On Sep 27, 2014, at 12:34 PM, Michael Ross via EV <[email protected]> wrote:
> The laws are the same though. Yes and no. For example, not all jurisdictions have "three-foot" laws...and, even in those that _do,_ the laws might as well not exist. First, though the laws don't say anything about paint on the roadway granting drivers the right to pass bikes closer than three feet, almost every single jurisdiction I know of and pretty much every cop assumes that, if you're both on your respective side of a painted strip, all is well. Even if the painted strip is six inches from the gutter. If you do the math, and include the full width of a cyclist with arms outstretched for signaling (a set-in-stone legal requirement), a three-foot law really means that cyclists are actually legally required to actively take the entire rightmost lane on 90% of the roads out there. Unless you've got nine-foot-wide bike lanes (or narrower lanes with two- or three-foot "no-go" buffer lanes), cars are legally obligated to change lanes to pass most cyclists even when the cyclists are centered in the bike lane, and most three-foot laws require cyclists to take the lane under such circumstances. Yet how often do you see that happen? ...and I don't think I've ever heard of a citation being given for a three-foot violation save as an add-on in rare circumstances after a serious collision. If anybody's ever been ticketed for a three-foot violation not involving a wreck, I'm unaware of it...yet I almost *never* see drivers give cyclists the requisite three feet of space. ...but this is all getting a bit farther off-topic, so I suppose I should probably leave it at that.... Cheers, b& -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 801 bytes Desc: Message signed with OpenPGP using GPGMail URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20140927/30e14f15/attachment.pgp> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
