Close Call With a Cop

// July 7th, 2009 // Cycling, Personal Crap

cycling-signI had a close call with a car today, riding my bike near the house this evening after work. I wanted to get out for a short, but hard ride prior to dinner, so just hit a nice little route that goes down to Falls Lake and back on a relatively short and low traffic road. I wanted to get some speed work in — keeping the heartrate, cadence and speed up. That was pretty successful.

Right at the end of my ride, I had a rare run in with a car. Right after passing the Falls Village Golf Course, and just before returning to Highway 98, I could hear a car coming from behind, an obvious super common occurrence out on the road. Despite being all the way over to the right, the car’s mirror rushing by me missed me by near inches — no exaggeration. It immediately made me cuss out lot, but then I got even more pissed as I saw it was a cop car — Durham County to be more specific.

Now, North Carolina doesn’t have a three-foot law, but seriously? These are the guys that are supposed to be protecting us all out on the road. If they’re not passing safely, how can we expect normal motorists to do so? Unfortunately, I didn’t get a car number, nor license plate, so all I can do is rant right here on my little ol’ blog. Doing so, isn’t going to help anything, but allow me to blow off a little steam. All my fellow two-wheeled riders out there — be careful, defensive and fend for yourself. You obviously can’t expect anyone else to.

One Response to “Close Call With a Cop”

  1. Joe Mizereck says:
    July 8, 2009 at 6:47 am

    Keefer…it is so frustrating. We, cyclists, have a lot of work to do in educating motorists, and yes law enforcement as well, of the need to give cyclists at least 3 feet clearance when passing from the rear. With the law on the books you have a tool to use. But, even without the law we need at least this amount of space to be safe.

    Here’s the thing. Every time we get on a bike and ride we have to expect motorists to be paying attention and driving responsibly. If we couldn’t expect this, then we really shouldn’t be on the roads with motorists. But, we also know that there are some motorists who do not drive responsibly and even some others who do, but make mistakes…that end up putting us in harms way. There are risks and we have to do all we can to minimize those risks. That’s where education comes in. That’s where bright colors come in. That’s where following the rules comes in.

    We have a lot of room for improvement and every step we take in making those improvements makes cycling safer for all of us.

    Keefer, please take a moment to go to http://www.RoadGuardian.com to report, mark and share your incident with the police officer.

    Thak you,
    Joe Mizereck
    joe@3feetplease.com

    Reply

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