San Francisco Bicycle Injury Attorney Comments on Street Safey
According to Streetsblog.com, at least eleven states have laws requiring drivers to leave three feet between their vehicle and cyclists while passing. Right now mayor Villaraigosa of Los Angeles is pushing for California to join those states before the year ends. At a Tuesday press conference, Villaraigosa, surrounded by leaders of the LADOT, LAPD, Los Angeles Councy Bicycle Coalition, and Midnight Ridazz, stated his support and promised his advocacy for a state law requiring drivers to give those three feet. Villaraigosa has vowed to push forward with this proposed legislation no matter what. At a press conference he promised to keep pushing for it until it becomes part of the California Vehicle Code. The website "3 Feet Please" has been monitoring the national movement to bring this law to every state. It provides a policy paper from the Bicycle Alliance of Washington, which covers the local issues and provides guidance for activists with similar goals in other states.
State patrol officials in several of the 11 states that have passed the three-feet law emphasize that the law is used more as an education tool to provide safe practices than as an enforcement tool to punish law breakers. It gives officers, government officials, and civic groups the opportunity to inform drivers what a safe minimum distance is by use of a common measure (3 feet or one yard). Accordingly, if the law passes, the police probably won’t go around with measuring tape and measure passing distance between cars and bikes, but the law could give cyclists legal leverage when passing cars drive dangerously close, even when there's no actual collision. While cyclists are waiting for a legislator to emerge to champion a "3 Feet Passing Law" in Sacramento, activists have high hopes for the campaign and for the future of cycling advocacy under the city's Mayor. Here at the Brod Law Firm, we are glad to see initiatives such as this (as we have helped many cyclists who have been doored), and we hope to see this become law. Ensuring the safety of cyclists is an issue that can’t be ignored or pushed aside any longer, considering the death of 22-year-old Nils Yannick Linke, a German tourist, who was killed by a drunk driver while riding his bicycle on Masonic two weeks ago. Bicyclists and pedestrians should not feel like they are risking their lives every time they take to the streets.
