People ask me about flags–I don’t see them as necessary. Most of the time, people are going to see my size well before they will see something the size of most common flags. The flapping motion of a flag may draw some attention, but the aero penalty doesn’t justify it for me. I can just as easily mount a flashing light without the aero penalty, and the light helps more at night than a flag.

Mean, arrogant drivers come in all size vehicles. Rich dads showing off for their girlfriends, er, daughters (yeah, right), teens showing off for themselves or each other, whatever. They get mad at other motorists, too, when those other motorists don’t go 60 in that 45 zone.

The woman behind the counter was startled that anyone knew about it, much less ask, but she turned one over. The “welcome” is not very. I don’t think there are many signs around directing tourists there and it is not open on weekends.

Given that the pass must be safe, you would think that it gets used a lot. Not so. We can’t get law enforcement to use it. There are some known problems with the enforcement of the law.

1. Officers that have used the statute have expressed frustration that the judges have dismissed the charges on a regular basis. There seems to be nothing the officer can say when the driver claims the rider swerve.

2. Officers are not using the “safe pass” portion of the statute. If they did, they might win the cases more often.

3. Officers claim they cannot judge what is 3 feet. The bicycle community has often said that we don’t care about when it is borderline, but when the rider flinches or is hit the driver slams on the brakes or swerves, or the roadway is clearly not wide enough, then that’s pretty good indication that the driver didn’t leave 3 feet.

4. Some officers believe that motorists are complying with the law because they tested it out. They put an officer on a bike and motorists passed safely. Duh! It says POLICE on the shirt. So then the offices tried something different. Put a plain clothes officer on a bike with a camera on the frame and another in front. Film it. Well, the cars that darned near clipped the camera bike were moving left by the time they got to the front rider and nobody seems to have violated the 3-foot distance. Ok, that failed too. But law enforcement seems to be pointing at that study as some sort of proof that drivers are in compliance with the law.

It is frustrating and there is absolutely no doubt that the 3-foot law is not being used in Arizona.

Funny, we had a driver rear end a well known rider some years ago and the police refused to issue a 3-foot saying that they absolutely could not invoke the statute because the driver didn’t “pass” the rider. So they used the failure to control speed statute which is common for rear end crashes. Shortly after that another rider was rear ended, only in a different jurisdiction and the officers did use the 3-foot statute, went to court on it, and won. Go figure. This tells me that our enforcement and judiciary don’t know how to handle these kinds of statutory citations and need training.