tallsteve
Joined: 02 Dec 2005
Posts: 181
Location: Cedar Hills
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| Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 2:08 pm Post subject: Utah's 3' Rule About to be Put to the Test |
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Saw this in yesterday's Des News. Here's to hoping it gets held up as I have been narrowly missed recently.
Arm of law about to hit pranksters
By Lee Benson
Deseret Morning News
Published: Sunday, March 23, 2008 12:24 a.m. MDT
It was a classless, inadvisable thing to do under any circumstances, but when the prankster reached out the truck window and touched Jason Bulton on the back, he had no idea what he was starting.
You know that old song about "you don't pull on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger ... ?"
You also don't mess with J.B. when he's riding his bike.
There were no injuries that resulted, no pileups and not even — and this was due entirely to the fact that try as he might, Jason couldn't catch up to the truck — any physical altercations.
But what the two men in that truck, out to have a little immature fun at the expense of an unsuspecting cyclist, did not know was that they had slapped on the back the most passionate, most ardent, most aggressive advocate of bicycle safety in the state of Utah, if not the entire Intermountain West.
Oh, and also — Bultman is 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighs 220 — the biggest.
Although he couldn't catch it, Bultman could memorize the license number of that truck, information he turned over to the police.
The result is the first-ever test of Utah's three-foot law in a court of law.
When authorities locate the driver of the truck, they will arraign him on charges of being less than 36 inches away from Bultman and his bicycle.
The so-called three-foot law was passed by the Legislature in 2005 after the deadly summer of 2004 that saw three Salt Lake-area bicyclists die in bike-car collisions.
The law stipulates, as its title implies, that motor vehicles must allow at least three feet between them and bicycles.
Bultman, 35, an engineer who commutes to work daily, year-round on one of five bikes he owns, could have chosen to charge the truck passenger who reached out and touched him with assault, or he could have charged the driver with reckless driving.
But he opted for the three-foot law for two reasons.
One, "I want to show that the law is enforceable." And two, "I want to educate the general public that by and large doesn't know the law exists."
And if the court needs an expert witness to testify about bike laws, Bultman could call himself.
Few people anywhere are more versed on the subject. The Florida native is a former chairman of the Mayor's Bicycle Advisory Committee and current president of the Salt Lake City Bicycle Collective, a group he helped organize in 2002. In 2007 he was named Bicycle Advocate of the Year.
"My side job is bicycle advocacy," says Bultman, who does not personally own a car.
On the day the truck passengers decided to fool with him, he was on his way to a Bicycle Collective board meeting.
It wasn't the final straw, just another one, for a man who never retreats from talking about and promoting bicycle safety. He's turned in his share of reckless drivers and had numerous "talks" with "right-hookers," the name he gives to motorists who pass a cyclist and then almost immediately turn right, oblivious that the cyclist has already caught up to them and they could have killed him.
"I know to constantly be on the lookout, always ready to brake," says Bultman, who switched from cars to bikes when he was a grad student at the University of Pittsburgh and has never switched back.
"I'm really healthy," he says, enumerating the advantages of bike-commuting. "I never even think about going to a gym ... or paying for parking."
His most serious car-bike encounter occurred in that tragic summer of 2004 when a car turned left directly in front of him — what Bultman calls a "left-crosser" — and hit him head-on. That resulted in multiple bumps and bruises and a fractured ankle that required a series of surgeries.
Rather than knocking him off his bike for good, the collision only heightened Bultman's desire to make the roads safer for cyclists.
Of course, those guys in the truck didn't know any of this when they swerved over so they could smack him.
Any more than they knew they were about to make history by becoming the first people ever to be charged with violating the three-foot law by driving too close to a bicycle. |
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