Photo of Los Angeles’ “Give Me 3” campaign poster courtesy of LA Streetsblog.
UPDATED 10:46PM | A previous headline on this story incorrectly said that SB1464 was now a state law when in fact, it has only passed in the state assembly. We regret the error.
As bike culture continues to grow in Long Beach, safety remains one of the largest interferences in getting more people to ride—and with fair reason. The discomfort of having to share a road with motorists, especially motorists who are impatient with or pass too closely to bikers, makes passing-from-behind the leading cause of adult bicyclist fatalities in both California and the nation.
To combat this staggering statistic, the California Assembly approved SB 1464 in a 52-19 vote this past Monday, which now requires that drivers must provide at least three feet of space when passing a bicyclist.
The bill, co-sponsored by the California Bike Coalition and the City of Los Angeles and authored by Long Beach Senator Alan Lowenthal, overrides the broad “safe distance” law that doesn’t specify how much clearance a driver must provide when passing a bicyclist by listing that “safe distance” as three feet.
The main goal of the bill is to reduce accidents and fatalities and is similar to bills passed in Washington DC and 21 other states which require a specific distance in passing, such as Pennsylvania’s four-foot requirement signed into law this past February.
“Californians are turning to bicycles more and more as both a form of leisure and for their daily commute,” Lowenthal said in a press release. “SB 1464 will give drivers the guidelines and incentive to more safely share the road with cyclists.”
The bill is largely in response to SB 910, a previous bill also authored by Lowenthal and sponsored by the CBC, which was vetoed by Governor Jerry Brown in October of last year.
SB 910 required that, if there was not 3-feet of space given to the motorist to pass, the motorist must slow to 15mph and pass safely. The Automobile Association of America as well as the California Highway Patrol had severe issues with this requirement, worrying that the slowing down of a vehicle by such a dramatic decrease would increase collisions and danger, particularly on streets with 30mph speed limits and higher.