In Spain drivers are required to leave 1.5m gap when overtaking a cyclist. In my experience 99% of them respect that. It’s way more common for them to leave a gap and force the driver going in the other direction to slow down than to pass to close to me. Overall drivers suck here (worst in Spain) but this one rule they do obey.
It’s good they’re respecting that. We have a similar law in Québec that requires drivers to leave 1,5m when overtaking on a fast road, and 1m in towns and urban environments. It’s unfortunately not very respected.
I can’t find the article back but some police forces bought tools to measure that, but they thought it was too dangerous to send police officers on bikes to use that tool and fine the drivers not respecting the law. They just gave up.
In America, I think drivers don’t know how to drive around cyclists, so quite a few will drive frighteningly close. I wouldn’t care to guess about the percentage.
But even 1% is a lot of people. A bicycle even on a short trip will be passed by 10s of cars. So, if you bike everywhere, that might be 1 close call a day. So, I’m guessing that Spain is not actually as dangerous as 1% and you were just picking a large number.
I don’t think about each time a driver passes me a closer than 1.5m as a “close call”. Once I went off the road and fell right into 1.5m deep ditch. Now that was a close call… I still don’t know how I didn’t hurt myself. I did get fired next day but it was unrelated.
In Spain drivers are required to leave 1.5m gap when overtaking a cyclist. In my experience 99% of them respect that. It’s way more common for them to leave a gap and force the driver going in the other direction to slow down than to pass to close to me. Overall drivers suck here (worst in Spain) but this one rule they do obey.
It’s good they’re respecting that. We have a similar law in Québec that requires drivers to leave 1,5m when overtaking on a fast road, and 1m in towns and urban environments. It’s unfortunately not very respected.
I can’t find the article back but some police forces bought tools to measure that, but they thought it was too dangerous to send police officers on bikes to use that tool and fine the drivers not respecting the law. They just gave up.
In America, I think drivers don’t know how to drive around cyclists, so quite a few will drive frighteningly close. I wouldn’t care to guess about the percentage.
But even 1% is a lot of people. A bicycle even on a short trip will be passed by 10s of cars. So, if you bike everywhere, that might be 1 close call a day. So, I’m guessing that Spain is not actually as dangerous as 1% and you were just picking a large number.
I don’t think about each time a driver passes me a closer than 1.5m as a “close call”. Once I went off the road and fell right into 1.5m deep ditch. Now that was a close call… I still don’t know how I didn’t hurt myself. I did get fired next day but it was unrelated.