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Dan Morgan screenshot.pngVideo: Houston cyclist uses flagpole to enforce often-ignored passing law
Armed with a flag on a flexible pole, a Houston, Texas rider has taken to YouTube to highlight the frequency with which drivers disregard the state’s passing law, which requires motorists to give a cyclist a three-foot gap when overtaking.
“They hit the flag, they're breaking the law,” Dan Morgan told Channel 2 Houston. “Houston has a local ordinance designed to protect so-called vulnerable road users.”
As you might imagine, some car-loving Texans are none too pleased at having to give a cyclist more space than needed to avoid skimming his forearm hairs, no matter what the law says.
“I don't think they understand the law and there's a lot of driver entitlement that goes on in Houston,” Dan Morgan said. “Drivers will roll the window down and start cussing me out so I tend to fight fire with fire.”
And his campaign to physically demonstrate how much room cyclists are legally entitled to has made the local news:
But although he passes his videos on to Houston police, no drivers have been ticketed for disregarding the passing-distance law and hitting his flag.
Morgan has been posting his rides and encounters with irate drivers on YouTube in videos like this one:
On Facebook, Morgan says: “This was filmed in Houston Texas on what will soon be my normal daily bike commute route - riding with the flag is the ONLY time I am passed safely (most of the time) - the flag has been hit a total of 10 times while filming and I am on my second flag because the first one was broken by a driver hitting it.”
Many commenters have pointed out that a pole and a flag alone maybe don’t get the message across, but Morgan’s way ahead of them.
He plans to roll out a new flag shortly, and has corporate sponsorship to have multiple copies made that he intends to hand out to other Houston cyclists to help spread the word.
John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.
He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.
Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.
John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.
He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.
Latest Comments
- chrisonabike 7 min 39 sec ago
Thank you for the local knowledge. One out of two ain't bad? And you get the best of both worlds currently... Presumably there are people who...
- grasen 58 min 20 sec ago
or a bent link that didn't grip the cog
- Dhill 1 hour 12 min ago
I agree with you. Just enjoy riding a bike. Easy to forget that one simple thing.
- Steve K 1 hour 41 min ago
He also writes articles from there saying that people whom work from home are all skivers who should be back in the office
- Hirsute 1 hour 57 min ago
Far too many in that article unable to reverse onto the driveway. Does no one know the highway code ?
- Car Delenda Est 2 hours 48 min ago
A more appropriate punishment:...
- Rendel Harris 2 hours 52 min ago
By no means claiming that Armstrong was the only doper in that period but your claim makes no sense: the average speed is taken on the time of the...
- kingleo 3 hours 16 min ago
So why did they not make the bridge wider, one side for cyclists and the other for pedestrians with a partition in between?
- wtjs 3 hours 21 min ago
I suffered a close pass by a BMW driver 2 or 3 years ago. 10 yards later he was stopped by temporary lights. It's all on video: there's no swearing...
- ManicDrummer 4 hours 11 min ago
Electromagnetic pedals you say? Call the witch finder general!
Add new comment
26 comments
Ride a recumbent!
Most people are to stupid to remember to hate you when they cant figure out what the hell you are doing.
Just smile and wave, smile and wave
Flexible pole with a tile cutter on the end
All was well until the flag got caught in the skirting of a large truck....
I'd consider something like this, but only if it was retractable for filtering through traffic
Of course the original version doesn't have this requirement, in most American states filtering is illegal!
I am in two minds about this. Firstly, I think what he is doing is great, after all he is just going along his normal route, i.e. not looking out for trouble, and highlighting the law as he is perfectly entitled to do so.
On the other hand I do worry about these overly provactive methods, after all we are not surrounded by a steel cage for protection and while that guy may be able to handle himself if it came to fisticuffs the next cyclist along the road who is wound up by his demonstration of the law might not be able to.
It is a shame that like so often, there is a law that is not being enforced. The point of laws are to protect the vulnverable so why aren't they enforced?
Irate drivers? The most memorable driver in that video was far from it.
Proves the point that without proper cycling infrastructure, this most health, purse and earth friendly way of commuting will never gain the momentum needed to justify the investment (no matter how modest). Chicken and the egg. It takes a determined lot to break the vicious cycle.
Great idea - I've had to add a couple of miles to my commute to avoid I'd these dimbos. It's really not hard to do, just a little patience required....
I heard that a long time ago one of the old gents in Norwich used to go around with a garden fork mounted sideways on his bike and apologise profusely any every time somebody hit it "Oh dear. I'm so sorry that you didn't see me."
Geniuses. Both of them.
Indeed. When your laws on cycle safety are behind Texas then you know it's time to worry,
So far, it's just Houston and they've always been the oddball in Texas. I worked briefly in Dallas, and I got a few odd looks from colleagues when i told them I walked to the office (it took 15 minutes...).
Meanwhile, the UK minimum pass distance is a bunch of inconsistent advice and one big shrug in law. This has come up a number of times, cyclists are generally supportive of the idea and yet CTC have ignored it.
Personally, I'd like to see Britain adopt the French guidance, (1m for town roads, 1.5m everywhere else).
Just as an aside, there is talk within the EU on making the 1.5m passing distance a requirement for all 27 member states. See, the EU is good for something.
I guess our UKIP and Tory MEPs will be voting against that, just like they voted against making lorries safer!
Do you have any links/references for that. The number of European countries adopting this law is increasing, but I've never heard of it being adopted by the EU itself.
Yep, check the European Transport Safety Commission (ETSC) website. I don't have a link to it to hand but Yahoo or the evil Google empire should be able to locate that for you.
Of course Nigel Farage's UKIP would vote against it as they hate cyclists and non-smokers. And David Cameron's Tory party probably would too, just like they did against data sharing across the EU allowing driving offences to be pursued from country to country within Europe.
ha! very good ...
Maybe some extra long Stephen Boyd style wheel nuts would do the job
I had a folding plastic arm like this with a reflector on the end on my raleigh chopper circa 1980, only about 500mm though.
Not new.
Way back when I used to use a piece of piano wire with some high visibility, sticky tape on it. The piano wire was fixed to the rear stays just behind the saddle. An old record player stylus was slipped over the end of the wire and held in place by the reflective tape. When a car hit the piano wire it'd bend back and then whip along the length of the car's side, leaving a very fine line along the paintwork. And as the stylus had a diamond tip, that fine line was cut all the way through to the steel, leaving an additional racing stripe that came up in distinctive rust red finish a short while later.
Pictures or it didn't happen.
This was back in the bad old days when cycling was proper dangerous, not like now. I didn't have a camera then as they cost money I needed for other stuff. It was in the days before digital photography when taking photos cost actual money rather than space on a hard drive. I don't have any photos of my first three bicycles, my first three motorbikes, my first car, the first flat I lived in after I moved out of the family home or even my first girlfriend either for that matter.
I'd seen those plastic things like FlyingScot had on his Chopper and decided to make something a bit more effective. It was secured to the bike with insulation tape so it'd tear off if someone hit it really hard, rather than it knocking me off my old Falcon.
I took it off after a while as I got fed up with it catching on things.
7:40....The chicks seem to dig it...Im in!
Dip the end in Nitromors.
Carbide tip would be useful