorities apparently assume that to make the highways or streets reasonably safe for bicyclists using reasonable care would impose more onerous duties upon municipalities than to keep them in repair for pedestrians or horse-drawn vehicles. We do not think that this conclusion, under all conditions and circumstances, necessarily follows. While it is undeniable that certain defects in the highway may be harmless to a horse-drawn vehicle and dangerous to a bicycle, on the other hand it may well be argued that many times the care required of public officials to make a highway perfectly safe for a bicycle would be less than it would for a vehicle drawn by horses. A bicycle, by its compactness and readiness of control, renders its rider often more favorably situated than the drivers of loaded wagons, or even of light carriages, to avoid dangerous places or collisions with other vehicles. An asphalt pavement, even when level, is practically impassable for a horse ordinarily shod when the pavement is covered with a slight coating of ice or sleet, and yet a cyclist, on account of his rubber-tired vehicle, can pass over it readily. When highways are not restricted by their dedication or statute to some particular mode of use, they are open to all suitable methods of travel. 'A street is made for the passage of persons and property, and the law cannot define what exclusive means of transportation and passage shall be used. ... to say that a new mode of passage shall be banished from the streets, no matter how much the general good may require it, simply because streets were not so used in the days of Blackstone, would hardly comport with the advancement and enlightenment of the present age.' Moses v. Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne & Chicago Railroad Co., 21 Illinois 516. To hold that the standard of safety required of public authorities as to streets and highways for all methods of travel should be the safety required for a horse-drawn carriage, or of any other particular vehicle, would not accord with wise public policy. 'If there is any one fact established in the history of society and of the law itself, it is that the mode of exercising this easement is expansive, developing, and growing as civilization advances. In the most primitive state of society the conception of a highway was merely a foot path; in a slightly more advanced state it included the idea of a way for pack animals; and next a way for vehicles drawn by animals--constituting, respectively, the "iter," the "actus," and the "via" of the Romans. And thus the methods of using public highways expanded with the growth of civilization, until to-day our urban highways are devoted to a variety of uses not known in former times and never dreamed of by the owners of the soil when the public easement was acquired.' Cater v. Northwestern Telephon Exchange Co., 60 Minn 539, 63 NW 111. In the early history of this country the great highways by water were supposed to be of such importance as to entitle those who used them to superior rights over those using land highways which might cross them, but long ago it was decided that the rights of vessel owners in navigable streams must submit to the incidental inconvenience of allowing those streams to be bridged for public traffic. Persons using horses as a means of travel have no superior rights in a highway to those who rightfully make use of it for other methods of travel. 'Improved methods of locomotion are perfectly admissible, if any shall be discovered, and they cannot be excluded from the existing public roads, provided their use is consistent with the present methods. A highway is a public way for the use of the public in general, for traffic and passage, without distinction.' Macomber v. Nichols, 34 Mich 212, 22 Am Rep 522.
"The law does not require that a road shall be absolutely safe for bicycling purposes, any more than that it shall be absolutely safe for other methods of travel. The defect which renders municipalities liable must be such as would make the street or highway unsafe for the use of vehicles in general. In constructing and keeping in repair a street, the public officials are bound to take into consideration the probability that it will be used by all vehicles that are in common use, and they must make it reasonably safe and convenient for all such uses, and in so doing are not required to take into consideration injuries to machines, vehicles, or persons which may occur from causes which cannot be reasonably foreseen or prevented. ...
"... Bicycles being subject to the rules of law governing other vehicles, this general rule as to liability of public authorities for injuries to bicyclists can be reasonably and safely applied to them as to other vehicles.
"... It is a matter of common knowledge that bicycles have for years been in common use on the streets of Chicago and other cities. We think riding a bicycle on a street is an ordinary mode of travel."
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