Originally Posted by
Leisesturm
50' is around two car lengths. Even if it was one car length that would be better than what we have now.
Okay, so you don't mean a distance in any direction, but a following distance.
Still, how do you pass?
In Europe they go even further. A car can only overtake a cyclist at a maximum speed of 19mph.
What if the cyclist is going faster than that? Pretty common for the e-motorcycycles that prompted this thread (but then they're often not in the car lanes to begin with). Actually the cars aren't passing them, they are passing the cars - is it still a violation if the illicit proximity occurs because the "victim" is gaining on you?
And the issue isn't so much between the e-motorcycles and the cars (they'd match rather well, except for the lack of safety features and paperwork if they would actually operate in the lanes intended for their speed), but between them and the pedal bikes and pedestrians.
In highly populated urban settings there shouldn't be cars anyway! None at all.
That utopia exists nowhere on the planet. Superblocks, sure. But in between guess what you have. Even on remote islands, someone has a jeep.
But the supreme and more relevant irony is that your typical Manhattan pedestrian has daily negative interactions with e-motorcycles, but only infrequent ones with cars. For all their potential danger, the cars are mostly where they are supposed to be and doing almost what they are supposed to be. It's the two wheeled electric gizmos that no longer even
pretend to abide by the order designed into the system.