Would the safe passing law apply in this case?

No.

City chief dies after being hit by cyclist
Elizabeth Hopkirk, Evening Standard
08.11.07

A City fund manager has been knocked down and killed in a collision with a cyclist on his way to work.

Nick Bancroft was a year away from retirement when the accident happened just yards from his £2 million Holland Park home.

He suffered fatal head injuries and died three days later. Mr Bancroft, 63, who was married with three adult children, was a respected investment manager who had worked in the City since graduating from Oxford and Stanford universities in the Sixties.

Think about it, and then rationalize it. You see, thanks to the efforts of some bicycle "advocates", bicycles aren't really seen as vehicles anymore, with all the rights and responsibilities of other vehicles, but are instead becoming seen as "toy" vehicles. Much the same way that children aren't fully "human" until they are adults.

Under the Texas "Safe Passing" law, cyclists, pedestrians, people in wheelchairs, farm tractor operators, equestrians, and motorcyclists are "protected" from other road users passing them "too" closely, but the motorcyclists and tractor operators also fall under this law, as operators of "motor vehicles" (electric wheelchairs are exempt because they aren't legal vehicles), and must obey it. But cyclists, who have a bad record of fatally injuring pedestrians in urban environments, are exempt from the law's provisions, because they aren't "motorized". The new law will codify the exclusion of bicycles from the only other legally recognized vehicles in the law.

Why does this matter? Because it puts us very much closer to the day bicycles are no longer legally recognized as vehicles at all. Bicycles will be something different, something that legally requires separate facilities. That legal definition is already on the books. It applies to pedal-cars, roller-skates, skateboards, and soon... to bicycles. It's called "toy vehicles."

Welcome to your new world.