Today after riding my bike, I was driving down one of our main streets with my bicycle on the back of my truck. It is a four-lane urban thoroughfare with sidewalks and curbs and many curb cuts to businesses, etc. Not a good place to ride a bicycle. Anyway, I saw a cyclist ahead on a mountain bike -- on the sidewalk, no helmet. I was doing about 25-30 mph and as I got almost alongside him (he still on the sidewalk), without looking back or signaling, he suddenly darts down a cut and into the lane directly in front of me. Keep in mind that traffic is heavy and my truck with trailer mirrors is very wide. I stood on the brakes and eased left as fast and as far as I could and avoided hitting him, but it was close.
Scared the **** out of me. Had he stayed on the sidewalk, there would have been no problem with the 3-foot rule (or a six foot rule for that matter). Had he been riding on the road, I would have been able to give plenty of room. It would have just taken a bit of time for an opening. But I have to say, as a driver, I'm not expecting a bicycle to dart from the sidewalk into traffic on a busy narrow four-lane for no apparent reason and with no advance warning to cars at all and without even glancing back to perhaps signal intentions. I sure as heck don't do it as a cyclist.
Scared the **** out of me. Had he stayed on the sidewalk, there would have been no problem with the 3-foot rule (or a six foot rule for that matter). Had he been riding on the road, I would have been able to give plenty of room. It would have just taken a bit of time for an opening. But I have to say, as a driver, I'm not expecting a bicycle to dart from the sidewalk into traffic on a busy narrow four-lane for no apparent reason and with no advance warning to cars at all and without even glancing back to perhaps signal intentions. I sure as heck don't do it as a cyclist.