Originally Posted by crhilton

Closer to 7' with mirrors. If he were on the edge of the shoulder his shoulder would be something like .5' into the lane. So, 7 + .5 + 3 = 10.5. It is indeed possible.

So the rider either swerved 4.5' within a few seconds or the guy wasn't giving him this much room. It can happen, that's for sure. Especially if you're trying to ride on a 1' shoulder.

Really, you give a little error room on each side and I wouldn't feel comfortable making that pass unless I was barely going faster than the rider.


<armchair BS warning>
There's basically nothing in the way of information on this, so you really can't do anything about it or determine what happened in any just way. But I'd guess that the bike swerved some and the car wasn't really taking the bike into account much if at all.