Originally Posted by Treespeed

HH. You never replied to my earlier post and you won't accept e-mails, so I'm reposting it in reply to a more recent post as I think your only educating one half of the users, and the least dangerous at that. As demonstrated by this rider's experience and the ones I have every other day in Los Angeles there are obviously motorists who would benefit from a little education. I concede the point about educating cyclists, but there is already an infrastructure in place to educate motorists, signage, DMV's, testing, and traffic school. Why not utilize what is already there? We're not talking about new legislation, only education of existing regulations and rights. Kind of like the big DUI education initiatives of the last decade.

The obvious problem is that at least every other day I have a motorist who passes to closely because they feel I shouldn't be in the lane. I attribute these common occurrences to motorist ignorance and the resulting 'problem' is that every close pass increases the likelihood of being clipped or worse rear-ended. You are always quick to point out that these are the rarest accidents, but they are also, when the occur the most likely to be fatal. So obviously the closer a motorist passes the more likely it is that there will be a collision. It is all well and good to ignore the behavior, how noble of you. But it doesn't do anything in the long run to change the behavior. You say you don't know what to do about law enforcement ignorance, but I would argue that it is symptomatic of the lack of education of all motorists to cyclists rights and responsibilities. When the folks that are charged with enforcing the laws are ignorant of the laws what do you think that says about the level of education across the board of all roadway users. You are so set on educating cyclists, as these are the ones we can all reach and change, but in the end this ignores the vast majority of roadway users.

I recently took a traffic school course, don't ask, and there was almost nothing about cyclists, except to watch out because we are unpredictable. On the other hand there was an exhaustive section on alcohol and narcotics. It is my opinion that a few more pages in the drivers manuals and an increase in signage would go a long way in getting the word out about our rights to the roadway. And I don't mean the share the road baloney, but a few "Cyclists allowed full use of lane" at some of the more contentious intersections and some sharrows that have been shown to increase passing clearance in studies in San Francisco. HH, you make the argument that bad drivers will just ignore such signage anyways, but this is a cop out argument, because if law enforcement and motorists are aware of the laws they are breaking it is more likely that scofflaws will be ticketed, instead of just having to ignore it.