Share the road, drivers and riders

New law sets margin of safety for bikes

Spring is just 11 days away, and already Ohio’s roads are blossoming with bicyclists. Along with spring will come a new protection for those two-wheeled trekkers, the implementation of House Bill 154, passed last year to mandate that motorists passing bicyclists do so at a safe distance, which can be no less than 3 feet.

This is a welcome improvement over the previous law, which specified that passing be done at a safe distance, without specifying a minimum clear distance. Now motorists will have a specific guideline, one that can help them make crucial decisions as they overtake a bike.

When overtaking a bicycle when there is no oncoming traffic, a motorist can safely pull left and pass the rider with plenty of clearance between motor vehicle and bike. But when there is oncoming traffic, a motorist must decide whether he can safely squeeze between the bike and oncoming traffic, or slow down behind the bike until the oncoming traffic has passed, leaving the road clear for a motorist to pull left and loop ahead of the bike.

Many car-bike accidents happen when impatient drivers try to squeeze between the bike and oncoming traffic, and end up clipping the bicyclist, sometimes with fatal results for the rider. With HB 154, motorists will know that unless they have 3 feet of space, they should not pass.

Ohio joins 29 other states that specify a minimum safe-passing distance. The Ohio Bicycle Federation lobbied for the requirment for seven years before achieving success in December, when Gov. John Kasich signed HB 154 into law.

The National Highway Traffic Administration compiles statistics on bike accidents and reports that in 2014, the most recent total available, 726 bicyclists were killed in accidents involving motor vehicles and a staggering 50,000 were injured (http://bit.ly/2mBRN81).

According to the agency, the highest number of fatal crashes, 20 percent, occur between 6 and 9 p.m., and 71 percent of them occur in urban areas. Of the riders, 88 percent are men between age 20 and 24.

And while drunken driving usually is associated with motorists, in fact, in 21 percent of accidents in which bicyclists were killed, the bicyclists had a bloodalcohol concentration of at least .08, which is the legal definition of drunken driving in many states.

This underlines that safely sharing the roads is a joint responsibility of motorists and bicyclists. While motorists sometimes are impatient with having to slow down for bicycles, they also have legitimate gripes that some bicyclists don’t follow basic rules of the road, cutting in and out of lanes of traffic, ignoring red lights and stop signs and failing to signal turns.

However, HB 154 included a provision giving bicyclists the right to proceed through a red light if, as often happens, the light’s vehicle-detection system does not register that a bike and rider are waiting for the light to change. In such cases, bicyclists are permitted to proceed through the red light after stopping and determining that they can do so safely.

More and more people are riding bicycles, whether using them to commute or simply for pleasure. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, the number of people commuting by bike rose 64 percent between 2000 and 2012.

This means that interactions between motorists and bicyclists will continue to rise. Courtesy and adherence to the rules of the road by drivers and riders will minimize friction as well as tragedies.