Bicycle advocates in California and Texas are lobbying for state laws that would require passing vehicles to give at least 3 feet of clearance when passing bicycles.
Efforts to pass 3-foot legislation have failed in both states before.
The California bill, entitled AB 60, was introduced by Assemblyman Pedro Nava of Santa Barbara in memory of a cyclist killed by a passing truck on a narrow road. The Texas bill has yet to be filed. If the bills pass, the two states would join seven others that currently have similar laws on the books.
The Texas Bicycle Coalition, in addition to the 3-foot clearance, is seeking 6 feet of clearance when a commercial vehicle passes. The Texas bill hasn’t been filed yet in the state legislature, where it lost by four votes two years ago.
Bud Melton, chairman of the Texas Bicycle Coalition, told the Dallas Morning News that about 50 cyclists are killed every year on Texas highways; about 20 of them are struck from behind by motorists.
A 3-foot law “would add teeth to a situation where you have a bicycle-motorist crash. It’s almost always the fault of the motorist, but they get off scot-free, and there is no real law that they have to give adequate clearance to the bicyclist when they go past. What this sets out to do is highlight the importance of that spacing.”
