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A poster fromt he site <\/i>www.copenhagenize.com<\/i><\/a>. It’s true, isn’t it?<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n You\u2019re riding up St. Laurent, you\u2019re on the right side of <\/p>\n Sound familiar?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I remember spending a day wandering around Manhattan last <\/p>\n Each one has a bouquet of flowers and a laminated note about <\/p>\n That\u2019s why I\u2019m happy to see that Maryland recently has
\nthe road trying to keep a safe distance between you and the parked cars, but
\nalso not take up a whole lane. <\/span>The
\nlight behind you turns green and you hear an engine behind you,
\naccelerating. <\/span>A sports car passes
\nyou, with about a foot of clearance on your left so the driver doesn\u2019t have to
\nswitch lanes. <\/span>You feel the car\u2019s
\nair stream rush past you and you think \u201cWow, a foot off and I would be a bloody
\npile on the pavement.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nyear. <\/span>I was walking around with a
\nfriend who was also a cycling enthusiast and had actually done some advocacy
\nwork in New York City. <\/span>She kept
\npointing out the white bicycles that serve as memorials for cyclists killed on
\nthe road. <\/span>It\u2019s an effective system
\n\u2013 the spray-painted, all-white bicycles serve as ghostly, elegant reminders of
\nthe perils of cycling in our cities. <\/span>There are a lot of them in Manhattan.<\/p>\n
\nwho the person was and how he or she died. <\/span>An overwhelming majority of them sound something like this:
\n\u201cJohn was riding down 6th<\/sup> Avenue, he swerved to avoid a piece of
\nconstruction steel and was hit from behind by a truck.\u201d <\/span>We don\u2019t have the white-bike memorial
\ntradition here, but my anecdotal evidence points heavily to this problem.<\/p>\n
\npassed a new law to prevent such a thing.
\n<\/span>In Maryland, you now have to give cyclists three feet of clearance when
\nyou pass. <\/span>If you don\u2019t, you\u2019re
\nsubject to a $500 fine (enforcement is another issue!). <\/span>It came with a bunch of other
\ncyclist-friendly laws, like a repeal of an old law which stated that cyclists had<\/i> to use the shoulder whenever it was
\npaved, and also a commitment to investing in cycling infrastructure. Read about the law <\/span>here<\/a>.<\/span>
\n…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n