Yeah, I don't think that 3 foot laws are in any way comparable to a strict liability law. All they really represent is a codification of what safe drivers already should be doing routinely, because apparently it's too hard for some of them to figure out how to pass a cyclist without having it spelled out for them. Strict liability changes how crashes are handled by police and courts. 3 foot passing laws merely create a new crime that drivers can be charged with in addition to existing laws. There's a big difference.

Since I don't believe strict liability is a realistic political possibility most places in the U.S. anytime soon, maybe there are other things we could do. One that I think would be good would be to somehow upgrade the standards via which police officers investigate crashes. Does anyone know if there are any sort of codified standards for how they are supposed to do that? Because it seems like we hear a lot about police officers that fail to conduct a proper investigation, whether it's because of anti-cyclist bias or simple ignorance on their part of the mechanics of typical car-bike collisions. I mean, does anyone here seriously believe that cyclists routinely swerve in front of or into high speed motor vehicles? A lot of these "swerving" incidents are caused by things like motorists not staying in their proper lane while executing turns, and thus drifting sideways into cyclists. Police should realize that, instead of just believing the story of the negligent motorist when they don't understand what happened.