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CTC rejects calls to back minimum passing distance - but what do you think?3ft Please jersey UK

CTC rejects calls to back minimum passing distance - but what do you think?

Vote in our poll to help us discover what Britain's cyclists really think...
by Simon_MacMichael
Mon, Nov 16, 2009 14:39
34

The cyclists’ organisation CTC has rejected calls to throw its weight behind a campaign to introduce a five-foot-to-pass rule in the UK, and says that its priority is to improve the levels of enforcement of existing traffic laws.

Last week on road.cc, we reported how cycling safety campaigner Joe Mizereck, whose website www.3feetplease.com has helped have a three-foot minimum passing distance introduced in a number of states in the US, had backed moves to seek a five-foot minimum in the UK, and had thrown the gauntlet down for CTC to do likewise.

Such a rule would bring the country into line with several other EU member states where a 1.5-metre minimum passing distance has been adopted, such as Germany, Spain and, other than in urban areas where it is 1 metre, France.

Mizereck, who dreamt up his campaign’s ‘3 feet please’ cycling jersey, had initially suggested on road.cc that CTC back Tom Amos’s petition to have a similar rule implemented in the UK. But on learning that 1.5 metres was the law elsewhere in Europe, and that a separate petition had been launched seeking five-foot clearance, he agreed that it made sense for cyclists here to push for a minimum of five feet.

CTC doesn’t share his opinion, however. Its campaigns co-ordinator, Debra Rolfe, told road.cc: “If we thought it was a good idea to support this, we’d be supporting it because we work for the cycling community and that’s what we’ve been doing for 130 years.”

According to Rolfe, “There’s very many ways that Britain differs from the rest of Europe in how it protects cyclists and this [the minimum passing distance] is only one of them. We feel like it’s a bit of a red herring and that legislating a minimum passing distance is not even going to begin to address the problems that we’re facing in the UK.”

She continued, “We feel that the major problem is the lack of traffic law enforcement and that’s why we’re running the Stop SMIDSY campaign, and one of the things we’re calling for in the Stop SMIDSY campaign is increased resources towards road traffic policing.”

As for Mizereck and his 3-foot-please campaign, Rolfe maintains that “sometimes with policy changes, they can’t be summarised on a T-shirt.”

But given the number and nature of comments road.cc has received on this subject during in recent weeks during our coverage of the three-foot petition and subsequent moves to seek a five-foot minimum instead, it’s clear that there are a lot of British cyclists out there who would like to see some kind of minimum safe passing distance enshrined in law.

It’s clear that irrespective of Mizereck’s involvement, it’s an issue is now a hot topic of debate in the UK cycling community, so tell us what you think – is CTC right in its current stance, or would you like to see them press for a minimum safe passing distance when overtaking on British roads?

We’ve put a poll up on road.cc, which you’ll find here, and we’re very interested in finding out what you think.

SMIDSY
poll
Petition
CTC
5 Feet Campaign
3 Feet Campaign
Simon MacMichael

Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.

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34 comments

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bigshape | 7 years ago
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sorry - just realised this post was 6 yrs old! 

 

 

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Ush replied to joemizereck | 7 years ago
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joemizereck wrote:

You have a choice. Bow down and accept the verdict of the CTC or move forward and do what's good and right...act to save cyclists' lives  ....  cyclists will be safer and fewer lives will be lost. Those two outcomes alone should be enough to move every UK cyclist into action...and I should hope, the CTC as well. Do this for yourself and for all UK cyclists and make cycling safer for everyonem, please.

 

And don't forget SOMEONE HAS TO THINK OF THE CHILDREN.  ACT NOW.  WHILE SUPPLIES LAST.

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arowland | 7 years ago
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CTC's response is not helpful. Saying that conditions vary and drivers should exercise judgement may sound true but doesn't work in practice. One of the most stressful things I deal with on my commute is the number of vehicles passing fast and close, leaving no safety margin for when you need to jink round a pothole or some glass on the road (which the drivers can't see). Half the drivers are great; the other half are terrrible. The days are gone when nearly all drivers would have been cyclists before they drove  and many now haven't a clue what it is like for cyclists. They need clear guidance in law. The Highway Code's 'Rule 163: Give vulnerable road users at least as much space as you would a car' is too vague. Some drivers pass other cars too close!

Drivers have been conditioned by the terrible cycle lanes we have in this country into thinking the average cycle lane repesents the amount of space cyclists need. For traffic over 30 mph it should be 1.5m minimum.

A change of the law and accompanying publicity would help enormously in driver education and give police an objective standard to base their giving a driver a ticking off on, or as part of evidence that a collision was caused by dangerous driving. It would take away the defence that "I was going to miss the cyclist by a good 6 inches, m'lud, but s/he suddenly changed direction."

Incidentally, the same space should be left between moving traffic and pedestrians too. There are some ridiculously narrow pavements on narrow roads in our village and some drivers take the view that if they have to stop or risk knocking someone's arm off, they will go for the arm every time.

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crazy-legs | 7 years ago
1 like

Total waste of time, effort and money, the CTC are right not to back it. A similar petition was done years ago, it reached the required however many thousand signatures, got discussed in Parliament and got thrown straight out with the response that the highway code basically already covers this.

Read why it's pointless here:

http://beyondthekerb.org.uk/2016/04/11/passing-laws/

As always, Bez sums it up brilliantly.

Completely totally unenforceable and a massive distraction from the main issue here. The ONE thing that gets people cycling as a day-to-day activity - for commuting, for leisure - is good quality segregated infrastructure (as London is finally now building, as Amsterdam, Copenhagen etc have had for decades). And once people are cycling, they become aware of cyclists needs more on the occasions that they drive. None of this "driver education" or "respect" or "share the road" bollocks has had the blindest bit of impact on cycle fatalities; the way to educate drivers is to get them riding bikes and the way to do that is not to tinker round the edges with distance passing laws, it's to create an environment that discourages short car journeys and increases walking and cycling.

Put it this way - you have two roads, both with traffic moving at 40mph. One road has a 3ft minumum distance passing law, the other has some proper segregated infrastructure. Which one do you take your 5yr old kid riding on? Which road would granny choose to ride to the shops on?

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