A Call to Action?

This came into my email box from a bicycle advocacy group:

CALL TO ACTION
March 9, 2009

Urgent Support Needed for Safe Passing Bill
3/11/09 Transportation Committee Hearing

DALLAS, TEXAS 3/9/09

We are asking citizens of Senator Florence Shapiro's district to indicate their support for the Vulnerable Road User Bill, SB 488 as introduced, to her ASAP. There is a hearing of the Senate Transportation Committee Wednesday March 11, 2009. Ms. Shapiro is a member of this committee and will hear testimony from individuals in reference to this bill. She has not commited to supporting this important legislation. We would like to make sure she realizes that her constituents consider this bill important and that she should support it.

We are sending this message to you because your zip code , or a portion of zip code, is in Senate Shapiro's District 8. Please verify that you are in District 8 by following this link and entering your address information, and contact her especially if you are in her district.

If you are in her district please send letters, phone calls and e-mails requesting that she support this important piece of legislation for all road users. Please take a moment and let her know that you support a defined safe passing distance for all users of the roadways. Thank you.

I have problems with this bill, and asked members of two vehicular cycling advocay listeserves for their opinions. Here's my request...

A local cycling advocacy leader is really touting the now trendy Safe Passing law as being NECESSARY for bicycle safety, while saying that repealing the Ride to the Right language is good, but not that important.

The more I consider the Safe Passing laws, the more I dislike them. The language bothers me ("vulnerable operator"... I proposed "exposed operator" to make cyclists sound less pathetic and helpless), and the exclusion of having the law apply to cyclists as well (therefore, they are now less of a vehicle because ALL laws don't apply to them).

It seems also to reinforce the notion that cyclists belong on the road edge (the source of the vast majority of negative car-bike interactions).

Am I just being crankier and crankier as I see cyclists become classified as "disabled vehicles", or is more here than meets the eyes?

Thoughts (better than mine) appreciated.

Responses came in.

In one of my recent interactions with uninformed uniformed law enforcement, the officer referenced the Florida law requiring three-foot clearance as his justification (one of many) for writing me a citation. I explained to him that the laws on the books make the three-foot passing law unnecessary. That went nowhere and I've given up on talking logic, even when it's printed in black and white.

What control does the cyclist have to ensure that the motorist obey the three-foot passing law? Lane position, simple enough. If you're properly positioned, you don't need the law. Why is it that only trained cyclists (and apparently not all of them) are the only ones able to recognize this? At least some law enforcement officers are getting some training, but every class has people to finish at the bottom of the list.


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It's strictly my opinion, but since I've been controlling the sub-14' wide lanes, almost all of the passing has been done by the overtaking motor vehicle changing lanes, which leads me to conclude that the three foot passing law is unnecessary. Virtually all vehicles give me at least three feet by the lane change. If almost all drivers provide suitable clearance when passing, why have an unenforceable and unenforced law on the books?


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The problem that many "bike advocates" are mistakenly trying to solve with 3' legislation, is not bad passing laws, rather it is that many police officers across the US, when investigating a car-bike collision, choose not to cite bad passing, 3-foot law or not, typically citing the cyclist for
violating the FTR law instead! The proper approach to this lack of enforcement is two-fold:
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1) Eliminate the FTR law which is main tool police use to blame cyclists for using the roadway, instead of citing a motorist for a bad passing.
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2) Educate police to cite any motorist that interferes with the safe operation of a bicycle per existing passing laws; and this interference can and does happen when more than three feet of clearance exists between the cyclist and the motorist, particularly on roads with faster traffic.
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In addition, motorists who pass cyclists at less than three-feet clearance at very low absolute and relative speeds, as is common in dense urban traffic, are criminalized by these ill-conceived laws. Worse still, a (mindless) three-foot minimum sets a very bad precedent in law that is being used against cyclists.
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For example Wisconsin has seen fit to legislate 3-feet as the minimum by which a cyclist may also pass also a motorist - under all conditions. In one instance in that state a cyclist was cited for violating the three foot law when she was doored! Bad law craft in the guise of 3-foot laws will not solve a police education problem, and creates additional problems for cyclists and motorists compared to standard passing laws. In other words, the "bike advocate" solution is not addressing the real causes, and is making the problem worse.


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You've drawn a good parallel with the disabled community. There is controversy among the advocates for the disabled about whether disabled students should be "included", "mainstreamed" or "segregated". The usual approach seems to be to match the the level of inclusion to the individual student's needs.

The problem with applying this concept to bicycling on roads is figuring out whether some bicyclists need help because of their special needs. In the words of CVC 21200, it is a matter of what traffic principles "by their very nature can have no application". Curb hugging bicyclists often complain about being buzzed. When I lived in Indiana, I often rode on 2-lane county roads or state highways with narrow lanes and no paved shoulder. I tried to ride along the edge of the pavement to make room for motorists to pass, but occasionally one would pass close, apparently on purpose. These sociopaths in automobiles apparently figured that they could prey on the vulnerable and get away with it. Nowadays, though, with helmet cams and cell phones, we have tools to record their actions on video and report them to the police. The problem, though, is that many police officers haven't a clue about bicycle related traffic law.

Of course, the main question is where a bicyclist should ride on a road with narrow lanes. I helped write the law that excepts bicyclists from having to ride as far right as practicable when riding in a lane that is "too narrow for a bicycle and a vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane." But, as bicycle advocates such as Roger Geller contend, operating a bicycle "the same as the primary vehicles for which the roadways were designed: automobiles" is only for the "strong and the fearless".

Advocates for vehicular cycling, of course, contend that any cyclist can take the "primary position" in a narrow lane. This is a fundamental disagreement between the two groups of advocates. Right now, the Gellers of the world are winning; they hold the positions of power and the purse strings. We vehicular cyclists, though, believe that we hold the moral and intellectual high ground.

Your question is apparently whether the 3 foot passing rule fits better with the curb hugging or the vehicular cycling point of view. Since vehicular cycling advocates like Dan Gutierrez point out that the further left you ride in a narrow lane, the more room passing motorists give you , the 3 foot rule is only relevant for advocates of curb hugging.

If we bicycling advocates are to be inclusive of all bicycling behaviors, then we need to acknowledge that the curb huggers do need help with sociopathic motorists who intimidate vulnerable bicyclists. Whether the best way to do that is with the 3 foot rule, though, is debatable. More effective might be efforts at improved driver education, tighter driver licensing standards, and educating police and judges. So far, we have focused on educating bicyclists, which has not been terribly effective. We need to "mainstream" our own view of how traffic should operate, displacing the current dominant view that all roads are motorways and that the job of bicyclists is to "stay out of the way of cars". Primary in this effort would be the repeal of the "as far to the right as practicable" rule, which your local "bicycle advocate" sees as not important.

I hope this helps you in deciding whether or not to support the 3 foot rule.


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Every law that is bicyclist specific brings us closer to bicyclists officially being a third party to motorists and peds. This cannot be good. Of course, bicyclists are also more and more being defined as rolling pedestrians as well.


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We already have safe passing laws in every state. The laws that are the subject of agitation are not safe passing laws but "Don't frighten me" laws that define some specific clearance distance as necessary to prevent fear being felt by some cyclists. Or, they might be "Don't harass me" laws, based on the fear that many motorists are attempting to inform cyclists that they don't belong on the road.

I think that it is all silly. There is no specific "safe overtaking clearance", because every situation is different. In the world of traffic law, that clearance has always been a matter of judgment. Certainly, if contact occurred, the law was violated. Also, if the motion of the overtaking vehicle caused the slower driver to take avoidance action, then the issue of violation would arise. That would occur if the faster vehicle moved into the front of the slower vehicle so close as to cause the slower driver to take avoidance action, or if, when the vehicles were side by side, the faster vehicle moved so close to the slower vehicle that the slower driver took avoidance action. If observed by a police officer, these movements would be grounds for citation and prosecution. If the avoidance action by the slower driver caused him to run off the road, or to collide with another vehicle, and suffer damages, then the issue would be considered by the court.

The argument for this agitation is that cyclists are vulnerable road users, meaning much more vulnerable than are motorists. As I have always written, motorists don't like the inconvenience and cost of repairing collision damage; I see no evidence that any significant number of motorists are deliberately risking colliding with a cyclist despite the
inconvenience and cost resulting from such a collision. Those motorists who deliberately run that risk are, pretty generally, so very obvious in their determination that the issue is one of assault, not needing any other law.

I also don't like being labeled as some kind of road user for whom special treatment is warranted, either for vulnerability or for political purposes. The stronger is the mental image that cyclists require special treatment from other road users, the stronger is the motorists' attitude that such nuisances should not be using the roadway.

For that matter, what is the expected result of this law? It will have no effect if the standard safe overtaking law is violated. It will have effect only when that is not violated. When would that be? I say, only when observed by a police officer equipped with measuring and recording equipment. And, I say it, such conditions will in in all probability occur only in very slow traffic when the actual safe overtaking clearance can be less than the usually specified three feet. If I am navigating in slow traffic where there is no possibility of turning right, I don't mind having an eighteen-wheeler close alongside me.


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We had a car/bike collision four or five years ago in Nebraska in which the motorist claimed the cyclist swerved--and he hit him from behind and killed him. The motorist was not held responsible. How do you prove that the swerve was less than three feet without witnesses? Could an expert reconstruct the collision that closely? I have my doubts.

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Sometimes the point of impact can be determined from physical evidence (skid marks, damage to vehicles, etc.). Sometimes, the "usual" or probably position of the cyclist can be determined. If the two are within 3', then the motorist defense can be challenged.

Also note that a more complete version of the law might require different distances for different MV speeds: no specified distance for >25 mph, or 3' for <25>45 mph.

It's no panacea but I think it could help. Certainly universal education is the closest we have to a universal solution and a 3' law is no substitute for such education. We need to dispel what I call the three great fallacies of bicycle operation:

1. The superstition that there is great danger from passing traffic (fear from the rear).
2. The notion that cyclists do not belong on the road; that their greatest duty is "staying out of the way".
3. The erroneous belief that cyclists cannot (or do not need to or should not) follow the standard rules of the road.

Note also last year's fatality on a bridge in Louisville KY, where the police did not cite the motorist. Apparently state law does not allow a citation unless the officer witnesses a violation or unless drugs of abuse are found. A police spokesman made excuses for the driver "He didn't see him."

Still, I suspect there would have been citations if it had been a police officer killed alongside the road with no surviving witnesses (other than the motorist).

We need that education.

Ultimately, I feel that I support the intent (that motorists should pass cyclists at a safe distance), but I disagree that more complicated legislation is the correct way.

I believe this is more of a "feel good" law than an effective piece of legislation. Is someone "bad" or "wrong" for supporting this (or opposing it)? No. But I have an uneasy feeling that it's driven by misguided optimism, when cleaning up the existing laws (i.e., removal of the "far to the right" language") would have better results, and certainly be less confusing.

Finally, expressing much of my opinion, and using language I will employ as a base in contacting my elected officials, there came this response.

I do not support either SB-488 or its companion bill in the House, HB-827.

Existing statutes already dictate that slow(er) moving traffic is to stay to the right (§545.051) and overtaking vehicles are to pass to the left (§545.053). Since bicycles are already recognized as legitimate vehicles, the only action necessary is for the definition of "a safe distance" (§545.053.a.1) to be specified.

These bills are dangerous for cyclists, for they combine recognized, legitimate vehicles with several pedestrian groups. In doing so, this opens the door to future legislation which may serve to lessen the legitimacy of cyclist's rights.