Just a couple of months ago, I was riding my motorcycle on Stanford Drive heading south one block from UNM when an oncoming car veered into my side of the street.
I could clearly see the driver was too busy texting to notice he was driving head-on toward me. My options were to stop and hope he saw me before he hit me, or swerve to the left side of the street and hope he didn’t over-correct when he saw he was about to hit a parked car. I decided to slow to a crawl and got ready to jump onto his hood when he hit me.
Fortunately, he did see me just seconds before his front bumper hit my front wheel. He mouthed the word “sorry” as he peevishly used the full extent of his turning radius to swerve away.
We read about wrong-way drivers and head-on collisions all the time in New Mexico. There was another one just last week. But when we read about these collisions, we are usually reading about people whose blood alcohol level is two or three times the legal limit.
But because cyclists and motorcyclists aren’t SUV huge or visible, and because they are considerably more vulnerable, we tend to be aware of inattentive drivers, regardless of why they aren’t paying attention to us on the road.
Even before the cellular phone era, two-wheelers were concerned with people reading the paper, putting on makeup and/or screaming at their children in the back seat.
Not so much any more.
Today, we’re concerned about the number of drivers paying attention to their touch screens instead of paying attention to their driving and actively looking for us.
You just have to watch the news to see that in recent years bicyclists and motorcyclists have suffered at the hands of inattentive four-wheel drivers.
In the UNM-area, I personally encounter at least one motorist every week who turns too wide, swerves into my lane or simply doesn’t see me until it’s almost too late. Usually, it’s because he or she won’t let go of that cell phone.
The ubiquitousness and imminent danger of driver cell phone use, even texting, leads to careless, inattentive driving. This has become alarmingly clear to both two-wheeled communities.
This past Saturday, 150 two-wheelers of both varieties rallied in Santa Fe to support bills intended to make us safer.
Rick Miera’s (D-Albuquerque) HB 68 increases the penalties for drivers who kill or create “great bodily harm” in a collision.
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Although this bill does not specifically mention bicycles or motorcycles, the likelihood of serious injury or death when bigger vehicles hit less-protected two-wheelers makes this a law we hope will encourage four-or-more wheeled motorists to look more attentively for those of us who take up less road.
Similarly, HB 197, sponsored by Antonio Lujan (D-Doña Ana County), does not specifically mention motorcycles or bicycles, but prohibits texting while driving.
Texting while driving is more dangerous to two-wheelers than drinking while driving, and is disproportionately injurious to two-wheelers. It behooves those of us who ride on public streets to support its passage.
The final two bills of concern to two-wheelers specifically mention bicyclists.
Peter Wirth’s (D-Santa Fe) SB 124 is a law that is currently in place in Albuquerque but is long overdue in the rest of the state. It mandates a safe passing zone of five feet around a bicyclist. This makes sense, especially in rural back roads where fast drivers lose their peripheral depth perception from tunnel vision, and in urban areas where bike lanes often double as wide side-view-mirror lanes.
As a motorcyclist, I would love the same protection.
Miguel Garcia’s (D-South Valley) HB 259 and its companion bill SB 382, sponsored by Eric Griego (D–South Valley), would allow bicyclists to legally roll through stop signs after pausing to look both ways.
As a longtime bicycling advocate, I have mixed feeling about separate-but-equal rules.
As an avid cyclist, I understand the extra energy it takes to accelerate back up to speed from a full stop. Frankly, I think the bicycling community would be well-served by a law that gives us a little leeway at stop signs.
Laws intended for all vehicles that share the road too often favor the four-wheeled, larger kind of motor vehicle. It’s high time that our lawmakers up at the Round House pay more attention to human-powered and motorized two-wheeled vehicles — even if it’s to give those of us pedaling as fast as we can a break at stop signs.
