Someone From My Cycling Club Hit (but ok)

[Hell-uv-a-job]

WOW Nancy!! I am so glad he/she's ok!!!

That is the reason why I drive one hour to get to a bike trail, I just don't trust riding in the road. Since I wish to ride more often I just got a trainer.
I wish they had laws here like in The Netherlands where bike riders are at the top of the food chain when it comes to traffic. EVERYONE, including pedestrians must give the right of way to a bicycle.

[Nanci]

I'm not really sure what a "Walmart shopper" is...I'm not one! :-) I'd be a Target shopper. The Walmarts here just make my skin crawl.

Hell-uv, I was in your exact position last summer, but I needed to be on my bike more often than just the weekends, so I had to bite the bullet and get used to roads. Luckily, although my road doesn't have a bike lane, I start out against the homeward-bound flow of traffic in the evening, and get to a road with a bike lane as fast as possible, and then I can get to _really_ rural/low-traffic roads from there. I'm out in the country, so mostly the drivers are careful, and I know the couple roads where they are not. I've finally built up enough of a base that I can actually ride to the bike trail rather than driving, too! (It's about 20 or 30 miles).

I do a lot of exploring on routes that the bike club publishes, that I can get to from my house. The roads are usually pretty low traffic.

Nanci

[Lise]

Nanci, sorry to hear about your friend's accident, and glad to hear it wasn't worse. I ride mostly on busy city streets, and am always aware of that type of danger. So far I've been ok, but I won't ride with ice as an added degree of difficulty! Did the Walmart shopper lady notice that she'd hit him and stop?

Best wishes, Lise

[bikerchick68]

man, how scary... people really do try to intimidate us sometimes for kicks... sickos... and other times they're just oblivious. Either way, just one more reminder to be as careful as we can be... and hope it's enough! Glad he's gonna be OK...

[RoadRaven]

Hi Nanci... glad to hear he was ok... my partner had that happen last year - a wing mirror just brushed him... he didn't go off the road, but he was fuming when he got back - and he was riding with a pack on a training ride, so not like he was on his own and difficult to see or anything...

Perhaps bike-safety awareness should be part of getting a driving license, and people sitting there test should have to practice/show how they pass bikes... and maybe get stats or pix of the results of careless driving...

GRRRR...

[Nanci]

If you read that Safety Brochure for Law Enforcement that I posted, it states that the rider should be two feet from the edge of the roadway, and a passing vehicle needs to be three feet horizontally away from the bike, so for a car to pass a bike safely without crossing into the oncoming lane, the lane must be at least 14 feet wide. I _know_ people pass me all the time closer than three feet. And I definitely ride closer than two feet from the edge of the roadway, a lot of the time it's like 6", if I'm trying to stay out of the way...

Oh, and I found out it's ok to pass a bike in a no passing zone, if there is no oncoming traffic. In Florida. I didn't know that.

It should somehow be made public knowledge about how much room a bike needs- because I'm sure Walmart Shopper had no idea she needed to give the bike a three foot space, and if she _had_ thought about that, she wouldn't have dinged him with her mirror.

Nanci

[RoadRaven]

Yeah... I did read that - very interesting

Here in NZ cars are supposed to pass 1.5 metres out from the cyclist - thats 4-5 feet I think...

And guess how many actually do? Not THAT many