Laws give pedal power to the people
Like it or not, bicycles are here to stay – deal with it
By Michael Dresser - Baltimore Sun
Michael Harris of Catonsville is a serious bicycle enthusiast, 56 years old, who races with an Annapolis team and trains on a 33-mile course in the Baltimore suburbs. After reading last week's column about bicyclist-motorist interactions, he sent me this account of a recent ride on semi-rural Landing Road in Howard County:
As I was approaching the intersection of Ilchester Road a group of young men in a 4-door Jeep came within 6 inches of my handlebars. One jerk yelled in my ear an obscenity as the vehicle passed by. I could hear the laughs as they came to a halt at the intersection.
As I found out later when I caught up to (another) group of racers, a few of them were abused in the same fashion as the car blew by. Are our driving schools, these kids' parents not educating the young about sharing the road?
udging by some of the reaction to last week's column, no. In fact, parents might be a big part of the problem. Many older motorists, it seems, have some quaint but somewhat delusional ideas about life, logic and the rules of the road. The young gentlemen in the Jeep could very well have cultivated their attitudes about bicyclists while sitting in the passenger seat of the family car.
Quite a few readers objected to the column's suggestion that motorists quit bellyaching and learn to give bicycles the 3-foot berth required by a newly passed bill. Several recounted anecdotes about occasions when they witnessed misconduct by bicyclists and attributed that behavior to everyone on a bike. Their conclusion: Bicyclists should be banished from roads that just happen to be near where these motorists live and drive.
Let us apply that reasoning to the circumstances encountered by Harris: Young men in a Jeep misbehaved on a country road. Therefore all Jeep drivers – no, make it all SUV drivers -- are hooligans. So let's ban all SUVs from country roads. Ridiculous? Absolutely. But many folks in cars seem perfectly willing to apply that tortured logic to bicyclists.
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