Bicyclists are obnoxious.
On any sunny spring day, you'll find them infesting the country roads surrounding Baltimore looking freakishly fit in their Spandex outfits and dweeby helmets. You just know they're a bunch of smug, greener-than-thou elitists whose greatest joy - apart from forcing motorists to crawl along at 10 mph while they drift toward the middle of the road - is to lecture you about your carbon footprint.
So I can sympathize with those members of an Annapolis House subcommittee who would really prefer to kill Del. Jon S. Cardin's bill to establish a 3-foot buffer zone for bicyclists when cars are passing them. It would be galling to hand a victory to those irksome people - half of whom don't seem to think the rules of the road apply to them. Why reward their bad behavior?
Because it's a good bill. And it's needed.
House Bill 496, along with the companion Senate measure that received preliminary approval last week, would write into Maryland law an evolving national standard that has been adopted in at least 20 states. It won't cost the state money. The State Highway Administration and AAA have endorsed it. Nobody testified against it when it came up for a hearing. It could save a life or two.
Nevertheless, Cardin told me Friday, the bill's prospects are hanging by a thread in the House subcommittee. The Baltimore County Democrat said it isn't being lobbied to death, but it has touched a nerve of resentment among some legislators.
They've seen the way some bicyclists behave. They've seen them scoot through red lights where vehicles are stopped. They see them flagrantly going the wrong way on one-way streets. They see them riding side by side and taking up a whole lane of a two-lane road, oblivious to the vehicle traffic stacking up behind them. Why would anyone possibly want to pass a law on behalf of those people?
Because it's the right thing to do.
Whatever the rights and wrongs of who does what to whom on the roads, the mismatch in weight and vulnerability between motor vehicles and bicycles is extreme. And the law protects the vulnerable, even when the vulnerable get on our nerves.
And, hard as it is to accept, there are many law-abiding, courteous bicyclists who would never dream of lecturing you about your vehicular decisions. These bicyclists tell me the law is urgently needed.
