Oh, Well That Won't Cause ANY Trouble

Austin wants you to give bicyclists and wheelchair drivers a wide berth on the street. Never you mind that wheelchairs aren't supposed to go on the street, they're included. The new rule is that a motorist must give a 3-foot 'buffer zone' when passing a cyclist, but heavy and commercial trucks must give cyclists a 6-foot buffer.

What's wrong with that, VFD? You don't like bicycle safety?

Of course I do. When I rode my bicycle every day to get to work or school or wherever I had to go, I wore a helmet and generally drove like I was invisible. I went to great efforts to drive as close to the edge of the pavement as possible. When my family goes on a ride together, we crowd the little'uns to within a foot of the curb, and don't ride on anything narrower than a 4-lane road, and NEVER on a road with heavy traffic. If it's just my Darling Wife and me, we're in single-file (don't tell her I don't mind the view).

There are a certain number of jerks around here who think that, because they have the legal right to ride on the public streets, they should be able to use the lanes as they please, without negative consequences. 5MPH, two riders side-by-side, on a two-lane road with oncoming traffic in the other lane? Sure, why not? I mean, nevermind that we are holding up commerce and generally making assholes of ourselves, WE have a RIGHT! Who cares that you have to wait or risk your life in oncoming traffic to pass? WE HAVE A RIGHT!

Shades of Critical Mass. I wonder how well that would go down here. I wonder how the cyclists would like being run over by Texans, or actually brought up on charges by a District Attorney not afraid of the Spandex Lobby.

You have a right to do what you want, when it does not interfere with my right to do what I want. If you make a delivery driver 15 minutes late delivering a cake to a wedding and he gets fired, YOU are wrong, regardless of how technically legally entitled you are to occupy a lane of traffic.

The law also says a driver can't cut off a cyclist, when making a right turn. That's all fine and dandy when you have cyclists with a lick of damn sense, but when you are driving your car 5MPH around a turn, with your turn signal going, and cream a bicyclist who slips in front of you going 30MPH, that was their fault. Especially if they were doing 30MPH coming off the sidewalk. To cross against a red light. While talking on a cell phone. Yes it happens.

This is what happens when you let leftists make the rules. This is yet another reason why a) I don't live in Austin proper and b) Austin needs single-member city council districts.