Our previous coverage via Washcycle https://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20110406163738881
The driver’s response: https://lefthandview.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/04-08-11-bikes-cars-lessons-learned/ (also found via Washcycle)
Highlights:
04.08.11 Bikes & Cars: Lessons Learned
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• Cyclists have every right to be paranoid and hostile: any interaction between a car and a bike is inherently more dangerous for the cyclist than for the driver. Not only that, but they face the indifference and outright hostility of drivers all the time. Who could blame them for seeing cars (and drivers) as enemies?
• After I came close to the cyclist at the first intersection last week, he moved purposely leftward, so that – even as I was touching the while line to my left – he was coming closer and closer to me. I interpreted his move as purposely aggressive. Cyclists have since pointed out to me that what he was probably trying to do was to “take the lane”: cyclists moving toward the center of the lane are trying to force cars to stay behind them as they approach an intersection, rather than come up alongside. They do this because it puts them in a safer position. I never heard of this idea before, but – whether it is the law or not (which isn’t clear to me) – I intend to respect it from now on.
• Cyclists assume that all drivers know that the law requires cars to stay three feet away and that everyone knows the take-the-lane principle. They view any driver who does not abide by these guidelines as purposely and provocatively breaking the law, i.e., the interaction and their reaction to is not only about safety for them (legitimate as that is), but also about hostile fire in an ongoing war.
• Many cyclists seem unwilling to consider the possibility of flaw among their own, just as they seem unwilling to accept any driver as a potential ally.
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• His “taking the lane” may have been a reasonable attempt to communicate with me, but it backfired, because I didn’t speak that language. (This was not something covered in drivers ed 35 years ago!)
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Just the same, I think reasonable cyclists and reasonable drivers could come together to find ways to reduce inbred hostility and to recognize that at least some of the warfare going on is due to misunderstanding and ignorance, as opposed to ill will.
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Biking in Baltimore