A visit to traffic school
TBL reader M sent this in:
I was recently in traffic school (oh so fun) for supposedly not completely stopping at a stop sign in my car even though the cop couldn’t see me from where she was (but that’s another story).
I decided that my responsibility in the class was to bring up as much about respecting bikers while driving as possible and I was sadly none too surprised about the absolute void of knowledge that people had with regard to bikers. Most specifically people couldn’t believe they had to give bikers a minimum of 3 feet while passing. People asked questions such as “but what if they are in the road?” or “how am I supposed to pass them then?” It was really a bit shocking. Fortunately our traffic school instructor had no qualms about telling everyone that bikes had every right to take up the whole lane if they deemed in necessary and that no matter what 3 feet was the minimum passing distance. No one seemed very happy about that. Hopefully some people paid attention.
Way to go Agent M! It’s very good to hear that the instructor was on board. I have heard some horror stories about some of those instructors.
–Erik Ryberg
May 7th, 2009 at 9:09 am
I was recently surprised to discover that some people where I work believe that if a cyclist is not in the bike lane, on a road where there is a bike lane, that the cyclist is breaking the law. This was in an informal group of employees at a company funciton. You can bet I told them straight away how wrong that was–a couple of guys that rode motorcycles backed me up too.
People seemed to imply that is was okay to run cyclist off the road should they break the “bike lane law.” Mostly they were ignorant car heads…
May 7th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
I’m so tired of dodging cars. I love to ride, but I know someone will be building a ghost bike for me some day. I’ve been hit twice, almost died once, there are to many drivers who do not care about bike riders only their make-up, cell phones and cup of coffee on the dash. I hate to say it , but I’m giving up bike riding. It’s only a matter of time before I’m hit again. That makes me very sad.
don