Just yes­ter­day, I had a pick-up truck pass me in the early morn­ing hours. He was so close, that I could reach out and touch his side panel. Two things about this. First, he did it twice within about 1-minute’s time. He did it the first time, stopped at a light and I caught up to him. I maneu­vered to the front and side of him. As I rolled away when the light changed, he did it again. Sec­ond, it was a four-lane road and there were no other cars on the road (no exaggeration–it was 5:30am)! He could have eas­ily gone around me. Why buzz me? It’s not like I had insti­gated an alter­ca­tion with some rude hand-gesture. I was just exist­ing. So for­give me if I seem a lit­tle per­turbed at motorists these days.

My wife some­times sees things dif­fer­ently than I do (imag­ine that!). When I tell her of the var­i­ous traf­fic inci­dents I know of that involve bikes and cars, she is a lit­tle more lenient on the car dri­ver on the assump­tion that it was an acci­dent. Since no mal­ice was intended, the result­ing fines/ punishment/ con­se­quences should be reduced.

I can cer­tainly under­stand this posi­tion. As a dad, I always take into account the intent. But if the sit­u­a­tion did not involve a cyclist and instead involved the acci­den­tal death of a non-cyclist, I don’t know how for­giv­ing she–or any­one else–would be. To illus­trate this dif­fer­ence, Bob Mionske recently wrote:

It was only a few short weeks ago, as the year changed, that some­body, some­where, fired off a gun to ring in the New Year. The bul­let rock­eted sky­ward, until the inex­orable pull of grav­ity slowed its ascent, and it arced back to earth. A mile away, it slammed into an inno­cent New Year’s rev­eler, killing him instantly.

Police recov­ered the bul­let, and based on tips, appre­hended the shooter. Bal­lis­tics tests con­firmed that the bul­let came from the shooter’s gun. The only ques­tion now was whether the shooter should be charged with a noise com­plaint, or if he should be let go, per­haps with a warn­ing to be more quiet in the future.

Improb­a­ble? Of course it is.

The “inci­dent” described is fic­ti­tious, but that’s not what makes it improb­a­ble. No, what makes this depic­tion impos­si­ble to buy is that no law enforce­ment agency, and no Dis­trict Attorney’s office, would treat this unin­ten­tional death as “just an acci­dent” unwor­thy of seri­ous charges; no cho­rus of apol­o­gists would assure us that the shooter’s regret is “pun­ish­ment enough”; and if brought to trial, no jury of his peers would acquit him, think­ing, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

What we for­get is that when we get behind the wheel of this 4,000 pound object that can move at 70-80mph, we need to be dili­gent and aware. Peo­ple who han­dle (poten­tially) deadly objects have a respon­si­bil­ity to han­dle these objects safely. And when they are not, some­thing bad could (prob­a­bly will?) happen.

Licens­ing of auto­mo­bile use of the road­way began as a result of the dam­age they were caus­ing. Pedes­tri­ans and cyclists were get­ting hurt and/or killed. The gen­eral pub­lic demanded that dri­vers show some com­pe­tency in han­dling these horse­less car­riages: licenses. We main­tain this bur­den of proof to this day.

Is there any valid rea­son that in Austin, Texas, we have this?

These are just a sam­ple. For more cases see the table.

© 2010, Mark. All rights reserved.

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Related posts:

1. Streets­Blog NYC (4/14/10)
2. Bicy­cling & the Law, Pt. 2
3. Cyclists Sub­si­dize Cars